green island serenade
Yet another reason why Feministing is quite often quite idiotic:
"...I appreciate that the White House's interaction with the press corp is beginning to reflect the bilingualism of our country, but also the world...."
..ahahaha, seriously? 'Cause in America they only speak English and Spanish, you know. The rest of the world just speaks Foreign.
Let's see, what else? Things learned at two in the afternoon, flat on your back in a flat-bottomed boat, feet in the air: the English summer is rightly the mockery of the world at large, but sometimes, sometimes it's all perfect. Sometimes it lingers the right side of twenty degrees for a blissful couple of hours, sometimes the grass is immaculate green and the flowers droop handsomely into the clear river, sometimes it's two in the afternoon and you're drunk on champagne.
...from which it may, perhaps, be deduced that I finished my exams on Monday morning, having dispensed with land and then criminal law, emerged into the sunshine with my baby lawyer friends and the party adjourned to a punt, with two boxes of strawberries and a bottle of sparkling pink bubbly, and eight very classy plastic champagne flutes. Apparently every woman in the world other than me can punt competently, even the Norwegian friend who never stepped in a punt before in her life (apparently it's not a real boat without a figurehead and a few axes sticking out of the prow), so I lay in the bottom and looked up at the sky and got tipsy. It was heavenly, in just the Malory Towers meaning of the word, perhaps with the strategic addition of alchohol.
Criminal went better than land, I think. My land exam was rushed, because for a lot of the problem questions I knew I could do a decent answer if given twice the time, but as it was I was just sitting there thinking "easements! covenants! Wheeldon v Burrows! shit!" and scribbling. In the end, my answer hinged on the vital point of llamas. If you have covenanted not to keep cattle on your land, are you in breach if you subsequently start a llama farm? The jury, consisting of yours truly, is out.
I related this somewhat incoherently to teh_elb and dr_biscuit at the weekend, having been invited to a barbecue at Untold Blessings and being somewhat bemused throughout at the thought of a successful barbecue in England. It was bright and summery and very civilised. And then I went home and read about fraud, blackmail, assault and murder in preparation for Monday, which did, yes, go a lot better. I wrote a long and rambly essay about liability accruing for omissions, and two disparate problem questions about A's liability for murder when he throws itching powder at C while meaning to hit B, and then liability accruing for theft when D and E go out to the shops and nefariously acquire photos, flowers, mushrooms and too much change that they subsequently spend on drink.
So... four exams done, if, please god, I have passed these two, and three, plus the legal research project, to go. I can do this, yes. No going mad here. (We'll carefully not talk about the last couple of weeks, or today. Yes.)
In the meantime, I am still reading Lois McMaster Bujold, and have just got through Young Miles and half of Cetaganda. And, um, yay. They're really great. Really, really great. I love the complexity of the world-building, and the politics, and the way the characters are all real people rather than ray-gun-wielding desperadoes, and yes, I have a lot of love. Which is not what I was saying at the end of The Warrior's Apprentice, because, um, I am not as fond of Miles as I ought to be, I think. I loved Cordelia's narrative voice, and Miles is great fun in a lot of the same ways, but unlike Cordelia... okay. How to put it? Everything goes right for Miles. Of course, he has the crippling disability to mark him out, and that is such an interesting idea - Miles, who has every privilege, the little Vor lordling with money, prestige, education, boundlesss intelligence and energy, everything he wants, and yet, he's not like Ivan, because of his very visible and relevant disability. And in the beginning this is a factor, yes, and it's interesting and it makes him human rather than perfect. But when he becomes Admiral Naismith, and runs around the galaxy balancing everything on a thread, and fights the battle and solves the plot and saves his father and the emperor and comes back to get into the Academy just like he wanted in the first place - I was thinking, but, but, where's the punchline to this? Isn't the house of cards collapsing a narrative imperative? Especially when Miles, you know, treats Elena horribly, and has this tendency to treat other people like pawns anyway, and... yeah. The happy ending didn't sit right for me.
