Interesting Links for 20-05-2016

[andrewducker]

A List Of Things In Literature, Music and Art That Are Actually Metaphors For Women (tags: women writing funny ) Water puppy wants to play (tags: cute ) A _completely_ serious guide to Scottish, Irish, Appalachian, and English folk songs (tags: song music funny ireland scotland england usa ) Original post on Dreamwidth - there are

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

MLW once sang some French chanson which were not metaphors for sex.

The one where they lady tied her pig to her ankle so it wouldn't run away whilst she was having sex with her boyfriend was particularly jolly.

[andrewducker]

Jolly pig-adjacent sex. I can see that being a thing :-)

[kalimac]

I chuckled particularly at the list of English folk song themes, because I know every one of those songs. Between Steeleye Span and Martin Carthy, they've done all of them.

Soil may seem an odd metaphor for sex, but I've seen that one too. In one of John Steinbeck's very early, symbolist novels, a farmer literally has sex with the earth. For no apparent reason, he throws himself down on the ground and his body heaves with growing intensity, then he lies still. It was the weirdest f'ing thing I've ever read, and I don't mean that word just as an intensifying expletive, though that too.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, that's odd. But as metaphor I can see it working well. I hope he didn't get it pregnant.

[kalimac]

Surely he did. That's what farmers all want, isn't it - the fertility of the land? This one just did it metaphorically.

[steepholm]

I heard Spenser being quoted to this effect on the radio just today:

The day with clouds was sudden overcast,
And angry Jove an hideous storm of rain
Did pour into his leman's lap so fast,
That every wight to shroud it did constrain...

Of course, Jove is an expert on golden showers.

[skington]

The best bit about the folk song tumblr post is that it's Neil Sodding Gaiman who turns up at the end.

[andrewducker]

Yup. I quite like his Tumblr, although it's not nearly as interestingly personal as Wil Wheaton's.

[skington]

How much of this is because he's got a new baby and is finishing a book, though?

[fiddlingfrog]

I think you can blame Twitter and Tumblr more than the new baby and book. When his primary non-professional outlet was his blog he would diverge into his personal life, thoughts, opinions with regularity. Now the personal stuff has been moved to Twitter where it never gets into the depth it used to, and even Tumblr doesn't really allow for the long-form stuff he used to write on the blog.

[pashazade]

They missed the classic Irish folk genre "Oh Mary how I loved you so, till I accidentally shot you-o, in the morn amid the foggy foggy dew".

[kalimac]

I remembered that I was just listening to the Kingston Trio's "Tom Dooley." The spoken introduction says that it "tells the story" of its three characters, but no it doesn't. It doesn't tell a story at all, and the spoken introduction actually affords more clues as to what the F is going on than the lyrics of the song do.