Being the I.T. Girl

In my first major project since becoming full-time I.T. for my main job, I may have over-scheduled myself.

Basically, I have left time for a day of doctor appointments in two weeks and then two weeks after that, I've penciled myself in for finally getting a moment to just opening cry.

My goal for the month leading up to my conference at the beginning of October was to get to the final day of the conference and then I would be free to cry.

Somehow, I've managed to hang onto not crying. It's very new to me. But I still desperately need it frequently. Just about any time I'm at any of my jobs or in front of a computer, I feel a underlying desire to just weep and finally release everything I have been holding in.

I basically will have that chance... just in time for the holiday season to go full blast.

I still haven't figured out when I'm going to sleep or take care of my leg, however. One luxury at a time.

The Knightly Situation

I love Emma the most out of all of Jane Austen's leading ladies. And I feel like she doesn't get the credit she deserves. Hell, even Jane Austen was worried that she was the only person that liked Emma. But that's part of how Emma has taken up such a large portion of my Austen-based love.

The other part is that I find Knightly, by far, the most interesting of Austen male leads. If you ask me, he's a lot more accessible as a character than Mr. Darcy or Edward Ferrars. I have a theory that Darcy is possibly on the autism spectrum for his inability to understand emotions. Edward is... kind of a confused sad puppy for most of Sense & Sensibility. 

But Mr. Knightly, I feel makes a tad more sense. Even the whole "fall in love with the girl fifteen years younger than you that you've always thought of as a sister" thing. Because he's more logical in working through his realization and I really respect that his big move, initially, was to remove himself from the situation completely and not fuck things up. He only finally gives in and admits his love when he finds out that Frank Churchill is no longer a concern when it comes to Emma and he admits his love while also having already come to terms with the very real possibility that she would not return the feelings.

I respect that in a man. Colonel Brandon was a similar type- willing to gracefully remove himself from the situation and being very stoic and manly about it. Which makes sense for Austen to write the older suitors for her leading ladies to be wiser yet silently suffering from heartache (especially Colonel Brandon).

And while the whole "known Emma her whole life"/"15-17 years her senior" thing has some ickiness to it, I also like that Knightly and Emma's story has a lot of history. They know each other ridiculously well and interact constantly throughout the book. You start to realize that at least part of why Emma has no desire to marry is because she already has a pseudo-marriage with Mr. Knightly. One of my favorite details in the 2009 BBC miniseries is when Mr. Knightly comments lightly that Emma looks so comfortable in Donwell Abbey that one would think she was its mistress. Because she really did seem that comfortable as she settled her father for his place at the party.

Also? Mr. Knightly is actually a nice person. Which I really don't feel I can say about Darcy all the time. Mr. Knightly was really trying to help out Robert Martin, he bothers to get to know Harriet and takes back his comments about her, he expresses concern for Jane Fairfax when she is not well, and he even solves the issue of how to make Mr. Woodhouse comfortable with the concept of Emma marrying. 

It also helps that Mr. Knightly is one of the few Austen men that has total control of his own life. Darcy has his aunt trying to control him, a sister to watch out for, and a scumbag of a former best friend all getting in his way. Edward has a terrible mother and sister in his way, as well as a long-term fiance that he's too nice to dump when he falls in love with someone else. Henry Tilney's father try a lot to control his life entirely. And Edmund Bertram is... in a book so boring I can't even finish the Billie Piper film version. Also: in love with his cousin. Even Colonel Brandon had his ward and her child to consider and care for.

But Mr. Knightly has no one to try to force him to do things he does not wish to do. His obstacles are just that the woman he loves possibly does not feel the same. 

I do wonder, however, that when he started to realize that part of his dislike of Frank came from a point of jealousy for Emma's attention, if Mr. Knightly had a giant, "OH SHIT" moment with himself. How do you come to terms with the fact that you're in love with the little girl from next door? With the younger sister of your sister-in-law? Or was it that over the years he kept trying to make himself not feel attracted to her, but when she finally seemed to be in love with someone, he couldn't take it anymore?

I always wanted to know more about the connection between the Knightly and Woodhouse families before the book began. More about why the Knightly boys were so comfortable being around Mr. Woodhouse and his family.

