In Which a bunch of Fragments are collected

So, I often sort of wonder whether my blog is actually more of a waste of ideas than a discussion of them. I feel like I start off somewhere reasonable like “howzabout those new ads?” or “tropes, man, I mean, eh?” and then I have lots and lots of little ideas, which really could use proper exploring, but which generally just get pelted like hail into the post, and not explored any further. So, I can’t go about the place writing another very similar post about how it is that so many of my friends are geeky and so on, because that one’s used up, but lots of the things I only glancingly mentioned could’ve made quite a good post all by themselves, had I the wherewithal to exploit that. Basically it’s the same problem as I used to have with essays. Fortunately, however, no-one’s marking these posts, so we should be ok.

What makes this seem really especially relevant, though, is that I’ve just found a bunch of half-written, never-posted blog posts saved on my computer. And I would just finished them, polish them up and post them, but I can’t really remember where I was going with them, so here’s my plan: Instead of doing it properly or keeping them languishing forever on my laptop, I’ll just post them as is, caveat emptor as it were. Later on, if I suddenly remember or can be bothered, I might finish some of them and repost them as whole posts, and if so, I’ll signpost that reasonably clearly, so you don’t sit there reading them at work going “this is it; I’ve finally gone mad, and am thinking like Ang, because I swear I’ve read or thought all this before”.

So, here you are, some fragments:

In Which Worth is Mysterious

Where does a person’s worth lie? Traditionally, we have all been taught that it’s all about the heart and mind. A literary hero is someone with extraordinary courage or kindness or something (Brontës excepted, of course), and preferably someone with some kind of combat skills and a way with the ladies. This is an interesting point in the first place: from our earliest youth we are taught that these qualities are heroic and great, and it makes us special that we all have them. Except that if we’re all taught that we have the uniquie quality of being especially lovely, then just exactly how special is it?

I have little direct experience with the social pressures on boys, being as how I’m a girl myself, with no brothers, and who was confined to the exclusively female environment of a girls’ school until uni, more or less. I don’t know how it is that boys become men, since the ones I know tend to be either fully-fledged or sort of permanently half-baked. Obviously, there must be some strange pressures on young men, and presumably these are ongoing in some way, but it would be the height of hypocrisy of me to presume to write about them. Therefore, this post is going to be pretty markedly gendered. If this is something you anticipate finding infuriating, ciao.

I guess the whole crux of what I want to get at here is articulated best by that Disney movie Beauty and The Beast. Either you’ve seen it, or you should, and if the latter, I assume you were raised Amish or something (nice work being online to read blogs, if so). There’s this whole thing about how Belle is smart, and well-read, and also gorgeous. The bad guy, a roguish hunk named Gaston say that she’s “the more beautiful girl in town – that makes her the best!”. You’re supposed, as a child, to sort of boo-hiss at this point, because if Care Bears and Roald Dahl’s Twits have taught us anything, it’s that true beauty is deeper than that. She does happen to be the “best” in town, but actually that’s because of being bookish. Except, they sure did go ahead and make her the most beautiful anyway, just for emphasis. It’s not “Smart Girl and the Beast” or “Chick who Makes Friends with the Anthropomorphised Crockery and the Beast” (either a more accurate summary of the character’s relevant skills). What makes her special is that she looks past the ugliness of the Beast and sees that he’s quite nice really (except that he’s not, at least at first, that’s the whole point). In fact, when he becomes officially nice, he gets to be attractive too (although not as good-looking as Aladdin).

What’s happening here? We go to lengths to teach kids that it doesn’t matter how they look, but there’s already this subtext: a real hero is nice to teapots and looks good flourishing a sword. You can really look up to a man whose teeth go ting in the sunlight.

*****

(Intriguingly, this fragment gets to remarkably closely resemble the other day’s post. Apparently my subconscious has Thoughts about Beauty & The Beast. Probably it’s on account of having accumulated days and days of total viewing time watching it as a child. Well, mainly as a child.)

