Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
The latest book I listened to on CD was Deception Point by Dan Brown. From the pre-Robert Langdon era, it was Brown's second published novel (after Digital Fortress).
Frankly, Deception Point isn't as interesting as the Langdon novels. It lacks the world art, architecture, and history references that help make the Harvard "symbologist's" adventures so entertaining. Deception Point is still entertaining as a fast-paced thriller, though.
The other day I shared some of my "casting" choices for my mental "movie" of Deception Point. For the main protagonist, Rachel Sexton, I like Kristen Stewart. Rachel is young, intelligent, capable, ballsy when she needs to be, and a bit vulnerable at times. She's the prototypical Dan Brown heroine, a Sophie Neveu in the making (minus the divine bloodline).
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Rachel Sexton's love interest is the oceanographer Michael Tolland. I can't imagine anyone else but George Clooney as Tolland. Michael Tolland is supposed to be a good-looking, photogenic guy with brown eyes. Maybe he's not right-now George Clooney - age 53 - but The Perfect Storm-era George Clooney certainly would work.
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Are they too mismatched in age to be a couple? Stewart is only 24, a whole 12 years younger than the newly-minted Mrs. Clooney, the brilliant, gorgeous humanitarian lawyer Amal Ramzi formerly-Alamuddin-now-emphatically-Clooney. (Guys, I love her.) This is supposed to be Mike's second-chance romance. He lost his wife to cancer right before he threw himself wholeheartedly into a career of bringing science education about the world's oceans to the public through documentary filmmaking, like a Jacques Cousteau for the 2000s.
Eh, maybe it's a bit of a male fantasy--the much-younger woman--but I'm going to let it slide. It's pretty much par for the course in a Dan Brown novel.
For Dr. Corky Marlinson, the astronomer and expert on meteor composition, I favor Jeffrey Wright. He's brilliant as Beetee in the Hunger Games series; is it bad to typecast him as "smart guy?"
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Thank you, Dan Brown, for not killing Corky. I was pretty worried for a moment, especially when Corky's leg was bleeding and he didn't put a tourniquet on it.
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He's a fairly minor character, but Dr. Weilee Ming could be played by Ken Leung. To be honest, though, Dr. Ming is much less of a troublemaker than the typical Ken Leung character.
While we're on the subject of actors from Lost and Person of Interest, I could see William Pickering as Michael Emerson.
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It's a given from the text that Gabrielle Ashe looks like Halle Berry.
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But who should play her boss - and Rachel's estranged father - Senator Thomas Sedgwick Sexton? I can only think of Richard Gere.
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I borrowed this audiobook from my local library and was not obligated in any way to review it. Now that I've finished it, I've begun listening to The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, read by the author himself. It'll be the first Neil Gaiman book I've read.
If you're a Simpsons fan like me, you remember Neil Gaiman from "The Book Job." It's my second-favorite episode, after the classic "Lisa's Rival."
Content Warning (CW) for discussion of child abuse. The Bourne Identity
YouTube recommended this video to me the other day.
This video is a bit silly. Mario is essentially just reading an article he found on the (unaffiliated with him) website The Vigilant Citizen. The article is from June 2012, and it includes photos of Twilight stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart - separately - in photo shoots from glossy fashion magazines. The article makes reference to MK Ultra, a favorite among conspiracy theorists a.k.a. alternative media sources. (No judgment - remember, I like to examine so-called conspiracy theories through the lens of modern folklore and urban legends.)
Here's how the theory basically goes, according to my understanding:
- During/after the Korean War, the U.S. government saw the American prisoners of war were being manipulated by their North Korean captors to say anti-American things. (This part seems to be factual.)
- As a defense strategy, the U.S. began researching ways in which the human mind can be controlled. The "MK" part stands for "Mind Kontrol." Part of the U.S. government experiments under this program involved giving doses of hallucinogenic drugs, including LSD, to people without their knowledge or consent. (This part is factual and documented.)
