A blog of righteous indignation

I just remembered this: last night at work, Abbie was telling Ally and me that she has Sox tickets for some Saturday in April, and she's not even excited about it. She was like, "Eh, I've sat down behind home plate, I've sat on the Green Monster, I've been to an ALCS game, whatever," and Ally and I were, like, "Give the tickets to us then, you ungrateful beyotch." I mean, I know this April isn't shaping up to look like fabulous baseball weather, but whatever! If you don't even care about going, I will buy the tickets from you!

This is depressing. I mean, Abbie likes the Red Sox and stuff--she's not a fake fan--but she's not even interested in actually going to a game anymore. Also, she's pregnant, so she can't get drunk on overpriced beer. Clearly, I would get much more use out of those tickets.

The other day I finally watched the new Ninja Turtles movie on HBO, and it was, like, really good. I was kind of worried that it would be bad, and it would ruin something beloved from my childhood (like that Alvin and the Chipmunks movie would be sure to do if I ever saw it), but it was totally cool! I think I want to buy it now.

Whenever I try to rearrange my books/CDs/DVDs to add new ones and keep the collection in alphabetical order (totally necessary, do not argue with me on this), Charles loses his mind and starts attacking my hand and/or the books/CDs/DVDs. He's very fond on chewing on the edges of DVD cases, which drives me mental, because he knocks the tower all askew, and I simply cannot have that kind of disorder in my life!

My throat hurts, so I tried to make some tea, but I cannot find any damn tea bags. How can we not have tea bags? What kind of operation is this? Am I in prison???

Girlcrushes through the years, part I

This is basically nothing more than an excuse for me to post pictures of a bunch of hot girls. Enjoy, lesbos!

These fist four all occurred when I was about 12 or 13, before I had any idea that they were actually crushes.

Jewel Staite

I think I’ve talked about her enough, but let’s just say that I fell for her in this ridiculous rainbow wig, not when she was lookin' all cute like she does above. Also, I hate how rainbows are the symbols of gaiety. (That should probably be “gayness,” since gaiety means something entirely different, but I like that word, okay?) The rainbow thing had absolutely nothing to do with the girlcrush.

Melanie Chisholm
Sporty Spice made me proud to be a tomboy again when I was going through puberty and wondering if I had to be, like, girly and shit. I didn’t—and don’t. Also, she was hot—and how gay does she look in this picture?

Colombe Jacobsen (aka Julie “The Cat” Gaffney)

So I love the Mighty Ducks movies, and Julie Gaffney was totally awesome. Also cute in Rookie of the Year.

Kate Winslet
She had a small part in A Kid in King Arthur's Court, the older sister of Rookie of the Year’s love interest, but she was so pretty—I watched the movie over and over again for her. And! She dresses up as a knight to fight in the tournament that's supposed to decide who she marries, and she wins! So she gets to, like, choose who she wants to marry. Totally awesome. And, actually, this crush might be on its way to swinging around to the present day, because Kate is beautiful, people. Beautiful.

High school (ish):

Katherine Heigl
Thanks to Katherine Heigl (and gayass Ryan), I realized that the way I was feeling about pretty girls on tv was, um, gay. Thus, Katherine Heigl is the girl who made me gay. I'm kind of over her now, mostly because I've realized that Isabel Evans would have no patience for Isobel Stevens. Since she's Izzie now, I'm over her.

Alyson Hannigan
Once Katherine opened the gay floodgates, I started realizing the girls of Buffy were pretty cute too.

Charisma Carpenter

Eliza Dushku
Better than merely five by five. Also cute (and totally dykeadelic) in Bring It On.

Alexis Bledel & Lauren Graham
I know they were, like, mother and daughter and whatever, but they’re both so hot. Naturally, when I was in high school, I favored Alexis, but now it is clear that Lauren is the real babe.

Carly Pope
Okay, so I was one of about five people who watched Popular, but it was seriously the best show on the WB ever. And Sam, Carly's character, was pretty effn' gay--especially toward the end.

Part II, featuring more recent crushes, coming soon.

