Welcome to the Weekend Open Thread Dada Party. Talk about whatever you want. And don’t worry if some of the words you use aren’t actual words. The Dadaists didn’t care about that sort of thing. Blago bung, blago bung. Bosso Fataka!
Click here or here to hear Kurt Schwitters read some of his Dadaist poetry. For more on this poem, see here.
Enjoy! Or, as Hugo Ball might have put it, ba – umf.
re tattoos, I know what I want, I just have to find someone who can do the art.
I want a PNW style of openwork abstracty black; or a Raven, which I want on my right shoulder, where I can just sort of see it, if I look.
Not or, “of” a raven.
@ithiliana Why did you loath it, may I ask? Sorry if I’m being annoying, just trying to understand my own feelings on the book 🙂
@Tabby No worries! And yeah, I agree with the sucked in feeling. The ending threw me, though, and part of that was having seen the musical first. I got the B&N nice leather-bound Wicked/Son of a Witch combo, though, so I’m going to start on ‘Son’ in a bit.
@amandajane If you liked the music it’s probably safe to assume you’d like the musical, I think. As I said that plot is pretty radically different from the book.
My question is which of our resident MRA trolls would be Ruggedo. NWOSlave because he keeps digging himself bigger and bigger holes? I kind of think of MRAL as Kiki Aru from The Magic of Oz, just a Munchkin who’s gotten into things over his head.
I’m trying to think of who David would be – I almost think post-getting brains Scarecrow, who rules his own country, though I don’t know how he’d feel about living in a giant golden corn cob.
It occurs to me that I can actually probably read the ones I couldn’t find as a child online nowadays – I know that the original Wizzar Gaboz is in the public domain now. Hmm.
I have a triquetra tattoo on my left shoulder. If anyone is in the LA area, the people at Shogun Tattoo are really nice! Pete did mine.
(For real, people who do one less-conservative thing are likely to also do other less-conservative things, so yes, there will be an above-average intersection of feminism and tattoos.)
Nobby: Not in the least annoying–I love talking about books and why I like or love them–less often why I loathe them (meaning, that it’s rare that I totally loathe a book–I may get bored and stop reading becase I cannot care about the characters or even remember who they are from day to day, but true loathing? Comes seldom). But two warnings: it’s gonna be long!
And, it’s all about my response which means that I’m going to talk more about me than the book. I’m not making any judgements about the work’s quality (you talk about yoru response as well, so I know you’re thinking in the same way I am, but for anybody who wanders through and confused “what I feel about a book” with “quality of the book, because they’re two very different things).
And I’d love to hear you talk about your response!
I checked–it came out in 1995, and I bought it first thing, so that was sixteen years ago! I read it to the end, but I can actually remember few of the specifics. This is what I recall, hazily: Elphaba at school? Sister of Glinda? The Wizard as sort of totalitarian dictator, and a sort of Orwellian enforcement of the “happy” surface of Oz (which is sort of parallel to Braum’s version of it?) Elphaba becomes an activist–a revolutionary?
See, I first began reading the Oz books when I was 5–in 1960. It was hard to find copies of them in bookstores (and there were no bookstores in my hometown–we had to drive 90 miles to get to onel). The library had a shelf full–I can still remember them. Green buckram covers (no pictures), gold faded embossed letters for title and author. That wonderful OLD BOOK smell–the pages were slightly ‘tan’ from age. And during the 1950s/60s, there were concerted efforts by educators, and psychologsts, against Oz, and letting chldren read them. Fantasy was BAD for chldren. And Oz was a communist country.
I herad this from the bookstore clerks when we asked about them (we found some in used bookstores–I have some copies that have the original hard back covers and are antiques nowadays!), and from SOME of the librarians (remember this was decades ago when professional standards for librarians, especially those in small towns, were different).
Hey, there’s an Oz wiki–I found this while searching for some outside evidence of what I remembered:
http://thewizardofoz.info/wiki/About_the_Oz_Books#Have_the_Oz_books_ever_been_banned.2C_edited.2C_or_censored.3F
So there were adults arguing about the evils of Oz, and that really really pissed me off (and as little kid in era where children were supposed to be seen and not heard, I could not argue with them). Luckily my parents were all about the reading is good, and we’ll talk about books, and see what we think. For a while, when I was having really horrible medical procedures involving lots of pain and only local anaesthetic, my reward for getting through a session (we had to go 90 miles to get to better doctors as well as bookstores) was a new Oz book (when they started being reprinted in a sort of sturdy paperback version). Oz helped me through that misery. Oz, especially the female characters, the talking animals (I LOVE talking animal books), and the various fantastic beings, was where I escaped from the pain of chronic illness (some sort of weird compromised immune system plus other stuff) and from pain of bullying by classmates who didn’t like the weird sickly four eyed bookworm who compounted her sins by being a teacher’s pet (I loved my teachers–the ones who let me talk about books anyway).