- Although the program was alleged to have ended in the 1970s, it continues today. Actors, musicians, and other popular culture figures undergo mind control experimentation that makes them into Jason Bourne-type "puppets" who can be triggered by their handlers into performing whichever action their handlers want them to take. The process involves taking these people into a secret place where they are abused and tortured until their minds split like people with dissociative disorder. They come out with alternate personalities that don't know what the other personalities are doing. Common triggers include Disney movies, Alice in Wonderland symbolism, and Wizard of Ozsymbolism (This part is speculative.)
Mario is an interesting vlogger. I don't see eye to eye with him on many, many issues. He's anti-feminist, for example, and he doesn't believe in the theory of evolution. I'll never quite understand why a certain segment of the Christian population has to reject the scientific method, but hey, that's just me (and people who believe in a rational universe). But I think he's basically coming from a well-intentioned place, even if his "facts" are intellectually questionable. I say this so you know my intention is not to mock or disrespect him. On a person-to-person level, I kinda like the guy. Like me, he was raised as a Roman Catholic. He's a French Canadian who learned English as a second language.
Ellie Goulding's "Lights"
At this point, I have been exposed to enough YouTube and blog material by The Vigilant Citizen, Mario the Vigilant Christian, and others to be able to "talk the talk" of MK Ultra, as you'll see below. If I were going to pick out a song to use as an example of mind control talk in popular media, that song would be "Lights" by Ellie Goulding.
I know you can interpret the lyrics of just about any song to mean whatever you want them to mean. In college I once wrote a paper about how the lyrics of Hole's song "Violet" could be interpreted as a warning about the dangers of alcohol abuse and another paper on how the Beatles song "I Am the Walrus" was John Lennon's plea for American authors, but especially Edgar Allan Poe, to be taken as seriously by the literary world as classical British authors. I knew those things weren't intended by the songwriters, but at the time I thought it was humorous to tortuously over-interpret things for allegedly comical effect.
So, please take this with a large grain of salt and, perhaps, a rocks margarita.
I hear "Lights" quite often on the station Tit Elingtin and I listen to on our day job as remodeling contractors. We listen to an "easy listening" station, while essentially means Top 40 radio without the rap songs. I liked the way the song sounded before I even listened to all the lyrics. I started to like Ellie Goulding even more when I heard her song "High For This (The Weekend Cover)." Then, of course, she contributed the song "Beating Heart" to the Divergentfilm soundtrack. It was one of my favorite songs for a while.
BUT I can't stand her song "Burn." I just find the very high-pitched section of this song incredibly annoying. Sorry. Even the best musical artists have an occasional fail. Now back to "Lights."
According to SongMeanings.com, which lets anyone add their comments on what they think the song means, the simplest explanation of this song is that it's about Goulding's childhood fear of the dark. She was afraid of the dark, so she had to sleep with a light on in order to feel safe.
Other theories think the song refers to:
- A battle with depression or another mental illness, such as schizophrenia
- Childhood sexual abuse
- An encounter with an extraterrestrial spacecraft and/or Goulding herself being from another planet.
Lyrics
Let's look at the lyrics of "Lights."
