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[psocoptera]

Salon's interview with Neal Stephenson is well worth the daypass commercial.

Guess the slash pairing: "the eyes of [character 1] and [character 2] met, and were kind to each other, and promised each other many things, secret and sacred and very beautiful." Go on, guess, before you read any further.

...

Did you guess? Harry/Draco? JC/Lance? Qui-gon/Obi-wan?

Okay, I misled you about the slash pairing. Or did I? You can get Five Children and It/Phoenix and the Carpet/Amulet free from Fictionwise (also Stephanie Dyrkacz' Auch das Schone, interestingly). This was a lovely excuse to reread the first two, which I hadn't in years (some splendid bits of writing in there), as well as to read the last, which I had somehow never managed before. Probably the only children's novel I've read where the climax is the mystical union of two adult men. There is joining and becoming one. There is the holding out of hands and crying "Come!". Somebody "quavered and shook and as steel is drawn to a magnet he was drawn". Someone is "slipped into". A heart's desire is thus achieved. You know, believe it or not, I do not try to slash *everything* I read, but come *on*. You can't tell me *mystical union* doesn't have some subtext.

On another subject entirely, it's hardly original to point out that Dear Abby is a right idiot sometimes, but today's column stands out. To the question, DEAR ABBY: If a woman proposes to a man, who should buy the ring? she replied,

Call me old-fashioned, but if the man is a gentleman he should buy the ring. And if he refuses, the woman should enter into that marriage with her eyes wide open and no illusions about what her future will be.

Whereas if he *does* buy the ring[1], she should enter the marriage with her eyes closed and plenty of illusions about the future? Is that, perhaps, the purpose of the ring, to keep the woman from opening her eyes? Abby tries to make this sound ominous - no illusions about what her future will be, mayhem without rigid traditional gender roles, or perhaps a nightmare of practical financial priorities, but, dude, this is like my new engagement blessing, "congratulations, you have your eyes wide open and no illusions". Foresight and objectivity, things to live by. And characteristic of my friends who've gotten married, I mean, from my outside perspective, they sure seem to have their eyes wide open - wide enough to see a good thing and go for it.

[1] I want to put "the ring" in scare quotes here to convey my skepticism about the whole engagement ring swindle, but it disrupts the flow of the sentence. Not that all engagement rings are inherently evil, but the whole notion that there *has* to be A Ring, and it should cost three years of your salary which should go to fund civil war in Africa "to show how much she's worth", I consider a toxic mind virus. It is my dream that someday Dear Abby will be dispensing vaccine ("you can have a romantic proposal without any ring at all!") instead of transmitting it. After the revolution... ::grin::

Comments

[irilyth]

Perhaps some day we'll all be reading Dear Amy in our local papers. :^)

[kelilah.livejournal.com]

See, I think that if a woman proposes to a man, she should give *him* a ring. And then he should get her a ring, too. That is, if both of them actually want rings.

But then again, I a) think it's stupid that only women should have engagement rings, and b) hate, loathe and despise the "three months' salary" thing--I wouldn't even spend one month's worth of my own salary on a piece of jewelry, and I work part-time. Also, I'm anti-diamond and I don't wear gold, which makes it much less likely that I (or anyone else) would ever be able to spend that kind of money on a piece of jewelry.

Oh, I guess I spent three months' salary (very, very approximately) on my class. I feel that that's a worthwhile thing to spend a bunch of money on.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

You're much less likely to lose a class down the garbage disposal, for one thing ::grin::. Seriously, there are any number of items, that, in their usefulness to one's everyday life, I think it quite worthwhile to spend several months of salary on. Classes. Computers. Cars. Remodelling sucky kitchens. (Well, cars and kitchens are probably several several months salary, but same idea.)

I think women giving men rings is nifty, if the man actually wears rings and would appreciate it. Or maybe a nice watch, or something? (Or does that have too much of a connotation of "your time is running out"? Maybe it could be more of a "looking forward" sort of counting down, or something ::grin::).

There is always platinum, as a non-gold expensive metal. I personally like the idea of titanium rings for the symbolism ("our love is strong and hardy! also nonallergenic and light weight! and, uh, they use it in airplanes!" ::grin::). I don't know how that compares in cost to gold.

[andele.livejournal.com]

At badloki's wedding, he mentioned the physical properties of their titanium wedding rings in his vows (complete with airplane reference). And the first thing Jill said when she began her vows was "I'm marrying someone who knows how cool titanium is!"

[andele.livejournal.com]

What I really stopped by to say, though, was, "way cool icon!" I haven't seen that thing/being (whose name I've forgotten it's been so long) since it was in a backup feature to Phil Foglio's MythAdventures comic in the mid-80's.

[kelilah.livejournal.com]

"our love is strong and hardy! also nonallergenic and light weight! and, uh, they use it in airplanes!"

Hee. I've never seen a plain titanium ring, but it seems to me that one could probably commission one.