Recess

perhaps just trying to cure my insomnia

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...it was not the custom in England to confer titles on men distinguished by peaceful services, however good and great; unless occasionally, when they consisted of the accumulation of some very large amount of money.

Bleak House. criticizing the English values of class, money, and military power.

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'Rents are high about here. I don't know how it is exactly, but the law seems to put things up in price. Not,' adds Mr. Snagsby, with his apologetic cough, 'that I mean to say a word against the profession I get my living by.' Mr. Weevle again glances up and down the court, and then looks at the stationer. Mr. Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward for a star or so, and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his way out of this conversation.

Bleak House. "The rent is too damn high" leads to awkward silence, Victorian style.

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'Ay, ay! Ho, ho! U-u-u-ugh!' chatters Grandfather Smallweed, swallowing his rage. 'My dear friend!' (still clawing).

Bleak House. "impotent vindictiveness"

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'For a pipe,' says Mr. George; who with great composure sets his chair in the chimney-corner, takes his pipe from the grate, fills it and lights it, and falls to smoking peacefully. This tends to the discomfiture of Mr. Smallweed, who finds it so difficult to resume his object, whatever it may be, that he becomes exasperated, and secretly claws the air with an impotent vindictiveness expressive of an intense desire to tear and rend the visage of Mr. George. As the excellent old gentleman's nails are long and leaden, and his hands lean and veinous, and his eyes green and watery; and, over and above this, as he continues, while he claws, to slide down in his chair and to collapse into a shapeless bundle; he becomes such a ghastly spectacle, even in the accustomed eyes of Judy, that that young virgin pounces at him with something more than the ardour of affection, and so shakes him up, and pats and pokes him in divers parts of his body, but particularly in that part which the science of self-defence would call his wind, that in his grievous distress he utters enforced sounds like a paviour's rammer.

Bleak House. This scene is just so weird and hilarious and well-described and I love it.

from what I gathered, a paviour's rammer (aka a paver's rammer) is the laborer (or the tool) that would tamp down asphalt for roads back in the day

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'I had confident expectations that things would come round and be all square,' says Mr. Jobling, with some vagueness of expression, and perhaps of meaning, too.

Bleak House.

wordplay

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Bleak House. Charles Dickens

Bleak House follows the lives of people from extremely different social groups and levels of sanity. The novel focuses a great deal on money, and how the possession of money, lack of money, or promise of money affects human behavior. It is about social responsibility and being held accountable for your actions. The protagonist Esther is an extremely good judge of character and sees through hypocritical behavior, yet she is almost too forgiving, letting the more dangerous hypocrites go unchallenged. She is the connection between all other people's lives in the story, in part because of the mystery of her birth which many people are interested in, and in part because she is a giving person able to interact with the rough, the destitute, and the unhinged, without insulting or judging them.

As with most Dickens novels, it is a bit slow at the beginning and you are not sure how the dozens of minor characters fit into the story, but everything comes together in a brilliantly worked climax.

My favorite thing about Dickens is how he is able to depict the cruelest aspects of human existence, counter them with demonstrations of the purest kindness and empathy, AND amongst all of that have the relief of laughter in absurd moments of human folly.

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The bar of England is scattered over the face of the earth. How England can get on through four long summer months without its bar--which is its acknowledged refuge in adversity, and its only legitimate triumph in prosperity--is beside the question; assuredly that shield and buckler of Britannia are not in present wear. The learned gentleman who is always so tremendously indignant at the unprecedented outrage committed on the feelings of his client by the opposite party, that he never seems likely to recover it, is doing infinitely better than might be expected, in Switzerland. The learned gentleman who does the withering business, and who blights all opponents with his gloomy sarcasm, is as merry as a grig at a French watering-place. The learned gentleman who weeps by the pint on the smallest provocation, has not shed a tear these six weeks.

Charles Dickens, Bleak House.

Making fun of lawyers.

Also, apparently every courthouse in England took a FOUR MONTH summer vacation.

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reading is magic

This blog will mostly be composed of quotes I come across from whatever book I am reading at the time. because reading is magic. and by the end it, you done git some schoolin

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I forgot I had a blog

I honestly forgot I had a blog. I got an email saying this blog turned 2. I will make a tentative effort to keep it up this time.

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summer reading

I have finished two books since the summer began. The Monk by Matthew Lewis and Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. I read The Monk because they talk about it in Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey. I read it because it was one of the most popular and one of the earliest gothic novels. Very popular in Austen's time. I read it to dig into that time period and to find out what was scandalous and titillating in Regency England. It was not a great book--very melodramatic--but it was sometimes a page-turner and a hair-raiser. I guess it would have been their version of a beach read.

Oliver Twist, though also a bit melodramatic, was of course better. not as good as A Tale of Two Cities, because it lacked historical weight, but it made me laugh. Dickens writes killer plots.

Now it's Three Men in a Boat by a man named Jerome K. Jerome. It's very Monty Python-esque in its dry British humor though not so off-the-wall, because it's old timey. Three Victorian men decide they need a vacation and choose to row a boat up the River Thames. All the characters are great hypocrites and there is a chapter about adventures with smelly cheese. So basically, you should read it.

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yesterday I didn't do shit. I was sad all day for no reason, and mad because I couldn't snap out of it. what some people might refer to as "just one of those days." what a waste.

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allons-y

maybe this tumblr will turn me into someone who uses their time more wisely. if I have to tell the internet what I do all day as an unemployed sadpants I will not spend the entire day in front of the television. two days ago I applied for jobs, but more importantly I finished spray painting a piece a furniture I found on a curb several years ago. it was all stupid and white with terrible terribly painted terrible green accents. now it is muthafuckin tardis blue. a tardis blue curio cabinet to display stuff that I can now pretend I picked up on my adventures as a time traveller. one day i will take a picture of it