2 comments on my sanity Listening to: Van Halen
Mood: GLEE
Well, it's taken a while, but I have just finished reading the third Dirk Pitt novel, "Iceberg".
As the name might imply, quite a lot of the book was set in Arctic waters and Iceland and even manly Dirk Pitt (with his coat of manly hair to keep him warm) hesitates to whip his clothes off when the ambient temperature is zero and below.
However, this was more than made up for during the course of the book with Dirk's hilarious disguises.
The first being the most cunning disguise ever: a gay man! Yes! Dirk fakes a love of landscape painting (obviously only gay men like watercolours) and an "[admiration] of virile men" and (somewhat to the reader's surprise) manages to convince the main villian that he is a "fairy queen". Clive Cussler has some interesting ideas about gay men, but since he did write Iceberg in 1975 I will have to excuse him slightly.
Lo, the description of Dirk's disguise:
The guard did a classic double-take at Pitt, who brought up the rear moving along the pier in a short sissyish gait.
If Sandecker and Tidi looked and dressed like a pair of fishermen, Pitt came on like the queen of the May. He wore red suede pull-on boots, multicolored striped duck pants, so tight the seams were strained beyond endurance, supported by a two-inchwide tapestry belt and a stretched purple sweater trimmed at the collar by a yellow neckerchief. His eyes blinked rapidly behind a pair of Ben Franklin glasses and his head was covered by a tasseled knit cap. The guard's mouth slowly drifted agape.
"Hi, sweetie," Pitt said, smiling slyly. "Is our boat ready?"
The guard's mouth remained agape, his eyes blank and unable to communicate to the brain the apparition they were focusing on.
"Come, come," Pitt said. "Miss Fyrie has generously loaned us the use of one of her boats. Which one is it?" Pitt stared fixedly at the guard's crotch.
Yes, that was a crotch reference. These were sadly lacking in this Dirk adventure.
The second part of the book takes place in Disneyland, somewhat oddly. I still don't know exactly why, but I maintain that it is just so that Dirk has an excuse to fight with a cutlass in the Pirates of the Carribean ride. He also get his second awesomebad disguise- a manly, hairy Big Bad Wolf suit. Which he fights in. With a cutlass.
God, I love these books.
Aitken Index Analysis:
Book 3: Iceberg
Word count: 91, 574
Number of occurrences of Dirk being naked, including inferred nakedness (in the shower etc):
0
Number of words Dirk spends being naked:
19 words- Schroedinger’s nakedness. But then he checks; and in checking, the waveform collapses and he is in fact clothed.
Total: 0 words
= 0% of the book.
References to manly hair, facial/bodily:
12
References to/occurrences of naked/barely clothed women:
13
References to crotches; male or female:
5
Which gives a crotch reference every 18,314 words
The results were quite disappointing but the surprise ending and the disguises more than make up for the lack of nakedness and crotch references.
I have also finished my analysis of the Bond novel Casino Royale, as suggested by Katy. The results were rather surprising as you will see, but I qualify them by pointing out that most of the actual secret-agenting was done by half way through the book, at which point James Bond ran off with the girl and cavorted about on the beach with her.
The last Bond novel I read before that was the one that has Ursula whatserface in the white bikini in the movie (the name escapes me right this second) and I don't recall Bond cavorting to quite such an extent at the end of that. So I am going on the "Casino Royale is a first novel fluke" hypothesis for now and I will analyse another Bond novel until I am crushed with overwhelming evidence that Bond is in fact more naked than Dirk.
Aitken Index Analysis Control:
James Bond book 1: Casino Royale
Word count: 49, 881
Number of occurrences of James being naked, including inferred nakedness (in the shower etc):
7
Number of words James spends being naked:
58 words- having a massage (inferred)
138 words- getting ready for a tough night at the casino
3,762 words- naked torture
413 words- naked beach wandering.
211 words- more naked beach wandering. *shakes head sadly*
32 words- shagging (inferred nakedness)
256 words- more shagging (inferred nakedness)
Total: 4870 words
= 10.7% of the book.
References to manly hair, facial/bodily:
8
References to/occurrences of naked/barely clothed women:
8
References to crotches; male or female:
8 (and one “he stroked his memories” which I can’t decide is a euphemism or not)
Which gives a crotch reference every 7,126 words
Stay tuned for Dirk Pitt book 4 and Live and Let Die.
October 28, 2006 at 5:38 p.m.