I had a way then losing it all on my own I had a heart then but the queen has been overthrown And I'm not sleeping now, the dark is too hard to beat And I'm not keeping now the strength I need to push me You show the lights that stop me turn to stone You shine it when I'm alone And so I tell myself that I'll be strong And dreaming when they're gone 'Cause they're calling, calling, calling me home Calling, calling, calling home You show the lights that stop me turn to stone You shine it when I'm alone home Voices I play within my head Touch my own skin and hope that I'm still breathing. And I think back to when my brother of my sister slept In an unknown place the only time I feel safe You show the lights that stop me turn to stone You shine it when I'm alone And so I tell myself that I'll be strong And dreaming when they're gone 'Cause they're calling, calling, calling me home Calling, calling, calling home You show the lights that stop me turn to stone You shine it when I'm alone home Light, lights, lights, lights Light, lights, lights, lights (Home, home) Light, lights, lights, lights Light, lights You show the lights that stop me turn to stone You shine it when I'm alone And so I tell myself that I'll be strong And dreaming when they're gone 'Cause they're calling, calling, calling me home Calling, calling, calling home You show the lights that stop me turn to stone You shine it when I'm alone home Home, home Light, lights, lights, lights Light, lights, lights, lights... Writers: Ash Frances Howes, Lorin Ashton, Ellie Goulding, Richard StannardCopyright: Sony/ATV Music Publishing (Uk) Limited, Major 3rd Music Limited, Amorphous Music, Global Talent Publishing Interpretation The first line could refer to a childhood fear of the dark: "I had a way then (when I was a child) of losing it (losing my fear of the dark) all on my own (I simply turned on my night light)."
Creative Commons image by Marple Bridge Photography
The second line, though, seems a little strange in that context. The queen has been overthrown? That fits more with the mental illness theory - the "queen," or rational part of her mind, has been "overthrown" or overwhelmed by the illness. It also makes sense according to the childhood sexual abuse theory: she had a heart then (as a child, before she was abused) but then she learned to shut off her feelings after "the queen was overthrown," which could refer to an adult authority figure, such as her mother, being unable to keep her safe from the abuse. Of course, both mental illness and sexual abuse could be considered part of MK Ultra-type conditioning - a child who is being groomed to be a pop star is abused until her mind splits, and that way she'll be easily controllable.
The chorus starts off with, "You show the lights that stop me turn to stone/You shine it when I'm alone/And so I tell myself that I'll be strong/And dreaming when they're gone." Now this seems to be saying the opposite of what we might expect. The lights were supposed to protect her from fear of the dark, right? So why is saying that the lights "stop me?" This speaks to the alien theory, I suppose: the lights that stop her are the sudden lights from a spacecraft that appear. She is either stopped simply by curiosity, or paralyzed with fear of them, or the extraterrestrial beings have stopped her somehow.
Some theorists, depending on their point of view, would go so far as to claim that aliens are synonymous with demons. They say that when people think they are abducted by aliens, they are really being tormented by fallen angels. If we are going with the MK Ultra theory, then we'd probably say that the handlers who perform the abusive experiments disguise themselves as aliens--or that they're somehow in league with actual aliens, who may or may not be fallen angels.
Creative Commons image by Mingle Media TV
The "I tell myself that I'll be strong" could refer to being strong in the dark when there are no lights - a simple enough explanation, although it doesn't seem to match up with "lights that stop me, turn to stone" line. What does turning to stone mean, anyway? Shutting off one's emotions so that one is as imperturbable as stone, perhaps, which fits with the abuse theory.
"Dreaming when they're gone" seems to fit this theory as well; the child cannot sleep until her abusers are gone. What would "they're" refer to in the context of fear of the dark? Nightmares, perhaps. Maybe she simply means that sleeping in the dark makes her prone to nightmares.
The "calling me home" of the chorus is why some people interpret this song to mean that Goulding herself has come from the star people. The lights call her home? Why, that's her fellow extraterrestrials coming back to claim her. Alternatively, we might say that the lights calling her home are some kind of signal or trigger that her handlers use when it's time for her to "come home" to be reprogrammed. The "reprogramming" process is painful and frightening, and that's why the singer seems to be so scared and depressed.
In the second verse, "Touch my own skin and hope that I'm still breathing" sounds a bit ominous, but fear - including simple childhood fear of the dark - could do that to a person. But then she sings something rather strange: "And I think back to when my brother of my sister slept/In an unknown place(,) the only time I feel safe." The only time she feels safe is when her brother and sister slept in an unknown place - now that seems odd. If a child were simply scared of the dark, wouldn't we expect her to say that she only felt safe when her brother and sister slept in her room with her, or when they were in the house with her - sort of a "safety in numbers" feeling? What is the "unknown place?" Is she saying that she wants her brother and sister to sleep away from where she is, because wherever she is is unsafe, and she wants to keep them safe? That line really makes it seem as if something other than mere darkness frightened her when she was a child.
