Thothmuffin
Don't get any crumbs on the scale of judgement.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Out with the old
I conquered some terrible writing anxiety today and got started on finishing a project so old it was starting to fester. Change of venue did me good; I found the best coffeeshop ever for writing. I liked it so much I went all Trust, Concern, and Respect and left my laptop lying around while I went to the bathroom. . .it was a heavily college-infested coffee shop so I guess it threw me back to my days as a Quaker.
I was sitting across from a nice young man who looked like he desperately wanted to make conversation with the girl sitting next to him, but, thwarted by her immediate insertion of her minipod headphones, was left to the cold comforts of his graphing calculator. Then I went home and had a muffin. <3
Goal for TM: No new projects until the old one is finished!!
I was sitting across from a nice young man who looked like he desperately wanted to make conversation with the girl sitting next to him, but, thwarted by her immediate insertion of her minipod headphones, was left to the cold comforts of his graphing calculator. Then I went home and had a muffin. <3
Goal for TM: No new projects until the old one is finished!!
Saturday, March 26, 2005
I'd buy that for $1
Yesterday was Purim and I craved hamantaschen, those tricornered pastries with delightful fruit or figgy filling. I couldn't find them anywhere: not grocery stores, not bakeries, not even the big high-priced gourmet hippie market (HPGHM). I finally went to another HPGHM today and found them for the extortionate price of $1 each. I bought them out of stubbornness, but they weren't even that good. Just goes to show you can't have your hamantaschen and eat it too.
I'm not Jewish, but I am amazed by how not Jew-friendly this town is. Take, for example, my conversation with the Checkout Boy at the HPGHM of Hamantaschen.
TM: Do you know how hard it is to find hamantaschen in this town?!
Friend: Yeah, no kidding, these had better be good.
Checkout Boy: Huh, really?
CB: *prints receipt*
CB: *hands us hamantaschen*
CB: Have a happy easter!
TM: @_@
Then we went to the mall. You know those rubber bracelets that people wear to show that they're good people or raise awareness or whatever? [Live Strong, USO, etc]? Well, Hot Topic is offering black versions that say, I think, "Save the Music". On the attached card it says "Donate $1 to the Hot Topic fund." I thought this was highly amusing, but my friend and her LiveStrong bracelet didn't seem as excited. But as I noted to her, it's really all about whether you'd pay $1 for irony or not. I might, but I seem to find it for free everywhere. I think Hot Topic should change its slogan from "It's all about the music" to "It's all about the irony."
Also, I got the most amazing deal ever on an HP printer-scanner-faxer-copier (also makes julienne fries). It wasn't quite $1, but it'll be pretty close if I manage to remember to send in the rebate this time.
I'm not Jewish, but I am amazed by how not Jew-friendly this town is. Take, for example, my conversation with the Checkout Boy at the HPGHM of Hamantaschen.
TM: Do you know how hard it is to find hamantaschen in this town?!
Friend: Yeah, no kidding, these had better be good.
Checkout Boy: Huh, really?
CB: *prints receipt*
CB: *hands us hamantaschen*
CB: Have a happy easter!
TM: @_@
Then we went to the mall. You know those rubber bracelets that people wear to show that they're good people or raise awareness or whatever? [Live Strong, USO, etc]? Well, Hot Topic is offering black versions that say, I think, "Save the Music". On the attached card it says "Donate $1 to the Hot Topic fund." I thought this was highly amusing, but my friend and her LiveStrong bracelet didn't seem as excited. But as I noted to her, it's really all about whether you'd pay $1 for irony or not. I might, but I seem to find it for free everywhere. I think Hot Topic should change its slogan from "It's all about the music" to "It's all about the irony."
Also, I got the most amazing deal ever on an HP printer-scanner-faxer-copier (also makes julienne fries). It wasn't quite $1, but it'll be pretty close if I manage to remember to send in the rebate this time.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Spring has Sprung
Today has been chock full of rich and possibly unintentional double-entendre.
