Utils in Bat Country

My big fat Greek..., wait, I'm not Greek

[Though, really, if you swap out the lamb for pasta, essentially the same family dynamics]

I'm pondering some big life decisions but since I am unable to be completely spontaneous, I temporarily soothed the plan and logic loving beast in my brain by sending out an exploratory email, complete with bullet pointed discussion topics, to my aunt and uncle, who play a significant part in the plan.

They write back, say call us later when you're out of work.  I get home, bundle up, and get ready to wander around in the dark with Miss Sassypants so I can have a non-dropped conversation.  We get on the phone and they're all making soup and I hear gma say, oh, hello Stephanie, I thought your letter was so funny.  I'm trying to figure out which letter she's talking about when I realize she's talking about the email... that I didn't send to her.  Wasn't a problem, I didn't care, but that should have alerted me to what was ahead.  Then my uncle says how everyone thought it was hilarious and I'm laughing when I ask, well, who is everyone?  Did you send it to all your friends and relatives?  Nope, just your father.

My. Whatwhonow? My father.  Why would you send it to my father?  Well, before we proceed with the plan, I wanted to make sure he was in the loop and make sure I had his blessing and support. At this point, I'm just trying to figure out exactly when my life became a Nia Vardalos movie.

I was laughing but I was a little annoyed.  And no one could figure out why. So I explained that as a 30 yr old living in 2011, I didn't need the men in my family talking to the other men in my family to determine the course of my life.  Then I went off on some tangent about moving to Nova Scotia regardless of what any of the in charge men thought but that was more for my own enjoyment of the dramatic.  My uncle was a little taken aback that I was having such a reaction and at that point I just gleefully said how much I was looking forward to Thanksgiving.  Oh, the fun that will be had.

[Wasn't so much upset that my father's permission was sought, that part is so ridiculous that I find it funny, more that I - in my tight fisted grip on life - like to control who reads what, when.  Not that I wasn't going to involve my parents in my life plans but I was caught off guard knowing that Dad had read what I sent.  Nothing in there that I was uncomfortable with him seeing but I had to do a quick mental scan and make sure because there are other things influencing this whole process that I wouldn't want him to see in as frank a manner as I might phrase them if I was talking to my aunt]

I hang up with them and immediately call Dad.  He answers and I say "So, I hear that you - as the man and head of household [since I am single and a spinster] - have been approached regarding my future?"  And, smart man, he just starts to laugh.  Ever since I went off to school Dad has always been your life, your decisions so I wasn't worried at all about his possible response to my uncle, but the whole situation was so antiquated that I couldn't resist turning the screws a bit.  Of course Dad was conciliatory and said we all love you and support you and he was just being a good brother-in-law and we all want what's best for you, etc.  Yes, yes, I know.

He'll get his come Christmas dinner.

Watching and Reading

My epic plan to read all six of Jane Austen's books last fall was derailed by a triple whammy of not-reading-things. I got a job, a boyfriend, and started school (again). However, having made it through Mansfield Park at some point last fall, and starting Northanger Abbey not long thereafter, I remain/ed devoted to the cause. I have, as of right now, finished the three books I had not read, which leaves only the ones I have.

I must say, I think I picked the right order to go in. I was very disappointed in MP, and NA wasn't much better. Persuasion moved along much quicker, and has a quote that I'd love to work into a tattoo someday.

I've also been on quite a movie-watching tear over the last few weeks. This was, in part, due to the three or four days when I was sick. I couldn't contemplate reading things that were going to take brain power, instead opting for simple, mind-numbing films to fill my time. And naps. But I try not to count those, for fear of realizing how much of my life I've spent asleep.

Thus, if I can remember, I'll be posting one of these at the end of each month (technically the beginning of the following month). It's always fun for me to keep count of how many books I've read, but I've never tried to do it with movies before. Let's see how long I can keep it up.

Without further ado:

Watched:

Let the Right One In, 2008
Black Swan, 2010
The Importance of Being Earnest, 2002
Fort Apache, 1948
Dark Shadows: The Complete Revival Series, 1991 (Rewatch)
The Lost Boys, 1987
Impromptu, 1991
Becket, 1964 (rewatch)
Rio Bravo, 1959
Boondock Saints, 1999 (Rewatch)
That Hamilton Woman, 1941
Overnight, 2003

Movies (or complete TV series) seen in 2011: Twelve


Read:

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (Finished 13 January 2011)
Persuasion by Jane Austen (Finished 31 January 2011)

Books read in 2011: Two

Up next: Emma by Jane Austen, and the Battlestar Gallactica miniseries (before I launch into watching the entire modern version of the show). I also have plans to make my way through every James Bond movie ever made this year. I think I've seen the majority of them at some point or another, but I remember very few. Since I read the books over the last couple of years, I may as well go forth and see the flicks as well.

