Yet Another Linkdump

Our almost three weeks of solid snow and frost are thawing just in time for New Year. Unfortunately, that thawing is accompanied by freezing rain, which makes every surface slippery as hell. I’m very glad that I don’t have to go out tomorrow except head to a nearby Italian restaurant for dinner. And the restaurant is in walking range. Not in easy walking range, but it’s possible and I’ve done it, too. Though given how dangerous the slippery roads are, driving is probably still the safer option.

In other news, I’m still busy with that big translation job, so have another linkdump:

Juliette Wade has a great post on what does “normal” mean anyway. As someone who’s never really been normal either – quite deliberately so in my teens, to the point that I explicitly did not wear or do certain things, because that would be too normal – I heartily agree with her.

Here is a great article about all female shoplifting gangs in Victorian London at The Guardian. Great storyfodder there, particularly for historical fiction and Steampunk writers.

And in what will hopefully be the last celebrity death of 2010, singer/dancer Bobby Farrell of Boney M died yesterday aged 61. If you’ve ever seen Boney M, you’ll know Bobby Farrell. He was the lone male member of the group who always danced so enthusiastically. He wasn’t the main singer, though, that was Frank Farian’s voice coming out of Bobby Farrell’s mouth.

I was a young child during the Boney M/disco era. And since Boney M was the brainchild of the German producer/singer Frank Farian, they were on German TV a lot in the 1970s and early 1980s. As a result, I’ve had a lot of exposure to their music and I’ve always been fond of their music. Whatever one may think of Frank Farian, the man knows how to make pop music. He was also ahead of his time, e.g. he used sampling techniques on Boney M songs before it was common. And as for Farian’s tendency to let prettier people dance and move their lips to his singing, so what? I’ve never understood why so many people were so shocked that Milli Vanilli, another Farian band, didn’t sing live, since everybody knew that Boney M. (and most likely Eruption, Farian’s other disco band, too) never sang live either.