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My fiancée is a talented individual.
Frank can kill you with his brain.
Jan. 29th, 2008 02:34 pm![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
redheaded_itch: Gerard / JayneThere is not enough "WTF?" in the world, man.
ishidashipper: ... As in "Jayne from Firefly"? The hero of Canton? The man they call Jayne?Well. At least the reason Gee loves him ain't hard to explain.
Dear stupid, stupid white people:
When someone says "Hey, I think that's racist," here's what you do:
You sit the fuck down, you shut the fuck up, and you listen.
You don't give them a pat on the head, say "But it's not racist, you silly little reactionary!", then get all huffy when they call you out on it.
Seriously, what's wrong with you?,
Me
When someone says "Hey, I think that's racist," here's what you do:
You sit the fuck down, you shut the fuck up, and you listen.
You don't give them a pat on the head, say "But it's not racist, you silly little reactionary!", then get all huffy when they call you out on it.
Seriously, what's wrong with you?,
Me
On Lolita.
Jul. 7th, 2007 11:11 pm"I felt really sorry for Humbert. Lolita seduced him!"
Before I ever read Lolita I used to hear people say this a lot. Since I hadn't read the book, it kind of went in one ear and out the other. I knew what the book was about, of course- I don't think there're many people who don't know what Lolita is about- but I thought that maybe I'd gotten it wrong. Maybe there was some sort of dynamic I didn't understand. Or maybe Dolores was secretly a forty-year-old Russian prison guard posing as a little girl and the book was really a jab by Nabokov at international communism.
Or maybe I was just more immune to bullshit back then.
Having read the book this year- yeah, it took me this long- and wow, those people sure were full of it, eh?
Humbert Humbert- quite aside from being an unreliable narrator- is not a nice guy. Not even a little. It's weird that I feel like I need to say that about a guy who marries one woman because she looks and acts like a prepubescent girl, marries another woman to gain access to her prepubescent daughter (all the while ripping this woman to pieces in his own mind out of some misplaced superiority complex), kidnaps and rapes said daughter, and drags her around the country after telling her that her mother is in the hospital, but apparently this all adds up to "poor innocent adult man seduced by dastardly twelve-year-old."
Buying sleeping pills so you can drug your stepdaughter and rape her for six hours does not qualify as "seduced." Neither does justifying your attraction to underage girls by telling yourself they're not really children at all, but demonic temptresses in the form of twelve-year-olds.
The weird thing is, even Humbert doesn't try to argue that Lo seduced him. In fact, he usually sets himself up as the active party, and even (sort of) acknowledges that he's hurting her- although, being Humbert, he goes about it in a particularly florid, patronizing way:
"There was the day, during our first trip- our first circle of paradise- when in order to enjoy my phantasms in peace I firmly decided to ignore what I could not help perceiving, the fact that I was to her not a boy friend, not a glamour man, not a pal, not even a person at all, but just two eyes and a foot of engorged brawn- to mention only mentionable matters. There was the day when having withdrawn the functional promise I had made her on the eve (whatever she had set her funny little heart on- a roller rink with some special plastic floor or a movie matinee to which she wanted to go alone), I happened to glimpse from the bathroom, through a chance combination of mirror aslant and door ajar, a look on her face... that look I cannot exactly describe... an expression of helplessness so perfect that it seemed to grade into one of rather comfortable inanity just because this was the very limit of injustice and frustration- and every limit presupposes something beyond it- hence the neutral illumination." (283)
He mentions it again a few pages later:
"But the awful point of the whole argument was this. It had become gradually clear to my conventional Lolita during our singular and bestial cohabitation that even the most miserable of family lives was better than the parody of incest, which, in the long run, was the best I could offer the waif." (287)
Yeah, Lo had a crush on Humbert. Yeah, she'd experimented with other kids her own age. Yeah, she seems to be in control the first time they had sex- that is, after Humbert fed her what he thought were sleeping pills and tried to rape her in her sleep. She even uses her influence over him to get things she wants, because she is helpless and wants to gain some sort of control over her life, and to do that she needs to use the means at hand.
This does not mean she seduced him. You know, due to that whole "asswipe child molester" thing.
Before I ever read Lolita I used to hear people say this a lot. Since I hadn't read the book, it kind of went in one ear and out the other. I knew what the book was about, of course- I don't think there're many people who don't know what Lolita is about- but I thought that maybe I'd gotten it wrong. Maybe there was some sort of dynamic I didn't understand. Or maybe Dolores was secretly a forty-year-old Russian prison guard posing as a little girl and the book was really a jab by Nabokov at international communism.
