Because she will destroy you.
I don't know how this has escaped me for so long, but my flatmate Sarah, she is like the Kiss Monitor Nazi Police Chick of the world. (Yes, that is the technical name of the position she occupies.) Sarah and I watch lots of flims and TV, and every time anyone kisses anyone Sarah makes a TSK TSK TSK noise, or else she looks deeply discontented, or else she makes an AW noise and an AW face. But the AW reaction is rahther rare, which is why I have called her the Kiss Monitor Nazi Police Chick and not - I don't know, something more flattering than that.
I do not know what has happened to make Sarah such a Kiss Monitor Nazi Police Chick (and I use Nazi in the kindest sense of the word, not meant to convey anything about Sarah generally as she is a lovely person and would never commit atrocities of any kind; I merely mean that she is very severe in her Kiss Monitoring judgments), but I have never met anyone in my entire life who is such a hater of people with kissing abilities that do not meet her high high standards.
Like, okay, I will give you an example. We have been watching Desperate Housewives for a while now, and I have always been a strong proponent of Susan and Mike's getting back together, possibly because the previous episodes I have seen of this show (like from the first season), they were having tension and moving towards being in love with each other. (I only saw like three episodes). Sarah, on the other hand, liked Ian and said he was nice, and although it was clear that she appreciated the value of the history Susan and Mike had together, she had accepted their break-up and wanted Susan and Ian to be together. UNTIL. She decided that Mike was a better kisser. And now she's all in favor of Mike and Susan getting back together. Because of the smoochies. Because Sarah cares.
Having articulated this, I find myself glancing nervously at her every time the people in whatever flim we are watching kiss, because I wonder whether they have met her approval, and I am afraid that if they have not, she will destroy my computer with the laser rays that come shooting out of her eyes. Or possibly my laundry and my papers: when she is cross about flims we are watching she looks angrily to her left, and to her left is my laundry and those of my essays that have been graded already because I am messy and I cannot be bothered to clean them up. Though perhaps I should if Sarah is going to incinerate them.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
You know what I really, really, really don't like?
I like these so little that I have created my very own brand new category that will never be used for anything else because I can only ever have one thing that I seriously like the least in all the world.
Throughout my life, I have lived happily without ever watching any medical dramas, even ones as reportedly wonderful as Grey's Anatomy and House M.D., of which everyone in the world is a huge fan. Right. And this is because I don't like blood, and I don't like yuckiness, and I don't like scary needles going graphically into people's skin (and oh my God, eyes, don't even get me started). Cranky misanthropic doctor person, Hugh Laurie in the main role, these are both great incentives for me to watch House M.D. Hugh Laurie is a legend. Even in a medical drama. Okay, so I decided to watch an episode or two, mainly because I really love Hugh Laurie and he is incredibly funny in Black Adder and he is his own redeeming quality and I figured I could just shut my eyes and fast forward through the icky bits. Time devoted to yucky bloody things and time devoted to Hugh Laurie being a cranky pants, they are not evenly divided. Of all the scenes in a given show, probably ninety percent of them do not involve blood and yuckiness. Maybe ninety-five percent. I thought it was going to be fine. Except that they GAVE THIS WOMAN A PROCEDURE THAT IS WHOLLY UNACCEPTABLE TO ME, and they did it very suddenly without warning me first (except by having her airways close up completely as she tried in vain to regain her ability to breathe, and having everyone screaming about what they were about to do). So I decided to post in my blog about this procedure that is my least favorite thing in the whole world.
(That was acrostic.)
Actually, having just said all that and been all flippant about it, I have grave concerns that the Lord is going to punish me by making them a staple of my life. Or else, oh God, by placing me in a situation where I have to give someone an emergency one with a ballpoint pen like in Wonderfalls. I would like to say that these procedures, they horrify me. When I was watching Robin Tunney (of Empire Records fame!) have this procedure, I basically turned into a miserable squeaking mass of terror, nearly incapable of independent motion. I closed my eyes, but the sounds still got to me, so I pressed my hands very hard to my ears to drown out the noise. I was wearing headphones, though, so that actually had the precisely opposite effect, to my extreme distress.
I hate 'em. Hate. Hate. This is why I am going to great lengths not to name the procedure lest God hear me and remember that I've never had one and the time might be ripe for it. (It really isn't, God! Please don't!)
Throughout my life, I have lived happily without ever watching any medical dramas, even ones as reportedly wonderful as Grey's Anatomy and House M.D., of which everyone in the world is a huge fan. Right. And this is because I don't like blood, and I don't like yuckiness, and I don't like scary needles going graphically into people's skin (and oh my God, eyes, don't even get me started). Cranky misanthropic doctor person, Hugh Laurie in the main role, these are both great incentives for me to watch House M.D. Hugh Laurie is a legend. Even in a medical drama. Okay, so I decided to watch an episode or two, mainly because I really love Hugh Laurie and he is incredibly funny in Black Adder and he is his own redeeming quality and I figured I could just shut my eyes and fast forward through the icky bits. Time devoted to yucky bloody things and time devoted to Hugh Laurie being a cranky pants, they are not evenly divided. Of all the scenes in a given show, probably ninety percent of them do not involve blood and yuckiness. Maybe ninety-five percent. I thought it was going to be fine. Except that they GAVE THIS WOMAN A PROCEDURE THAT IS WHOLLY UNACCEPTABLE TO ME, and they did it very suddenly without warning me first (except by having her airways close up completely as she tried in vain to regain her ability to breathe, and having everyone screaming about what they were about to do). So I decided to post in my blog about this procedure that is my least favorite thing in the whole world.
(That was acrostic.)
