In a Nutshell

I once read a book in which the ending was a descriptive scene of a man digging through a dead woman’s uterus with his bear hands in search of her unborn baby. Despite the flesh, blood and fingernails, Pride and Prejudice managed to disgust me so much more.

On Regret

Regret is useless, it’s not like you can do anything about it. Its there, its ugly, best thing you can do is move on. Of course you have to learn from it, because that is the whole point of screwing up, but you can’t get stuck on the past regretting you sent that email or ate the last brownie.
Lizzie regrets every move she made regarding Mr. Darcy “I cannot fix on the hour, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun” And I can’t help but pit the fool.
I mean, so what? You had to marry someone anyways and lucky you got a stud for a hubby, make the best of it. You idiot, you though he truly loved you, no man with such scary sideburns can ever love a woman properly. Now that you realized getting married had little of nothing with being in love you can start another book, learn a new language, knit a tie… your pick! You have roughly forty more years to waste.

Meeehh Brrr

Elizabeth is truly a wild pony: “Neither duty, nor honour, nor gratitude ... have any possible claim on me.”
I was never raised accordingly to a religion, I was taught my values separately. Not so long ago I realized that I could pretty much to whatever I wanted and nobody could do anything about it and so I went into a rebellious “Screw Up as Much as You Can Buffet” but soon realized being bad was not as fun as Hollywood made it seem. I’m still aware that if I can handle the consequences, I’m free to be free.
Honor has never been something I have been afraid to lose, I have no hell to be afraid of and no heaven to wish for, just one big, thick, mind-numbing mystery. I don’t owe anybody but my parent anything sine they are solely responsible for the awesome child you see today.
I have no duty either, I don’t have to spread the word, be a good example, or impress any superior being. I can chose to be whoever I want to be and learn whatever I want to know and so I have control.
That is why I can relate to Lizzy on this issue.
PS: the title was supposed to be horse sounds, I don't know if you got that

On Modern Marriage

“Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all.”
Taking into account that Elizabeth is an objectified woman and that her only hopes in life are to marry well, she seems to have a point. Marrying a stupid man could be beneficial to a smart woman because that would enable her to manipulate him and his wallet. Dealing with a smart man in that era would not me a lot of fun since you would have to put up with arguing and convincing someone who doesn’t even believe you have the capacity to own real-estate.
Nowadays I find it more beneficial to marry a smart man because now women have a lot more equality (they haven’t fully been considered equal to men yet) and they can survive a single life. What would really matter to me if I ever start thinking about marriage (IF!) would be to find someone who I can a great conversation with. If I have to spend the rest of my life with someone he better be worth it.
Fun fact: Have you ever played LIFE, the board game? Do you remember that one house that was broken into three sections as a result of an earthquake? I used to always buy that house as a kid so I could put myself in one part, my kids/dogs in the other and my husband and the car in the third.

Mean Girls

“Mr. Collins is a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man; you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who married him cannot have a proper way of thinking.” Oh buuurn #2!
Is it just me or “Mean Girls” appears to be largely based on this book? I love that movie, it made me laugh, snort included (sexy points for Kristie!).
Personality wise: Regina is to Louise Bingley as Elizabeth is to Cady, Jane is to Karen, Mary is to Gretchen, Charlotte is to Karen, Darcy is to Aaron (just because they’re both “the hottest dude is high school”) and Mr. Bingley can take either Damien or Karen’s cousin.
If you get why that last part was funny we were meant to be best friends.
Will there be fist-fights later on in the book? There should be… I’ll just write my own.

