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Archive for the ‘Geese’ Category

Arthur Conan Doyle–“The Blue Carbuncle” [The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes] (1892)

Posted in Adventure, Arthur Conan Doyle, Christmas, Geese, Greed, Mystery, Sherlock Holmes, Short Story on March 31, 2024| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus.

[READ: March 4, 2024] “The Man with the Twisted Lip”

After a couple of lesser stories, the seventh story in this collection returns Holmes to his glory.  For instance, he looks at a felt hat and determines

That the man was highly intellectual is of course obvious upon the face of it, and also that he was fairly well-to-do within the last three years, although he has now fallen upon evil days. He had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing to a moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, at work upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact that his wife has ceased to love him.

Outstanding.

The hat belongs to a man who was carrying a Christmas goose.  He was set upon by some thugs and dropped the goose.  But when he fought off the thugs, he smashed a window.  Peterson, a constable happened upon the scene, but everyone fled, leaving Peterson with a hat and a goose.  No one claimed the goose, so Peterson ate it and Holmes took the hat.

But Peterson comes back soon after saying that in the goose was a blue gem–the Countess of Morcar’s blue carbuncle.

Holmes lays some simple traps and determines that at least two people are not suspects in the theft.  But this case, which seems so challenging actually get solved fairly easily.  The remainder of the story actually lays out how the jewel wound up in a goose.

I have read another version of this story (in comic book form) and I feel like the “how” part may have been placed in a different order, which made the story a bit more suspenseful.  But perhaps I am misremembering.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The four novels of the canon:

  1. A Study in Scarlet (1887)
  2. The Sign of the Four (1890)
  3. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
  4. The Valley of Fear (1915)

The 56 short stories are collected in five books:

  1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
  2. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)
  3. The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905)
  4. His Last Bow (1917)
  5. The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) contains 12 stories published in The Strand between July 1891 and June 1892

  1. “A Scandal in Bohemia” (June 1891)
  2. “The Red-Headed League” (August 1891)
  3. “A Case of Identity” (September 1891)
  4. “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” (October 1891)
  5. “The Five Orange Pips” (November 1891)
  6. “The Man with the Twisted Lip” (December 1891)
  7. “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (January 1892)
  8. “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” (February 1892)
  9. “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb” (March 1892)
  10. “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor” (April 1892)
  11. “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” (May 1892)
  12. “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches” (June 1892)

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Deb Olin Unferth–“My Friend Goo” [The 2023 Short Story Advent Calendar #15] (2022)

Posted in Canadian Content, Christmas, Deb Olin Unferth, Geese, Hingston & Olsen, Pandemic, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar on December 15, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: December 15, 2023] “My Friend Goo”

This year my wife ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my sixth time reading the Calendar–it’s a holiday tradition!  Here’s what H&O says about the calendar this year.

The 2023 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individual short stories from some of the best writers in North America and beyond.  Now in its ninth year, the SSAC is back to once again bring readers a deluxe, peppermint-fresh collection of 25 short stories from some of the best writers in North America and beyond.

The author of this story was Deb Olin Unferth.  Each day has an online component with the author with a brief interview.

It’s December 15. Deb Olin Unferth, author of Barn 8, looks through her hair like she doesn’t care.

This is a pandemic story.  In the story the narrator and her husband are having relationship trouble.  Primarily, her husband is exploring religious options which the narrator is not supportive of. (more…)

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James Felton–52 Times Britain was a Bellend: The History You Didn’t Get Taught in School (2019).

Posted in Australia, Disease, Elephants, Eurovision, Funny (ha ha), Geese, Hindus, History, Humiliation, India, Ireland, James Felton, Law, LGBTQ, Liars, Military, Morality, Museums, Muslims, Non-fiction, Pakistan, Plague, Politicians, Poo, Priests, Prison, Religion, Revenge, Sex, Slavery, Toilets, Torture, Vikings, Violence, Wales, War, Witches, Yuck! on May 26, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JAMES NEWMAN-“Embers” (England, Eurovision Entry 2021).

.Eurovision 2021 is over and the big news (aside from drug-taking accusations against the winner) is that the entry from England received zero.  Nul points.

This is not unique, but it’s not something that anybody wants.  It’s actually better to not make the finals than to make the finals and get nul points, because no one is going to forget that.

