Happy Birthday to R&M!

Well folks, it has finally come.  I HAVE BEEN BLOGGING FOR ONE WHOLE YEAR! *jumps up and down with excitement*  Isn't it amazing?  One year, one hundred posts (yes, I timed it on purpose, and yes, some of them are still drafts), fifty-two followers, and 3,935 pageviews.  You all are so sweet.   I know it sounds cliche, but I really wouldn't have kept blogging without all the awesome feedback I get.  I've discovered all sorts of cool people, too.

So, have I learned anything by blogging?  I think I have.  I've discovered that I really like article-style writing, for one.  I think it's what I'm best at, really.  (I know what you're thinking.  If that's what she's best at...)  I've also realized that it's stupid to apologize for my opinions and tastes.  It just makes me sound rant-y and insecure and who knows what else.  Not to mention, a shocking amount of people actually agree with me, which is kind of awesome.

So, happy birthday to me.  And thank you all for being amazing.  *gives gigantic internet hug*

A Ramble-y Post on *The Scarlet Letter*

 People.  This book.  I thought I was going to hate it, but I don't.  It's full of interestingness and ideas and STUFF, which I will now proceed to ramble about.  Oh, and I must put out a major spoiler alert.  Don't say I didn't warn you.  You won't understand what I'm talking about, if you haven't read the book, by the way, because I'm not going to explain who or what I'm discussing.  I have to do that all the time in real life, and I very much dislike it.

First of all, The Scarlet Letter made me very grateful to be a Catholic.  Catholic confession would have been the saving of Dimmesdale!  He wouldn't have had to struggle with all that guilt and hypocrisy, because his sin would have been cleansed by the sacrament of Penance.  But no, he was a Puritan, and so he had to struggle with his guilt and try to avenge it on his own.  I do feel very, very sorry for him, even if he was a spineless jerk most of the time.  But shame is a horrible thing to bear.  It's not even explainable, it's so ghastly.  So I feel for Dimmesdale, and I wish I could hop in a TARDIS or something and bring him a Catholic priest.  (Do TARDISes go to fiction?  I'm not very well-versed in Who-ology.)  I did like that the author had confession (in a general way) be essential to Dimmesdale's redemption.  Hawthorne didn't just have him say "oh, in my heart I'm sorry for this, and that's all it takes so everything's fine now.  Glory hallelujah."  Also, the author didn't make excuses for the sin.  I mean, the whole book is about the consequences of a couple's adultery.

Random point #2: Pearl scares me.  I know she's supposed to be the living incarnation of her parents' sin and their punishment, but the girl is freaky.  You have no idea how relieved I was to find out that she was "humanized by sorrow" and eventually married and had a child.  I would have liked to see what she was like after her "transformation."  Too bad Nathaniel Hawthorne is dead.  A Pearl-centered sequel would have been interesting.

Speaking of weirdness, I was a bit confused by all the mentions of witchcraft.  Did Hawthorne mean to imply that all the flying about in the sky and whatnot actually happened, or was he just giving  the local opinions?  Very strange.

I found the characterization to be very good.  All the characters were three-dimensional: no one was  all good or all bad, yet the division between good and evil was very visible.  Even revengeful old Roger Chillingworth had his sympathetic moment in the beginning of the story, when he admits that he was wrong to marry Hester.   One almost feels sorry for him at that point.

Well, I'd better wrap this up.  It's nearly dinnertime and I'm too hungry to think anymore.  But I shall make this into a proper review by giving The Scarlet Letter 7 stars out of 10, a PG-13 movie-style rating (for mature themes), and recommending the book for readers age fifteen & up.

Note: I did not give the "mature readers"/"ordinary readers" distinction because once a reader is old enough for the mature themes, he/she is already old enough to be comfortable with the style.  Hope that makes sense. 

If you've read The Scarlet Letter, what did you think of it?  (Seton students, my eye is upon you.  I know you've read it because it's required for 11th-grade English, so I am expecting your comments.  Muahaha.)

