Meme - Movie Quotes

When I was younger, my dad and I used to quote movies to each other and then try to guess which movie it was from - he still occasionally tries to do this, but I don't rewatch movies over and over again like I used to, so I usually just ignore him now. Anyway, I found this meme on Reading is My Superpower, and decided to play.

Here are the rules:
1. Pick 10 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb (Internet Movie Database) and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. No Googling or IMDb-ing. That's cheating, and that's no fun!

1. I have no where to send this letter and no reason to believe you wish to receive it. I write it only for myself. And so I will hide it away with all things left unsaid and undone between us. - Legends of the Fall

2. You prefer a book to your husband's company? Well no wonder, I'm only flesh and blood - that's no match for the printed page! - Quills


3. Tell you what, we coulda had a good life together! Fuckin' real good life! Had us a place of our own. But you didn't want it, - - -! So what we got now is - - -! Everything's built on that! That's all we got, boy, fuckin' all. So I hope you know that, even if you don't never know the rest! You count the damn few times we have been together in nearly twenty years and you measure the short fucking leash you keep me on - and then you ask me about Mexico and tell me you'll kill me for needing somethin' I don't hardly never get. You have no idea how bad it gets! - Brokeback Mountain

4. Because it's a book about a man who doesn't know he's about to die. And then dies. But if a man does know he's about to die and dies anyway. Dies- dies willingly, knowing that he could stop it, then- I mean, isn't that the type of man who you want to keep alive? - Stranger Than Fiction

5. Please let me keep this memory, just this one. - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Superfast Reader

6. Boy, it sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think? - Serenity

7. I owe you nothing. And you are nothing to me. Thank you for curing me of my ridiculous obsession with love. - Moulin Rouge

8. You never understood, why we did this. The audience knows the truth: the world is simple. It's miserable, solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you... then you got to see something really special... you really don't know?... it was... it was the look on their faces... - The Prestige

9. It's okay for guys like you and Court to fuck everyone. But when I do it, I get dumped for innocent little twits like Cecile. God forbid, I exude confidence and enjoy sex. Do you think I relish the fact that I have to act like Mary Sunshine 24/7 so I can be considered a lady? I'm the Marcia fucking Brady of the Upper East Side, and sometimes I want to kill myself. So there's your psychoanalysis, Dr. Freud. Now tell me, are you in... or are you out? - Cruel Intentions, Superfast Reader

10. Well I was just wonderin' why you would throw home when we got a two-run lead. You let the tying run get on second base and we lost the lead because of you. Start using your head. That's the lump that's three feet above your ass. - A League of Their Own, Dad

Just for my dad:
Dyin' ain't much of a livin', boy. - The Outlaw Josey Wales, Dad

Bonus:
Not a movie, but from one of my favorite TV shows:
No weapons... no friends... no hope. Take all that away and what's left? - Me. (Such a great scene!) - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 2 Episode 22 ("Becoming Part II"), Dad

Update: I guess it helps to have readers for this kind of stuff . . .

Another Post on Women's History Month

In order to celebrate Women's History Month, one of the units put together an hour-long presentation.  I was one of the few people who showed up that wasn't under an obligation (for example, if someone cancels a meeting because it's at the same time as an event, that tends to mean you should show up to the event instead of the meeting).

 

I can't complain too much because honestly, I should have tried to get involved - I asked our company rep if there was anything planned, but didn't follow up and ask how to participate.  I'm not sure how much of a difference my input would have made, but I still should have tried.

 

I'll also admit that when I think Women's History Month, I don't think of only a celebration of Women's History, but also of a celebration of Feminism, even though the two aren't the same.  There are many strong women that don't identify as feminist (unfortunately).

 

Basically, it wasn't bad, but I was disappointed.  The fliers all had the topic "Women's Art, Women's Vision" printed on them so I was expecting a discussion of women in the arts and the different messages that women might try to convey when using art for political purposes (I guess someone else predetermines the topic for the year).  I showed up expecting a college style lecture, forgetting exactly where I am.  Instead there was a long program beginning with an invocation and the national anthem and ending with a benediction.  In between, there was a slide show, a poem, a skit and a guest speaker.  The guest speaker was entertaining but definitely took the topic in a different direction than I would have expected (she went straight for the word vision, and made the statement "I visualize" to connect her speech to the topic).

