Random Spewing

A)  My sister no longer has a job.  She injured her foot falling down the basement steps and now needs surgery.  Her workplace will not permit her a leave of absence and will not promise to hold her job for when she returns in, tentatively, two months.  Fine, she can't help any of that.  It isn't her fault she fell down those stairs (I've done it twice).  But it has been a week-and-a-half since she went to work and she has complained about having to do things around the house for those of us who do have jobs.  Right now I work five days a week - all long shifts.  The only other person who has a job is my nephew's girlfriend.  Out of eight people, my parents get retirement checks but don't have to be anywhere, neither of my nephews have school because one is online-schooled and one is twenty-five, and the other girlfriend just graduated from school and for the past year only had to be at school for two hours a day.  And you know what happened today?  My mother told me to make sure I always washed my own dishes because my sister said she wasn't going to wash my dishes.  Fuck her.  She isn't in so much pain she can't do things - she's just fine when she has to go to the tobacco store to get cigarettes rolled or when she goes to spend her $400 support check on junk at Wal-Mart.  I do my own laundry, take care of the phone/cable/internet bill, handle the repairs on the car and put in most of the gas, and buy food that gets eaten within twenty-four hours.  Why can't she wash my, maybe, five dishes I dirty a day?  I usually only eat breakfast and only two or three days a week any other meal, so it's often not even five dishes.  And we have a dishwasher which I normally put my own dishes in.  Why does she get to lay around doing nothing, and her children get to lay around doing nothing, leeching off of my paycheck but refusing to do anything for me?  FUCK.

B)  I'm reading The Beekeeper's Apprentice.  I hope it gets better because I want to slap the narrator, Mary Russell, upside the head.  She's egotistical and pretentious.  I know it's because in the beginning she's a fifteen-year-old girl but that doesn't excuse her tone of voice because a fifteen-year-old girl is not narrating this story.  An adult looking back is narrating.  I'm hoping I'll love the book and her once it becomes more of a mystery, once the Sherlock Holmes inspiration kicks in a little.  But once again, I'm disappointed in a book I've looked forward to for a long time. 

C)  I've made a decision based on this:  now that I have to support said sister above even more than I did before, I won't have very much extra money and so I'm going to have to just rely on random books from the library.  I used to go to the library with all my lists of books and try to find specific books but that's beginning to prove more frustrating because I often end up hating the books I was previously excited by.  So I think I'll try random books again.  I've said before, I think, that I used to pull five random books in a row (well, technically I would pull five random authors in a row) from the shelf and out of those, it would be an even bet that one would be awful, three would be mediocre, and one would be excellent.  That's how I stumbled upon The Descent - a book that is so much more intelligent than that horrible movie supposedly based on it - and The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye.  It's how I found Memoirs of a Geisha before it became a reknowned movie and it's how I read Tom Arnold's autobiography, which is surprisingly funny and interesting.  The thing about it is that if I'm disappointed I won't have wasted money.  It sounds to me like a lot of people are rediscovering the beauty of libraries for various reasons, and this is mine.

Seeing Everything

First, I didn't get the little apartment. But I am on a waiting list for another apartment complex and I'm going to see another one today.

Second, I've come to the understanding that I can't know everything. I used to worry all the time that I needed to know the current events of every news story or I'd sound like an idiot when people were talking about what's happening in, say, Argentina.

For a time, I would get the New York Times on my Kindle and would try to read the whole thing, every day. That proved a feat, mainly because I need to realize I'm not a fast reader. Then I decided I would just get the New Yorker, which comes out weekly, and read it on Sunday mornings. But I must freely admit - I get bored really easily with most news stories. I can read an entire book about constructing word puns but I can't read half-a-page about Russia's legal system.

I have several articles clipped from both the Times and the New Yorker, but I haven't read them. One is about Franz Kafka - and you would think I would have been ALL OVER that article. Nope. I don't know if it's because it's an article and not a book or whether it's because I feel like I'm forcing myself to read and that feels like school and I never read any of my assignments for school so why should I do it now?