Actually, having just said all that and been all flippant about it, I have grave concerns that the Lord is going to punish me by making them a staple of my life. Or else, oh God, by placing me in a situation where I have to give someone an emergency one with a ballpoint pen like in Wonderfalls. I would like to say that these procedures, they horrify me. When I was watching Robin Tunney (of Empire Records fame!) have this procedure, I basically turned into a miserable squeaking mass of terror, nearly incapable of independent motion. I closed my eyes, but the sounds still got to me, so I pressed my hands very hard to my ears to drown out the noise. I was wearing headphones, though, so that actually had the precisely opposite effect, to my extreme distress.
I hate 'em. Hate. Hate. This is why I am going to great lengths not to name the procedure lest God hear me and remember that I've never had one and the time might be ripe for it. (It really isn't, God! Please don't!)
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
THIS IS NOT FAIR
Also: This is not fair.
You may remember me bitching about when I went home and I ate all the delicious food that was to be had in my hometown and it gave me horrific stomach cramps because I'd spent the last six months eating my own cooking and I can only make two proper meals? I was really justified in bitching about that because all this time in England I'd been eating my rubbish cooking and when I finally finally had the chance to eat some good food it POISONED ME.
Similarly, I just got done with my essays and I was finally going to get to go out and whatnot, and I am sick.
Poor me. All sickly.
And while I'm being cranky, let me just say that I don't like Ben Stiller. Or Will Farrell. I never have, and I never will. They're rubbish.
You may remember me bitching about when I went home and I ate all the delicious food that was to be had in my hometown and it gave me horrific stomach cramps because I'd spent the last six months eating my own cooking and I can only make two proper meals? I was really justified in bitching about that because all this time in England I'd been eating my rubbish cooking and when I finally finally had the chance to eat some good food it POISONED ME.
Similarly, I just got done with my essays and I was finally going to get to go out and whatnot, and I am sick.
Poor me. All sickly.
And while I'm being cranky, let me just say that I don't like Ben Stiller. Or Will Farrell. I never have, and I never will. They're rubbish.
Monday, April 23, 2007
I hate to bring up Jane Eyre again
Well, no, actually, I don't. I love Jane Eyre and I am enchanted to bring up Jane Eyre as much as possible. If I had a private income, I would devote the rest of my days to (not teasing Mussolini like Dorothy Parker because he is dead) raising Jane Eyre awareness nation- and then world-wide. I would distribute copies to all the schoolchildren in the world. I would creep in to English teachers' offices and add Jane Eyre to the syllabus. Even Caribbean literature and Indian literature classes. Everyone could use a chance to read Jane Eyre again. I would visit George Bush in the Oval Office and refuse to let him leave until he had finished reading all of Jane Eyre. (Which would pretty much leave the country without a President until the next election, but hey, I think that's all to the good.)
I was sitting in my chair just a minute ago humming the theme to "Pan's Labyrinth" and trying to decide what I wanted to do next. It is 8:40 in the evening and I want to be in bed by eleven, so I was contemplating what two- or three-hour activity (that's the second dangling hyphen I've used in this post. Does that seem right to you?) I could engage in. If I were being virtuous, I'd write my paper, because I still have one more paper and there are 1400 words of it not yet written, minimum. If I were being thoroughly lazy and mindless, I could watch a movie, because I have many movies and I haven't seen all of them and it is jolly to watch movies. If I had ANY THOUGHTS IN MY HEAD AT ALL, I could work on my own writing, but then I'd have to come up with some thoughts of my very own.
It was pretty joyless, and I had to keep humming the "Pan's Labyrinth" theme song over and over again in order to prevent myself from sinking into a deep depression and remaining confined to my desk chair for the rest of my life. And then Jane Eyre saved me!
Because I remembered I had it.
I made a shrieky noise of glee and lunged for my bed, and then it occurred to me that if I told the internet about how good Jane Eyre is, then someone might remember how good it is and read it all over again! And because I love my neighbor, I decided to hold off reading lovely lovely Jane Eyre for long enough to make a blog post about it and bring it forcibly to your attention.
This is how good that book is: It wrung a wholly involuntary shriek of glee from me after a day spent miserably researching for and then writing 900 words of a paper on the interaction between imagination and reality in two poems from the Modernist period (Wallace Stevens' "The Snow Man" and Yeats' "Beyond Break of Day", if you're interested).
P.S. Jane cracks me up. Mr. Rochester says, "Oh! you have been very correct - very careful, very sensible," and she says, I reflected, and thought, on the whole, I had. And later he asks her, "Were you jealous, Jane?" and she says, "Never mind, Mr. Rochester, it is in no way interesting to you to know that." I love this girl. She is the standard to which I aspire. So in case anyone is thinking that I only love Jane Eyre because I adore Mr. Rochester (and I do adore Mr. Rochester), you are so wrong. It is actually far more because I want to be Jane Eyre.
I was sitting in my chair just a minute ago humming the theme to "Pan's Labyrinth" and trying to decide what I wanted to do next. It is 8:40 in the evening and I want to be in bed by eleven, so I was contemplating what two- or three-hour activity (that's the second dangling hyphen I've used in this post. Does that seem right to you?) I could engage in. If I were being virtuous, I'd write my paper, because I still have one more paper and there are 1400 words of it not yet written, minimum. If I were being thoroughly lazy and mindless, I could watch a movie, because I have many movies and I haven't seen all of them and it is jolly to watch movies. If I had ANY THOUGHTS IN MY HEAD AT ALL, I could work on my own writing, but then I'd have to come up with some thoughts of my very own.