Crying about books

So I just found that Lord of the Rings set I had gone on and on about previously, and now I am very upset that I abandoned those books, because the set is fucking forty-five dollars. Check it: apparently, they're some special anniversary edition or something. I thought they would be cheap because they're old! I clearly know nothing about books.

Confound it all

I should be saving my money for a new car or an apartment or something, but now I have this urge to go on an unnecessary shopping spree. Even though it’s not getting any warmer than 40 degrees these days, all the stores have their summer stuff in, and I, like, really wanna buy some shorts. And flip flops. And a new belt. Then I want some new books and DVDs. I already buy music without thinking about it—damn you, iTunes. I also want a Mac Book, which is, like, the most unnecessary thing ever because I just bought an iMac, and I don’t do any traveling. But I just really like the idea of being able to take my computer anywhere. A new iPod would be nice too, especially since this one’s started acting up—I’ve had to restore it to its original factory settings, like, five times.

Theoretically, I could just go to the library instead of Barnes & Noble, because that would be much cheaper, but the Nashua Public Library does not have a lot of the books I want to read. Which is a damn shame. I love libraries. It did, however, have two books I wanted to read, both by Margaret Atwood, and the one I am reading now, The Handmaid’s Tale, is so good, but so horrifying that I can’t read it all at one clip like I usually do with books that are good. If you have any investment in the equal treatment of women, you should probably read this book. There have been a few parts that have made me actually sick to my stomach. Which I is why I am simultaneously reading On the Banks of Plum Creek, even though, if I recall correctly, this is the one where the entire family gets scarlet fever, and Mary goes blind. And it’s definitely the one with the locust plague. Still cheerier than The Handmaid’s Tale!

Gratuitous pretty girl picture

Okay, obviously this girl is pretty, but I'm posting this picture for another reason entirely:
Please check the argyle socks. Nerdtastic and adorable.

Sing, sweet nightingale

Last night, I meant to go to bed early for once, but I accidentally stayed up to watch Enchanted, which, on the whole, I found entirely charming. Amy Adams is adorable. I had no idea. Also, there were a lot of references to classic animated Disney movies, beyond the obvious Snow White/Cinderella/ Sleeping Beauty stuff. For example, McDoofus and Giselle have dinner at an Italian place called Bella Notte, like the song from “Lady and the Tramp.” Also, there’s a part in one of the musical numbers where McDoofus and Giselle are in a rowboat in the pond in Central Park for no real reason other than it recalls the “Kiss the Girl” scene from The Little Mermaid. So as a Disney geek and appreciater of adorable ladies, I thoroughly enjoyed it. But as a feminist, I still had some serious issues with it.

For one, Susan Sarandon’s evil queen is obviously the coolest, most powerful character—I mean look at this:
She’s the evil queen from Snow White plus Maleficent, and she’s the greatest, but the plot is put into motion because her stepson finds his true love (allegedly), and her throne becomes threatened, so she heaves Giselle out of the world. So here we have a power mad woman upsetting the balance of things, and only a bone-headed man can restore everything. And James Marsden, while brilliantly moronic, is so. Dumb. He interprets poor Pip’s charades as messages to tell him how great he is—only becoming able to understand him at the very end, of course. But the thing that really killed it for me was at the end, when he basically catches Narissa trying to kill Giselle, and she tries to save her ass, suggesting perhaps he’s overreacting and being a bit “melodramatic,” and he replies, “I don’t know what that means.” I was like, “Really? REALLY? This idiot gets to take the place of this smart, powerful woman??” Why are smart, powerful women always evil in Disney films? Why? At least, in this instance, have another smart, powerful woman restore the balance. But Giselle is a bimbo and a half, and Nancy is hardly developed as a character, so we’re right where we were, like, eighty years ago with Snow White.

