Things That Are Annoying Me Currently

[brigdh]

1. People, if you are going to post to a community which has a membership in the thousands and which is orientated towards somewhat vaguely polished products rather than off-the-cuff remarks, maybe you could... I don't know... run fucking spellcheck on your posts. Particularly crack_van. I cannot believe anyone would attempt to recommend someone else's work with an incoherent, punctuation-less run-on sentence.

2. I've read two historical books in a row now where characters were described as "cousins" and who I therefore assumed were not suitable romantic partners for one another. In both books, of course, these characters ended up in love.

Oh, changing definitions of incest. How you freak me out.

Also, I could do without the random antisemitism, you same books.

3. Sitting around before the-class-that-really-annoys-me started, I vaguely listened to two classmates discussing some of the articles we'd read this week, but didn't pay much attention because I was doing something else. "Oh, I hope you didn't criticize that article too much in your paper! The professor really likes him; I've heard her go on and on about him previously," one said. "Really? That's good to know," the other replied.

I didn't think much about this until around an hour later, when the same article came up in discussion. When prompted by a request for any other comments on it, the second girl replied, "I just enjoyed reading this article so much. I found his writing to be utterly clear and comprehensible, and his ideas were so interesting. I just... really enjoyed reading it."

PEOPLE. I AM PRETTY MUCH QUOTING DIRECTLY. I JUST- WHAT. First of all, who even says something like that? Secondly, I wonder if such express obsequiousness causes one to hate themselves. I can only hope.

Things That Are Not Annoying Me, But Are, In Fact, Awesome: I have a new coffeshop with free wifi! And it is way closer to me than the previous ones I've been going to. Hooray!

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

2. Was one of those The Grand Sophy? I warned you!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, it was! The other was The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, which was less extreme in its antisemitism, but it went on for the entire book instead of just being in one chapter, so it ended up being more frustrating.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Cousin marriages have been at various times (and in many modern cultures) preferrabe because you know what you are getting into. My grandparents on my father's side were first cousins.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I like cultures that have really specific definitions of it, too: like, your mother's nephews are appropriate marriage partners, but your dad's nephews would be just wrong.

But it just bothers me when I'm surprised by it; both of these books I thought were set too late for cousin-marriage to be okay in Western culture, and then when suddenly people start falling in love I'm like, "Wait! Can they do that? Maybe I am reading too much into this. ...no, I guess they can do that."

[rm.livejournal.com]

Cousin marriage, while looked down on has I think pretty much consistently been legal. Also, granted Sicily is the West Virginia of Europe and my father's parents were peasons withut more than a third grade education, but no one gave a crap about that, which would have been around 1920 I think.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

The whole small town/peasant thing makes cousin marriage much more common, too. I mean, if you're related in one way or another to nearly everyone you know, it's not like you have a lot of other options.

[rm.livejournal.com]

This is true. Also, Sicily -- backwater central.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

You could marry a cousin on your trip there! It would be a memory you'd never forget.

[rm.livejournal.com]

No. My family is scary. You are bad.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha. Challenge them to a duel, then? Equally exciting, but less of the bad touch.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Hahahahaha. Oh god.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Nothing like a little blood to celebrate family togetherness, I always say.

But it would certainly be more memorable than any of my family's activities, which pretty much consist of 1) eat or 2) spread malicious gossip about anyone not present.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Lots of cousins end up married in historical books. Usually they are not first cousins.

This is how Rasputin ended up in charge in Russia, you know.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

One pair were definitely first cousins, the other didn't give enough details to know.

Yep. First-cousin marriage is not actually as dangerous as our culture likes to make it out to be, but generations upon generations of it can cause problems.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

It was best to be like Bertie and never get married.

And the other half of the danger is divorce/breakups/etc, which were not so common in those days.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha! That's a good way to look at it.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

3. I just read a scene in the Mahabharata where this guy is decapitated with a bow and arrow, and his head flies into the hands of his father, and it turns out that his father had earlier petitioned the Gods so that if anyone ever held his son's head in their hands, their own head would explode... and so the father's head explodes!