It was pretty joyless, and I had to keep humming the "Pan's Labyrinth" theme song over and over again in order to prevent myself from sinking into a deep depression and remaining confined to my desk chair for the rest of my life. And then Jane Eyre saved me!
Because I remembered I had it.
I made a shrieky noise of glee and lunged for my bed, and then it occurred to me that if I told the internet about how good Jane Eyre is, then someone might remember how good it is and read it all over again! And because I love my neighbor, I decided to hold off reading lovely lovely Jane Eyre for long enough to make a blog post about it and bring it forcibly to your attention.
This is how good that book is: It wrung a wholly involuntary shriek of glee from me after a day spent miserably researching for and then writing 900 words of a paper on the interaction between imagination and reality in two poems from the Modernist period (Wallace Stevens' "The Snow Man" and Yeats' "Beyond Break of Day", if you're interested).
P.S. Jane cracks me up. Mr. Rochester says, "Oh! you have been very correct - very careful, very sensible," and she says, I reflected, and thought, on the whole, I had. And later he asks her, "Were you jealous, Jane?" and she says, "Never mind, Mr. Rochester, it is in no way interesting to you to know that." I love this girl. She is the standard to which I aspire. So in case anyone is thinking that I only love Jane Eyre because I adore Mr. Rochester (and I do adore Mr. Rochester), you are so wrong. It is actually far more because I want to be Jane Eyre.
Friday, April 20, 2007
You'd think being a writing girl would have at least a few perks
As predicted I have been totally absorbed by The Time Traveler's Wife. It is inexplicable. There have only been a few books in my life that have this effect on me, the one where if I am near the book and I am in the mood to read it, I have absolutely no self-control but must fling myself on it and have my way with it immediately. No matter how much I try to make it last by reading slowly on purpose and finding stopping points and deciding to stop right there and pick it up again later, the book sucks me in and refuses to release me and I am totally in its thrall until I finish reading it, at which point I become despondent because it is over and there is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon, and there are so few books that are like this and I have just finished one of them.
It's mysterious. They aren't the best books of my acquaintance - I didn't even own The Time-Traveler's Wife until yesterday, and I am all about owning copies of my favorite books. In real life I think that, for instance, Lolita is a better book, but Lolita does not do this to me. The other book that comes to mind in this regard is The Scarlet Pimpernel. Today I would give anything - I mean anything, I would give my laptop and my entire DVD collection and every book I own - if it meant that I could be reading The Scarlet Pimpernel for the first time.
The first time I ever read it, I was about eight or nine, and I remember that when I was at the really exciting bit (with the pepper and the good solid British "Damn!" and all that), I was riding the bus home from school. I completely lost track of where I was and what was going on, and when Anna alerted me to the fact that the bus was stopped in front of our house, it was exactly like being woken up from a really good dream, except that when I got off the bus and went inside, I immediately got to return to it and have it be perfectly resolved.
The point is, when I finish The Time-Traveler's Wife and The Scarlet Pimpernel, that will be It for this kind of book, the consuming my soul kind. It's sad because these are the books that remind me of my great and enduring and passionate love affair with books (I love them even more than water), and after I read them, there are no more like them. Today I went to the library and pulled out every book I could find that I had ever heard was a wonderful book, and I read the beginnings and bits of the middle of them hopefully, in a frantic attempt to find another book like I wanted, but it was a failure.
It just seems so stupid that I should be stuck for books. I'm a writing girl. Writing is my thing. It's like if a carpenter came to me and told me desperately that he really, really, really, really needed a table and he just didn't know what to do. Damn it, if I want a book, why don't I just write one? Sheesh. I am thoroughly frustrated with myself, and also with the world of letters.
Oh, Jane Eyre. That was another one. So there's three. It's the books of which I have distinct and specific memories of reading them for the first time (in the case of The Time-Traveler's Wife it was the second time; I have no idea what bizarre failure of my mind was happening when I read it the first time, but I suppose I must have been expecting something completely else and felt disappointed) and being unable to put them down.
Anyway if you know of any books that have this effect on you, please tell me. I am going to read Jane Eyre and The Scarlet Pimpernel (which, damn it, the library doesn't have and the bookshop doesn't have and I'm going to have to read it on my computer which is a lot less satisfying), but that won't take me very long and then I will be a pathetic lost soul and I will wander aimlessly around the library and the bookshop feeling very water-water-everywhere and feeling like I am Rose and Cassandra making longing cat noises in I Capture the Castle.
(I Capture the Castle has a similar sort of allure, though not as strong. It is one of my favorite books for this reason - I always find it hard to read just a little bit of it, but it does not fill me with misery to finish it. Except that I wish Cassandra had bestowed her heart on someone I liked more.)
OH MY GOD it is like a drug. I need my fix of soul-consuming books because otherwise life is totally unbearable. Tell me another book like this that I can read! Someone! Please!
It's mysterious. They aren't the best books of my acquaintance - I didn't even own The Time-Traveler's Wife until yesterday, and I am all about owning copies of my favorite books. In real life I think that, for instance, Lolita is a better book, but Lolita does not do this to me. The other book that comes to mind in this regard is The Scarlet Pimpernel. Today I would give anything - I mean anything, I would give my laptop and my entire DVD collection and every book I own - if it meant that I could be reading The Scarlet Pimpernel for the first time.
The first time I ever read it, I was about eight or nine, and I remember that when I was at the really exciting bit (with the pepper and the good solid British "Damn!" and all that), I was riding the bus home from school. I completely lost track of where I was and what was going on, and when Anna alerted me to the fact that the bus was stopped in front of our house, it was exactly like being woken up from a really good dream, except that when I got off the bus and went inside, I immediately got to return to it and have it be perfectly resolved.