Another thing that really bothered me I guess is relatively minor, but here we go. When McDoofus tells his daughter that he’s going to ask Nancy to marry him, he tries to soften the blow by giving her a book—a book about important women in history, which, like, yay for you, McDoofus! But it is not favorably received by six-year-old Morgan, who would clearly rather read about princesses and enchantments and all that bananas. And maybe textbook-like material is not the greatest gift for a six-year-old, but I still think that book would be good for her. I mean, in this movie, you basically have the real world vs. fairy tale world, and obviously the children in the audience are going to be rooting for the world of make believe and hoping and hoping that McDoofus comes around and realizes Giselle is his one true love or whatever. So the book about important historical women gets shunted onto the “bad” side of this dichotomy, because it’s about McDoofus being boring and trying to take all the fun out of life or whatever. And it seems to show young girls that history isn’t important—that they can ignore all that, all the hard and brave and important things women have done, and go on hoping that some day their princes will come. The only thing that gave me hope here was a brief shot of Giselle reading the book on the couch before getting into it with McDoofus. Maybe Giselle can actually blend real life and fantasy for McDoofus and Morgan, making their lives more fun, but she can also help Morgan learn the important things about life. Wishful thinking since Enchanted is still a regular fairy tale. At least Giselle has her own job at the end! Hey, that’s progress, I guess.

So they, um, made a half-hearted attempt to do a more feminist retelling of a fairy tale, because Giselle has to go save McDoofus from the dragon instead of the other way around—she even uses a sword—but it is actually ultimately Pip the chipmunk who causes the dragon’s death. Which is fine, since I don’t like killing things. And the prince was rescued by the girl and her chipmunk.

It’s not enough. She still fell into an enchanted sleep that he had to wake her from!

Also, while McDoofus and Giselle have a slightly more realistic relationship, as they get to know each other a little bit (at least) before shacking up, we still have the same damned stale old fairy tale happening with Edward and Nancy. Like, okay, Giselle leaves behind a transparent shoe when she chases after the dragon to save her man, and at the end, Nancy finds it, and Edward puts it on her, and it fits, and they’re in love! They rush back to the fantasy land of Andalasia to get married. Ridiculous. It seemed that the point of this movie was to temper that archetype with at least a small strain of reality, but they totally negated that with the stupid ending. Damn, Disney, have some balls and allow some characters to be alone at the end of your movie. Oh, god, of course that’s never going to happen.

Hah, would you believe I actually really liked this movie? Because I did. I mean, I love The Little Mermaid, but it has some of the exact same problems. Oh, but there was this one stupid scene that almost made me cry, and it was mostly insignificant, but whatever. Peter Pettigrew follows Giselle and Edward to New York to try to thwart their reunion, and Pip the chipmunk figures it out, so Peter Pettigrew has to spend the rest of the movie trying to shut Pip up, and at one point, he strings Pip up by his paws using a hotel hanger, one of those with the clips for hanging up pants—each paw is stuck in a clip—so he’s just hanging there, looking kind of like he’s being crucified, and he makes a pitiful tiny animal squeak of pain, and it killed me. I mean, he escapes and everything, but that image just made me depressed. Do not cause pain and suffering to tiny animals!

Oh, also, like any good fairy tale, it has a narrator, and I was, like, “That betch sounds like Julie Andrews.” And it was! Even Julie Andrews in a tiny voiceover part can make a movie for me.

Like endless rain into a paper cup

So Starbucks, the evil coffee empire, is named for Starbuck, first mate of the Pequod, the whaling ship in Moby-Dick, which is all very literary and pretentious and lovely, but I don’t get it. Why is it plural? There was only one Starbuck. (Although, apparently, there’s another one on this Battlestar Galactica show everyone’s watching, which actually sounds like something I might like, but I don’t know if I care to get invested in a sci-fi drama right now. Also, this Starbuck is a girl. Weird.) If they want an ‘s’ on the end, because it sounds better, it should be Starbuck’s Coffee. Even though Starbuck had nothing to do with coffee ever. I read on Wikipedia that the founder dudes wanted the name of their coffee company to be Pequod, but that just didn’t have the right ring to it, so they snagged Starbuck. And made it plural. Whatever, it bothers me.

