extemporally

it's a harsh realm, don't abandon me

Fri, 18 May 2012 06:43:03 GMT

THE YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL MEME

my thread here

400 words left to the last essay of my two-week library bender. I am working in bed and my brain feels like mush, but that is all right because soon it will be DONE and I will be free. Share some love, guys? ♥

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they don't know nothing about redemption, they don't know nothing about recovery

Thu, 10 May 2012 14:19:03 GMT

Maybe this is better on Tumblr, and maybe I'm not a "real" fan (before yesterday the only song of theirs I'd known, and loved, was Baby I'm An Anarchist), but I want this here -

I have spent the last 24 hours on and off alternately beaming and tearing up. You brave, brave soul. ♥

Context
Thrash Unreal

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"What are your favourite flavours?" is actually a question I take very seriously

Sat, 05 May 2012 13:42:01 GMT

( pasta with five different kinds of veg )

ALSO HELEN CAME TO VISIT AND WE HAD PANCAKES

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[film review] Winter's Bone

Tue, 01 May 2012 14:51:42 GMT

(I know I'm posting a lot lately... sorry. Bear with it, and I promise I'll pipe down once I'm well enough to be up and about doing Actual People Things again!)

So, the Cherwell! I have mixed feelings about the Cherwell. In my opinion, it is a perfectly average student publication with some perfectly awful writing. That's what happens when you have students writing towards a deadline, and that's not even for their degree. Added to which, that awful (student) journo tendency to believe earnestly that Every Situation Has Two Sides To It (And Only Two Sides), Ever, and sometimes stomach-turning moral equivalence is the result, with extra doses of uneven irony. On the other hand, look at the list of past contributors! Evelyn Waugh! W.H. Auden! Graham Greene! It is an embarrassing habit of mine, to go weak at the knees at such dead white male prestige. ~~Shut up there's a reason I go here.~~

Anyway, that needlessly long ramble was to say that Sometimes I write for it, and Sometimes I get published. Seeing your name in print is endlessly satisfying. And sometimes, I do not get published, and since the world does not exactly have a black-market level demand for reviews of Winter's Bone, though they should, I am posting my rejected (the sub-editor didn't even get back to me, How Rude!) piece here.

And the thing is. I have seen it three times, okay? That is how much I love Winter's Bone. I don't even know that I am particularly critical here. But it is a wonderful film, and Jennifer Lawrence is prodigious in it, and here is my clumsy, inarticulate attempt to explain why:

( Winter's Bone )

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poetry month day 30

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:46:13 GMT

This one is stolen from laiqualaurelote.

Ghazal of Winter

for C

Outside the homeless ask our help in all their languages;
The words disperse like witches' ashes.

Your nights are filled with arsonists and lonely politicians,
Charred cities drowned in posters like curling skin.

What will survive of this is words and stardust.
At customs they found nothing hidden in the bronze god.

Six seeds can trap the underworld's season.
Ignorant of spring, the snowflakes kiss and pass.

Each morning brings two sets of dreams, the summoned and the lost.
Every other space I learn to halve with you

As days slide away like streetcars
Along steel networks planned by neither of us.

- Teng Qianxi

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poetry month day 29

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 17:15:56 GMT

Gigolo

Pocket watch, I tick well.
The streets are lizardly crevices
Sheer-sided, with holes where to hide.
It is best to meet in a cul-de-sac,

A palace of velvet
With windows of mirrors.
There one is safe,
There are no family photographs,

No rings through the nose, no cries.
Bright fish hooks, the smiles of women
Gulp at my bulk
And I, in my snazzy blacks,

Mill a litter of breasts like jellyfish.
To nourish
The cellos of moans I eat eggs --
Eggs and fish, the essentials,

The aphrodisiac squid.
My mouth sags,
The mouth of Christ
When my engine reaches the end of it.

The tattle of my
Gold joints, my way of turning
Bitches to ripples of silver
Rolls out a carpet, a hush.

And there is no end, no end of it.
I shall never grow old. New oysters
Shriek in the sea and I
Glitter like Fontainebleu

Gratified,
All the fall of water an eye
Over whose pool I tenderly
Lean and see me.

- Sylvia Plath

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ahh! it's nearly the end of poetry month!

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 15:29:22 GMT

have not posted anywhere near enough poetry. But have this one:

Who Said It Was Simple

There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear.
Sitting in Nedicks
the women rally before they march
discussing the problematic girls
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes
a waiting brother to serve them first
and the ladies neither notice nor reject
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.
But I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see causes in color
as well as sex

and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations.