Nowadays, as a more critical reader, I can see the racist imagery (some info on the wiki talks about some versions being edited especially through removing illustrations). And while I kept my Oz books, I didn’t read them much for some years–recently started rereading as i’m considering a sort of queer transofmrative work of my own, heh heh heh.
But Maguire’s book–all I can say is that I felt like something I loved was being hammered for no good reason–I felt the book used characters to make a point that could have been made many other ways–that he’d appropriated the Oz material beause he could, and because it would guarantee a certain audience and popularity (I feel the same way about the Jane Austin/zombie books by the way). I interpreted the tone of the book as mean spirited and nasty — more like scribbilng rude graffitts over someone else’s work.
Nowadays , as someone who has been immersed in online media fandom since 2003, I’d point out how there’s a pattern of men doing transformative works on material in the public domain for profit to great acclaim while women fans who do transformative works on a variety of texts (some in public domain, some not) for love rather than profit are routinely denigated in multiple ways. But that would not have applied in 1995 of course.
I read it to the end because it might have changed–but I felt no differently, and donated the book to our English honors group who raises money through book sales.
Does that make any sense (to anybody but me?)
We could probably cast all the gnomes as MRA/MGOTW because as far as I know, there are no female Gnomes (I never thought about that before); they’re presented as operating off sort of a group think, i.e. the leader says march against Oz, and they do!
Plus, think how handy it would be to get rid of them with just a dozen eggs!
(I love Billina! LOVE LOVE LOVE her. A queer chicken if ever ther was one).
@ Elizabeth:
Thank you kindly, though I have absolutely no idea when I will next be anywhere near Tempe. I go to Phoenix semi-often to visit extended family, though, and I sometimes need an escape from all the Mormons.
In case anyone is interested, Scott Adams has now responded, sort of, to my latest post mentioning him:
http://manboobz.com/2011/06/23/scott-adams-self-proclaimed-misunderstood-genius-part-xviii/comment-page-3/#comment-32698
Stop jacking off about how excited you are that Scott Adams has finally noticed you.
I love Billina too! And Scraps. And Polychrome, the rainbow’s daughter. And Betsy. And Ozma. And Glinda. No wonder I loved these books so much as a kid – so many strong female characters! The racism is very blatant, but mostly just a sign of the times.
POLCHROME! OMG YES!
She’s Incredible.
And yes to the female characters – I admit to a sneaking fondness even for General Jiinjur who conquered Oz to get pretty jewellery, and get to eat chocolates adn lie around reading, while the men do all the housework.
heh heh heh
David: re Scott’s response. I’ve said it many times online, there should be laws against people misusing analogies when they do not understand how they are supposed to work rhetorically (and how a whole argument cannot in fact be supported by an analogy).
hit me up on LibraryThing next time you are out here.
I have my first therapy appointment Monday. I’m not trying to get people to talk about it, or make this thread all about me. But I wanted to share that.
I probably won’t be posting much the next few weeks, because therapy will eat up what little free time I had to comment here.
Just a word of advice, MRAL, therapy doesn’t work instantly, it will likely take a great deal of patience and trust-building before you start feeling results. Don’t let this discourage you.
http://i749.photobucket.com/albums/xx134/ami_angelwings/Magyc%20Cards/NomadsoftheOmegaDesert.jpg
New card :3
I second what Amanda says.
I hope it helps.
http://i749.photobucket.com/albums/xx134/ami_angelwings/Magyc%20Cards/KristinMistressofHounds.jpg
There’s Kristin’s card 😀
I was gonna say KristinMH but I realized that Mistress of Hounds was alrdy MH so it worked out so great xD
Hody hody depravody.
http://i749.photobucket.com/albums/xx134/ami_angelwings/Magyc%20Cards/AcerimanFeminist.jpg
http://i749.photobucket.com/albums/xx134/ami_angelwings/Magyc%20Cards/LordRoissysAngel.jpg
Well it’s Sunday afternoon where I am and I’ve had a lovely weekend. I saw a fashion show put on by some fantastic trans women, played soccer and was generally kick-arse (except for an embarrassing own goal), had dinner with some girlfriends and got quite drunk, met up with my very handsome crush and took him back to my place for the first time, and had a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs this morning! I wonder what the rest of the weekend will hold. The only bad point was that I didn’t get around to writing any job applications…
Ami: OMG OMG OMG OMG OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
Also XD about a million times! I love it!
Now if only it worked to get my actual hounds to obey me….
XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD