While We're At It

(harkavagrant.com)

I Can't Wait...

I can't wait for them to invent sweatpants. Once I stop wearing corsets:

* I can start breathing again.


* It won't take four people to help me get dressed/undressed, and my mom/sister/neighbors won't have to look at me naked anymore.
* I can stop shifting my internal organs around.


* More room inside for making children.

It's Either This, or Making Fun of Poor People Again

Enjoy your summer. And remember, it could be worse:

(harkavagrant.com)

A Question of Aesthetics

Another thing about Victorians: they ruin cute boys.

I was grumbling about Masterpiece Theater's Wuthering Heights on here before, but what I didn't mention, because it wasn't particularly relevant, is that Tom Hardy, our protagonist, but certainly not our hero, made a bit of a meh-looking Heathcliff (comma total: 6). Which is what I sort of always imagined anyway, what with his being a terrible Gypsy and totes evil.

So imagine my surprise when he showed up in Inception (go see it right now. Go see it ten times.) looking utterly gorgeous. A case can be made for Victorians and evil Gypsies uglying up all our most eligible eligibles, and they must be stopped.

Georgians, on the other hand, will do wonders with what they're given: I only like Matthew Macfadyen in all his waist-coated Darcy glory, and Simon Woods looks for all the world like Paul Bettany's learning-impaired younger brother unless he is playing the nebbish Bingley. As if I needed another reason to prefer Pride and Prejudice to the Heights.

Hemophelia, It's What We Do

My blood won't clot! Blast my great-grandmother, who should have fallen down the stairs while she had the chance.

Rather Amused Indeed, Actually

Ah, The Young Victoria. Who could deny the lavish costumes, the lovely sets, the Rupert Friend? Not I, not I. But just how Victorian was the eponymous royal?

Not very, I guess, if the movie is to be believed (please let me believe the movie). I mean, yes, there were little dogs and corsets and hats, and she apparently had to be accompanied up or down any staircase, until she became queen and told everyone in favor of this rule that they were as loony as loons on loon tablets (I so want her to have died from falling down some stairs, though, just for the universe's sake. The universe needs things like that to keep it going). She was all, get that scary Mark Strong away from me, he didn't let me learn things when I was a girl, and even though I'm still a lowly female I'm the QUEEN, DAMMIT. And scary Mark Strong was sent away! And of course, she had lots and lots of sex with her dreamy husband. At one point, Albert is shot, and I told my sister, "Not to worry, he doesn't die, they have about eight hundred more kids." I mean, Victoria dies at the age of 81 (the movie didn't say whether or not stairs were involved, pity), which is basically her just laughing in the face of Victorianism if you ask me. "You thought I was going to die from a case of the sniffles when I was 17, didn't you! DIDN'T YOU! Well take that, 1800's!"

And they did take it, because it was 1901 by then. But also, she had provided basically every European royal family on the map with a rousing case of hemophilia, which is a pretty Victorian thing to do if you ask me.

When you get right down to it, it was a feature-length version of this comic, and really, what more could you ask for?

(harkavagrant.com)

Suitors, Back Off!

I've finally found a suitable suitor. He will buy me horses and tie my corsets.

Thanks to all the applicants. This one will do.

Oh Engaged Bliss!

Many congratulations and happy returns, etc, etc, to Lady Brett for bagging such a worthy suitor!

Oh, if there were such another man for me--perhaps Mister Collins has a cousin!

Oh My Word...

Riding side-saddle makes me look fat :(

Another Thing...

Sarah is right here. Since my parasol didn't match the wallpaper (or the drapes but that is an entirely different crisis altogether that would take up the better part of an hour to whine about), I have decided to have my father send a telegram to the parasol repairman to tell him to blast the thing.

Parasols be damned! I'm buying a new corset, to hold in my knowledge. As we all know that knowledge makes ladies husky and unattractive. Bad enough I haven't made a single spelling mistake in this entire blog entry. I'll never find a suitor this way...

CRISIS AVERTED

Dearest, since your parasol didn't match your wallpaper anyhow, I feel it would be best for you to just chuck it and buy a more aesthetically pleasing, useless accessory. After all, England did recently acquire a new African country, and the economy is doing splendidly. I secretly read that in a newspaper whilst Father wasn't looking. You know how he feels about women and learning.

