Apparently I feel chatty today

[cleolinda]

Feeling a smidge better. Got a good bit of work done yesterday, even though I was stuck wrangling fussy dogs for eight hours while my parents were on a church orchestra daytrip. (Sam parked himself in front of the door out to the garage once 5 pm rolled around, because that is The Time Mommy and Daddy Come Home, and yet they did not. So he barked at it for two hours.) Today I got up and went straight to work in the den, instead of getting up and faffing around on the computer and/or sleeping on the couch (both also in the den). I'm in there anyway, usually by 7 am, because "I have to keep an eye on the dogs" is a good way to add structure to my day. ANYWAY. I'm starting a new book for my novel research (although, as I noted, there's a point where research is about finding out things, and then there's a point where it's about the fear of not having found out enough, and I've been at that second point for a long, long time now), but I'm also checking Twitter.

@scottEweinberg: This Pattinson kid is on my TV. He looks like a cross between @TheJoeLynch and a Lycan.

O rly?

Ah, the Remember Me publicity circuit has started. I had plenty of time to read my book during commercials, because as American viewers of the Olympics know, NBC is now 85% advertising content.

@cleolinda: Al Roker's outside the Today studio saying Robert Pattinson's name over and over just to hear the girls scream.

@cleolinda: Matt Lauer: "Harry Markopolous!" Herd of fangirls: "... Wooooo?"

@cleolinda: Today show. Middle-aged woman: "I have been here since seven... last night for him." #fanthropology

I did not mention, by the way, that the fangirls were waving all manner of hideous things at the camera.

@poponjer: @cleolinda: just saw someone holding up a pic they drew of RPattz behind Roker. Looked like RPattz as the elephant man.

@cleolinda: I LOVE YOU SAM WATERSTON! He is bravely giving a quick interview outside while RPattz signs autographs in the background.

@cleolinda: What's hilarious is when [Waterston's] trying to talk and you suddenly hear random screams behind him.

@cleolinda: [Matt Lauer:] "We'll be interviewing Robert... if he has any arms and legs left."

@cleolinda: I just looked up to hear Matt Lauer ask Harry Markopolous about possibly having to kill Bernie Madoff. "Well, I do have army training."


The interview itself went without incident, although not without lots of women crushed up against the glass walls of the studio, waving frantically. It basically went, "So... we're talking about something other than Twilight. Huh. I kind of don't know what to say." "I know, right?!" "..." "..." "So... Eclipse is coming out in June..." I think my favorite part was when Matt Lauer said something to the effect of, "You just did a photoshoot for Details with a lot of naked women... I don't have a question, I just wanted to mention that."


@wonderella: Watching the Today Show. One of these moms are gonna lock Rpattz in a dungeon and make him do Realdoll stuff. :(

@cleolinda: @wonderella If only there were someone who could save him!

@wonderella: @cleolinda I'm kinda not feelin' it. I'd save the Underworld guy, tho!

@wonderella: @cleolinda that guy's a vampire AND a werewolf, so it's kind of a twofer.


Speaking of which, today's reading is The Great Big Werewolf Book of Werewolves.


@cleolinda: "It should be stressed that the idea of a man morphing into a wolf is actually well within the realm of feasibility." #orly


So far, I am still on the introductory content--the pages still have Roman numerals--and I have already learned that


>> Medieval cats got their own witchcraft trials

>> In Renaissance France, from about 1520-1630, 30,000 people were charged with lycanthropy

>> A particularly infamous suspect, Gilles Garnier, was all like, "YES, I MOST CERTAINLY AM! PLEASE BURN ME ALIVE NOW!," so they did

>> An Arcadian werewolf won boxing medals in the 400 B.C. Olympics

>> Alpine sorceresses turned men into beasts of burden with special cheeses

(@tzikeh: "Did the beasts of burden have holes in them?")

>> St. Patrick had to deal with a shitload of werewolves in his congregation, which I can only imagine was a bit distracting during his sermons


and cannot WAIT to see what the rest of the book has in store.

Yesterday I finally finished Montague Summers' Vampires and Vampirism, which I found a bit of a slog because he kept quoting untranslated Latin, Greek, French, and German, and I can only muddle through one of those. Also, he kept going off on huge tangents that were unrelated (strictly speaking, and in my opinion) to vampires, like necrophilia and grave-robbing. I hate to break it to you, sir, but vampires don't care about dead people. Vampires ARE dead people. Vampires only care about juicy live people and how best to snarfle them, therefore I doubt they are going to be poking around tombs that do not belong to them, much less whatever's in them. As such, I found pages upon pages of anecdata about people doing terrible things to corpses (safely described in French, because that's somehow more tasteful, except that French is the one language he didn't translate that I can hack) to be both nauseating and tedious, which is something of a feat. I also tweeted ugh twittered sigh a couple of things about this book as well:


@cleolinda: So apparently the ancient Macedonians believed in vampire sheep. #themoreyouknow

@cleolinda: "Vampires and Vampirism" (1929) ends on the casual note that Dracula was recently played on stage by an actor named Bela Lugosi.


