Within the kingdom of the fish
the fisher-king is king
his hooks, his lures bring surcease sweet
to those who sway beneath his sway
and at his plate sublimely meet
the tines, the teeth, the palate grey
the finless flay, the stingless sting

Within the kingdom of the fish
the fisher-king is strong
each darting shape among the reeds
dreams dreamless dreams of silvered halls
where throned and robed her sovran feeds
as twilight after twilight falls
and long they wait, and long

Yet in the kingdom of the fish
the consummation tarries
no trident spears, no net enfolds
as slumb’ring sleepless in our crèche
the like grip gripless our need holds
for ’gainst our citadel of flesh
no host invests, nor harries

But who’d have guessed that this famous scene of sophistry from Life With Father –

– was prefigured in Poe’s lesser-known essay “Diddling Considered As One of the Exact Sciences”?

The diddler approaches the bar of a tavern, and demands a couple of twists of tobacco. These are handed to him, when, having slightly examined them, he says:

“I don’t much like this tobacco. Here, take it back, and give me a glass of brandy and water in its place.” The brandy and water is furnished and imbibed, and the diddler makes his way to the door. But the voice of the tavern-keeper arrests him.

“I believe, sir, you have forgotten to pay for your brandy and water.”

“Pay for my brandy and water! – didn’t I give you the tobacco for the brandy and water? What more would you have?”

“But, sir, if you please, I don’t remember that you paid me for the tobacco.”

“What do you mean by that, you scoundrel? – Didn’t I give you back your tobacco? Isn’t that your tobacco lying there? Do you expect me to pay for what I did not take?”

“But, sir,” says the publican, now rather at a loss what to say, “but sir –”

“But me no buts, sir,” interrupts the diddler, apparently in very high dudgeon, and slamming the door after him, as he makes his escape. – “But me no buts, sir, and none of your tricks upon travellers.”

(I wouldn’t recommend trying this on an actual bartender, by the way, unless you’re eager to learn wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert.)

Influence or coincidence? I don’t know. The pug dog incident doesn’t appear to be in Clarence Day’s original book Life With Father, so it probably originated in the subsequent play (by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, best known for The Sound of Music, for which they wrote everything but the songs) which in turn was the basis for the movie. Crouse also wrote about the Mary Rogers murder case (the same case that Poe fictionalised as “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”), so that’s some basis, though not much, for speculating that he might have been a Poe aficionado.

I’ve just posted photos from both the first Libertopia conference (Hollywood, 2010 – 2 pages) and the second Libertopia conference (San Diego, 2011 – 5 pages). You may recognise some familiar faces.

Isn’t Humphrey’s Half Moon Inn cool? I used to pass by there as a kid and wonder what it was like inside.

Actually that was my chief quarrel with the second Hulk movie too. In the first Hulk movie (which of course isn’t strictly part of the Avengers continuity, but the second Hulk movie picked up so many narrative strands from the first that it’s hard to treat it as purely separate either), General Ross was likewise a complex, nuanced, somewhat sympathetic antagonist, and one who was opposed to the human experimentation that led to Banner’s condition; in the second Hulk movie Ross is more straightforwardly villainous (albeit not completely so) and is actually carrying on human experimentation himself.

It occurs to me that both writers have featured season finales involving the series protagonist apparently falling to his death.

Thus spake Marvel Studios star-tsar Kevin Feige:

There had been discussion as to where to take … the part [of the Hulk] and Joss [Whedon] had some ideas. He came to us and said, “I’d like to think about another actor,” and we said, “Well, much of what we like about The Avengers is we’re taking all the actors we had before and putting them together again, so we said it depends on who you’re thinking of – if you’re thinking of A, B or C maybe not, if you’re thinking of Mark Ruffalo, we’d be open to a conversation.” And he goes, “Holy shit!” and takes a list out of his pocket, and at the top of his list was Mark Ruffalo.

Okay, so does that mean that Feige was lying his head off two years ago when he said, or at least strongly implied, that the change was made because Ed Norton was too difficult to work with?

Gosh.