I just freaked out about this over there on Twitter, but it is bothering me, and I have a snobbish-nerd need to expound. All over the place lately, it seems, I am reading “lightening” when people are talking about lightning, you know the electrical flashes that come with thunderstorms. “Lightening” is actually a word, because “to lighten” is a verb, as in “Try lightening up about spelling and grammar mistakes, you freak!” Never! “Lightening” is the present progressive form of “lighten”—“lightning” is a regular old noun that should not occur in February in New England, but nevertheless, it, um, did. By the way, it’s spring today! And there are still piles of snow everywhere. And it won’t stop raining and/or snowing. “Droghte of March,” if only.

I miss group games of Trivial Pursuit. And then I think, “It would have been so much better if I’d more than two friends who drank in college.” My friends are such squares! Actually, three of them drank—no, four—but one of them never played board games with us (actually, maybe two of them never played board games with us), and the other one we do not speak of anymore, because she showed herself to be the biggest asshole to ever…exist. Wow, that insult went nowhere. Whatever, we graduated, and she turned into a giant jerk. So it was just me and the potato who were drinkers, really—and he wasn’t even into it that much. God. So. Lame. Thank god I hooked up with Mike the alcoholic after college and let the real fun begin! But I don’t think Mike and his friends would be very interested in playing drunk Trivial Pursuit. The best I can do for that is my grandparents and aunts—and it’s fun! But it could be funner if I had friends who would drink and play Trivial Pursuit.

Oh, so last night, Jess and I went to see A Fine Frenzy, even though both of us were sick, and Boston was wet and cold, but it was totally worth it. I’d already seen this girl twice, but only because she was opening for some other girl whose name I totally can’t recall at the moment, but this time she was, like, a bazillion times better. I have no idea why, really—she just sounded better. That girl whose name escapes me and her boys stole Alison’s drummer, Daxx, which made me sad, because he was my favorite thing about A Fine Frenzy’s performances, but oh well. I was on the wrong side of the stage to get to see him anyway. She played a brand new song at the very end that she wrote on guitar, and it was the first time I’d seen her play guitar, and it was such a good song. It had the kind of rambling country feel that “Closer to You” and “How These Days Grow Long” have, which made me think that perhaps she wrote it last fall. But it’s possible that she didn’t—except, it didn’t sound like any of her other songs. And I liked it better than all of her other songs combined. Hmm.

Anyway, I told that whole story just so I could tell this one: during her encore, Alison did “Across the Universe,” and it was lovely, about a billion times better than anything happening on American Idol these past two weeks (good riddance to you, Amanda!), and I kind of want an mp3p of it now, because my new thing these days is lovely women who sing Beatles songs. I need to get my hands on more lady versions of Beatles tunes. It’s even better when they don’t change the gender-specific pronouns. I used to have this mp3 of Cyndi Lauper doing “Strawberry Fields,” which was splendiferous, mostly because I love Cyndi Lauper, and oh my god, I’m still not telling the story!

After the show, as Jess and I were waiting in the rain for the train (I can’t resist a cheap rhyme), she told me that she didn’t know that “Across the Universe” was the name of the song. Even when the movie came out, she was like, “Huh. That’s interesting—I wonder why they called it that.” And I was just laughing my ass off, and I was like, “What did you think the name of the song was?” and just as she answered my question, I answered it for myself, “Nothing’s Gonna Change My World.” I don’t know why I find that so amusing—Jess is so literal sometimes. Also, “Across the Universe” is a big deal song! But this is from the girl who thought Led Zeppelin was a guy. I loved Carlos’s reaction to that: “No, Mrs. and Mr. Zeppelin did not have a baby and name him Led.” Oh, Jess. She’s so precious.

Lady Sings the Beatles:
Hold Me Tight – Evan Rachel Wood
It Won’t Be Long – Evan Rachel Wood
Why Don’t We Do It in the Road – Dana Fuchs
Helter Skelter – Dana Fuchs
Blackbird – Sarah McLachlan
Mother Nature’s Son - Sheryl Crow
We Can Work It Out – Heather Nova
I’ve Just Seen a Face – Brandi Carlile
I Want to Hold Your Hand – Brad & Nikki Boyer (Nikki is the one who sings.)

