gdp's Comments

The Toast : Two Medieval Monks Invent Horses and Armed Warfare

Mon, 23 May 2016 15:33:45 +0000

The Two Monks have changed my art gallery mentality forever.

The Toast : How To Politely Decline A Proposal From The Emperor Of Byzantium

Tue, 10 May 2016 16:39:03 +0000

According to legend Saint Olga of Kiev had a slightly more subtle approach: Trick the Byzantine emperor into adopting you as his god-daughter, then point out this makes marriage impossible. (Sadly this probably isn't true, as he was already married - in fact, she took his wife's name as her baptismal name.)

The Toast : Ayn Rand's Firefly

Mon, 1 Feb 2016 17:28:46 +0000

Though I guess this could also be read as a direct response to Atlas Shrugged, so YMMV.

The Toast : Ayn Rand's Firefly

Mon, 1 Feb 2016 17:27:54 +0000

Ayn Rand's Doctor Who has already been written, and it's Doctor Who. “And when this war is over, when you have the homeland free from humans, what do you think it’s going to be like? Do you know? Have you thought about it? Have you given it any consideration? Because you’re very close to getting what you want. What’s it going to be like? Paint me a picture! Are you going to live in houses? Do you want people to go to work? Will there be holidays? Oh! Will there be music?! Do you think people will be allowed to play violins? Who will make the violins? Well? Oh… you don’t actually know, do you? Because, just like every other tantruming child in history, Bonnie, you don’t actually know what you want! So, let me ask you a question about this brave new world of yours: when you’ve killed all the ‘bad guys’, and it’s all ‘perfect’ and ‘just’ and ‘fair’, when you have finally got it exactly the way you want it, what are you going to do with the people like you? The troublemakers. How are you going to protect your glorious revolution from the next one?”

The Toast : Charlotte Brontë's Most Inexplicable Denominational Burns

Thu, 10 Dec 2015 10:20:23 +0000

That's not entirely accurate. Catholics believe in salvation through grace and works - that is, it's not enough to just believe in God. You have to also do good works and live a decent life. (That did get perverted in the pre-Reformation period with indulgences etc, but so it goes.) You do still have to have the belief/grace part as well though. (This all gets into Calvinistic predestination arguments, as so much Catholic/Protestant theological argument tends to.) This led to the opposite confusion for me (raised in Ireland as a Catholic) from what most people in this thread are saying. When my American friends described someone as "very Christian", I thought they meant she did an awful lot of charity work. It turned out they meant she prayed a lot and strongly disapproved of Dungeons and Dragons.

The Toast : Link Roundup!

Fri, 4 Dec 2015 15:24:27 +0000

The smoothest single-malt whisky I've encountered is AnCnoc. It's a good present to buy for someone who doesn't drink whisky much but likes having some on special occasions.

The Toast : \"Face Like A Farmer\": The Greatest Reasons Various Men Were Rejected For The Role Of James Bond

Tue, 1 Dec 2015 13:42:53 +0000

I love Brosnan's deal that he made with the studio back in the 90s - for every blockbuster he did for them, they would fund a small independent film based in ireland for him to star in. (Such as "The Nephew, or "Evelyn".)

The Toast : Unsolicited Advice For The Six Wives Of Henry VIII, Working Within Their Social Parameters And Not S

Fri, 13 Nov 2015 16:00:40 +0000

Agreed. I've been attending a night class on Henry VIII for the last few weeks (the zeitgeist is real!), and the lecturer's take is that Catherine had two main reasons for defying Henry on this: - They had got a papal declaration when they got married that said that it wasn't incest, and she was hard-core Catholic enough to refuse to believe the Pope was infallible when speaking ex officio, and - She didn't want Mary to have the taint of being "a child of incest". Which Mary was able to fight free of anyway, partially because Jane Seymour (who was the same age as Mary) utterly adored her and persuaded Henry and her to reconcile. Which says an awful lot about how much people liked Jane Seymour.

The Toast : Auto Draft

Mon, 2 Nov 2015 16:47:30 +0000

The Northern Ireland assembly actually voted in equal marriage today - a historic first! ...then it immediately got vetoed by the biggest party in the assembly (the Christian fundamentalist and extremely right wing Democratic Unionist Party) in an abuse of a process designed to prevent sectarian abuses of one community by the other. Baby steps, people. Baby steps.

The Toast : Scenes From Glengarry Glen Ross, A Movie I Have Never Seen

Thu, 29 Oct 2015 11:50:27 +0000

A. B. C. Always. Be. Cloistered.

The Toast : Poems I Have Misunderstood

Fri, 16 Oct 2015 15:42:26 +0000

"What These Women Talk Of As They Come And Go Will Defy Your Expectations." "He Didn't Tell His Foe Of His Wrath. What Happens Next Will Shock You."

The Toast : Two Monks Discover How Tall Women And Horses Are

Tue, 6 Oct 2015 15:33:46 +0000

It's fine, we have our own thing. <img src="http://elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com/culture_of_life_news/images/2008/01/31/h_bosch_unicorn_garden_of_delights.jpg"> (actually, I'm not sure if those are men or women. Or if, this being Bosch, it matters.)

The Toast : Don't Stand So Close To Me: People Ignoring Personal Boundaries In Western Art History

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 10:14:42 +0000

It's probably Mary Magdalene. (Or one of the other biblical women she's always conflated with, because the concept of more than one female character freaked some people out even back then.) And I don't think artists in historical times (and indeed even today) needed a reason to paint someone as naked. As evidence, I point to a good 70% of Art.

The Toast : Ayn Rand's Charlotte's Web

Wed, 9 Sep 2015 10:27:07 +0000

That sounds like you all learned an important lesson. Did she stay the course and finish it?

The Toast : Code Words For \"Sexually Active\" In Classic Films

Thu, 27 Aug 2015 13:36:50 +0000

I've been listening to the "You Must Remember This" podcast recently (which is an excellent 'cast about the "secret and forgotten history of Hollywood"), so this list made me laugh quite a bit. Most of these code words would apply even more to actors and actresses off the stage than on it - such as the indomitable Kay Francis, who not only always brought her own skates to the rink but was also well known to occasionally stand up on the night train. <img src="http://pre-code.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/kayfrancis1.jpg" width="400">

The Toast : Some People Eating Normally In Paintings, The Way People Eat

Fri, 21 Aug 2015 14:48:07 +0000

At least cats in paintings eat perfectly normal things like entire plates. <img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/The_Cat's_Lunch.jpg/378px-The_Cat's_Lunch.jpg">

The Toast : Link Roundup!

Fri, 14 Aug 2015 14:45:10 +0000

Shade balls are now up there with snow farms on the list of odd climate-related things I never thought about before I found out about them.

The Toast : Link Roundup!

Tue, 11 Aug 2015 13:14:09 +0000

Damn, I think I need to write about Jeanne now, or someone else in that general field of history. That's an intriguing description - and an interesting backstory, and a tragic death that smells a little of the classic Hollywood whitewash coverup.

The Toast : If White People Food Were Described Like "Exotic" Food

Tue, 28 Jul 2015 12:54:44 +0000

Hah, beat me to it - I was just about to post the same link. That was such a great show, shame it's not better known these days.

The Toast : I'm Off To Utah Today, Please Enjoy This "Ritual Animal Disguise" Category From Wikipedia In My Abse

Fri, 10 Jul 2015 12:48:02 +0000

From the wikipedia page for Mari Lwyd (which is the proper name for the horse-skull thing): "In north Wales on the first of May the skull of a donkey or horse was put over a woman's door instead of a bunch of flowers to show disapproval."