Imagine my surprise when the local news radio station mentioned one of my favorite collections of "weird tales" from the 19th/20th century cusp- sure enough, Robert Chambers' King in Yellow is now on the Amazon bestseller list due to the popularity of the Cable TV series True Detective.
The tales which make up Chambers' "King in Yellow" sequence are in the public domain. The first The Repairer of Reputations, is a science fiction story set in New York City twenty-five years in the future (1920), when suicide by means of "Government Lethal Chambers" has been made legal. The second tale, The Mask concerns a fatal love triangle among Parisian artists, one of whom has invented a chemical which can petrify organic matter. The third story in the cycle, also set in Paris In the Court of the Dragon, is about a man obsessed by a "hateful" church organist. The final tale, The Yellow Sign returns to a Manhattan setting and involves an artist who is coming to grips with his new-found love for one of his models.
The common thread among these stories is the fictional play The King in Yellow, a literary work that has the power to drive readers to madness:
I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow. When the French Government seized the translated copies which had just arrived in Paris, London, of course, became eager to read it. It is well known how the book spread like an infectious disease, from city to city, from continent to continent, barred out here, confiscated there, denounced by Press and pulpit, censured even by the most advanced literary anarchists. No definite principals had been violated in those wicked pages, no doctrine promulgated, no convictions outraged. It could not be judged by any known standard, yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in The King in Yellow, all felt that human nature could not bear the strain, nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked. The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect.
Chambers drops vignettes from the play into his stories- the play concerns the inhabitants of Carcosa, a locale borrowed from a short-short story by Ambrose Bierce. The Carcosa of Chambers' play-within-a-story is a dreamscape of black stars and twin suns:
Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.
SF author James Blish "added" to Chambers' text of The King in Yellow in his story More Light, and other authors have attempted to "reconstruct" the entire play. Of course, if the entire "play" could be produced, the resultant work would leave madness and horror in its wake... could this explain the rise of the Tea Party?
Here's some bonus content regarding The Court of the Dragon featuring commentary by everyone's favorite sexy antipodean Doktor. In honor of Herr Doktor Awesome, here's Blue Öyster Cult's E.T.I., which references the "King in Yellow":
Now, after writing all that about Robert Chambers' book, I feel I may have to track down the TV series that sparked its newfound popularity. Any readers out there hooked on the show?
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query king in yellow. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query king in yellow. Sort by date Show all posts
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Thursday, June 24, 2010
No Sunflower This!
A line in Smut Clyde's latest post reminded me of a classic, underappreciated series of "weird tales":
It is a tribute to their perceptual acuity that they headed straight for a "King in Yellow" sunflower with their cargo.
Robert W. Chambers was an author of "genre fiction" whose career straddled the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While he was a prolific author of romance fiction, he is best known today for a collection of "weird tales" published in 1895, which revolve around a play, The King in Yellow, which can drive its readers mad. Mentioned in the ficticious play are various locales cribbed from Ambrose Bierce's 1891 short-short story An Inhabitant of Carcosa.
The first tale in Chambers' King in Yellow cycle is The Repairer of Reputations, set in the futuristic world of 1920, a world in which suicide is legal, and every town has a Government Lethal Chamber available to the despondent (NYC's is on the south side of Washington Square, a bad location due to the presence of stressed-out NYU students and losing chess players). The protagonist of the story has succumbed to the fatal charms of the play, which has all the seductive, yet damning, characteristics of an opiate:
During my convalescence I had bought and read for the first time "The King in Yellow." I remember after finishing the first act that it occurred to me that I had better stop. I started up and flung the book into the fireplace; the volume struck the barred grate and fell open on the hearth in the fire-light. If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second act I should never have finished it, but as I stooped to pick it up my eyes became riveted to the open page, and with a cry of terror, or perhaps it was of joy so poignant that I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing from the hearth and crept shaking to my bedroom, where I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet. This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa, where black stars hang in the heavens, where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the Lake of Hali, and my mind will bear forever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth -- a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow. When the French government seized the translated copies which had just arrived in Paris, London, of course, became eager to read it. It is well known how the book spread like an infectious disease, from city to city, from continent to continent, barred out here, confiscated there, denounced by press and pulpit, censured even by the most advanced of literary anarchists. No definite principles had been violated in those wicked pages, no doctrine promulgated, no convictions outraged. It could not be judged by any known standard, yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in "The King in Yellow," all felt that human nature could not bear the strain nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked. The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterwards with more awful effect.
As Chambers incorporated motifs from the work of Bierce, Lovecraft and his imitators incorporated motifs from Chambers' works. The very notion of a destructive, madness-inducing book is a common plot element in the tales of the "Cthulhu mythos". While the idea that a book could endanger one's soul is an ancient one, such terrifying tomes as The Necronomicon or The Book of Eibon owe a greater debt to Chambers' King in Yellow than to the Papal Index.
It is a tribute to their perceptual acuity that they headed straight for a "King in Yellow" sunflower with their cargo.
Robert W. Chambers was an author of "genre fiction" whose career straddled the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While he was a prolific author of romance fiction, he is best known today for a collection of "weird tales" published in 1895, which revolve around a play, The King in Yellow, which can drive its readers mad. Mentioned in the ficticious play are various locales cribbed from Ambrose Bierce's 1891 short-short story An Inhabitant of Carcosa.
The first tale in Chambers' King in Yellow cycle is The Repairer of Reputations, set in the futuristic world of 1920, a world in which suicide is legal, and every town has a Government Lethal Chamber available to the despondent (NYC's is on the south side of Washington Square, a bad location due to the presence of stressed-out NYU students and losing chess players). The protagonist of the story has succumbed to the fatal charms of the play, which has all the seductive, yet damning, characteristics of an opiate:
During my convalescence I had bought and read for the first time "The King in Yellow." I remember after finishing the first act that it occurred to me that I had better stop. I started up and flung the book into the fireplace; the volume struck the barred grate and fell open on the hearth in the fire-light. If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second act I should never have finished it, but as I stooped to pick it up my eyes became riveted to the open page, and with a cry of terror, or perhaps it was of joy so poignant that I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing from the hearth and crept shaking to my bedroom, where I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet. This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa, where black stars hang in the heavens, where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the Lake of Hali, and my mind will bear forever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth -- a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow. When the French government seized the translated copies which had just arrived in Paris, London, of course, became eager to read it. It is well known how the book spread like an infectious disease, from city to city, from continent to continent, barred out here, confiscated there, denounced by press and pulpit, censured even by the most advanced of literary anarchists. No definite principles had been violated in those wicked pages, no doctrine promulgated, no convictions outraged. It could not be judged by any known standard, yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in "The King in Yellow," all felt that human nature could not bear the strain nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked. The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterwards with more awful effect.
