Come, Cry With Me, Let's Cry Let's Cry Away

Songs that can make me cry:

Because this is important information that you naturally need to know.

(Note: this list is actually quite different from my 'sad songs that are good songs' list.)

Butterfly Kisses by Bob Carlisle.


I actually don't listen to this song for this reason - because I go all OH MY GOSH GROWING UP IS SO SAD ARGH WHERE'S MY DADDY. I may or may not have this as the father-daughter dance at my wedding... probably not, because I'd be a crying mess...

Blow Up the Pokies by the Whitlams


No personal meaning in this one... it just makes me feel sad and angry about the fact that Australia sets the world record for gambling addiction and it's a government endorsed thing. Besides, the song is so sad (it was written for a friend of the band members)!

Tears of the Saints by Leeland


Do I even need to explain? *sobs*

Who Are We Fooling - Brooke Fraser and Aqualung


I have to be pretty on edge to cry at this one, but it's still pretty touching. And it's a sort of song you don't see very often, either: most sad relationshippy songs are either: 'You Left Me And Now I'm Sad' or 'I'm Sad Because I'm About to Leave You' or 'I Never Got To Be With You In The First Place'. This song is actually more encouraging than that; it describes a marriage going through a really rough time, but ends on a hopeful, faithful note. I love that.

Beauty in Me by the Whitlams


I know, I know, another Whitlams song. I guess it's because most of these are songs I've known for a really long time, which is why they can elicit an emotional response from me. (Although not really this version. I like the Whitlams and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra version, but can't find it online.)
Warning: don't listen to this song after you've had a nasty day!

Floating on a sunset cloud... of pain.

Ah, the reason for my panic attack of yesterday has become more plain to me... unexpected pre-lady-time! Whilst researching this post (because, of course, all my blogs are meticulously pre-researched) I found some interesting euphemisims for 'that special time of the month' but none I'd feel comfortable adopting, even for a one-off blog post, so I decided to invent my own. From now on I shall refer to 'floating on a sunset cloud', which hopefully is icky and unsettling enough for everybody - though not quite as pretty and delicate as 'the tears of my disappointed uterus', which is an honest-to-goodness thing someone said somewhere. Don't worry, I'm not about to spend a great deal of time discussing MENSTRUATION because it is, in fact, quite gross. In case you didn't know.

Instead I'll tell you that in an attempt to ignore the pain that nurofen is doing a lousy job at defeating, I'm listening to Peter Gabriel and music from The Rescuers.

I shall also here express my simultaneous emotions of befuddlement that people in general do not find the face of Benedict Cumberbatch completely gorgeous and marvelloustastic

and intense frustration that stupid Channel 9 will not hurry up and give us Australians a damn release date for Sherlock  season 2!

Oh.
No.

Just looked it up... and they have. It's next Wednesday evening. My brother's birthday. I AM SO ANNOYED RIGHT NOW. And the episode has a dominatrix and nudity and stuff in it, so watching it with my family is not going to be an option.




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Deep breaths. There is such a thing as catch up TV. At least there had better be. Though the fact that I will probably have to resort to such a thing is annoying beyond all belief, particularly seeing as the one reason (besides the law) that I didn't just download it off the internet back in January (which was pretty tempting, let me tell you), is because I didn't want to use up downloads on something that I would be able to watch on television legally anyway. AUGH.

I shall hereby assauge my feelings with some more Cumberbatchery thus:

 

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What is wroooong with me? I have had opportunities to do nice and good things that are nice and good and my brain is like 'now is the time to be cynical and angry for no reason. Enjoy.' In a place right now of... not poverty, because that implies desperation, but financial discomfort. Will have to go and look for work very soon. When I can afford the petrol to drive to places and apply for jobs. Which is pretty damn scary. And phoning people and looking up avaliable jobs is proving ridiculously challenging right now. I'm sorry for being so babyish.

Went back to work for a few hours in the afternoon yesterday and today. Lovely to see the babsies again, but I'm still in a state of continually simmering panic. My comfort zone is infinitely too small and stupidly uncomfortable.
Good night folks.

I Wax Parenthetical On the Topic of Narnia

Hiya guys.

Didn't really know whether to put this on here or on my book blog, (cue shameless self promotion here) but my book blog's had more attention from me lately, so I'll put it here.

