Bits and Pieces

(1). I continue to update my long, detailed post on the screen career of actress Carolyn Farina with idle speculation about her (apparent lack of) lovelife. With a little simple detective work, I have also found out more about her family and where she has lived.

(2). Another obsessive, ST Joshi, wrote a two-volume biography of HP Lovecraft, the noted horror writer. I recently discussed the possibility that Lovecraft’s odd appearance may have been due to acromegaly, producing the prognathous or lantern-jawed look that Joshi refers to, and which is obvious in photos of him as an adult.

I have now read a good part of the Joshi biography, and Joshi does not seem to discuss the cause for this facial oddity. He does remark that Lovecraft went from being a normal-looking boy to a young adult with an elongated jaw which was obvious enough to be a likely reason his mother once called him “hideous”. On the other hand, he did attract a woman to be his wife, for a couple of years before the marriage failed.

There do not seem to be any ancestors or relatives with such a prodigious chin. His father was facially normal. His mother did have a fairly substantial chin for a woman, but nothing really out of the ordinary.

I still think it very possible, although by no means demonstrable, that Lovecraft did suffer from acromegaly. It is strange that even his closest biographer, who spends pages discussing his purchase of suits in New York, should be so incurious as to the genesis of one of the strangest features of a rather strange man.

(3). I am getting a steady trickle of people coming to this blog, interested in the “rape scene” in Blade Runner, the movie. I discuss the sexual politics of this film here. My feeling is that the sex scene between Deckard and Rachael is not meant to be a rape, although it is forceful and Rachael’s level of consent is unclear, especially in the shorter theatrical version of their sex act.

(4). A piece by Australian thinker and writer Mishka Gora on the morality of the “Nordic Model” of prostitution which was published not long ago at this blog, has been republished with some additional commentary at The Knight & Drummer blog here. The Nordic Model is yet another attempt by organised feminism to make men’s lives difficult.