a long and dark December

I was reading an interview with Chris Martin in Rolling Stone today and while I usually have found him to be arrogant and insane, I laughed at this quote:

On "Death and All His Friends," there's this great topical line: "I don't want a cycle of recycled revenge."

That's Brian Eno's line. I had this blank spot in the lyrics: "I don't want to battle from beginning to end. Something, something, something. I don't want to follow death and all of his friends." So we were all having a sandwich, and it's like, "I don't want to watch too many episodes of Friends? No, that won't do. I don't want to listen to Radiohead's The Bends? No. I don't want to eat any Jerry and Ben's? No." And then Brian came out with the line, and he was like, "I quite like that. You should use that."

i don't care what everyone else may say

Mr. Rochester's loss of his left hand is just SO NOT symbolic of castration. That is so... time-period MALE. So thanks for typing your post-WWII analysis as your wife brings you coffee in her pearls, Mr. Chase, but I'm afraid Charlotte Bronte might have actually written that to make things more about the female character, you know, the MAIN ONE, Jane? Yeah, her.

my new favorite things ever

I put them in my lunch kit so they sit in the fridge for about four hours. Then I eat them as dessert and I swear if they came in a bigger bag, I would weigh 500 pounds. They.are.so.freaking.good.

PS - do not tell me if they come in a bigger bag. I do not want to know.

moms can always be worse

I consider myself very lucky because I really love my mother. She's a good person, she has a big heart, she gives good advice, and makes great spaghetti. She's a born mother - really good at that job - and tends to mother anyone who needs it. I know a couple of people who have benefitted/continue to benefit from her being around when their own mothers were/are not very good.

Having my mother as a mother also has given me the opportunity to become a snob about mothers, even though I have no children of my own. It's horrible. I'm not sure I'd be that great a mother, but I can't help but think of all the good things I've learned from mom, if not as a mom, as a teacher. I have friends that are amazing mothers to their children, and I admire it, but when I walk through a store and a five year old is using a pacifier, or a seven year old is climbing shelves and screaming, I think I could do better than them. It's very arrogant.

Still, despite the "bad" mothers I believe I have witnessed, it can always be worse, as illustrated by the drama Christian Bale is going through. Thank God I don't know any mothers as bad as that. No wonder he's crazy.

And this last bit is my theory (which makes me a little crazy, too). Everyone is coming out with these statements made by him or other actors he's worked with about his intensity and how serious and into character he is all the time. Then they're saying how cold he's been in interviews, kind of harsh, not really warm or friendly. So no one even WANTS to put this together? The guy currently thinks he's John Connor, living during a war that he believes he will lose, in a post-apocolyptic world of misery, raised to believe he will be the savior of it all. OF COURSE he's grumpy and cold and harsh. and crazy. don't forget the crazy.

You might want to insert yawn here.

I'm not writing exactly what I'd originally planned. My advisor really only wants something like a "chapter two" to my first paper, though I believe this one will become chapter one. There will probably be lots of snips of work here and there - ignore if you find it boring :) it's really good for me to see it all typed out somewhere.

As seen in two of the era's most predominant novels, Sense & Sensibility and Jane Eyre, male characters were most often depicted through the eyes of a female. In particular Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte were careful to keep the conscience of their 'sensation' novels confined to the voice of a main female character. Bronte, for example, used an older, wiser Jane to tell her story in a style much like one would expect from a personal journal entry. And while she never clearly identifies Elinor as the narrator, Austen allows the eldest Dashwood sister to offer the reader a clear view of their life, as well as the harsh realities of its lessons.

Austen uses Elinor to show the reader (the reader of her time, naturally, being under-educated young women on the brink of making a marital decision) that a woman can be completely socially acceptable and still be intelligent and free-thinking. She spends a great deal of time showing us that if you openly follow the rules of a society in which you are trapped, you will find success in your private life. As the old saying goes - the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I think there's a Japanese version of that saying that is something like 'the crooked nail gets the hammer'. Yeah, that's what Victorian England was like - no one wanted to stand out because you could really suffer for it.
Elinor spends a GREAT deal of time silently judging the people in her world. Because we're allowed into her head, we see that she really doesn't understand people who seem to live lives based on passion. She sees only the negatives of reacting without forethought. In fact, the amount of forethought that Elinor allows to herself leads us to believe Austen found women like Elinor to be very smart, and very worthy of a happy ending with a wealthy, adoring man. However, I'm now wondering about the value of judgment. One critic I recently read compared judgement to imagination and creation. She stated that the subjectivity of judgment is similar to that of creating an idea in your head.
So I wonder, if any of you are up to answering it, do you think judging someone (accepting the filters of what you believe are fact and your bias) is on the same level as a day-dream world you invent in your imagination? Do the conclusions contain the same value?

Into the world of blog

So I finally joined the world of blogs. I'm pretty excited, even though most of the time I'm not sure what to write about. I guess I'll just go with what's on my mind at the time.

Currently in life, I'm just trying to settle down. I just recently moved, and while I love my townhouse, I really don't like unpacking. I figured out why I love packing so much more - and I always have. I really like the consolidation and organization of packing, whether it's for a trip or for a new house. I'm much happier when an item has a determined home (i.e. a box) and I can put it there, and in putting it there I reduce mess. I am less happy when I open a box, and there is so much in it that never had a home to begin with, and each thing expects to have a home even though you don't even know where the basics go yet!

Ben is the opposite. He likes opening boxes and stocking shelves with things and rediscovering old items. I'm lucky he's there to do that for me with a smile on his face.

Elise came over Friday and helped me put the guest bedroom together, and Courtney came over Saturday and I let her OCD take over. She was tearing boxes apart, arranging PS2 games, and helping me make the living room feel like home. I was able to take yesterday for the closet and armoire, and it's very exciting to have an armoire. I like it. Ben gave me the use of that in the closet and I gave him the bedroom dresser. Of course there are my two dressers in the guest room which will be used for winter clothes and scrapbook/card-making stuff.

Chanel is getting used to her new place, happy that food bowls are in two different rooms. She has actually become lazy enough to want to eat under the stairs when I am in the kitchen because it's closer than the foyer! Of course I encourage this because we want under the stairs to become her home when we're gone, giving her space to sleep and a door she can't destroy.

The little house is starting to feel like home, and it's really nice to not have to do all the mental shuffling that I was doing when I had to choose between dinner with friends or dinner with Ben, and trying to find time to see him for an hour every other day was really hard. It's so wonderful that he's here in Houston, and with me, and I can see him any time I want! We even see my friends and go on dates!

Speaking of, we hit a midnight screening of Dark Knight (a gift for my birthday), and it really is everything the critics say it is. I was impressed. I do believe it's the best comic book movie ever made. Of course, I'm drawn to comic book movies that make the stories believable and realistic, leaving no questions in mind as to how certain things are possible. This is where the Tim Burton movies failed me, even though they set up precedent and we would not be where we are now without them. Heath Ledger was terrifying, and I wish there were more scenes where he and Bale could face off. Both such amazing method actors. And I can say it's the best even though Watchmen hasn't come out yet. The trailer is attached to Dark Knight (as is the new Terminator movie - how glorious is it that Bale is John Connor???!). It impressed me.

I should begin school work now, though, because I have let it go and I very much need to kick into gear.