Cathryn

So mostly, the "random" feature on MP3 players is random only to a point, randomly playing the same twenty-five songs over and over regardless of how many actual songs you have.

Every once in a very great while, though, it will really make my day. It did the other day, when I was walking home, by first cuing up "Bad Horse Letter" from Dr Horrible, which is short enough for me to post the (almost) full lyrics:

He rides across the nation
The thoroughbred of sin
He got the application
You just sent in

It needs evaluation
So let the games begin
A heinous crime, a show of force
A murder would be nice of course

Bad Horse
Bad Horse
Bad Horse
He’s Bad

The Evil League of Evil
Is watching so beware
The grade that you receive
Will be your last we swear

So make the Bad Horse gleeful
Or he’ll make you his mare . . .

Get/You’re saddled up
There’s no recourse
It’s Hi-Ho Silver
Signed Bad Horse

There was that moment of silence between songs. Then:

Javert: Listen, my friends, I have done as I said
I have been to their lines
I have counted each man
I will tell what I can.

Cue me, staggering along the sidewalk outside a hospital, giggling helplessly to myself.

NO, JAVERT. BAD JAVERT. NO BISCUIT.

(Random aside: Thanks to the Les Mis blooper reel, I nearly typed "I have been to their homes/I have watered their plants," which is, as far as I'm concerned, an infinitely superior interpretation.)

HELP. I have finished Les Miserables (and cried on the bus in so doing, which at least looks slightly less ridiculous than crying over an audiobook, which I have also done on a bus and probably makes me look like I am crazy). AND NOW I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MY LIFE. I have, according to the shipment date on Amazon, been reading this fucker since September thirtieth. I have never in my life spent a MONTH reading one book before. I feel vaguely as though I've braved a gauntlet or something. And it didn't help that the last chapter GOT ON MY NERVES, like, you! Valjean! Quit being a damn martyr and suck it up! You! Marius! You are a passive-aggressive twat! You! Cosette! Do you actually have any operating brain cells in that lovely head of yours?

I mean, I know I'm bringing in a more modern-day mindset on this one, but Valjean's decision-making process when it comes to his conscience - tends not to sit well with me. I bought it when he turned himself in to save Champmathieu at the expense of Montreuil-sur-mer's well-being, because there was no good choice to be made there and Valjean himself was in a daze for much of it, but telling Marius of his past was purely selfish. All it did was put Marius in the position of having to lie to Cosette. Honesty to help someone else is good. Honesty that hurts someone else so you can have the relief of telling the truth is crappy. Especially when you make me cry for you anyway when you do it, you jerk.

Marius didn't annoy me quite so much, because he is a DORK and he will never escape his innate dorkness and I cannot help but be fond of that. I especially enjoyed how he somehow came to the conclusion that Valjean, the ex-convict, ratted out M Madeleine for being an ex-convict, and then stole his money? Somehow? I mean. I appreciate that, at this juncture in the narrative, it is difficult for Marius to imagine that Valjean could be a particularly good or selfless person, but I love how he came up with the only scenario that could possibly be more convoluted than what actually happened.

And I'm not even dealing with Cosette. That is my approach to female characters in pre-twentieth century literature in general, because they tend to be, oh, thinly written? So I accept it when they suck, as they so frequently do, and I ignore them. Cultural context and yadda and there's no point to getting worked up, really. But I just could not quite overlook that she was so wrapped up in being married that her father slipped her mind. I suppose if I thought about it I could hammer it into something that makes sense, but I don't WANT to think about it. It HURTS my BRAIN. What the fuck is wrong with her?

Sigh.

Anyway. Now I can't quite decide what to do next. I want to read at least parts of it over again, and I have to go back and read Waterloo, because I kind of, um, lost my patience and skipped half of it. But also I think I need to read something slightly less taxing. Which is EVERYTHING EVER PUBLISHED, so. Any recommendations? Funny is good, please. Depressing is bad.

The Sarah Jane Adventures!

. . . okay, first let's get the obligatory Les Mis geekery out of the way. Look, it's not my fault if it keeps popping up everywhere. (You should see me in English 245, where we are currently studying poetry. "This poem is about Valjean! This essay is about Marius being a tremendous dork!") Clyde's birthday is June fifth, which is the day the 1832 revolution began.

(Geeky real life birthday coincidence: My little brother was born on March twenty-fifth, which is the day Sauron fell. When he is old enough, I will explain this to him, and he will probably look at me funny.)

