Bit of Ivory

All of you WOULD go and be prolific on a day when I had little to no access to the internet, wouldn’t you?

I don’t have time to do a proper update, so this will be the shortened version:

• Got Christmas cards from Poconell, Lilac, alphabet, and q_sama so far. Thank you so much!
• Had a dream about Sweeney Agonistes the other day. She was coming to Wahleecon, and I was supposed to pick her up at the airport, but was delayed. She ended up at a mall downtown waiting for me, eating gelato. When I finally got there she had picked up Orlando Bloom and Andy Serkis and convinced them to come to wahleecon. A great time was had by all, although people kept calling Orlando “Legolas” and it got on his nerves after a while. Was a good dream.
• Finally got to watch those RotK clips today. Was very very sad when my power went out Thursday night, just after Kirk had figured out how to let me watch them.
• Went to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert last night. Was very, very good. After the concert Jen and I went to European Connection and got a crepe (I had Nutella and caramel, with white hot chocolate. Mmmmm), and then on a whim checked what time the next showing of Pride and Prejudice was at. It was 10:30, so we stayed and watched it. It was very good the second time, too. Anna Darcy and Will Darcy have different accents, which I find very funny.
• There’s some great discussion on SQ about P&P, but I don’t have enough time to post right now. Will do so tommorow.
• Have to WUX again tonight. Blah.
• Asked for Wednesday off TWICE, but still got scheduled. Had to ask a coworker to take my shift so I could go see RotK.
• Got a visit from Fellytone from SQ at WUX yesterday. She brought me a present– the Premiere magazine with the Hobbitses! She is AWESOME.

Okay, I think that covers everything I wanted to say. Finally, I wanted to post this:

I know very little about some of the people on my friends’ list. Some people I know relatively well. We have something in common and we chat occasionally. Some of you I hardly know at all. Perhaps you lurk, for whatever reason. But you friended me and I thank you.

But here’s a thought: why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself. I’d love it if every single person who friended me would do this. Yes, even you people who I know really well. Then post this in your own journal.

I think I’ve commented on everyone of you who posted this already, but if I haven’t, yell at me. I posted something different in each journal, so if you read all of them you get some very divergent views of my life. I want to hear from all of you!

HP shipping meme:

One True Pairing Ship
Harry/Ginny

Canon Ship
Ron/Hermione, Harry/Ginny

“If this happens I’ll stab my eyes out with a spork” ‘Ship:
Harry/Hermione

“You are one sick human being” ‘Ship:
Incest ships, especially twincest

“I dabble a little” ‘Ship:
Bill/Fleur

“It’s like a car crash” ‘Ship:
Draco/Ginny

“Tickles my fancy but not sold quite yet” ‘Ship:
Charlie/Tonx

“Makes no canon sense but why the heck not” ‘Ship:
Lockhart/Trewlaney (It’s all Erica H. Smith’s fault)

“Everyone else loves it but I just don’t feel it” ‘Ship:
Sirius/Remus

“When all is said and done” ‘Ship:
Harry/Ginny

“The be Very Afraid” Ship
Harry/Luna and Ron/Luna

Guilty Pleasure Ship
Draco/Ginny

“I can’t believe I read it and liked it” ‘Ship
Draco/Ginny (thanks a lot, Arabella and Jedi Boadicea)

Favorite older/younger ‘Ship
Snape/Maud Moody.

In other news, I still have lots of vocabulary to learn, and I hate hate HATE, with the burning passion of a thousand fiery suns, GRE analogies. There is a reason I decided not to take the PSAT and the SAT, thank you very much. Well, one reason was that I only wanted to go to BYU and BYU accepted the ACT, but the other reason is that I hated analogies. But I need more practice on them, so must search them out. Stupid GRE.

I am having daily headaches these days, and they center on my right eyebrow. Is a very strange feeling, and very painful. I want them to go away. Must go take ibuprofen to get rid of the one I have right now.

Back to studying. . .

Earlier I was really hating life. Work was bad. Bad, bad, BAD. Stupid customers, stupid corporate people who don’t know what’s going on in the retail stores, stupid marketing people who failed to notify us that one of the most prominent LDS musicians was coming to our store to sign (luckily a customer asked us about it this morning so we were able to make the necessary preparations. It would have been incredibly embarrassing to have him walk in and have us scrambling to get books and cds for him to sign), stupid managers who haven’t set foot in our store in 4 weeks and so don’t realize that we’re severely understaffed, and therefore expect us to be miracle workers, stupid employees at other stores who keep you on hold for 10 minutes at a time while you’re trying to make sure they have an item. I came home extremely irritated and intensely happy that I have the day off tomorrow and don’t have to deal with it all. I usually love my job, but sometimes the stupid things my company does really irritate me, and the fact that they’re doing them in the middle of the busy Christmas season drives me crazy.