When I read that little anecdote, I thought it would be so awesome if that happened in class.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha! That would be awesome. I think my head nearly did explode, though; I stared at her open-mouthed for a second, and then realized that I had to pretend to be polite and like I was unaware of what she was doing.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

First-cousin marriage has to have been unexceptionable in England at least as late as Austen, because not only does it figure in Mansfield Park, but it's so obviously acceptable that one of the first things addressed in the book is Sir Thomas Bertram's concern that if he agrees to raise his wife's impoverished niece with his own children, one of his sons will wind up marrying her. Cousins falling in love is evidently a routine event, and one to watch out for if you're not sure your sons can afford it.

It does take some getting used to. But then, so does a lot of the social background; I remain convinced to this day that Fanny Price gets an unfair amount of bad press because it's the next thing to impossible for us to wrap our minds around the circumstances she had to deal with -- and similarly, that Miss Crawford gets an unfair amount of good press because it's so hard for anyone living now to understand that marrying her would genuinely have been a recipe for disaster. But that's another whole rant, and one I will not hijack your comments for.

I swear, crabbiness is just in the atmosphere today. I am even now restraining myself from writing -- and worse, posting -- an enraged and hand-waving screed about surgeons telling mastectomy patients that they ought to have reconstruction done. And you know, I haven't even thought about the issue in years, and when I did I was all, 'meh, whatever.' Only today? Suddenly I am insane with rage about it.

Also about your asinine colleague, who would probably do very well in today's Justice Department. It would serve her right if someone asked her to elaborate on precisely which arguments she found so persuasive, and why.

I can only hope that whatever it is will blow out to sea or something soon. Otherwise, it's gonna be a rough week all around.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

But then, so does a lot of the social background

True. I'm usually very good at picking up on the various cultural differences, even if they're ones I wasn't familiar with before reading the book, but one I read recently- The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton- tripped me up several times. Which is strange, because it's only set in the 1880s or 90s, so you'd think it would be easier than more distant ones.

Only today? Suddenly I am insane with rage about it.

Oh, but why refrain? Unless you think you'd come back tomorrow and find it incredibly embarrassing, I suppose. But I feel certain that you'd have interesting things to say on the topic.

It would serve her right if someone asked her to elaborate on precisely which arguments she found so persuasive, and why.

Argh. I could see someone having truly found the article informative, or useful, or thought-provoking, or many other positive adjectives. But enjoyable? It was a piece about the history of Marxist interpretations of linguistic theory. I would be willing to be that the author didn't even enjoy it.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

It's not so much fear of being embarrassed later as it is fear of upsetting random readers who might feel that reconstruction would be deeply important to them, and that I was calling them petty and stupid. And okay, to be brutally honest, I have to wonder about the sanity of anyone who would accept a TRAM flap procedure, which involves building a fake breast out of what would otherwise be functional abdominal muscle. I mean, hello, those muscles have a job to do where they are, and the odds of your being sorry when they're not available to do it are high. You know how I get about things like that. It's particularly silly in this case, since I feel reasonably confident that mastectomy patients are not reading my LJ by the dozens and hundreds -- but then, that's also a reason why it might be pointless to go rant about it there.

Here's a horrible admission: I can see where the history of Marxist interpretations of linguistic theory might in fact be pretty interesting. Enjoyable, even, if the writing were good enough. But something about your story suggests to me that your classmate would be unable to back up her praise in any intelligible way, if called on it.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ah, I can see that. It is a worry: sometimes the most random things turn out to be personal for someone or other. ...I have to agree with that being a bad idea, too. Abdominal muscles have got to be more useful than breasts.

I'd certainly give it interesting. And in any other circumstances, I probably wouldn't have found the choice of 'enjoyable' so strange. But the whole concept of making yourself ingratiating in such a way boggles me. I can see not picking something utterly to pieces if you know another person in the discussion is fond of it (if not to be polite, then just because they might have thought more about it than you and therefore might have better reasoned arguments), but deliberately inventing praise seems so alien to me. And I want to believe that it wouldn't work, because surely by graduate school one is expected to do more than parrot the professors' tastes? But alas, I cannot count on this professor being put off by such a thing.

[childofatlantis.livejournal.com]

Er, I'm pretty sure that it's still legal to marry your first cousin in the UK. Or it was until very legal. The idea's never bothered me, especially - I mean I would not want to marry MY first cousins because they are like extra siblings, but cousin-marriage doesn't hit incest vibes for me. Possibly this is because Brits Are Weird.

