Le Chat: The Cat...

Le Chat by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

( Viens, mon beau chat, sur mon coeur amoureux; )

The translation:

The Cat by Charles Baudelaire:

Come, my fine cat, against my loving heart;
Sheathe your sharp claws, and settle.
And let my eyes into your pupils dart
Where agate sparks with metal.

Now while my fingertips caress at leisure
Your head and wiry curves,
And that my hand's elated with the pleasure
Of your electric nerves,

I think about my woman — how her glances
Like yours, dear beast, deep-down
And cold, can cut and wound one as with lances;

Then, too, she has that vagrant
And subtle air of danger that makes fragrant
Her body, lithe and brown.

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

Rebellion...

No one gets paid to rebel. All revolutions start with volunteers. - Susan J. Ellis

Body parts...

It has amused me how many of the items I've seen about Matt Smith's coming role as the Doctor in Doctor Who have been about his hair. Even a kid, in a question and answer session, asked about his hair. Now, I don't see his hair as being so remarkable.



When I was young, people used to fuss over other people's hair all the time. It was a thing. Especially young men's hair. Girls could do anything with their hair, it didn't matter much - mostly they just grew it long and straight, as I did. But men's hair? That was a big deal. My cousin and my uncle fought over the subject like Hector and Achilles. For years. There was even a Broadway musical about it - "Hair". It was a big deal. So Matt Smith has been photographed with hair that has personality - I like that. It's a good thing. Hair should be interesting.

And teeth... I thought of this while reading Sam Wollaston's review of Britain's Got Talent and John Barrowman's new show, Tonight's the Night:

In all my years of watching television, Simon's teeth are the silliest I've ever seen; they're like the White Cliffs of Dover... John Barrowman is the man with the perfect teeth this time. Perfect everything, he's shiny and sparkly, nice even. Too nice. No one ever failed on Tonight's the Night, we're told. Where's the fun in that?

I laugh. (Ah, Wollaston, there is a world of philosophical speculation in that question.)

But then I thought: speaking as someone who is neither British nor American, it seems to me that the British talk about teeth a lot. Really a lot. They notice teeth, and mention them. While Americans, though they value their teeth, don't talk about teeth. Not directly. They might talk about dentists, and dentures, and toothpaste, or whatever, but they don't say (at least not in the media), "Look at that person's funny teeth."



Now I'll probably see a zillion sources proving me wrong.

FIC: Torchwood (drabble) - Dead and Alive

Title: Dead and Alive
Author: fajrdrako
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Gwen/Rhys
Challenge: tw100, challenge: resurrection
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims, all property of the BBC.
Notes: Spoilers for Torchwood episode 1x13, "End of Days". Cross-posted to my lj, to outside_bf, and to tw100.

( Dead and Alive )