- Audre Lorde

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#43 - 45: feministy readings of books about women

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 12:56:07 GMT

Today instead of doing my work I have been reading Rosemary's Baby. This means that when I go to the ball (that's right: a BALL. I am excited to wear my hotass dress!) tonight I will have to drink in moderation so I can not wake up with a hangover and make up the work tomorrow. I HAVE MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT THIS...

The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides.

( Eh. )

Empress: A Novel, by Shan Sa.

( lacking. )

Rosemary's Baby, by Ira Levin.

( good. )

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my - my second post about 1D in two days D:

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 07:53:22 GMT

What in the WORLD.

Like this is the most self-indulgent thing ever, but all I really want is girl!Zayn where her tendency to date older men* is like this mildly self-destructive thing where she's just suuuuuper into people who are more ~experienced~ than her, not just sexually, but in every other way. That stops pretty soon as soon as she goes out with [insert 25 y.o. pop star who has his life organised by his spin machine], and [rando record executive who says things like, "Brunch is an experience."] and it would be this strange period of growing self-awareness where she does things like get bored during sex, omg, like that scene in Caitlin Moran's book

AND THEN SHE GOES OUT WITH SOMEONE ELSE (Liam? Selena Gomez??*) idk

* I know nothing about One Direction okay, only that Zayn dated - is still dating? - an older woman or something. Or maybe that's someone else. WHATEVER WHATEVER
** Selena Gomez is in here because she was cute in that Call Me Maybe video and also Justin Bieber was like "hurrr I'm going to do college the right way" wtaf

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request for porn

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:35:52 GMT

So I still can't even tell apart One Direction (and this is not, you know, a cry for help - I know where the primer posts are!), except for Zayn, but I would read girl!Zayn being eaten out. Either that or Zayn eating out a girl.

... Internet I'm not even into One Direction but please won't you make this happen ;_______;

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Embarrassingly heartfelt post on seeing EUROPE'S PREMIER BOWIE TRIBUTE BAND live:

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 23:08:16 GMT

When we all got up and danced and sang along with the people on stage who love David Bowie so much they have made it their actual career to be him, though not exactly, I thought: this is the exact epitome of fandom. This is it: letting it sweep you away despite (because of!) the cheesiness, and knowing every single word to every goddamn song and letting the riffs come and come at you. And participating in an extended in-joke, an exercise in the best sort of earnest irony. It must be so strange being in a tribute band.

I kicked my shoes off and danced and danced and danced. The glitter on them came off anyway.

PS. Not that I'm saying it was a perfect show - the lead singer will never approach the perfection of Lindsay Kemp's original choreography, the vocals were muddy and the most recognisable thing in the end were Bowie's riffs, but the dancing made up for it. Exam tomorrow, la!

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more poetry month

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:47:21 GMT

Why Can't We

leave Buddha alone? We make Buddha ride an elephant like the way a village boy rides on a man’s shoulder, and we let Buddha run and play, then make him cry, and we make him couple blissfully with a buttery woman and call it Tantra, but then we make him smile by himself in emptiness, make him sit, lie down, make him be born from the waist, then teach him how to walk right away, and we question him when he lies down to sleep You said this and that didn’t you? and we braid his fingers, cut off his nose and swallow it down with water, then dress him in gold, but then we cut his throat and sell his head at a store in Insadong, and we lock him up inside a cave on top of a mountain, and as if that weren’t enough we keep him inside a rock, starve him, paint his skin gold so that he can’t even breathe, have him stand far away on top of a mountain and caress him slowly as we approach him by boat, and beneath his feet we beg him to beat us up. Why can’t we leave him alone? We build a house on a cliff overlooking a blue river and lock him up, and a bunch of us go together to gawk at him. We pummel him, crush him, and push him over, then we come home and write a letter of apology in blood from our pierced fingers, and we pull his teeth and divide them up into numerous pouches and give them out to the whole world, and why do we go near him and bow on our knees till they are raw and look once into his eyes then return home with our downcast faces?

- Kim Hyesoon

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you can take this as a post for poetry month

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:20:06 GMT

or a reason why I haven't been posting for Poetry Month, snap!

Transformation

I haven’t written a single poem
in months.
I’ve lived humbly, reading the paper,
pondering the riddle of power
and the reasons for obedience.
I’ve watched sunsets
(crimson, anxious),
I’ve heard the birds grow quiet
… and night’s muteness.
I’ve seen sunflowers dangling
their heads at dusk, as if a careless hangman
had gone strolling through the gardens.
September’s sweet dust gathered
on the windowsill and lizards
hid in the bends of walls.
I’ve taken long walks,
craving one thing only:
lightning,
transformation,
you.