The point is, when I finish The Time-Traveler's Wife and The Scarlet Pimpernel, that will be It for this kind of book, the consuming my soul kind. It's sad because these are the books that remind me of my great and enduring and passionate love affair with books (I love them even more than water), and after I read them, there are no more like them. Today I went to the library and pulled out every book I could find that I had ever heard was a wonderful book, and I read the beginnings and bits of the middle of them hopefully, in a frantic attempt to find another book like I wanted, but it was a failure.
It just seems so stupid that I should be stuck for books. I'm a writing girl. Writing is my thing. It's like if a carpenter came to me and told me desperately that he really, really, really, really needed a table and he just didn't know what to do. Damn it, if I want a book, why don't I just write one? Sheesh. I am thoroughly frustrated with myself, and also with the world of letters.
Oh, Jane Eyre. That was another one. So there's three. It's the books of which I have distinct and specific memories of reading them for the first time (in the case of The Time-Traveler's Wife it was the second time; I have no idea what bizarre failure of my mind was happening when I read it the first time, but I suppose I must have been expecting something completely else and felt disappointed) and being unable to put them down.
Anyway if you know of any books that have this effect on you, please tell me. I am going to read Jane Eyre and The Scarlet Pimpernel (which, damn it, the library doesn't have and the bookshop doesn't have and I'm going to have to read it on my computer which is a lot less satisfying), but that won't take me very long and then I will be a pathetic lost soul and I will wander aimlessly around the library and the bookshop feeling very water-water-everywhere and feeling like I am Rose and Cassandra making longing cat noises in I Capture the Castle.
(I Capture the Castle has a similar sort of allure, though not as strong. It is one of my favorite books for this reason - I always find it hard to read just a little bit of it, but it does not fill me with misery to finish it. Except that I wish Cassandra had bestowed her heart on someone I liked more.)
OH MY GOD it is like a drug. I need my fix of soul-consuming books because otherwise life is totally unbearable. Tell me another book like this that I can read! Someone! Please!
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The reason I don't run
Not that I need a reason not to run. Running is completely unfun, it is bad for your joints, it causes you to sweat profusely and it makes you tired, and from what I can tell it does not give me endorphins but merely exhausts and depresses me. But I also have a reason not to run that carries over from my childhood.
This one time in second grade I was running somewhere on the playground and I fell over very painfully and scraped my hands where I was using them to try to protect my face, and I also failed to protect my face because I fell so hard and I banged my cheek and had a cut there as well. I was only seven so I went crying to my teacher (not the nice second-grade teacher but the nasty one, although on this occasion she gave me sound advice), and she said, "Your head was running too fast for your body." Which didn't make any sense, since my head cannot run at all, and I asked for clarification, and she said, "You were leading with your head. The top of you went too fast for the bottom of you."
I then got an image of my running self as something like this: / So that if the slightest bit of forward tilt happened I would go right over, being inclined while running to tilt forward anyway.
Thereafter I adopted a new running system, which was to lean my head really far back in order to prevent it from speeding ahead of my legs, as I knew it would be much more difficult, while running forward, to tip myself over backward, and thus I would protect myself from injury. I did that for several years.
Then someone said I ran funny, and I realized they were quite correct, that most people simply found a way to convince their heads to run at the same speed as their bodies, resolving the forward tilt problem by demanding obedience from their heads. I, being unsure that I would be capable of getting my head to obey (after the catastrophic and really painful falling-down incident that my head should really have been clever enough to avoid), decided to just stop running, insofar as that would be possible.
And here I am, a happy and well-adjusted person who doesn't run. You don't have to run to be happy. Many happy people never run at all. I run to catch buses or trains, or to catch people before they go somewhere in order to give them something they have forgotten and left behind; but I do not run recreationally, because running is just not fun. It just isn't. It is a recipe for disaster. And I have never been able to break the habit of trying to make myself do like this when I run: \ If you see me running, I am probably leaning backwards to stop my head from outrunning my body - which seems silly except that I am protecting myself from serious injury.
This one time in second grade I was running somewhere on the playground and I fell over very painfully and scraped my hands where I was using them to try to protect my face, and I also failed to protect my face because I fell so hard and I banged my cheek and had a cut there as well. I was only seven so I went crying to my teacher (not the nice second-grade teacher but the nasty one, although on this occasion she gave me sound advice), and she said, "Your head was running too fast for your body." Which didn't make any sense, since my head cannot run at all, and I asked for clarification, and she said, "You were leading with your head. The top of you went too fast for the bottom of you."
I then got an image of my running self as something like this: / So that if the slightest bit of forward tilt happened I would go right over, being inclined while running to tilt forward anyway.
Thereafter I adopted a new running system, which was to lean my head really far back in order to prevent it from speeding ahead of my legs, as I knew it would be much more difficult, while running forward, to tip myself over backward, and thus I would protect myself from injury. I did that for several years.
Then someone said I ran funny, and I realized they were quite correct, that most people simply found a way to convince their heads to run at the same speed as their bodies, resolving the forward tilt problem by demanding obedience from their heads. I, being unsure that I would be capable of getting my head to obey (after the catastrophic and really painful falling-down incident that my head should really have been clever enough to avoid), decided to just stop running, insofar as that would be possible.
And here I am, a happy and well-adjusted person who doesn't run. You don't have to run to be happy. Many happy people never run at all. I run to catch buses or trains, or to catch people before they go somewhere in order to give them something they have forgotten and left behind; but I do not run recreationally, because running is just not fun. It just isn't. It is a recipe for disaster. And I have never been able to break the habit of trying to make myself do like this when I run: \ If you see me running, I am probably leaning backwards to stop my head from outrunning my body - which seems silly except that I am protecting myself from serious injury.