On the intentional side: Our local Feed & Grain store that sells baby poultry has hit on a fresh new marketing campaign that includes slogans such as "Pick up chicks here!" and "Chicks sold here: Peep! Peep!" What's next? "See our XXX-large chicks!" or "Come touch our chicks--so soft!"? Still, I find it delightfully cheeky.
Possibly unintentional: My adventures at the ATM. The machine accepted my card and my pin, but no matter how many different buttons I pushed after that, refused to proceed. I at least retracted my card and tried to insert it once more, at which point the machine's display flickered and changed to the message: "Sorry I am being serviced."
Well. Guess I know where I stand with *that* ATM. I'm not sure how I feel about the anthropomorphized ATM, though--it's a little too "FEED ME THE KITTEN."
On the intentional side: Our local Feed & Grain store that sells baby poultry has hit on a fresh new marketing campaign that includes slogans such as "Pick up chicks here!" and "Chicks sold here: Peep! Peep!" What's next? "See our XXX-large chicks!" or "Come touch our chicks--so soft!"? Still, I find it delightfully cheeky.
Possibly unintentional: My adventures at the ATM. The machine accepted my card and my pin, but no matter how many different buttons I pushed after that, refused to proceed. I at least retracted my card and tried to insert it once more, at which point the machine's display flickered and changed to the message: "Sorry I am being serviced."
Well. Guess I know where I stand with *that* ATM. I'm not sure how I feel about the anthropomorphized ATM, though--it's a little too "FEED ME THE KITTEN."
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
National Catch the F*ck Up Day
I'm naming today, March 16th, National Catch the F*ck Up Day, which I'm sure the FCC will approve of immediately. I do this because I forgot to celebrate both Pi Day (3/14) *and* the Aides of March (3/15) this year.
I've decided the 16th is a carefully planned lull so that you can realize that you have one last chance for celebration, and that tomorrow, March 17th, is St. Patrick's Day, for which I will at least hopefully remember to wear green. Although I don't dismiss the possibility of noshing on some bangers!
I've decided the 16th is a carefully planned lull so that you can realize that you have one last chance for celebration, and that tomorrow, March 17th, is St. Patrick's Day, for which I will at least hopefully remember to wear green. Although I don't dismiss the possibility of noshing on some bangers!
Monday, March 14, 2005
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
Dear Self,
Please do not read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy directly before going to bed. Ever. Again.
Thanks,
The Mgmt
P.S. Seriously, wtf were you thinking?
Please do not read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy directly before going to bed. Ever. Again.
Thanks,
The Mgmt
P.S. Seriously, wtf were you thinking?
Sunday, March 13, 2005
I'm a big dork...
...because now I want to go teach myself shorthand. Did you know I once memorized the Star Wars writing system so I could write secret notes with a friend in class in high school? Because I did. XD
Ganked from Fiore.
You are 'Gregg shorthand'. Originally designed to
enable people to write faster, it is also very
useful for writing things which one does not
want other people to read, inasmuch as almost
no one knows shorthand any more.
You know how important it is to do things
efficiently and on time. You also value your
privacy, and (unlike some people) you do not
pretend to be friends with just everyone; that
would be ridiculous. When you do make friends,
you take them seriously, and faithfully keep
what they confide in you to yourself.
Unfortunately, the work which you do (which is
very important, of course) sometimes keeps you
away from social activities, and you are often
lonely. Your problem is that Gregg shorthand
has been obsolete for a long time.
What obsolete skill are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Ganked from Fiore.
You are 'Gregg shorthand'. Originally designed to
enable people to write faster, it is also very
useful for writing things which one does not
want other people to read, inasmuch as almost
no one knows shorthand any more.
You know how important it is to do things
efficiently and on time. You also value your
privacy, and (unlike some people) you do not
pretend to be friends with just everyone; that
would be ridiculous. When you do make friends,
you take them seriously, and faithfully keep
what they confide in you to yourself.
