On the porch, there are molding strips around the doors...Maya, my dog, has chewed on them, and torn them off, making a hazard for herself, as long nails stick out from the torn off strips...I've removed all of them, at least those low enough for her to reach, but I missed some, around the windows...this morning she was working on the lower window edge moldings...I put her outside in the backyard, thinking she couldn't get back in through the dog door, which I secured by nailing it shut...but from my bunk, my lay-still-refuge in the heat, I hear her working on the dog door, so paddled out and let her back on the porch...I played with her a bit, thinking to distract her from her task, or tire her enough to lay down and rest...she's hot too, what with her husky/sheperd fur, and nature's only way to sweat and cool off for dogs, through their tongues by panting...she's resting quiet now...
for a moment yesterday a breeze came up blowing my room's curtains, and thunder in the distance...people were evacuated from the beaches so as not to be struck by lightning...but no rain hereabout, and the heat continues...I went to Denny's for breakfast, but the air conditioning was out...I'm surprised my computer keeps working...I don't think the cooling fan is even working...or at least when I'm texting, maybe it doesn't get too hot... glad it does work, writing and reading with it 'cools' me off a little...
The midnight movie I watched the night before I watched the midnight showing of Exodus...I've discovered the full length movies on youtube! and now have a 'midnight movie time'...the movie I watched before was Jules Verne's 'Master of the World' made in 1961...I'd come to watching that curious about super cool water freezing which is a scene in his tale, Off On A Comet...I don't know if a movie was made of that Verne story, but I did watch some of Five Weeks in a Balloon, which is on youtube too, and from that watched Master of the World, which I'd seen as a kid...I was first amused by its beginning, which is a synopsis of early flying machine inventions...Disney at the time did a cartoon bit on this too, using the same old film footage, and it was hilarious...and then I was taken aback when the movie proper begins...the opening scene is a small rural town near a flat top mountain that looks like a volcano, and it is rumbling and spewing fire like a volcano, and from it's bowels comes a deep voice quoting the Bible...the voice is Vincent Price's, who was no light weight at being ominous!...
so, so, at Denny's I'm thinking to find what Bible verse Vincent was quoting, and maybe with that to get a post going...I found it, but before quoting it, hopefully not as ominously, which may not be possible, I've thought to relate some thoughts written in an essay on Verne that I happened on...
quote
One much-discussed trademark of Verne’s writing style is that he continually cites famous scientists, geographers, and historians—sometimes quoting sizable portions from their works and inserting them directly into his narratives. I have argued elsewhere, for instance, that Verne used this particular strategy to help increase the authoritative credibility of the scientific pedagogy contained in his novels, to bolster the verisimilitude of his fictional plot-structures, and to experiment stylistically with the juxtaposition of scientific and literary terminology.2
Literary Intertexts in Jules Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires
Arthur B. Evans
SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES, XXIII:2 #69 (July 1996): 171-187.
http://jv.gilead.org.il/evans/literary.html
unquote
why, why, I sort of do that in my blog!...and from reading the essay, I now have this word 'intertext' to use!
quote (same)
Verne’s use of the term “L’Albatros” (with the many literary connotations that it carries, from Coleridge to Poe and from Michelet to Baudelaire) serves to complement his portrayal of the fictional hero of this novel, Robur himself. For Robur, a true “prince of the clouds” (as Captain Nemo might be called—quite literally, as we discover in L’Ile mystérieuse [The Mysterious Island]—a “prince of the seas”), also found himself to be an “exile” on land and jeered at by his contemporaries.
unquote
In the essay, there are literary references I can't keep up with...I haven't read all of Verne, and certainly not all of the books Verne read!
quote (same)
It was a library. High pieces of furniture made of black violet ebony inlaid with brass supported upon their wide shelves a great number of books, uniformly bound. The shelves followed the shape of the room and terminated at the lower part in huge couches, covered with brown leather, which were curved to afford the greatest comfort. Light, movable desks, made to slide in and out at will, allowed one to place one’s book down while reading. In the center stood a large table, covered with pamphlets, among which were some newspapers that were already old. Electric light flooded this harmonious ensemble from four unpolished globes half-sunk into the vaulted ceiling.
unquote
That's a depiction of Verne's library he made on his own yacht...I had a glimpse of Disney's bookshelves...they were in a display of his office that used to be in Mr. Lincoln...I don't know what's become of them...it was an eclectic collection of books like Verne's, and Disney had the same habit of borrowing from other story tellers...Verne liked James Fenimore Cooper...
quote (same)
“There goes our scientist again,” answered Glenarvan. “He would pursue scientific inquiry so far as getting himself burned alive.”