I missed my calling (I really did)
I should have been a casting director. I would be such a movie casting goddess, particularly if I had little people around who could give me options and make me lists of everyone of the right age and sex to choose from, and head shots to remind me what they all looked like. I would find people and I would attend auditions and I would choose people extremely appropriately, and then when books got made into films there would be no more of this me-being-disappointed-in-the-actors-they-chose business.
For instance, whose idea was it to cast David Thewlis as Lupin? (I do seem to go on and on about Lupin. I really love him, however. Fangs are sexy. I'm going to make Lupin his own category.) If anyone had any sense or judgment they would have cast David Wenham -- just missed it by one surname, blast them! Did you see The Two Towers? David Wenham is practically Lupin in that already, with that exactly-perfect-for-Lupin kind of underneath tortured misery that he knows he can't do anything about and he's just had to learn to live with.
(Aside: HOLY SHIT. He was also the scary white-faced crazy writer in Moulin Rouge that stopped writing the show because adorable Ewan McGregor showed up. Remember that guy? That was David Wenham. You totally didn't know that -- probably because you had no idea who David Wenham was. Well, anyway, that just shows he's versatile and could convert his Faramir tortured misery into Lupin tortured misery.)
Okay, and here's another example. Eric Bana has just been cast as Henry in The Time-Traveler's Wife, which is fair enough and I'm sure he'll be all right, but the thing is that my sister and I had already cast that part and we had given it to Billy Crudup. We were very contented with our selection! Billy Crudup! He is elegant and dangerous and I know that Henry's supposed to be tall but what the hell so is Clare and they've given that part to Rachel McAdams and anyway Billy Crudup acts tall terribly well so it would have been JUST PERFECT. Silly casting people. I was so sad about the Billy Crudup thing that I conceived a desperate desire to read The Time Traveler's Wife again, and the library didn't have it and I was forced to buy it from the Waterstone's on campus. That's what happens when there are casting mistakes: I spend £7.99 and probably stay up all night reading my new book and abjectly weeping.
I am currently in the process (it's a process. it takes a long time. luckily so does preparing to make movies) of casting Greensleeves, one of the best books in all the world and also containing the character that I actually would choose to marry out of all the fictional characters in all the world, including Ramses and John Tregarth and Mr. Rochester (before and after the fire) and Lupin and everyone. Nezabeth, who (curse her!) always wants to marry the same people as I do, could have everyone else we want to marry in the whole world, as long as I got Sherry from Greensleeves. Anyway I have decided that James McAvoy should be him even though he's not tall enough (he is a fencer, however, and a fire-eater which is completely irrelevant but I thought I'd let you know) and now I am working on the other main characters, and it pleases me very much.
A while ago my little sister and I cast Howl's Moving Castle, I believe very successfully, but I've forgotten who was who. We did a really good job. Christian Bale wasn't in it. If I were the casting director for the world, Christian Bale would never work again except in really obnoxious parts with people who have pretentious mouths and irritating voices. And I would send a note to Jonathan Rhys-Meyers telling him to get rid of his cheeks if he wants to play Howl, or ANYONE ELSE EVER.
For this all to work, however, the actors would all have to agree to be in the movies I was casting, so I'd also have to be in charge of making actors be in films (I don't know what job that would be); and then as well I'd have to be in charge of making them play it properly, so really I guess what I'm describing as my calling is The Person With The Final Say Over Everything In Films Ever. And that's not a job at all. So I guess it's best I stick to writing.
For instance, whose idea was it to cast David Thewlis as Lupin? (I do seem to go on and on about Lupin. I really love him, however. Fangs are sexy. I'm going to make Lupin his own category.) If anyone had any sense or judgment they would have cast David Wenham -- just missed it by one surname, blast them! Did you see The Two Towers? David Wenham is practically Lupin in that already, with that exactly-perfect-for-Lupin kind of underneath tortured misery that he knows he can't do anything about and he's just had to learn to live with.
(Aside: HOLY SHIT. He was also the scary white-faced crazy writer in Moulin Rouge that stopped writing the show because adorable Ewan McGregor showed up. Remember that guy? That was David Wenham. You totally didn't know that -- probably because you had no idea who David Wenham was. Well, anyway, that just shows he's versatile and could convert his Faramir tortured misery into Lupin tortured misery.)
Okay, and here's another example. Eric Bana has just been cast as Henry in The Time-Traveler's Wife, which is fair enough and I'm sure he'll be all right, but the thing is that my sister and I had already cast that part and we had given it to Billy Crudup. We were very contented with our selection! Billy Crudup! He is elegant and dangerous and I know that Henry's supposed to be tall but what the hell so is Clare and they've given that part to Rachel McAdams and anyway Billy Crudup acts tall terribly well so it would have been JUST PERFECT. Silly casting people. I was so sad about the Billy Crudup thing that I conceived a desperate desire to read The Time Traveler's Wife again, and the library didn't have it and I was forced to buy it from the Waterstone's on campus. That's what happens when there are casting mistakes: I spend £7.99 and probably stay up all night reading my new book and abjectly weeping.
I am currently in the process (it's a process. it takes a long time. luckily so does preparing to make movies) of casting Greensleeves, one of the best books in all the world and also containing the character that I actually would choose to marry out of all the fictional characters in all the world, including Ramses and John Tregarth and Mr. Rochester (before and after the fire) and Lupin and everyone. Nezabeth, who (curse her!) always wants to marry the same people as I do, could have everyone else we want to marry in the whole world, as long as I got Sherry from Greensleeves. Anyway I have decided that James McAvoy should be him even though he's not tall enough (he is a fencer, however, and a fire-eater which is completely irrelevant but I thought I'd let you know) and now I am working on the other main characters, and it pleases me very much.