In short, although this song is supposed to be about using light to ward off fear of the dark, the lyrics actually seem to be suggesting exactly the opposite - that the lights are failing to ward off the fearful thing that the dark brings, whatever that thing may be. But only the songwriters know for sure what they were thinking.
I saw The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 earlier today. Be prepared for spoilers if you haven't read the book/seen the movie yet.
Everyone seems to either love this series or hate it, but I love it. I wasn't so into the first third of Stephenie Meyer's first novel, but by the end I was Team Edward, and I devoured the last three books in huge chunks. I think I read Bree Tanner the first week it was out. I've been waiting to see the fourth movie brought to the big screen since - forever, it seems.
My verdict is this: see it twice. See it once to enjoy the story and then once again just to take in the visuals. Director Bill Condon has made a lovely spectacle of Meyer's fourth novel - and how could he not? What could be more visually striking than a vampire wedding, glamorous with sinister undertones?
Bella's dress is gorgeous, with a criss-cross pattern in the front and an impossibly delicate gauzy fabric holding the pearl buttons in place in the back. Equally well-done was Bella's eye makeup, a blend of smoky colors. I'd award it Second Best Eye Makeup in a Vampire Series, because frankly I still can't get over how True Blood's makeup artist does Jessica's eyes. I love Kristen Stewart's chestnut Bella hair color, but you have to admit, Deborah Ann Woll's "Jessica red" is very striking.
The best hair of Breaking Dawn Part 1 belongs to Taylor Lautner as Jacob and Julia Jones as Leah. Their characters go through a lot of emotional pain and suffering in this installment, but it never dulls the luster of their thick, perfectly straight, blue-black hair. They must have either an indigenous beauty secret or a werewolf one.
P.S. Taylor Lautner, I predict, will play Tane in the movie version of Beauty Queens.
The eyes have Bella, but the best-looking lips (other than Robert Pattinson's, of course) in the wedding scene belong to Bella's Forks High classmate Angela, played by Christian Serratos.
Sarah Clarke, as Esme, deserves an award for her mother-of-the-groom dress. The combination of platinum sequins and plum accents neither washed out her pale skin nor made her look too matronly.
It makes sense: literary Esmes are well-known for their fashion sense. Consider only Esme Squalor of A Series of Unfortunate Events, with her stiletto heels that were, literally, stilettos.
The Most Reformed Character award surely goes to Rosalie, as played by Nikki Reed. Rosalie pissed me off in New Moon. Yet, as soon as I saw her ferocity in guarding pregnant Bella, she won me over. What an ode to sisterhood! Rosalie is like a feminist vampire super-shero, avenging sexual assaults and standing up to fight for Bella's reproductive freedom.
That should totally be a spin-off comic book series. Somebody run that idea by Stephenie Meyer, please. Said comic book should contain lots of gratuitous shirtless Emmett. (Why not? Boys always put girls with giant boobs in their comic books.)
Hello, all, and welcome to my first link-up with Blonde...Undercover Blonde and The Vintage Apple for "Eff, Marry, Kill." The game is played thusly: I give you three celebs, and you must decide which you would marry, with which you would have a one-night stand (eff) and which you would kill. It's more fun and entertaining if you give your reasons why.
The kid version of this game is "Kiss, Marry, Avoid." If "kill" is too violent, you may choose to avoid one celeb. I play "Kiss, Marry, Avoid" all the time on GoodReads, usually with Harry Potter characters. I'm not going to use book characters, because I have no way of knowing if you've read the same books I've read.