Regina did a Beatles cover for one of those, like, save Darfur charity albums, but I can’t remember which one. Maybe she did “Imagine”—should that not count, then? Since it’s not the Beatles, just John? Also, I clearly need to get Fiona’s “Across the Universe,” which is really the only non-Beatles “Across the Universe” worth having, but, um, I’ll get to it. Right now, I need new and different lady Beatles covers. Where even do I begin?

Brandi and linguistics

All right, so I've been convinced that in a few live versions, Brandi sings "I'm so sad since she went away," but then I started thinking about how the girl isn't the clearest enunciater, and I realized that there's a linguistic explanation for why I hear "she." First, she pronounces "you" more like "yew," so you get a long 'e' sound in there. But there's this thing that happens in people's pronunciation sometimes when the 's' sound is immediately preceded by the 'y' sound--the 's' and the 'y' kind of blend to get the 'sh' sound, as in the word 'tissue.' So you take "since you," and it comes out of her marbly mouth as "sinshew," which you could easily miss hear as "since she," since you'd give the 'w'-ish sound to the next word, "went." I forget the linguistics term for that mashing up of sounds--I learned it in my study of the development of the English language. I learned a lot of things in that class--and then promptly forgot them.

Oh, college. Only useful in my nerdy blog posts.

Lazy Thursday

So! I took today off from work, and it was magnificent. I slept till 1:30, made pigs in blankets, watched American Idol (I love it when they get rid of the boys first), went to the Y, and then went out to dinner with my dad and my brother. Now I am watching Arctic Tale, which Netflix recommended to me. I was reading the description, and I was like, "Awww, polar bears," and then, "narrated by Queen Latifah? I'm in!" Then, while I was waiting for it to get here, I saw this brief excerpt from Roger Ebert's review: "It attributes human emotions and motivations to its central animals. Its music instructs us how to feel." Usually, I hate that kind of bananas, but not when we're talking about animals! I love stories that anthropomorphize animals--I can't help it. It's the one thing I get all sappy about.

I have tomorrow off too, so maybe I'll finally watch Elizabeth: The Golden Age, but I keep hearing that it was kinda crappy. Boo.

In a world by myself

I do not like Simon Cowell saying this Irish girl is the new Kelly Clarkson. I mean, we all know how I feel about Kelly Clarkson, but this Irish girl isn’t even memorable—and Simon Cowell is usually right about everything. Super early on in season 4, he told Carrie Underwood that she’d be the most successful Idol ever, which may in fact be true, since Kelly has shot herself in the foot with My December. Anyway, back to Carly: it’s not like she’s bad—she’s just not interesting. Like Michelle Branch or Vanessa Carlton or Katherine McPhee—or, really, any of the other girls who’ve been on American Idol except for Tamyra and Melinda—and the bad ones, of course. But what really got me was that, after he told her she’s like Kelly, he totally forgot her name. Which, um, he totally didn’t know Kelly’s name until the first top ten performance. When she got selected after Justin, Simon said something to Brian and Ryan about getting a lot of calls about “this girl” the night before, and Ryan (bless his heart, for once) went, “Her name is Kelly,” and even better, she chimed in herself: “My name is Kelly!” I don’t know why I felt the need to relate that story, but… Apparently, it bodes well if Simon can’t remember your name? Plus, Kelly was really cute about it, all indignant, but laughing—and also crying because she really didn’t expect to make it, I don’t think.

American Idol was also hideous last night because…well, I don’t think I’ve gone on at length anywhere how I feel about Beatles covers, but I think you probably know the gist, which is this: generally, when people mess with the Beatles, I get feral. The exceptions to this rule are as follows: Kelly Clarkson, Brandi Carlile, most of the cast of Across the Universe (except Bono), and a few of the people on the I Am Sam soundtrack. Oh, and Fiona Apple, whose cover of “Across the Universe” is awesome. And not one of the people on this show this season even comes close to the level of awesomeness exhibited by Kelly, Brandi, Fiona, or even Evan Rachel Wood, who is not a professional singer. Giving American Idol the rights to the Beatles’ catalog was the dumbest thing that ever happened, except it allowed Kelly Clarkson to totally kill “Sergeant Pepper’s,” so… Worth it? Almost. If “Eight Days a Week” hadn’t been hideously countrified by…whoever that girl is, I’d say Kelly made last night’s show worth it, because that performance killed me! She should have done that entire medley herself. Anyway, don’t countrify The Beatles. I will come after you. Which means I should really find out that girl’s name, so I can, um, go after her like I just threatened.