Unfortunately, the work which you do (which is
very important, of course) sometimes keeps you
away from social activities, and you are often
lonely. Your problem is that Gregg shorthand
has been obsolete for a long time.
What obsolete skill are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Saturday, March 12, 2005
No Such Thing as Free Lunch
So I got the new A Perfect Circle Remix-CD-and-DVD (which has some pretty cool versions on it btw) at Best Buy today. As I was going to pay, the cashier boy told me that because I bought the CD, they were going to give me 8 free issues of Sports Illustrated or Entertainment Weekly. Since I know people who seem to get free issues of these magazines all the time, I said OK to EW.
Cashier Boy looked up my phone number and got my address and name, etc., and then he told me to swipe my credit card--at which point I thought I was paying for my CD. Then I read on the card-swiper thing that I was actually agreeing to continue buying the magazine after my free issues ran out, and authorizing the magazine to charge my credit card. >_< So I had Cashier Boy cancel the whole thing, and told him he should have mentioned that up front. He had the grace to look a little ashamed.
I'm one of those people who would forget to cancel online before I had to start paying money for the subscription, which is excatly why this is such an effective marketing tool. So watch out if you go to buy things from BB and they try to offer you free stuff.
Cashier Boy looked up my phone number and got my address and name, etc., and then he told me to swipe my credit card--at which point I thought I was paying for my CD. Then I read on the card-swiper thing that I was actually agreeing to continue buying the magazine after my free issues ran out, and authorizing the magazine to charge my credit card. >_< So I had Cashier Boy cancel the whole thing, and told him he should have mentioned that up front. He had the grace to look a little ashamed.
I'm one of those people who would forget to cancel online before I had to start paying money for the subscription, which is excatly why this is such an effective marketing tool. So watch out if you go to buy things from BB and they try to offer you free stuff.
Friday, March 11, 2005
The Law of Intelligence
This entry is going to be very long and possibly very boring and probably very confusing. I really don't have any amusing anecdotes or salacious tidbits, though, so I have to fall back on philosophy.
I think I've figured out why I don't believe in magic. This is a result of meditation on the twentieth, and last, axiom of magic that appears in the introduction to Bill Whitcomb's "The Magician's Companion: A Practical & Encyclopedic Guide to Magical & Religious Symbolism."
XX. Law of Intelligence:
At first glance, there seems to be a problem of tautology with this statement in the definition of "sufficiency." Perhaps this axiom would be better stated as:
"A pattern that acts intelligently when treated as an entity is a pattern of sufficient complexity to be termed intelligent."
This brings into better focus the words that must be defined for this axiom even to be argued: pattern, intelligent, and entity. Complexity, in my mind, sort of drops out; it is part of the definition of intelligence, and could even be replaced by that word. It also highlights the necessary distinction between action and being; for things are their names, their labels, in a magical system.
Pattern is the first word that must be defined. From my own experience and the axioms that preceded this one, I define pattern as "a collection of information whose properties can be predicted." A very complex pattern may seem entirely nonsensical, but that is only because we don't know enough about its workings and composition to accurately predict how it functions. Think weather, the cosmos, plate tectonics.
The thrust of the magical argument is that if you take a pattern of great complexity (plate tectonics, say) and treat it as an entity, it will react intelligently.
How do you treat something as an entity?
Entity could be interpreted as basically anything that exists, meaning anything that has an objective reality beyond just a set of causes and effects, a being beyond action. Gaia theory is an example of this. Instead of viewing the earth as a collection of molten rock, vegetation, salinated water, fertile dirt, sliding plates, creeping critters, etc., all of these things become merely the side-effects and attributes of an entity called the Earth. This is a useful, and oft-used, shortcut in natural language. Magical theory takes this farther: the entity of the Earth is seen as a pattern so complex, so incomprehensible, that certainly it must be intelligent.
Before I go on, let me provide my simplest definition yet: Intelligence is the ability to make choices.
Without either of us necessarily disagreeing with the truth of the 20th axiom, pagans and I have a very different view on the nature of the Earth. I do not believe the Earth has the ability to make choices. It cannot reason; it does not learn and apply knowledge to effect change. When parts of the Earth-pattern react, this reaction is not intelligence, nor is it even instinct.