“My heavens no, my dear Glenarvan. But in having read one’s Cooper, one would know how Leatherstocking saved himself from a prairie fire by pulling out the grass around himself for a dozen meters or so. Nothing could be simpler. Therefore, not only do I not fear the approach of such a fire, I look forward to it!"57
end quote
and Verne said himself:
quote (same)
“I never tire of Fenimore Cooper; certain of his romances deserve true immortality and will, I trust, be remembered long after the so-called literary giants of a later age are forgotten.”53
end quote
a fan myself of Cooper...see my Leatherstocking posts!
I have read enough, that I can see some things being alluded to in a movie or story I'm watching or reading...this to say, when a story is referring to another story obliquely, I catch on to it...what I'm trying to describe is a bit like the tv game show Jeopardy...the game board gives a clue in a category, and the three contestants compete to answer what the clue refers to...it's a game of trivial pursuit...Verne had amassed from his reading all kinds of trivia, or lore...I listen to such everyday on the sports talk radio, and can follow along as I'm familiar with the sports lore and trivia!!!...
I'm not familiar much with Bible lore, or trivia...the word trivia not a good fit, as not much is trivial in the Bible...but I have some of it...the republican candidates have fallen to calling out one another's faith, and one wonders how they would fare before Trebek and the category Bible!...
anyway, there are Biblical and historical intertexts in the movie Exodus...when the Ergun and Haganah fighters are plotting the prison escape, doubts are raised about the impenetrability of the Acre prison, the old fortress Napoleon laid siege too and couldn't defeat, being one example cited...'I know that story now, about Napoleon, it's in my posts', I thought on seeing that scene...but I'm sure the movie going audience in 1960, and since, pretty much miss this historical intertext...
and there was another in the movie I caught, which is where I wanted to come to with this post!...when Eve Marie Saint visits the kibbutz of Paul Newman, Newman's father, Lee J. Cobb, who started the kibbutz with his farm, Cobb explains that he bought the land from an Arab in the nearby village...I think he even says how much he paid...this payment is a biblical intertext, a reference to land purchased in the Bible...
I had found the purchase of the cave and surrounding land that Abraham did for his tomb, now known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs, it's in one of my posts back away...The Glass Slab...and I had just come across, forget where, that King David had purchased the 'threshing floor' where the Temple would be built...looking that up was in my mind when watching Exodus, so seeing Cobb go on about purchasing property for a Jewish settlement, added momentum to my looking up King David's purchase...
quote
When God denied the right to build the Temple, as David said he would do, King David went instead and paid 50 silver shekels to purchase a threshing floor, and later paid 600 gold shekels for the whole mountain (see I Chronicles 21:25) where the Temple would subsequently be built. The sacrificial altar and subsequent Temple building were built on this threshing floor and on the mountain we now know as Mount Moriah.
unquote
Verne would self reference himself in his stories...characters from one story would appear in another...
quote (from above)
Before leaving the realm of Verne’s literary sources, one last group of cited intertexts must be discussed: those of Verne himself. Throughout Verne’s works, repeated reference to characters, plots, and actual titles of previously-published novels of the Voyages Extraordinaires is astonishingly frequent. This practice of textual self-citation performs many useful narratological tasks: it acts as a sort of “binder” which adds a measure of continuity and unity to the series, it tends to increase the verisimilitude of the fictional events portrayed, and it helps to insert Verne’s own works into the same dimension of extra-textual referents occupied by those authoritative scientific and literary works which he constantly cites.
unquote
I have it that the authors of the Bible were about this intertexting long before Verne, and I went about seeing if the payment Judas received for betraying Jesus was somehow interwoven...
quote
"But I became impatient with them, and they also detested me. So I said, 'I will not be your shepherd. What is to die, let it die; what is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed; and let those that are left devour the flesh of one another.' And I took my staff Grace, and I broke it, annulling the covenant which I had made with all the peoples. So it was annulled on that day, and the traffickers in the sheep, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the Lord. Then I said to them. 'If it seems right to you. give me my wages: but if not. keep them.' And they weighed out as my wages thirty shekels of silver. Then the Lord said to me. "Cast it into the treasury - the lordly price at which I was paid off by them. So I took the thirty shekels of silver and cast them into the treasury in the house of the Lord." (Zechariah 11:4-14)
Thirty shekels of silver is the sum of money Judas, the betrayer of Jesus, was paid for his foul deed. When the priests in the temple discovered that the money had been used to an unlawful end they applied it to the purchase of a plot of land in the territory of Judah, just south of the Old City of Jerusalem known even today as the "potters field." The accounts of this series of events is recorded in the Gospels and in the book of Acts:
Land Owned by Famous Jews
Lambert Dolphin
http://www.templemount.org/Famous.html
unquote
first part of the quote is the author quoting the Bible, and then they add comment...a copy paste and comment!...which is about all I'm about...