Bless.

ETA: WARNING: Before you run off and buy The Great Big Werewolf Book of Werewolves, I have to warn you--the reviews on Amazon are terrible, and now that I've gotten into the actual encyclopedia-style entries, I'm starting to see why. There's an entire entry about aliens and UFOs, a really sketchy attempt to connect Elizabeth Bathory to lycanthropy (she totes hung out with wizards and vampires and werewolves, you guys!), and the tale of a French guy who was really more of a ghoul than a werewolf, see, but while we're here... And if you can tell me what Charles Manson has to do with lycanthropy, believe me, I'd love to know.

Comments

[sea-of-tethys.livejournal.com]

Argh. I can understand French and German fairly well, but untranslated quotes are one of my all-time book-related pet peeves. It always looks like the author is just doing it to show off, or to exclude people. This goes double if they're quoting from a language that uses a different alphabet, like Greek.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

YES, which particularly pissed me off, because I don't even have a fighting chance with a different alphabet. He might as well have put it in the Enigma code for all the good it does me.

... I think I suddenly just realized why the expression is "It's all Greek to me" rather than some other language.

[wyldirishtric.livejournal.com]

That's weird, those werewolf facts... though one nitpick, that you can't really do much about, I'm aware. :) 1520 - 1630 is really more Renaissance France, not medieval.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Oh, DUH, why did I even say that. That's completely Renaissance.

Although, actually, now that I think about it, I can't remember if the book claimed it was medieval or if that was just me.

[flamingtoilet.livejournal.com]

^^^ @poponjer, just so you know ;)

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Ah!

[beckyh2112.livejournal.com]

So... What did St. Patrick do with his werewolves? /curious

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I haven't gotten to that part yet, but I'm curious about that myself.

[stateofserenity.livejournal.com]

">> Alpine sorceresses turned men into beasts of burden with special cheeses

(@tzikeh: "Did the beasts of burden have holes in them?")"

I seriously just spit soda all over my work computer screen.

*dies of hilarity*

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Is it bad that I now want St Patrick to be some kind of action hero? HE FIGHTS SNAKES AND WEREWOLVES. POSSIBLY AT THE SAME TIME. WHILE DRUNK. BECAUSE THIS IS IRELAND*.

[elfin-miss.livejournal.com]

Accessories include a sack of potatoes and sheep because this is Ireland

[maudelynn.livejournal.com]

I am reading a bit of the Dom Augustine Calmet book today. Want I should throw out some fun facts?
"Some people thought vampires were the dead who were disturbed when trying to complete a pilgrimage unfinished in life."

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

omg you have it! Is it online? I don't want to read every single text mentioned, if only because that would be an excellent excuse to not actually write my own thing. But still!

(By which I mean yes!)

[edda.livejournal.com]

I want to hear more about these Olympic werewolves.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I really, really hope we go more in depth with that.

[cassierua.livejournal.com]

Another interesting story about werewolves:

There is a fully serious factual account of Ireland written in the 12th C written by Gerald of Wales. He tells a story about a priest from Offaly who is walking down the road, when he is approached by a wolf. The wolf asks the priest to follow him to visit the wolf's wife to give her her last rites. The passage concludes with the sentance: "This is a common event in Offaly, where most of the population consists of werewolves."

I can only say I am glad not to be from Offaly.

[meleth.livejournal.com]

And the priest was all, "I gave her last rites because she said she was a person, and people should get last rites, but I am conflicted because she's a werewolf."

[meleth.livejournal.com]

The medieval trial of the French werewolf Jean Grenier (who especially liked to kill and eat little girls, whose flesh he said tasted the sweetest) was one in which the judge actually judged the boy not responsible for his actions due to insanity (or, in this case, having been duped and misled by Satan). The boy was remanded to a monastery for care and spiritual counseling. Unfortunately, Grenier died at the age of 20 (turns out that thinking you're a werewolf makes you not take care of yourself).

I love this instance of the insanity defense.

[meleth.livejournal.com]

Well, Renaissance, really, but w/e.

[purple-sammich.livejournal.com]

I hate hate HATE untranslated quotes. I mean, I'm taking Latin and Ancient Greek and when I have to read Classics articles, I don't care if I have six years of Latin and almost three semesters of Greek under my belt, I am in no mood to translate. Article time is English time, stop being pretentious. Besides, I'm pretty terrible with Greek vocab anyway and I'd rather not sift through my giant, cumbersome Greek lexicon.

And then there are some articles that quote German or French Classicists without translating and it's like, for God's sake, I could at least sort of get the gist of the Greek and Latin quotes, why you gotta do this.

[nicolars.livejournal.com]

When I was high school I was very pretentious and would LOVE to run over to my parent's old books and translate quotes.It made me feel like a special person for actually putting the work in to translating it.

