mauvecloud said, not referring to Nix but to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Al. For this ex-Catholic the Easter cycle has always felt oddly-- very oddly, given the doctrine involved-- unchancy and disquieting. You don't get nice babies in cradles and fun music and snow; you get weather that's either bad-tempered or oppressive, and empty tombs and winding sheets, and someone who looks like the man you knew but who isn't quite and who says not to touch him. Or maybe I'm the only one who finds the risen Christ as uneasy-making as the risen Gandalf? (There's also the weirdness of a Friday holiday. Puts the time sense off badly.)I've been time-travelling again, back to the mid and late 90s. Time-travelling is bad for the health, along the lines of 'The counsel of the dead is not profitable to the living.' However time travel reminds me why LJ is a good thing. You get to see people in something more of the round than you do in email and mailing lists; you can check them out for signs of notable batshittery. It would have saved a lot of grief if I'd been able to do that in, say, 1995 or 1998.
But to happier things.
octopedingenue has an entry about Sherlock Holmes that not only traces Death Note L's chair-perching back to the Master, it reveals what a fanboi P.G. Wodehouse was.The following poem is copied from an Oxford collection of some Sherlock Holmes short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. At the back of the collection it was apparently deemed appropriate and scholarly to include old-school Holmes fanfic.
P. G. Wodehouse
Back to his Native Strand
["Sherlock Holmes" is to reappear in the "Strand" Magazine.]
Air—"Archie" in the "Toreador."
Oh, Sherlock Holmes lay hidden more than half a dozen years.
He left his loving London in a whirl of doubts and fears.
For we thought a wicked party
Of the name of Moriarty
Had despatched him (in a manner fit to freeze one).
They grappled on a cliff-top, on a ledge six inches wide;
We deemed his chances flimsy when he vanished o'er the side.
But the very latest news is
That he merely got some bruises.
If there is a man who's hard to kill, why he's one.
Oh Sherlock, Sherlock, he's in town again,
That prince of perspicacity, that monument of brain.
It seems he wasn't hurt at all
By tumbling down the waterfall.
That sort of thing is fun to Sherlock.
When Sherlock left his native Strand, such groans were seldom heard;
With sobs the Public's frame was rent: with tears its eye was blurred.
But the optimists reflected
That he might be resurrected:
It formed our only theme of conversation.
We asked each other, Would he be? And if so, How and where?
We went about our duties with a less dejected air.
And they say that a suggestion
Of a Parliamentary question
Was received with marked approval by the nation.
And Sherlock, Sherlock, he's in town again,
Sir Conan has discovered him, and offers to explain.
The explanation may be thin,
But bless you! we don't care a pin,
If he'll but give us back our Sherlock.
The burglar groans and lays aside his jemmy, keys, and drill;
The enterprising murderer proceeds to make his will;
The fraud-promoting jobber
Feels convinced that those who rob err;
The felon finds no balm in his employment.
The forger and the swindler start up shrieking in their sleep;
No longer on his mother does the coster gaily leap;
The Mile-End sportsman ceases
To kick passers-by to pieces,
Or does it with diminishing enjoyment.
For Sherlock, Sherlock, he's in town again,
That prince of perspicacity, that monument of brain.
The world of crime has got the blues,
For Sherlock's out and after clues,
And everything's a clue to Sherlock.