As Chambers incorporated motifs from the work of Bierce, Lovecraft and his imitators incorporated motifs from Chambers' works. The very notion of a destructive, madness-inducing book is a common plot element in the tales of the "Cthulhu mythos". While the idea that a book could endanger one's soul is an ancient one, such terrifying tomes as The Necronomicon or The Book of Eibon owe a greater debt to Chambers' King in Yellow than to the Papal Index.
Thursday, April 30, 2020
Illinois Is Not Sending Us Their Best Strippers
Every once in a while, a non-COVID-19 related news story pops up, and it is a relief to recount it. Yesterday's tale was the arrest of a distraught woman from Illinois in the vicinity of the USS Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum, which she believed was the USNS Comfort hospital ship. Being a high-class publication, the NY Post coverage makes clear that the woman is a stripper... that's precisely the titillating content that this Murdoch rag promulgates.
Of course, the deranged woman is a QAnon follower, and she ranted about Hillary Clinton and John Podesta, and spoke about taking down Joe Biden. Apparently, she's been a Trump supporter for a while, but she's active in the QAnon community for a couple of weeks and had a rapid downward spiral into madness. The fact that she had eighteen knives is her car suggests that she was no longer willing to 'Trust the Plan' and sought to take matters into her own hands. Eighteen knives! I don't even have that many knives in my house, including the flatware.
The video of her arrest is unsettling, but she was apprehended without incident and sent to a hospital for evaluation:
The whole QAnon thing fascinates me... I believe it started out as a LARP started by a troll, but morphed into a grift that morphed into a cult. I am reminded of the titular play in Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow, a work of art that has the power to unhinge the reader:
During my convalescence I had bought and read for the first time, The King in Yellow. I remember after finishing the first act that it occurred to me that I had better stop. I started up and flung the book into the fireplace; the volume struck the barred grate and fell open on the hearth in the firelight. If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second act I should never have finished it, but as I stooped to pick it up, my eyes became riveted to the open page, and with a cry of terror, or perhaps it was of joy so poignant that I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing out of the coals and crept shaking to my bedroom, where I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet. This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow. When the French Government seized the translated copies which had just arrived in Paris, London, of course, became eager to read it. It is well known how the book spread like an infectious disease, from city to city, from continent to continent, barred out here, confiscated there, denounced by Press and pulpit, censured even by the most advanced of literary anarchists. No definite principles had been violated in those wicked pages, no doctrine promulgated, no convictions outraged. It could not be judged by any known standard, yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in The King in Yellow, all felt that human nature could not bear the strain, nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked. The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect.
The QAnon Conspiracy Complex is perfectly tailored to further radicalize Trump dead-enders. It posits that Trump is a super-genius of sterling moral character, that his opponents are evil beyond all possible redemption, and that all of the Deplorables' foes will meet a sticky end, tried and executed by military tribunals. The end result is supposed to be a utopia in which the formerly despised conspiracy theorists will become revered leaders, recognized for the wisdom which led them to see what the 'normies' were unable to see in time. It's a heady narrative, but the fact that it's not coming to fruition is driving people to madness... in a very real sense, as Chambers would put it, the very banality and innocence of the first act only allows the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect.
Title taken from this infamous Trump quote.
Of course, the deranged woman is a QAnon follower, and she ranted about Hillary Clinton and John Podesta, and spoke about taking down Joe Biden. Apparently, she's been a Trump supporter for a while, but she's active in the QAnon community for a couple of weeks and had a rapid downward spiral into madness. The fact that she had eighteen knives is her car suggests that she was no longer willing to 'Trust the Plan' and sought to take matters into her own hands. Eighteen knives! I don't even have that many knives in my house, including the flatware.
The video of her arrest is unsettling, but she was apprehended without incident and sent to a hospital for evaluation:
The whole QAnon thing fascinates me... I believe it started out as a LARP started by a troll, but morphed into a grift that morphed into a cult. I am reminded of the titular play in Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow, a work of art that has the power to unhinge the reader:
During my convalescence I had bought and read for the first time, The King in Yellow. I remember after finishing the first act that it occurred to me that I had better stop. I started up and flung the book into the fireplace; the volume struck the barred grate and fell open on the hearth in the firelight. If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second act I should never have finished it, but as I stooped to pick it up, my eyes became riveted to the open page, and with a cry of terror, or perhaps it was of joy so poignant that I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing out of the coals and crept shaking to my bedroom, where I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet. This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow. When the French Government seized the translated copies which had just arrived in Paris, London, of course, became eager to read it. It is well known how the book spread like an infectious disease, from city to city, from continent to continent, barred out here, confiscated there, denounced by Press and pulpit, censured even by the most advanced of literary anarchists. No definite principles had been violated in those wicked pages, no doctrine promulgated, no convictions outraged. It could not be judged by any known standard, yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in The King in Yellow, all felt that human nature could not bear the strain, nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked. The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect.
The QAnon Conspiracy Complex is perfectly tailored to further radicalize Trump dead-enders. It posits that Trump is a super-genius of sterling moral character, that his opponents are evil beyond all possible redemption, and that all of the Deplorables' foes will meet a sticky end, tried and executed by military tribunals. The end result is supposed to be a utopia in which the formerly despised conspiracy theorists will become revered leaders, recognized for the wisdom which led them to see what the 'normies' were unable to see in time. It's a heady narrative, but the fact that it's not coming to fruition is driving people to madness... in a very real sense, as Chambers would put it, the very banality and innocence of the first act only allows the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect.
Title taken from this infamous Trump quote.