In Which I Rant On The Phenomenon Of The Crush

*Warning for male audiences: very girl-oriented post ensues*

Modern parlance is really something.  When a girl likes a boy (or vice versa), we say that she has a crush on him.  Ummm....please tell where this term came from?  The etymology must be fascinating.  For my part, when I hear it I think of cans of crushed pineapple.  Seriously.

I have many levels of distaste for this word (which I will admit I use in daily life because I'm too intellectually lazy to think of a better term), but the aspect which I encounter most often is the all-encompassing meaning of the word, especially when used as a synonym for "like" - which is, incidentally, another rant-worthy topic itself, which I shall not go into at present.  A crush can be anything from "the really cute cashier at Giant" to "Ohmygawsh the actor who plays X (insert fangirled movie character here)" to "that random person I just talked to for three minutes" to "my neighbor/friend/companion-in-hanging-about-after-Sunday-Mass who just happens to be a guy."  All these people (and you know about most, if not all of these situations, I know you do), lumped under the one term: "crush."  I cringe just seeing it, it's so expressive of teenage drama and silliness.  I think some of this very silliness could be dispelled if we called things by more proper terms.  What you feel for the good-looking young man at the grocery-store cash register is just passing admiration of his external features.  What you feel for the movie character is something between the cashier situation and what can only be called obsession.  The guy whom you had one short conversation with has inspired interest.  And as for your partner in after-church socialization (or whatever) - it could be simple friendship, or a sort of infatuation, or maybe, possibly, it could be a liking which will turn out to be much more.

You can easily see that all of these situations are vastly different, and ought to be considered as such.  (And, if I may say so, teasing is always called for, EXCEPT in the pure friendship case.  In the others, it provides a comic relief for overly-dramatic drama.)  I think we girls would be much less confused about these matters if we called them what they are.  Personally, when I was first introduced to the concept of "having a crush" I was horribly muddled and very anxious.  I thought that it was something very serious which one was pulled into against one's will.  I would frantically review every male being I knew and apprehensively try to ascertain if I had a crush on any of them.  My journals from 2007 and 2008 are the most mortifying (and laughable) things you can imagine.   This was one of the few matters in which I wish I had had an older sister to ferret things out and show me what was what.

The other aspect of crushes, intertwined with and illustrated by my first objection, is that of every single guy near one's age being, as my little sister used to put it, "crushed upon."  This is basically what happens to a girl who is called boy-crazy.  Everyone is looked upon as possible crush material when really they should just be looked on as a possible friend.  We girls confuse the two.  Sometimes we decide that we "like" a person when really all we want is to be friends with them.  This is the biggest thing I have had to contend with.  I think that when our feelings start getting carried away, we should sit down, give ourselves a mental shake (and perhaps some non-caffeinated tea) and really think what we want from this person.  Sometimes a so-called crush is just a desire to know more about someone.

Well, I believe I've exhausted my ranting capacity for the day - for two days, actually, since my rambling has now brought me to midnight.  See how much I love you all, to stay up till midnight for you?  Anyway, so, if you've made it down here, what do you think?  Do you disagree?  If you do I'd love to hear about it, with the reasons why you think that way.  I've had some awesome discussions in the comments section - particularly on the Hunger Games posts.  And of course if you agree I'd love to hear that too.  Always nice to know that one is not alone in one's strange opinions.

This is a peace offering in case you were discouraged by what might be construed as cynicism, on my part, about "love." :)

Character Letters - June Edition

So, for those of you who don't know, Rosamund Gregory over at Shoes of Paper ♥ Stockings of Buttermilk (formerly A Wanderer in the Shadowed Land) has a monthly feature called  Character Letters, where one has a character write a letter based on certain prompts.  It's a lovely idea, and I meant to do it last month and didn't get to it.  I nearly didn't get to it this month, either, but I was determined, so here goes.

Nora isn't really a letter-writing kind of girl -- more because she hasn't got anyone to write to then because she doesn't like letters.  The theme for this month's Character Letters was villains, but Nora's story  (entitled, by the way, Coffee-Shop) doesn't really have a villain, per se.  It may yet, but it doesn't right now.  You see, Nora creates her own villains.  Mental villains, that is.  She's kind of her own enemy, and I don't mean that in a dramatic dual-personality kind of way.  She just has tendencies she must fight against and circumstances that are against her, like everyone else.  So her "letter" is a diary entry. 