My other wonder is always if Mr. Knightly and Anne Taylor (later Anne Weston) ever considered each other. They're around the same age, were around each other constantly, and both have a strong sense of morality and loyalty. Or would their different statuses make it completely not even worth considering?

But I also wonder how well Mr. Knightly's marriage to Emma would go after the book ended. Would all that history, all that antagonistic back-and-forth, still come through every so often? Briefly forgetting "this is the person I married"? Emma wasn't even sure if she could ever call Mr. Knightly anything other than "Mr. Knightly", despite the change in their relationship. How much would actually change? Especially since they would still live at Hartfield with her father and he would probably like to pretend nothing had changed. Would just that aspect of it get in the way at times?

So, in conclusion: I think a lot about Mr. Knightly.

Killing the Fishtank- S.H.I.E.L.D. "0-8-4"

Episode 2 was a grand improvement, with the help of Angel alum writer/producer Jeffery Bell. Yay!

It's nice to know the writers were aware that the first episode was a bit of a clusterfuck and addressed it head-on immediately. And finishing it with a weird hissy-fit from Director Fury was kind of awesome.

Also, two thoughts on Coulson:

1) I think he's actually a robot.
2) I sort of feel like he's being written as a non-villain version of the Mayor from BtVS.

Final note: this is basically the only new show I'm bothering to follow at this point this year. TV time is very rare for me at the moment.

Return of the Amazonians!

Hey, remember when I tried the Amazonian Clay face mask sample and bitched about how Tarte expected people to pay $38 for five applications of the mask?

Well, a couple months ago, Sephora started carrying a "Limited Edition" version of the Double Detox Amazonian Clay face mask that is one 2.64 oz tube for the same $38 price. That's quite the better deal than the 5 tubes of .1 ounces.

And, yeah, I bought it. Even though it still smells like pee every time I use it. And I like it. Although, it seems to be no better than any thing else at dealing with the pours on my nose, but that is the curse of the glasses wearer, I guess. And I should just be thankful that I don't have a W.C. Fields nose going on yet.

But why does it smell like pee? Does anyone know? Is it just Amazonian pee mixed with mud and jojoba? Because I think that might be the case.

Take Control of Your Weekend!

When one is looking at a really crappy few days of MRIs and invasive medical appointments... sometimes it helps to schedule some fun with a friend in between it all.

Rather than try to type it all out, I'm just going to link to the episode of his podcast we recorded. And I'll mention that the episode was recorded on my iPhone after my MacBook Pro suddenly acted up for the first time in the 7 years I've owned it. It took 40 minutes to open up Garage Band for some reason. And then as soon as I got home that evening, it was back to its typical self.

We did have a handful of bad luck moments- but never anything terrible. I somehow managed to print out only the confirmation and not the tickets for the Cubs game, but we solved that quickly. Driving out to House On The Rock took ridiculously longer than we thought it would, but we saw it all (rushing only through basically the dollhouse and doll sections of the third building). We were stuck behind a grandma driving way too slowly when we were pressed for time to get back to Milwaukee, but still got awesome seats for the second Cinematic Titanic show (which was ah-may-zing). We had a lot of trouble finding restaurants that were open after 10 pm on a Sunday night, but eventually found a Portillo's. So on. So forth.

Also, we're convinced there's some seedy underbelly situation with The House on the Rock. As mentioned in the podcast, you really get the feeling that there is more behind the little fake cobblestone streets and giant collections of self-playing instruments than just that the guy liked to collect things. The first area you walk through, before going into the living area of the house, is a museum dedicated to the guy that build the House on the Rock and it's so bizarrely propaganda-y that it doesn't make sense.

And I really don't know how to stress how amazing Cinematic Titanic was.

And how awesome Dave "Gruber" Allen was as a warm-up act (I will never forget him dancing to "Bye-Bye-Bye"). Special mention must go out to Mary Jo's impression of a West Wing background character and J. Elvis's amazing airport tribute band. As for the actual riffing... it was THE BEST. As much as I try to not pick favorites between Cinematic Titanic and RiffTrax, the CT team does tend to be more natural and make the script seem more improvised. And being with a live audience just makes everything so much better. And it really makes a difference to have Mary Jo on the cast, as there's a definite benefit to having an actual woman to pretend to be the voice of the female character rather than the guys doing falsetto all the time. And Mary Jo tends to get the really sly joke that gets an overwhelming (and deserved) response.

