Gone Fishin'

Not really. But we are going island hopping this week for our tenth anniversary. It's our first real vacation (as every other vacation we've spent has been visiting family, which is fun, but not a vacation). And, we will have no internet! For a whole week! It will be rugged, I tell you.

Until I get back, I give you my cat, Neville, who lives with my sister in Landlocked State, and so I miss him very much.

You know what else I hate?

If your gut response was "everything," well, at least I'm not alone in my dark, dark mood. I was thinking exercise though. I decided to add another set to my exercises today. Hurts. But I'm out of shape and should do something (to be honest, I'm not sure exactly why, but the peer pressure is getting to me).

Yesterday Husband and I went to the zoo, because we could. The day before, I scrubbed the floor ala Cinderella. I think both count as exercise. Today was a workout day--strength training stuff you can do at home while watching reruns of Star Trek: Voyager. Just hate it (not Voyager).

The one time I had a gym membership, I to wanted to hit my trainer, and not in a good you're-making-me-push-my-limits way, but in a bad fuck-you-sexist-bastard-making-clandestine-comments-about-my-weight way. I'm sure he was a nice enough guy, but he tried to motivate me by talking about how great it will be to buy a whole new wardrobe. (Only if Narnia's in the back of it.) I don't like clothes shopping that much either. I'm not that kind of girl.

Anyway, bad mood usually follows exercise because it gets me to thinking about my weight, which isn't a big deal unless I'm thinking about it.

When I was 12, I weighed 135. Do you know how I remember this? After school, while waiting on a bus, a boy asked me and my friends how much we weighed. I was not ashamed of my weight and thought I looked pretty good. I wore size 8 or 10 jeans (depended on the brand) and was a 36C. You might could say I was hot, as I was one of the first girls to develop curves (I also have a report card that says my clothes were too mature for my age). Not particularly beautiful, but my biggest body concern was that boys didn't make eye contact. I hadn't really started trying to change the way I looked. So I said, confidently 135. The boy responded, "you don't look that fat." Bye, bye confidence.

135 lbs. is what I "should" weigh today according to the BMI mess (which is utter nonsense and seriously flawed, and I'm not just saying that because on that scale a 12-year-old weighing 135 is overweight. The history of its development is quite interesting). My doctor wants me to lose 30 lbs. before I get old (something about degrading bone over time and osteoporosis; although, my only predisposition for osteoporosis is my race. I have no personal reasons to worry about it). Basically, as long as I drop the 30 lbs. in the next decade, I think she'll be happy (not that I'll be old then, but it's hard to think more than 10 years out). I weighed 145 on the day I got married, when I was 19. I went up to 160 lbs. at 16. Today, I weigh 180.

BMI tells me I'm obese. BMI is wrong, of course, and I am incredibly healthy. Except for my cholesterol, all of my test results are"perfect," and my high cholesterol is "genetic" since it's the same as my sister 's and mom's and I'm the only vegetarian of the three of us. My doc expects me to never need any meds for my cholesterol as it has been within this range since I was a teenager (it's stable).

So basically, I'm healthy and don't really enjoy exercise or organized sports, so every time I exercise, I think about being fat. And that isn't something I usually worry about because I like who I am and am mostly satisfied with the way I look.

I want to be 11 again. I remember that boy's name. It's not his fault though. Stupid society.

This isn't really what I had in mind when I started writing this post, but I already deleted two posts this week when I got to the posting stage, so this one stays.

Cleaning Sucks

I am taking a break from cleaning my apartment, which is due for its regular inspection. I'm sure that our normal level of cleanliness is fine, but we're using this as an excuse to do things like wash the windows and mop the floors--things we don't do unless they look very very dirty. Curtains cover up windows you know. Scrubbing a floor on hands and knees? Not fun. But if we finish soon, we're going swimming. Or maybe taking a nap. Ice cream might be good too.

Book 7

NO SPOILERS

So I finished reading the last installment of Harry Potter about 5am Sunday morning. We picked up the book at a midnight party that Friday night, read for about three hours, slept, and then did nothing but read until we finished. Husband and I read it together so we could talk about it as we went. We've never done that before, and it was nice. Pretty much all of our predictions were accurate, but there were still surprises. We successfully avoided spoilers. The was really only one thing I felt particularly strongly about, and I was right about that thing as well as the reasoning behind it, and I can't tell you how happy that made me (and it's probably not what you think it is).