I think I've said this before, but I hate reading short stories. There's something about them, something limited, that I find frustrating. I think it stems back to something a former professor said about my short stories - she always felt like there was more to be told. She said my stories didn't feel contained, like they were all part of a longer story and like they were all interconnected. I've taken that with me, because I feel that way, too.

But back to feeling like I should know everything. I'm just not interested in current events. I mean, sometimes I am, don't get me wrong. I know there are certain stories I'd be a fool not to follow. But there are times when I'll be in a conversation about, for example, the Indiana governer's race and I get a vibe the other person thinks I should totally know all about each candidate. Because, you know, they know all about each candidate because they follow that story closely. So shouldn't I be following it closely? Wow, how can anyone now know who's running and what they stand for or don't or what kind of mud they wallowed in once upon a time?

The truth is I shouldn't care what I know vs. what they know. Do they know how to construct a perfectly rhythmed sentence? Do they know how to take two seemingly unrelated objects or ideas, construct a hierarchy, and compare them to create a unique and intriguing metaphor? Do they know people used to think male possums impregnated the females through their noses because the male has a forked penis?

A lot of people have told me throughout the course of my life that I think outside of the box. Maybe that's because I seek information in places that don't come packaged, air-mailed, and stamped with a message to open immediately. The other day I drove to the library (the first time I had driven in FOUR MONTHS) and picked up three random books - two fiction and one non-fiction. They are books few other people have probably read, that have probably only been checked out once before, if ever. I'm excited to read them. I will probably find nuggets of wisdom, because in obscurity is where I always find wisdom, and I will be happy with my little discovery of the knowledge gained in a moment of spontaneity.

Doctor Who?

So, like every doomed relationship in the history of the world, I've gone back to a website that occasionally makes me angry to give other shows another shot - because not only are the recappers different and therefore deserve a chance, I at times encounter a whole new community of posters. For the most part, I've enjoyed the Glee fandom because it's usually more carefree, being a comedy show, and at least one of the recappers - it's split between two who alternate weeks - isn't a whining, venom-spitting asshole. The other is. But I can deal.

My other new obsession is Doctor Who. I haven't ventured into the forum because I'm catching up on the episodes via Netflix, but I've been reading the recaps after watching each episode. Why do I need a recap, you might ask? Because sometimes the recappers, who are all fairly smart, catch something I didn't. And vice versa, but I won't get into that here. The point of this post is really to talk about levels of intelligence.

The guy who recaps Doctor Who is quite obviously a super genius. Vast knowledge of religious literature, literary theory, linguistics, etc. Great, I love all of those things. The problem? His knowledge is overwhelming. He doesn't know how to hold back. There are three - five refereneces or allusions or angry tangents on every single page of the recap. What spurred me into this post was his complete inability to laugh at common physical humor. I'm the first person to roll my eyes at The Three Stooges and whatnot, but sometimes, sometimes, it's funny. I love Benny Hill. Ridiculously familiar sight gags are often funny, and I think it's because we don't feel any need to explain what we're supposed to be getting out of the gag. Mr. Bean doesn't do anything for me, but I don't use my "superiority" to humiliate others for laughing at "lowbrow," "common," "lazy" writing. Actually, sometimes "lowbrow" is far superior to "intellectual" writing.

My friend NGS bought me a book a few years ago because I had it on my wish list at Amazon. It was called The Origin of Stories and was vastly interesting. However, I struggled incredibly trying to read it. Why? The author couldn't just say what he needed to say. I would never shy away from three-dollar words with more than seven letters, but I also don't feel some kind of alpha-male-pissing-contest need to shove an "academic" word into every single sentence. It was a hard day's work weeding through the bullshit to get the heart of the story.

