a wolf angel is not a good angel

Matilda’s thoughts: an exercise in anthropomorphising.

You got me inside. What else do you want from me?

(more…)

or, Careless mistakes run in the family.

The three things that differentiate plants from other living things:

• Plants tend to be green.
• Plants do not depend on other living things for nutrients.
• Plants do usually walk or move around.

Tomorrow the Opera de Montreal is giving a free perfomance of Aida — sort of. They are having their normal performance, and then showing it (live) on a screen outside for free, and during intermission, we get to see whatever is happening backstage. (Last year — I think it was Carmen, and I didn’t know about it — 12,000 people showed up.) I rather want to go, though no one else I know is available, but I should be ok all by my lonesome. And apparently I can watch two shows for $60 next year, which totally appeals — and I could find people to go with me there, no problem.

I bought strawberry plants and a raspberry plant too. Right now they are sitting in pots on my patio, hoping I won’t end up succeeding in killing them. Poor plants, to be stuck with me taking care of them. Good intentions do not actually mean death-avoiding.

But I don’t want to kill them — they’re perennials (which seems like the wrong word for non-flowers) — so, I ask of other pot(ted)-plant-growers, especially northy ones, what do I do? All I get is that they die easily from too much wet, so should I poke holes in the bottoms of the pots (which are plastic and have no holes)? What is too much wet, anyhow, how often should I water etc? I know they need full sun, which my south-facing top floor balcony conveniently has. But what of the winter? I bring them inside, sure, and then I . . . what? Let them sit until the last frost? Water the soil occasionally? Keep in a warm room, keep near the sun, keep away from the sun?

See, this is why I don’t do plants. They’re too confusing.

montreal balcony

This actually is not about the show so much anymore, but about the reactions of people who watch the show. I keep complaining about fake-nice-guy-Jack, though they’re pushing the nice a lot less. I also complain about the lack of agency of the female characters. My cousin, who I brought up in the last post so I could make this point, but decided to put it into a different post without editing the beginning of the last one, had much the same reactions. Go cousin! Given the stupid nasty cracks you made about your women’s studies course (though really, I made just as many about mine, only that’s because the course I took was full of idiots and the prof didn’t run the course so much as let them all talk, idiotically) — anyways, I was sort of pleased to see that my cousin noted and was annoyed by the same anti-womanness in the show that I am.

A friend of mine also watches the show, and likes it way, way more than I do. (I took to watching it a day or two later, just to annoy him. I am such a super awesome friend.) He does not concede that Jack is a jerk. (Incidentally, although I also hate Jack, it’s not his jerkitude that annoys me, since I am a fan of Sawyer.) And he doesn’t seem to be annoyed by the new eye-candy-ness of Kate, nor will he accept that the show is becoming more anti-woman. (House, on the other hand, is getting marginally better.) I think he just waits for these sorts of rants to stop so we can discuss the show again. But you know, this *is* discussing the show. Another problem we have: I like complaining, and he does not.

I don’t want to say too much, because I don’t like blogging about friends too much. It feels inappropriate.

It’s almost more enjoyable to see how other people respond to these issues in and about the show than to watch it. Except for the scenery.

I had a long chat with my cousin (who is 18) last week, about Lost. Now, I really liked Lost at first, and I haven’t entirely given up on it — I was close, at points this season, but the finale worked for me, and I am intrigued again. Spoilers for the entire season 2 of Lost.

But! Where the hell are all the women? We killed off Shannon this season — ok, we replaced her with Ana Lucia and Libby! Who we . . . killed off too. So, of the most important characters, we have — all men! Jack, Locke, Sawyer, maybe Eko, maybe Sayid, maybe Henry Gale. Kate, you wonder? Kate has been made into a meaningless Cute Girl. She was the one who could hunt and track and . . . get caught in a stupid trap that Rousseau left, get caught by the Others, get told to stay behind and do this and that. Now, I believe that Jack would tell her what to do, but first season, she would just have ignored him, and it would not have ended in Doom!

Of the more minor main cast, sure, we have Kate and Sun. Claire and Rose and Rousseau? Forget it.

I could talk about the remarkable consistency that Michael has shown, as a character, especially when we compare him to, for example, Locke. Or the fun job of “finding the relationships between the main cast and secondary characters” — which I suck at and only find out about when I read recaps. I could talk about how very much I want to go back to Hawaii it is so beautiful.

But instead, I will continue to complain about the pointless non-women in this show. I appreciate that Sun insisted on going with Sayid and Jin. And I understand that in an ensemble show with eleventy zillion characters and twelvy zillion zillion story lines happening, you can’t focus on them all at once. But you can, say, note that all of your characters that do anything are guys, and that all of your important storylines are about guys, and maybe try to balance that out a bit. (This may be what Desmond’s weird ex-girlfriend is trying to do. Who the hell knows.) Guess we’ll see next season, especially as we might have killed off half the men and lost Michael. Or maybe not.

I just woke up from a nap. The disturbing thing is that I have absolutely no idea when I went to take the nap, and so I do not know how much time I lost from my day. I also don’t know when this means I should try to go to sleep, or how much sleep I have gotten lately, either over the last few nights or during this nap today. It’s very weird, somehow, and disorienting, and today was worse than usual.

To be honest, I have been losing time more generally. I look up and suddenly it’s hours later, and I have no idea what I’ve done. But somehow that hasn’t been as bad as today, because then I don’t feel like anything has been different, the day just goes on as usual, if a bit more briefly. Today I know there’s been a difference, but I don’t know how long it was.

Yesterday, I heard part of a radio show. The question was “Are you man enough to drive a chick car?” As far as I know, they didn’t specifically define chick cars. Apparently it’s very annoying, because now guys are worried about things like fuel efficiency and value for money, and girls buy sports cars. The horrors! Lack of good enough gender-segregation-by car! Whatever will happen next?

I do not know, because I missed the end of the show. But I predict men wearing purses women wearing pants men wearing pink men wearing pantyhose.

At the market I also saw these pansies.

Black pansies! Or very dark violet, really, but doesn’t black just sound cooler? From a distance they look plain black.

I did not buy them.

Madame Cat debated coming into my house, but in the end decided against it.

I claim she’s a really beautiful cat, but she doesn’t photograph well.