you have always been my favorite niece
AMAND-R AND THE WIVES OF HENRY VII: So I'm reading this book, and it's striking how sad Catherine's life is, really. I haven't even got to her marriage to Henry. It's easy with documentation to read Catherine's letters and the letters of those around her to see that everything is a series of political intrigue that led to her circumstances, from the moment she was born, really, as a piece of political capital. I don't think there's any doubt really, that her mother loved her, or even her father, in his way. It's sad, how everything was a matter of money and political alliances, etc. I mean, it's not like this is new information. Or rather, the slow, plodding nature of the history is like watching a car wreck in slow motion.
I guess we could all look at it and say that it's a point of the position of women in that time period and shake our heads and say yeah, this is bad. But sometimes I wonder if the bare bones of it are even different in our own lives. You have to work, you need to have a job, you have family alliances and friends and houses and cars and things and-are we any better off in some ways? Don't you feel trapped? Aren't we all just grinding along? Everything we're doing is just some sort of distraction from the fact that in sixty years we're going to be rotting in the ground, so it doesn't have meaning. What meaning do the dead have? What meaning does Catherine have, or some poor schmuck in her household whose man is unrecorded? Or Tianyu, really, now that he's dead and exists only as an abstract presence of imperfect memory?
I dunno. I remember about what Denis Leary, AKA God, said about happiness:
"I'm just not happy, I'm just not happy. I'm just not happy because my life didn't turn out the way I thought it would." Hey, join the fucking club! I thought I was going to be the starting center fielder for the Boston Red Sox. Life sucks, get a fucking helmet! Alright?
Happiness comes in small doses, folks. It's a cigarette, or a chocolate chip cookie or a five-second orgasm, that's it okay? You come, you eat the cookie, you smoke the butt, you go to sleep you get up in the morning and go to fucking work okay? That is it, end of fucking list!
God, by the time I get to Catherine Howard I'm going to want to slit my wrists.
BESTSELLER! AMANDR AND THE DISAPPEARING WASHCLOTHS: I used to have about 8 of them, and I am down to about three. I searched the dirty clothes and the linen cabinets. Are they on holiday? I sense a trip to Target, but really, is there a backdoor to Narnia in the dryer? Is that where they are? WASHCLOTHS! BRING BACK SOME TURKISH DELIGHT AND A FAUN. Well, no, I hate Turkish Delight and I think a faun would just dance about and play the goddamn pan pipes and I hate the panpipes. On the other hand I bet fauns can play ocarinas, and I could ask him to play The Ocarina of Time or something. Hrm. Choices. Do I want the candy? Do I want the faun? Do I want new washcloths? Would there be hoof prints on the carpet? These are troubling times, my friend. [joke about a donkey dressed as Aslan]
AMAND-R AND THE LATEST GRAPHIC NOVEL OF ASTONISHING X-MEN: Whoa Warren Ellis you have got better at, well, everything. Yay! I don't read your original work, just the fanfictions Marvel pays you to write and someone else to illustrate. And I love this whole "Mutants Without Borders" thing and the murder mystery and the whole, you just rule, really. although it feels as if Pete Wisdom has split into two people: Logan and Emma. I am okay with that. Make more funny jokes about floating spinning burning bodies that the SFPD cannot put out.
Scott and Agent Brand of SWORD have an argument:
Agent Brand: If I say it's S.W.O.R.D. business, then that's exactly what it is, One-Eye-
Cyclops: I swear to you, I will cut your head off and hide the ****ing body if that's what it take to keep S.W.O.R.D. business out of mutant affairs, because I am done with this-
Agent Brand: did you just say "****ing" to me?
Beast: Scott, you just said "****ing" to my…um. Actually, what are you? "girlfriend" doesn't sound quite…
Agent Brand: "Xenophiliac Experimentation Partner"?
Beast: Scott, you just said "****ing" to my girlfriend.
Cyclops: I wouldn't say anything like that.
Logan: Cyke, I heard you from down the hall. Don't do it again, okay? It's like catching a rerun of "Happy Days" and seeing Ron Howard picking up hookers.
That is art, Mister Ellis. You are a superstar. And your shorts at the end of the volume were…whoa. That last one alone was worth the whole cost of the book.
DEAR ALL-STAR SUPERMAN: I would ask you to marry me, but I read "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex". And also you are in love with Lois Lane. And also you are a comic book character. And also uhm, something else.
Can you introduce me to Batman? Not the Goddamn Batman, Just Batman.
DEAR Frank Quitely---ILU. That is all.