Wednesday, July 8, 2020
Dim Costcosa
During this Plague Year, I've been obsessed with Robert Chambers' story-cycle The King in Yellow, referencing it in a couple of posts. In this week's Lovecraft reading by Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth at Tor Books website, they cover a riff on 'The King in Yellow' by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. The very idea of a madness-inducing play (or opera or film) resonates in this age of social media induced meme-poisoning (amplified by reactionary talking heads who have turned public health into a culture war) injecting not-just-misinformation but malinformation into the public discourse, which leads to madness, despair, disease, and death.
The mad, maskless minions of the King in Orange are out there, terrorizing the good people of, well not Carcosa, but Costcosa:
We know, asshole, you wear no mask...
Customer, we only ask
That you wear a snug face mask.
Is that such an awful task?
In Costcosa.
The mad, maskless minions of the King in Orange are out there, terrorizing the good people of, well not Carcosa, but Costcosa:
Florida man at Fort Myers Costco in "Running the World Since 1776" shirt flips out on elderly woman who asked him to wear a mask and man who defended her #BecauseFlorida (via @profjaffar) pic.twitter.com/PDOvi33qHK
— Billy Corben (@BillyCorben) July 7, 2020
We know, asshole, you wear no mask...
Customer, we only ask
That you wear a snug face mask.
Is that such an awful task?
In Costcosa.
Thursday, May 7, 2020
Horror Anthology
I know I've been joking about the relevance of horror fiction in this current Age of Plague, but, Lordy Loo, events this week are really reminiscent of a horror anthology. Two months ago, I wrote a post titled The Masque of the Orange Death, riffing off of Poe's masterpiece, and now it looks like the Orange Death has entered Stupid Prince Prospero's castle.
A week ago, I referenced Robert Chamber's The King in Yellow in a post, and now we have the tale of the King in Orange unmasking:
The gaslighting attempt is farcical, and it really comes across as a scene from the eponymous play in Chambers' story cycle:
Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.
Stranger: Indeed?
Cassilda: Indeed, it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
Stranger: I wear no mask.
Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda) No mask? No mask!
Meanwhile, the real horror story continues, and the Orange Death is poised to sweep rural America at a time when the MAGA people are agitating for opening up for business. Meanwhile, Trump is claiming to be a warrior in the fight against COVID-19. and I'm getting a real Staff Sergeant Matthew McKeon vibe from him.
NOTE: My familiarity with the Ribbon Creek Incident is due to family history... one of my mother's cousins was there, and being raised on Pelham Bay in the Bronx, was a strong swimmer who was able to save several other recruits from drowning. This was why she drilled into us the importance of learning how to swim at a very young age.
A week ago, I referenced Robert Chamber's The King in Yellow in a post, and now we have the tale of the King in Orange unmasking:
I asked @realDonaldTrump why he didn’t wear a mask at the Honeywell plant yesterday. He said he had worn one. I said we did not see him wearing one. He said he wore one backstage and the Honeywell chief said it was not necessary to wear in the plant. pic.twitter.com/4KYvq3J6yE
— Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) May 6, 2020
The gaslighting attempt is farcical, and it really comes across as a scene from the eponymous play in Chambers' story cycle:
Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.
Stranger: Indeed?
Cassilda: Indeed, it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
Stranger: I wear no mask.
Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda) No mask? No mask!
Meanwhile, the real horror story continues, and the Orange Death is poised to sweep rural America at a time when the MAGA people are agitating for opening up for business. Meanwhile, Trump is claiming to be a warrior in the fight against COVID-19. and I'm getting a real Staff Sergeant Matthew McKeon vibe from him.
NOTE: My familiarity with the Ribbon Creek Incident is due to family history... one of my mother's cousins was there, and being raised on Pelham Bay in the Bronx, was a strong swimmer who was able to save several other recruits from drowning. This was why she drilled into us the importance of learning how to swim at a very young age.
Sunday, May 24, 2020
Health and Immunity!
I've been sorta remiss in my runup to International Talk Like a Jack Vance Character Day. As I noted last week, I've had Jack Vance on my mind lately. There are a couple of reasons for this... one is that a podcast I like, which looks at fantasy and science fiction literature using St Gary's famous Appendix N as a starting point, covered The Star King in a recent episode.
The primary reason I've had Vance on the mind is that I've been using "HEALTH AND IMMUNITY!" as a greeting and farewell lately. This was inspired by a passage in The Palace of Love, in which protagonist Kirth Gersen, honed by his grandfather into an instrument of vengeance against the pirates and slavers who destroyed their community, visits one of the Planets of Hats (WARNING: TV Tropes, may cause hours of lost time) that pop up in the series, in this case, a planet on which poisoning is an art form. The visit, prompted by a news item concerning the upcoming execution (by poison, of course) of a guildmaster 'venefice' for selling poisons to the Big Bad Evil Guy of the book, involves contacting a local guide and poisoners' guild member to allow Gersen to interview the condemned man in the hope of obtaining information about his quarry.
In typical Vance fashion, this episode in the novel is all about mordant humor, cultural relativism, and verbal repartee, with a side order of an off-putting culinary exposition. One of the highlights involves a pre-interview visit to a forest, in which the local guide shows off local flora and fauna to Gersen and his female companion, who is beginning to weary of Gersen's role as an obsessed avenger:
"Very well," sighed Edelrod "The interview may be conducted later this afternoon In the meantime what are your wishes^ Would you care to explore the countryside5 The weather is fine, the woods are ablaze with flowers, sultnes, pop-barks, there is a well-drained path " Alusz Iphigenia, who had been restless, rose to her feet Edelrod led them along a path which crossed a brackish river and plunged into the forest. The vegetation was a typical Sarkovy melange trees, shrubs,cycads, bubble-shells, grasses of a hundred varieties The high foliage was for the most part black and brown, with occasional splotches of red; below were purples, greens, pale blues. Edelrod enlivened the stroll with a discussion of various plants beside the way. He indicated a small gray fungus. "Here is the source oftwitus, an excellent selective poison, fatal only if ingested twice within a week. It ranks in this respect with mervan, which migrates harmlessly to the skin, and becomes a lethal principle only upon exposure to direct sunlight. I have known persons who fearing mervan kept to their tents for days on end."