Okay, I do appreciate that Carly peed her pants when Simon made the KC connection, but… He’s wrong. This time. Do you think she would have if he’d compared her to Carrie or Jordin? Those comparisons would be even less apt just because of Carly’s style of singing, but… Getting favorably compared to Kelly Clarkson is a big fucking deal, bitches. Especially when it comes from Simon, because, once he found himself able to remember her, he loved her.

Brooke White, you’re making yourself cry a little early on in the game, I think. Jordin waited until, like, the third week at least. She’s definitely the best singer there, though. But again—I am not interested in her. Kelly Clarkson, whatever you think of her, really, at least has a personality—and a personality I find charming: on the show, she was dorky, nervous in interviews, but confident when performing, gracious, and just utterly adorable. Plus, people, watch this video, and if you’re not converted, I’ll give you a dollar:



The Ditty Bops’ new album is totally bangarang. I bought it yesterday, because it was new music Tuesday, even though the album actually came out, like, a month ago, but I have fallen way behind on my new music. Anyway, I do love the lesbian duos. Except for those Canadian twins. Are both of them gay? That just seems so weird to me. Although, I guess maybe it’ll help lend credence to the fact that gayness is genetic, that gay twins exist.

Making up for the lack of updates all at once

Here’s something that was inspired by (read: stolen from) someone’s blog on afterellen.com:

TV Characters I Would Date
Liz Lemon (3o Rock)– obviously. She’s kind of neurotic, but she’s clearly smart and funny, and oh yes, she’s actually Tina Fey. I know she already tried to be a lesbian, but whatever. This is my fantasy!

Tyra Collette (Friday Night Lights) – She is tough and badass and hot, but underneath it all, she’s still vulnerable and unsure of herself, because she’s, uh, supposed to be seventeen, and that combination just kills me. Plus, Adrienne Palicki is, like, seven feet tall (and totally older than seventeen!). Gorgeous.

Catalina (Space Cases) – My first true girlcrush, Catalina was, like, totally Jewel Staite’s preparation for being what’s her face on Firefly. I got all giddy and dorky when Ryan made me watch Serenity, like “She was all into the ship’s engines on Space Cases too!” I never actually watched all of Serenity, because that one time he tried to make me watch it, I fell asleep on Mike’s couch—and so did Mike and Ryan’s sister—but I remember that part.

Dana Fairbanks (The L Word) – Dana was my favorite character on The L Word, and I am still bitter about her death. She was such a dork, and she was so funny and sweet and cute… And I’ve always had a secret soft spot for jocks.

Faith (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) – Okay, so maybe I wouldn’t want to date Faith, really, since the girl is unstable. Maybe I’d just want to have as much sex with her as possible before she totally skipped town to kill undead things or whatever. That would be fine with me.

So two random people started following me on twitter the other day, and one of them is this bilingual dude who seems to only post, like, mushy quotations. In English and Spanish. And one of them was this: “Te quiero no por quien eres, sino por quien soy cuando estoy contigo.” Which means, “I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I’m with you.” How gross is that? And it’s not gross in the way I would usually call something like that gross. It’s gross in that that is such a self-centered thing to say. “I don’t love you because you have these special qualities that are unique to you—I love you because you make me look good.” I don’t like that; I don’t like the idea that someone is only worthwhile if they make you better. I would never want anyone to say that to me. I want to be loved for who I am, and I want to love someone for who she is and what is important to her and whether or not she’ll stay up all night watching old episodes of Futurama with me. I don’t want her to have to change me—that’s not fair to her. Am I making any sense? It’s just like that stupid “you complete me.” No! That’s not how this works. You have to be complete yourself—you cannot expect someone to validate you. That’s not fair to you or to the other person. And there’s just something so blatant about that quotation: “I don’t love you because of you, but because of me.” Hideous.

