"This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me." - Emily Dickinson
Ramblings of a twenty-nine-year-old trying to make sense of life, literature, and love.
To continue Tuesday's theme, in addition to attacking my favorite literary characters, apparently the Zombies have struck in Austin as well. KXAN.com has the full story on the hackers, who changed road signs on major streets in Austin to read "Zombies in Area! Run for Your Lives!" As a bonus, they've included a guide to the undead, which has a link to the Jane Austen book my friend Sarah found (their site has much better details about the book than Amazon or BN).It's hilarious. Apparently this is a "very serious crime" but honestly, I can't help saluting the balls and brilliance of whoever did it. If you're worried about your chances against the undead and want to create your very own escape plan, here's a great place to start. My question is, what's with the popularity of zombies all of a sudden? Is it like when all the children's fantasy novels got popular riding on the back of the Harry Potter series? All the paranormal beings are trendy now that everybody's in love with the vampires and werewolves in Twilight?
Jane Austen Poll Results: P&P wins with four votes. Emma gets second with one and the others lose with zero.
And I'm a Jane Austen Addict. I love reading Regency history, Regency Romance and anything remotely related to Jane's characters. The recent surge of Pride and Prejudice sequels on the book market has been both nirvana and the bane of my existence. There are so many and not all of them are good. And it's very hard to tell the good from the ever so dreadful just by flipping through the pages at the bookstore. So I've had some blunders, but I've also found some wonderful ones (including Pamela Aidan, Linda Berdoll and Helen Halstead). Anyways, today, my friend Sarah sent me an email with a link tothis book. Which is possibly the most creative and bizarre P&P version I've ever seen. At least the cover and title are. There's no description of the plot on Barnes & Noble.com, so I don't know what it's going to be about other than Lizzy, Darcy and Zombies. Do the zombies take over P&P? Do they enjoy reading it? I'm guessing it must be a sort of parody with some of Jane's own words since they've kept her name on it? All these questions and no answers. So, of course, I'm going to have to get it and read it. Sadly, it is not available until May 2009. I hate waiting for books to come out. At least I have a date for this one; who knows when they'll decide to release Twilight #3 and Harry Potter #7 in paperback so that I can buy them.
Update: For some reason the BN.com link isn't working reliably. So go check it out at Amazon instead. And (oh yay!) Amazon actually has a description of the book: "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone crunching zombie action." (A side note to Amazon description writers, book titles are supposed to be italicized, not put in quotes. Grrr.) Seriously, violent horror movie and Regency romance combined? There can't be anything more satisfying (or amusing).
While I understand the principles behind saving the mortgage and auto industries, I also feel a bit like it's telling them that it's okay that they used shady practices and wasted all their own money. It's not really fair that they get a second chance with our tax money when they haven't really shown that they're going to do any different this time around. Yes, they've they'll do things different, but they've been saying lots of things for a long time. I have absolutely no sympathy for the mortgage companies that have gone under. They knew that what they were doing wasn't the right way to handle loans but it made them money, so they didn't care. I feel even less sympathy for the car companies. They knew this was coming. They'd have to blind not to. But they kept doing what they were doing and now it's biting them in the ass. It'd be bad for them to go out of business, but if we save them from the consequences of their actions now, what's to keep them from coming back to us again the next time they screw up? And then there's the selfish part of me that goes, hey I did a good job of managing my money and doing my job and then out of the blue I'm laid off because the economy is tanking, because these guys decided to mess around with all that stuff, and the government isn't helping me get out of it and it wasn't even my own doing. It's just one more example of how life differs from what my mom taught me growing up. When I misbehaved, I had to face the consequences (generally groundings).
Down the hall from the office in which I'm working part-time, there's a door that rattles every time I walk by. (Actually, I'm relatively sure it rattles constantly, but it's like the "tree in the forest" conundrum and I'm not in a philosophical mood.) There is a part of me that is waiting for something to pop out of that door whenever I pass (even though the rational, logical side of me knows that it's just caused by air circulation or something else reasonable and boring). I've never seen anyone go in or out of that room and the door itself is completely ordinary, which only serves to further convince me that there must be a monster hidden behind it. In my head, it is something akin to the giant furry red alien that Marvin the Martian set on Bugs Bunny. So I'm patiently waiting for the Hallway Monster to finally break through the multitude of locks on the other side of the door and go roaring down the hallway to the coffee machine for a cappuccino.