But a little rest, Orange Creme Stephen’s Gourmet Hot Cocoa and some Heyer works miracles.

I even recovered enough to do a bit of studying for the GRE. I am profoundly grateful for Jane Austen, J.K. Rowling, and Bill Watterson. They are extremely helpful when studying vocabulary. Thanks to Jane I know the meaning of words like taciturn, dissemble, and precipitate; JKR helped me guess that to occlude means to prevent or stop something and let me recognize torpor; and Bill Watterson showed me that transmogrify indicated a change of state.

Being well-read can be extremely helpful. Now if only I could get that darn math. *sigh* At least I won’t have trouble with the Fibonacci sequence. “One, one, two, three, five. Eureka!”

Holiday cards are DONE. Unless anyone else wants one?

I got a lovely package from Lou today! It included a Harry Potter towel and a pretty sparkly box that she says I’m not allowed to open until Christmas. That is SO not fair. Apparently there is another one coming as well. I love getting fun stuff in the mail!

Working at Deseret Book would be ever so much easier if I didn’t have to deal with stupid customers all day.

I am insanely jealous of Connielane. But I asked for next Wednesday off! Whoot! I already have my tickets, too. They are in my purse as I type.

Lots of you need hugs. And chocolate. I recommend lots and lots of chocolate.

Went to the chiropractor again this morning, and did some weight training in his basement. He wants me to exercise this week, and check me again on Friday. I had a bit of pain yesterday. The chairs and pews in our chapel aren’t the most comfortable things in the world. He doesn’t charge for using his exercise room, though.

I’m going to be cutting down on my online time in the next few weeks. Not only will I be working a lot, but that GRE is coming up awfully fast. I need to spend at least two hours a day studying. I’ll still check LJ and blogs and answer emails and try to keep the discussion on P&P at SQ going (and why aren’t some of you contributing?), but I won’t be on IMing programs much.

I want to send you holiday cards, but I don’t have your addresses. Could you email them to me? Link at the bottom of the right-hand column.

And anyone else that wants one, you can email me and I’ll send one right out!

So, I know that many of you saw the trailer for Pride and Prejudice: A Latter-day Comedy and were concerned. I recall Rachel saying it looked “horrible”, and edeainfj thought Austen had been “reduced to bad, cliched, teenie-bopper romantic comedy drivel.” Many of my LJ friends concurred.

I admit, the trailer didn’t give me much hope. I had been looking forward to this production. Most of you don’t know about the recent flood of independently -produced Mormon films. It started with a flick called “God’s Army” back in 2000, which was a very well-done move about missionaries in southern California. Its success started a rash of filmmakers trying to capitalize on what Richard Dutcher started. Unfortunately, most of them have been so-so to downright terrible. A notable exception would be “The Other Side of Heaven”, which was actually distributed by Disney on DVD, about the missionary experiences of John Groberg in Tonga in the fifties. It starred Christopher Gorham and Anne Hathaway, and was very, very well done. But then there were such travesties as “The Singles Ward” and “The RM,” which decided that humor consisted of “It’s funny because it’s true” moments and cameos by local celebrities such as LaVell Edwards and Larry Miller. These two movies were so overloaded with Mormon cliches, bad acting and sophomoric directing that they’re truly painful for any thinking human being to watch. So when I heard that someone was making a movie based on Pride and Prejudice I was intruiged. At least they had good source material.

I tried to keep an open mind, though. Lots of trailers make movies look incredibly stupid. Then Box Office Magazine gave it an incredibly positive review, and I decided to give it a chance.

I am SO glad I did.