Anyway!

( 2x05, The Secrets of the Stars )

YOU GUYS. comme_un_buddha drew me a Javert the Telekinetic Supercop comic. Look!







Betsey, you are the best. ♥ ♥ ♥

I am STILL reading Les Miserables. I'm nearly seven hundred pages in, which is a little over halfway through. I've been reading for about a week and a half, and I'm just going to go right ahead and toot my own horn here - it is extremely unusual for it to take me so long to read as much as I've read. I don't spend as much time reading as I used to, but I can still blow through a five-hundred page novel in a couple days if I've got the time and motivation to do it. But there's no blowing through Les Mis. There just isn't. It constantly requires me to slow down, to go back, sometimes because I'm not sure I read something right, sometimes because Hugo's sentences tend to involve about sixteen commas when he's really worked up, and sometimes just because I particularly liked something and want to read it again. It doesn't require the level of attention that, say, Shakespeare needs, but it's not just a book, either. It's eating my brain and I keep talking about it because I need to process it somehow. It's exhausting and exciting, and I know how this sounds, but I kind of understand why people call it life-changing. This is not a casual reading experience.

Of course, because I am me, I also have to point out that it is completely ridiculous. When last we met, I was gleefully expounding upon Valjean's daring escape from the courtroom following his confession via the simple expedient of walking out while people stared at him slack-jawed. Since then, he has scaled a fifteen-foot wall with his bare hands and almost been buried alive. And those are only a couple of the highlights. I don't want to give EVERYTHING away.

But let us not forget Javert! His superpowers are even cooler. Check it out:

Thenardier took hold of the pistol and aimed it at Javert. Javert, who was only three feet away, looked him steadily in the eye and merely said: "Don't shoot, please! You'll miss."

Thenardier pulled the trigger. He missed.

"What did I tell you!" said Javert.

Sure, Valjean is alarmingly strong and can climb walls with his bare hands, but Javert can dodge bullets from three feet away without moving. RIDICULOUS. I may be a little bit in love with Victor Hugo for so brazenly putting that in there, without any explanation whatsoever.

And of course, heightening the COMPLETE INSANITY of the plot are the constant digressions, where Hugo is mostly quite seriously discussing his philosophical beliefs or offering a detailed history lesson. The section following Javert the Supercop, for example, is thirty pages about a revolution in 1830 that didn't quite happen. Valjean's exploits in wall-climbing and near-death by burial are broken up by twenty pages of history on a (fictional, but only because Hugo decided not to use a real one for fear of causing offense) convent, followed by another ten on the evils of convents. The total clash between crazed melodrama and Srs Bzns just makes everything so much more amazing. Yes, they complement each other thematically as well, and the digressions always provide background and color that, even if they don't directly relate to the plot, still support and flesh out the story. But. Also hilarity. And I'm pretty sure Hugo is in on the joke.

I love this book so hard.

One of the things I am constantly encountering, in reading Les Miserables (look, reading a twelve hundred page novel is a very consuming thing, so it merits lots of posts), is discovering that Hugo's version of events frequently makes far more sense than the musical's. I keep going, "Ohh, that's why that happens!"

. . . of course, this is not always the case. Les Mis is, at heart, a melodrama that relies a lot on coincidence and dramatic events for the plot to run smoothly. Hugo takes the time to explain things (OH GOD, does he ever take the time to explain things) which helps a LOT in making everything believeable in the context of the story, but sometimes I just end up giggling anyway.

Take, for example, Valjean's confession of his identity and subsequent arrest/not arrest, depending on the version we're talking about.

In the musical, Valjean confesses to a courtroom that happens to contain Javert, which apparently was thought to make for simpler storytelling, or something. (Believe me, I understand that the musical's writers had to streamline a lot of the plot to make it work, and they did a great job with it. That does not mean that every decision they made makes sense.) Then he flees the building and runs . . . directly to Fantine's sickroom, which is an interesting choice given that he has to know that Javert is in hot pursuit and knows all about Fantine.

It works out, though, because apparently Javert thought that attempting to apprehend a man he knows to be almost inhumanly strong without bringing any reinforcement would be a great idea! So Valjean tries to reason with him, but then just knocks him out and goes on his merry way. Nice policework, Javert.