A while ago my little sister and I cast Howl's Moving Castle, I believe very successfully, but I've forgotten who was who. We did a really good job. Christian Bale wasn't in it. If I were the casting director for the world, Christian Bale would never work again except in really obnoxious parts with people who have pretentious mouths and irritating voices. And I would send a note to Jonathan Rhys-Meyers telling him to get rid of his cheeks if he wants to play Howl, or ANYONE ELSE EVER.
For this all to work, however, the actors would all have to agree to be in the movies I was casting, so I'd also have to be in charge of making actors be in films (I don't know what job that would be); and then as well I'd have to be in charge of making them play it properly, so really I guess what I'm describing as my calling is The Person With The Final Say Over Everything In Films Ever. And that's not a job at all. So I guess it's best I stick to writing.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Stupid England! Stupid! Stupid!
You know what's wrong with this country? It has completely ruined my understanding of left and right, a subject on which I was already rather shaky. The reason for this is that when I was a child everyone tried to tell me to look at my hands and see which one made a proper L, but that takes a really long time. I have to look at my hands, and then I have to try to remember what an L looks like and work out which one of my hands more closely resembles an L when neither of them do, in fact, look much like an L at all because they are not alphabet letters, they are HANDS. I was always much clearer on which of my eyes was my left eye and which was my right, because I knew which contact lens was which. It's just that this look-at-your-hands thing was so drilled into me that I was never given the chance to learn left and right by my eyes, because everyone insisted upon my learning it by my hands.
Anyway, before coming to England, I had pretty much sorted it out, this left and right business. Occasionally it took me a second, but mostly if you said left I knew which way to look without bothering about my hands or my eyes. But you know England? In England everything goes the opposite way. They drive on the left side of the road and the driver sits on the right-hand side of the car. Very confusing. As a pedestrian, I am always looking the wrong way up the street and nearly getting hit by cars, which will not stop for such a trifling matter as an errant pedestrian but will go ahead and strike me and kill me dead if they get half a chance.
It is a crossing-the-road issue. What you do in America is look left, look right, and look left again to make sure that no more cars have come while you were occupied in the looking-right phase; and then you cross safely. Here it is backwards, which I thought was fine because I thought I had come up with a system that sorted it all out. The system was this:
I get to a road that has to be crossed. My brain automatically thinks: Look left. Then I deliver myself a sharp mental slap and say sternly, NO. THE OTHER WAY, at which point I look the other way instead, allowing me to cross the road without being killed.
Only now, now my brain automatically does the sharp mental slap no the other way thing, even when I do not want it to. If someone says, Turn left, I begin to think about turning left, and my mind says NO. THE OTHER WAY, and instead I turn right until someone shrieks at me to stop, stop, that is the wrong way because we told you to go the opposite way to the way you have elected to go!
Stupid England.
(This is so unfair to England. In fact it isn't stupid England at all, it's Stupid Jenny! Stupid! Stupid! but I feel so stupid being incapable of telling left from right properly even though I am extremely old and should have worked it out by now (it takes me a while to read clocks too; I was the best in my class at it in first grade when we learned them, but everyone else kept progressing and I stayed at about the same clock-reading level so they have surpassed me). In order to distract everyone from my total failure at life I am therefore blaming it all on England.)
Anyway, before coming to England, I had pretty much sorted it out, this left and right business. Occasionally it took me a second, but mostly if you said left I knew which way to look without bothering about my hands or my eyes. But you know England? In England everything goes the opposite way. They drive on the left side of the road and the driver sits on the right-hand side of the car. Very confusing. As a pedestrian, I am always looking the wrong way up the street and nearly getting hit by cars, which will not stop for such a trifling matter as an errant pedestrian but will go ahead and strike me and kill me dead if they get half a chance.
It is a crossing-the-road issue. What you do in America is look left, look right, and look left again to make sure that no more cars have come while you were occupied in the looking-right phase; and then you cross safely. Here it is backwards, which I thought was fine because I thought I had come up with a system that sorted it all out. The system was this:
I get to a road that has to be crossed. My brain automatically thinks: Look left. Then I deliver myself a sharp mental slap and say sternly, NO. THE OTHER WAY, at which point I look the other way instead, allowing me to cross the road without being killed.
Only now, now my brain automatically does the sharp mental slap no the other way thing, even when I do not want it to. If someone says, Turn left, I begin to think about turning left, and my mind says NO. THE OTHER WAY, and instead I turn right until someone shrieks at me to stop, stop, that is the wrong way because we told you to go the opposite way to the way you have elected to go!
Stupid England.
(This is so unfair to England. In fact it isn't stupid England at all, it's Stupid Jenny! Stupid! Stupid! but I feel so stupid being incapable of telling left from right properly even though I am extremely old and should have worked it out by now (it takes me a while to read clocks too; I was the best in my class at it in first grade when we learned them, but everyone else kept progressing and I stayed at about the same clock-reading level so they have surpassed me). In order to distract everyone from my total failure at life I am therefore blaming it all on England.)
Because I care what you think
I have taken the time to copy your comments into my new blog. I just care that much about what you think. I have even published dissenting comments although my instinct was to destroy them forever. I am a free-thinker. (But things would be better if you would just let me tell you what to think. Which I will do for FREE.)