Work is slow today. Actually, for the last hour and a half, it's been virtually non-existent. This is why I want to get out of the advertising proofreading biz. Even when my co-workers are awesome (unlike at my previous job), there just isn't enough work to keep me busy. It's days like this when I really miss my old job proofreading apartment newsletters. I never had serious down time there. I got to do a million different things and I learned new stuff every day. Now, nobody wants to hire anyone who isn't already trained on everything. Nobody wants to let me have a chance at anything that might challenge me or allow me to develop new skills. Everyone wants me to make a lateral move and the problem is that unless I move up, I'm going to end up taking a pay cut and bored out of my mind.
I interviewed for the perfect job at a fabulous company yesterday. They're interviewing more people over the next few days, so it's going to be a long week of wishing and hoping all the while trying not to get too caught up because if I don't get it, I don't want to totally crash and want to hide in bed for a week. Such is the life of the partially employed. I try to stay positive, but it's a difficult balance between keeping positive without getting my hopes up enough that every rejection crushes them completely. It took me awhile to get that through to my mother, who kept telling me to keep hoping that people would call about my previous two interviews. I tried to explain to her that I have to keep the idea that I may not get it in mind so that I don't end up depressed to the point that I stop being able to function. But it's harder this time because I've interviewed with this company once before (last summer) and I almost got the job last time. They tried to add an additional position so that they could hire me, so I can't help hoping that this time I come out on top. It'd be so nice to have a full-time job again. If I wasn't working part-time, I'd have completely lost it by now. Some people are meant to work. I'm one of them, which is why I want to know why nobody will hire me. Not even for the crappy jobs. I'm willing; I'm able. I hate what Bush did to the economy.
"I used to be a virgin, but I gave it up because there was no money in it." - Marsha Warfield Natalie Dylan is proving Marsha Warfield wrong.As a follow up to my question regarding the demand for virginity, a 22-year-old woman in Nevada is auctioning off her virginity online according to a story on FOXNews.com. Normally, I wouldn't read FOX News (my grandad agrees with everything they say, therefore I can't stand it), but my friend Mac shared this story with me and I thought it fit in with my other post too well to ignore. I'm not going to weigh in on the legality of the issue because in my opinion as long as she's not breaking any laws (which they grudgingly admit in the article, in fact the whole point of the article seems to be to complain that it's not against the law), I think she should be able to do what she likes with her body. I seriously doubt it will start some auctioning epidemic like FOX seems to fear. The part I find interesting is that she's apparently been offered $3.7 million for this "precious" commodity. Does anyone else think it's slightly ridiculous that some guy is willing to pay that much for that? And also vaguely creepy. Is this the same type of person who is creating a market for the artificial virginity kits? It's way too former-century for me, personally. But seriously, that's a semi-brilliant way to pay for grad school (though I think it will probably pay for more than that--did I mention she majored in Women's Studies?). If guys are going to be sick and weird, women might as well profit off it.
Post Script: Reuters has a much more balanced report of the story here.
The one thing about my new laptop that is going to drive me completely crazy (granted, that's not a terribly hard thing to do most of the time, but still) is that the keyboard, palm rests and back of the screen are all made out of a slick, shiny iridescent gray and black plastic. Now, this looks really pretty, but it shows EVERY SINGLE fingerprint and smudge. So every time I touch the computer, it shows up like a neon sign. I'm not OCD, but I like things to be relatively neat and so I find myself wiping the computer down with the cleaning cloth (obviously they realize there's a problem as this came with the computer) way too often, which is making me feel like I must be losing it. But seriously, when did all these companies decide that this was the way to make laptops? All of the computers in my price range were like this.
For anyone who (like my friend Dameon) didn't get the 411 on the "break-up" right before Christmas. This was my lesson that I've outgrown college boys (even the ones who are actually older than me).
Dameon says: I didn't hear that story.
Jaxx says:
(The following are not actual quotes. Just an 'I'm a bitch' Dramatization.)
Oh, boy got busy.
Boy said, “Oh my life is so busy right now, what with me not having any finals because I dropped all my classes and only working part time and I just can’t fit you in between my bouts of drinking with the boys.”
Boy also said, “You’re crazy and make everyone around you miserable.”