My first thought was to use the guys from The Dark Knight Rises - Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman. Eff Gary Oldman, marry Christian Bale, kill Tom Hardy. Then I thought, "Naw, Christian Bale is mine, and y'all bitches better stay away from him."
Instead, let's do contemporary authors.
Stephen King.
George R. R. Martin.
John Grisham.
I say eff John Grisham, because he's a good-looking guy and I really liked A Painted House and The Client. I wouldn't marry him because he'd totally lawyer me. I'd never win an argument.
I'd marry George R. R. Martin, 'cause that guy's doing really well with his Game of Thrones series. I'd have to kill Stephen King. Hey, he's had a good run - he's probably published more books than anyone except maybe Nora Roberts.
Here's me making good use of my BA in Psychology from Fancy Women's Liberal Arts College. This morning I happened to notice an article on Gather.com by Effie Orfanides called " 'Breaking Dawn' teaser trailer has fans crazy!"
Orfanides goes on to admit it's a fan-made trailer and that the official film trailer will be released closer to Breaking Dawn Part 1's November 2011 release date.
Here's the cool cognitive psych part: even though you know for a fact this "trailer" is made with clips of the other 3 Twilight movies, interspersed with clips of actors who are not Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, the way the human brain works will still cause your mind to interpret these images as a unified whole, making it seem authentic.
Try it on this clip, another fan-made from the one Orfanides mentions in her article, but one which I think is of better quality.
[2024 Update: Sorry, the video is no longer available on YouTube.]
Did you fool yourself? If so, here's why: we perceive stimuli, not according to their individual characteristics, but organized in groups of information. It would take too much time and brain power to perceive every mental image individually, so our brains have created shortcuts.
One of those shortcuts in closure. You hear someone say "Shut the" and you shut the door, even though you never heard the word "door." Your mind fills in gaps with information that should logically go there.
Other shortcuts include continuity and contiguity. Continuity allows you to perceive short film clips as a unit. (Count the number of cuts in a 30-second commercial. There are many. TV relies on the principle of continuity.) Contiguity ensures that you'll perceive stimuli--again, video clips in this case--as belonging together simply because they are near each other in space and time.
In her December meditation for BBI Media, the publisher of the magazines Witches&Pagans, Crone and SageWoman, writer/musician Lisa Wersal's winter thoughts were of the divine feminine. She writes, "Even now when I am no longer a practicing Christian, I still occasionally steal into Catholic churches to meditate in quiet candlelit alcoves dedicated to Our Lady. Several other feminine divinities also now capture my attention, and their representations grace my home mantle: Tibet’s compassionate Kwan Yin, the Hindu goddess Sarasvati, who inspires creative endeavors, and Yemaya, Brazil’s 'Mother of Pearls.' I invoke their guidance, their blessings, their healing."
This Winter Solstice month, I'd like to dedicate my Wednesdays to the goddesses associated with this time of the year.
Don't worry: WIP Wednesday will continue. If you'd like to share a blurb about a current work-in-progress, contact me at erinoriordan (at) sbcglobal (dot) net. We can do both. It's a flexible blog.
"Mother Night" is the Northern European name for the longest night of the year, according to GoddessGift.com. In Norse myth, it was on Mother Night that the great goddess Frigga, goddess of beauty, love and marriage, gave birth to her son Baldur. In ancient times, the Vikings burned candles on this night each year, then stored them away to burn again when a woman went into labor, as a blessing over the birthing process.
Baldur would eventually be killed by a dart made out of a mistletoe. Frigga, who can see the future and knew that Baldur would die, made every being on the earth promise not to hurt Baldur, but she neglected the mistletoe because she thought it was insignificant. The trickster-god Loki took advantage of Frigga's oversight and tricked Baldur's blind brother into hurling the mistletoe dart, unwittingly killing the beloved young god. Frigga's tears became the mistletoe's white berries.