- Adam Zagajewski

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flyby

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 21:12:08 GMT

You know what you should do? You should go OVER HERE and prompt and fill on this goddamn HAPPY CUNNILINGUS DAY post, is what you should do.

(I have prompted, though not filled. Entirely too many embarrassing Z Berg/Brie Larson requests, although it is not even my fault, I am entirely too obsessed with the new video. THEY MAKE PANCAKES AND TAKE BATHS TOGETHER... like... that is actually a thing.)

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When I'm drunk, I sing; When I feel wild, I dance; When I sober up, I stop.

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 08:22:33 GMT

Proof that going to university on a 8-week term drives you crazy: negative-first week restlessness. I am back in Oxford and THERE IS NOBODY AROUND... Except for the flatmate that stood me up for lunch for her boyfriend and hadn't bothered to tell me beforehand, but whatever. The point is: slowly being driven crazy through solitude, abandonment issues, and work guilt. Always the work guilt. :(

On the bright side, I have never seen so many movies in such a short period of time in my life. I make it a point to never see movies during term time because there are so many other things I could be doing... peering at a screen you can do anywhere! Over the past couple of days I've seen Winter's Bone (ohhhh lord. If you ever remotely enjoyed Jennifer Lawrence's performance in THG, you NEED to see Winter's Bone yesterday. It's just a really gorgeous film, and Jennifer Lawrence's performance is wonderful. I'm not surprised she got nominated for an Oscar for it - I haven't seen The Blind Side, and I'm unlikely to, but she should have won instead of Sandra Bullock, whose movies I've never really enjoyed), Zombieland (funny, but nothing will convince me that Jesse Eisenberg wasn't essentially playing himself), and The Artist (a masterpiece, or overhyped? probably both). The last I saw at the Ultimate Picture Palace, which is like a century old and awesome for that reason. Also, I went running yesterday! Maybe I should make that a regular habit, or something.

Also, I read some books.

The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath.

( It's pretty hard not to read this autobiographically. )

Master Tung's Western Chamber Romance, trans. Li-li Ch'en.

( I read the English translation, to my eternal shame. )

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Sat, 07 Apr 2012 05:44:55 GMT

I watched Titanic, which was the first film I ever remember watching in the cinema (it seems unlikely, doesn't it, I'm sure most people watched their first movie in a cinema before they were five, but then again my parents were big believers in the fact that you shouldn't bring your children into a public space where they're expected to remain quiet unless you're sure they can do it), last night. In 3D - my first time, too! The 3D experience was cool, especially when they did exterior shots of the ship, but a little pointless when they were filming indoor scenes (HERE IS MY HAND, IT IS SO MUCH FURTHER FOREGROUND THAN THE REST OF MY BODY). Also, I cried tons, what's up with that! I don't think I'd seen it in full in over a decade, and it is actually terrifying how much of my latent psyche was probably affected by this movie. Like I unironically think that THAT IS WHAT AN ACTUAL ROMANCE SHOULD BE Jaaaaaaaaaaack, I'm flying. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet have tons of chemistry, I never quite understood what this chemistry thing was, but they have SO MUCH CHEMISTRY.

So yes. Cried tons, audience applauded at the end, and the couple some rows away started making out. I have Celine Dion stuck in my head and it's not even really irritating me because it's playing out over my flashbacks of Leo & Kate kissing on the deck with the sun setting. FEEL FREE TO MOCK ME FOREVER NOW.

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#36-40: One-paragrah book reviews!

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 06:39:14 GMT

How Italian Food Conquered the World, by John F Mariani.

Solid book - if you're interested in Italian-American history and the history of food, you might want to pick this up! I felt like this could have been shorter, in general, but that's not a debilitating flaw. This was also refreshing, in the sense that most books about food tend to get a little food porn-y, and this was just... history.

Dicey's Song, by Cynthia Voigt.

Annnd I've finished reading the Tillerman cycle. Reading Dicey's Song in the wake of having read all the others is weird, because you meet Mina and Jeff and everyone else knowing what's going elsewhere, and it's a little bit strange to see them from Dicey's POV? Speaking of which, I am quite fond of Dicey's POV in the sense that I feel like her default face is :|, which is delightful. Archetype-y maybe, but also AWESOME.