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In Which Writing is just One of Those Things

So, I am chary of apologising for not writing in weeks, ever since that XKCD last week which made us all feel so self-conscious about whether we were, in fact, deeply uninteresting (http://xkcd.com/621/). But nonetheless, I do have a reason for not having posted in a while. Firstly, I’ve been studying for my exams, and thus unwilling to spend my spare time at my computer, and secondly because I sort of got into a bit of a rut with the writing thing, and I didn’t want to just write the same thing over and over again.

I am listening, while ostensibly studying (and I am studying, I have learned all about corticosteroids this afternoon, and learned that I need to start summarising my notes as the semester progresses over the last fortnight) to the Camera Obscura album My Maudlin Career. This hasn’t grown on me so much as some of their earlier stuff, because it turns out that it actually is rather more maudlin than previously. What prompts me to write is the line which was just sung at me “so you think you want to be a writer. A fantastic idea”, and now I’m all contemplative.

I have a friend (a Dad, in fact) who has a theory that being a writer is the only really satisfactory way to become obscenely rich. Like the other ways to get obscenely rich (rather than just Really Quite Comfortably Off) it is highly unreliable, since most writers are more prone to be Struggling Artists. But unlike such things as major scientific advances or Inventions or what have you, there’s no moral murk about getting rich from it. If I invent a fantastic thing which purifies water, say, at practically no cost, and then charge through the nose for it (which is an important step preceding the one labelled “Profit”) then that’s pretty seriously morally suspect. If I come up with a cure for malaria or Cancer or AIDS and charge for it so that only people with money can afford to access it then I am roughly on a par with Hitler in the “Good Citizens of the World” stakes.

BUT... if I write (if one writes, anyway) Harry Potter or something then it’s definitely mine, people don’t need it, so it’s not wrong to withhold it pending payment, but a lot of people do want it, and I’ve made something which wasn’t there before and so on and so on. Obviously, if I write The Da Vinci Code and significantly increase the amount of paranoid stupidity and conspiracy theorising in the world, muddying what little knowledge of history has made it into popular culture, then that’s less than ideal. But something like Harry Potter hasn’t made anyone stupider, surely. I mean, it provoked book burnings and such in the Bible Belt, but they were nutters. Nutters who paid for the copies they flamboyantly flambéed. I mean, those guys probably raised the royalties revenue noticeably. ‘Nuf said about previously existent dimness. There’s no helping that particular demographic.

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As to this one, I’d just love to know where I was going with all that, but I probably never will. I mean it definitely looks to be heading towards “so being a writer is the best way of being rich”, but I wonder if it was to end up “maybe I should publish my blog, and make all 4 of you reader types pinky swear to buy a copy and recommend it. I could be like David Sedaris and end up with my own TV show or something!” or on more of a “I wonder how that could even be done, man, that sort of thing takes a lot of perseverance and being good at dealing with rejection, nuts to it”? It could even have been heading “I hope one of you people I know becomes a famous author some day so I can be all ‘I know that guy!’: we’re looking at you, Spencer”-wards, for all I recall.)

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In Which a Blogger Gets Away with It

You know something wonderful? It’s nearly the end of August. This means that next Wednesday is my birthday but even more delightful than that is the fact that this means that Spring is on its way. Sure, there’s always a cold snap in September-ish, and it often cools for a while in November or whatever, but it will eventually, inevitably, be warm. In a few meagre months’ time, we will count how long it was since we felt “too cold” (not “deliciously cool” like an evening breeze or a soft-drink being spruiked by a model who would die before drinking it or anything else so sugary) in days. In weeks, even! It the moment, it’s more a “minutes” sort of measure. “Hours” if we’re lucky. But we won’t stand in the shower aware that the hot water can’t last forever but dreading the chill gust of air when we step out onto the bathmat. We may not bounce perkily out of bed of a morning for our 8 am lectures (I personally have a strong moral stance against that sort of behaviour at any time of year) but we won’t lie there with our blankets drawn up to our chins, looking at our jumper,visible from where we lie, but separated from us by aeons of icy transition.