 

Of course, I would have been happy with an hour long lecture but since they added all the extra pieces, I think they could have used a slightly different approach.  Being the military, I understand that there will be more of a focus on women's history in the military, and that's fitting - but the slide show should have reflected that.  It should have included portraits/pictures of women in the Revolutionary War, Clara Barton's nurses, the WACs of WWII, and chronologically included everything in between and up to now.  Instead, it was a bunch of pictures of women that are in the Brigade - women that are making history right now, as they put it.  The slide show should have culminated with that but it also should reflected the history of women's service in the military.  Also, they chose the song "You Gotta Be" as the background music for the slide show - it just didn't set quite the right tone for me.  Too obvious; too empowerful.  I'm probably being too harsh on the song.

 

They used the skit to highlight women inventors - I think I would have chosen either different inventions to discuss, or introduced the inventors by some other means.  I understand the difficulty, though - given that people still tend to make comments along the lines of "what's the point of women's history month?  They're 51 % of the population," it can be rather hard to do something to keep the audience interested without preaching at them (I probably would have ended up preaching).  As a result, they used comedy in the skit in a way that I found slightly obnoxious ("work it, girl") but the rest of the audience laughed.  It's important to keep people entertained as well as educate, and I think my idea of entertainment might be slightly different than most (I don't like most Will Ferrell comedies, or anything that involves a man wearing a cross-gendered fat suit).

 

I actually almost didn't go because I was afraid I wouldn't like it - now I know that next year when we are back in Germany, I should make sure to volunteer far ahead of time and maybe put some of my vision into affect.  I wonder if they do anything for V-Day on military posts . . .

Grief and Indulgence

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

 

Didion wrote this book after her husband's death, and uses it to detail her first year of coping with her loss and her grief.  I haven't lost anyone that's been particularly close to me, but I liked the book.  She repeats certain comments throughout the book to demonstrate the impact it had, and how her thoughts just keep going back to the same thing over and over again.  She also describes the need to avoid certain places or memories because if she isn't careful, they will lead to other thoughts.  In addition to losing her husband, Didion's daughter was suffering from illness and was in and out of the hospital in first few months of this year.  As a result, she doesn't even begin mourning until much later because she didn't have enough time to deal with her shock and her grief.

 

She also talks about the idea of indulgence and self-pity, "the most common and the most universally reviled of our character defects" (192), and how it is looked down on, and yet very necessary.  As she says, "only survivors of death are truly left alone" (192).  As part of this, she also mentions the idea of dwelling, and how there is this fear of dwelling on things, or being called out on it.  I admit I have a tendency to dwell on things, so I don't even want to know how I'll deal with death.  Honestly, is it bad that some of the things she described I could relate to on a minor scale as part of a break up?  Such as when she talks about the fact that she used to just randomly tell her husband things as they came up and now she can't - similar things happen during break ups, divorces etc.  Except, of course, in the case of a break up, you can still tell the person things; you just don't get the same reaction anymore.

 

Of course, now I'm being self-indulgent - but then again, that's part of the point of reading - you can get different things out of a book based on when you read it.  Or if it's personal like this one, you can try and relate it to your own experiences even if the situations aren't completely equivalent.  Didion actually describes rereading many of her husband's novels, and in retrospect, they all seemed darker.  Did her mood make them darker or had she missed certain things in her earlier readings?

 

In addition to discussing her relationship with her husband, she discusses their work and the influence they had on each other.  There were one or two of her novels in particular that I'm kind of interested in now.  If it weren't for the fact that as two writers, their work was going to play an important part of their relationship, it would almost look like self-promotion (I'm kidding).