The second night was Danger on Tiki Island, which they have done numerous times and were clearly having fun with it. Patrick noticed that the cast was looser with the f-bombs and general swearing. But there's also just the plain fact that the film is nuts and perfect for mocking. As that movie started and the first few lines were thrown out, the uncontrollable thought of "I want to do this every night." flooded my brain. Even with the drive to Milwaukee, the parking price, and the price of concessions... if I could go to Cinematic Titanic every night, I think I would until I went broke.

The Psyche of One Diana Barry

"It's extremely interesting," Anne told Marilla. "Each girl has to read her story out loud and then we talk it over. We are going to keep them all sacredly and have them to read to our descendants. We each write under a nom-de-plume. Mine is Rosamond Montmorency. All the girls do pretty well. Ruby Gillis is rather sentimental. She puts too much lovemaking into her stories and you know too much is worse than too little. Jane never puts any because she says it makes her feel so silly when she had to read it out loud. Jane's stories are extremely sensible. Then Diana puts too many murders into hers. She says most of the time she doesn't know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them." - Anne of Green Gables, Chapter 26: "The Story Club Is Formed"

This section really popped out at me during my most recent re-listen to the audio book. I've been convinced for years that Diana's mother is, by far, the most evil person in Avonlea (in all the books and movies)- so now I'm wondering how much of that has warped Diana and we the readers just don't see the worst of it. Did we miss out on scenes of Diana torturing small animals or lighting fires around the island? Is there a more devious reason for why Diana seemed to have such ease in adjusting to being a grown proper lady and wife after being Anne's partner in mischief for so long?


Also: Ruby Gillis, you minx you. Writing smut before anyone knew it would be popular.

I Still Can't Believe We Have a Network Show About S.H.I.E.L.D.

Best line in the show was delivered in this moment.

Man, the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. pilot was... kind of boring. Not even the constant Marvel Movie universe sly references (gamma radiation! Super soldier serum! Extremis!) and an amazing Cobie Smulders appearance could really keep me totally interested. This has to be the most mainstream middle-of-the-road show to ever have Joss Whedon's name connected to it, and I'm including Roseanne and the early 90s version of Parenthood to that equation.

I'm guessing the middle-of-the-road-ness might just be to ease in folks like my parents, who will tune into anything resembling a cop show and also just really like Ming-Na Wen (when did she stop being just Ming-Na?). And as the show goes on, it'll get more genre-friendly. Hopefully. That end was so super-cheesy that my side hurt.

And I have to admit to having total and complete nostalgia giddiness of seeing the Grr-Argh monster once more. I miss that little paper Mutant Enemy.

So, quick breakdown of the Good:

• Seeing old friends like Ron Glass and J. August Richards. Although, I'm a little freaked out by how Richards appears to be going grey. Remember when Gunn was, like, just slightly too old to still be considered a juvenile delinquent? I do. But he got a great role for the episode and I always feel like he should be much more famous than he really is. So, hopefully this episode will help him get more notice.

• Clark Gregg. Clark Gregg. Clark Gregg. I would not watch this show if Coulson was not in it. I do fear that he's actually a robot, but I'll take what I can get. It is a teeny bit weird to have Coulson as the central character, however, as he's a little... aloof. And it does feel like there might be a Doyle-esque situation in the making, if Clark doesn't want to hang around forever.

• Actors that can handle Whedon-style dialogue. It takes a special brand of actor to be able to wrap your tongue around the twisty-jokey dialogue of not just Joss Whedon but of Jed and Marissa as well. The cast handled it beautifully, much better than any other Whedon cast managed in a first episode. 

• Bear McCreary's scoring, which is suitably super-hero-y and lush. 

• Two main characters played by Asian-American actresses? And the characters aren't even related?! Again, it's a shame that something like that gets me this excited but... that's nice to see. 

The Not-So-Good:

• Whedon has this weird ability to cast really bland looking guys. Eventually, you do start to be able to remember which one is which, but right now I've got "Tech Guy" and "Poor Man's Sam Witwer".
• What the hell was that ending? Slow-mo? Bullet to the head that's not actually deadly? No follow-up with the character as to how they're going to help him pull his shitty life together? I don't understand how they thought that was a decent ending.
• Man, I wonder how much damage the set takes for all those heavy dropping anvils about the pasts of characters.
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