Another Literary Disappointment

Disappointment has struck again.

This time it came in the form of Evelyn Waugh's "Vile Bodies."

It tried to be humorous at times but was undone by a suicide, a death by nerves, a marriage of convenience and a battle that doesn't end well.

I am about to start Tom Jones which will undoubtedly leave me feeling bleak and tired.

To pick myself up after this I may have to dip back into P.G. Wodehouse or give Lucky Jim another read through.

On Tess of the D'Urbervilles

I read a lot.

Sometimes, to deal with the impending stress of a law exam, I read to escape.

I recently completed Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" and I hated it.

The story centers around a lovely, sweet, country girl named Tess whose proud, lazy, drunken father finds out he is related to an old family once filled with knights and nobility.

When he discovers that a nearby wealthy woman shares the same last name he decides to send Tess to them in hopes that she might benefit from the woman's connections.

Against her better judgment, Tess goes to the home of the woman and meets her pervy libertine son Alec who leers at her and tries to get fresh.

Tess leaves to return home but Alec convinces her to come back by providing gifts to her poor family.

One night he "rescues" her from a disagreement with some fellow villagers and takes her into a forest where she falls asleep while he goes off looking for the way home.

He comes back to discover her sleeping and proceeds to rape her.

Don't let anyone (I'm looking at you Wikipedia) tell you any different.

The end of the chapter where it happens says he did to her what some of her knighted forefathers did to other village girls on their way home from victory.

Further in the book one villager says to another that they heard crying on the night it happened and that Alec might have been in trouble had he been discovered by any of the local men at the time.

Of course, Tess gets pregnant and everyone judges her as a fallen woman.

The child is born, lives for a few weeks and then dies. Because Tess's father is too proud to go for the clergyman, Tess baptizes the child herself.

Eventually she moves on to another valley to work at a dairy where she meets a Methodist parson's son, Angel Claire, who has decided to dabble in animal husbandry.

He gets the special treatment on the farm so he doesn't really have to mix with the peasants unless he wants to. In his spare time he plays the harp badly and develops feelings for Tess.

Tess struggles to tell him what happened to her but can't find the words or proper time to do so.

He asks Tess to marry him but she says no. She's afraid she isn't good enough for him.

Meanwhile, there are three other young milkmaids who lust after Angel and try to harm themselves when they find out he really prefers Tess.

Eventually, the two get married and on their wedding night Angel tells Tess he had an affair with an older woman in London but has learned his lesson and is sure she will forgive him.

Tess, in a rush of relief and confidence tells him of her ordeal.

While Angel assumed that him sticking his penis in someone else would be cool with his wife, the thought that someone stuck their penis in her, even though it was against her will, is unacceptable to him.

What follows is some good old fashioned, double-standard, slut shaming.

I was made all the more livid by this because no one in the whole damned book seemed capable of realizing that 1) women's value doesn't degrade though sexual experience and 2) Tess was sexually assaulted against her will.

Angel goes off on a boo hoo fit to Brazil but before he leaves he tries to seduce one of the forlorn milkmaids to go off with him and live as his mistress. He ends up leaving her behind after she tells him that she could never love him more than Tess does.

Angel is just really a first rate guy.

And yes, later on Tess finds out about this but decides to forgive him and go on loving him.

Of course she does.

Tess is left behind with a little money and the understanding that she will live with her family.

Instead, Tess goes off to work on a hellish farm where she is despised by her boss and left to feel like damaged goods by the absence of her husband.

To make matters worse, Tess runs into Alec again and at this time he's become a travelling preacher who talks of hell and brimstone.

He soon begins to stalk Tess and, in one unforgettable scene, forces her to swear "not to tempt him again."

I really wanted to scream at that point.

Alec soon abandons his new found piety and starts showing up at Tess's work and insisting that she become his woman. She says no and tells him she is married and he starts the whole, "Oh, really? Where's your husband then?" line of questioning.

Tess's father dies, her mother and siblings get turned out of the house and the place they were supposed to rent is rented out to someone else.

Alec then sails in and promises to help Tess's family if she will become his property.

Finally she gives in and they go off to live by the seaside.

At about this time, Angel decides that maybe Tess isn't that bad and he'll give her another chance (so magnanimous of him) and he heads back to England to find her.