I liked The Mountains of Mourning much better, partly because, I must say, I was sort of geekily excited to see how Barryaran legal procedure works. (Shut up.) But also, you get to see Miles thoughtful and discomfited and interesting, not magic wunderkind, so, yes. And The Vor Game is a lot better in this regard, especially as there is lots of Gregor and I like him a lot better than Miles. I really like him, actually, because he's so plausibly done: obviously, he cannot be a mad emperor, because that would just derail the series; but equally, he can't be just and sane and, er, perfect, look at his life and circumstances. So instead he becomes the quiet, withdrawn, just and good man, but who gets up one night and steps off a balcony, because he's no magical wunderkind either. (And he and Miles make a nice pair, then: Miles with his physical impairments, Gregor with his mental ones, his depression and fear that his sanity is pasted on yay. And, this is getting to be a long parenthesis but how much do I love that Gregor's depression is not given moral value? It doesn't make him a hero or villain - it's just a thing. They're also, um, really cute. They threaten to stuff cream pies up each other's noses. Awww.)
I am now reading Cetaganda, and, well, so far I like it, Ivan is adorable. But. Um. Okay. I was kind of hoping this was not a, um, pale universe? But so far it seems suspiciously... less than chromatic. Yeah.
Okay, now I shall go and do some work.
Oh, no, wait, no I won't. About Gregor, whom I think I am going to just continue to fangirl. shimgray and I are having a fight shouting match reasonable debate about how you pronounce his name. Shim thinks like Gregory without the Y; I think with a long E as in "evil", because it's a Russian name and Barrayar's cultural landscape does seem to be heavily derived from imperial Russia. I am interested to hear your thoughts, dear flist, especially as last time I asked I discovered that no two of you pronounce "Vorkosigan" the same way, so.
Anyway! Infinite diversity in infinite combinations! I return to public law!
eta: I recommend you read emily_shore's comment below; she kindly addresses my fail.
"...I appreciate that the White House's interaction with the press corp is beginning to reflect the bilingualism of our country, but also the world...."
..ahahaha, seriously? 'Cause in America they only speak English and Spanish, you know. The rest of the world just speaks Foreign.
Let's see, what else? Things learned at two in the afternoon, flat on your back in a flat-bottomed boat, feet in the air: the English summer is rightly the mockery of the world at large, but sometimes, sometimes it's all perfect. Sometimes it lingers the right side of twenty degrees for a blissful couple of hours, sometimes the grass is immaculate green and the flowers droop handsomely into the clear river, sometimes it's two in the afternoon and you're drunk on champagne.
...from which it may, perhaps, be deduced that I finished my exams on Monday morning, having dispensed with land and then criminal law, emerged into the sunshine with my baby lawyer friends and the party adjourned to a punt, with two boxes of strawberries and a bottle of sparkling pink bubbly, and eight very classy plastic champagne flutes. Apparently every woman in the world other than me can punt competently, even the Norwegian friend who never stepped in a punt before in her life (apparently it's not a real boat without a figurehead and a few axes sticking out of the prow), so I lay in the bottom and looked up at the sky and got tipsy. It was heavenly, in just the Malory Towers meaning of the word, perhaps with the strategic addition of alchohol.
Criminal went better than land, I think. My land exam was rushed, because for a lot of the problem questions I knew I could do a decent answer if given twice the time, but as it was I was just sitting there thinking "easements! covenants! Wheeldon v Burrows! shit!" and scribbling. In the end, my answer hinged on the vital point of llamas. If you have covenanted not to keep cattle on your land, are you in breach if you subsequently start a llama farm? The jury, consisting of yours truly, is out.