Now it just seems like an irritating waste of time. But I think some of the people who write these books operate off of that high school mindset.

[eyemage.livejournal.com]

is reminded of the legends of vampire squash and various pumpkins if they are left out during a full moon...

seriously.

[narnian-dreamer.livejournal.com]

Hee. I remember those from Digger. :)

[flossiepots.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you'll be able to watch this in the US (its a UK show) but if you can it will really interest you- its all about vampires through history and how they've evolved in modern literature from dracula up to true blood/ twilight etc. Its amazing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pzbzb/Vampires_Why_They_Bite/

if the show link doesnt work check the bbc america site, they might have shown it on there.

[wyldirishtric.livejournal.com]

Aww, no links for us in NL. Ah, well, will have to keep an eye out for it..

[cupcake-goth.livejournal.com]

@cleolinda: "Vampires and Vampirism" (1929) ends on the casual note that Dracula was recently played on stage by an actor named Bela Lugosi.

I have to admit, that was my favorite quote from the entire book when I read it.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I liked the Macedonian sheepires, but yeah, it's such a wonderfully casual statement to (nearly) end the book on.

[robinmc.livejournal.com]

Reading your twitterings about the vampire book yesterday kept making me giggle and scratch my head. I especially loved the Bela Lugosi comment.

[laughingrat.livejournal.com]

O, I tried to get through the Summers book years ago. Congrats for making it.

Mostly, this is an excuse to use my Lugosi icon.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

Good Lord, he looks dapper. I almost expect him to put on a monocle.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

Splendid, I think I'll get the werewolf book, thanks for the recommendation. There aren't nearly enough shapeshifter stories out there to suit me.

Montague Summers has a huge reputation, and it's hard for me to see why. He does wide research--obviously--but he doesn't write very coherent summations of that research. It's all over the place. Maybe people think he's important because he has an important-sounding name.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I gotta warn you, the reviews on the werewolf book are really bad, and I'm starting to see why. I may go hunt down another one that's a bit better.

That said, I ALSO have Montague Summers' werewolf book! I don't see how this can go wrong at all!

[queenanthai.livejournal.com]

TRUFAX: My senior-year Brit Lit teacher - and I wish I could remember his name - vehemently asserted that he had once met a family of werewolves in Romania. Evidence: "Both men and women were extremely hairy, they only ate meat and had sharp teeth, and they all had shoulder tattoos of a wolf."

So help me, that class was the only part of high school I miss.

[flamingtoilet.livejournal.com]

Imagine what he would've done if they'd had wolf shirts, too.

Montague Summers

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

Although he's a seminal source, he's not thought of as a reliable one any more. You should have a look at Paul Barber's excellent Vampires, Burial and Death, though. Vampire butterflies and vampire chickens FTW!

Re: Montague Summers

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm not so much looking for reliable information as what people would have thought at the time.

[r-a-black.livejournal.com]

I'll get the book at the library, if they have it. It sounds pretty interesting but I never buy a book unless I know I really want it. Or if it's like by JKR or something.

[viorica8957.livejournal.com]

and the tale of a French guy who was really more of a ghoul than a werewolf

Gilles de Rais? He always gets trotted out in werewolf books, and I still haven't figured out why.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

He's mentioned, but this was someone in the 19th century, maybe even the 20th--Francois someone, Bermand? I've left the book upstairs, I'll have to go back and look at it again. Bottom line is, apparently anyone who ever did anything gory is a vampire and/or werewolf. I'm kind of traditionalist; if people aren't literally sucking blood or (allegedly) changing into wolves, specifically wolves, I'm not interested. Because we've still got a lot to talk about, even with criteria that narrow.

[wolfhanyou.livejournal.com]

Regarding the book, I finished it some weeks ago for my project and I have to say I agree with the majority of the reviews. While the connection with serial killers is certainly interesting, a lot of the killers listed in the book have really sketchy connections. I was sad that there wasn't more information on actual werewolf mythology.

Also how the fuck does Jack the Ripper and Gilles de Rais fit in here?

[snapdragon76.livejournal.com]

'k I recorded the Today today (ostensibly for the 'Eight Is Enough' reunion. What?), so the RPattz near mauling is going to be a lucky bonus, I dare say!

[diddakoi.livejournal.com]

@cleolinda: So apparently the ancient Macedonians believed in vampire sheep. #themoreyouknow

I totes had a dream a few months ago that I got bitten by a vampire deer. I may have commented something to that effect on this very blog, but I feel it's worth mentioning again. I was more pissed about having to be a vampire than actually scared. (You could tell it was a vampire because it had pointy carnivore teeth.)

[lolen.livejournal.com]

This may interest and/or terrify you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanged_Deer

Also look up muntjac.

[amaz0n-princess.livejournal.com]

Matt Lauer said something to the effect of, "You just did a photoshoot for Details with a lot of naked women... I don't have a question, I just wanted to mention that."

That pretty much just made my day.