Frigga's ability to see the future was related to her spinning wheel, the Wheel of Fate. By the names of Holda (Holle) and Bertha (Perchta), Frigga is associated in parts of Austria and Germany with the spinning maidens who punish lazy girls and reward industrious ones at this time of year. Generally, Holda is the kindly one, and Bertha is more frightening, but Bertha is known to give gifts of apples and nuts to young women who've been industrious at the spinning wheel. The Italians in Switzerland know her as Berta and associate her with La Befana, the benign gift-bestowing witch of Southern Italy. In Christian times, Holda and Bertha were sometimes assigned the task of guiding the souls of unbaptized children.
Sometimes Frigga (or Frigg) is differentiated from the Norse goddess Freya, but often they are thought to refer to the same being. Queen of the Valkyries, amorous Freya collects dead warriors from the battlefield, taking them to her hall to feast and joust and be her lovers. I wrote about Freya in "Black Bear Skin," a short story that appeared in Divine Matches.
The bawdy story of how Freya acquired the necklace of the Brisings, an exquisite ruby-and-amber piece, by agreeing to sexual shenanigans with the dwarves who created it has come down to us through folklore as the sweet children's story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. (We'll see if Kristen Stewart can give Snow White back her bad reputation when Snow White and the Huntsman comes out.)
Frigga/Freya gave her name to Friday. Freya also lends her name to erotic e-book publisher Freya's Bower.
That's the Winter Solstice goddess tradition in Northern Europe. Next week, we travel to India to learn more about Sarasvati, then go to Japan to meet Amaterasu.
The other reference I used is an old book called Christmas Customs and Traditions: Their History and Significance by Clement A. Miles.
P.S. Mother Night is also a 1961 novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. He took the title from Faust:
Faust. You call yourself a part, yet whole you're standing there.
Mephistopheles. A modest truth do I declare.
A man, the microcosmic fool, down in his soul
Is wont to think himself a whole,
But I'm part of the Part which at the first was all,
Part of the Darkness that gave birth to Light,
The haughty Light that now with Mother Night
Disputes her ancient rank and space withal,
And yet 'twill not succeed, since, strive as strive it may,
Fettered to bodies will Light stay.
It streams from bodies, it makes bodies fair,
A body hinders it upon its way,
And so, I hope, it has not long to stay
And will with bodies their destruction share.
I finally finished listening to the audio book version of Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian by E.L. James. I must say, I genuinely enjoyed it, in no small part to the voice acting talent of Zachary Webber.
Many of my thoughts about this audio book are captured in my status updates over the two months it took me to "read" this book on my commute. (Click on the image or zoom to make it more readable.)
I enjoyed this as a lengthy and complicated piece of Twilight fan fiction, and I find that I genuinely care about these fictional characters. I want Ana and Christian to succeed as a couple. Of course we know they do - they finish as a nice married couple with two children - but they're actually broken up at the end of the first novel of the trilogy. It's a downer ending, made somewhat more hopeful in this version.
I really do get a kick out of the way Kate irks Christian.
But I still don't want to see the movie. Jamie Dornan is quite attractive, and being a person of Northern Irish descent myself I quite like him, but I like my imaginary Christian Grey better. He doesn't resemble any living person that I know of, although from here on out he may sound like Zachary Webber in my imagination.
I do think Kristen Stewart would have made an amazing Ana, though. That's not a slight against Dakota Johnson. I find her beautiful and charming.
Dakota Johnson. Creative Commons image by GabboT
I feel especially compelled to protect and defend the young Ms. Johnson, and I suppose it's because I've long felt compelled to protect her mother, Melanie Griffith. Do you all remember The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order?
It was first published in 1999, and it's very, very '90s. It represents some of the early work featured in the women's magazine, which started out as a small feminist/girl culture zine, itself a very 1990s concept. I mention the anthology because it contains an essay called "Bring Me the Head of Melanie Banderas" by Sarah Feldman writing as Dixie LaRue. It's much meaner and snarkier than what Bust publishes today, and it's all about what a terrible actress and human being Melanie Griffith (married to Antonio Banderas at the time) is.
