Monty Python rampage continues
Yes, well, you know how I get. Last night (having returned the library materials I did not check out last week) I picked up two hold items: A Fish Called Wanda and Halfway To Hollywood, the second installment of Michael Palin's diaries.
Regarding Wanda, as usual I find something to worry about:
For some reason I had always--even on last viewing a few years ago--heard that famous line reading as "Wevenge for Wanda!" (See recent posts concerning the Kowalski story.) I've always remembered Ken as having a second speech issue in addition to the stammer. I seem to have recalled as a problem with the letter R.
On closer examination I think I was wrong (although I admit it's hard to make out anything the character says owing to the speech impediment.) I think the issue is with his accent and my ears: the character kind of rolls into an "R" sound in a way that makes me hear a "W" in it. [I assume it's like the "oot" sound so many Americans hear Canadians make when we say "about": according to linguists, if you miss the developmental window to learn certain sounds you can not only never pronounce them, you can't hear them either. Which got very tiresome very quickly when I lived in Dallas, I can assure you!]
Anyway, I think Ken is pronouncing the "R" in a way that my ears don't quite process, which is distressing since "Wevenge for Wanda!" sounds even funnier than "Revenge for Wanda!" I figure I'm going to need to offer a word of explanation about the band name once I insert it, so if I go with "Wevenge" I'll just add another word or two. (The band name resulted from a rampage much like mine, only involving everyone in the band, who then went around for three days pretending to drive steamrollers at each other until Gareth, probably, pointed out that they had just solved their "what shall we call our new band?" dilemma.)
It's always something.
Also got volume 2 of the Palin diaries (why not volume 1? Because when I checked the catalogue and placed my hold, the first volume was on the shelf at my local library. I figured I would gamble they would still be available later in the day, rather than placing a hold and waiting for it to be processed. I lost.)
Here is the thing about those diaries: the reviews seem to fall into two distinct camps. The first holds that, despite the inherent interest of much of the subject matter, Palin's general lack of spite or cattiness makes it all pretty dull. The second camp finds that reading about inherently interesting material is even more fun when you like the main character of the story and find him pleasant company.
I fall into the second camp and am enjoying the diaries, which should surprise nobody reading this--I've already commented that my main pick on Big Brother is the fact that it depicts unpleasant people doing nothing in particular. And I mean, I'm also the person who deliberately set out to create a nice, charitable young man to be the protagonist of my mystery and then discovered charity did not always come naturally to me!
It seems to come pretty naturally to Palin, although there's one passage in (I believe) the first diary when he refers to a situation in which one of the other Pythons (I think it was Chapman) was getting on his nerves--he apparently cuts off the observation with, "but this is a nice diary!" and goes on to something else.
Speaking as a diarist myself (on paper and here) the very act of writing things down makes you see them from outside and can also make you aware of the personality being revealed in the writing. So I was interested in an interview I can't find right now in which Palin remarks that he was, in fact, deliberately "nice" when writing the diaries. His reasoning was pretty much this: he knew he, at least, would be reading them over at some point, and he wasn't keen to come slap up against evidence of his own worst, selfish, catty qualities. (I'm not saying he's got more than a normal share of these qualities. It's just that when they're right there in black and white...) So he apparently decided to use the diary at least partly as a place to work on having an optimistic and positive outlook. It's not that the guy in the diary isn't real, it's that Palin seemed to want to encourage him.
I find that quite interesting because in the past I've thought of posting about that very subject. The character who inhabits my blog is me all right. But I've had the experience, when reading over my paper diary years ago, of realizing the entries I didn't like revisiting were the ones in which I found myself to be selfish, uncharitable, overly self-centred and paranoid. A rant is one thing, but I really don't like being an arsehole.
I also have depressive tendencies--okay, fine, as a friend once pointed out, going through periods of weeks or months when I wanted to cry all the time probably indicates something stronger than "a tendency." I've always remained functional, but at times it's gotten pretty bad. A number of years ago I subjected my dear older sister, who has common sense for two, to long phone calls dredging up the source of a lot of this crap, and talking it through. It was an emotionally charged period but I have actually felt much better ever since. I do still get blue, especially when I'm tired, but my overall perspective is much better and I feel much better.