Dameon says: Wow, that's an interesting assessment.
Jaxx says: Then he goes, “OUR schedules just aren’t allowing enough time for us to get together, I think we should just be friends for now.”
To which I said, “It's not our schedules, it’s your schedule that doesn’t work. Just stick my Psych dvds in the mail so I can have them back.”
So Smart Bitches, Trashy Books posted a link to what might possibly be the weirdest, creepiest thing I've ever seen for sale online (and if you've surfed the internet at all, you know that's not easy): an articifical hymen kit. Yes, for only $15 you can order your very own re-virginization kit from Japan (but shipped from China--with all the controversy over the problems with lead in toys in recent years, do you really want to buy something this personal from there?) and he'll never know it's not for real! Is there really a demand for this? In the US? (I'm assuming there must be at least some interest from here since the price was listed in USD and no other types of currency.) What I want to know is whether it's men or women creating this demand? And there's definitely something about the fact that it only costs $15 that really bugs me.
I'm pretending that the new year hasn't started yet because I only just finally got most of the holiday leftovers out of my fridge and off my counter. It's impossible to start a diet and exercise regime no matter your willpower when there are still bags of homemade fudge on the counter and delicious mashed potatoes and stuffing in the fridge. So the new year starts tomorrow with my resolution to eat better (and less), cut down on fast food, fatty food and too-large portions, and exercise more (now that the tree is down, there's room for my pilates mat) because while I am okay with being single, unemployed OR overweight, but I flat-out refuse to be single, unemployed AND overweight.
"Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then." - Katherine Hepburn "Our struggle is not to have a female Einstein get appointed to assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel." - Bella Abzug "I don't need another dress. I need another body." - Nan Kempner "I am the modern, intelligent, independent-type woman. In other words, a girl who cannot get a man." - Shelley Winters "Now that I'm here, where am I?" - Janis Joplin "I love being single. It's almost like being rich." - Sue Grafton
The other night, I watched The Duchess and it reminded me of some of the reasons I'm glad I wasn't born a woman in the mid-18th century (now, Regency England on the other hand would still be fun, I think). I've always found it interesting...intriguing...ironic, even...that men get so mad at women for not bearing sons when it turns out that it's the men who determine the sex of the baby. So the Duke only had himself to blame for the fact that he was only siring daughters. As good as the movie was, and I quite enjoyed the costumes and thought Kiera Knightley did a fabulous job (she's much better suited to Duchess of Devonshire than she was to Elizabeth Bennet), it made me very upset on the Duchess' behalf because how could her husband be such an ass as to a) take up with her best friend (less surprising) and b) force her to live with his mistress (seriously, that is beyond the pale even for the time period, at least from my research and study). If she were my friend, I'd totally have gone balistic on his ass for treating her that way. Of course, I also think that she could probably have been slightly happier and been able to conduct her own liasons if she hadn't announced them to her husband at the dinner table. If she'd waited until he had an heir and then been discrete about it, she probably would have pulled it off. Not that I can really blame her for announcing it with the way he continued to rub her face in his affair until her death, but there was a way to play the game during the time period and it was played by wives as well as husbands during the Georgian era as well as the Regency period that followed. It really just goes to show that men have not changed much in the past couple hundred years. (And it did not help me overcome my swearing off of boys for the time-being.) They're (yes, it's a generalization that doesn't apply to the entire sex, but in my experience, it applies to more than enough of them) still unwilling to grow up, commit and treat women with respect.
To continue Tuesday's theme, in addition to attacking my favorite literary characters, apparently the Zombies have struck in Austin as well. KXAN.com has the full story on the hackers, who changed road signs on major streets in Austin to read "Zombies in Area! Run for Your Lives!" As a bonus, they've included a guide to the undead, which has a link to the Jane Austen book my friend Sarah found (their site has much better details about the book than Amazon or BN).It's hilarious. Apparently this is a "very serious crime" but honestly, I can't help saluting the balls and brilliance of whoever did it. If you're worried about your chances against the undead and want to create your very own escape plan, here's a great place to start. My question is, what's with the popularity of zombies all of a sudden? Is it like when all the children's fantasy novels got popular riding on the back of the Harry Potter series? All the paranormal beings are trendy now that everybody's in love with the vampires and werewolves in Twilight?