Animal instinct may be considered a very low form of intelligence; for example, nerves send the brain a message in the form of pain to give a creature a warning that some necessary part of itself is being damaged. Pain encourages movement away from pain, though certainly anything capable of feeling pain is also capable of disregarding it, and choosing not to avoid it.
This discernment between "pain thing" and "safe thing" is so basic to humans that we no longer consider it a form of intelligence, but it is.
The Earth does not have this discernment. If you explode a nuclear bomb in a fault line, plate tectonics and physics are going to give you some spectacular consequences. Things are going to move around. There will be flattening, tsunamis, eruptions, and all manner of other excitement. But these reactions do not mean the Earth is angry. They do not mean the Earth is in pain. They mean that the laws of physics are still in effect, and nothing more. These after-affects are simply attributes of how physical matter interacts; they do not form part of an entity-process.
Why am I so mad about this? Because a Gaia-lover wrote an opinion piece about how maybe the southeast Asian tsunami was a vengeful reaction by a wronged and emotionally distressed Earth who resented the overcrowding on Her surface. What a callous and fundamentally irresponsible statement. Assigning moral values to plate tectonics helps no one and devalues the true, intelligent, human life that was destroyed by the simple, unintelligent, and most of all consistent reactions of matter against matter.
Just as I was recovering from the shock of reading this opinion professed seriously, another opinion letter followed, citing recent upswings in volcanic activity, flooding in certain parts of the US, and the aforementioned tsunami as evidence that God [in true 1.0 style] is wroth with the world.
Here we strike to the heart of my agnostic values: to say that God had a hand in the devastation resulting from plate tectonics is just as irresponsible, and equally absurd, as saying that the Earth chose to wreak such havoc Herself. Plate tectonics don't care about you. They just happen, because other things happened, and they can't decide not to happen.
I understand the impulse to ascribe intelligence to patterns we admire or fear. Humans are intelligent beings; when choice is taken from them, when they cannot react to save their own lives, existences, and intelligence, they prefer to believe that a higher intelligence had something to do with their defeat. No one wants to be undone by something that can't care about their destruction.
It is the height of ego to believe in God, to believe in the intelligence of unreasoning effects; and egoism has always been a large part of what makes us human. It is also part of what makes us great. Humanity does have such intelligence, and such power of belief, that anthropomorphizing the unintelligent can give us new and wildly creative tools to understand the complexity of great patterns. But this must be done with the utmost caution, and choice must never be ascribed where choice does not exist.
All students studying chemistry in high school say that atoms "want" to fill their shells with electrons because it makes them "happy"--this is a good shorthand for helping students begin to understand the fundamental principles of stability in atomic reactions. This sort of language persists even in the highest reaches of science, as when brain scientists, who deal with one of the most complex patterns we may ever study, fall back on endless common metaphors to attempt to explain what little we know about the workings of the brain.
But this means of discussion does not mean that atoms, or nerves, are making choices; it means simply that we can understand their effects because they resemble intelligent processes of choice that we undergo everyday. The difference is that humans can choose to go against the norms, but patterns and processes will always make the same "choice," which is in fact not a choice at all. Every time you drop a quarter, it falls--not because it chooses to fall, but because the physical patterns and forces we know as gravity are acting on it. Under typical quarter-dropping conditions, the quarter will always fall. Gravity never takes a vacation; the quarter never disobeys.
A true magician, who operated in a world where the 20th axiom of magic was true and valid, would see gravity as an entity, a pattern of sufficient complexity to be reasoned with intelligently. The magician would find a way to talk gravity into taking a little rest, offer gravity a bribe so it looks the other way for a second, or boost the quarter's self-esteem until, hey, maybe it decides it doesn't want to fall today.
Can any such magician exist in our world?