In the novel, Javert has left the courtroom before Valjean arrives, which means it takes time for him to hear about the confession, which means that Valjean (who, Hugo establishes, is in something of a state of shock, anyway) visiting Fantine makes more sense, because he's got the time to do it. Or at least it's logical for him to think he does. And when Javert does show up at the hospital, he has the sense to bring backup with him, so his attempt to arrest Valjean is successful and no one gets knocked out.

However. It also causes the following scenario to play out:

Valjean, at the courtroom: ". . . and so, as you can see, I am irrefutably Jean Valjean, the dangerous convict and recidivist."
Everyone else: *stares*
Valjean: "Yup, Jean Valjean, that's me. The whole kindly mayor thing is a total fabrication and I am the bad guy."
Everyone else: *stares* "W. T. F."
Valjean: "So, uh, whenever you want to get around to arresting me, I'm available."
Everyone else, including all members of the court empowered to make arrests: *stares*
Valjean: ". . . right. Okay. I'll, uh, be back in Montreuil-sur-mer, then. You know. For whenever you're ready to make the arrest."
Everyone else: *stares*
Valjean: *leaves*
Javert, from the next town over: "Am I the only person in this entire godforsaken novel who knows how to do my job?"

This makes more sense when you're reading it, since Hugo spends a lot of time playing up how "Monsieur le maire Madeleine" is a much-loved and worshipped pillar of the regional community, but then afterwards it's like, "Wait, did they really all just stand there and look at him?" And then I find myself thinking, "Man, Javert should have been there," and then the musical goes, "Nope, that wouldn't have worked either." And then I give up trying to make sense of a story that at one point relies on Valjean's ability to scale a sheer fifteen-foot wall and go on with my life.

Oh my god, I haven't posted in almost two weeks. How did that happen??

I ATEN'T DEAD.

Things I have done in the past two weeks:

* Written two awesome papers and one crappy one.

* Accurately pegged a fellow classmate as nineteen based entirely on his world-weary disdain for the vast majority of society. I told him he reminded me of a cross between Chuck Bass (world-weary disdain etc) and Dan Humphrey (sense of intellectual superiority). I have a good feeling about his future self, though. He does, after all, have the taste and intelligence to dislike The Catcher in the Rye when he could just as easily go in the opposite direction and identify with it. *shudder*

* Spent two hundred bucks at Amazon on my textbook for the semester. The most expensive one was a bit over fifty bucks. And I didn't even buy them used. Let's hear it for a) being an English major (no expensive math or science textbooks!) and b) having budget-conscious professors!

* Part of that order was the latest translation of Les Miserables. You guys, I have finally found a translated novel that I can enjoy reading. I am very wary of translations. So often something goes wrong and the book ends up feeling detached, like instead of reading the story, I am reading about the story. This is a really good one, though; the translator, Julie Rose, has updated some of the language and used idioms to make it more accessible and genuine, but has still kept the feel of a novel that takes place in early-ish nineteenth century France. I don't know much about translation, or about Les Mis, but the quotes on the book jacket tell me that she has given the novel "the captivating tone Hugo would have struck for his own contemporaries." This makes a lot of sense to me. Older novels can be such dry going for modern readers, but they wouldn't have been back when they were published, would they? (I mean, unless they sucked.) So, anyway, I'm enjoying the book a lot, and I know I have Julie Rose as well as Victor Hugo to thank for that. You can be reading the most amazing book in the world, but if the translation is crap, you'll never know it.

* TV! Gossip Girl and Supernatural and Dexter and House and The Sarah Jane Adventures! I should probably get back in gear and start writing post-ep reactions again. And maybe I can even keep them below the epic length that my Doctor Who series four ones tends to reach.

OH I HAVE A VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION. Ugly Betty people! I got irritated and disillusioned with the show last year for starting to rely too much on easy jokes and contrived, cheap crap. I made it through the entirety of season two and decided not to continue for season three, but - the episode blurbs are making me curious. So, has it gotten better? It is anywhere near the standard of awesome that the first season set? Or should I just let it go?

* Ridiculous things in Milliways that I won't specify here because the five people on my flist who care are fellow Milliwaysers and already know. For the most part. But trust me, they are ridiculous. (The things. Not the people.)

* Whiling away boring lectures by writing terrible Les Mis slash. I think I might be able to turn it into something that doesn't suck, but right now, I would not show it to another human being.



So! That's what I've been doing. Uh. I will try not to let another two weeks pass before my next post. :D?