Evil Under the Sun, by Agatha Christie.

( It is so hard to review Agatha Christie novels, because she writes with remarkable consistency. Thoughts on gender and shit! )

Mrs McGinty's Dead, by Agatha Christie.

UGHHHH PERFECT I feel like I can't even evaluate Agatha Christie novels properly, every time I go away being like goddamn! she got me, again. There's plenty of satirical content in here too - from the tabloids, which turn out to be that really intriguing hybrid of both valid clue and red herring (urgh, I should have read through that properly, I feel like I've let down my high school teachers who trained me in CRITICAL THINKING and such) and the adaptation of Ariadne Oliver's play. Mm!

Clouds of Witness, by Dorothy L. Sayers.

( extremely sparse spoilers. )

In other MEDIA: I HAVE BEEN CONSUMING IT news, I have watched the first three episodes of Downton Abbey. My reaction: this is okay, but not brilliantly written. They're all such snobs! We're.. meant to enjoy that or something? And the first two episodes of Game of Thrones. Reaction: God, that is not the best-written book, and it routinely makes me uncomfortable in its portrayal of race and hegemony (all the THOUGHTS about how a lot of media these days seem to be so fascinated by sending 'here is the way people thought back then, they obviously had different values, as a society' RACIST SEXIST HOMOPHOBIC CONTENT 'enjoy the show!!' when it's doubtful, really, how radically society has changed tl;dr I am so sick of ironic isms) but also, that is one sumptuously-produced show, maybe I'm just noticing that because my downloads are pretty high-definition. I've also just finished the last season of Skins. God, when it is a badly-written show, it is badly-written. I wouldn't have stuck with it, except that Season 5 was amazing, god damn it!

PS. Re Downton Abbey - I'm not a monster, I still cried when Bates was asked to come back.

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#35: Orientalism

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 03:08:07 GMT

Orientalism, by Edward Said.

( Loved this. Also, I start by talking about oil paintings. Fun stuff. )

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#34

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 12:46:52 GMT

I'm now half an hour into Boy A. It's based on the Venables case - which has the dubious honour of being on my reading lists for both criminal and admin law. I don't think I can watch any further, just because... I can't. That's a pity - Andrew Garfield's performance looks really impressive. People who've watched it: how upsetting does it get, exactly?

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua.

( The parenting memoir that was excerpted in the WSJ and got all the controversy. Ambivalent! Cue InterestingTM thoughts about race and ethnicity )

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media: sometimes I consume it!

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 07:42:10 GMT

Things I've been doing over the past few days: rereading ALL THE VICTORIAN LITERATURE. I jest - just Jane Eyre, which kind of surprised me with how racist it was, I definitely had not picked up on it the first time I read it but then again the first time I read it I was like twelve, and I may or may not have a lot of feelings with the way it feels nearly deliberate, the way Jane engages in racial othering in order to displace her own marginalisation and claim a place in her world. Maybe I'm just projecting what I know about early first-wave feminism (which is not to say that that distressing tendency is entirely exclusive to it, um) onto Charlotte Bronte's poor text? Hopefully not!

The other thing I've been rereading is Great Expectations - well, the first two-thirds. I love that book so much, it nearly makes me wish I knew more about psychoanalytic theory (that's saying a lot, given that I... do not have the greatest impression of it) so I could apply that. Really loving the insistent niggling of What was it? that bites at Pip so towards the end of Part 2, everyone loves a good mystery. Also the excitement shown by Mrs Joe in the face of violence, her own demonstrated violence, and the fact that she is eventually culled (physically and mentally) by violence, and the 'eagerness' she shows towards Orlick post the attack. (And obviously the parallel baptism of violence that Estella undergoes &c &c.) DICKENS, THAT IS SOME FUCKED UP SHIT.

Yelling at Victorian novelists for being sexist/racist/etc is obviously the most productive use of one's time.

---

I don't think I ever mentioned this, but on the plane ride home, in addition to completely neglecting the work I promised myself I'd do, I watched Qiu Jin. The article I linked to doesn't quite demonstrate the full extent of her bamfiness: she founded a women's poetry journal! abandoned her family to go study in Japan! wore Western male dress! ---> the last bit is the most interesting, given that (like all left-wing revolutionaries in her post-Opium War days) she was also anti-Western imperialism. Was she attempting to signify that Western men had the most power in the Chinese society she knew and thus attempting to reclaim that power via her body as site of rebellion? WE'LL NEVER KNOW. Anyway I just wanted to talk to that and also talk about an awesome lady.