This indicates to me that my mental health problems, such as they are, really do originate in my mind (rather than in a chemical imbalance in my brain, for instance.) I enjoy a good wallow as much as the next hippopotamus, but in my case it really only makes me feel worse. So I've made a conscious effort to use this space, as much as possible, as a place where the more upbeat side of my personality has the reins. Yes, I do rant and angst, but for the most part the rants are external matters: the Prime Minister, for instance. Some twit who did something twittish. I try, for the most part, to leave "poor me nobody loves me I am going to go into the garden and eat worms" (as they say in the Patricia Wentworth books) out of the journal. (When those entries slip in I usually go back later and put them behind a cut and a private lock, because nobody else needs to see them.) In fact, when I get like that I usually just call my sister and talk about it (and she calls me for the same reason) and then it's over and I don't have to go back and see the evidence (and get sucked back into the same mind-set, which for me really is the danger. You know the fossils they find of mastodons and other creatures mired in ancient tar pits? I'm the one over there on the left.)
I'm not being dishonest here, any more than someone consciously focusing on correct leg position is being dishonest when they ride. The harder I work on seeing the other person's point of view, on appreciating things, and on having an overall brighter outlook, the easier it gets. Obviously not every entry in this thing is sunny (and I do enjoy a good recreational rant), but I often find myself, as I write, reconsidering what I've written and in a lot of cases revising it to reflect the adjusted perspective while I'm writing it. What begins as bitching and martyrdom sometimes takes a turn into describing and reflecting, and it's at times like that I start to think there may be hope for me after all. If I can actually think, "Wait, I'm not being fair here" while I am being unfair, and then stop myself, maybe I can then transfer that to real life.
Mind you, I'm sure there are people reading this entry and thinking, "If this is what she's like when she's trying not to be a colossal arsehole, imagine what she's like normally!" I, um, would not disagree with you. However I've recently come to believe that my personal superpower, the ability to second-guess every action I've ever taken and every motivation I have ever had, is not in and of itself a bad thing. I just need to use it to make myself a better person, as opposed to a sadder and crazier one. This journal is one place I try to practice that--with mixed success, admittedly, but at least in public where I can hold myself accountable.
Um, yeah. Nothing terribly interesting here, but at least I have the entry up as a reminder.
Regarding Wanda, as usual I find something to worry about:
For some reason I had always--even on last viewing a few years ago--heard that famous line reading as "Wevenge for Wanda!" (See recent posts concerning the Kowalski story.) I've always remembered Ken as having a second speech issue in addition to the stammer. I seem to have recalled as a problem with the letter R.
On closer examination I think I was wrong (although I admit it's hard to make out anything the character says owing to the speech impediment.) I think the issue is with his accent and my ears: the character kind of rolls into an "R" sound in a way that makes me hear a "W" in it. [I assume it's like the "oot" sound so many Americans hear Canadians make when we say "about": according to linguists, if you miss the developmental window to learn certain sounds you can not only never pronounce them, you can't hear them either. Which got very tiresome very quickly when I lived in Dallas, I can assure you!]
Anyway, I think Ken is pronouncing the "R" in a way that my ears don't quite process, which is distressing since "Wevenge for Wanda!" sounds even funnier than "Revenge for Wanda!" I figure I'm going to need to offer a word of explanation about the band name once I insert it, so if I go with "Wevenge" I'll just add another word or two. (The band name resulted from a rampage much like mine, only involving everyone in the band, who then went around for three days pretending to drive steamrollers at each other until Gareth, probably, pointed out that they had just solved their "what shall we call our new band?" dilemma.)
It's always something.
Also got volume 2 of the Palin diaries (why not volume 1? Because when I checked the catalogue and placed my hold, the first volume was on the shelf at my local library. I figured I would gamble they would still be available later in the day, rather than placing a hold and waiting for it to be processed. I lost.)
Here is the thing about those diaries: the reviews seem to fall into two distinct camps. The first holds that, despite the inherent interest of much of the subject matter, Palin's general lack of spite or cattiness makes it all pretty dull. The second camp finds that reading about inherently interesting material is even more fun when you like the main character of the story and find him pleasant company.