He soon learns of her whereabouts.

She meets him at the hotel and tells him she's living with Alec and that he can't have her.

He leaves all dejected and I experienced a welling up of Schadenfreude.

Out of nowhere, Tess suddenly becomes someone completely different from the long-suffering and good hearted woman she has been throughout the book and murders Alec.

Really?

Yes, really.

I half expected Miss Marple to show up and start sleuthing. That's how disjointed this felt.

After slaying Alec, Tess catches up with Angel and they hide out in a house for a week before they are discovered and Tess is captured and hanged.

Before she is taken away, Tess tells Angel he should take up with her younger sister and that's what he does.

Seriously. Team no one with this book.

My takeaway is that everyone in Victorian society was fond of pretending their poop didn't stink.

One didn't speak of one's problems to one's friends leaving one to suffer through them alone.

It was okay for men to screw whomever they liked, offer a half-hearted apology (or not) and move on.

Women were damned because they could not own property, have careers or vote and had to deal with some male-invented mythical concept of "purity."

Dickens had a way of issuing biting social commentary with wit and humor.

When Hardy does it I become misanthropic.

The My Little Pony Question

Before we go to bed, Nick and I sometimes watch YouTube videos together.

Lately we've been watching a series called "cringe compilation" which features a lot of weird and awkward stuff.

I am horrified by the videos of a full grown man wearing a diaper and acting like a baby. The fact that he is being filmed by another adult male who talks to him from behind the camera is also super creepy.

I am incensed by the sweaty, awkward, overweight guys who whine about not having hot girlfriends.

It's not that they're sweaty, awkward or overweight (many of us were one or more of these things as teenagers) it's the fact that they feel entitled to an outwardly perfect girlfriend.

Intelligence and personality have nothing to do with it. She must be hot.

What do they have to offer to any girl, hot or otherwise? I'm at a loss.

If you asked them I'm sure they would tell you it's because they're nice guys.

There are a host of videos with young people who are obsessed with all things Japanese and using the word "sugoi."

There are videos of people who think Africa is a country.

There are videos of teens trying to bear witness for Christ in ways that give me a sever case of secondary embarrassment.

But of all these awkward, weird and cringe inducing displays none takes a more devastating toll on Nick's psyche than those involving "Bronies."

After sitting through several videos of boys and grown men professing their love for the My Little Pony franchise, Nick has become agitated and will often cry out,"What am I missing?"

He seems unsettled that a cartoon originally geared toward little girls could drive adult males to pin rainbow colored tails to their pants, collect plastic figurines and cry over the imaginary adventures of a character named "Pinky Pie."

Growing up in the 80s, I had several My Little Pony toys.

The first one I received was purple and green and named Seashell. She was cast in a sitting down position which was really frustrating because it was impossible for her go trotting out into battle whenever She-ra needed backup in the vicious war against Ken and the Pound Puppies.

My Little Pony: Sedentary Edition

Anyway, I'm not a fan of gendered toys and think its fine for boys to play with dolls.

What bothers me is that, in some cases, there seems to be a weird, almost sexual aspect to some Brony fandom. It seems more like a fetish than a hobby.

Move Along. Nothing to See Here.

Should full grown men be getting this caught up over children's cartoons?

Is there something below the surface that might make them a danger to others?

It's hard to say a definite "yes" but it still feels like something is off.

That's my take on it anyway.

So I told mom, "If they go, I go."

I'm not sure if any of this will comfort Nick.

He seems to view the phenomenon as holding some undecipherable universal truth hiding in plain site.

Two Visits To Ulva Island

We took two trips to Ulva Island to see the rare birds living there.

On the first trip we showed up at the dock and met Peter the Captain. 

He had captured a small octopus in a cup and let me get a picture of it before setting it free.

A teeny tiny cephalopod

As we were waiting for our 9:30 am departure, a lady brought her Jack Russel pup who was specially triained to hunt for mice and rats on Ulva. The dog's name was Gadget and she took an immediate shine to Alex. (I'm pretty sure she saw him as a fellow puppy.) 

By the end of the day they had become mates.

On Ulva, we saw Stewart Island Robbins which hopped around and waited for us to scratch up some bugs for them. 

