Neil Gaiman on Love

"Have you even been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life . . . You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like maybe we should just be friends or how very perceptive turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love."

-Neil Gaiman

stop. breathe.

e.e cummings is right about everything. all the time.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

- e. e cummings

As usual, someone is able to say it better than I was...

On the Polanski...thing.

I've been pretty busy the last couple of months with school and life and personal drama, but I am feeling the burning, itching need to weigh in on this Roman Polanski extradition thing.

Can I just say?

What is ambiguous about what he did? How is there any moral grey area at all? By the evidence and HIS OWN ADMISSION he drugged and raped a thirteen-year-old girl. I don't care how fucking "sexy" she seemed. He was AWARE OF HER AGE. Beyond which, a thirteen year old CANNOT LEGALLY CONSENT to sex with an adult. A thirteen year old who has been fed Quaaludes and booze and thinks she has a modelling career that is dependent on said older man, CANNOT LEGALLY CONSENT. Besides all of which, she said no. More than once.

Yes it was thirty-five years ago but if he had served his time he would have been out by now, making "omgamazingmovies". He has been hiding from legal repercussions for his actions and basically living a sweet fucking life for thirty-five years. I don't care how long ago it happened, rape is a crime not only against the victim but against an entire society, in what it says and the attitudes it perpetuates.

And I don't give a fuck if he made a couple of good movies. I don't give a fuck if he has had a tragic life. People are culpable for their actions and being a great artiste has fuck-all to do with the facts of what he did.

Also Kristen Scott Thomas, you're breaking my heart.

Summer Reading

Ok, yeah, there are beaches and beers and sunny days and thunderstorms, but you know what else about summer is AWESOME? Reading time! Which can usually be combined with any or several of the above (catching some rays on the beach while drinking a beer and gettin' your Bronte on? Fuck yes).

Here's some of what I have been reading, and loving, this summer.

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

A novel about a thirteen-year-old girl living on a war-torn tropical island, who, through the local eccentric white man, Mr. Watts, discovers Dickens' Great Expectations. The world of the orphan Pip becomes an escape from the daily struggle for survival. Mister Pip has been compared to The Life of Pi, in its twists and themes of self-reinvention, but it's much less pretentious, more multilayered, and also more devastating. In that good good way.

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

After East of Eden I am not sure what I expected from Cannery Row. Probably a lot more desolation and high emotions and family drama. Wrong! Cannery Row is a book that can be described unironically as "charming" and "quaint". It follows moments from the lives of a couple who live in an old boiler, a bunch of semi-unemployed men who live in what they have named the Palace Flophouse, and who, darn it, just wanna throw a party for their friend the local marine biologist. It's all small-town misadvantures and nonmaterialistic wisdom, which could be insipid except for the fact that it was written by the incomparable Steinbeck, who has the most awesome writing style, simultaneously super-evocative and yet completely natural. Lots of love on this one!

The Selected Works of T.S Spivet by Reif Larsen

I don't really know how to describe this book. A twelve-year old boy with an ingenious talent for cartography wins an award and is summoned to the Smithsonian to recieve it. So he sneaks out at the break of dawn and hops a train east. Exploits and adventures ensue, many of them illustrated in the borders of the book itself with assorted maps, charts, and labelled illustrations. The best part is the way the character of T.S Spivet is written: Yes, he's very bright, and acute, and rigorously analytical -- but he is still a little boy, not a precotiously miniaturized adult.

The Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Man. I don't know how I did not discover this book sooner. Shameless fun. A former combat nurse living in 1945 is suddenly transported to 18th-century Scotland. Where she meets a dashing and charming (and GINGER!!!!!) young Scots warrior. Historical adventures, hijinks, rescues, political intrigue, and hot outdoor sex ensue. Also the heroine is badass and cool and collected, and definitely not helpless. So much fun!

Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan

For a little more cerebral read, check out Paris 1919. It discusses and explains the history of the Paris peace talks following the First World War, and where they went wrong. MacMillan's accessible but well-researched book provides perspective on the multitude of ways that the largely well-meaning deliberations of Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau gave rise to new political entities and in many ways paved the way for the WWII. Macmillan also, by the way, wrote a great little book called The Uses and Abuses of History, which points out the different spins that one can put on any particular history to further a certain point of view or ideology, and drives home the importance of keeping historical narrative fact-driven and as dispassionate as possible.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Man. There are no limits to how much this book has to recommend it. A smart, resourceful heroine, criticism of arbitrary gender roles, a mysterious brooding Mr. Rochester, a crazy pyromaniac wife locked in an attic (actually!), a romance and a happy ending. Bronte > Jane Austen. Case closed.


What about you kids? What've you read this summer?

Pretty Cynicism

"A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesn't believe, and leaves before she is left."

- Marilyn Monroe

It Lives!

Having ended my spontaneous and admittedly laziness-driven hiatus from blogging, the plan is to get Razor Candy back up and running, and better than ever! That means more frequent posts, more lengthy posts, more use of the f-word, and minimal mention of Michael Jackson (sorry, MJ). Hopefully upcoming topics include summer reading, dream travel locations, retro-style eye candy, and video evidence of that thing I did with your boyfriend.

All coming soon! Peace, suckas!