pleasures

* A glass of Peirano "The Other Red" with roast duck. Yummy! [A description by someone who knows more about wine than I.]

* Sir Denis Johnson's discussion of Il Trovatore (in A Night at the Opera), which opens with "Stand by for the most confused baby-swapping plot in the business" and goes on to assert that "Verdi could not have foreseen that almost within his lifetime baby-swapping plots were to become ludicrous through over-use, thanks particularly to W.S. Gilbert."

* Sir Denis's take on Werther:

The chief weakness of the story lies in Werther being such a pill. Romantic love on a suicidal scale is hard enough to take even with the noblest of heros, but when the suicide is committed by someone you would have been glad to have got rid of in ActI, the impact is negligible. Werther is both a wet and a selfish bore. Let's hope he as at least a half-decent poet, but the way he drools over a lavatory-calendar quote from Ossian (who never existed anyway) doesn't give one much hope. Bring on the pistols!

* tbranch's illos, including a very nice rendition of Ten. (And there's also Snape/Lupin and H/Hr...)

* florahart's "Big Words and Small Mercies", which is Neville/Grover. Adult Neville/Grover. Yes, the pathetically sweet fuzzy blue critter you watched on telly when you were a tyke. I can't quote from this - there isn't enough brain-bleach left in the house - but most of you are already sharing handbasket-space with me for enjoying "Why Sex Ed Should Stay in Schools", so head on over if you haven't already.

* Speaking of sex ed, I am flirting with ordering The Cunt Coloring Book for a friend's birthday when the time comes...

* Speaking of Babeland, one of their bloggers nicely articulated her horror upon hearing about injections to enlarge G-spots: "I believe that mine has unwrapped itself from my genital area and is presently cowering behind my sacrum."

* ...and as for fictional characters who probably wouldn't need a GPS to find the thing (nods to westernredcedar and other perps of that meme), I'd include Peter Wimsey, Mervyn Bunter, Luc Ashford (from Stephanie Laurens's Cynster series), Berowne (Love's Labours Lost, at least as played by Mike Gwilym), Death (from Gaiman's Sandman series), Alys Vorpatril, Joan Edwards (the athletic, no-nonsense science tutor in Gaudy Night), Gramarye's Professor Will Stanton... hmm, that's only eight, but I'm too tired to come up with two more. Everyone else I can think of at the moment would be too gauche, too scary, too self-absorbed, too much Not My Type, or too much from my personal fanon to count (badass!bisexual!AU-after-HBP!Lupin, I'm looking at you). The Whomping Willow almost made the list, but I'm so not keen on splinters...

It's also clear that I need to read more fiction. But not tonight. Zzzzzzzz....

...and one last link: celebrating imperfection.