early modern anglia is for lovers

So, I think my next-door neighbour is in the middle of a beautiful coming-out narrative, wherein coming to university in a big cosmopolitan city allowed him to meet the love of his life and discover the joys of his burgeoning homosexual identity. It's pretty beautiful. Except for right now, when it's horrible. The walls in this place are really thin and him and his Italian stallion/"friend" are mere feet away from me giggling like the keynote speakers at the 2011 Man Giggles Symposium and TickleFight Expo. While I feel a bit weird interloping unwillingly on their hairy tryst—seriously, they're both real hairy dudes—it's mostly just making me heartsick.

These guys know what I'm talking about.

Now, to deal with problems in life you're supposed to use what you know, right? This is what I try to do. Having spent the past five years of my life mostly reading early modern poetry and drama, this means I solve A LOT of my problems by dressing up like a boy and trying to pun them away, and also via that potion you can get from any priest that makes you look like you're dead, when really you are just INCREDIBLY asleep. Regardless, I've never taken the advice of witches, or been duped by a bed-trick (exactly what it sounds like, just the very normal Elizabethan practice of turning the lights off and forcing your maid into bed with your new husband so he would think you were a virgin, whatever) so I guess I'm doing okay.

Being lovesick was considered an actual physical illness in the early modern period, like having the flu or being insane (also considered a physical thing—there was no twitter so it was harder to diagnose back then).So what does Renaissance medicine have to say about the longings of the heart?

... If you read that last question and are legitimately interested, I guess keep reading this, and if you're my mom (the only other option) please be warned, shit gets REAL.

The King's Speech

I'm not generally into bathroom humour. But the other day I was literally doubled over crying on the tube, thinking about The King's Speech and how hilarious it would be if instead of a stutter, Colin Firth's character just had a flatulence problem whenever he tried to speak in public. Everything else about the movie- the subtle acting, the complicated exercises with Geoffrey Rush, the pressure from World War II, Helena Bonham-Carter as his supportive, understanding wife- would be the same, except that instead of stuttering, high-pitched ladyfart-type sounds would come out when he attempted to give a speech. Watch this trailer and tell me you're not losing your mind thinking about that. No? Just me? Come on guys. Give in to your inner five year old. (Related: Having cookie dough tonight for dinner.)

And the Oscar for Greatest Fart-Based Rewrite of an Original Screenplay goes to me. It's just an honour to be nominated in the company of past winners like Celine Dion's "My Fart Will Go On", Tarantino's masterpiece Inglorious Gas-turds, and The Defarted. 

PS. "The war will come, and when it does, we will need a King we can all stand behind."

Van Gross

A posh British family sits in a cafe in an art gallery, dressed in their preppy best, ignoring the redheaded grad student in the corner reading a THRILLING and not at all creepy history of Renaissance stage representations of female orgasm. While she attempts to hide the unnecessarily graphic illustrations from those around her, she creeps on the family's convo, because kids with British accents make her more serious than normal about her fantasy marriage to Prince Harry. Just THINK of the ginger babies! Adorable!

Child: Who was that artist with the orange hair we saw? He made a painting of sunflowers.

Her Dad: Van Gogh. He cut his own ear off.

Child (horrified): ... WHY. WHY DID HE CUT HIS EAR OFF. FOR WHAT.

Her Dad: I can't remember. Because he was sad.

Her Mother: He was sad because a girl rejected him. I think he sent her his ear.

Child: That is gross and stupid. Of COURSE she rejected him, he's ginger.

Czech, please

Badummmm-shhhhh. (That's a drum. The sound FX on this blog are stunning. It's all about #multimedia right? (...what is happening.))

Okay, so opening with a bad joke and a double parentheses doesn't bode well for this particular post but I promise it's worth it because the glories of Praha, where I went on reading week with my visiting famiglia, are multitudinous. To wit:

THE HAT got taken out in all its leopard-print, furry glory, beause if you can't wear a leopard-print furry head covering in the cold winter of Eastern Europe, when can you? I was emboldened by the many and various beautiful fur hats/ensembles of the local stylish Czech ladies; I have seen the utmost in glamour and function, and it is a full-length fur cape.

THE HAT was really in its element in the Czech Republic, where fur hats were one of the things sold at Prague Souvenir shops, alongside "czech me out" t-shirts, marionettes (?), and those stackable dolls. Nothing says "my beautiful Eastern European vacation" like a set of stacking dolls with the cast of Twilight inexplicably pictured on it.

Also, our tour guide did NOT delineate when she was telling us historical facts and when she was telling us folkloric Czech myths. "This is where the statue of Stalin was until it was joyfully torn down after the fall of the Communism" was exactly the same as "This is the statue of the frog spirits who can marry women of the town, and once the woman is marriage to them, she can breathe also underwater." (That is a real informational tidbit she told us. The Czechs are a complex and storied people.)

... And then we went with my Dad to a black light theatre show with some minor barely-legal nudity and a great deal of lesbian sensuality.

THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS

Today, in "things I did instead of my readings for tomorrow," we have Home Haircut. Now, normally I cut my own bangs and it's no big D. A cooler-than-me friend initially gave me a straight across fringe one summer at Cambridge and since then I've felt pretty okay about giving them a trim, or letting them grow super long to cover it up when I can't afford to dye my eyebrows (it's fun to be albino). But when I cut them it's usually, just, like, straight across. Following a line.

And then today, for no reason, I did this:

 

You brought this on yourself, self.

LIFE, sometimes, you know?

"Well of course the lovely thing about the house is that each marchioness has such a different taste, and that is really reflected in the Great Hall. Most of the decorative touches in there aren't original, they've been Jacobethan-ized by past dowagers. ...More tea?"

THIS REALLY HAPPENED TO ME.

I spent the day with the other research interns at Hatfield House, a manor home in Hertfordshire originally built in 1611. It's closed to the public in the winter but we went on a Special Geek Mission to check out the Jacobean tapestries. (This is my life now, deal with it everyone.) It was nerd heaven- the library there literally looks like the one from the part in Beauty and the Beast where he just gives her the library as a present. BEST PRESENT EVER. NICE ONE, THE BEAST.

It was also the most British day of my life.

I think I'm going to kill someone.

In Gnomeo and Juliet one of the characters talks to SHAKESPEARE'S GHOST in the form of a statue, and together they decide that the lovers dying in the end is not a good story. OH GOOD.