My Princess Days Have Just Begun

Charlotte for president!
“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation*; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.”
*New word: vexation= annoyance
If I was a girl in the early eighteen hundreds and was forced to marry someone for reasons not good enough to me I would definitely follow this piece of advice. I mean, because my husband is rich (filthy rich) he is bound to have a big house in which I could play hide and seek and side-walk chalk all day long for eternity and not have to see his fugly face like totally evar.
The way they talk keeps reminding me of this song (which is why I can’t concentrate): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfmdRTCagmU

It Brings Me to Tears

When I heard we had to read Pride and Prejudice I wasn’t too excited. This is why:
After spending a week in Cuba I was more than ready to re-enter capitalism and so the first thing I did when I got to Panama was turn on the T.V.. “Pride and Prejudice” the movie (with Kiera Nightly) was on and I started watching it but got bored and switched to “Skins”, which I love and even though I had already watched the entire first two seasons a re-cap didn’t sound too bad. Lucky for me they were showing the exact episode where Chris dies mysteriously and leaves his very misunderstood and pregnant girlfriend Jal on her own (oh! The drama!). Naturally, my estrogens kicked in and I started crying the kind of cry you cry when you don’t really feel that sad.
I switched back to “Pride and Prejudice” right before my dad knocked on the door because it was dinner time and when he saw me crying and realized what I was watching said “Pride and Prejudice is boring and Kiera has an awful nose-job”.
It was the best father-daughter bonding time I’ve had in a long time.
PS: “I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.” Oh buuurn!

What Can I say, I Just Love Complaining

What can I say, I just love complaining.
A friend asked me what I had been reading lately and I told him I was in the middle of a very interesting combination: Why I am Not a Christian by Russell and Pride and Prejudice by Austen. He asked to borrow the first one when I was done with it but openly admitted to disliking Austen having read one book and two movies based on her books. (Russell 1 Austen 0)
“Hey, we both hate pride and prejudice... Lets get married” I can’t believe I actually said that, good for me I caught myself in the midst of IRONY.
(Sob story: I say things like that a lot and that’s why nobody takes me seriously anymore.)
In chapter 7 (ish) Elizabeth pays a visit to her sister Jane who is resting her cold at the Bingley’s. She comes in dirty and dripping, acts rudely toward the Bingley sisters and dares to borrow clothes and stay the night. Ru-ude. She met these people about two minutes and expects to be warmly welcomed after intruding? This girl needs spanking (not in the kinky sense).
I “IMDB’d” the movie for some fun facts and found absolutely nothing fun about those facts, BUT then I looked at the casting for the movie and found out that the girl who plays Mary is named Talulah! Don’t know about you but that’s the funniest name I’ve ever heard.
PS: I was trying to find a modern version of Pride and Prejudice and this is all I found:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1WAjT5Yn8M&feature=related
I personally though it was better than the Joe Wright version.

7 Years of Bad Luck

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOjpvNPr3JU
Act III Scene iv

In this scene Hamlet is incriminating his mother of murdering his father and as he grabs her by the hair and screams in her hear there is a broken mirror in the background which caught my attention more than once (3:11-3:37). The mirror represents the broken relationship between Hamlet and his mother, Hamlet loosing his cool upon finding out and the effect the mother's crime had on her family and the kingdom. It reflects the whole scene in mismatched pieces and it is large and noticeable but at the same time shoved in the back of the room.
In the scene Hamlet is wearing a white shirt, which marks him as the "good" character in the scene, but at the same time and undone black bow-tie hangs, like his burdens, from his neck.
I also noticed the columns in the back that stand in a vertical pattern which indicates and active scene where something climatic is bound to happen... an indeed it does.

"To Boo or not to Boo"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY-QL_HJBCc&feature=related


Act III Scene i

"To be or not to be, that is the question" (00:10-00:15) is probably one of the most quoted and parodied lines from Shakespeare's plays. I found this (adorable) example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGdCJeSu82Q

In this screen shot, Hamlet is looking away from the camera and the lighting won't show his face, you can only see his outline which isn't even on the centre, but on the right. The attention is taken away from the subject, leaving only his voice to take the spotlight, making the audience focus on what he is saying and only on what he is saying. The colours are also bleak: black, gray and tan with very little white makes the visual even less appealing.
The colours may play second roll in reflecting the character's feelings, at this point in play Hamlet is in the worst of emotional states.

