(no subject)

[stakebait]

Happy belated 100th Bloomsday! Have some lemon soap.

Did anyone watch the premiere of Method and Red last night? Was it any good?

Comments

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Women dressed like old-fashioned serving girls were giving away free lemon soap beside the Molly Malone statue in town yesterday. :)

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

That's so cool.

Molly Malone statue in town... are you in Dublin? When I was there 8 years ago I bought some lemon soap at the Joyce museum and carried it around with me all day, because I am a great big dork. In fact I think I still have it somewhere.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I thought you knew that! I'm a Dubliner, born and bred. (Well, my mother's actually a Louth woman. Born and half-bred? Nah, that just doesn't sound very nice.)

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

I knew you were Irish, but I thought you were in the Middle East for some reason. Don't mind me, my brain is very strange. But yay, Dublin! I was only there a few days before I met up with my friend and went on to Galway, but even all alone, with no money, killer jetlag, and a bed in a hideous hostel, it was a lovely city. I keep meaning to get back there someday, as well as back to the unfinished novel I've set there.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

I've spent four days of my life in the Middle East! Though I do talk about them a disproportionate amount. :)

If you ever do make it back here, you're very welcome to stay with me and avoid the hideous hostels. What's your Dublin novel about? I'm all curious now.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*grin* That must be it. It's still four more than I have.

Thank you! I just might take you up on that. And let me know if you're ever in New York. The accommadations are a bit primitive, but my air mattress is your air mattress. :)

It's called Quick Bright Things, and it's about the bit in Yeats' Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland where he describes the leanan sidhe. If you say yes, you must be her slave. If you say no, she must be yours. Since I'm into BDSM and fantasy, the slave part caught my eye, but what really intrigued me was the part where there's no "go away and leave me alone" option. No matter what you say, once the question's been asked your life's forever changed. So the novel is the story of the boy who said no and then found he had an unexpected fairy on his hands.

The guy's an Irish-American kid, just out of college and living in Dublin on one of those short term summer - 1 year plans. Supposedly he's there to find his roots, but really it's a socially acceptable way to duck out of family and dating and people wanting him to know what he wants to do with his life. Which I mostly did because I didn't think I could pull off an authentic Irish POV character (fairies don't count, they're supposed to be strange) but also because then we have the fun of him running away home and getting yanked back by the bond, because the fairy can't leave.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Whee! Meine Luftmatratze!

(when you only know about five words of a language, I figure you should use them whenever an opportunity presents itself.)

That novel sounds fascinating. Irish readers would lap it up, too - there's a huge market for books merging modern and mythic Ireland. And having the boy be an Irish-American emphasises the contrast, which works well.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! What does it mean? *g* German, right? I suspect that's five more words than I know, also, unless you count Yiddish crossovers.

I'm glad you like the concept! It's on hold at the moment till I bull through at least the rough draft of Broken Glass Slippers, since I have a proper ending for that one and this one trails off into a morass of "stuff happens". But I figure once that's in the nervewracking submission stage I'll have QBT to work on and keep me sane. (the name's stolen from Midsummer's Night's Dream, BTW -- "So quick bright things come to confusion").

May I pick your brain for appropriate Dublin details when the time comes? Or ask you to do a read through for inappropriate Americanisms?

Thanks for the info on the market -- if I ever get it done I'll have to work on getting an Irish publisher as well as a US one. How is the Irish market on a spot of kinky sex with its myths?

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

In a John Irving book, his main character is a novelist (surprise, surprise) who's submitting a short story to a contest run by a German (surprise, surprise) thingy. It's called Die Blaurote Luftmatratze, meaning The Red and Blue Air Mattress.

I'd love to help you out with Dublinian stuff and Paddy-picking. Come over and we'll do research in pubs! Aer Lingus do NYC-Dublin flights quite cheaply these days... *tempts, tempts*

Irish people spend approximately 50% of the time congratulating themselves on how modern and progressive they are compared to the hidebound Catholicism of only 25 years ago, so they'll lap up the kinky sex.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Bwah! You only know five words of German, and one of them's air mattress? I love it.

Research in pubs sounds like a great incentive to hurry up with this book and get to the next one. :)

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Damn straight! We'll drink, we'll ask the random punters if they're interested in kinky sex... it'll all be good.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

And a book about an American living in Dublin for a while is really interesting too, because you could deal with all the anti-American feeling here, and Irish people's condescending declarations that they 'quite like individual Americans, but hate America'. I think we must drive Americans here to distraction, by constantly laughing at the words they use, with the implication that ours are necessarily better, and by casually saying that our systems of government, education, et cetera, are clearly better than theirs, and expecting them to agree with us on that as a matter of course.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*nods* I get that, although I think any protagonist of mine is likely to at least agree that our current government, if not our system, leaves something to be desired.