It’s pretty exciting, you guys. Warmth which you don’t have to get out of a kettle via a hot-water-bottle or tea mug.

Anyway, this wasn’t what I was going to talk about so much as something which has just suddenly and excitingly struck me. I was going to talk about “getting away with it”. Maybe this is not something you often think about, it could be that you feel that you are perfectly competent at everything you turn your hand to on a day to day basis. Let me tell you, if you are in fact able to do all the things you’re supposed to be able to do, you’re missing out on a world of adventure.

This is obviously particularly relevant to me in my student capacity. I have a latin major but was sort of surprised to have slipped through the net with every latin exam I failed to fail. In anatomy labs and such, I am constantly surprised by the things that everyone else seems to just know. I don’t remember ever being told what the branches of the trigeminal nerve are, but everyone seems to know them. (I’ve got them now, but the point stands) I’m fairly sure that I get a bigger sense of achievement out of every question correctly answered than other people, just because I’m so surprised that I got away with it. That I guessed right, or managed to pull the answer out of the air (which is often how it feels) – that “holy crap! I knew that! Wow! I should say it again and listen this time, so I can write it down!” feeling.

And it’s not just study things, this is how I know almost all the things I know. It’s ridiculous that I’ll make an obscure reference and then go “tell me you’ve seen that! A Bit of Fry & Laurie! C’mon!” but totally miss quotes from Ace Ventura or whatever it is the kids quote these days. Zoolander? (Actually, I did see Zoolander). It has come to my attention that doing this is about as socially acceptable on a “things that make you a terrible person and conversationalist” scale as just kicking people in the shins when they sass you, so I plan to stop doing it (well, both those things) any time now.

A fortnight ago I managed to conduct an entire conversation with someone about a singer by whom I know a total of 2 songs. The thing is, they happened to be the two songs that the girl I was talking to really liked. So I got away with it. I wasn’t actually pretending to know more than I did, so maybe “got away with it” has a more surreptitious air than it really ought to have done.

The thing is, as I’ve said innumerable times, I know almost nothing about almost everything. The thing is, not-quite-nothing is just enough most of the time. It’s amazing how often I’ll randomly get given one fragment of information or see one episode or something and that will be exactly what’s required that I know the next day. It sort of makes me wonder how many things I’m missing, but mainly it just makes me dangerously cocky.

Because the thing is, if you strike lucky 3 times, people won’t believe you that that’s genuinely all you know about things. Someone will list three books that they’ve read and they’ll merely happen to be three that you’ve also read, or read reviews of, or heard about on the bus, and they will assume you know every other book they ever read.

I failed to get away with it once when someone quoted a Jason Mraz song at me (long ago, before I had ever heard anything other than The Remedy, the one everyone knows) and asked if I knew any of Jason Mraz’s stuff. It’s a funny look you get when, asked about a singer you answer “it’s a familiar name, I think maybe I’ve read some of his stuff”. (Also, oh my, so embarrassing).

But with music in particular this is always happening to me. Music is a little like the Cranial Nerves in this respect; I feel like I managed to miss out on some kind of essential information that everyone else got. I’m just absolutely not in the loop except occasionally by chance. I’ll know the obscure band (by chance) which leads people to assume that I’m down with the scene, and then I’ll be all “The Kinks? Weren’t they on the Juno soundtrack?”.

Essentially that’s the thing, that’s the knack to getting away with these things. It’s exactly like having a towel in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. If you have one thing (a towel, a working knowledge of String Theory, a recognition of the works of The Kings of Convenience or Darren Hanlon), people will naturally assume that you’ve merely forgotten whatever else is in question and happily lend you the relevant stuff (a toothbrush and place to sleep, Newton’s 3rd Law, or who the hell Deerhunter are).

The funny thing is, I never pretend to know more than I do (not since I wised up at the age of about 13) except in exams, when that’s the whole point. But it’s funny how disconcerting it is when people suddenly realise that you weren’t just being all false-modest and faux-naïf when you said that you didn’t really know anything about this stuff.

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So, uh, there you go?