#david owen

[lolitics-confessions]

Submitted by anon

[crispylive]

"...you can kiss this!"

-Shiner, Rocket Man

[tedheath]

David Owen, at David Steel: You can't "I'm just a little guy" your way out of this one, cunt.

[rpfshippingpolls]

⚠️ DON’T START DISCOURSE ABOUT RPF IN THE NOTES!! YOU WILL BE BLOCKED IF YOU DO SO ⚠️

Do you ship it?

David Owen/David Steel

I ship it!

Sure, why not/I can see it

Neutral

I don’t ship it

I don’t know them

Non-rpf shipper button

Voting ended onDec 26, 2024

Reason:

“Okay so: Basically the two of them were partners in an alliance between their parties (the Liberal Party and the SDP), and their relationship was just kind of all over the place. They were often satirised as being two peas in a pod, and there was an even a cartoon that depicted them as a recently married couple. In an episode of Question Time (show where politicians are asked questions by the audience), Steel says that he “doesn’t propose to conduct a love-in with Dr. Owen” but “a marriage is a possibility”. In Spitting Image, a popular satire show of the time period, Steel was portrayed as lovesick and adoring of Owen, often calling him “dear” and even sleeping in the same bed with him, things Steel would complain about, particularly how his puppet “gazing up adorably” (Steel’s words) at Owen. Overall though they have a very cute dynamic. In the fandom, Steel is portrayed as the short, adorable and needy one while Owen is the tall, gruff and no-nonsense one, and this was honestly quite true in life to an extent. To quote an article from the Journal of Liberal History, “For Steel, personal friendship was a prerequisite. For Owen, a business partnership would suffice.””

[the-six-fingered-villain]

If there’s one book I recommend to folks interested in bookbinding (or anyone interested in non-fiction really), it’s Paper by Mark Kurlansky. 

But now I’ve a second book I’d like to recommend to bookbinding folks-- Copies in Seconds by David Owen! 

The book is very easy to read in an a pleasing, people-focused, linear timeline style by a fellow who writes for the New Yorker and (now that I look) has a number of other interesting looking titles to his name.

The focus is on the Xerox machine, which has the same fundamental guts as our cursed (affectionate) laser printers!! Actually, it focuses on the machine’s creator (Chester Carlson) who I hadn’t heard of before but sounds like such a fascinating, good natured fellow. This book makes my really appreciate the tech (and finicky-ness and restrictions) a vital piece of fic binding equipment and thus enriches my overall enjoyment (tied to knowledge) of the process. [note: doesn’t talk about inkjet printers... but you shouldn’t be using those for textblocks anyway ;) ]. 

There’s also this wild ride about patens and the finances that goes into producing such a complicated piece of machinery. It starts off with a speed-run of paper/printing history (best covered in Paper) and an interesting highlighting of the differences between a duplicate and copy. As someone whose memories only really kick in around the early 90s, it was also enlightening to read/consider the state of tech for such things at the turn of the century to mid century. Also touches on lithography and mimeographs and-- UGH! Really- cannot recommend this enough to all the @renegadepublishing​ folks out there. 

It’s a brief 283 pages long and amusingly found directly after the bookbinding section at this library’s non-fiction collection (call 686.442). This is actually the second time I checked it out (grabbed it during my visit in the summer but didn’t wind up cracking it open- am one of those folks who checks out 5-7 books at a time and only reads half of about 3 of them) 

A couple quotes from the text below the cut--

Again- I really, really liked reading about Carlson. Sounds like a brilliant, kind, very intelligent man. Very sweet. 

This book ties well with some of my other reading- mostly Archeology of Knowledge. I really had not had a moment’s thought about physical recorded history or the notion of information over the passage of time prior to... I don’t know, a couple years ago. I was busy thinking about other things! Really, have avoided academics and philosophy for so long- all these ideas register as new/novel to me but are likely common to those in other fields... 

Books books books

Anyway, I like chewing on these thoughts now.

And in conclusion - this little bit (minus the quaintly sexist aspect of it) does remind me of some of the Renegade discord vibes in terms of our collective relationships with our printers. 

[appleinducedsleep]

Second-hand bookstore spoils

[muppet-facts]

Muppet Fact #398

There were plans for a Dinosaurs movie, but it was never produced.

Source:

"Looking Out for Kermit.” David Owen. The New Yorker. August 16, 1993.

[illustration-alcove]

Gray318′s illustrated cover for David Owen’s The Panther.