Like a Judge-y Judy, Dixie LaRue recounts Griffith's crimes against womankind, including getting multiple tattoos (!) and having breast implants. Body shaming much? She takes Griffith to task for starring in sexist movies but doesn't question why the movie-going public lets filmmakers get away with pernicious gender stereotyping and sexist slander. It's very old school, and it makes me want to wrap Griffith in a nice warm blanket, hand her a latte, and assure her she's worthy of love and respect.
So, with absolutely no offense meant to Jamie Dornan or Dakota Johnson, I'll just watch the "movie" inside my head and fan-cast it with the Twilight cast members.
"Lelliot" hates jellyfish.
If I were summing up this book in one sentence, it would be, "A brave woman explores the limits of her sexuality; a recovering abuse victim explores the limits of his emotional vulnerability." And I liked it.
I'm not a usual Waiting on Wednesday blogger, but since it's still early in 2013, I wanted to get down a list of books I'm looking forward to this year. Just yesterday I found out that Dan Brown is releasing a new novel in the Robert Langdon series, to be titled Inferno, on May 14. Yay!
My mom told me if I started The Da Vinci Code I wouldn't be able to put it down, and she was right. I still love that book, Angels and Demons, and (to some extent) The Lost Symbol, and I don't care if you like them or not.
I'm also utterly addicted to J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood series - that's my mom's fault, too. I eagerly await Lover at Last, set to come out on March 27.
It will be bittersweet when this series ends, but I've got to read Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris. Amazon says the release date will be May 7th. I wonder if it's too early to put my name on the library waiting list? I never buy the hardcovers in this series - the first ones went straight to the genre paperbacks shelf, and I still contend it was kind of rude (and money-grubbing) of Harris' publisher to start putting them out in the much-more-expensive hardcover first.
...and my mom also got me hooked on Sookie Stackhouse. It was my introduction to paranormal romance, actually.
P.S. How fantastic are the Japanese covers for the Sookie Stackhouse series?!
P.P.S. Doesn't this one look like it might be about Bella Swan and Rosalie Hale?
I love vintage book covers. Now, some pins that are just cool. This is Jack Kerouac in 1944. Kinda sexy (even though he appears to be in some kind of trouble). Is anybody else looking forward to the On the Road movie with Kristen Stewart?
Anybody looking forward to Catching Fire?
This, I feel, is pretty cute. Lewis Carroll's birthday is coming up (January 27th), so I think a full Alice's Adventures in Wonderland post will be called for soon.
Readers who are sensitive to discussions of sexual abuse
should be aware that it will be mentioned in the discussion below. There will
also be SPOILERS for Mockingjay Parts 1 & 2. You’ve been warned.
We saw Mockingjay on Friday night. We didn’t sit in the back
row and eat popcorn mixed with Milk Duds like Ethan Wate and Lena Duchanne,
although that sounded awfully good when I was listening to Beautiful Creatures
earlier in the week. We sat in the middle and didn’t eat anything, because we’d
just been to Red Lobster. I had the lobster tacos (which, of course, made me
think of the Simpsons joke. “I’ll have your finest food stuffed with your
second finest.” “Very good, sir: lobster stuffed with tacos.”).
We arrived at the perfect time, as the commercials ended and
the previews began. One of the previews was for Insurgent. The clip showed an
action heroine Tris in a dream, bravely trying to rescue her mother Natalie
(the ever-beautiful Ashley Judd) from a burning house careening through the
air. Tit turned to me and said he’d just realized the same actress played Tris
and Hazel Grace. Disney’s new live-action Cinderella movie looked very
traditional, very close to the cartoon, but also very good.
We also saw the Night
at the Museum 3 trailer. The movie looks fantastic - it moves the setting to London, and Rebel
Wilson (another one of my favorite Aussies, with the Hemsworth brothers)
appears as a security guard. She gets to be sexy and do a British accent. Robin
Williams plays Teddy Roosevelt, and it’s bittersweet to see his face on the big
screen now that he’s gone.
