In the form of a bulleted list

[philena]

Just like Mimi Smartypants!

• First, Daniel and I watched "The Wizard of Oz" last night. Having not seen the movie since I was very little (except for that "Dark Side of the Moon" experiment that someone showed when I was in college), I was watching it with pretty fresh eyes. And I must say, it is an extremely trippy movie! Especially Munchkinland! And it was amusing, and some of it was very ingenious, but I was pretty cranky with Dorothy the whole time. First of all, Judy Garland was 16 when the movie was made, and looked every bit of her age. I know now, at the ripe old age of 23, that 16-year-olds really are little girls, but all the same, she could have been doing some work around the farm! Daniel says Dorothy is supposed to be a little girl (he suggested 13), but however young she's supposed to be, I have a hard time imagining that someone as big and strong as she looks can really get away with doing no work on the farm, when even elderly Aunt Em has to with the outside work. And here's Dorothy, babbling about her dog, trying to pet the chicks when she's just getting in the way, and bothering the hired men by climbing on railings and falling into pig-pens! Doesn't that girl have any chores to do? Her behavior is not realistic for anyone over the age of seven.
  
  Daniel was also struck by the wicked witch urging her winged monkeys to fly, after which they fill the sky. He drew a comparison to WWII, especially since the movie was made in 1939. He also said that he had heard that the original book was supposed to be an allegory of the Gold Standard. I remember that the book, which I actually read when I was little, featured green-tinted glasses that everyone had to wear in the Emerald City (more humbuggery!), that the scarecrow gets a pincushion or something that prickled when he tried to think, and that the tin man became tin because he kept cutting off bits of himself in the course of his work. I don't remember any allegory, but I was pretty little when I read the book, too. So it's on hold for us at the library, and I'll pick it up tomorrow.

• I fell off my bike on the way to work today. I scraped my knee, my elbow, my wrist, and my chest, and there was no good reason why I fell, either! I just lost my balance and boom! A passing car stopped to ask if I was okay, and although I wasn't, I said I was to make it go away. I said I was fine, just embarrassed, because those are the sorts of things that you're supposed to say when showing that you're not hurt after a silly accident, and although the accident was silly, I was most certainly not embarrassed. I hurt and just didn't want to deal with any people. Also, I was about ten feet from my driveway (another reason the accident was silly), and it only took a few seconds to limp back home and have Daniel call the bakery to say I would be late. And now I'm all neosporined and band-aided, but the knee of my pants, I'm afraid, is beyond repair.

• Does anyone else find it insanely annoying that tags are sewn into the seams of clothes? You can't remove the tag without destroying the structural integrity of the garment, and you can't simply cut the tag off because the stub of the tag is just as scratchy as the tag was. I have one shirt where the material info and washing instructions are simply printed right on the fabric, and that's great! Why can't garment manufacturers do more of that?
  

• Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield, is a thoroughly delightful children's book. I recommend everyone take it out of the library or buy it. For that matter, I think when I go to the library to fetch The Wizard of Oz I'll inspect what else she's written.

• Ann Patchett is also a good writer. Bel Canto, which is the first book I read of hers, is absolutely fabulous. I've since read two more, Taft, which was so-so, and The Magician's Assistant, which was excellent, but not as good as Bel Canto. I'll be reading the other books of hers that my library has to offer, Truth and Beauty: A Friendship and The Patron Saint of Liars, as soon as I can get my hot little hands on them. I've been using the library quite a bit recently--I'll even be tutoring people on computers next Thursday!--and I'm a huge fan of looking up books at home and requesting them to be delivered to the local branch. Usually this results in a wait of a few days (it is not unknown for me to get impatient, go all the way to the other branch, get another copy of the book, and then cancel the hold, but that's cheating so I try to be patient), but ideally I'd be constantly requesting books, so that even if the most recently requested books are not available, the books requested a few days ago are.

• Cake time!

Comments

[parisienne.livejournal.com]

still, as a farm girl myself I was working in the fields when I was seven! yeah, first they had Judy Garland wearing this ridiculous blond wig. I'm glad they went with her natural (I guess?) hair color. I couldn't imagine the movie any other way. I used to watch it daily when I was a little tyke.

I liked Magician's Assistant well enough. I guess I found it problematic that she would have spent so long with someone incapable of loving her back in the way she loved him.