Banana Blues

The man has an increasingly hard time listening to the tape, as if the more he is reminded of his younger years the more regrets he harbours and the more he misses the company of his lady. You can see he was in love with her deeply, and now he is a lonely senile man with a desk.
The voice seems soothing, the type of thing I’d play before going to bed but that soft cooing voice is tormenting this man, paining him like I never expected such a sweet voice to pain someone. The voice clearly is not his since in the end the man records his own bit and he seems to crow rather than speak.
At the begging the man was happily eating away his bananas and counting boxes and spoons, and at the end there flipside personality, blue and angry. The light swingin from left to right doesn’t help bring up the mood, either.

Spoons

The entire time I was watching this I kept thinking back to a video I saw some time ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrStENrKZa8
Don’t watch if you’re allergic to stupid.
The immediate link I made from Krapp’s Last Tape to the course was the simplicity theme and how so little can say so much like we saw in McCarthy’s The Road. The old man sitting at his desk with a set of boxes talking to himself brings me to one of my biggest fears: growing old and bored. I can stand being old, but I could not stand having to live the last years of my life bored an lonely like this man, counting spoons somewhere and eating tiny bananas.
He’s so senile it’s rather endearing, he repeats himself plenty and wonders perhaps a bit too much.
I listened carefully to what the man was reading off the book but I couldn’t make sense of the list of phrases no matter how much I tried, I know… sad. It is obviously a simplistic play and I have just discovered this is the kind of play I hate the most since there is so little to grab on to make sense and analyze the author’s work and it seems so sad that the author has wasted a lot of time writing something I’ll simply drool at idiotically.
“Did I ever sing?...No” definitely my favorite part.
I though it was creative and witty how the tape mutters the man’s thoughts, his memories, like he is listening to his autobiography written by someone else. The voice from the tape was grasping since it was very detailed and you could even heard the tongue moving inside the voice’s mouth (yet it was not even close to Alan Rickman’s).

Last Thoughts

I wonder if McCarthy writes like this in all his novels, is it a novel thing or an author thing?
Usually I bring all my questions to mighty ol’ Google… but this time it has failed me.
Now onto the real thing:
The ending was awful!
I don’t mean awful like it was badly written but it was so sad and frustrating, I keep thinking that the family that picked up the boy at the end were all cannibals in disguise and I just wished so hard for the boy to shoot himself and end it. I know it sounds terrible.
Another thing I would like to point out was the baby roasting. I’m scared enough of babies as it is but roasted babies simply freaks me out, I can stand the Hannibal trilogy but I don’t think I’d be able to watch a cooking infant on film which I think is a strong enough reason not to watch the movie.
Is the baby shown? I need to know.

A Bad Beggining

To be honest I dreaded the first fifty pages or so of the book. I’m not saying the book had a bad beginning but if it was up to me I would’ve put the book down and moved on to the next, it simply didn’t leave me wanting to read more. I knew it was going to get better since some of my classmates were ahead of me and said the action started further ahead but I had to drag myself into picking up the book again which is something I’ve never done before. The only reason I did it is because you, Mr. Tangen, said it was one of the “best novels ever written!”… or something like that I honestly can’t remember (forgive me for putting word in your mouth).
I don’t want to move on to the post-bring era of the book yet, as for the pre-bring era:
I love the language McCarthy uses and I know I say this a lot about book but I thought it was beautiful (if it was possible I’d marry words, all of them). The character are pretty basic, it’s a father-son relationship where the father is really concerned about what future lies ahead and the kid merely tags along aimlessly, still embracing his infantile ignorance. I hate kids.
I don’t think there were many memorable bits in just this section of the book but out of the ones I managed to capture I think the one that got to me the most was the image of the son taking a bath in the lake and the description of how thin an frail he is. The image immediately made me think of those disturbing pictures you see pretty much everywhere of the starving kids in Africa, with their bloated bellies and heads at least four sized too big for their tiny bodies. To me they always looked like unborn babies, like they weren’t supposed to be alive yet and that’s the reason why they suck at being alive. It’s not their fault. Neither is the son’s.