Coming of Age Story

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 

After I read Half of a Yellow Sun, I saw a few reviews that compared Adichie to Chinua Achebe (including the back of this novel).  I read Things Fall Apart in high school, so I had a hard time seeing the connection (partially due to lack of familiarity with Achebe, partially due to an inability to remember the novel very well).  I actually thought that comparison was more obvious and accurate in this novel.  It appears to take place in the '90s after a military coup (I checked Wikipedia first, and then found this site to confirm my suspicions - she writes of the death of a reporter in the novel and I had assumed that was the real name -Nwankiti Ogechi - but even that was fictionalized).  The coup served as a backdrop to the rest of the novel, which focused on a much more personal story.

 

As the story progresses, the narrator, Kambili, begins to question her upbringing, and become more independent.  In the beginning, she worships her strict father.  We soon learn that her father is not only strict, but abusive and fanatically religious.  His beatings have induced miscarriages upon his wife, and he is quick to punish his family for what he sees as wrong-doings (for example, he beats his wife for having to be asked more than once to go into the minister's house when she was feeling naseuous).  He is intolerant of different beliefs and has even cut off contact to his father because his father holds on to the old religion.  His children have a daily schedule and are expected to be first in their class - he doesn't care that his controlling all their time leaves them no time to develop friendships, and actually earns them ridicule as "snobs."  Kambili and her brother Jaja visit their liberal aunt's family, and through interacting with these relatives, they begin to question their own lives and enjoy themselves and new freedoms.

 

The reason I felt this novel seemed more reminiscent of my faint recollections of Things Fall Apart, is that in both there is the struggle between new and old, and the intolerance of certain religious-minded.  They also both showed very controlling patriarchs that took things too far and felt it was their right and duty to discipline their families.  Still, I am curious if people simply compared these two authors because they are from the same country so it was just easy.  It's not as if these two authors are the only to explore these themes, though there are probably comparatively fewer that set them in Nigeria.  I can't wait to see what else Adichie will write - I enjoyed both her novels and hope there will be more.

 

The idea of the incredibly strict religious patriarch also reminded me of The Poisonwood Bible but in Purple Hibiscus, everyone in the community loved and admired the father, while in The Poisonwood Bible, the people he came to convert see him as the prejudiced tyrant he is.  The difference, of course, is that Eugene, Kambili's father, tries to do good for the community, while the father of The Poisonwood Bible is a missionary that looks down on the black community he came to spiritually lead and help.

Shakespeare and Existentialism

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

 

This play was recommended to me by another person in the company.  He, too, plans to go back to grad school for English eventually, but he wants to focus on creative writing.  I figured I'd check it out since I like re-imaginings of old stories and I like Shakespeare.  I love Margaret Atwood's piece "Gertrude Talks Back" which tells the story of Hamlet from Gertrude's perspective.

 

As the title suggest, the play is about the characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and their view of the court and life during the play Hamlet.  Parts of it were funny, but I am not always that good at imagining what's happening on stage, so I'm sure it would have been a lot funnier performed since there seems to be quite a bit of slapstick in addition to the intellectual discussion on fate.  As the play progresses, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern realize that they have no free will or choice in their fate and are simply caught up in the action.  The back cover compares this play to Waiting for Godot, and I can understand it.  Of course, I'm not sure if that's really a comparison one should make if they are recommending something.  I didn't enjoy Waiting for Godot very much - there were definitely funny bits, and some entertaining play with language (in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as well), but it was just so pointless - I didn't see that one performed either.

The Activist, the Hippie and the Reader

The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez

 

I enjoyed A Feather on the Breath of God quite a bit so after searching Amazon, this novel seemed to be the next most popular of Sigrid Nunez's works.  This one had a different set-up and was much more plot driven, though not completely linear.  Overall, I liked them both but A Feather on the Breath of God reached me more on an emotional level.