I did this while watching The Da Vinci Code, which turns out to be one of the silliest movies of all time. It's tough to make a good movie out of a book that's like forty percent expository explaining passages. I'm not even going to bother reviewing it because it's just not worth it. How did they make a movie with Tom Hanks and Paul Bettany and Ian McKellan and Audrey Adorable Tautou and have it come out such utter crap?
I have also added another category, which I call, The Universe's Ways of Supporting Me in My Quest to Name My First-Born Son Indigo. So there. It is my most favorite category of all.
I did this while watching The Da Vinci Code, which turns out to be one of the silliest movies of all time. It's tough to make a good movie out of a book that's like forty percent expository explaining passages. I'm not even going to bother reviewing it because it's just not worth it. How did they make a movie with Tom Hanks and Paul Bettany and Ian McKellan and Audrey Adorable Tautou and have it come out such utter crap?
I have also added another category, which I call, The Universe's Ways of Supporting Me in My Quest to Name My First-Born Son Indigo. So there. It is my most favorite category of all.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Stephen Colbert
I love Stephen Colbert. He is a funny, funny man; and if I'd thought of it, I'd have thrown him in the teeth of the silly British person who was trying to tell me that Americans didn't know about irony. (He offered as an example, I must add, a song by Alanis Morisette, who is Canadian.) He is so cool that he has had both a Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor (Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream) and a leatherback turtle who is in a great turtle race (Stephanie Colbertle the Turtle) named after him.
AND FURTHERMORE, he stole a microwave from the Fox News studio when he went on Bill O'Reilly's show.
AND he is Catholic! He gave up sweets for Lent and thus could not sample his ice cream until after Easter because he is Catholic! In my opinion there are not nearly enough cool Catholics out there representing the faith! I am Catholic and he is too! Yayyyyy for Catholicism! When I am famous I will go on the Colbert Report and Stephen Colbert and I will have a good old talk about how swell it is to be a Catholic!
(The "Every Sperm is Sacred" song is playing in my head as I type this.)
AND FURTHERMORE, he stole a microwave from the Fox News studio when he went on Bill O'Reilly's show.
AND he is Catholic! He gave up sweets for Lent and thus could not sample his ice cream until after Easter because he is Catholic! In my opinion there are not nearly enough cool Catholics out there representing the faith! I am Catholic and he is too! Yayyyyy for Catholicism! When I am famous I will go on the Colbert Report and Stephen Colbert and I will have a good old talk about how swell it is to be a Catholic!
(The "Every Sperm is Sacred" song is playing in my head as I type this.)
Buying clothes
So my aunt buys most of my clothes, and she has done for quite some time, with this terribly impressive ability to look at things on hangers and tell whether they will look nice and fit well. It's remarkable; I have to try on ten pairs of jeans before I can find a suitable one to buy, but Aunt Becky brings over one and it fits! and is comfortable! Which leads to me thinking that everything I try on will necessarily fit, and I become quite cross at clothing stores if that does not turn out to be the case. And it's really often the case since I never remember to look at sizes - I just grab things off the rack and assume they will be right, because everything Aunt Becky gives me is the right size, and that is just the way clothes work. So when I shop with friends they are always taking things gently away from me and saying, "No, no, Jenny, that's a size 1; you will not fit inside of that dress."
Now, in the olden days, it used to happen that I would say in conversation something like, "This shirt is too small! I really need some new long-sleeved shirts!" and two days later Aunt Becky would come over with like ten long-sleeved shirts for me to try on. Which was really kind and sweet and thoughtful but it wasn't eerie and telepathic.
Whereas now we have moved on to a new stage; and I am telling you, it is a very peculiar stage. While I was home, Aunt Becky started READING MY MIND. Like, okay, I was talking to Robyn and telling her that I wished I had some more shoes, in order to make my wardrobe more versatile, and now I have three new pairs of shoes! Of which one pair is a pair of tan strappy heely sandals that I love madly! And, and I also was telling Robyn that I hadn't owned a dress since I was fourteen or so, and Aunt Becky got me three new dresses! Three! Dresses! Plus I bought one for myself which means that I own one, two, three, four dresses now! And I have also always wanted what I refer to as pants-like-that, which means black pin-stripey slacks; and I really cannot recall ever having said this to Aunt Becky but she got me some anyway because she has mad psychic powers!
And ALSO (you thought the new-clothes saga would have to end, but it just keeps carrying on) I told my mum that if I won a lot of money, I would not spend it on lots and lots of new books as I have always planned if I won a lot of money, but would instead buy myself a whole new wardrobe. Then the day before I left Aunt Becky rang us up and said she had a couple of things for me and Robyn to try on so to come over and try them on. (Which is where I got two of the aforementioned three dresses.) "A couple of things" meant, in my case, basically a whole new wardrobe.
Aunt Becky has telepathy. She reads minds and hears conversations that take place miles from where she is. And me, I have lots of nice new clothing.
Now, in the olden days, it used to happen that I would say in conversation something like, "This shirt is too small! I really need some new long-sleeved shirts!" and two days later Aunt Becky would come over with like ten long-sleeved shirts for me to try on. Which was really kind and sweet and thoughtful but it wasn't eerie and telepathic.
Whereas now we have moved on to a new stage; and I am telling you, it is a very peculiar stage. While I was home, Aunt Becky started READING MY MIND. Like, okay, I was talking to Robyn and telling her that I wished I had some more shoes, in order to make my wardrobe more versatile, and now I have three new pairs of shoes! Of which one pair is a pair of tan strappy heely sandals that I love madly! And, and I also was telling Robyn that I hadn't owned a dress since I was fourteen or so, and Aunt Becky got me three new dresses! Three! Dresses! Plus I bought one for myself which means that I own one, two, three, four dresses now! And I have also always wanted what I refer to as pants-like-that, which means black pin-stripey slacks; and I really cannot recall ever having said this to Aunt Becky but she got me some anyway because she has mad psychic powers!