They came to a little clearing. Edelrod looked sharply in all directions. "I have no overt enemies, but several people have died here recently . . . Today all seems well. Notice this tree growing to the side." He pointed to a slender white-barked sapling with round yellow leaves. "Some call it the coin-tree, others the good-fornought. It is completely inoffensive, either as a primary or an operative. You might ingest the whole of it leaves, bark, pith, roots, and note nothing other than a sluggishness of digestion. Recently one of our venefices became irritated at such insipidity. He made an intensive study of the coin-tree, and after several years finally derived a substance of unusual potency. To be useful it must be dissolved in methycm and wafted into the air as a fog or a mist, whence it enters the corpus through the eyes, causing first blindness, then numbness, then complete paralysis. Think of it' From waste, a useful and effective poison' Is this not a tribute to human persistence and ingenuity?"
"An impressive accomplishment," said Gersen. Alusz Iphigema remained silent.
Edelrod went on: "We are frequently asked why we persist in deriving our poisons from natural sources. Why do we not immure ourselves in laboratories and synthesize? The answer is of course that natural poisons, being initially associated with living tissue, are the more effective."
"I would suspect the presence of catalyzing impurities in the natural poisons," Gersen suggested, "rather than metaphysical association."
Edelrod held up a minatory finger. "Never scoff at the role of the mind' Eor instance—let me see—there should be one somewhere near . Yes. See there—the little reptile."
Under a mottled white and blue leaf rested a small lizardlike creature.
"This is the meng. From one of his organs comes a substance which can be distributed either as uigar or as furux. The same substance, mind you' But when sold as uigar and used as such, the symptoms are spasms, biting off of the tongue and a frothing madness. When sold and used as furux, the interskeletal cartilage is dissolved so that the frame goes limp. What do you say to that? Is that not metaphysics of the most exalted sort?"
"Interesting, certainly... Hm... What occurs when the substance is sold and used as, say for the sake of argument, water?"
Edelrod pulled at his nose. "An interesting experiment. I wonder... But the proposal encases a fallacy. Who would buy and administer an expensive vial of water?"
"The suggestion was poorly thought out," admitted Gersen.
Edelrod made an indulgent gesture. "Not at all, not at all. From |ust such apparent folly come notable variations. The graybloom, for instance. Who would have ever suspected the virtue to be derived from its perfume, until Grand Master Strubal turned it upside down and left it in the dark for a month, whereupon it became tox meratis? One waft will kill; the venefice need merely walk past his subject."
Alusz Iphigema stooped to pick up a small rounded pebble of quartz. "What horrible substance do you produce from this stone?"
Edelrod looked away, half embarrassed. "None whatever. At least none to my knowledge. Though we use such pebbles in ball mills to crush photis seed to flour. Never fear; your pebble is not so useless as it seems."
Alusz Iphigema tossed it away in disgust. "Unbelievable," she muttered, "that people should dedicate themselves to such activity."
Edelrod shrugged. "We serve a useful purpose, everyone occasionally needs poison. We are capable of this excellence and we feel duty-bound to pursue it." He inspected Alusz Iphigema with curiosity. "Have you no skills of your own?"
"No."
"At the hotel you may buy a booklet entitled Primer to the Art of Preparing and Using Poisons, and I believe it includes a small kit of some basic alkaloids. If you are interested m developing a skill—"
"Thank you. I have no such inclination."
Edelrod made a polite gesture, as if to acknowledge that each must steer his own course through life.
The macabre tour continues in town, as the guide escorts them to the poisoners' guildhall, where Gersen will attempt to convince, that is bribe, the guildmasters to use a quick, painless poison rather than an experimental toxin for the execution so the condemned man will give him the information he needs:
Subdued and depressed, Edelrod took them through the bazaar. Only in the Poison Quarter did he recover his animation, and pointed here and there to bargains and especially noteworthy preparations. He seized a ball of gray wax. "Observe this deadly material. I handle it without fear: I am immunized^ But if you were to rub it on an article belonging to your enemy—his comb, his earscraper—he is as good as gone. Another application is to spread a film over your identification papers. Then, should an overofficious administrator hector you, he is contaminated and pays for his insolence."
Alusz Iphigenia took a deep breath. "How does a Sarkoy survive to become an adult?"
"Two words," Edelrod replied, holding two fingers didactically high. "Caution, immunity. I am immune to thirty poisons. I carry indicators and alarms to warn ofcluthe, meratis, black-tox and vole. I observe the most punctilious caution in eating, smelling, donning garments, bedding with a strange female. Ha—ha. Here is a favorite trick, and the overimpulsive lecher finds himself in difficulties. But to go on. I am cautious in these situations and also in passing downwind of a covert, even though I have no fear of meratis. Caution has become second nature. If I suspect that I have or am about to have an enemy, I cultivate his friendship and poison him to diminish the risk."
"You will live to become an old man," said Gersen
When time comes for the public execution, which takes the form of an entertainment accompanying a banquet, the friendly guide and poisoner uses the salutation that I adopted a couple of weeks ago:
As if in response to her question Edelrod appeared bowing in absurd punctilio. Tonight he wore a long gown of green cloth, a tall fur cap "Health and immunity'" he greeted them. "Do you attend the poisonings? They are scheduled for the hotel rotunda, for the education of gathered notables "
Health and immunity, everybody!
The primary reason I've had Vance on the mind is that I've been using "HEALTH AND IMMUNITY!" as a greeting and farewell lately. This was inspired by a passage in The Palace of Love, in which protagonist Kirth Gersen, honed by his grandfather into an instrument of vengeance against the pirates and slavers who destroyed their community, visits one of the Planets of Hats (WARNING: TV Tropes, may cause hours of lost time) that pop up in the series, in this case, a planet on which poisoning is an art form. The visit, prompted by a news item concerning the upcoming execution (by poison, of course) of a guildmaster 'venefice' for selling poisons to the Big Bad Evil Guy of the book, involves contacting a local guide and poisoners' guild member to allow Gersen to interview the condemned man in the hope of obtaining information about his quarry.