The only way I can find to redeem the 20th axiom is the concept that the force of human intelligence could be so strong that a human, by committing wholeheartedly to the intelligence of patterns, might discover in its human self a framework from which to subvert or alter those patterns, simply by refusing to believe in them as incontrovertible reactions and processes. Jesus comes to mind. But then I'd have to believe the Bible was a complete and accurate account of historical events. Haha.
I am no guru, no magician, and certainly no messiah. If it rained for forty days and forty nights and the waters rose to drown the people of the earth, I would be standing high on a mountaintop, shaking my fist at God and telling the LORD that I still didn't believe this was anything more than a freak weather pattern.
Yes, I do see the irony there. I would know the rain was a pattern devoid of intelligence, know that I could do nothing to alter it--but that would be a cold comfort, and perhaps at the cataclysmic end of my life, I would prefer to have something intelligent to yell at. It would certainly be easier to resign myself to my own defeat, to the utter subjugation of my ego, if it were effected by the choice of something ineffable and much worthier than myself.
But the bane of intelligence is not a higher intelligence: it is the uncaring juggernaut of cause and effect, the ceaseless, choiceless action-and-reaction that forms the universe as we know it. My one true comfort is that I know that, and it never can.
I think I've figured out why I don't believe in magic. This is a result of meditation on the twentieth, and last, axiom of magic that appears in the introduction to Bill Whitcomb's "The Magician's Companion: A Practical & Encyclopedic Guide to Magical & Religious Symbolism."
XX. Law of Intelligence:
Any pattern of sufficient complexity will act intelligent when treated as an entity.
At first glance, there seems to be a problem of tautology with this statement in the definition of "sufficiency." Perhaps this axiom would be better stated as:
"A pattern that acts intelligently when treated as an entity is a pattern of sufficient complexity to be termed intelligent."
This brings into better focus the words that must be defined for this axiom even to be argued: pattern, intelligent, and entity. Complexity, in my mind, sort of drops out; it is part of the definition of intelligence, and could even be replaced by that word. It also highlights the necessary distinction between action and being; for things are their names, their labels, in a magical system.
Pattern is the first word that must be defined. From my own experience and the axioms that preceded this one, I define pattern as "a collection of information whose properties can be predicted." A very complex pattern may seem entirely nonsensical, but that is only because we don't know enough about its workings and composition to accurately predict how it functions. Think weather, the cosmos, plate tectonics.
The thrust of the magical argument is that if you take a pattern of great complexity (plate tectonics, say) and treat it as an entity, it will react intelligently.
How do you treat something as an entity?
Entity could be interpreted as basically anything that exists, meaning anything that has an objective reality beyond just a set of causes and effects, a being beyond action. Gaia theory is an example of this. Instead of viewing the earth as a collection of molten rock, vegetation, salinated water, fertile dirt, sliding plates, creeping critters, etc., all of these things become merely the side-effects and attributes of an entity called the Earth. This is a useful, and oft-used, shortcut in natural language. Magical theory takes this farther: the entity of the Earth is seen as a pattern so complex, so incomprehensible, that certainly it must be intelligent.
Before I go on, let me provide my simplest definition yet: Intelligence is the ability to make choices.
Without either of us necessarily disagreeing with the truth of the 20th axiom, pagans and I have a very different view on the nature of the Earth. I do not believe the Earth has the ability to make choices. It cannot reason; it does not learn and apply knowledge to effect change. When parts of the Earth-pattern react, this reaction is not intelligence, nor is it even instinct.
Animal instinct may be considered a very low form of intelligence; for example, nerves send the brain a message in the form of pain to give a creature a warning that some necessary part of itself is being damaged. Pain encourages movement away from pain, though certainly anything capable of feeling pain is also capable of disregarding it, and choosing not to avoid it.
This discernment between "pain thing" and "safe thing" is so basic to humans that we no longer consider it a form of intelligence, but it is.
