Mortaine’s Blog

Today I went to Border’s for lunch. About once a week or so, I go there for lunch and spend half of my lunch break (and half my allowance) book-shopping, and the other half eating in their micro-cafe. I call it a micro-cafe because there’s almost nothing to eat, and their coffee/drinks selection isn’t even that impressive. It’s best three features are location, location, and location– it’s inside a bookstore. Unfortunately, they forgot to provide really snuggly chairs inside the cafe, but that’s probably for the best, as I would probably just cuddle up with a book and still be there now, instead of here at my place of employment.

Anyway, today I had meat lasagna and a mocha blendie for lunch. Of course, the bulk of my lunchtime was spent buying a very nicely bound hardcover copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses and a book of critical essays on Ulysses, a hardcover sketchbook (it almost matches the Joyce– I’m thinking of using it for reading notes on the book), and some finger-puppets that were 1/2 off (those are for my nephew).

Now, I have never successfully enjoyed a James Joyce story, and I have never actually finished a Joyce novel, so reading this will be an interesting experience for me. Nonetheless, it is crucial for the MA exam in November. I could probably take the exam right now and do okay on the novel/prose question, but I would feel more confident with a bit of Joyce under my belt. I could certainly blast through it with even a moderately strong understanding of, or at least appreciation for, Ulysses. Plus, I want to see how smart and/or crazy I am (I have a theory that you must be either a genius or a madman to really understand Joyce; being both probably helps). Also, I hope to be as pleasantly surprised by Joyce as I was by Milton– who really shocked me by writing a readable and enjoyable poem, once I got the “cadence” of it and could understand what the hell he was saying.

Other works on my upcoming reading list: two books of literary criticism, plus a third that I hope to read in time for the exam. Then, Inga and I will probably outline a plan for getting through some of the poetry, as poetry is my weakest area. I need to re-read The Making of a Poem, which has been very helpful in getting me to understand the forms of poetry, but which has also done an excellent job of fleeing from my memory entirely. I no longer know what a villanelle is, and suspect it is either (a) a drag queen with a black mustache who ties young ladies to train-tracks, or (b) a poem of a specific length and line structure, but whose structure currently evades me. Some sort of mnemonic device will almost certainly help, if I can think of one. Knowing these forms, incidentally, will help with the third exam question, in which one is given two poems to read, analyze, and discuss in their composition contexts (authors and dates are not given for the poems, so I was really afloat on this one!)

As far as poetry goes, I’d like to do a quick review of the Victorian poets, Browning in particular. I really like Browning. “My Last Duchess” is one of his best-known works, but certainly not his only narrative portrait, and not even his most subtle. Many of his works are similarly ironic, such as “The Bishop Orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church”, which begins in an exclamation of the poem’s central message– “Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!” The study of literature, unfortunately, affords me little space to delve into the authors whose work I genuinely enjoy for their entertainment value, and forces me instead to consider the works of authors whose works I must grudgingly accept as “great” even though their “greatness” does not result in any particular enjoyment or inspiration on my part.

I’d also like to focus in on G.M. Hopkins, whose poetry does actually inspire me, despite having been over-exposed to it in AP English. Then, move on into some of the 19th century American poets a bit, to kind of round things out in preparation for the exam (invariably, the exam asks you to evaluate one or more each of 19th, 20th, American, and British poets in the context of some statement about poetry or philosophical truth.

My weak areas are 19th century American poetry and 20th century British. And where does T. S. Eliot fit in, anyway? An early 20th century poet, certainly, and born in the U.S., but so disdainful of our country that he actually affected a British accent and adopted various British mannerisms? A friend of mine once described Samuel Beckett (I think it was Beckett) as an Irishman, living in England, and writing in French. Eliot seems to me much the same– an American impersonating an Englishman and writing in Greek.

Originally posted on UserFriendly
Philadelphia Girl Escapes
Ok, first of all, here’s a GREAT example of a kid with a head on her shoulders– she had the presence of mind to DO SOMETHING and not sit and wait for 2 hours before trying to get help. I really hope that this kid gets a full college scholarship or some sort of guarantee to a future, because she’s the kind of person I want to see making a difference in the world.

Second, why didn’t we hear about her disappearance before she was found? Hmmm. . . . perhaps because of her skin color? 2,000 kids go missing EVERY DAY, and yet why is it that the news only seems to report the ones who are blonde, white, and female? A little black girl goes missing, but in order to make the front page news, she has to chew through her bonds and rescue herself!

I’m feeling pretty jaded right now, because I feel that Erica’s case did not get the attention similar cases got JUST A WEEK EARLIER until something really surprising happened in the case. If it were just an isolated instance, I’d feel differently, but do you all remember the septuplets a few years back? That same year, a black family also had septuplets, but they were not the miraculous recipients of thousands of dollars in donated products and home furnishings, nor did they get on the cover of Time and every other magazine, show up on morning shows. At their request, they did eventually receive a year’s worth of diapers from Huggies, but there was virtually no news coverage and no outpouring of support and aid.

Also, did anyone hear about the 16 yr. old who faked her own abduction last night? Yep. Wanted to sneak out to a party with her friends. Cases like that are going to be the death of child-recovery systems like the Amber Alert system.

We’ve decided on a color scheme for the other bathroom– the one we use every day. Details, including the “running log” for it are available here.

Ok, I’m at work, bored out of my skull, because all of my current projects rely on other people– who are too busy to work on them right now. Not a problem, in that these are not high-priority projects, but it means that today and possibly tomorrow are kind of boring days.