The Doctor Who recapper is intent on this phenomenon called "subtlety." Great - I love to connect the dots and consider it one of my strengths in life. I, like the recapper, hate to be hit over the head with explanation of what I'm supposed to be seeing/feeling/doing. Unlike the recapper, I don't see that happening in the show. If I did, I wouldn't be able to watch it. What I do see is intelligent writers who know how to marry every level of cognitive ability into an organically told story. I don't like to use the word intelligence here - again, the reason is a whole other entirely therapeutic post - but the fact is some people aren't able to see or interested in seeing the symbolism behind certain images/themes/repetitions. Should the authors care? Are they sacrificing artistic integrity by descending into the "lowbrow?" Are they perpetuating the dumbing-down of society by not making the audience work to understand allegory?

I don't care whether the answer to those questions is yes or no. I laughed when an alien was trying to run away from The Doctor, kept teleporting itself out of the situation, but The Doctor just kept teleporting it back because he has the ability to reverse teleportation devices (just go with it). It was just plain a funny sight gag. Now switch to reading the recap. Basically, it made me feel as though I didn't deserve to be considered intelligent because I laughed at something meant for the lower classes. I mean, the recapper was seriously appalled by this so-called "humor." It's the same in every recap whenever there is any kind of toilet humor. I HATE farting jokes, but even I was slightly amused at the episode where aliens who were compressed into suits of human skin kept farting because the gasses used in the compression needed to be released. Did I love it in every scene? No. But I appreciated the ability of the writers to insert as much comedy as they often do into a series which could, without it, be incredibly heavy-handed. I mean, in one episode (a powerful one, I'll give you), atomic-sized bacteria bring a little boy back from the dead and basically "heal" the whole human race in Blitz-torn London. Sorry, but I need humor there. I need dark and at times "lowbrow" humor to make it through something so heavy. Not that I don't hold horrific, true-to-life stories of that time period, like This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen in the highest esteem.

I think I often bristle at this recapper because he just seems so sure that his opinion and his level of intelligence are better than Joe Average's. Is he right? Maybe. But even though I know quite a bit about literary theory I don't sit watching television or reading a novel trying to apply literary theory to every fucking scene. The recapper once noted that he used to just let his story tell itself from the inside out - he used different language, more literary and academic, but he used to let his stories revel in their own cleverness. He's too mature and learned for that anymore. Why? I get the feeling he writes stories that try so hard to do everything literary theory thinks is brilliant. You KNOW how I feel about that.

I mean, the scene he became a permanent pearl-clutcher about went something like this: The Doctor + three go to confront aliens. Each are posted at a door. One of The Doctor's companions is just Bubba Nobody who used to be another main character's boyfriend but who isn't "clever" enough for the adventures in time. He's just an earthling along for this particular mission because he happens to live in that time period and has a connection to the characters. He's a bumbling idiot - at times, I will admit, to a frustrating degree. In this scene he gets his foot caught in a mop bucket and therefore isn't where he needs to be and the alien gets away (sort of). But - BUT - isn't that necessary because later he's going to be exactly where he needs to be and no one is expecting that out of him? Doesn't that make him complex, that he's not completely reliable and therefore not perfect? Do we want everyone to be a Mary Sue with perfect timing and always ready with the right solution? No. Characters need flaws. Writers need flaws. I think, I swear, I've talked about this before.

But anyway, another long, boring, angry post where I sound just like those recappers. Who's critiquing the critics? Infinite mirrors to the face of God.

Why do I keep going back? For the nuggets where I see something I didn't see before. For the tasty nut in the elephant poo. For the chance to bitch about the literati. Should I begin capitalizing that? I guess I feel like they're my Dalek race, genetically bred to kill anything different or inferior. If you don't get that reference, I won't judge you. It's just from a stupid British TV show, anyway.

Northern Nut Growers Association

Last night I was tooling around on Amazon and stumbled across this. I just had to know, and it was free, so I downloaded and read it. And I think I came out a better person.

It seems it's a series, because it's a serious thing. I'm such a freak, because I'm considering downloading more.