The Earth does not have this discernment. If you explode a nuclear bomb in a fault line, plate tectonics and physics are going to give you some spectacular consequences. Things are going to move around. There will be flattening, tsunamis, eruptions, and all manner of other excitement. But these reactions do not mean the Earth is angry. They do not mean the Earth is in pain. They mean that the laws of physics are still in effect, and nothing more. These after-affects are simply attributes of how physical matter interacts; they do not form part of an entity-process.
Why am I so mad about this? Because a Gaia-lover wrote an opinion piece about how maybe the southeast Asian tsunami was a vengeful reaction by a wronged and emotionally distressed Earth who resented the overcrowding on Her surface. What a callous and fundamentally irresponsible statement. Assigning moral values to plate tectonics helps no one and devalues the true, intelligent, human life that was destroyed by the simple, unintelligent, and most of all consistent reactions of matter against matter.
Just as I was recovering from the shock of reading this opinion professed seriously, another opinion letter followed, citing recent upswings in volcanic activity, flooding in certain parts of the US, and the aforementioned tsunami as evidence that God [in true 1.0 style] is wroth with the world.
Here we strike to the heart of my agnostic values: to say that God had a hand in the devastation resulting from plate tectonics is just as irresponsible, and equally absurd, as saying that the Earth chose to wreak such havoc Herself. Plate tectonics don't care about you. They just happen, because other things happened, and they can't decide not to happen.
I understand the impulse to ascribe intelligence to patterns we admire or fear. Humans are intelligent beings; when choice is taken from them, when they cannot react to save their own lives, existences, and intelligence, they prefer to believe that a higher intelligence had something to do with their defeat. No one wants to be undone by something that can't care about their destruction.
It is the height of ego to believe in God, to believe in the intelligence of unreasoning effects; and egoism has always been a large part of what makes us human. It is also part of what makes us great. Humanity does have such intelligence, and such power of belief, that anthropomorphizing the unintelligent can give us new and wildly creative tools to understand the complexity of great patterns. But this must be done with the utmost caution, and choice must never be ascribed where choice does not exist.
All students studying chemistry in high school say that atoms "want" to fill their shells with electrons because it makes them "happy"--this is a good shorthand for helping students begin to understand the fundamental principles of stability in atomic reactions. This sort of language persists even in the highest reaches of science, as when brain scientists, who deal with one of the most complex patterns we may ever study, fall back on endless common metaphors to attempt to explain what little we know about the workings of the brain.
But this means of discussion does not mean that atoms, or nerves, are making choices; it means simply that we can understand their effects because they resemble intelligent processes of choice that we undergo everyday. The difference is that humans can choose to go against the norms, but patterns and processes will always make the same "choice," which is in fact not a choice at all. Every time you drop a quarter, it falls--not because it chooses to fall, but because the physical patterns and forces we know as gravity are acting on it. Under typical quarter-dropping conditions, the quarter will always fall. Gravity never takes a vacation; the quarter never disobeys.
A true magician, who operated in a world where the 20th axiom of magic was true and valid, would see gravity as an entity, a pattern of sufficient complexity to be reasoned with intelligently. The magician would find a way to talk gravity into taking a little rest, offer gravity a bribe so it looks the other way for a second, or boost the quarter's self-esteem until, hey, maybe it decides it doesn't want to fall today.
Can any such magician exist in our world?
The only way I can find to redeem the 20th axiom is the concept that the force of human intelligence could be so strong that a human, by committing wholeheartedly to the intelligence of patterns, might discover in its human self a framework from which to subvert or alter those patterns, simply by refusing to believe in them as incontrovertible reactions and processes. Jesus comes to mind. But then I'd have to believe the Bible was a complete and accurate account of historical events. Haha.
I am no guru, no magician, and certainly no messiah. If it rained for forty days and forty nights and the waters rose to drown the people of the earth, I would be standing high on a mountaintop, shaking my fist at God and telling the LORD that I still didn't believe this was anything more than a freak weather pattern.