I own a tonne of Narnia themed books (there's a little section on my bookshelf where they hang out) and I've just acquired another one: The Narnia Code. Despite the incredibly lame title - which is actually an appropriate one, unlike most books with Da Vinci Code parody titles - it is pretty good and I am looooving it so far. Author Michael Ward's got a unique and fascinating thing to say.

Anyway... it got me thinking about Narnia in general and one particular Narnian controversy - Susan.

I never really liked Susan all that much - to be perfectly honest with you, I always prefered Peter and Edmund to their sisters... which isn't just to say that I had a little tiny crush on Peter growing up (heh heh, of course not...) or that I adored Edmund for growing up 'graver and quieter' and having that long bromancy chat with Eustace about their respective experiences of redemption. (And yes, I have lost my train of thought! Um...)

Lucy I always wished I could relate to more, chiefly because she's got such faith and such a close connection with Aslan. To my lasting regret I'm probably more of a Susan in some ways - not least because of the serious case of 'eldest sister syndrome' we've both got going. And I'm pretty sure that Aslan would be telling me "You have listened to fears, child," rather than "Now you are a lioness". Damn my insecurities!

Something secular adult readers usually have a problem with when they read Narnia is the way Susan develops (or rather doesn't develop) throughout the series. They say things like 'Lewis punishes Susan for growing up' and 'the author's issues with sexuality are blatantly shown in his portrayal of Susan'. Neil Gaiman apparently wrote a whole short story about the issue called The Problem of Susan (and if I learn that the title was meant to be a swipe at Lewis's book The Problem of Pain I think I shall be violently ill). I haven't read The Problem of Susan and I don't plan to; having read that there are disgusting violent and sexually explicit scenes involving Aslan. THAT IS IN NO WAY OK AT ALL EVER. (I just accidentally read the excerpt from a reviewer of the story. There is bile in my mouth.) GO RUIN YOUR OWN CHILDHOOD, YOU SICK SON OF A BACHELOR.

I say, if you want to read C. S. Lewis writing female characters badly, go read That Hideous Strength and leave Narnia alone. It's fine. But let me elaborate on that.

Susan's sin is not 'growing up'. All four Pevensie children actually grow up twice (I always wondered how they would feel about that - seems like a bit of a mixed blessing to me) - once when they're kings and queens in Narnia and once when they're back in 'our world'. And nothing negative is said or hinted about their transitions into adulthood either time - except perhaps for Susan. I grant you, she is a bit silly for considering Rabadash as a suitor in The Horse and His Boy, but I'm sure that's a mistake a lot of girls would make about a dashing foreign prince. And there are at least two other strong female characters in that book anyway, all you feminist Narnia bashers! What Susan gets called on is her retreat into superficiality. When Jill says 'she's interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations' she means that Susan has become wrapped up in a chase for surface beauty and a desire to fit worldly standards. A bit of an easy trap for the 'pretty one of the family', I guess. When Jill does say that Susan 'always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up', Polly corrects her with 'Grown up indeed... I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste the rest of her life trying to stay that age.' Which is also a pretty good description of the whole of the modern attitude on age and beauty!
C. S. Lewis isn't attacking Susan's femininity. His sympathetic and human portrayal of Jill (I don't particularly like Jill, but she's very realistic and empathetic) shouts down any claims of misogyny from people who don't like Lucy or Aravis or Polly or any of the other fully fleshed out girls in the series.

And it is horrible for Susan that her whole family died together and left her alone - but I always saw that as a sort of hopeful thing: she doesn't end up cast out into utter darkness, she doesn't die lying to herself about her girlhood adventures and ignoring the rich spiritual life she knows she could have, so far as we know. I think that the loss of her entire family might just be the only thing that could jerk her away from the trap of superficiality. I mean, I could be wrong, but that's just how I like to think of it. There's still hope for Susan.

"I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled."

Ughsdhfkjas.

I want to eat but my stomach hurts when I eat... genuinely confused and not pleased. I don't want to be sick. I don't like being sick.
I think my car hates me. Can't find where the rain is getting in and now there's a musty odor lingering about the back seats.

This is a whingey post to balance out the pointlessly happy one of last week.

I have a number of necessary but dull/unpleasant errands to run tomorrow. And overdue DVDs to return. And overdue library books to return.

And I just read over my novel-in-progress and I hate it. Though right now is probably a bad time objectively examine anything.

I get grumpy when I'm hungry, can you tell? *sobs*

"Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city's reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty."

— P.G. Wodehouse