National Drunk Writing Night 5th November 2011

(What I wrote after a whole bottle of unidentifiable Hungarian liquid that had probably gone off, by the taste of it. My subconscious is a strange place.)

I don't know what to write but will keep just writing
whatever comes to mind
It's national drunk writing night
and Guy Fawkes night
and the anniversary of time travel kinda

Once upon a time there was a chemical reaction
everything smelled like a night club
in a nice way
not that sweaty way
but that a bit
dusty smell you get
It's probably the smell of that smoke stuff actually that I'm thinking off

I really love the smell of that smoke stuff

The chemical reaction was mostly green
and it span over the whole world
over all the oceans
everywhere

but there was some purple as well
and other colours
all more neon than the next

The whole world was completely dark

except for the chemical reaction that happened everywhere at the same time

and it was very bright

and lit everything up

there was smoke

and the Earth was a giant night club with flashing lights
people, everywhere, confused or scared or just not caring anymore
smoke, that nice smoke stuff
filled the air everywhere
Nothing really mattered anymore
because there was nothing more left to be done



And from space it looked really pretty

No one was looking from space at the moment though because they had other things to worry about and the Earth didn't really interest them mch at all

(Which is understandable given that the people on Earth didn't really care much about the people in space much either because they had something big to worry about at the moment(

The chemical reaction
it went everywhere
and many died
and many cried
but most smiled

It was pretty

Like fireworks
or fireflies
or any of those fire things really

The chemical reaction covered the earth
A bit like veins
or roots
in the atmosphere

and it neededa lot of air
not much was left

Where did it start
no one knows
or why
or when excatly

But it was the last thing anyone ever saw
So no one really cared

People swayed
from side to side
and back
and forth
and back again

The leaned on each other
although most fell
Because they thought someone was to their right
when they were to their left
and vice versa

And then they just lay back
on the ground
looking at the mostly green
but a bit purple
lights above them
It was breath-takingly beautiful
quite literally
since people were running out of oxygen


They lay down
wherever they happened to be
in the kitchen
or in the hall
or on the field
or fresh grass
that smelled like rain

Not the country rain smell but the rain in the city
that's polluted
but still nice
the urban rain smell

The chemical reaction
it killed us all
But it was so beautiful

No one really minded

My theory is that I need to unmartyr him

This blog shall live! Despite of it being written by one lazy procrastinating bastard. (And I do mean it when I say bastard, I am actually one. And lazy and procrastinating too. But luckily I am good at hiding all of these facts. Most of the time. Obviously one of those times isn't now though.)

ANYWAY.

I want to talk about something much more fascinating than my bastardhood today. It is a book that quite efficiently blew my mind and Made Me Think About Things (that I have actually though about before but this made me think about them again and I realised new things!).


John Fowles' The Collector.

I had to read it for a class, or actually, I got to read it for a class. I bought it from Amazon because I don't like to leave the safety of my cave and meet real people. It arrived on a Friday, which was great for that meant that the impending doom of Monday and deadlines was still far away in the future and I could spend the whole evening reading without feeling too guilty about it.

Because really, once I started reading it I could not stop. Fowles' writing is awesome and I am currently reading his The French Lieutenant's Woman because I just needed more. words. by John Fowles.

Okay, back to the Collector. (BTW, none of this will make much sense if you haven't read it. Although glancing through the Wikipedia article might just be enough.)

I am not exactly that bothered with Caliban. He is your average creepy, middle-aged man with an empty life and no passion for intellectual pursuits. You see them every day at the grocery store with their lifeless eyes and robotic gestures and you hope that they won't end up next to you in the line to the cashier but they always do and you just want to run away. (I can't actually even remember the stalker guy's name(s) and I don't care about him enough to check. So Caliban it is.)

... And I'm starting to sound like Miranda, which really isn't a huge surprise to me because we are basically the same person. Minus the posh part. And the messy relationships, I don't do those either.

In any case, it is Miranda who I want to concentrate on today. Or to be more precise, the topic of this post is: Why does everyone hate her?

So okay, her name is Miranda. That does sound like a name of a mermaid and sets off the Mary Sue alert in some modern readers' heads. (And as you probably noticed, I am not going to talk about this book from the point of view of the 1960s, when the book was published. I will talk about it from the point of view of now. Which is practically the only point of view I am familiar with.) Quite possibly not all readers spend too much time on the Internet reading horrible fan fiction, but in any case, as a name "Miranda" does somehow shout "LOOK AT ME, I AM SPECIAL".

