tuckova

better than nothing

I went out for a few beers with a friend of mine last night and it was good, though I came home singing which Friar will tell you and nearly everyone else will agree is not my greatest talent. He told me to shut up, using more words and more politely, but I got the point so I killed him at Scrabble and went to bed.

I'm re-entering one of my periods of having no idea how I look, but getting a distinctly bad feeling about it. I once went about a month thinking I oughtn't leave the house without a paper bag over my head. It's not that my image of myself has greatly improved since then, but more that I've realized that people who sit around talking about how ugly they are are either genuinely ugly, in which case they make others uncomfortable, or are not genuinely ugly, in which case they make other people bored, and my fear of being awkward or boring generally outweighs my desire to tell people they don't have to look at me when they talk to me if they don't want to. Anyway this is not the best timing, self-image wise, but there's not much to be done. I think I will sew myself up a tent this weekend and wear it til the feeling passes.

For reasons entirely beyond reason I decided to start The Life of Pi. Dear Yann Martel I am very proud of you for doing all that research! How many authors can list animals in a zoo for pages and pages? How many authors can list deities of various religions with the same fervor? I want to brush your pretty poetic hair for you and pinch your sweet clever cheeks, but if you do not get me a plot in the next 20 pages I am going to throw your damn book across the room.

Last weekend Squire and I hung out with some old friends of mine, people who think I'm a good singer by the way, though I think they're just impressed that I always know all the words. I remember everything. I hadn't seen these friends in uhm five years, so it was strange and interesting to be sitting around like no time had passed, yakking away and laughing. Squire fell asleep listening to Jan Werich read Svejk and when I went upstairs to bed he was still smiling. In the morning we drank strong coffee and watched the roe deer running in the field up the hill.

on what's fair game in an unfair game

Today I am thinking about public vs. private personality. In particular, I am thinking about the difference between having a voluntary or involuntary public persona, especially as it relates to politics. How much we expect the families of politicians to step up and work for them, campaign for them, smile endlessly and never even scratch their noses. I think it's unfair. I think it's wrong. It is the way it's done, though, and I wish we could agree on some rules. I wish for rules to protect the innocent, and I also wish for rules that will make it possible for me to mock the ridiculous.

Though it seems unfair to me, I'll concede that in order to win, it is now necessary to haul your family along for the ride. You can't be a drug addict and your spouse can't be either; also ideally your kids will be reasonably respectable. Somewhere along the line we started thinking the choices you made as a family member were the choices you would make as the leader of a country, and while I think that's not accurate I understand it's part of the mythos and okay: You wanna be president, your family will have to be at your side. And they will be judged for their behavior at your side. If you don't like that, you don't get to be the boss of the country.

So: You're a family member of a politician. You're going to be judged. I don't think it's fair to judge anybody for their personal appearance unless they're trading on that appearance or have altered that appearance. Plastic surgery is always fair game. The big nose you inherited from your grandfather is not. Tattoos can be mocked. Acne cannot. Bad makeup, bad perm, bad haircolor, ill-fitting clothes, and the inability to walk in high heels for any person who is both old enough to know better and financially capable of rectifying errors? I have made those mistakes and so half the time I'm laughing with, but make no mistake: I'm laughing. But it is not fair to mock without sympathy the cluelessly young, honestly poor, or hopelessly ill-advised, and it is never okay to assume that appearance (the one you're born with, at least) is any reflection of character.

But you can judge people for their behavior, for sure. Any family member over the age of let's say 16 should show up, unless they have the flu or homework. They should look happy to be there. This is not because they have to actually be happy but because if a family member is in politics, I expect that member to have good enough manners to handle a peace summit and I expect the rest of the family to be able to muster the manners to smile through a a political convention. It is not harder than telling Aunt Agatha you love that handmade sweater, and if you don't have the stamina for that, your family will not survive in politics.

I also think if they volunteer to go beyond standing at your side and smiling and waving, if they, say, want to start their own blog in which their description of themselves includes their astrological sign... well, that's like shooting Playmates in a barrel, isn't it? And people who fall asleep in church while trying to make their spouse look attentive to an issue deserve at the very least to be openly laughed at, even if they didn't actually drool or anything. I've yet to find anything funny in dog torture or glocks on a plane, but I'm sure it will come to me. And it's fair game, don't you think?

Line of Beauty

I finished The Line of Beauty finally. Around the middle, I started thinking: Are we ever going somewhere with this? and sort of sped through the second half of the book. I decided that we were not, in fact, really ever going anywhere, Alan and I, but that I would give his sentences the attention they deserved, so I went back to the middle and started again and finished.

It was... good. I guess. I was reminded of the Penn Jillette rule of clapping for the title of a movie when it appears in the movie, and clapped dutifully every time Hollinghurst name-checked his own novel, and ovated whenever he wanted to explain the title. It happened a lot. It's true that it may have seemed worse to me for having Evelyn Wood-ed and then seriously re-read the second half, but I think this really was laid on thick and recurrent. Including, of course The Amazing Parallels (or perhaps, the Amazing Serpentine Curves, bwaha) between the title of the book, the plot, and the presentation of the plot. It was a little anvillicious for me, as was the whole "Wow, and so the character named Nick Guest turns out to be a permanent guest! Who knew?!" Uhm... the guy who wrote the book? I know, I should have been prepared after Edward Manners, but... really?

