North and South (and East, and West) and Richard Armitage

Last night (and today) my friend and I (and then just I) watched this:

(source: chachic.wordpress.com)

 It is a movie! Actually it is a miniseries. As in BBC miniseries. As in Pride-and-Prejudice-featuring-Colin-Firth miniseries (except that there is no Colin Firth and it is not Pride and Prejudice).

As a BBC miniseries, it hosts (among other things): 1800s lingo and drama (lingo? lingo), British accents, sideburns, and hot men. 

Usually the sideburns are even attached to the hot men. It's great.

And in the miniseries is this guy:

(source: janeaustenfilmclub.blogspot.com)

 His name is Richard Armitage, and in case you can't tell by this picture, he is quite attractive. And in case you can't tell by this blog, I find it my duty in life to give you (whoever you are) the opportunity to view attractive men whenever possible.

Well, come to think of it, I've only shown you Matthew Lewis.

And now Richard Armitage.

You're welcome.

Essentially what he does throughout the course of North and South is: speak in a really hot accent, hit somebody, read Plato, run a mill, and (this is the real kicker) he stands at windows and stares at the heroine.

If this seems creepy to you, don't worry. Everybody does it in this movie (including the heroine herself and Richard Armitage's mother) (not his real mother). Obviously he is the best at staring out of windows (because he's, you know, attractive), but it is a universal thing and thus not creepy. 

So, to recap: You should watch North and South. Richard Armitage is attractive. British accents rock.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to go and stare at his picture. Like a creeper.

K Battles Neuroses, Weather, Offensive Odors

I have this really weird obsession with checking the weather that is even starting to bug me a little bit. 

That is always the point in my neuroses in which I know that I have to do something about it. When it starts to bother my friends or my family I am not in the slightest bit disturbed, because who cares what they think as long as I know exactly what the weather is going to be every single day, or that my clothes smell perfectly fresh or at least not offensive, or that I will never ever heaven forbid eat anything that includes a combination of peanut butter and chocolate? 

But there does come a time when I get sick of washing my clothes every other day or checking the weather report every fifteen minutes (the chocolate peanut butter avoidance has yet to waver), and that is when I know that I need to do something about it. Recently, for example, I have started hanging up my sweaters or cardigans after I have worn them once, instead of washing them. Worn them! Once! Usually I would wash them immediately, possibly soaking them in vinegar beforehand. Even if I had only worn them for upwards of five minutes, I would toss them into the dirty clothes pile and that would be that. This, naturally, got on people’s nerves, especially when I would ask them, insistently, whether or not my clothes smelled. 

This, incidentally, is the exact opposite approach to clothes washing that, say, my brothers take. Their motto is: “If it has not fused with dirt to the bedroom floor, then it is probably okay to wear again.” And then they still manage to get more dates than me. 

It's probably the neuroses.

Anyway, the weather checkup is even more idiotic than my clothes obsession because, while I can usually control how my clothes smell, and washing them three times a day will undoubtedly make them incrementally cleanlier than they would have been before, checking the weather constantly has absolutely no effect on the actual weather outcome. 

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I realize and respect that I have no control over the weather and must inevitably bow to it. But the larger part of me—the part that is constantly cleaning clothes, for instance—will not accept this. “NO! There must be something I can do! I’ll check another weather report! I’ll check a thousand weather reports! One of them must tell me what I want to hear!” 

But it’s okay. I am reforming. I have accepted that there are things out of my control, and I will only check the weather once a day, or maybe even every other day.

Or, you know, not. Whatever. 

Interview with a Vampire-Zombie-Angel-Werwolf Hybrid

I’m a bit wary of paranormal romance novels, mainly because I hate them. 

If you have never read a paranormal romance novel, then you do not know the main storyline of a paranormal romance novel, which is: a girl and a boy meet. One of them, usually the male, is a vampire/angel/zombie/werewolf, or some combination of the four. Because of forces beyond their control, the girl and boy fall in love, but some jerk who does not like the paranormal half of the couple is trying to tear them apart. 

Apparently evil villains in the paranormal universe have nothing better to do with their time than to force teenagers to break up. 

Oftentimes it is the actual relationship of the couple that is causing the issue for the evil villain, as though evil villain (we’ll call him Steve) sits up at night thinking, “I just can’t believe he’s dating her. I just cannot believe…fine. That’s it. They’re gonna die.” 

Frankly, Steve sounds like a whiny little girl when he talks like this, and if there were any real villains in the story, they would kick his butt. But no! Apparently all of the other villains are with Steve. They agree that it is ridiculous for the couple to be dating and that the consequence for this is for them to die. 

I don’t understand this at all. If villains knew anything about teenagers, they would know that the relationship is bound not to last for longer than six months at the most, and then they will not have to waste any more sleep worrying about it. Probably the male paranormal person (we’ll call him Joe) will forget the girl’s (Cindy’s) birthday, and that will be that. 

This, of course, leads into the other ridiculous part of the paranormal phenomenon, which is: that Joe and Cindy will never break up, because they are destined to be together, because there is some force that binds them inexplicably to each other and forces them to make kissy faces against their will. Back in the good old days, we called this “hormones.” Paranormal romance has renamed it “forces beyond our control” and tried to label it as magical. 

No! There is nothing magical about hormones! In fact hormones are the enemy, and if they didn’t contribute to the continuation of the species, we would have gotten rid of them a long, long time ago.

To actually label hormones as hormones would be too mundane, though, so paranormal romance writers have taken a new direction and labeled it “forces beyond our control.” Next thing you know they will be telling us that other body functions, such as “hair growing,” are also caused by magic and that this means we should find a vampire and marry him. 

Or something. I’m sketchy on the exact details of how this disease will spread, but rest assured that it will, unless we do something about it. So I think the plan should be: you put together a mob and take over all publishing companies, everywhere, and I will “supervise” from my house while making very important life decisions, such as how much chocolate I can get away with eating before being labeled a pig. 

Probably thirty pieces or so. Because, you know, hormones.