there you are sunshine! I guess Athens was hiding you- or maybe it was Alden Library. who knows?
Anyway, I have been home just over a week and currently am deeply concerned about my lack of a tan. I'm pasty (pasty). Gotta work on that- also on my list of summer plans:
1. Paint my living room- Mom's orders
2. Lose 20 pounds- Just balancing it out- THANKS sorority house cooking. It was like swimming in butta. Thankfully I have my own kitch next year.
3. Save muuun-nay (money)- you know for food to cook in my own little kitch.
4. Find cute things to put in my new bedroom- !!!!!! browns/greens. Thinking of adding a dusty rose hue into the mix, but just became aware as I am writing that no one cares but me.
5. Recruitment jazz- I'm saying "jazz" to mask my true feelings. my life come fall = game over.
6. Eat seafood until I explode- counter productive to item 2, but don't worry it'll only be for a week- in Cape Cod- where fresh seafood is freaking ABUNDANT. I'm a'cheatin on my vegetarian ways. Don't judge.
asking for it
7. Read until my eyeballs fall out- gosh, everything I'm doing seems detrimental- droopy eyeballs, exploding stomachs, manual labor, etc. But whatever I like books and don't have much time to read them at a leisurely pace whilst at school.
there was something else, but I can't remember it. oh well.
But point 7 brings me to the uh, point of this post. As I recently pointed out I like books - and variations of the word "point." I like books so much in fact that I have chosen to bother you with my opinions on them. Don't all shout for joy at once, people. I have decided to - temporarily?- make this a book review blog! I read about a book a week - not to toot my own horn- in the summer and decided with an apparent lack of structure and abundance of free time that seems to have come my way I'll give you a little insight into the wonderful world of what I'm reading- and what I think of it.
1st title announcement to come in the next few days (and possible blog RE-titling?)- I just finished my last book today and am in the market for a new one- shouldn't be too hard in my library of a house.
Oh, this word has always made me laugh- you may say I'm immature, but I cannot help it. kinky I have always thought of it as such a sexy and grown-up word, like something wealthy middle-aged ladies bring up when out to lunch- in regards to their pool boy of course.
So to see printed neatly atop a book of poetry, hovering over a slightly, uh curvier, Barbie- made me feel a little confused. As a young girl,l I grew up with a staggering Barbie collection (my favorite was actually Teresa, Barbie's best friend- she had brown hair), thinking nothing more of my dolls as- well just that dolls. I didn't give her much thought- Oh, I also really liked Barbie's French friend (Lena? Leia?), anyway she came with paint brushes. Kinky, introduced a different side of Barbie. Denise Duhamel presented a more sexual character. Yes, sure, sometime Barbie and Ken made-out or shared a little makeshift bed, but I had never thought about Barbie's sex organs, and who would think it was a concern of Barbie's either? The book shows us Barbie's own exploration of her sexuality-or I guess you could say sexless-ness. "'Even Stephen King, who wrote the novel, and Brian DePalma, who made the film, understand the nature of female cycles better than I do, and they're human men,'" Barbie says (Duhamel, pp. 54, Barbie and Carrie).
Had I never understood Barbie's distress over the inability to be a real women?-funny I say this as our culture has implied that Barbie encompasses all that a "real woman" should. What does that say about our culture? What does that say about women? I don't know but, I still feel bad for Barbie.
I'm Waiting for My Man I'm waiting for my man Twenty-six dollars in my hand Up to Lexington, 125 Feel sick and dirty, more dead than alive I'm waiting for my man Hey, white boy, what you doin' uptown? Hey, white boy, you chasin' our women around? Oh pardon me sir, it's the furthest from my mind I'm just lookin' for a dear, dear friend of mine I'm waiting for my man Here he comes, he's all dressed in black Beat up shoes and a big straw hat He's never early, he's always late First thing you learn is you always gotta wait I'm waiting for my man Up to a Brownstone, up three flights of stairs Everybody's pinned you, but nobody cares He's got the works, gives you sweet taste Ah then you gotta split because you got no time to waste I'm waiting for my man Baby don't you holler, darlin' don't you bawl and shout I'm feeling good, you know I'm gonna work it on out I'm feeling good, I'm feeling oh so fine Until tomorrow, but that's just some other time I'm waiting for my man
Oh, what a pretty song I thought the first time I heard it. I was sitting in my DANC 171 class, and today's lesson was all about ballet. We watched this movie, Amelia, by Edourad Lock, a French-Canadian choreographer. The song seemed sad and poignant. A lonely young woman waiting for her lover. Well that's what I thought. Then my friend, Renee' sitting next to me laughed a little. "Oh I like this song," she said," The original is by the Velvet Underground." That's weird "It's about his drug dealer." oh.
Certainly changes the perspective of a song when you hear something like that. It is interesting how the whole meaning of a song can change in regards to its context or what sort of images are juxtaposed with it. In this case, the dancers and the overall sad mood of the film had led me to believe I was hearing one thing, while the original version and the lyrics sang a different tune (hahahaha. pun intended.) Their original implies something seedy and purely rock and roll. In art classes we learn about appropriation-to take exclusive possession of-in this sense we had been told, not to borrow someone else's work, but to steal it. how nice Well, that surely sounds awful, you might say; however, the intention is not to plagiarize or claim someone's work, but rather to use what they have and change it so completely you have made it your own. And I can safely say in the case of Amelia's, I'm Waiting for My Man, thorough appropriation has been achieved.
So I will be the first to admit that my title is way dramatic, but I like coming up with headings-so just let it happen.
I'm not sure if everyone noted this but in the opening credits Helen Fielding, the author of BJD, was listed a one of the screen writers for the movie. I thought this was interesting considering the altered subplot, increase in Bridget weight (she was around 10-15 heavier in the film)- among other added and altered things. Obviously, we know the world of movies is much different than that of books and some liberties had to be taken- but I do believe the focus of the movie was more about the happenings in the plot; whereas, in the book -clearly because it was a diary- the focus was on Bridget's personal and private reactions to the things going on around her. We could look at this as a manner of "forwarding" the book to the movie, although I see it more as the author and director's interpretation (are those the same things? This fancy writing lingo confuses me) into film. How would Bridget's life look to an outsider, one who could not possibly know what she was thinking. Even though, Bridget does sometimes narrate and there is writing on the screen, we forget the significance of the diary, and see Bridget as someone out in the world rather than a young woman sitting in her apartment scribbling away in her diary. As far as successfully translating the book into a movie,where the story and characters are concerned- I believe they are both accurately represented and given justice on the screen. However, I think the experience of learning Bridget's story loses someone it's charm in the film- we lose the insight of being inside Bridget's head.
Really. Some of you may have already heard of this website, but here it is for those of you who have not. We all know Twilight fans, have a range in age, but scarcely in gender(newsflash: it is a girl book). This young man took on the task of reading the Twilight saga,and on his site you he goes chapter by chapter giving the reader his review- as a 20 something guy. Most of the things on the home page are just about movie updates, etc- but if you go to the chapter tab, that is where all the good stuff is. It is interesting to get a man's perspective on a on a clearly feminine gendered writing. See what you think
Clarissamo
7. Read until my eyeballs fall out- gosh, everything I'm doing seems detrimental- droopy eyeballs, exploding stomachs, manual labor, etc. But whatever I like books and don't have much time to read them at a leisurely pace whilst at school.