Now there’s another one up there: “The greatest hate springs from the greatest love,” which just sounds like a hacky spin on “my only love sprung from my only hate”—of which I do not approve. How do these people find me?

My dad had this ancient box set of The Lord of the Rings trilogy plus The Hobbit (and by “ancient,” I probably mean “from the ‘70s”), and that’s how I first read them, but they totally all fell apart while I was reading them, and now I have no idea what happened to them. But I loved them, because they were so old and just simple paperbacks, and they were all a different color, like The Hobbit was yellow; The Fellowship of the Ring was red; The Two Towers was green, and The Return of the King was blue. I may have mixed up the colors—but those were the colors, anyway. I kind of want that exact box set back; I have a hard cover set, but it doesn’t include The Hobbit, and I love hard cover sets for displaying things, but paperback books are the best for reading—and reading and reading until they fall apart or you give them to Allison in the hopes that she will read them already, dammit. I don’t even know how to go about finding that old box set—I wish I had an ISBN number or something. Maybe I’ll just trawl through Abebooks.

Philip Pullman wrote a story about how Lee and Iorek became friends! I am very excited to read that—I think it’ll be more interesting than Lyra’s Oxford.

I have this playlist on iTunes that I have called “Can’t Get Enough,” and it’s a somewhat fluctuating collection of songs I can listen to over and over, and it’s basically what I listen to when I’m in the car, and it consists of mostly Brandi Carlile. Still.

So this book I’m reading is part of a series of sorts of retelling of myths by ladies, and it includes The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, which, when I first heard the title, I was hoping was a retelling of The Odyssey but with Penelope as the main character, but I was kind of thinking it would be about what Penelope did while Odysseus was away, which it basically is. Boo. I do still want to read it, though. I’ve more or less read The Odyssey, so I’m good with that one.

Another thing I stole from the afterellen blogs:

Books that have affected me deeply:
A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L’Engle – This is quite possibly the book I have read the most times in my entire life. I haven’t reread it in at least a year, actually, but I’m pretty sure I still have it memorized.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott – For most of my adolescent life, I wanted to be Jo March, and I always hate the end of the book, where she decides to marry that guy. I didn’t want her to marry Laurie either—and there were certainly no suitable ladies included in this book for her to pine for, so… Spinster Jo it is! No, but really, Jo March is one of my biggest literary heroes. For sure.

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman – Everything comes to its beautiful, heartbreaking, poignant conclusion in this book, and it is just so perfect, I can’t handle it. I love the story of Mary and the mulefa, and I’m still puzzling out exactly the significance of her character’s name being Mary in this retelling of Paradise Lost, because my brain is slow, but one day I’ll have an articulate analogy.

Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden – This is, far and away, the best lesbian-themed book I’ve read so far. It is imperfect—the dialogue sounds hardly realistic at times, but that’s not really the point. It is the sweetest coming out story I’ve found, and when I first read the scene where Liza and Annie kiss for the first time, my heart caught. It was just beautiful.

The Giver by Lois Lowry – This book is so haunting—my second favorite Newbery winner. I haven’t read it in a few years, but I think I need to again.

Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls – The only book that ever made me bawl, until Jo Rowling killed Fred Weasley, but I don’t even remember what happened at the end, except the dogs died horribly. I do not need to read this one again, thanks.

Yes! My super early Top Chef girlcrush Lisa is totally gay! Remember her? I fell in love because of the bandana? Plus! There are two other lesbians on the damn show. Three lesbians on a reality show that is actually, like, respectable! When has that even happened? Never, that’s when. I cannot wait till Wednesday.

Oh my god. I had a dream last night that the Indigo Girls were actually the surviving members of TLC—T-Boz and Chili. What the fuck was that about?

Ariel plays the role of siren in the Broadway version. A little bit. Eric hears her voice at the very beginning of the show, and instead of giving in to Grimsby's pleas and the sailors' advice to return to shore, he cries, "Follow that voice! To the ends of the earth if we have to!" I don't know how I feel about that...

Stale blog

I've lost the will to update this thing ever since I banned myself from doing it at work, but I did write half an entry at work the other day in a Word document. Then I put the file on my iPod, but my iPod is in my car, and I don't feel like going to get it. So now for something completely different!

