I've been tagged by the boss. (See below.) Unaccustomed though I am to public speaking, here I go with eight random things about moi:
1. I once worked for a day in the office of a numismatist. When he explained to me what UNCs and BUNCs were, I was seized by an overpowering desire to squeeze each one of them between my thumb and middle finger. That isn't what ended my numismatic career, though. My dad refused to sign the legal guarantee I was sent home with that night, which was probably best all 'round.
2. I credit my good health, for as long as I had it, to peanut butter or its smarter younger brother, tahini.
3. I have six cats, two sisters, and two brothers, and I am on astonishingly good terms with all of them.
4. The greatest movie I have ever seen, I still think, is The Third Man.
5. I am proud of my Arctic blue willow to the point of vanity. The rest of the garden may be going to seed, but that gorgeous bush encourages me every day.
6. I love turtles. Wombats and meerkats are good too. And I could go on.
7. Filing defeats me. Filing makes me anxious to the point of paralysis. Life is a filing cabinet, and I've lost the key.
8. I have the best tech adviser in the world.
I tag MWW at Somena Media, Miss Vicky, and April Reign.
Holly: Have you ever seen any of your victims?
Harry: You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?
*Anton Karas plays on*
Misery loves company, is that it? ;)
Truly the most chilling moment, Jason, and more telling, I think, than the famous ad lib Welles did about the cuckoo clock. In the script I'm looking at, where you have "Tell me," I have "Look down there ...," which is even chillier, yes? We must listen for that next time.
The dialogue throughout about Holly's writing is very sharp too, sometimes Greene's wry self-mockery, sometimes threatening. Such a gem.
More like we're all in this together, April. ;-)
I just went with the imdb quote, which is probably less reliable than your recollection; I left the context unstated. The Hitler channel shows the movie often enough on the 'Cold War' features, along with the good and the bad of spy films. The film of "The Spy Who Came In from the Cold" is ok. I much prefer the book though; le Carré out-chills a boatload of Stanley Kubrick movies in just 200 pages or so. I'm a sucker for plot, and what a plot.
And what a cover blurb to have: "The best spy story I have ever read", from Graham Greene.
The WHAT channel?
The History Channel. Old, apt, history department joke about the History Channel and its practice, especially early on, of running insane amounts of WWII documentaries made on the cheap with stock footage and cheesy 'war-buff' subject matter. "This week on Panzers, the Panzer IVc!" etc.