Live Blogging Mansfield Park

I’ve been finishing the book, and suddenly it struck me. If people can live blog about the VMAs, the Oscars, football games, and the like, why should I not live blog about Mansfield Park. I have reached the penultimate chapters, and everything is moving along as I surmised.

Fanny, after telling Henry she could not marry him, went ‘home’ to her parents for a time. It was to be two months, but as fate would have it, stretched out further. Henry did come to visit her, and while her poor parents put on a good show and did not embarrass her overmuch, she was loathe that he spend any more time with her than necessary. As Austen says (and I’m paraphrasing) it’s one thing to send a man away because you don’t want to marry him, it’s another to be embarrassed in front of him because of your family’s poor breeding.

And so, poor Fanny sat and waited for a letter from Edmund, instead receiving letters from Mary Crawford, who repeatedly showed herself vain and self-aggrandizing. Then! Horror! Edmund’s older brother, Tom, was struck very ill. So ill that he had to be taken back to Mansfield Park from London, and it was touch and go for a period of time while he tried to recover. Fanny, stuck with her ill-bred parents someone in a port city, had to rely on letters from MP to know what was happening. And, because of the domestic turmoil, two months turned into three, and she had no way back to MP.

AND THEN! She received a letter from Mary Crawford. Do not believe a word you hear on the streets or read in the papers, it warned. It’s simply not true. Poor Fanny was left wondering WTF. And a day later she was answered through the newspaper, which said one of Edmund’s sisters, Mrs. Rushworth, who had a little flame for Henry prior to being married, had run off with Henry Crawford, to whence no one knew! The shock! The betrayal! The scandal!

BUT WAIT. THERE’S MORE!

While Fanny was all in a tizzy over this, she got another letter from Edmund. Not only have Maria and Henry run off together, but Julia (his other sister) eloped with Yates, a dude from earlier in the book. Eloped. But, of course, with Mrs. R and Mr. C having run away together, the elopement was quite overshadowed.

And now I shall read on, for a think there might be a tie between these two events…we shall see…

Ooh, Edmund is coming to get Fanny (and her oldest sister), because now the family needs them. However, upon getting to her, he calls her his “only sister”…poor Fanny and her broken little heart!

Now, as the details are unfolding, it seems that no one actually knows if Henry and Maria are together, or if Maria is simply hiding out because she hated her mother-in-law…

And of course, Henry’s actions mean that poor, lovelorn Edmund cannot possibly marry Mary Crawford. And lo! Is he saddened by this…

There are only ten pages to go. Austen better get with the romance post-haste.

Oh, and now Edmund has begun to understand the deficiencies in Mary Crawford’s personality…

No wait. It would seem that I was wrong. Mrs. R and Mr. C were very much together. And she wanted a divorce so as to marry him…but no, because before that could happen (something Mr. R wouldn’t agree to anyway) she and Mr. C fell very much out of lust with one another. And so Maria was left a broken woman, divorced by Rushworth and abandoned by Crawford.

Oh dear god, Edmund and Fanny are going to get married, Yuck.

 

OK, that was just disappointing. I was hoping Henry was going to turn out better, because he had more spice of life than Edmund could ever muster. Instead, Austen just lets cousins get married in the end, because they’re both nice people who deserve to be happy.

And the ending was weak, anyway. It seemed like a good way to clear up 390 pages of blah in ten pages of “and then Edmund realized Fanny was all he could want in a wife.” Blarg.

My love for Jane Austen is still firm, but this book is kinda like that thing that your BFF does that’s really disappointing. Why, Jane? WHY?

Jane Austen, Exposed

When last I wrote of MP and the various loves and lives there, I set forth a few predictions about how the book would progress.

1)      Henry Crawford would confess his love for Fanny, and she would reject him out of hand.

2)      Henry would then try to change into the kind of person Fanny could love.

3)      Some kind of family affair in London would be solved by Henry, which would help Fanny in her affections for him.

So let’s see if I was right.

1)      Yup.

2)      Yup.

3)      Almost. Rather than a family scandal, Henry secures Fanny’s brother (William) a commission in the Navy, where he’s been serving for several years as a midshipman. While this does not drive Fanny into Henry’s arms, she is appreciative.

So there you go. Jane Austen, you are so predictable. And yet, I love you.

Henry, his sister, Fanny’s uncle, and Edmund all try to convince Fanny that she has to love Henry. Has. To. Love. Him. And marry him! YES. Because he is a good match. And because he loves her! And it’s her duty or some such drivel and nonsense. And poor Fanny is just heartbroken over Edmund, and the idea of Edmund and Mary being together, and the only time she gets emotional is when Edmund is around, or spoken poorly of, and no one seems to notice.