In typical Vance fashion, this episode in the novel is all about mordant humor, cultural relativism, and verbal repartee, with a side order of an off-putting culinary exposition. One of the highlights involves a pre-interview visit to a forest, in which the local guide shows off local flora and fauna to Gersen and his female companion, who is beginning to weary of Gersen's role as an obsessed avenger:
"Very well," sighed Edelrod "The interview may be conducted later this afternoon In the meantime what are your wishes^ Would you care to explore the countryside5 The weather is fine, the woods are ablaze with flowers, sultnes, pop-barks, there is a well-drained path " Alusz Iphigenia, who had been restless, rose to her feet Edelrod led them along a path which crossed a brackish river and plunged into the forest. The vegetation was a typical Sarkovy melange trees, shrubs,cycads, bubble-shells, grasses of a hundred varieties The high foliage was for the most part black and brown, with occasional splotches of red; below were purples, greens, pale blues. Edelrod enlivened the stroll with a discussion of various plants beside the way. He indicated a small gray fungus. "Here is the source oftwitus, an excellent selective poison, fatal only if ingested twice within a week. It ranks in this respect with mervan, which migrates harmlessly to the skin, and becomes a lethal principle only upon exposure to direct sunlight. I have known persons who fearing mervan kept to their tents for days on end."
They came to a little clearing. Edelrod looked sharply in all directions. "I have no overt enemies, but several people have died here recently . . . Today all seems well. Notice this tree growing to the side." He pointed to a slender white-barked sapling with round yellow leaves. "Some call it the coin-tree, others the good-fornought. It is completely inoffensive, either as a primary or an operative. You might ingest the whole of it leaves, bark, pith, roots, and note nothing other than a sluggishness of digestion. Recently one of our venefices became irritated at such insipidity. He made an intensive study of the coin-tree, and after several years finally derived a substance of unusual potency. To be useful it must be dissolved in methycm and wafted into the air as a fog or a mist, whence it enters the corpus through the eyes, causing first blindness, then numbness, then complete paralysis. Think of it' From waste, a useful and effective poison' Is this not a tribute to human persistence and ingenuity?"
"An impressive accomplishment," said Gersen. Alusz Iphigema remained silent.
Edelrod went on: "We are frequently asked why we persist in deriving our poisons from natural sources. Why do we not immure ourselves in laboratories and synthesize? The answer is of course that natural poisons, being initially associated with living tissue, are the more effective."
"I would suspect the presence of catalyzing impurities in the natural poisons," Gersen suggested, "rather than metaphysical association."
Edelrod held up a minatory finger. "Never scoff at the role of the mind' Eor instance—let me see—there should be one somewhere near . Yes. See there—the little reptile."
Under a mottled white and blue leaf rested a small lizardlike creature.
"This is the meng. From one of his organs comes a substance which can be distributed either as uigar or as furux. The same substance, mind you' But when sold as uigar and used as such, the symptoms are spasms, biting off of the tongue and a frothing madness. When sold and used as furux, the interskeletal cartilage is dissolved so that the frame goes limp. What do you say to that? Is that not metaphysics of the most exalted sort?"
"Interesting, certainly... Hm... What occurs when the substance is sold and used as, say for the sake of argument, water?"
Edelrod pulled at his nose. "An interesting experiment. I wonder... But the proposal encases a fallacy. Who would buy and administer an expensive vial of water?"
"The suggestion was poorly thought out," admitted Gersen.
Edelrod made an indulgent gesture. "Not at all, not at all. From |ust such apparent folly come notable variations. The graybloom, for instance. Who would have ever suspected the virtue to be derived from its perfume, until Grand Master Strubal turned it upside down and left it in the dark for a month, whereupon it became tox meratis? One waft will kill; the venefice need merely walk past his subject."
Alusz Iphigema stooped to pick up a small rounded pebble of quartz. "What horrible substance do you produce from this stone?"
Edelrod looked away, half embarrassed. "None whatever. At least none to my knowledge. Though we use such pebbles in ball mills to crush photis seed to flour. Never fear; your pebble is not so useless as it seems."
Alusz Iphigema tossed it away in disgust. "Unbelievable," she muttered, "that people should dedicate themselves to such activity."
Edelrod shrugged. "We serve a useful purpose, everyone occasionally needs poison. We are capable of this excellence and we feel duty-bound to pursue it." He inspected Alusz Iphigema with curiosity. "Have you no skills of your own?"
"No."
"At the hotel you may buy a booklet entitled Primer to the Art of Preparing and Using Poisons, and I believe it includes a small kit of some basic alkaloids. If you are interested m developing a skill—"
"Thank you. I have no such inclination."
Edelrod made a polite gesture, as if to acknowledge that each must steer his own course through life.
The macabre tour continues in town, as the guide escorts them to the poisoners' guildhall, where Gersen will attempt to convince, that is bribe, the guildmasters to use a quick, painless poison rather than an experimental toxin for the execution so the condemned man will give him the information he needs:
Subdued and depressed, Edelrod took them through the bazaar. Only in the Poison Quarter did he recover his animation, and pointed here and there to bargains and especially noteworthy preparations. He seized a ball of gray wax. "Observe this deadly material. I handle it without fear: I am immunized^ But if you were to rub it on an article belonging to your enemy—his comb, his earscraper—he is as good as gone. Another application is to spread a film over your identification papers. Then, should an overofficious administrator hector you, he is contaminated and pays for his insolence."
Alusz Iphigenia took a deep breath. "How does a Sarkoy survive to become an adult?"
"Two words," Edelrod replied, holding two fingers didactically high. "Caution, immunity. I am immune to thirty poisons. I carry indicators and alarms to warn ofcluthe, meratis, black-tox and vole. I observe the most punctilious caution in eating, smelling, donning garments, bedding with a strange female. Ha—ha. Here is a favorite trick, and the overimpulsive lecher finds himself in difficulties. But to go on. I am cautious in these situations and also in passing downwind of a covert, even though I have no fear of meratis. Caution has become second nature. If I suspect that I have or am about to have an enemy, I cultivate his friendship and poison him to diminish the risk."
"You will live to become an old man," said Gersen
When time comes for the public execution, which takes the form of an entertainment accompanying a banquet, the friendly guide and poisoner uses the salutation that I adopted a couple of weeks ago:
As if in response to her question Edelrod appeared bowing in absurd punctilio. Tonight he wore a long gown of green cloth, a tall fur cap "Health and immunity'" he greeted them. "Do you attend the poisonings? They are scheduled for the hotel rotunda, for the education of gathered notables "
Health and immunity, everybody!