Wandering on The Raven

I’ve always like Poe and I have read the poem before, to me the obvious meaning of the bird was death and it was most likely related to a lost love of the protagonist name Lenore which lead me to think she was dead and he was mourning her. Now that I’ve come to calmly analyze it I realized that even if it is decided that raven symbolizes death there could still be many possibilities gathered around that fact in terms of plot.
I. The bird could be death “himself” (herself?) coming to take the narrator with him, and therefore kill him
II. The protagonist could be facing the threat/fear of death and it bother him
III. Lenore is dead and has come to visit him
IV. The bird has come to tell him Lenore is dead
V. The author’s conscience is nudging him since he has committed murder, maybe even killed Lenore herself
I could go on forever… but I wont.
It’s hard to pin a single plot to the poem since it is rather vague but I can say that I truly believe the meaning of the bird is death and nothing more.

Pardoner's Tale: Pardoner Shmardoner

Out of all the tales we read I think this one is my favorite. Yes it is ironic and yes it is witty but what I loved the most about it is how it makes fun of religion by making a sort of black humor parody of a biblical story. From all the Bible stories I have read (two or maybe three… maybe) I get the sense that they all go in chronological order, in third person and they all have a message at the end. The story talks about three guys that try to trick each other and two of the end up dead from the use of gambling, drinking and swearing (ok, they don’t die from it but it’s part of irony). The Pardoner has already confessed that his only interest in preaching is money an that he sells fake relics by the time he start to tell the story and goes on to tell a PG 13 story with rather ambiguous ending.
The more-than-flawed character is a part of the mocking himself by being the complete opposite of the morally correct holy man we expect to see preaching for the love of God in church. The story then ends up being completely inappropriate contrasting from the typical characters like seeds and sheep and to add the cherry on top he ends it with a rather flawed message since the third guy did get the entire pile of gold in the end…
I don’t know what to think. The story is not a fairy tale but at the same time it does turn out to feel more real to the reader and less like an unrealistic romance.

The Slacker's Tale

“As much as I am blesses with wits and mon’,
I am by far the least favourite son.
Just because I lack the inspiration,
And avoid the slightest transpiration,
It does not mean that I am doing wrong,
You’re just jealous I enjoy all day long.
I wear the same outfit for three days straight,
And after a meal I won’t wash my plate.
I rarely shower, but what do you care?
It’s my own body; it’s part of my flair.
I’m a pro, videogames are my career,
I’ve got the skills and I’ve got the gear.
I’m no weight-lifter but I eat well,
And by “well” I mean plenty, I’m a spell
Come get me ladies, got room for more babes,
I enchant them with my looks and my grace,
…And my photo-shopped picture on Myspace”

The Black Widow's Act

As the Wife of Bath told her story, two word came to mind: black widow. The image the character of the Wife tries to give, is that of an independent, powerful and strong-minded woman but all I see is a greedy, manipulative and emotionally anesthetized hag. She obviously doesn't marry for emotional purposes (although so far into the book no marriage has been for the right reasons) but for money, self-assurance and control.

She brags about her rebelliousness regarding her virginity, that even though everybody else seems to think of it is a crucial matter, she doesn't give it any importance. The woman was definitely ahead of her time.

And for all men who complain that women are complicated I found it surprising how wise and eloquent the Wife is at summing it up for you fools: "We women have, if I shall not lie, in this matter a curious fantasy: note that whatever thing we may not easily have, we will cry all day and crave for it." (515-519). Amen.