I'm going to wait a couple of weeks and then read it again. We just couldn't read fast enough (we were reading aloud), and rushed to get to the next action-packed moment. It is a very exciting book. I look forward to reading it again for the richness of detail.

In the mean time, I second Tonks. . .

Thank you J.K. Rowling for letting me read like a kid again.

Avoiding Harry

No Book 7 spoilers here. I've been avoiding them like the plague (cliches are fun). But I do mention major plot stuff from book 6.

It has been work (work I tell you!), to avoid finding out what happens in Harry Potter 7 before I read the book. You can't trust anyone. If you're a Potter fan, then you already know that The New York Times released a review of the book this week that contains spoilers. Do I know this because I read it? NO, in my avoidance of all things spoilerific, I have taken to reading Mugglenet first thing in the morning so I know where to avoid (for blogs I just end up holding my hand over parts of the screen that say Harry Potter or make a note to read that blog next week instead). Would you have thought of a fan site as being a safe zone? With every other book/movie that comes out, fan sites tend to be full of spoilers, and reviewers and the regular media tend to avoid discussing the important bits of the plot.

The New York Times defended their early review by saying that while the release-day phenomenon is a brilliant marketing strategy, they were under no obligation to keep it if they could legally obtain a copy of the book before that date. This is true. They haven't done anything legally wrong and really have no reason to justify or defend their review. However, if this wasn't HP7, they wouldn't have done it. When other highly anticipated books come out (is Stephen King still highly anticipated?), no one publishes important details in their reviews because they want to preserve the experience for the reader. Movie reviews often contains lines like "I won't tell you just what happens at the end, but it's spectacular or disgusting or whatever."

A friend was saying that the Scholastic and Bloomsbury taking legal action against spoilers was just part of their big marketing thing (true) and creates this idea that you only read a book once and that you'll never go back and reread it (not sure I buy this since much of the HP phenomenon is all about rereading) and that it focuses on one reading experience mattering more than all of the others (true). Despite her not having a problem with spoilers because she doesn't like the way the publishers are framing books and reading in their anti-spoiler/single-release-date antics, she is avoiding spoilers too. Because she wants what happens to be a surprise.

And here is where you should stop if you haven't read book 6.

Ok? You sure you want to keep reading?

Are you really sure?

Ok.



I knew that Dumbledore was dead before I read book 6 because it was in the regular media. You know, the news articles that I read in the morning while drinking a cup of coffee. So when I got to that part in the book, well, I didn't have the reaction I could have. I was prepared. I was expecting it. And so, even though that was the most important character to die of date, it wasn't as big a deal as the previous books' deaths. Do I still enjoy the book? Will I keep reading it? Of course, on both accounts. This didn't "spoil" the book for me, but it did deprive me of an uniformed reading experience. If you know what happens, you read the book differently. You read in context of that knowledge. You may not be thinking "so how does this fit into the big D's death?" on every page, but you do, on some level, relate that information to what you know will happen.

As a grad student, I took a single-work class on Sophie's Choice. On the first day, my professor (who has been nothing less than wonderful), in his excitement, gave us the "big scene," the scene that explains what Sophie's choice actually is, to discuss on the first day of class. Some of my classmates were pissed. Angry rants ensued when class was over because most of us hadn't read the book yet. The prof assumed we had, and, I imagine, thought that our love of the book was why were taking the class. Many of us were taking the class because the lit offerings that semester were piddling and that class looked more interesting than the other 2 or 3 (really unbalanced schedule that semester). But I digress (cause I'm good at it). Here we were studying the book for academia, completely deconstructing the thing and interrogating every possible interpretation, and yet, most of us still wanted to read it once, just for fun. But it's hard to do that when your reading has already been framed--what is significant about this choice? why does Dumbledore have to die?

My bookshelves are filed with books that only get better with each read. Shakespeare is better with every reading; Jane Austen just gets funnier. We return to books that we love because every reading brings something new. A truly good book gets better with age. A truly good book is one that we enjoy and want to reread. But even though I love certain books more now than when I first read them, I'm never so wrapped up in the plot as I was when I first read it. You have to put years, decades in between readings to try to recreate that experience.