Rebel Wilson also appeared in the trailer for Pitch Perfect
2, which I think I’ll also enjoy. I love me some Rebel Wilson and Anna
Kendrick. They’re so funny and smart and pretty and really they can do no wrong
– and I say this even after I’ve seen Kendrick’s screwball end –of-days comedy,
which is…different. Pitch Perfect 2 also has our Effie Trinket, Ms. Elizabeth
Banks.
Then Katniss Everdeen woke up from a nightmare in the bowels
of District 13, pining for Peeta. Forced into a hospital bed, she reawakens to
the sounds of Finnick’s tears.
Aw, Finnick Odair – how my heart aches. Finnick pines for
Annie in a way that Katniss can’t yet understand. Her love for Peeta is mostly
theoretical; Finnick and Annie’s bond is physical. He misses her with every
cell of his body. They both know Peeta, Annie, and (my darling) Johanna are
being tortured in the Capitol; they just can’t imagine the extent.
Finnick is still alive at the end of this movie, but he’s
already gone on the air to tell the people what President Snow did to him.
Fictional or not, it still makes me angry. All Finnick wanted was to marry
Annie and have a quiet life with her, but Snow forced him to be passed around
between the elites like a toy. Let’s be perfectly clear about this: there is no
such thing as consent when you’re being coerced by the threat of having a loved
one killed. Snow caused Finnick to be raped. In my mind, Snow might as well
have raped Finnick himself. Forced prostitution makes Snow and his accomplices the
lowest of the low.
Creative Commons image by dalekhelen
I don’t judge Finnick at all. He only did what he had to do
to save Annie’s life. He has nothing to be ashamed of. I don’t judge consenting
adults over the age of 18 for choosing sex work as a career, either, but
Finnick didn’t choose it.
As if we needed another reason to detest Snow – we see him
flat-out murder an entire hospital full of innocent wounded people in this
movie. He’s scum. I’m trying to remember what President Alma Coin does in
Mockingjay 2 that makes Katniss decide she’s scum, too.
But I like to think that once Finnick and Annie are reunited, they can't stop touching each other. They're both such damaged people, each other's presence is the only thing that keeps them going. I'd like to imagine that night is the night their baby is conceived.
Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson both do some
exceptionally good acting in this film. She has to make Katniss believably
traumatized, and I thought she did, especially in her reactions to seeing the
bombed-out, burnt remains of District 12. He has to portray the effects of
psychological torture (something similar to MK Ultra, in fact), which he pulls
off chillingly.
Creative Commons image by slackerwood
Hutcherson looked physically traumatized in this, gaunt and
with a swollen face. He almost looks like Christian Bale in The Machinist. I
hope this effect was achieved digitally, similar to how pregnant Bella Swan
looked emaciated and near-death in Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 without risking Kristen
Stewart’s health. I’d hate to think of an actor as young as Hutcherson putting
himself through such a harsh physical regimen.
If this movie has one fault, it's not enough Johanna Mason.
Of course, it’s bittersweet to see Philip Seymour Hoffman in
his last role as Plutarch Heavensbee. He played the character so well, too.
Remind me not to see the second part, though. I don't want to see some of the sad things that are going to happen. Reading the book was traumatic enough.
One of the side effects of reading is that it helps us understand other people's lives better. Right now, the entire United States is upset with the large number of innocent Black people who've been killed by poorly trained, racially prejudiced Caucasian police officers, who then escape legal consequences. Some of the victims are as young as 12. They're Primrose Everdeen in real life, only we're powerless to volunteer in their places. Unless the militarization of the police and the snowball effect it creates are somehow stopped, revolution will come off the big screen, out of the pages of the books, and into the real world.
Every young person deserves an equal chance to grow up safe and healthy. The odds should ever be in all our favors.
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