Oscar Wilde Said It Best

A woman whose size in gloves is seven and three-quarters never knows much about anything.

CRISIS

My parasol is in the shop.

Woes of the Information Age

You know what Victorians did not have to worry about? They did not have to worry about Blogger acting up and not letting some people make posts, and making it look like other people are hogging all the postage, and it's not their fault that Blogger is so fickle, and who is really worrying about who is posting anyway?!

But they did have to worry about dying every time they got a cold, so I guess it all evens out in the end.

Oh, Bother...

I just noticed that my new parasol does not match the wallpaper.

Suitors, come to my rescue!

Byronic

Pip pip, I am going to need a subscription to this magazine.

(harkavagrant.com)

Withering Heights

Why oh why did I start watching the new BBC/Masterpiece Theater version of Wuthering Heights? I will tell you: because it was readily available on Netflix Instant Play, and because yesterday my only goal was to find out whether or not Burn Gorman is attractive.

If this is your only aim in life as well, let me be brief: not in this, he isn't.

I read Wuthering Heights a few years ago, and hoped for my own death and those of the fictitious characters taunting me throughout the ordeal. If everyone could just stop whining all the time, that would be brilliant, thanks. And how could anyone ever see Catherine and Heathcliff as nice, romantic kiddos just trying to get by? It makes me wonder if maybe Kate Beaton is wrong (heaven forbid), maybe Emily Bronte really did know an alcoholic dickbag when she saw one, and everyone else (I'm looking at you, Stephenie Meyer) simply can't. Then again, she was a Victorian, so probably not.

Anyhow, everyone in the film does their job admirably. By which I mean, if the only people you end up liking are Hareton and Nellie, then congratulations! You have a soul. Cathy is a bit of a slag, frankly (and unfairly gorgeous, but that is another matter), and Heathcliff is evilly evil, with nothing else to recommend him. Poor old Burn is sad, sad Hindley, and I was so disappointed that the movie didn't include my favorite scene from the book (I say favorite, it may have been the only readable one), where Hindley drops his baby from a second storey balcony, and Heathcliff miraculously catches it. Health and safety gone mad, I suppose.

In the end, we are left with some terribly Victorian themes: dying in childbirth, marrying in vengeance, tight corsets, high boots, and some seriously confusing names: Catherine Earnshaw marries Edgar Linton to become Catherine Linton; their daughter is named Catherine Linton, and she sort of marries her cousin named Linton, who dies of being way too Victorian; but then it's assumed that she's going to marry her other cousin, Hareton Earnshaw, so that her name will be Catherine Earnshaw. Basically, it is impossible to pick up this book at any random page and pretend to know what is actually happening. Which is probably what old Emily had planned all along, that silly wench.

Uncovering the Latest Research

We've done some research and discovered some new and painfully accurate facts about Victorians.

Brett: another thing about victorians is the stupid hats that make the ladies look like dogs who aren't allowed to chew on themselves.

Sarah: although i was watching some blackadder today, and i rather liked the men's ruffle thingies

Brett: men are allowed to have ruffles, because they do all of the work. victorian ladies can't do anything for themselves. probably because of their hats.

Sarah: go put that on the blog

Brett: blogger is currently unavailable!?

Sarah: WHAAAAAAT

Brett: wtf did the victorians do when the internet didn't work?

Sarah: killed themselves

Brett: rightfully so. i'd kill myself if i had to wear hats like that.

We have also concluded that Victorians' clothes were so tight that it was too physically painful to laugh, and that's why they were not allowed to tell funny jokes.

Had Lunch With Marian Today...

She's trying to get them to call her George Eliot for her books or something.

I call her Horse Face. But not to her horse face. Just behind her back.

She's so awfully wise and preachy and dismal. She'll never make it far.

Another Thing about Victorians

If there's one thing Brett and I know, it's how to be awesome. Actually, it's probably how weird Victorians are.

Sarah: ugh, victorians are so stupid

Brett: i KNOW!

Brett: so preachy

Brett: and dismal

Brett: and awful

Sarah: "you know what else i'm going to do, besides get pregnant and never eat? i'm going to go tromping about outside when it is cold and raining, looking for some dude who is not my baby daddy."

Sarah: "and then i'm going to die."

Brett: you just saved a bunch of kids the trouble of having to read every book written by a woman before 1930

Another thing about Victorians: they're incredibly fertile.