When we sat on a bench to look at the forest two of them came to perch beside us. Alex decided they were getting too close and waved them away.

We also saw Weka, Kakariki, Kereru, Bellbirds, Tuis and Oyster Catchers. 

When the Weka started throwing leaf litter around while looking for breakfast Alex decided he was being untidy and told him, "No, no!"

Alex shares a seat with a friendly Robin.

Hunting for bugs

A Weka approaches

The next day we returned with a group of four Americans-a mother and daughter and two guys who were on their way back to the States after a semester of study in Australia.

Gadget meets Alex

Alex meets Gadget

Hanging Out

I ended up giving both groups a walking tour stuffed to the brim with bird facts. The two guys had named the tui "the R2D2 bird" and called the Oyster Catchers "Halloween Birds." When I pointed out a Weka to them they asked if it was a Kiwi. 

I didn't want to talk their ears off about birds to whole trip (yes I did) so I sat down with Alex on a bench and let them get on down one of the trails.

One of the guys came rushing back about two minutes later and explained in an excited whisper that he and his friend had spotted a Kiwi.

My first thought was "it's probably a Weka" but I followed him with rising hope. 

Some New Zealanders go their whole lives never seeing a Kiwi in the wild but Ulva and Stewart islands are the place to spot them. 

The overhead tree cover on Ulva is so dense and the sky so cloudy that the forest remains relatively dark and the bird will actually become active during the day.

Sure enough, nosing around below the ferns was a giant brown Kiwi. I was so excited to see it.

My fatal mistake came when I tried to put Alex down so I could get my camera out of my backpack. 

He immediately went into meltdown mode and screamed "Muuuuum!"

The Kiwi tore up a hill and I was able to just capture a blurry shot of its butt before it disappeared into the bush.

Center of the photo disappearing behind the tree: a kiwi butt.

 On the way to Boulder Beach a Weka came out of the forest and took a careful peck at my gumboots. On the shore we sat by the bush line and saw a baby Weka take food from its foraging parents. A Tomtit and a juvenile Saddleback came to see what we were doing and two tuis were chasing each other in the trees.

When Peter returned for us we gave him our tickets which were leaves of the muttonbird scrub.

We said goodbye to magical Ulva Island and returned to our hotel for an afternoon nap.

Wrath of the Toddler

The drive down to Invercargill was about seven hours.

I tried to keep Alex occupied by singing with him and feeding him lots of little snacks.

When we got to town I took him into a toy store where he promptly pooped his pants.

Luckily they had a changing station and I was able to take care of the situation.

As soon as we got to the airport and checked our baggage with the airline Alex pooped himself again.

I asked for our bags back so I could fish out another diaper and I hauled a wild toddler into the family room for a change.

As soon as he was released into the waiting area of the airport he began to get out seven hours of pent up energy.

And it was not pretty.

He scooted across the floor so many times he actually buffed a sheen in his path.

He instinctively sought out the areas of the airport where the public is not meant to go and trespassed.

He ran behind the food counter and startled the barista and he squeeled like a wild piglet when I caught him and attempted to remove him from her work area.

He's normally such a good child but after being confined in his carseat he went into terrible two overdrive.

I tried to get him to look at the tiny airplane which would carry us to Stewart Island but he quickly grew bored with this.

Finally it was time to go and we were allowed out onto the tarmac.

The plane we were actually flying down in was an even smaller one tucked behind the one I had been looking at.

It was a Piper Cherokee and the moment I took my seat in the back of it I started to have fond memories of my grandfather and grandmother flying me around in their Cessna,

The flight was only 15 minutes long and Alex dropped off to sleep five minutes in.

We flew low enough to make out the island's rugged coastline and the white caps on the Foveaux Strait.

I have always disliked flying and dreaded the airline experience but I adored the quick flight in the small plane.

How strange.

Alex woke with a start as we touched down on the grass runway and looked around with bewildered eyes.

He wasn't done getting his friskies out and had a series of shrieking melt downs on the hotel steps, in the hotel hallway and, for the grand finale, in the hotel bar where we were having dinner.

This bar is the place where a dedicated group of fisherman gather to swap stories in the most colorful language possible.

Favorite topics include people who have died and "The Japs."*

These poor souls had worked hard all day and all they wanted was the comfort of their foul-mouthed camaraderie.