I honestly don't know what to think of her, I believe she's a bluffer but at the same time she does demonstrate that her life experiences have brought her a lot of wisdom. Reading back on this blog I realized I was all over the place and didn't really establish an argument... which I usually do. But not this time.

Yo Miller

The contrast between the Knight's Tale and the Miller's Tale is an awful lot like the contrast you could pull from a love song and a rap song. The love song is much more poetic, it's an effort to make the target of the song know the author's feeling towards them to then be inspired to return them. On the other hand, the rap song's lyrics are more crude, and in a way more honest, they have an entirely different taste in compliments and the object is to brag rather than to charm.

Love song:"And I wonder when I sing along with you if everything could ever feel this real forever, if anything could ever be this good again" (Everlong- Foo Fighters)

Rap song:"Let me see your ***** baby pull that shirt up, lift that skirt up got ****** like a burger" (143-Bobby Brackins)

Knight's Tale: "That Emelye, who was fairer to be seen than is the lily upon its green stalk" (1035-1036)

Miller's Tale: "And thus lie Alison and Nicholas, In business of mirth and of pleasure"(3653-3654)

Bearded Beauty

I know it has been pointed out more than once how the perception of beauty has changed over the years, but I think it has been mostly applied to women. In this poem I
found a very detailed description of Palamon as he comes back with his army of men: "Black was his beard, and manly was his face"(2130), and is met by Arcite:
"His curly hair like rings was run (fashioned)"(2165).
This caught my attention since I would never consider a man handsome if he had a long beard and long, curly hair... quite the opposite, I'd probably think he looked like a hobo. The Knight's Tale is supposed to be about heroes, about handsome men fighting bravely to keep the damsel, I can only guess that back when it was written this was their version of the Twilight Saga (which is personally loathe).
If they were to make this appealing for the modern generations, Palmon and Arcite would have to shave, cut their hair, and completely change their wardrobe, not to mention they wouldn't even be battling on horses in the first place.

Back to my cheese allergies

Funny how this could have been the most creative piece during its time time, I mean, two guys fighting over a girl? "Who's ever heard of that before?"

Nowadays this scene just seems so cheeesy and is used only by writers with no creativity who need something for "On today's episode of 90210..."

I blame my lack of interest in romantic stories on the fact that every single one of them seems like a carbon copy of something else and nobody can come up with new ways for characters to find their soul-mate (or not).

If there is one trait that I share with my friend Anastacia* is that we can't take a movie seriously, whether it is suspense, gore, drama or romance, we always end up tearing it down to pieces and making fun of the script every chance we get. Just the other day I was looking through my old movies with Anastacia and we came across my Disney collection so we just HAD to feed it to [a very dusty] VHS (I can't believe I just almost typed HIV) and The Little Mermaid was first in line. We kept laughing and giggling (especially during the "dramatic" bits) unaware that Mufasa* was eavesdropping. Once the movie was over Mufasa handed me a copy of a very old, yellowish original version of The Little Mermaid and upon reading [googling] the ending I discovered it was not half bad.
Turns out Ariel's love is unrequited and she turns to sea foam while the prince marries some other floozie.
see?
original
I like it.
PS: is it just me or does anyone else think it's ridiculous that Emelye has absolutely no say in this?



*I changed her/his name for privacy purposes

'Migrations' By Dorian Merina

The poem describes the anticipation the European passengers feel as they get closer to the indies, the riches they they'll find there and the natives they will meet.
The sentence "On the boats come the blood" keeps repeating itself throughout the poem, and I found it interesting that the second I read it I could already think of two meanings for it. The "blood" could mean the violence, torture and pain that the Europeans would bring to the natives in the Americas, but it could also refer to how the races would come together and their blood would mix to create mulatos, mestizos, zambos and so on.
Overall the poem is very sad and it speaks form the eyes of someone who doesn't know what will happen next, but all those of us who read this part of history and know how it will turn out cringe at the thought of the boats gently rocking towards the New World.

Oatmeal

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