I no longer remember the exact reason we were all there. But the facility was housed in a volcanic island somewhere off the coast of Venice. It was the only place to perform the experimental operation. My life depended on it, I think. We had just gotten started when, as is normally the case in such situations, the volcano decides that now would be a good time to vent some pressure. Really, it wasn't that much of a surprise. What was a surprise was the holding area for evacuation was totally exposed to the elements. And was also home to a pretty sizable spider until one of the others, Mike I think, grabbed it and drowned it in some sort of chemical concoction under the grating we were standing on, which I thought was lava but it really wasn't. Next thing I know, I'm alone on the beach a few miles away. Too tired to move but knowing I had to drag my self out of the surf lest the tide take me back when the island explodes. Oh, there it goes it exploded. I got away, but things got painful after that...

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

I remember Winter, Turkish Delight, Aslan, and a big fight at the end.

Oh man, I should totally start smoking a pipe. They always smell so good.

ITA. If smoking wasn't bad for you I'd be smoking a pipe as well as cigars and cigarettes. They're all so cool. Plus I like fancy lighters and the various other accoutrements that go along with smoking. And it'd give me something to do with my hands when I'm sitting around waiting for something....

The Inklings, and their co-horts, were the last vestiges of Victorian/Edwardian writers. They reveled in their non-modernity and rejected the new stuff (JRRT was notorious in his dislike of television, and even though he had a car while his kids were still living at home, he got rid of it during WWII or right after, and never bought another).

Not abnormal for people of their generation, never mind of their particular circumstance. Like or dislike them, but their work needs to addressed in context.

You know, if my mother had named me "Clive Staples," I might not have had the most enlightened attitudes towards women either.

Especially if you had been born in 1898 and lived a stuffy sheltered professor's life and died before the revolutions of the sixties caught flame.

If smoking wasn't bad for you I'd have a cigarette holder.

If smoking wasn't bad for you I'd be smoking a pipe as well as cigars and cigarettes. They're all so cool. Plus I like fancy lighters and the various other accoutrements that go along with smoking. And it'd give me something to do with my hands when I'm sitting around waiting for something....

Yeah, don't get me started on how cool smoking is with all the fun stuff and business to do. Except it only gives you something to do with your hands in the privacy of your own home anymore -- at least where I live, you can't smoke inside anywhere else.

Pipes have got to be less bad for you than cigarettes, don't they?

Like or dislike them, but their work needs to addressed in context.

Of course it does, just as Hemingway does and Jane Austen does. We are embedded in our time as a fly in amber.

But there's a difference between literary criticism and saying "this rubs me the wrong way". Lewis was very important to my youth and adolescence, and so was Tolkien. They shaped me. But their treatment of women also gives me hives. I don't see myself in their worlds; their worlds don't have room for me. (This isn't true of late Lewis, but it's certainly true of middle Lewis -- see That Hideous Strength.)

Pipes have got to be less bad for you than cigarettes, don't they?

Aren't you smoking the same stuff? Pipes can have filters, but aren't they similar to cigarette filters? Or are they better?

I think water pipes are less bad....

Aren't you smoking the same stuff? Pipes can have filters, but aren't they similar to cigarette filetes? Or are they better?

Well, yeah, OK. But so fun!! And the smell!

When I was a kid, I liked the pipes that you could blow bubbles out of.

Also when I was a kid, I had an uncle who smoked a pipe. I haven't really been around anyone who's smoked tobacco in a pipe since, but I do remember I liked the smell.

I like the smell of gasoline, clearly I should start some sort of huffing habit. cool.