Man, her poetry is so great, too. If I'd been exposed to her stuff at school it's possible I would have been so much more invested in class.

---

Also, I really want to watch Michelle Yeoh's The Lady. I think it's still playing here! I could totally go with my mother and she could pay! <--- bad daughter

---

HELLO INTERNET. I have three or four books to review, but I'm not rn because my attention span is too short, also I promised myself that I'd finish H.L.A. Hart's Punishment & Responsibility today so I don't have that much time. Mostly I'm kind of bored.

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May the odds be ever in your favour!

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:59:22 GMT

I watched The Hunger Games today. I mostly liked it!

( spoilers, obv )

Fever. Jet lag. These two things do not make for a) the best reviews b) most coherent readings of Orientalism :(

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#26 - #33: hasty pudding book reviews!

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 05:19:52 GMT

Hi! It's 6 AM and I haven't slept all night, since I have a flight to get on at 11 today. Today I went to the British Museum for part of it and read on the steps there, in the sunshine:

Discipline & Punish, by Michel Foucault.

( Really what does one say about classic texts? Well, I liked it...? )

Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, by Jonathan Culler.

In our last tutorial of term my tutor referred to short introductions of [whatever field] as 'idiosyncratic & prescriptive'. Goddamn it: how does it take her like three words to sum up like three paragraphs' worth of my rambling re: my unease about this sort of thing?

Nevertheless, I can't stay away from these Very Short Introductions, and this was fairly competent. It did annoy me, though, that Culler organised the chapters according to 'what sort of questions does literary theory seek to answer?' rather than 'what sort of ideas have literary theorists found fashionable in the last handful of decades'? Probably the former is a more thoughtful way of approaching the introduction, but really that tends to leave you with a longer reading list and prevents you from namedropping theorists quite as readily as the latter would facilitate, and really isn't that at least 70% of the reason most people pick up these books anyway?

Gather Together in My Name, by Maya Angelou.

( yes )

Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, by Maya Angelou.

A bit more focused this time round, though it really pretty much is just careertalk and her getting to travel to amazing places, which can be either incredibly interesting or invariably dull depending on your perspective. I did love the bits about her son though! /insightful commentary

Gentlemen of the Road, by Michael Chabon.

( originally titled, according to Chabon, 'Jews With Swords' )

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins.

( Saw this in Waterstones and couldn't resist because I really want to watch the movie and not be behind on the pop culture curve for once )

Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins.

( spoilers, no quotes )

Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins.

( Still pretty good! But my least favourite. I don't know, I was getting pretty tired by the end of this race through the series. )

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okay i will actually shut up now

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 01:13:23 GMT

but this poem is so perfect it actually brings tears to my eyes (metaphorically).

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essay due in three hours oh god

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 06:55:32 GMT

Hello everyone I'm on the love meme that's going on here and you wanna say hi of course you wanna say hi. ♥

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#20 - 24

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 21:41:21 GMT

Thirsty, by Dionne Brand.

( Thirty-three linked poems about the city. )

The Real Me Is Thin, by Arabella Weir.

Pretty good book about eating issues and gender - I felt that there was a bit too much exposition, none of it very artful, in this book, which is possibly the most heartless, pointless criticism you could make. NEVERTHELESS. If we still gave out grades for books, I'd give it a flat B. No, wait, a B minus. Or a B.

/insightful commentary.

The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction, by Helen Graham.

( Pretty brilliant. )

Also: are there any other good books on the Spanish Civil War, especially re: the kind of things I outline here (gender/race/sexuality in the Civil War, and discourses of violence/institutionalisation, and the legacy of the War? I have on the tangible to-read pile Preston's (who seems to have published a lot on the topic) Comrades!: Portraits From the Spanish Civil War, and am probably going to reread Orwell's Homage to Catalonia and understand it a lot more, but if any of you are even remotely familiar with the topic, I would definitely appreciate recs.

Ways of Seeing, by John Berger.

I'm frustrated with everything in LIFE right now and also have just finished reading Rawls' A Theory of Justice, which I won't be reviewing here. Book review time!

( Brilliant. It's kind of hard to disagree with John Berger. )

Don't Tell Alfred, by Nancy Mitford.

Blaaargh it's probably because I read this in the lead up to a half-hour long freakout but I found absolutely no interest in this whatsoever and found one of the subplots vaguely racist. There were really only two moments I enjoyed, but other than that I have no feelings about this book except annoyed indifference.

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