Friday, January 6, 2012

What Did the Chicken Take Out of the Library?

After the last debacle I thought "Perhaps these boocs are not for me." After consulting another booc called a dictionary I discovered I meant "books" of course. Silly me! Nevertheless, on I plunge into the homes of occasional silverfish.

I read this and it made me laugh a lot. There's a version here and it's relatively readable if you are the sort of person who can make sense of these people and their archaic gibberish.

I've just recently started on Debt which appears at the outset to be reasonably well-written, preaches to the choir - me and perhaps you too - and appears to be a pinko Golden Bough concentrating on the Unsympathetic Magic of turning credit into morality. Thus far it's been peppered with examples and lore from France, England, Japan, India, Madagascar and I'm not really out of the starting g— um, thing that has something to do with pepper. Follow the link to the book and you'll get that opening chapter, which has kept me reading. Yes, this funny symbol is in the index.

17 comments:

Dr.KennethNoisewater said...

Volpone does sound like a good time. OTOH reading is kinda faggy.

No, but, seriously a lot of Shakespeare stuff has been modernized and redone. Has anyone done that to Volpone that you know of?

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

What makes the work more than a screed is...

More Than A Screed. Sounds like a decent song, eh?
~

Substance McGravitas said...

Wikipedia sez there have been some modernizations, but even before then I was thinking about how it could be ripped off and made into a modern film. It's so entertainingly vicious, but courts don't really work the way they do in the play...some sort of mob tribunal?

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Post zompocalypse, Sub. Then you can set up whatever kind of new society form you need.

And there's always a chance for a zombie attack, so the tension stays high.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Wikipedia sez there have been some modernizations, but even before then I was thinking about how it could be ripped off and made into a modern film.

Michael Bay would "zazz" it up with gratuitous sexism and tons of explosions.- I think it'd hit box office gold... needs robots, though.

M. Bouffant said...

"More Than A Scrod"

Dr.KennethNoisewater said...

I should have continued reading. Looks like there have been tons of adaptations. But the idea of people changing the ending kind of squicks me out.

You know what's fun? Recasting a remake in your head.

"The Women" is one of my alltime favorite movies (and was originally a play) and I always thought it could be updated. I always dreamed about my dream cast. It WAS remade recently...and managed to be one of the most horrible movies I've ever seen in my life. I was so heartbroken.

Substance McGravitas said...

Post zompocalypse, Sub.

I'm a huge fan of post-apocalypse films, but part of the fun on Volpone is how horrible the people are, and bringing the awfulness near is a more satisfying way to make your audience squirm.

Speaking of which, the lovely daughter demanded pakoras last night - which she then refused to eat - and I'll be damned if the spice combination didn't give me the usual post-apocalypse dreams I associate with Indian food. This time an earthquake had levelled the city and I was trying to get people out of it.

mikey said...

More than a screed
It might be a tantrum
More than a screed
When I see Maryann throwing lamps...


...and I was trying to get people out of it.

Once again, a trebuchet would be an efficient solution to a modern problem...

El Manquécito said...

Debt sounds excellent and I'm a gonna get right on it. What are the rest of y'all talkin' about?

Substance McGravitas said...

Thus far one fun thing about Debt has been a demolishing of money-as-replacement-for-barter: no society has ever been described that had the standard Jack-has-two-chickens-but-Jill-wants-two-arrowheads-for-her-juniper-berries-OMG-what-will-they-do model economists dream existed before the invention of money. There HAS been barter, but within primitive societies allocation of goods was just different. So ALL UR ECONOMICS TEXTBOOKS R RONG.

mikey said...

Meh.

Today we barter hours or skillz for "money", it's all ultimately "Barter", money just provides an efficient abstraction...

Substance McGravitas said...

The point is not that trading doesn't happen, but that the device of money might serve a purpose other than for efficient goods distribution. See also They Live.

M. Bouffant said...

But the idea of people changing the ending kind of squicks me out.

Free country, last I heard. And © has expired.

Far as The Women, often lightning does strike only once.

El Manquécito said...

ALL UR ECONOMICS TEXTBOOKS R RONG.

This does not come as a complete surprise.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

but part of the fun on Volpone is how horrible the people are,

You need to go beyond the real world outside your door for that?

Substance McGravitas said...

It's the pretense that lets you forget.