I did try to write it out by hand, but you see, Nora's handwriting is quite different from mine, and I'm not much of a forger.  So I shall just describe it.  Nora writes in that funny half-cursive, half-print style, where some letters are cursive and joined together, while some are just and print as print can be.  Nevertheless, she isn't a careless person, in writing as in everything else, and her handwriting is quite neat and very small, with a tendency to be rather vertical.  It is not pretty, but hasn't got any obvious faults. She dots all the i's and crosses the t's with short, straight lines.  She likes to use pens but usually confines herself to pencils because they are more economical and can be erased if necessary.  Nora writes in a neat brown-covered journal with a key and lined pages.  She uses the key because she feels it's bad enough to have her thoughts and emotions down permanently on a piece of paper without making it accessible.  She wears the key as a necklace, and finds that to be very romantic and heroine-like.  The girl would never confess to something so silly, though.

Without more ado (though that description was ever so much fun to write):

 April 12, 20--

I am miserable.  I've finally owned it to myself.  I'm lonely and awkward and boring and bored.  The fact that I am miserable just makes me more miserable, too.  I guess that's ironic.  I should be grateful, you know.  I have a job that pays for me to live comfortably enough, I haven't any mortal illnesses, and nobody hates me.  But nobody really likes me, either.  Well --- that's not true either.  Nobody thinks of me enough to like me or dislike me.  I'm not the noticeable kind.  And as for my job, it may pay enough to live on, but I have to continue it constantly in order to live.  I shall never be able to go to college, at least not till I'm too old to want to.  I will be stuck in this dreary life for a long time yet, with no happiness apart from library books and the coffee-shop five blocks down.  I wish that awful car crash had never happened, oh, I wish so hard I feel it must bring them back!  But that's stupid.  They're not coming back.  And it isn't like me to be so emotional.  I must stop this.  But I am so very tired and overworked and just all-around miserable.  I'm very alone, just like in the rhyme: "I care for nobody, and nobody cares for me". 

All right.  I'm going to try and get over it.  My lunch break is over, I've got to get back to work.  And I can look forward to the coffee-shop this afternoon.  I'll think on that.

 - Nora Grace

Okay, I'm sorry it's rather depressing.  But you see, this takes place the day the story begins.  When Nora goes to the coffee-shop this particular afternoon, she meets someone (after an uncharacteristic display of strong emotion) who --- oh, but to tell more would give too much away.  Spoilers, sweetie!

Cause you know, I'm a lot like my dad.

I had to do a Father's Day-ish post, because my dad actually reads my blog.  Sometimes.  Once in a while. 

He doesn't like to be talked about "in public" so that's exactly what I'll do.   I'm just like him, so I know how his brain works.  Yes I do. *evil cackle*.  My dad's a choleric-melancholic, which basically makes him a drill sergeant with a shy streak.  Nothing makes him happier than to have something done right - so at work he does everything for the incompetent people who are supposed to do it.  He's smart as anything and he discovered Einstein's theory of relativity in grade school, just to find out it had already been discovered.  At least, that's what he says.  I know he's smart, but if he's really that smart, it's scary.  He explains stuff to me all the time and makes me read books on philosophy and logic and theology and all kinds of complicated things.  I skim through them and then pretend to know what I'm talking about.  Sometimes we have deep discussions (in which I get mad and then get disproved into an embarrassed silence) late into the night. Those are fun cause I get to be completely and unabashedly nerdy, even if I am disproved into oblivion.  But you see, I got my know-it-all attitude from him, too.  I always say he gave me the worst traits, but in reality I like being like him, except for the hair and the temper.  Could have done without those. Oh, and I could have done without the love of internet surfing, too - though that can't be genetic because there was no internet when he was born in the far-off days of hippies and crazy hair and seriously freaky music videos that I still have to see because he has a sentimental attachment to what my mom calls "the music of his youth".  I have a different name for it, but we won't say it.

ANYWAY, so my dad's kind of amazing and I love him.  The end.