So I'm reading this book called Girl Meets Boy, which is a retelling of the myth of Iphis, which is in Ovid's Metamorphoses, which is another piece of important ancient literature I've never read but should have since millions of later pieces of literature were based on these stories. Er, at least some of Chaucer's poems were, anyway. I can't remember what else. Shakespeare probably used something or other from Ovid. Anyway! One of the main characters falls for a girl, and the other main character, her sister, freaks out a little bit and tries to figure out how Anthea became "a gay." The best reason she comes up with is this: "(She chose the video of Spiceworld with Sporty Spice on the limited edition tin.)" Fuckin' hilarious, but my first response to this was, "Is that real?" Maybe it is in the UK, but, like, I kind of want one now. Anyway, I loved that, because Sporty Spice played a key role in my lesbianic development. Thanks, Mel!

Doldrums

So I started watching Waitress, and Keri Russell is super cute, but for some reason, it put me in a bad mood. I fell asleep for five minutes during it and woke up all bummed out, and when it was over, I went to Barnes & Noble to alleviate my bad mood. But then! I could not find a single book that interested me. Oh, it was a crisis to the extreme. However, I finally found two books, and I'm excited to read both of them, and I'm not as bummed anymore.

Hurrah for books!

Things I thought!

I love how everyone who isn't from New England spells Worcester with an h. Do they pronounce it Worchester too? Wooster, y'all, with the double o like in book.

Speaking of books, I need a new one to read. I'm re-reading Many Waters and Annie on My Mind, because they are beloved, but I also would like to read something brand new. I think I'm over The Other Boleyn Girl--historical fiction is usually not my thing, even though Elizabethan England is one of my favorite historical periods. But since this is pre-Elizabethan, it does not hold my interest. Even though it, uh, leads directly to Elizabeth's existence. Whatever!

So I finally saw half an episode of Idol today, and oh my god, Danny Noriega is the textbook definition of a fagtron. Seriously. That was such a drag queen performance. I felt like I was at the 3. He also reminds me of Ian Cheever, somehow, though Ian is cuter. And red-haired. And really looks nothing like Danny Noriega, but reminds me of him nonetheless!

This is one of my favorite stories about language ever. I probably have already told it, but I feel compelled to retell it. Sophomore year of college, in my conversational Spanish class, we were talking about regional word usage, and the one boy in the class, Eddie, talked about "wicked," and how in New England, it is totally an adverb and not an adjective. He said one his friends said something like, "My mother is wicked," and Eddie felt like he was left hanging. "Wicked what?" he asked. I love it. "Wicked" is a qualifier, not an adjective. It's my favorite regionalism, I think.

Keep singing!

So apparently, Disney put The Little Mermaid on Broadway, and I obviously have to go see it now, but I bought the soundtrack on iTunes last night because I am crazy, and it was only $7.99. I haven't finished listening to the whole thing yet, but I have several things to say. This woman they found to play Ursula is no Pat Carroll. I know they don't want, like, an identical performance, because that wouldn't be very interesting--in addition to being impossible, because how can anyone top Pat Carroll's drag show in "Poor Unfortunate Souls"? However, the girl they found to play Ariel is lovely. They gave Scuttle far too large a part: he gets two songs, and they're both pretty bad. Oh, and they made the relationship between Ursula and Triton explicit: they're siblings, which is something that was meant to be included in the movie, but it got cut. I still find that odd, but I guess it explains how Ursula was once in power, and then her might makes right big brother took over. Blech. That makes me angry. One day, someone will write a story where the brother is the evil one, and the sister rules with benevolence--alone, because her husband is dead--and she and her children must defeat the evil brother who wants to bring darkness back to the kingdom. Maybe even a set of fraternal twins: a prince and princess who work together to help their mother keep their kingdom secure. I don't hate men, but Disney has far too many female villains and absolutely no female characters with any kind of political power.

Um, anyway, I still totally love The Little Mermaid, and I still totally must go to New York to see it. I missed Beauty and the Beast--I cannot miss this!