Yes, I do see the irony there. I would know the rain was a pattern devoid of intelligence, know that I could do nothing to alter it--but that would be a cold comfort, and perhaps at the cataclysmic end of my life, I would prefer to have something intelligent to yell at. It would certainly be easier to resign myself to my own defeat, to the utter subjugation of my ego, if it were effected by the choice of something ineffable and much worthier than myself.
But the bane of intelligence is not a higher intelligence: it is the uncaring juggernaut of cause and effect, the ceaseless, choiceless action-and-reaction that forms the universe as we know it. My one true comfort is that I know that, and it never can.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Didn't want to kill myself!
I just read Jane Eyre, and was shocked to find that not only was it not excruciatingly painful, I actually found myself enjoying it. I mean, Bronte's narrative style is not the most subtle (though lucid, more on that later), and I'm still not quite sure that I liked any of the characters, but for the life of me, I couldn't stop reading!
Another point of astonishment was how much lighter JE was in style, purpose, and tone than anything by Austen or Eliot. I never really realized how exhausting I found the arch, convoluted style of Austen's narration. (We won't even go into Eliot's narration here, though I'll give a nod to everyone who's read Middlemarch; you know what I'm talking about.) I don't think it's only the first-person POV that made JE so enthralling and involving. Jane Eyre was much more like a modern romance than Austen, and was surprisingly full of Gothic elements--madness, ghosts, the supernatural, etc. Perversely or not, it was also unrelievedly Christian in a way that no books are anymore these days, not even modern translations of the Bible.
Plus, Bronte made passing reference to Paradise Lost. Yeah, I'm easy.
I think the reason why I so enjoy Austen movies and so dislike the books is due to the presence of that *insufferable* narratorial voice/style/person. Movies tend to strip that stinky veneer off as quickly as possible to get to the raw wood of character beneath.
On a related note, there's a 1983 movie version of Jane Eyre that stars Timothy Dalton. Who I have a big crush on. From James Bond. ^_^;; I'll keep you updated if I watch that.
In *other* related notes, the ever-alluring Sayid is starring as Mr. Bingsely in the Bollywood version of Pride and Prejudice, renamed "Bride and Prejudice" and soon to be in wide release, I hope. I'm not sure if they'll be able to work bondage into Austen, but I have high hopes for the powers of Mr. Andrews.
They're also making *another* white-bread version of P&P starring Kiera Knightely as Elizabeth. Is it just me or is she not...Elizabeth...enough for that role? Maybe she'll surprise me...and purge the horror that was King Arthur from my brain...
Another point of astonishment was how much lighter JE was in style, purpose, and tone than anything by Austen or Eliot. I never really realized how exhausting I found the arch, convoluted style of Austen's narration. (We won't even go into Eliot's narration here, though I'll give a nod to everyone who's read Middlemarch; you know what I'm talking about.) I don't think it's only the first-person POV that made JE so enthralling and involving. Jane Eyre was much more like a modern romance than Austen, and was surprisingly full of Gothic elements--madness, ghosts, the supernatural, etc. Perversely or not, it was also unrelievedly Christian in a way that no books are anymore these days, not even modern translations of the Bible.
Plus, Bronte made passing reference to Paradise Lost. Yeah, I'm easy.
I think the reason why I so enjoy Austen movies and so dislike the books is due to the presence of that *insufferable* narratorial voice/style/person. Movies tend to strip that stinky veneer off as quickly as possible to get to the raw wood of character beneath.
On a related note, there's a 1983 movie version of Jane Eyre that stars Timothy Dalton. Who I have a big crush on. From James Bond. ^_^;; I'll keep you updated if I watch that.
In *other* related notes, the ever-alluring Sayid is starring as Mr. Bingsely in the Bollywood version of Pride and Prejudice, renamed "Bride and Prejudice" and soon to be in wide release, I hope. I'm not sure if they'll be able to work bondage into Austen, but I have high hopes for the powers of Mr. Andrews.
They're also making *another* white-bread version of P&P starring Kiera Knightely as Elizabeth. Is it just me or is she not...Elizabeth...enough for that role? Maybe she'll surprise me...and purge the horror that was King Arthur from my brain...