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Bibliophile's Angst- Lending a Cherished Book
I have a friend and co-worker who is such a bibliophile that she'd probably bleed ink were she cut. In one of our conversations, which invariably lead to the subject of books, I mentioned John Bellairs and she said she was a big fan. I then told her that an omnibus edition had been published of Bellairs' fiction for adults, and that it included an unfinished draft of a sequel to The Face in the Frost, the existence of which she was unaware. Well, now I've gone and done it... I feel compelled to lend her my copy of Magic Mirrors. Hey, I know where she works, so the odds that she'll scarper off with it are pretty slim. Now I guess I have to put up a review for the unfinished sequel, the title of which is The Dolphin Cross.
The Face in the Frost is, at its core, the story of an investigation- the protagonists, Prospero and Roger Bacon, become aware of a threat to their (particularly Prospero's) continued well-being, and seek to determine the nature of the threat. Throughout the course of the narrative, they are unsure of the nature of the threat, though they journey on to its potential source in a desperate attempt to counter it.
The Dolphin Cross takes place a few months after the end of The Face in the Frost, after Prospero and Roger Bacon (with some unlooked-for help) have thwarted the evil machinations against them (the nature of the threat is never made explicit). While working outside his improbable house (a line from The Face in the Frost comes to mind- "I do not think, Prospero," he said, "that one should attribute a very high degree of reality to your house."), Prospero becomes aware of the movements of armies throughout the kingdom in which he lives, and he is eventually attacked by a mysterious knight of a singular nature. While catching up with news of local happenings at a nearby tavern, he is separated from his all-important wizard's staff. Thus handicapped, he is unable to fend off another attack and is exiled (like the Prospero you are thinking of) to a remote island. Much of the manuscript is a prison narrative, with Prospero alternately killing time, and devising a means to escape from his captivity. All the while, his sympathetic but unrelenting jailer lets fall snippets of information regarding a new claimant to the throne of the disunited kingdom who seems to wish to bring all of the petty fiefdoms under his rule. Bellairs' description of the disposition of Prospero's country is an inspired bit of lunacy:
The South Kingdom, where Prospero lived, was an insane mélange of tiny princedoms, dukedoms, free cities, fiefs, independent farms, and toll-free bishoprics. The only extant map of the whole domain was done by Abraham Ortelius, cartographer to King Gorm the Wonderworker, the ruler of one of these miniature principalities. The "Measles Map", as it was called in the rather small intellectual community of the South, looked like a picture of something in the last stages of a malignant and disfiguring disease. Blotches of purple rot crept across streams and fields. Pimples and boils popped up everywhere in realistic colors, for when Ortelius had to depict, say, a kingdom within a dukedom within a princedom, he always used pink for the outer ring, red for the next, and bright pustular yellow for the pimple's head. The largest of these nations was about the size of Connecticut, while the smallest was only half an acre. It was called Bedd, and whenever Prospero looked at the map- there was a copy tacked up in his living room- he imagined the crabby old Bishop of Bedd peering over the top of his brass fourposter, threatening all comers to try and do him out of his rightful fief. Or frightful reef. Or something. You couldn't look at the Measles Map for very long without getting the giggles.
So, for much of the narrative, our protagonist sits in lonely exile on a tiny, remote island, until he is able to escape with the aid of a magical MacGuffin which he finds when he makes a thorough search of his environs. Meanwhile, there is a brief interlude in which Roger Bacon discovers that his friend is in danger through the agency of a magic alarm bottle, and departs from his abbey in Scotland. The plot resumes with Prospero safely ashore, where he poses as an itinerant leech-gatherer until he gives his wizardly avocation away by using a trick to cheat at a game, thereby gaining the attention of an angry mob. Escaping the mob, he makes his way to a nearby island where he falls into the clutches of one of Bellairs' most memorable villains, a malignant wizard who calls himself "The Bishop". The scene in which Prospero dines with The Bishop is like a creepy spin on a scene in a "James Bond" movie, in which the spy dines with the supercriminal... the description of the table setting allows Bellairs to indulge in some of his signature creepiness:
What else was there? Hmm. Well, over there was a covered dish of some kind. It was shaped like a duck, with overlapping layers of copper feathers and an ivory bill. One leg was missing. Prospero stared at the thing. For an object that was obviously artificial, it had a very lifelike air. He wondered why. Maybe it was the way the glass eyes caught the firelight. Prospero looked around some more. Near him, behind a small covered dish, stood a sugar bowl shaped like a badger- a badger with the top of his skull cut away. Prospero winced. He had an owl-shaped cookie jar at home, and the head was removable. But he never felt that he was beheading the owl when he reached in to get a cookie. These dishes were obviously made of china, porcelain, and metal, but they all seemed real. And the things they were shaped like were maimed, twisted, mutilated. Prospero felt that he was staring at the display case of a sadistic taxidermist.
The fragment ends with Prospero's escape from The Bishop, and Prospero's parting view of the Bishop's home is another of Bellairs' architectural flights of fancy:
The castle was something to stare at. It looked like what Buckingham Palace might look like if it ever went on a two-week drunk. Essentially, it was a big stone strongbox covered with cornices and pediments and balustrades and balls and vases. But instead of being all triangles and rectangles and squares, as such places usually are, it was droopy crescents and parallelograms and lurching unidentifable shapes. Every angle was out of kilter. Here and there, in niches and in split pediments, Prospero saw busts, and even at this distance he could tell that they were meant to be busts of the Bishop. But some were covered with spider webs and some dripped moss; one was only a half-face split down the middle. The whole building seemed to be afflicted with some horrible stone disease, so that the gray surface was covered with blisters and blotches. A low dome of green copper sprawled across the roof of the building, and from the center of the dome a column of black smoke rose.
The Dolphin Cross went unfinished due to Bellairs' concentration on writing successful children's thrillers (his young adult fiction career began with The House with a Clock in its Walls). The published draft of this, the first third of the book, is a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been. While it's not the equal of The Face in the Frost (it's a draft, so it's not very polished), it does feature Bellairs' trademark blend of humor and horror, though the horror is not quite as unsettling as that in "TFitF". The dangers presented in the plot are more concrete, less existential. There is, though, one moment in which I had to pause in my reading to howl "NOOOO!!!", an experience which most Bellairs fans would no doubt share, especially since the book is unfinished, so the actuality of the plot hook remains up in the air.
Now, here I am, looking at my cherished copy of Magic Mirrors, questioning the wisdom of letting it out of my sight for an instant. I know I can trust my friend, like I said, I know where she works. Yeah, I have to lend it out... I know the exact moment when she'll pause in her reading and howl "NOOOO!!!"