First of all, setting it in Provo was a stroke of genius. Nowhere is the marriage-market mentality as prevalent in this day and age as it is in good old Provo, Utah. Instead of 5 sisters, you have 5 roommates. Jane is an exchange student, Elizabeth is a 26-year-old (ANCIENT in the Mormon world, definitely On The Shelf) aspiring novelist, Mary is hoplelessly socially-inept, Lydia is a boy chaser in the extreme, and Kitty is Lydia’s little sister who follows wherever she leads. Lydia and Kitty spend a good amount of the show following the advice of a “The Rules” clone called “The Pink Bible, which offers such advice as “Nerdy men can be a pain, but they are easy to catch and will usually support you” and “Some guys try to seem cool. Do not be fooled. This is a pathetic attempt at misdirection. No guy has ever been cool, no guy will ever be cool. Beneath the facade, all guys are like your dad.” Charles Bingley is a goofy, rich guy who made all his money selling classical music CDs for dogs. Jack Wickham turns out to be a complusive gambler who tricks unwitting young Mormon women into thinking that he’s waiting for a temple divorce, gets them to elope to Vegas, and then runs up gambling debts on their credit, all while being legally married to someone else. Collins is a hopelessy inept return missionary who keeps quoting his mission president (President de Bourgh) and can’t take a hint. And Darcy is a very rich, very cute British guy that Bingley baptized while on his mission and who happens to be the “D” in “D&G Publishing”, a publisher that Elizabeth sent her book to. The story is updated in an entirely believable and funny way, with lots of great references to the book and even a few nods to the BBC/A&E miniseries. Eventually Elizabeth goes on study abroad to London and Darcy follows her over after explaining to the judge why he started a fight with Wickham, and they meet at Lyme Park, which most of you know as the location used for Pemberley. They also kept putting relevant quotes from the books in between scenes. For instance, Jane and Elizabeth decide to go on a hike to get their minds off their romantic troubles, so they flash “What are men to rocks and mountians?” up there. And when Elizabeth gets really mad at what Darcy says about her book (they want to buy it, but want it to be revised), it says “Angry people are not always wise.” It was great. They also managed to work in Mormon references without being completely in your face about the whole thing, without distracting from the story, and without making all Mormons look really stupid.

I want to write more, but I have to go to work. In any case, I very much hope that “Pride and Prejudice” truly can make the jump from Mormon Movie to sleeper hit, like “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” because I really think that all of you would really like it.

I made two phone posts tonight in the LiveJournal. I transcribed them there, as well, for all those of you who can’t hear it.

Warning: Excessive fangirl behavior in the the latest post.

I am in love with Orlando Seale. And I dearly hope that Pride and Prejudice: A Latter-day Comedy goes into nationwide release so all of you can see it.

Pat wanted to know the story behind the “1700 bucks damage to my car, you son of a butthead” phrase in this post. Be careful, though. You are entering The Bytheway Zone.

Many of you will recognize much of the phrase as being from Back to the Future, although its true form is “You caused 300 bucks damage to my car, you son of a bit**.” Right? Well, the only version of Back the the Future we’ve actually *owned* is one that we taped off the air ages ago, which has several extremely funny dubs in it to lower the rating. One is “You’re going to see some serious stuff” instead of– well, you remember what it is. The funniest one, though, is “You caused 300 bucks damage to my car, you son of a butthead.” It’s especially amusing because “butthead” has more syllables than the word it is replacing, and if you watch Biff’s mouth it is incredibly clear what he said. And “son of a butthead”? What kind of an insult is that? Anyway, it just tickles my family’s extremely odd funny bone to no end, and we repeat it whenever possible.

Everyone’s letters are making me compose some in my mind. And you all know how that goes. So here it is:

Dear Wedgewood (my parakeet),

I think you’re really cute. But must you land on my head and sit there like a hood ornament until you slip down my hair, and then chatter at me when I try to help you out?

Your loving hood,

Emily

Dear Disney,

The Pirates DVD is great. Make the sequel as soon as possible, please.

Your adoring fan,

Emily

Dear Orlando Bloom,

Why oh why aren’t you Mormon? And available?

*sigh*

Yours devotedly,

Emily

Dear cold,

It was really very nice of you to go away while my back decided to act like it had been hit by a Mack truck, but now that I’m almost back to normal, is it really necessary to come back with a vengance?

Wishing I wasn’t yours,

Emily

Dear cough,

You’re annoying. Go away.

Even less yours than the cold,

Emily

Dear Rachel,

Your semester will be over soon, right? Chatting with you is CRAX, and I am in withdrawal.

I tried to make that a haiku, but I’m too tired.

I miss you.

Your squeeing fangirl,

Emily

Dear GRE,

Procrastinating isn’t going to work with you, is it? You are going to turn my day off into a study session. Why can’t BYU just admit me without you?

Dreading our meeting,

Emily

Dear BYU,

Why can’t you just admit me without the GRE? You sent me t-shirts when I applied for undergrad.

Hoping to be yours again,

Emily

Dear math,

Why, oh why, couldn’t you have stayed buried in my junior year of high school? I became an English major for a reason, you know. And why does BYU’s English Master’s program care that I know how to determine a square root without a calculator?

I watched Square One as a kid. Shouldn’t that count for something?

*sigh*

Yours,

Emily

Dear eyelids,

Yes, yes. I know. I’ll be inspecting you shortly.

Yours much less than I would like,

Emily

This is all PrettyAnnaMoon’s fault. She’s so clever.