I don't think people marrying a first cousin would be approved of nowadays, but it was certainly pretty acceptable to any degree for a good long time and up until recently!

[childofatlantis.livejournal.com]

*until very recently -_- sleep deprivation does not good comments make

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

It's okay, I knew what you meant. I'm actually not sure it would be illegal here, either, or that it would be illegal in every state in the Union even if it's not permitted in Massachusetts. But there's a strong social norm against it, enough to cause the instinctive huh? and oh, ick responses when you first run into it in books.

Either way, though, if there's a cultural difference on the point it would be just as fair to say that Yanks Are Weird. In fact, I can see it all too easily: They don't see the difference between their sisters and their cousins, right? And in some of those towns everybody's everyone else's cousin, so they wind up marrying, you know, sheep. Which only works for one generation, because after that the sheep are part of the family and no one can marry them any more. Which is how they wound up with George W. Bush as president, right?

[childofatlantis.livejournal.com]

*dies laughing*

When we were all children (I was twelve, everyone else was younger) we were absolutely adamant that my younger sister was going to marry our cousin and they were going to live in a big house while I had a little cottage on the grounds where I wrote books. True story. But there was some competition from his cousin on the other side (not related to my sisters and me), which led to Family Tension in the younger generation of the who-gets-to-sit-with-who-at-birthday-parties variety. ^_^

As I said - the idea of marrying one of _my_ cousins squicks me out, but the concept in the abstract doesn't. It helps that I grew up on historical fantasy type books where people frequently marry their cousins. ^_^

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with you: the idea doesn't actually squick me, I just am surprised to see it. I certainly wouldn't sleep with any of my cousins either, but I wouldn't sleep with them even if we weren't related.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

1. This is why Eliza and I have a suggestion in the community rules that people spellcheck and re-read their stuff before posting it to nuna_fans and nuna_fanworks. These are comms that were created in part for a crit-friendly area within the fandom. People will take crit more seriously from other people who've already demonstrated a command of the language.

2. Were the people involved also noble? I remember talking to a friend about how cousin-marriage is historically okay among lower-class USians and upper-class Europeans (she was from Britain). For USians, it's because the people available for marriage in your region tend to be already related to you (not that I'm speaking from familial experience *koff*). For Europeans, she said the logic was often in order to keep titles and fortunes within the family. Of course, with the linking of many issues (insanity, birth defects, blood diseases) to genetics, I think cousin-marriage has actually become more taboo. Yay, science.

3. Wow. Just wow.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

1. Good idea. Particularly if you're going to critique someone's grammar or spelling, it always looks best if you do not make a great deal of mistakes yourself.

2. The English couple was (...I think. Certainly they were referred to as 'Lord' and 'Lady', which means nobility and not just wealthy, right?), the US couple was simply very, very Upper Class. Which sort of throws off your theory, but I do think in general that you're right.

3. Yup.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

Actually, two doesn't throw off my theory, because we're talking a time period and region where imitating the nobility of Europe was very much the thing to do. There's still a sense of "keep it in the family" in that world, but family has come to mean "business partners" as well. As you get further west and south, you have the issue of isolated communities leading to inbreeding, which was yet another impetus for the "mail-order bride" business. Provided you could afford it.

[aonekosama.livejournal.com]

In Finland first cousin marriages are perfectly legal, but there admittedly is some squickiness and joking around involved. For my part, when I was little my cousin, three years younger than me, said he would marry me when we grew up. Everyone just thought it was sweet. Later when I was attracted to the same cousin, it didn't cross my mind that going out with him would be in any way gross.

All in all, I find the whole business of who you can or can not marry in different cultures fascinating although muchly silly.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I don't actually find the idea of first cousin marriage unappealing (though I wouldn't want to marry any of my cousins, but that's because I don't like them, not because we're related), I just get annoyed when it throws off my interpretations of literature. *laughs* Which is a strange reason to be annoyed, I know. But if I'd known from the beginning of the books that cousins might be falling in love, I would have been less confused and better able to understand what was happening, which was what I really found irritating.

[aonekosama.livejournal.com]

Funny, I've always assumed that in historical books cousins are very likely to end up getting married. :D

Also, I hope the girl from your class is very ashamed of herself. Unfortunately, though, that's probably not the case. Makes me lose faith in humanity again.