When I was in Ireland it was amazingly hard for me to meet any Irish people. Of course I was only there about two months, at the height of the tourist season. If you're in the hostels you end up knowing lots of Australians and Germans and other Americans and a few miscellaneous Europeans, but you only really see Irish people to talk to in pubs. If I'd succeeded in getting a job, which the protagonist will have to, I'd have met a few more that way. And once he's there for the long haul it will be different.

Which words get laughed at? I do remember being recognized as an American without even opening my mouth, because, I was told, Irish women don't wear turtlenecks.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, almost all the Americans I've talked to here hate Bush, and often are quite willing to criticise their country, but still, we go too far and they feel beleaguered and I think, sometimes, they realise a sort of new patriotism in reaction to our condescension.

Quite a few Americans come here to do one-year MAs or something of the kind, but you want your protagonist to be more rootless than that, do you?

Well, he could find temporary work here easily enough. 50% of bar staff are a mixed bag of foreigners, and 99% of newsagent staff are Chinese. (Seriously. And ten years ago, I'd probably never seen an Asian in the flesh. God, but this place has changed.)

Words - oh, everything. Bill instead of note. Check instead of bill. School instead of university. Jello instead of jelly, jelly instead of jam. Fries instead of chips and chips instead of crisps. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of Americanisms that send us into fits of laughter.

You see, we who use British English are religiously convinced that American English is an inferior dialect which should be trained out of the unfortunate Americans at the earliest opportunity.

And we yell at them for mixing us up with the Northern Irish or with the Brits and yet we still persist in calling every US citizen a Yankee, even when we've been repeatedly informed that that's very, very incorrect.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Huh. I can't say it would bother me on a visit, since at least I'm *in* your country, so you wanting me to do it your way would make some sense. I was much more annoyed by the American girl who came to visit us while we were in Ireland, and then spent all her time telling us how everything different about Ireland was "wrong", from bacon to money. Dude, if you didn't want to see anything unAmerican, why did you pay good money to leave America?

Definitely more rootless than an MA. He's burnt out and doesn't want to owe anybody anything or vice versa, which will make his sudden acquisition of an unbreakable bond that much more annoying. Bar staff would work nicely.

He's also got to be something of an artist (to attract the leahan sidhe in the first place) but unambitious with it (to refuse her offer). I'm thinking musician, the kind that's content to busk and play in pick-up groups and doesn't dream of a recording contract, but I'm not wedded to it.

Maybe it's just because I read so much British and Irish fiction, but I use bill/note, check/bill, school/university, and jelly/jam almost interchangeably. Not the others, though. Fries are fries forever and ever amen. :)

It's merely amusingly inaccurate to call me a Yankee. I don't mind. It's only when you say it to a Southerner that those are fighting words.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

spent all her time telling us how everything different about Ireland was "wrong", from bacon to money.

Haha, yes, I remember an American exclaiming in annoyance once, "How can any sensible money system not have quarters?" I responded "How can any sensible money system not have 20p/20c coins?" She looked confused.

The Irish do, however, say exactly the same things to Americans in their own country as they do when the Americans are here, so we don't really have any excuse.

He could busk on Grafton Street! Whee!

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*grin* Yes, but here we can do it back, and have you outnumbered. Or more likely, coo over your accent and completely ignore the content, or consider it like a quaint period piece. We have our condescending people too.

Where's Grafton Street? The place I remember buskers was, um, a plaza near a wacky hat shop near Temple Bar? Is this a real place, or did I make it up or dream it?

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

You've definitely walked down Grafton Street. It's pedestrianised, very busy, and has Stephen's Green at one end and Trinity at the other. Filled with buskers.

Temple Bar Square! God, that's a funny place. Yep, it has the buskers too. As well as the mad lefty ranters whom the bored teenage metalheads listen to while wondering when their drug dealer's gonna call.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Ah, that explains it. I fell in love with the Trinity library with a deep and painful love, and barely had enough attention left to see the Book of Kells, let alone mere streets. I'm glad I remembered the square right. And mad lefty ranters are the much-prized local color. Ahem, colour. :)

Mer

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

The library? How come you were allowed in? They're pretty good with security...

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*does some internet research* I guess it was the Old Library? Anyway, I took a tour. It wasn't sneaky.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Wait, do you mean the Long Room? Part of the Book of Kells tour, and way better than the Book itself?

(if so, I can bring you in free again)

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*does more Internet research with pictures* Yes, yes I do. And thank you tons, that would be wonderful! Of course, you want to be careful about letting me into that room. You might never get me out of it. I never really *got* why anyone would want to be buried in the floor of a cathedral before, but I did there.

[babydraco.livejournal.com]

They were amusing, but the white neighbors (the blonde woman and her family) were written as A) slow witted and B)so out of touch with reality that it's not really believable. And the little kid can't really act.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

That's a shame. Though I might give it a go anyway, if I'm home next Wednesday. I've always liked Method Man.