So just how bad was “embers?”

I’m not going to defend the song, because I would never listen to it on purpose–it’s not my thing.  But by the same token I can think of a lot of songs that are much worse than this.

This song is just kind of bland.  It thinks its big and catchy with the horns and the “light up the ROOM!” line.  But really it just doesn’t do much.  I could see this song playing in a club and people would dance to it and then forget it.  No one would ask who it was or request it again.

And maybe that’s worth nothing.

[READ: May 26, 2021] 52 Times Britain was a Bellend

Bellend is such a great insult and it is exclusive to Britain, which is a shame.

Also a shame is just how terrible Britain as a country has been throughout history.

Obviously any global superpower is going to be dickish–you get power by crushing others.  You could write this same book about the United States and cover just the last four years.

But Felton, whom I’ve never heard of before, but who is apparently a huge Twitter presence, narrowed history down to 52 (one a week) examples of Britain being absolutely horrible (and somehow managing to make it funny).

How did he decide on these events?  Well, they are judged by today’s standards (saying “I’m from the past” is no excuse).

What you’ll get here is a good overview of fun and horrifying times when we were cartoonishly evil, from a comedian just as appalled as you are about what shits it turned out we were in the past.

Most of the terrible behavior involves other countries.  Like starting wars with China because they wouldn’t buy British opium.  Or making Zanzibar pay for the bombs that Britain dropped on  them. (more…)

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Peter Brown–The Wild Robot (2016)

Posted in Animals, Babies, Children's Books, Culture Shock, Death, Efterklang, Friendship, Geese, Language, Peter Brown, Robots, Tiny Desk Concert, Violence on February 16, 2017| Leave a Comment »

wildrobot efterklangSOUNDTRACK: EFTERKLANG-Tiny Desk Concert #270 (April 8, 2013).

Efterklang is a Danish group whose recent album Piramida took its members to an abandoned mining town between the North Pole and Norway. There, they recorded sounds of empty oil tanks, old pianos and pretty much anything they could strike or record.

That blurb made me think this would be a noisy chaotic Concert.  And yet despite the found sounds, their music is really peaceful and lovely.

“Dreams Today” builds on a series of echoing keys and guitar notes.  After nearly two minutes the singer sings a series of high “ahhs and oohs” until the vocals officially kick in.  And then the whole band starts playing a series of fast looping notes while the percussionist plays some water bottles and mugs.  The songs builds and builds, with a steady bass keeping the melody strong and then just as it seems it should turn the corner into a new section, it abruptly ends, leaving you wanting much more.

Before the second song, “Danish Design” they explain that they “never went public” with this song. They played it once before in a huge power plant in Copenhagen.  It was a big room–very reverby (if you can say that).  The office is a very different place and they want to compare how it sounds.   They also sampled the worlds northernmost grand piano for this song.  They were in Piramida, a ghost town in the arctic.  The song begins with slow notes from the sampled piano while the keys play pinked notes. The singer sings in a baritone that is quite lovely.  When the loud drums kick in it’s quite a shock to the mellow music.  The song is only a bout 2 and a half minutes and, once again, it ends just as it seems like it might soar into something new.

“Alike” is from their previous album.  It opens with keys and percussion (all kinds of things like a fork on a mug).  They sing in harmony for much of the song.  It doesn’t use much in the way of guitar or bass (the bassist is keeping time with a pair of scissors and then a beer bottle on a step stool) until the end of the song when the guitar chords kick in fast (but not too loud).  It’s the longest song but the way it builds slowly it feels like it could go on for much longer.

This Tiny Desk really made me want to learn more about this interesting group and to hear more from them.

[READ: April 20, 2016] The Wild Robot

I love Peter Brown’s picture books.  I think Chowder is absolutely genius and The Secret Garden brings me to tears each time I read it.  So I was pretty excited to read this novel–his first.

It’s quite a fast read (with about 70 chapters all about 3 pages long) and lots of pictures.  The blurb on the book said that a robot woke up on a remote island. She has to learn to survive from the animals. And once she starts to feel comfortable, her past comes back to haunt her.

And that is a fair summary of the book.  The plot is very simple, but Brown adds a lot of details and a lot of characters to make the plot interesting. (more…)

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