Someone needs to draw this.

[erastes]

Keith Floyd and Patrick Swayze together?  I like to think they are both sitting in Valhalla quaffing and roistering.  Floyd is cooking something delicious and educating everyone about seafood and good wine. Swayze is teaching them to dance. 

I’ve been watching The Unit – and while I was a bit dubious about it at first because it seemed just like a Hoo-Rah for the men and Stepford Wives for the women, it’s improving as the flaws in the characters show through.  No women in the Unit though?  Sexist bastards.  And it really really really convinces me that there’s no way I could ever been an army wife – because to live under that kind of Stepford mentality would make me run out there with a gun and kill everyone.

What was inconceivably STUPID though was in episode 10 where Molly got conned by a con artist who made her buy her house when it really wasn’t her house.  I could understand a complete ignoramus being caught out like this “hey, I’ve this old London Bridge to buy, and no-one to take it off my hands” but NOT someone who actually works as a Realtor.  You don’t accept title of a property by someone simply giving you a printed copy of their title.  I’m not sure of the American conveyancing laws but over here we have to prove 13 years clear title before we can engage in any sale. So… stupid.  What pisses me off about this kind of idiocy is that I then start to wonder what else they are making up. And Yes, I know that American Black Ops forces aren’t the best in the world!!

And in other news – i do wish authors would do the fucking research. It would certainly save me tearing my hair out when I come to review. KICK KICK KICK. Don't get me wrong. I'm not an historian, but I do check random facts when I'm reviewing.

Comments

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

What are you reviewing? *izcurious*

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Can't say!

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

*sniffs* :)

But! I shall start working on "Transit", my next short story which will emphatically NOT turn into a 140k novel.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

what happened to Iron Cross?

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

"Transit" has a deadline. It's for "I Do, Too."

IC is still around, but I want to get some stuff in for the submission calls. (Both of them).

[angrboda]

OMG Keith Floyd? O.o
I remember watching him when I was a child. Didn't understand anything about what was going on and had little to no interest in cooking, but I found him entertaining anyway. Sort of in the same way that I like watching Top Gear even though I'm not even remotely interested in cars and can't even drive one.

Sad face.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Well, one thing we can say is that he enjoyed life. He was the 80's version of NZ's galloping gourmet. I loved him (and I watched him in the same way you did) because he was one of the first chefs who just chucked things in, and i approve of that.

[aphephobia.livejournal.com]

ME TOO.

My grandmother used to hate Floyd. She said he never washed his hands before he played with the food.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

they are all hugely unhygenic - it makes me feel ill when some of the cooks do the fiddly stuff, putting things on the plate by hand and stacking food into piles with their fingers - i'm all "you just had those in your hair!"

[beckyblack]

Little niggly errors can really spoil a book for me. Sometimes I can get past them and be happy to read the rest of the book, even if that error still rattles around my brain. But some will make me throw the book at the wall there and then.

An example of the latter: an Arab man described as looking like Lawrence of Arabia in a book that then got immediately closed. Well, no I read that bit a few times, trying to see if I'd misunderstood what she meant, but no. Now I'm sure TE Lawrence wasn't quite as blondly pretty as Peter O'Toole, but I still doubt he was easily mistaken for a 6 foot+ hunky Arab dude. That was just too silly for me to keep reading the book.

Another recent one, that I read on after and finished the book, but still, it nagged me. Book set in 1806, had a reference to "Wellington himself". Well the sum total of my knowledge about the Peninsula wars may come from the Sharpe books and TV show, but that still meant I knew he wasn't even Lord Wellington until 1809.

I think it nags because even if you get past it, you keep thinking "if they got that wrong, what else is rubbish?" It really did me in with a writing advice book, where I spotted a couple of errors in reference to the books he was citing. The thing was, because it was a non-fiction instructional book, that was a whole different thing than a novel. I just totally lost confidence in the writer and stopped believing that he'd actually read the books they were citing as examples, or at best that they didn't bother going and double checking the details, and of course wondering what other mistakes there were.

Ah well, just gotta check everything! Nothing's ever easy. :D

[erastes.livejournal.com]

That's the thing, you do have to check everything - even if you are sure you know the fact - I've been caught out more than once like that.

This was glaring - to me, anyway - one major fact that is wrong wrong wrong (along the lines of Wellington wrong) and the rest of it is a horrible mish mash of films and books about the era.

[aphephobia.livejournal.com]

And it really really really convinces me that there’s no way I could ever been an army wife – because to live under that kind of Stepford mentality would make me run out there with a gun and kill everyone.

Me too. I saw something on DVD for sale called Army Wives and thought, "This is like Desperate Housewives with a military bent. Urrgh."

Most likely, I'd stick to myself and write slashfic and play video games. And avoid the other army wives.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Me too - I'd be hugely unpopular if the woman are really like the women in the Unit. I don't BAKE, or like attending any kind of meeting - they've just be told they have to plant their gardens in red white and blue - bleughk.

However, I doubt English army bases are as bad as this, we don't tend to do the whole Jingo-ism quite as bad. I think.

[aphephobia.livejournal.com]

Oh gawd... I can't cook for shit, and when I do... I see it as some kind of punishment. (Also, what's with women being expected to cook all the time yet also being expected to stay super-skinny? Something doesn't calculate there...) And meetings... urrgh. *shudders* I can't do meetings/support groups. That shit depresses me and makes me feel like a complete outsider. (Well, the one I tried, New Mothers' Group, was like that. I was the only one there who wasn't married, didn't have a mortgage, was under 25, had career and educational ambitions, and who had interests outside of babies, weight loss, cooking, cleaning products and "my husband.") The garden thing would depress me: I'm a rose fanatic and I love them in all sorts of colours.

[crawling-angel.livejournal.com]

Aw, I loved old Floydy. His cooking progs were a hoot.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Hate to tell you this, but American title laws vary by state. Here in CA, you have to prove title ownership by paying a specialized company to do it back to us taking it away from the Spanish. (Yes, really. Land Grants.)
Back in MO, I happen to know they may or may not bother. Just part of the negotiation whether somebody will pay for getting that done. So you get these interesting bifurcations when it doesn't get done, and clear title was never proved back in year such-and-such, and then perhaps several parties got into arguments about it. You can have *competing* title claims going on when there's heirs involved, for instance.
No, not joking!
So, similar to termite inspections and so on, a clearly proven title is worth more as a property than something that's been in murky dispute for years but that's never stopped them from reselling the place. Or stopped local or sate gov from accepting the taxes owed, either.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

But my point is, that no-one who WORKED in real estate would take proof of title in such as casual way. Yes, a lay person might be fooled, but not a professional, even a part time one.