Poor Edmund just blunders about, talking about Mary and how he cares for her but is turned off by her attitude about the church and whatnot, failing to understand that his complaints to Fanny are breaking her heart even more. And dear god, this is just like an episode of Jersey Shore but with less mid-riff.

I’ve got roughly 100 pages to go. Henry and his sister have just left the neighborhood for London, or somewhere else that wealthy Englishfolk ran off to in the winter. Everyone is hoping that distance will make Fanny’s heart grow fonder, but she is holding firm. The only thing that Henry did which caught her attention was to read from some Shakespeare, which he did with fine form and proper dramatics. She was impressed with that…and Henry knew it, so he’s got something to work with.

Fanny has finally admitted that Henry’s desire to flirt with All The Women bothers her, that she feels he could never focus on just one, when he so willingly played with the hearts of so many before. I’m not sure how Henry will prove her wrong from London, but we shall see. There’s still time for a family crisis for him to fix, or something along those lines.

There are pages enough left for Fanny to admit her love for Edmund, but I fear she may go to her grave with that particular secret. We shall see what Austen does with them…

My Rifle, My Jane Austen, and Me

OK, this doesn’t actually have anything to do with guns, but you have to forgive me for thinking the title was cute.

Because I sometimes write blog posts days before they actually get posted, I can’t even remember when another post about Mansfield Park (MP) went up here at Utils. But since writing that one, I’ve read another hundred pages and made a horrific piece of self-discovery.

When last I wrote about Fanny Price and her obnoxious family members at the Park I was a little confuzzled about where the story would go. And then it started to head into typical Austen territory. See, since Fanny came from a lower background, she got stuck spending a lot of time with her aunts, who aren’t very nice to her, and who are, per so many older women in Austen novels, just a little out of touch with what’s going on around them. Once MP really gets going, though, Fanny is almost reintroduced to the reader as attractive, demure, and full of love for her cousin Edmund (yuck).

My biggest problem with Fanny? She’s a pansy ass who rarely sticks up for herself. Even when some young women around her are at least putting a small step forward, Fanny is a wimp. FRUSTRATING FOR ME TO READ.

Anywhoo. Fanny’s neighbors, the Crawfords, spend a lot of time with Fanny and Edmund. Mary Crawford has a thing for Edmund, but she’s pissed because he wants to be a pastor. Except she’s not really pissed, you know? But she says some rude things about it, in a poor attempt at humor. And then Edmund goes off to take his orders, but only after confiding to poor Fanny how disappointed he is in Mary and cementing Fanny’s heartbreak.

At the same time (and this is where the book starts to hit close to home) there’s Henry Crawford. He’s That Guy, the one who tries to line up conquests left and right. He essentially broke the heard of both the Bertram daughters (Edmund’s sisters) before one of them got married to an oaf and the other moved away with them. Henry then set his sights on Fanny, because lo, wouldn’t it be funny if Fanny fell in love with him. And of course- OF COURSE- Henry accidentally falls in love with Fanny during this attempt. Except she doesn’t like him at all. She sees little in his demeanor and personality to draw her to him, and on the whole is blown away by the idea that she might be attractive to someone.

So, recap.

Henry <3s Fanny <3s Edmund <3s Mary

Right. It’s just like a soap opera but with less compelling and dramatic music.

I’ve just gotten to the part about Henry admitting to his sister that he wants to marry Fanny because she’s all that, and it struck me. I’m Henry Crawford. Goddam it. That’s what I do, set forth to conquest and end up smitten. Gah.

I can only imagine what’s going to happen by the end of the book. Let’s see if I’m right.

Per Austen convention, Henry will soon (within the next ten pages) tell Fanny he loves her and wants to marry her. Fanny will dismiss him out of hand because yuck, she doesn’t like him and she’s tied up with her feelings towards Edmund. Henry’s sister, meanwhile, will be concerned over her brother attempting to marry beneath him AND try to help him because of Fanny’s influence over Edmund.

Henry will, at the same time, try to change into the kind of person Fanny wants him to be, probably running off to London or something for a while just to bring the level of drama up. By the end of the book, Henry Crawford will have gone through some kind of metamorphosis that we all know men are actually incapable of, and become the man of Fanny’s dreams (because dear god, she cannot marry her fucking COUSIN. THAT’S GROSS AND RESULTS IN THE FOUNDATION OF KENTUCKY OR SOMETHING). And then perhaps Fanny, Henry, Mary, and Edmund can have a big joint wedding at the end.

And, knowing Austen, there may be some kind of family scandal that Henry has to go take care of on the sly, which is what makes Fanny fall in love with him.

These are just my assumptions, of course. I could be wrong. But I doubt it. I’ve seen this movie before. And by movie I mean any of the 65,706,298 of them with this exact plot, minus characters named Fanny. Because seriously? Fanny?