And ALSO (you thought the new-clothes saga would have to end, but it just keeps carrying on) I told my mum that if I won a lot of money, I would not spend it on lots and lots of new books as I have always planned if I won a lot of money, but would instead buy myself a whole new wardrobe. Then the day before I left Aunt Becky rang us up and said she had a couple of things for me and Robyn to try on so to come over and try them on. (Which is where I got two of the aforementioned three dresses.) "A couple of things" meant, in my case, basically a whole new wardrobe.
Aunt Becky has telepathy. She reads minds and hears conversations that take place miles from where she is. And me, I have lots of nice new clothing.
New blog!
My new blog! It is new in nature! Hurrah!
Oh, and you can leave comments! I fixed it! I think you can leave comments! Woohoo!
Oh, and you can leave comments! I fixed it! I think you can leave comments! Woohoo!
Saturday, April 14, 2007
My tremendous love affair with water
I am so in love with water it’s ridiculous. I am completely enchanted by water. It is very fascinating. It swooshes about interestingly and it is fun to swim in. When you drink it you are filled with joy and all within your mouth and then your esophagus is delicious coolness. It falls down from the sky. In drops. It gets sucked into the atmosphere and then falls back down onto the earth, because it is just that sick-ass awesome.
But as far as drinking water is concerned, I am mainly in love with the water in my beloved home town. In fact, I am only in love with the drinking water there, and if it were possible to survive this way while travelling elsewhere, I would be completely faithfully in love with the water there. It is the most tasty water in the world; it is nice and sweet and cool, and furthermore it is soft water so I do not perpetually feel like I am having my skin flayed off when I wash my hands. It comes out of wells or something and thus is extremely delicious and clean and healthy, and it is furthermore the most thirst-quenching water I have ever had.
So when I get to somewhere else (in this case, England) and I get a cup of water expecting it to taste like water is supposed to taste, I am extremely let down. You know when you were a little kid in the grocery store with your daddy and you got separated from him for a second for one reason or another and you think you see him so you get all relieved and you go up and grab his pants leg and it’s a TOTAL SCARY STRANGER who for all you know might be one of those bad people who likes to do bad things to little children? That is exactly how I feel when I drink water in England (or Houston, or Atlanta, or Maine, or most places in the world). It is imposter water, and it is completely undelicious. No wonder people drink so much alcohol here. Their water is practically unimbibible. (I just made up that word. It makes me giggle every time I look at it. Look at where it says bibib. Hahahaha, bibib. What a funny combination of letters.)
I am being unfair to water in other parts of the world; they are not that bad. I only say it because it’s true in essentials although I did employ hyperbole, and also because I am dying of thirst here no matter how much water I drink. I drink it, and I think, okay, it doesn’t taste delicious, but at least when I get finished drinking this cup of it I will not be thirsty anymore. NOT SO! I will be thirsty! I am thirsty! I am thirsty, thirsty, thirsty!
Also I have to write three papers, and I totally thought that yesterday was Thursday. But it wasn’t. It was Friday. I somehow got confused and had it in my head that I was going to arrive in England on 11 April, though indeed my plane departed at 3:45 PM on 11 April and arrived at 6:55 AM so I would have had to travel backwards through time to arrive on 11 April. But it was very disconcerting to find that today was Saturday. I was beginning to think that I had slept through an entire day before I finally figured out what was going on (which was that I am a big idiot).
But as far as drinking water is concerned, I am mainly in love with the water in my beloved home town. In fact, I am only in love with the drinking water there, and if it were possible to survive this way while travelling elsewhere, I would be completely faithfully in love with the water there. It is the most tasty water in the world; it is nice and sweet and cool, and furthermore it is soft water so I do not perpetually feel like I am having my skin flayed off when I wash my hands. It comes out of wells or something and thus is extremely delicious and clean and healthy, and it is furthermore the most thirst-quenching water I have ever had.
So when I get to somewhere else (in this case, England) and I get a cup of water expecting it to taste like water is supposed to taste, I am extremely let down. You know when you were a little kid in the grocery store with your daddy and you got separated from him for a second for one reason or another and you think you see him so you get all relieved and you go up and grab his pants leg and it’s a TOTAL SCARY STRANGER who for all you know might be one of those bad people who likes to do bad things to little children? That is exactly how I feel when I drink water in England (or Houston, or Atlanta, or Maine, or most places in the world). It is imposter water, and it is completely undelicious. No wonder people drink so much alcohol here. Their water is practically unimbibible. (I just made up that word. It makes me giggle every time I look at it. Look at where it says bibib. Hahahaha, bibib. What a funny combination of letters.)
I am being unfair to water in other parts of the world; they are not that bad. I only say it because it’s true in essentials although I did employ hyperbole, and also because I am dying of thirst here no matter how much water I drink. I drink it, and I think, okay, it doesn’t taste delicious, but at least when I get finished drinking this cup of it I will not be thirsty anymore. NOT SO! I will be thirsty! I am thirsty! I am thirsty, thirsty, thirsty!
Also I have to write three papers, and I totally thought that yesterday was Thursday. But it wasn’t. It was Friday. I somehow got confused and had it in my head that I was going to arrive in England on 11 April, though indeed my plane departed at 3:45 PM on 11 April and arrived at 6:55 AM so I would have had to travel backwards through time to arrive on 11 April. But it was very disconcerting to find that today was Saturday. I was beginning to think that I had slept through an entire day before I finally figured out what was going on (which was that I am a big idiot).
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