Reviewers of books and movies tend to respect that. I usually disagree with most critics, and so have stopped reading a lot of reviews because Husband is tired of hearing me scream "but they missed the damn point," but I do read them for books and movies I'm not sure about. And I'm rarely ever told important plot points. What I am told is what the book is about, what the reading experience is like, and what the reviewer thought of the writing style. If the review is for a kids or YA book, sometimes you get a warning about violence or sex or whatever.

My understanding is that The New York Times review does all of those things, but also gives away a couple a pieces of info that people have spent months speculating over. They don't announce who dies, or so I've read, and therefore claim to have not given away major news. I really have no problem with them reviewing the book before the release-date. I think the release-date marketing strategy is fun because it makes the excitement people usually feel individually a social experience (Who else is is anxiously awaiting Jasper Fforde's new book? Just me? I thought so). But I have no problem with The New York Times or anyone not being ensnared by the HP marketing. I do think, however, that it is only because of the marketing that spoilers (whether mild or major) get page-space and air-time. And that's it's difficult to claim that you're not treating the HP books differently than any other book, when you clearly are by voiding normal practices.

And so, I'm avoiding the internet until I've finished the book. No blogging for me this weekend.

And, as a side note, really a condesed version of a rant I chose not to publish on my blog afterall, but still HP themed...

I'm really sick of people saying that HP is boring and not "literature" to make themselves look smart. You don't have to like the books (plenty of charming people don't), but claiming that you don't like them doesn't make you look well-read and intelligent. And if you try to make the point that you're better than HP because it's basically (gasp) genre fiction, then you just look like an ass.

Lost & Found

A while ago, I was reading random blogs, just clicking on titles that sounded odd in other people's blogrolls. I found one blog that I really liked, and so I bookmarked it for later. At least that's what I thought I did. Apparently I did not do that, and I cannot remember anything about this blogger, blog content, or blog title. What I remember is what it looks like, kinda. Fiery is the adjective that comes to mind. It is orange (or at least a yellow or red that is very close to orange). It has very clean lines, no ads, and not much clutter in the layout. It is a simple layout, possibly a blogger one, but I don't know. So basically, all I remember is that it is orange and I like it. How's that for frustrating?

Also? Cherries are the most delicious thing ever. I love cherries. The skin around my nails is stained purple because I've been eating cherries all day. My grandparents had a cherry tree in their front/side yard when I was very little. They cut it down when I was in elementary school. I don't remember why. I think the birds ate most of the cherries, but occasionally I ate some too. And blackberries. I would sit by the side of the road next to their house and eat blackberries for as long as I could (an hour seems like a good length). Blackberries are also wonderful. Mmmmmm. Fresh fruit is awesome, particularly if you eat it right there at the tree/bush.

Harry Pot

Well, I just got back from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (I don't actually need to link to this do I? Everyone know what I'm talking about). My ticket stub reads "HARRY POT"--heh. I liked it. I think they made a lot of good decisions when it came to cutting and condensing. This of course means that some of my favorite scenes from the book are gone, but many of those are so complex and imaginative that a movie couldn't do them justice anyway. I'd rather them be cut than ruined. Anyway, good movie. Go see it. Don't read any reviews first because they'll just spoil the fun.

Now, if you haven't seen the movie yet and plan to, DO NOT READ ANYMORE. I mean it. I'm going to mention a few things that may spoil your fun. I'll try to be vague enough so nothing is a spoiler per se, but I'm not making any promises. I mean it.

• Delores Umbridge was well played, but Grawp was not scary enough. Evanna Lynch was great as Luna.
• They added three lines that worked really well--all of which, I believe are the last lines spoken by Kingsley, Sirius, and Luna. Luna's line, I think, I hope, foretells something about book 7.
  
• They are really setting up Ginny as the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter in this one--you know, she's really powerful (although I don't think she's actually the 7th of a 7th; I think we're just supposed to think of that tradition because she's a 7th and go ahhhhh). And they're setting up the romantic tension for the next movie too.
  
• The betrayal of the DA is well done. It wraps up two plots in one move, but is also explained away so we don't hate the person.
• Alan Rickman is just grand.
  