I fall into the second camp and am enjoying the diaries, which should surprise nobody reading this--I've already commented that my main pick on Big Brother is the fact that it depicts unpleasant people doing nothing in particular. And I mean, I'm also the person who deliberately set out to create a nice, charitable young man to be the protagonist of my mystery and then discovered charity did not always come naturally to me!
It seems to come pretty naturally to Palin, although there's one passage in (I believe) the first diary when he refers to a situation in which one of the other Pythons (I think it was Chapman) was getting on his nerves--he apparently cuts off the observation with, "but this is a nice diary!" and goes on to something else.
Speaking as a diarist myself (on paper and here) the very act of writing things down makes you see them from outside and can also make you aware of the personality being revealed in the writing. So I was interested in an interview I can't find right now in which Palin remarks that he was, in fact, deliberately "nice" when writing the diaries. His reasoning was pretty much this: he knew he, at least, would be reading them over at some point, and he wasn't keen to come slap up against evidence of his own worst, selfish, catty qualities. (I'm not saying he's got more than a normal share of these qualities. It's just that when they're right there in black and white...) So he apparently decided to use the diary at least partly as a place to work on having an optimistic and positive outlook. It's not that the guy in the diary isn't real, it's that Palin seemed to want to encourage him.
I find that quite interesting because in the past I've thought of posting about that very subject. The character who inhabits my blog is me all right. But I've had the experience, when reading over my paper diary years ago, of realizing the entries I didn't like revisiting were the ones in which I found myself to be selfish, uncharitable, overly self-centred and paranoid. A rant is one thing, but I really don't like being an arsehole.
I also have depressive tendencies--okay, fine, as a friend once pointed out, going through periods of weeks or months when I wanted to cry all the time probably indicates something stronger than "a tendency." I've always remained functional, but at times it's gotten pretty bad. A number of years ago I subjected my dear older sister, who has common sense for two, to long phone calls dredging up the source of a lot of this crap, and talking it through. It was an emotionally charged period but I have actually felt much better ever since. I do still get blue, especially when I'm tired, but my overall perspective is much better and I feel much better.
This indicates to me that my mental health problems, such as they are, really do originate in my mind (rather than in a chemical imbalance in my brain, for instance.) I enjoy a good wallow as much as the next hippopotamus, but in my case it really only makes me feel worse. So I've made a conscious effort to use this space, as much as possible, as a place where the more upbeat side of my personality has the reins. Yes, I do rant and angst, but for the most part the rants are external matters: the Prime Minister, for instance. Some twit who did something twittish. I try, for the most part, to leave "poor me nobody loves me I am going to go into the garden and eat worms" (as they say in the Patricia Wentworth books) out of the journal. (When those entries slip in I usually go back later and put them behind a cut and a private lock, because nobody else needs to see them.) In fact, when I get like that I usually just call my sister and talk about it (and she calls me for the same reason) and then it's over and I don't have to go back and see the evidence (and get sucked back into the same mind-set, which for me really is the danger. You know the fossils they find of mastodons and other creatures mired in ancient tar pits? I'm the one over there on the left.)
I'm not being dishonest here, any more than someone consciously focusing on correct leg position is being dishonest when they ride. The harder I work on seeing the other person's point of view, on appreciating things, and on having an overall brighter outlook, the easier it gets. Obviously not every entry in this thing is sunny (and I do enjoy a good recreational rant), but I often find myself, as I write, reconsidering what I've written and in a lot of cases revising it to reflect the adjusted perspective while I'm writing it. What begins as bitching and martyrdom sometimes takes a turn into describing and reflecting, and it's at times like that I start to think there may be hope for me after all. If I can actually think, "Wait, I'm not being fair here" while I am being unfair, and then stop myself, maybe I can then transfer that to real life.
Mind you, I'm sure there are people reading this entry and thinking, "If this is what she's like when she's trying not to be a colossal arsehole, imagine what she's like normally!" I, um, would not disagree with you. However I've recently come to believe that my personal superpower, the ability to second-guess every action I've ever taken and every motivation I have ever had, is not in and of itself a bad thing. I just need to use it to make myself a better person, as opposed to a sadder and crazier one. This journal is one place I try to practice that--with mixed success, admittedly, but at least in public where I can hold myself accountable.
Um, yeah. Nothing terribly interesting here, but at least I have the entry up as a reminder.