I don't know, y'all, maybe I can't read grown-up fiction anymore. I'm a little too aware of the author wanting me to go someplace and I feel the pull of the puppet strings too much and then I'm irritated. I've read precious little contemporary fiction in the last decade where it felt like I was reading something that was both True and true*, and I think that I now value the latter, the feeling of the latter, as much as the former. If you're going to give me a story set in a world I've experienced or believe is true (Thatcher's England or whatever, as opposed to, say, Prydain) I need to have it that things don't always line up, the murder isn't always solved, the object of affection is not always attained; and the misalignment and unsolved murder and unrequited love don't make everything worse--any more than coincidence leads to enlightenment or solving the murder makes it less gruesome or falling in love means your troubles are over. I like a revelation on the human condition as much as the next person, but if it's too contrived it feels like less a moment of clarity and more like smoke and mirrors.

*off the top of my head: The Crow Road, Remains of the Day, Cat's Eye, and Middlesex all did a great job of making me feel like I was in a real place and that the people were real without overdoing the reality and while simultaneously getting to a point.

So Hollinghurst: dude, I don't know. The sentences were nice, sometimes even activating that little tingly part of my brain, which is certainly a thrill. And the way he wrote dialogue, which at first made me nutty, eventually sort of got entertaining, which may have been the point in the beginning and I was too slow to catch it. He's all "Really?" said Nick, meaning to convey his confusion at the statement and also a sense of disbelief in Rachel's apparent unawareness, if she was, in fact, unaware. "Hmm," answered Rachel, and Nick understood that she was keeping herself unaware, willfully holding herself in check against the onslaught of inevitable, horrible reality.

So, I liked the sentences. I thought the backthought was clever. I liked the snooty arty stuff, assuming he meant it to be both informed, informative, and a bit pedantic. But the insights were... Hey, did you know that coming of age was tricksy? Did you know that when you move outside of the social circle you were born in, there can be misunderstandings? Did you know that no matter how comfortable you are with your identity, other people may not be? Put against a backdrop of "hey, conservative politics were bad for lots of people; also, AIDS sucks" and the message I get is that Hollinghurst thinks his readers are a bit on the dumb side, and then the pedantic charm becomes a bit less charming.  Maybe I should have just seen the movie.

NOTE TO G: I did like reading it, for clarity. I think I just miss our book group.

It's a Key Party QUIZ!

YOUR KEYS (check all that apply):
are on a keyring
face the same direction on your keychain (all teeth to one side)
line up in the order you normally use them (outside door, inside door, or whatever)
are stored on separate rings according to function (house keys, work keys)
are all on one master ring
have those little color tabs on them so you can find them quickly
are accompanied by an item that is not a key (laser pointer, army knife, rubber toy, etc.)
follow the rules of the James Spader character in "Sex Lies and Videotape"

TRUE/FALSE:
I didn't know the jagged part was called "teeth".
I already knew the jagged part was called "teeth" but did not know that the part between the head and the shaft was called the "nape".
I knew teeth and nape.
I remember that the character's name was Graham and am insulted that you spelled it out.
I understand all of these questions.
Yes, even the subtext, pfft.

ESSAY:
Describe your key system.

hands unreasonable never to touch

I'm stuck in a moderately nasty memory loop. It's that I remember so much stuff and so much of it is awful that I think I made it up; and then I try to remember something bracingly good, and presently I'm counting dust motes and I'm no fun to be around at all. I can remember. Just sometimes Billy Pilgrim drinks me under the table and there's no Montana Wildhack to comfort me.

So okay, we'll do updates, shall we. Oh let's! We meaning I took down the decorations, the tree and the lights and everything today. I am madly efficient and did it with only one cigarette break. It is very funny how once the tree is gone that part of the room looks so empty. When you put the tree up, you're like, "Now how on earth shall I get to my back issues of Scientific American for the next two weeks?" and then two weeks later you're both "Whoo, there's that article on the temporal lobe that I was looking for!" and also "Hey, should we buy some more furniture or something?"

But we should not buy more furniture because in fact we're meaning I'm having the living room painted next week. I had to tell Friar about it, because he has to clear off his desk. I was sort of tempted for a minute to go ahead and have the room painted and see if he noticed but the burden of clearing the desk frightened me into reason. So he cleaned his desk while I undecorated. I believe he required quite a few more breaks and he's not done. Some people are not fixated on completion.

The cat has been put on a diet because she is a fatty fattness. She doesn't seem to have gotten the memo. Yowr.

Oh, and I shaved my head. Partly because I watched Violently Happy and it seemed like a good idea. Also because, as they say, I could. And also, of course, because it was there.

New Year's was magically delicious. We went to the beer garden for the first fireworks, which were at 11 for reasons rather too Brno-esque to detail. Then we went downtown and saw the midnight fireworks. The whole thing was lovely and crazy and nearly precisely what I love about living here, and I had it all encapsulated in my mind but then I didn't write it down immediately and now it seems so much my standard Making A Big Insight From A Small Event, whoo, that I can't quite bring myself to do it.

Sometimes I feel like U2 on tour or something, ratcheting up the emotion every night just to make a point when what I really want to do is crash back with a bottle of whiskey and a pretty groupie or something.

But my face is my own, as the poet said. What to say when you see me.