and reading along I come to this:
quote
But the matter of land owned by famous Jews is not finished, for the Book of the Revelation, the last book in the Bible written by the aged Apostle John (like all the apostles, a devout Jew) describes the Jewish Messiah, Yeshua (Jesus) in eternity as holding in hand the title deed to all the earth:
"And I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals; and I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, 'Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?' And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I wept much that no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it.
end quote
The seven seals are an inclusio, a bookend...see my post Bookends...the Seven Seals are an intertext to the Seven Days of Creation in Genesis...beyond that, I purse my lips, and don't know where to go...
Vincent Price (imagine his deep voice!) gets about this far with the quote:
quote
Come near, you nations, to hear;
And heed, you people!
Let the earth hear, and all that is in it,
The world and all things that come forth from it.
2 For the indignation of the Lord is against all nations,
And His fury against all their armies;
He has utterly destroyed them,
... ... ...
Isaiah 34
end quote
and finding the quote myself, and reading further on, I'm stopped in my tracks here:
quote (same)
For it is the day of the Lord’s vengeance,
The year of recompense for the cause of Zion.
9 Its streams shall be turned into pitch,
And its dust into brimstone;
Its land shall become burning pitch.
10 It shall not be quenched night or day;
Its smoke shall ascend forever.
From generation to generation it shall lie waste;
No one shall pass through it forever and ever.
11 But the pelican and the porcupine shall possess it,
Also the owl and the raven shall dwell in it.
And He shall stretch out over it
The line of confusion and the stones of emptiness.
12 They shall call its nobles to the kingdom,
But none shall be there, and all its princes shall be nothing.
end quote
Since the invention of the atomic bomb, linking it to Bible prophecy is an industry...and not an industry I want to work in!...but that Bible quote does describe Chernoble...plants and animals are living near the destroyed Nuclear Plant, but people can't go anywhere near it, as it is still radioactively 'burning' and will continue like that for generations...
fire and brimstone is a motif, an intertext, in the Bible...
here is wiki's take on Fire and Brimstone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_and_brimstone
The ancients wrote of things that look like things we know today and which the ancients had no way of knowing, except through time crossing visions, or, we have that wrong, that the ancients actually saw things, and wrote of things, just like the things we know of today...ancient literatures, lore, have these things that vaguely resemble modern things, and that's another industry...and another I don't seek employment with!...but there's this in Jesus' answer to his disciples question: "Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?"
quote
Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains: Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.
Matthew 24
I've seen this scene, in the movie of War of the Worlds...the Martians warcraft are devastating Los Angeles (one of them came down in Huntington Beach, another in Silverado), and in desperation, the air force sends in a bomber with an atomic bomb...the refugees from Los Angeles are sitting on the slopes of the foothills, and shield their eyes when the bomb explodes, to no avail...the Martians have a kind of force field shield bubble over them...the movie Independence Day borrows the shield notion--the alien space ships have such...all of which are borrowed perhaps from an imagined bubble shield dreamt up by Tesla big enough to cover a city...
oh...I ramble!...but Verne must have known of Tesla...
quote
The captives learn how his ship operates, and about his technical advances, including generation of electrical power by crossing "lines of magnetic force" (presumably created by the earth's own magnetic field).
Master of the World (1961 film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
That, that's Tesla's aether...
Oh, I'm no nearer the Dirac Sea...and another bulldozer has dug up an archaeological wonder in Israel...
quote
All around the sarcophagus are carved images of wreaths, bulls’ heads, naked Cupids, and the head of the monstrous female figure Medusa.
“In the Roman period she was believed to protect the deceased,” Mazor said.Rare 1,000-Year-Old-Sarcophagus Recovered in Israel
Sep 3, 2015 12:12 PM ET //
http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/rare-1800-year-old-sarcophagus-recovered-in-israel-150903.htm
unquote
oh...I have to look up Medusa...
quote
The project is known as MEDUSA – a contrived acronym for Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio. And it should not be confused with the Long Range Acoustic Device and similar gadgets which simply project sound. This one uses the so-called "microwave auditory effect": a beam of microwaves is turned into sound by the interaction with your head. Nobody else can hear it unless they are in the beam as well.
The Microwave Scream Inside Your Head
David Hambling
http://www.wired.com/2008/07/the-microwave-s/
I suppose the counter to such a thing would be Perseus' mirror shield, a gift from Athena...
DavidDavid
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