However, there must be something more going on too. After all, it is not her fault that her name is Miranda, and it would be pretty unfair to hate her just for that.

To be quite frank, Miranda doesn't have the most desirable personality qualities. She is clever and beautiful and she knows that she is beautiful and clever and that has made her self-centered and arrogant.

But wait. I can think of quite a few of self-centered and arrogant male characters that are loved and adored by absolutely everyone. There are tons of them.

So if a man is self-centered and arrogant it's entertaining, but if a woman is self-centered and arrogant she's a, to quote my fellow female student on Miranda, "a bitch"?

I grant that the way Miranda acts is immature (although, who would be at their best in her situation?), but she hasn't lead a protected, easy life either - her family life is quite troubled, actually. So she isn't really the kind of mindless spoiled posh princess she at times seems to be. (Or wants to be? Does she want to appear perfect to others? Is she conflicted because she doesn't fit the image of a bashful, well-behaved girl?) She is very self-aware, and self-critical even, at times. I honestly believe that she would have grown up to be witty, confident and a brilliant artist.

Basically I'm just wondering, what on earth warrants this passionate hate that many appear to feel towards Miranda? I understand if someone doesn't like her, but hate? Why?

My thoughts on this are still all over the place and I have read the book only once so far, so this is all based on first impressions. But all this has made me wonder and ponder on many questions. Is it for some reason not acceptable for women to be arrogant and selfish? Should women always be modest? Are there personality traits that are funny and even endearing in men but bitchy and annoying in women?

And finally, is being pretty and smart inherently wrong?

(Actually, readers' reactions to Miranda are similar to the hate Jane Austen's Emma Wodehouse has gotten. And in one of her diary entries Miranda explicitly compares herself to Emma. Fowles was awfully clever and my mind is being blown again.)

Fuck the world! (No, not that one.)

Sometimes it seems like I hate myself. Or maybe I just don't like having free time. Or social life.

To make my life as difficult as possible, I decided to apply for 4 universities this spring. This means seven (7 !) entrance exam books. Instead of actually reading them, I shall now waste time on providing you with nonacademic, biased and unhelpful reviews on these delightful pieces of literature.


Changing English (by David Graddol bunch of other intelligent people)

This book has a confusing attitude towards its reader. Well, at least it is very polite at first.

Please read through the extracts which follow.

Oh, I'd love to.

Read now 'The English Language today ' by David Crystal (Reading A).

Well, okay.

Now reread the extract. We don't expect you to understand every word, but we do expect that you'll find it a lot easier the second time.

...



Lost in translation (by someone called Eva, I think, I have lost this book)

A novel. About something. (Probably. It's not like I have read this.)



Ways of Reading - Advanced reading skills for students of English literature (also known as Face of Reading, by too many people)

Dear authors, getting to the point cannot be that hard.



Pragmatics (by George Yule)

more was being communicated than was being said

another example of more being communicated than is said

deictic expressions always communicate much more than is said

it is rather obvious that more is being communicated than is said

they are communicated without being said

more will be communicated than--

YES THANK YOU I GET IT.

English Next (by David Graddol)

Why use words when you can use abbreviation!

economic growth of the BRICs

the proportion of world GDP

This is often aspired to be around IELTS 6.0 but in practice, given the poor starting levels and, at times, indifferent motivation, rarely exceeded FCE/IELTS 5.0.

FDI HSBC TNCs BPO ITO ELFEFLCLIL ETHGJFDGGFKSDGKJDS

Diverse uses of English in Finnish Society: Discourse-pragmatic insights from media, educational and business contexts (by some people from University of Jyväskylä)

I am sure the tittle says it all.

The Study of Language (by George Yule)

This is actually a rather nice and simple book. Unfortunately, it has a chapter on pragmatics.

more is always being communicated than is said

You don't say.

What Should You Major In?

... Should I switch to Communication?

(This picture is not mine in anyway. I tumbled upon it.)

I am lame but I don't care!

This blog is for you, if

• you want to laugh at my misery
• Noam Chomsky is your hero
• Noam Chomsky isn't your hero but you know who he is
• you don't know who Noam Chomsky is but you don't mind occassional ramble about Linguistics and other monsters an English major has to face
• you don't care that I lie (I am not really an English major yet)
• you don't care that most of the time I am not funny
• you don't mind occasional cursing / adult themes
  
• you are not an entrance exam (I will try not to offend entrance exams too much, but I cannot promise anything)

Embrace the randomness of the Internet.