The Face in the Frost is, at its core, the story of an investigation- the protagonists, Prospero and Roger Bacon, become aware of a threat to their (particularly Prospero's) continued well-being, and seek to determine the nature of the threat. Throughout the course of the narrative, they are unsure of the nature of the threat, though they journey on to its potential source in a desperate attempt to counter it.
The Dolphin Cross takes place a few months after the end of The Face in the Frost, after Prospero and Roger Bacon (with some unlooked-for help) have thwarted the evil machinations against them (the nature of the threat is never made explicit). While working outside his improbable house (a line from The Face in the Frost comes to mind- "I do not think, Prospero," he said, "that one should attribute a very high degree of reality to your house."), Prospero becomes aware of the movements of armies throughout the kingdom in which he lives, and he is eventually attacked by a mysterious knight of a singular nature. While catching up with news of local happenings at a nearby tavern, he is separated from his all-important wizard's staff. Thus handicapped, he is unable to fend off another attack and is exiled (like the Prospero you are thinking of) to a remote island. Much of the manuscript is a prison narrative, with Prospero alternately killing time, and devising a means to escape from his captivity. All the while, his sympathetic but unrelenting jailer lets fall snippets of information regarding a new claimant to the throne of the disunited kingdom who seems to wish to bring all of the petty fiefdoms under his rule. Bellairs' description of the disposition of Prospero's country is an inspired bit of lunacy:
The South Kingdom, where Prospero lived, was an insane mélange of tiny princedoms, dukedoms, free cities, fiefs, independent farms, and toll-free bishoprics. The only extant map of the whole domain was done by Abraham Ortelius, cartographer to King Gorm the Wonderworker, the ruler of one of these miniature principalities. The "Measles Map", as it was called in the rather small intellectual community of the South, looked like a picture of something in the last stages of a malignant and disfiguring disease. Blotches of purple rot crept across streams and fields. Pimples and boils popped up everywhere in realistic colors, for when Ortelius had to depict, say, a kingdom within a dukedom within a princedom, he always used pink for the outer ring, red for the next, and bright pustular yellow for the pimple's head. The largest of these nations was about the size of Connecticut, while the smallest was only half an acre. It was called Bedd, and whenever Prospero looked at the map- there was a copy tacked up in his living room- he imagined the crabby old Bishop of Bedd peering over the top of his brass fourposter, threatening all comers to try and do him out of his rightful fief. Or frightful reef. Or something. You couldn't look at the Measles Map for very long without getting the giggles.
So, for much of the narrative, our protagonist sits in lonely exile on a tiny, remote island, until he is able to escape with the aid of a magical MacGuffin which he finds when he makes a thorough search of his environs. Meanwhile, there is a brief interlude in which Roger Bacon discovers that his friend is in danger through the agency of a magic alarm bottle, and departs from his abbey in Scotland. The plot resumes with Prospero safely ashore, where he poses as an itinerant leech-gatherer until he gives his wizardly avocation away by using a trick to cheat at a game, thereby gaining the attention of an angry mob. Escaping the mob, he makes his way to a nearby island where he falls into the clutches of one of Bellairs' most memorable villains, a malignant wizard who calls himself "The Bishop". The scene in which Prospero dines with The Bishop is like a creepy spin on a scene in a "James Bond" movie, in which the spy dines with the supercriminal... the description of the table setting allows Bellairs to indulge in some of his signature creepiness:
What else was there? Hmm. Well, over there was a covered dish of some kind. It was shaped like a duck, with overlapping layers of copper feathers and an ivory bill. One leg was missing. Prospero stared at the thing. For an object that was obviously artificial, it had a very lifelike air. He wondered why. Maybe it was the way the glass eyes caught the firelight. Prospero looked around some more. Near him, behind a small covered dish, stood a sugar bowl shaped like a badger- a badger with the top of his skull cut away. Prospero winced. He had an owl-shaped cookie jar at home, and the head was removable. But he never felt that he was beheading the owl when he reached in to get a cookie. These dishes were obviously made of china, porcelain, and metal, but they all seemed real. And the things they were shaped like were maimed, twisted, mutilated. Prospero felt that he was staring at the display case of a sadistic taxidermist.
The fragment ends with Prospero's escape from The Bishop, and Prospero's parting view of the Bishop's home is another of Bellairs' architectural flights of fancy:
The castle was something to stare at. It looked like what Buckingham Palace might look like if it ever went on a two-week drunk. Essentially, it was a big stone strongbox covered with cornices and pediments and balustrades and balls and vases. But instead of being all triangles and rectangles and squares, as such places usually are, it was droopy crescents and parallelograms and lurching unidentifable shapes. Every angle was out of kilter. Here and there, in niches and in split pediments, Prospero saw busts, and even at this distance he could tell that they were meant to be busts of the Bishop. But some were covered with spider webs and some dripped moss; one was only a half-face split down the middle. The whole building seemed to be afflicted with some horrible stone disease, so that the gray surface was covered with blisters and blotches. A low dome of green copper sprawled across the roof of the building, and from the center of the dome a column of black smoke rose.
The Dolphin Cross went unfinished due to Bellairs' concentration on writing successful children's thrillers (his young adult fiction career began with The House with a Clock in its Walls). The published draft of this, the first third of the book, is a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been. While it's not the equal of The Face in the Frost (it's a draft, so it's not very polished), it does feature Bellairs' trademark blend of humor and horror, though the horror is not quite as unsettling as that in "TFitF". The dangers presented in the plot are more concrete, less existential. There is, though, one moment in which I had to pause in my reading to howl "NOOOO!!!", an experience which most Bellairs fans would no doubt share, especially since the book is unfinished, so the actuality of the plot hook remains up in the air.
Now, here I am, looking at my cherished copy of Magic Mirrors, questioning the wisdom of letting it out of my sight for an instant. I know I can trust my friend, like I said, I know where she works. Yeah, I have to lend it out... I know the exact moment when she'll pause in her reading and howl "NOOOO!!!"