Or maybe I was just more immune to bullshit back then.
Having read the book this year- yeah, it took me this long- and wow, those people sure were full of it, eh?
Humbert Humbert- quite aside from being an unreliable narrator- is not a nice guy. Not even a little. It's weird that I feel like I need to say that about a guy who marries one woman because she looks and acts like a prepubescent girl, marries another woman to gain access to her prepubescent daughter (all the while ripping this woman to pieces in his own mind out of some misplaced superiority complex), kidnaps and rapes said daughter, and drags her around the country after telling her that her mother is in the hospital, but apparently this all adds up to "poor innocent adult man seduced by dastardly twelve-year-old."
Buying sleeping pills so you can drug your stepdaughter and rape her for six hours does not qualify as "seduced." Neither does justifying your attraction to underage girls by telling yourself they're not really children at all, but demonic temptresses in the form of twelve-year-olds.
The weird thing is, even Humbert doesn't try to argue that Lo seduced him. In fact, he usually sets himself up as the active party, and even (sort of) acknowledges that he's hurting her- although, being Humbert, he goes about it in a particularly florid, patronizing way:
"There was the day, during our first trip- our first circle of paradise- when in order to enjoy my phantasms in peace I firmly decided to ignore what I could not help perceiving, the fact that I was to her not a boy friend, not a glamour man, not a pal, not even a person at all, but just two eyes and a foot of engorged brawn- to mention only mentionable matters. There was the day when having withdrawn the functional promise I had made her on the eve (whatever she had set her funny little heart on- a roller rink with some special plastic floor or a movie matinee to which she wanted to go alone), I happened to glimpse from the bathroom, through a chance combination of mirror aslant and door ajar, a look on her face... that look I cannot exactly describe... an expression of helplessness so perfect that it seemed to grade into one of rather comfortable inanity just because this was the very limit of injustice and frustration- and every limit presupposes something beyond it- hence the neutral illumination." (283)
He mentions it again a few pages later:
"But the awful point of the whole argument was this. It had become gradually clear to my conventional Lolita during our singular and bestial cohabitation that even the most miserable of family lives was better than the parody of incest, which, in the long run, was the best I could offer the waif." (287)
Yeah, Lo had a crush on Humbert. Yeah, she'd experimented with other kids her own age. Yeah, she seems to be in control the first time they had sex- that is, after Humbert fed her what he thought were sleeping pills and tried to rape her in her sleep. She even uses her influence over him to get things she wants, because she is helpless and wants to gain some sort of control over her life, and to do that she needs to use the means at hand.
This does not mean she seduced him. You know, due to that whole "asswipe child molester" thing.
This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.
Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.
- "Variations on the Word Love", by Margaret Atwood
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.
Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.
- "Variations on the Word Love", by Margaret Atwood
Courtesy of coppertone.
Oct. 19th, 2006 04:00 amFrothy-mix-of-lube-and-fecal-matter compares Iraq to LotR.
I wonder if he ships Frodo/Sam?
In an interview with the editorial board of the Bucks County Courier Times, embattled Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has equated the war in Iraq with J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings." According to the paper, Santorum said that the United States has avoided terrorist attacks at home over the past five years because the "Eye of Mordor" has been focused on Iraq instead.
"As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else," Santorum said. "It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States."
I wonder if he ships Frodo/Sam?
Mr. Grant, bustling in: Okay, guys. Here's the thing. I was thinkin' about the story we were talkin' about last class, about Laura Secord and her cow, and I got to thinkin'... wouldn't that be a great name for a band?
Then he turns on the overhead, where we can read the following:
Laura Secord and the Cows- "I Don't Want No Udder"
When you're not around
I'm a boat without a rudda
Why don't you come around
We can talk to one anudda
Baby you're so sweet
You remind me of my mudda
You're the only one I need
I don't want no udder
MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
[Instrumental Break]
[Chorus]
Mr. Grant, beaming: Eh? Isn't that a great name for an indie band? I figure it'll sound like a mix between R.E.M. and 50 Cent!
And then he rapped the entire thing. Including the moo.
Then he turns on the overhead, where we can read the following:
Laura Secord and the Cows- "I Don't Want No Udder"
When you're not around
I'm a boat without a rudda
Why don't you come around
We can talk to one anudda
Baby you're so sweet
You remind me of my mudda
You're the only one I need
I don't want no udder
MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
[Instrumental Break]
[Chorus]
Mr. Grant, beaming: Eh? Isn't that a great name for an indie band? I figure it'll sound like a mix between R.E.M. and 50 Cent!
And then he rapped the entire thing. Including the moo.