I related this somewhat incoherently to teh_elb and dr_biscuit at the weekend, having been invited to a barbecue at Untold Blessings and being somewhat bemused throughout at the thought of a successful barbecue in England. It was bright and summery and very civilised. And then I went home and read about fraud, blackmail, assault and murder in preparation for Monday, which did, yes, go a lot better. I wrote a long and rambly essay about liability accruing for omissions, and two disparate problem questions about A's liability for murder when he throws itching powder at C while meaning to hit B, and then liability accruing for theft when D and E go out to the shops and nefariously acquire photos, flowers, mushrooms and too much change that they subsequently spend on drink.
So... four exams done, if, please god, I have passed these two, and three, plus the legal research project, to go. I can do this, yes. No going mad here. (We'll carefully not talk about the last couple of weeks, or today. Yes.)
In the meantime, I am still reading Lois McMaster Bujold, and have just got through Young Miles and half of Cetaganda. And, um, yay. They're really great. Really, really great. I love the complexity of the world-building, and the politics, and the way the characters are all real people rather than ray-gun-wielding desperadoes, and yes, I have a lot of love. Which is not what I was saying at the end of The Warrior's Apprentice, because, um, I am not as fond of Miles as I ought to be, I think. I loved Cordelia's narrative voice, and Miles is great fun in a lot of the same ways, but unlike Cordelia... okay. How to put it? Everything goes right for Miles. Of course, he has the crippling disability to mark him out, and that is such an interesting idea - Miles, who has every privilege, the little Vor lordling with money, prestige, education, boundlesss intelligence and energy, everything he wants, and yet, he's not like Ivan, because of his very visible and relevant disability. And in the beginning this is a factor, yes, and it's interesting and it makes him human rather than perfect. But when he becomes Admiral Naismith, and runs around the galaxy balancing everything on a thread, and fights the battle and solves the plot and saves his father and the emperor and comes back to get into the Academy just like he wanted in the first place - I was thinking, but, but, where's the punchline to this? Isn't the house of cards collapsing a narrative imperative? Especially when Miles, you know, treats Elena horribly, and has this tendency to treat other people like pawns anyway, and... yeah. The happy ending didn't sit right for me.
I liked The Mountains of Mourning much better, partly because, I must say, I was sort of geekily excited to see how Barryaran legal procedure works. (Shut up.) But also, you get to see Miles thoughtful and discomfited and interesting, not magic wunderkind, so, yes. And The Vor Game is a lot better in this regard, especially as there is lots of Gregor and I like him a lot better than Miles. I really like him, actually, because he's so plausibly done: obviously, he cannot be a mad emperor, because that would just derail the series; but equally, he can't be just and sane and, er, perfect, look at his life and circumstances. So instead he becomes the quiet, withdrawn, just and good man, but who gets up one night and steps off a balcony, because he's no magical wunderkind either. (And he and Miles make a nice pair, then: Miles with his physical impairments, Gregor with his mental ones, his depression and fear that his sanity is pasted on yay. And, this is getting to be a long parenthesis but how much do I love that Gregor's depression is not given moral value? It doesn't make him a hero or villain - it's just a thing. They're also, um, really cute. They threaten to stuff cream pies up each other's noses. Awww.)
I am now reading Cetaganda, and, well, so far I like it, Ivan is adorable. But. Um. Okay. I was kind of hoping this was not a, um, pale universe? But so far it seems suspiciously... less than chromatic. Yeah.
Okay, now I shall go and do some work.
Oh, no, wait, no I won't. About Gregor, whom I think I am going to just continue to fangirl. shimgray and I are having a fight shouting match reasonable debate about how you pronounce his name. Shim thinks like Gregory without the Y; I think with a long E as in "evil", because it's a Russian name and Barrayar's cultural landscape does seem to be heavily derived from imperial Russia. I am interested to hear your thoughts, dear flist, especially as last time I asked I discovered that no two of you pronounce "Vorkosigan" the same way, so.
Anyway! Infinite diversity in infinite combinations! I return to public law!
eta: I recommend you read emily_shore's comment below; she kindly addresses my fail.