I’m still not as happy with MP as I have been with other Austen books, but it’s growing on me. If Fanny weren’t quite so fucking wishy-washy and wimpy. Except that she’s not, all the time. She does stand up to people every once in a while, which makes her compelling in a really small way.

The realization that I am Henry Crawford has been disconcerting for most of the day. I will only be able to deal with this in a good way if he does end up with Fanny in the end, because that means something good for me eventually, doesn’t it?

Doesn’t it?

Jane Austen Autumn, Part One

As I’ve said before, if I were stranded on a desert island that wasn’t Australia, there are two books I’d want with me. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

I’ll let that sink in for a minute. Because yeah, they don’t go together so well. But I am a girl of eclectic tastes who also travels between a pencil skirt and heels to giant camo men’s shorts and a wife-beater. I paint my toenails because I realized that looked better than the sheer amount of funk there was on my toes following a weekend of shooting. I also realized that I can’t knit at shoots because I get distracted and because my hands are too dirty. So yeah, I’m the tomboy of this blog, for sure.

Fear and Loathing, therefore, shouldn’t be a surprise hit with me. It’s such an insane book, and Thompson’s ability to turn a phrase is so. Fucking. Amazing. My one regret in life is that I never got to meet him, or see him live in some capacity. But the way he lived his life? Yeah. I can see why he did what he did (and I mean that about his real life as well as his semi-fictional F&L persona). I was trying to explain Gonzo journalism to someone a couple of weeks ago, and I couldn’t define it other than to say that’s what HST did. He was the only one who ever got away with it, and for that I will forever be jealous. But there he was, balls to the wall, going crazy and writing that shit down for the world to read and enjoy. Or be disgusted. I don’t think he would have cared one way or the other, so long as you were reading. Hence the HST tattoo I have. (Have I posted that one yet? If not, I really should, and soon.)

But that brings us to my other favorite book, and a confession I have to make. A confession I’ll only make to the ten people per day who read our blog. And whomever else stumbles across is by searching for Thompson today on google.

I’m secretly a romantic.

There, I said it. One of my favorite movies, after The Godfather and Full Metal Jacket and Predator? Is Love Actually. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen that film. It stays on the table under my computer, because when the going gets tough, Tassie watches the writer and the Portuguese girl fall in love and all is right in the world.

Which brings us to Pride and Prejudice. That book is a trip through heartbreak lane for me. Jane Austen takes you 95% of the way through the book with the knowledge that OF COURSE Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy should be together. Even when they hate each other they belong together. And as a reader, you know that. And yet Austen confuses and befuddles and I still worry, after reading the book ten times over, that somehow they’ll miss each other at the end. Somehow, Elizabeth’s prejudice will win this time, and poor Mr. Darcy will be left to pine after her forever. (And there are days when I would say it served him right if she suddenly DID change her mind and NOT kiss him.) (And then the romantic in me kicks up again, and [since we’re being honest here] I cry at the end of the book. Again.])

And THAT brings us to Mansfield Park. It’s a 400 page book, and I’m on roughly page 150, but here’s a quick synopsis. Fanny is poor, her cousins are rich. Her rich Aunt agrees to bring her into their house when she’s a kid, to ease the burden on her poor parents.

Fanny is unhappy because she doesn’t know these people, but her cousin Edmund is always nice to her. They get older, other people get involved, Edmund starts paying a lot of attention to another girl (but for the life of me, I keep getting which one confused when I’m reading) and ignores Fanny a lot. She is hurt by this, but she’s used to being treated poorly. Although the family probably was doing her a favor in bringing her in and raising her, they treat her poorly and not on par with the other girls.

So, typical 19^th century book, when you get down to it.

Here’s the thing. I only have a vague idea where the story line goes from here. I think I’ve seen a movie version of MP before, but if so it’s not leaping out at me from the pages of the book. So really, whatever twists and turns are in there to come, I don’t know yet. And Austen always likes to throw some kind of twist.

I’ve been irritated with the writing on this one, though. It took Austen 100 pages to get the ball rolling, to finally start saying something. Her introduction to the characters was SO SLOW. But I wonder now, pondering it, if that’s not because all of Austen’s characters are pretty similar, and I already knew them when I started the book, thus making it seem slower to me than it might have otherwise been. I’ll have to see if that’s the case with the others as I keep up my Austen Autumn.

I also find myself forever irritated with the women in Austen’s books for putting up with bullshit. All Fanny has to do is speak up a little and everything would be fine. Except that it wouldn’t be fine, because this is early 1800s England, and she is written exactly how a person in her situation should have acted. And it’s a little more infuriating in MP than it is in the other books. At least, so far as I can remember. I just want her to grab Edmund, give him a big ole kiss right on the lips, and go from there. Preferably while in the middle of a bar, dancing. But since I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen, I’ll keep reading and see what does.