• Why has Neville replaced Dobby? I mean, I understand the decision because Neville is more important to the plot of this story, but they did that in the last movie too.
• Gary Oldman-oooohhh. He's a charmer.
• The credits are poorly done. I think they blew their special effects budget by that time.
• They left out a lot, but I think you'll still be able to follow along without reading the books; it's just not going to be as rich an experience. Go read the books.
  
• And they did explain in this one why Neville freaked out about the Cruciatus Curse in the 4th movie--something I though they should have done then. They also explain who Padfoot is, which is left unexplained in the 3rd movie; therefore implying where the Marauders Map in the 3rd movie comes from, but I doubt anyone wondering where the map came from will make the connection.
• Hmmmm. The actors are getting better, but Emma Watson seemed to slip out of the Hermione character a couple of times.
  
• I didn't cry when Sirius, um, you know. I did in the book, just bawled in the middle of the airport, had to stop reading. I welled up, but I think the fact that Harry's reaction is slow-moed and silenced robs the scene of some intensity. I cried when Cedric died in the 4th movie (but not when reading the book) because I could empathize with the grief of the father. Which is why I cried in Book 5; I empathized with Harry and felt his reaction. Not so much in the movie. But then again, this might have something to do with the acting, but I don't think so.
• A few reviews I read by teens were all "the actors are so hot," and I just didn't see it. I mean, the movie (4?) where all of a sudden these are adult bodies, yeah, I said "wow" out loud in the movie theatre. But they haven't exactly gotten hotter. But then again, me thinking these guys are hot isn't exactly legal, now is it? (Ok, I just checked the Wikipedia oracle and Ruprint Grint and Tom Felton are legal. Daniel Radcliffe still has week to go. Emma Watson a yearish. But still. I didn't look up anyone else because I felt silly, and yet I'm not deleting this bullet. Go figure.)
  

What did you think?

OMG, It's Wesley Crusher!

Who knew that Wil Wheaton was funny*?

So I'm browsing around Blogger's unhelpful help site trying to figure out how to put the accent mark over the "e" in cliche (still looking. help?), and Blogger tells me that Wil Wheaton signed a three-book publishing deal and credits his blog with his success. While that wasn't the information I was looking for, it lead me on an internet tangent, wherein I discovered that dude is funny. He also has a kid about to enter college, which totally caused me to freak the fuck out before I looked him up on Wikipedia and read the word "stepsons." Whew ('cause he's only 6 years older than me).

I so loved Wesley Crusher as a kid. Not so much Wil Wheaton (sorry Wil), but I'm sure I had some sort of Tiger Beat (I can't believe it still exists!) stats somewhere on him. Anyway, like I've mentioned before I crushed on fictional detectives quite a bit. I like smarts (my Husband knows everything). Wouldn't boy genius fit with teen detective?


*He has a bunch of recaps on there; I just linked to this one because I have always thought this episode was ridiculous. Of course, I was 9 when it aired. Omg, I was 9 when this aired. Holy fucking crap.

Book Review

So I mentioned before what I had checked out from the library, and rather than do real reviews, I'm just going to let you know if you should read it:

• North By Northanger, or The Shades of Pemberley: A Mr. & Mrs. Darcy Mystery by Carrie Bebris -- yes, if you like Jane Austen and mysteries--omg, there's this one-liner at the end that totally cracked me up
• The Full Cupboard of Life: More from the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith -- yes
  
• The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith -- eh, the Ladies series is better, but I'll read another one in this series before I pass judgment
  
• The Starter Wife by Gigi Levangie Grazer -- eh/no, it's super fast, but don' t spend money on it. I wouldn't have considered it w/o the mini-series. Full of cliches, but the cliches are totally expected, so it's not really a let down.
  
• Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link -- YES! wonderful, though not for kids or teens prone to nightmares. "Haunting" is the best adjective, and all that it implies -- scary and beautiful.
  
• Faerie Tale by Raymond E. Feist -- NO! Dear Lord, NO! This is just horrible, like some sort of sick cross between Stephen King and Danielle Steel with no sex and only the bad parts. The AT index is not a MOTIF index. Irish and Celtic are DIFFERENT. That is not how one gets a grad adviser. WHY do writers have to to be protagonists? An heiress!? A fucking heiress!?!?! Girls that are supposed to "have a good head on their shoulders" do not give up college for a cute boy on a whim. That is not how one gets a job writing movie scripts. TONGUES DO NOT DART. "Well I'll-be-go-to-hell" is a stupid curse. Shakespeare is NOT a reliable source for fairy LORE. The characters are SO unbelievable. Freakin' Masons -- not even a part of the damn plot, but they still get creepy cult mention. Sucky sucky suck suck. AhhhhH!@!!!!