But it was not to be.

Alex tore ass around the corners in the bar's two main rooms.

He pulled bar stools out of their places and put them into the path of wandering patrons.

He screamed, whined and threw himself on the floor.

Any attempt to reign him in and corral him into a quiet corner were met with a scream and a defiant cry of "Noooooo!"

With each high octave exclamation the fishermen would snap briefly out of their beer-induced stupor and look around to see what unearthly specter had let out such a howl.

After the tiny terror crashed into a small table and baptized me in my own Coke I decided it was time for bed.

So far my plan to avoid melt downs whilst traveling with a two-year old had failed miserably.



*The NPR was appalled that anyone not reciting lines from a WWII play would use this term. I'm inclined to feel the same way.

What's Wrong With America?

All the embarrassing headlines from the U.S. usually don't phase me.

If anything they just make me happy I don't live there anymore and don't have to frequently threaten to move to Canada.

But today I read a headline that incensed me and brought all the other recent b.s. to a boil in my mind.

Apparently, the TSA (which should stand for Total Stupidity Administration) beat up and bloodied a young woman who was undergoing chemo therapy for a brain tumor. Even though the girl's mother told them she had trouble understanding what was going on, they handled the situation with their signature style of escalation and overkill.

The girl was arrested and later released. The charges against her were dropped.

These TSA dipshits honestly think they are the tip of the spear.

This is the wise organization that once detained a five year old because he had the same name as someone on the "do not fly" list.

They are the scourge of mothers carrying pumped breast milk and sure to mishandle any interaction with someone wearing a prosthesis.

They riffled through my military issued gear once and "forgot" to put $260 worth of it back in my bag. I was left to buy replacement items with my meager Army salary.

One of their female agents also felt me up once.

America was not a safer place because of this.

I can't think of a single time the TSA has foiled a terrorist plot or picked on someone who was a serious threat. If they did I'm sure it was purely accidental.

Amazingly, they continue to get funding to hire the worst and the dullest.

None of that funding seems to go towards training their people to act like professionals and exercise discretion. Instead it all seems to be funneled into the "make vague statements to the press" department every time they need to do damage control for their latest stupidity.

And since I'm on a tear here, what the ever loving f**k is wrong with America when it comes to gun control?

Is there really anyone outside the NRA lobby who honestly believes the forefathers meant for us all to have an arsenal of high powered assault rifles?

When the second amendment was made you had to have a powder horn and flint and steel to get off your one shot. If you missed, too bad. Hopefully you had five to fifteen more minutes to reload and wait for the fuse to go off.

The "well formed militia" exists today in the form of the National Guard and various branches of the military.

How many more mass shootings does the place need before Republican law makers stop kow towing to the NRA and a bunch of paranoid separatists that probably don't vote for "big gubmint" in the first place?

The idea that more people with guns would help is ridiculous.

You would have to have a loaded gun on you at all times and be constantly vigilant.

No one can do this.

If you have children you can't leave a loaded weapon lying around and if someone breaks into your home they aren't going to send you a letter notifying you of the fact so you can be armed and ready when they get there.

As for making that cesspool great again, dream on. It was never great in the first place. Not in a way that those talking about it now would like to believe.

It was founded by theft and slaughter of the indigenous people who lived there. It was built up on the backs of slaves and it excluded women and minorities from having a say in government for ages.

It was supposedly a refuge for persecuted minorities and masses but let too many Irish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans or Middle Easterners show up and the tune changed significantly.

Those wishing to "Make America Great Again" are aspiring to a future where whites still have unchallenged power, Christianity is the only acceptable faith and women return to domestic life and let men make decisions for them. They advocate for the expulsion and exclusion of minorities and the degradation of the environment. They are anti science and pro war.

The days they try to recall were never great. They were a nightmare for everyone who struggled to overcome them and move forward. To have them now would be to create a dystopia.

I don't know where the cooler heads or calmer voices are but I am grateful for the land I live in and its great distance from America.

Stewart and Ulva Island Memories

Dawn at Oban

Ulva Island Tui

Stewart Island Robin

Boulder Beach

A tiny explorer

Lunch

Best Mates

Our Hotel

A curious Weka