Monday, December 10, 2012
Numbnut's Nog Nattering
One thing that I've noticed about Libertarians (so-called) is that they are hung up on the idea the tyranny can only come from an overreaching government (though most of them are notably silent when said overreaching is done by Republicans). Libertarians almost invariably turn a blind eye to the threats to freedom posed by corporations or wealthy private individuals. Conversely, Libertarians tend to portray attempts to regulate industry as attacks on liberty. For the latest Libertarian affront to sense and reason, nothing beats Kevin Williamson's bold resistance to the Eggnog Gestapo. Let's all put on our Liberal Fascist jackboots and tromp all over Williamson's post. The problems begin with the title, a Godwin's Law violation, and they don't get any better.
Here is a sentence that makes me want to burn my passport and move into a fortified rural compound:
The FDA dictates that U.S. nog have at least 6 percent milk fat.
Ah... the product standards of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are exactly analogous to the tactics of the dreaded Nazi Secret Police. I imagine that, in Williamson's "mind" (those square quotes are necessary), the Liberal Fascist Gestapo kicked down the doors of European Jews in order to mandate a minimum "white fish" quantity in gefilte fish.
Somewhere in the vast array of federal rules and regulations — the 10,000 Commandments — is one specifying the minimum of milk fat that eggnog shall contain. Did the men who fought at Lexington and Concord do so in order to set up a new regime that would manage their lives on this level? King George III would never have dreamed of such imperious behavior.
The men who fought at Lexingon and Concord fought to ensure that companies could foist adulterated and/or subpar products on the consumer. Any attempt to force producers to adhere to a quality benchmark is tantamount to tyranny. Why shouldn't the "masters of the universe" be able to pass off thin, watery pseudo-dairy products as genuine, traditional eggnog? The peasants aren't owed an explanation, they will get what they get and like it! Why should a "job creator" have to market their food products accurately? They should not be forced to label their seaweed extract nog as such... besides, seaweed extract nog is delicious!
King George III would never have dreamed of such imperious behavior. Is there nothing too trivial for the federal government to micromanage?
Is there nothing too trivial for an asinine Libertarian to whine about? Protip, Kevin, the adjective is Juvenalian, not juvenile- satire, UR DOIN IT RONG!!!
Not content to sit back smugly, enjoying the satisfaction of earning his wingnut welfare check for writing this bit of coprography (not to be confused with coprophagy, which is what Williamson's readers engage in), Williamson had to add to his screed:
UPDATE: And then there is this:
Annatto and turmeric (for color) The use of these two natural food colorings—which add a yellow tone—is technically forbidden in eggnogs under federal regulation (it might make revelers think the drink contains more egg than it really does). But eggnog makers pushed back, and that rule has been stayed—pending a public hearing—for the past 30 years! The FDA is now looking into it.
I shall now set something on fire.
I consume more much more turmeric and annatto than the average 'Merican, being addicted to the dubious cuisines of sinister foreign elements. I have no objection to the presence of such ingredients... unless such presence is meant to deceive the consumer. Williamson even admits this deceptive intent in his post: (it might make revelers think the drink contains more egg than it really does). Traditional eggnog recipes don't contain turmeric or annatto, they contain copious amounts of eggs. Dairy producers should have to market nogs with trace amounts of egg as "curry nogs" or "adobo nogs".
I suggest that, if Mr Williamson is sincere in his desire to set something on fire, he burn his computer... it would spare us his idiotic rants in the future, and it is sure to piss off some EPA or OSHA bureaucrat who would impose the tyrrany of clean air standards on patriotic Mr Williamson.
Cross posted at Rumproast.
Here is a sentence that makes me want to burn my passport and move into a fortified rural compound:
The FDA dictates that U.S. nog have at least 6 percent milk fat.
Ah... the product standards of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are exactly analogous to the tactics of the dreaded Nazi Secret Police. I imagine that, in Williamson's "mind" (those square quotes are necessary), the Liberal Fascist Gestapo kicked down the doors of European Jews in order to mandate a minimum "white fish" quantity in gefilte fish.
Somewhere in the vast array of federal rules and regulations — the 10,000 Commandments — is one specifying the minimum of milk fat that eggnog shall contain. Did the men who fought at Lexington and Concord do so in order to set up a new regime that would manage their lives on this level? King George III would never have dreamed of such imperious behavior.
The men who fought at Lexingon and Concord fought to ensure that companies could foist adulterated and/or subpar products on the consumer. Any attempt to force producers to adhere to a quality benchmark is tantamount to tyranny. Why shouldn't the "masters of the universe" be able to pass off thin, watery pseudo-dairy products as genuine, traditional eggnog? The peasants aren't owed an explanation, they will get what they get and like it! Why should a "job creator" have to market their food products accurately? They should not be forced to label their seaweed extract nog as such... besides, seaweed extract nog is delicious!
King George III would never have dreamed of such imperious behavior. Is there nothing too trivial for the federal government to micromanage?
Is there nothing too trivial for an asinine Libertarian to whine about? Protip, Kevin, the adjective is Juvenalian, not juvenile- satire, UR DOIN IT RONG!!!
Not content to sit back smugly, enjoying the satisfaction of earning his wingnut welfare check for writing this bit of coprography (not to be confused with coprophagy, which is what Williamson's readers engage in), Williamson had to add to his screed:
UPDATE: And then there is this:
Annatto and turmeric (for color) The use of these two natural food colorings—which add a yellow tone—is technically forbidden in eggnogs under federal regulation (it might make revelers think the drink contains more egg than it really does). But eggnog makers pushed back, and that rule has been stayed—pending a public hearing—for the past 30 years! The FDA is now looking into it.
I shall now set something on fire.
I consume more much more turmeric and annatto than the average 'Merican, being addicted to the dubious cuisines of sinister foreign elements. I have no objection to the presence of such ingredients... unless such presence is meant to deceive the consumer. Williamson even admits this deceptive intent in his post: (it might make revelers think the drink contains more egg than it really does). Traditional eggnog recipes don't contain turmeric or annatto, they contain copious amounts of eggs. Dairy producers should have to market nogs with trace amounts of egg as "curry nogs" or "adobo nogs".
I suggest that, if Mr Williamson is sincere in his desire to set something on fire, he burn his computer... it would spare us his idiotic rants in the future, and it is sure to piss off some EPA or OSHA bureaucrat who would impose the tyrrany of clean air standards on patriotic Mr Williamson.
Cross posted at Rumproast.
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