 

As noted above they were quite different, even though both novels must have taken place at a similar time - The Last of Her Kind begins as the story of two college roommates in the late '60s.  The parents in A Feather had met during the occupation of Germany, so their children would have been growing up in the '60s as well.  While A Feather almost ignores the time period in favor of personal relationships and character analysis, The Last of Her Kind shows how radicalism, class consciousness and idealism shaped Georgette and Ann's experiences.  The narrator, Georgette, and Ann end up taking completely different paths in life, but stay in touch until a falling out.  Due to a high profile trial, Georgette of course knows what happens to Ann, and occasionally reflects on their friendship, and Ann's influence on her.  While Georgette at first couldn't believe some of Ann's political views, and even writes that some things that people could say in the '60s or '70s sounded completely ridiculous only a few years later, she never doubted Ann's sincerity.  In fact, long after all the other hippies and idealist had gone corporate, Ann held on as "the last of her kind . . . her sensitivity and compassion aren't all just a pose" (226). 

 

Even though Georgette is married twice, the novel is much more concerned with friendships.  She mentions her marriages briefly, but except for one lover who is discussed close to the end of the novel, all her most important and defining relationships were with other women.  She discusses the betrayal and hurt she felt after her adored boss Nicole refuses to speak to her when her husband makes a pass at Georgette - in fact, Georgette forgave the husband his transgression long before forgiving Nicole.  Much of the novel also focuses on her sister Solange, and her struggle with her mental health.  While Ann portrayed the radical, political side of the '60s and '70s, Solange is the wild flower child who travels across the country, tries to go to Woodstock, and practices the idea of free love.  Georgette experiments with her fair share of drugs in college, but she is the more timid, shy one.  When she begins working at a Vogue type women's magazine, she loves it.  When comparing herself and her life to Solange's adventures she says,

 

I have gone through bad spells, times when, thinking about others' lives, the challenges faced and the risks taken, I have felt shame and loathing for myself.  I have accused myself of cowardice, lack of imagination, of ambition, of will.  (And if truth be told, it has not always been I myself making such accusations.  I have been blamed by others for my timidity; I have heard my passionate love of reading denounced as an addiction, a vice, a cowardly avoidance of the challenges, dangers, and even duties of real life.)  (164)

 

I just really liked that quote because honestly, I can completely relate.  It sometimes seems like everyone else is doing more with their lives than I am.  Or people will talk about the crazy things they did in high school/college, and my response tends to be, "I read a lot."  I don't regret that at all, but sometimes I do feel like I missed out on something.  It's crazy listening to how much traveling some other people have done, studying abroad and so forth, and I never did that kind of stuff.  I was always much more solitary so I didn't go on any crazy road trips.  Some things I plan on doing once I leave here, and other things I just missed out on.  And that's not necessarily a bad thing - but every once and a while, it seems like reading disconnected me from people.  Which is why I can't wait to get back to grad school where I can discuss books with other people who've read them (although I've been looking around online more lately - which that's another comment I've received lately: people that blog are losers, and the people that comment are even worse - gee, thanks).

 

In addition to exploring the '60s and '70s, the novel shows how these values later shaped the lives of those that came of age during that time.  After reading those two Ken Follett novels back to back, I enjoyed that Sigrid Nunez, while perhaps having a similar voice, wrote two novels that were very distinct from each other.

I'm Still A Klutz

Remember how back in the beginning of the deployment I talked about all my random klutziness? Well, it hasn't stopped by any means. In fact, I busted my lip open a second time recently - although, at least, it happened in an entirely new way so at least I learn from my stupidity. (In fact, Mom and Dad, if you take a close look at those pictures my PSG sent you, you might even see the scratch/scab above my lip.)

We were in the motor pool earlier this week doing PMCS (preventive maintenance checks and services) on all our vehicles. I was in the cab of one of the trucks, and I had my ACH on. Apparently, I left it a little loose, or it wasn't completely snapped, even though I could have sworn it was, because when I jumped out of the truck, the front of the ACH came forward and smacked me right in the lip (there's a metal attachment at the front of the ACH to attach NVGs to, so naturally that's the part that hit me). As soon as I landed, one of the specialist in the platoon was trying to hand me some papers to look over, so it took me a second to orient myself and focus on what I was seeing. And then I started bleeding all over the place.

It's healing nicely, though. I wonder how many broken bones and scars I would have if I hadn't quickly realized as a child that indoor hobbies such as reading were much safer for someone with my coordination.