Here at work, we have an intercom system that anyone can use just by picking up the phone. Here are three things that crack me up about our Intercom system:

1. There is another person named “Stephanie” who works at the company. Despite the fact that I started working here over 3 months ago, some people have not updated their phone lists and do not realize that there are two of us now. She is a highly mobile employee, never staying at her desk for long, so she gets paged frequently. In contrast, I only get paged when people are looking at the old phone list and trying to figure out my phone extension and can’t find it on the list. Sometimes, people forget to use last names when they page other people. Because most of the pages are for the other Stephanie, I usually just put on my headphones and tune out the intercom entirely. This saves my sanity– otherwise, I’d be writing and stopping every 5 minutes when I heard my name.
2. Because you use the phone to page people, clumsy callers often have trouble. There’ll be a page “Joe Smith, call extension 109,” followed by 5 seconds of clunking noises as the person at extension 109 tries to get the handset back onto the phone.
3. It’s hard to hear the intercom when you’re actually paging someone. This is one of my favorites from a few weeks ago. I recognized the pager’s voice– it was J from marketing (names changed to protect the guilty):
   “Eric, are you there?”
   “Eric?”
   “Eric?”
   “Eric, are you there?”
   “Eric?”
   Long pause. . . . We thought he was done.
   “Eric?”
   It was really quite sad, actually. I mean, here he was, this totally CLUELESS marketing guy, who’s actually quite on top of things most of the time, sounding like an utter moron trying to call one of his co-workers.

Oh, another thing I find funny about the intercom is the fact that people will page each other for the silliest things. I will never forget the day I heard a page: “Joe Smith, please come to the green table. Joe to the green table.”

Of course, “green table” is a code word in our company, a secret phrase to designate a specific location. Where, you may ask, is this top-secret location? Is the “green table” some sort of strategy room or planning area, with blinking lights and strategic diagrams? Well, sort of.

The “green table” is our ping-pong table. “Joe” was being called up for his turn.

Earlier this week, John and I saw “Adam’s Rib,” a 1940’s movie starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy as husband-wife attorneys who are on opposite sides in a husband shooting case.

First of all, I have to admit to a certain amount of prejudice in favor of Katharine Hepburn. Sorry, but she is a grande dame of the cinema, and very few actors have as much on-screen power as her. Her latest movies, after she began to have that slight palsy, have been weak, largely because of her disability. And yet, what admirable strength to go back on screen, even when it’s hard to speak without a tremble in the voice.

Anyway, back to the movie:

This is a pretty standard courtroom-drama kind of movie. Hepburn plays Amanda Bonner, a female attorney. This in an era when most women did not work, much less work in court. Her husband Adam, played by Spencer Tracy, is an assistant DA, assigned to prosecute a cut-and-dried case of a woman shooting her husband. The details of the case, however, make it intriguing to Amanda– the wife shot her husband in the arms of the husband’s mistress, with whom he had had a long-term affair. They have three children together, 6, 7, and 8 years old. She did not kill him. Amanda’s case revolves around the argument that, had a man committed the crime, he would have been considered to be acting in the defense of his home and family, and would have been found not guilty of attempted murder.

During jury selection, Amanda insists on choosing jurors who believe in equal rights for women. There’s a very charming sequence during the jury selection in which she and her husband flirt with each other underneath their respective tables.

The movie is further enhanced by a bachelor neighbor who spends most of the movie flirting with Amanda, completely without hope. The neighbor writes her a song and essentially treats her as his personal “Beatrice” for his music-making. Adam, however, is not amused.

At the end of the trial, Amanda has proven her case and won, but the cost is, possibly, her marriage, as Adam cannot believe that she truly believes that anyone has the right to shoot someone else. He stages a dramatic moment of walking in on Amanda and the neighbor in a playful embrace, then pretends to shoot them with a gun– made of licorice.

One of the interesting bits of energy throughout this movie is the role of physical abuse between spouses. Amanda and Adam occasionally swat each other on the butt, an act that seems playful until the moment when Adam is giving her a rub-down (there are many such erotically-charged scenes in this movie), and he slaps her fanny hard. Amanda’s reaction is to get up, furious, confront him– “You did that like you meant it! Worse, you did that like you had a right!” and then burst into tears. Honestly, her tears seem to be anger tears, the kind that women often have when they’re so furious they cannot lash out in any other way.

Later, the theme of spousal abuse comes up, both in the trial (both the victim and the defendant seem to have a history of knocking each other around), and in the Bonners (who physically assault each other in minor ways, neither one going so far as to leave bruises).

Hepburn and Tracy’s on-screen chemistry is pretty good, although it doesn’t have the same “feel” as the on-screen chemistry we see today. Off-screen, of course, they carried on a long affair, and we feel as though we are watching a pair who have a long, comfortable relationship– not a new, hot-blooded fire.

One of my husband’s comments about the movie was that it had the feeling of watching a theatrical production, rather than a film. In particular, there’s an argument between Adam, Amanda, and the neighbor shortly after Adam pretends to threaten them with the gun. During the argument, all three characters roam between the two apartments and the elevator, but the scene is shot entirely in the hallway. The largest amount of physical violence, aside from the opening crime, is presented here, in an off-screen brawl conducted in the neighbor’s apartment.

This is a black and white movie, but I was able to see it clearly and follow the story– something I’m not always able to do with b/w films. It’s funny, engaging, and surprisingly liberal for a movie made in 1949. Ultimately, the verdict seems to be equality between the sexes in everything– a man has every right to be as manipulative as a woman, and a woman has every right to be as violent as a man. The message that nobody has the right to be either is made, but somewhat weakly in the licorice-gun scene.