Ok, I happen to specialize in the material that makes up the background for this last book, and while the guy has certainly done research, and is probably well aware of where he gets some stuff wrong because he has shaped it to fit his story, you can't just imply authenticity and then just change stuff around to fit your needs. If you want to do that, don't make your characters folklorists, anthropologists, or psychologists -- even amateur ones. For the love of god, don't make them academics who would freakin' know better!*

Ok, without the "that is SO not right" moments that an average reader probably won't get . . . Seriously, the writing is weak. People are stunned like deer in headlights in this book. People "absently" pull at their clothing in one sentence and "absently" think in the next (on the first page!) in this book. TONGUES DART in this book. You cannot put the word "pussy" in your book and expect readers to read it as "full of pus" (okay, this one was funny -- "If I'd known it was this deep a pussy mass . . ."). The cliches are everywhere. The stereotypes are so overdone. I just don't know why I even finished it. I really hate leaving books unfinished. It took me 15 years to read The Scarlet Letter, but by god I read it, and it was okay once I decided not to read the prologue which just about sucked away my entire will to live. I could have finished this much faster had I not kept shouting "no!" and taking time to envision throwing it across the room (because it's a library book so I can't actually throw it across the room because it's not mine to damage).

If I were 12, and had just started reading adult fiction, so that I was not aware of all of the conventions, I still think I'd be "this sucks."

I think the frustration had subsided. And now that I have finished ranting, I can pretend that reading the book was not a waste of time because I have warned you (WARNED YOU) of its horror. It is indeed a scary book.


*To be fair, "anthropology" is not mentioned, but you can't be a folklorist in the field (which is what three of the characters are doing regardless of whatever it's called in the book) and not be using anthropology because you're studying people and communities.

The eyes are the first to go.

I kept seeing pictures of this puppy, and could not for the life of me figure out why the stupid thing was so special it's picture was plastered on Yahoo's News Site. So I just clicked on the picture and read the caption. Guess who feels stupid now?

Go Read Dooce

I love Heather's* blog for many reasons, and am glad Bitch turned me on to it, but it is posts like this one that make me look forward to when I have a tumultuous and hectic life and wish I was a bigger part of Squashbucket** (my nephew's) new little life.

*I find it weird to refer to strangers I've never met by their first names, but nonetheless.
**What? He needs some kind of pseudonym, and Sister told me I could call him that to his face (of course I don't think she thinks I really will). I also have threatened to call him Jesus Christ.

8 Things

So rather than being the only kid on block not memeing, I meme.

Rules:

• I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
• Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

My 8 Things

1. I love organizing books, well anything, but books especially. Cleaning I hate, but organizing, yay!

2. I don't tan. I used to tan some as a kid, but now, not so much. I don't wear sunscreen everyday, just when I'm playing in the sun, so you'd think my face and arms would be darker, but you'd be wrong. (I don't burn from my regular-day-non-sunscreen-wearing either).

3. I like commas.

4. I once entered a Star Trek: the next generation script writing contest with a friend. She got bored and I finished it. I made up a language for the aliens and everything. I only got an honorable mention though.

5. I know the birth dates of everyone in my family (grandparents, cousins, etc.) by heart and the blood type of my immediate family members. This impresses them. And yet I still forget to send cards early enough for them to arrive on the actual birthday.

6. I have to make up stories in my head before I can fall asleep.

7. My first concert was New Kids on The Block. My second? Poison. or was it Bon Jovi? It was one of those two.

8. I had a super crush on Frank Hardy. Pretty much any fictional and reasonably cute* male detective was crushable for me.

*for example, I did not crush on Sherlock Holmes or Columbo because looks were never part of their shtick.


And now I join the ranks of the other lazy and insecure bloggers and tag whoever wants to do this. I wonder if we should just give up the pretense of tagging on memes and institute a meme mandate, in which those who read said meme are tagged?