This Is Not Bridget Jones' Diary

Posting two. I hate to think this might be true, but I wonder (me pregunto, como se dice en español) if part of my decision to go ahead and start a blog was inspired by my reading of Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding earlier this semester. (I live in semesters, not seasons or months or weeks.) While the book itself sort of irritated me on an individual, page-by-page basis, I found myself consuming it like a chocolate bar and picking up little linguistic idiosyncrasiess from it into my thoughts. ("V. bad," for instance, instead of "very bad.") Overall, I'm glad I read it, but I'm not sure it was good for me. It is a book about the private ramblings of an unhappy single career woman who seems to find the worst in everything and make mountains out of molehills. Not really me, in other words. To me, she seemed like an ungrateful, whiny, overgrown child. But what do I know?

However, the postmodern, mirror-looking-in-a-mirror moments in the book really tickled my brain. They were all so unintended, too, was the great part. i.e., when Bridget Jones complains in her diary about the enduring popularity of Hugh Grant despite his cheating on Liz Hurley with a prostitute. (He later plays a main character in the book in the movie adaptation.) Preternatural, prophetical self-reference in art. That's pretty funny.

Also, in another such instance, Bridget's excitement about watching the TV version of Pride & Prejudice. Then her subsequent dismay and discomfort at seeing "Darcy" (or rather Colin Firth, the actor who plays him in the BBC miniseries to which Fielding's book refers) dressed in street clothes and an "unconvincing mustache" (loved that) snuggling up to "Elizabeth Bennett" (Jennifer Ehle in real life) in the pages of celebrity magazines as they played out their real-life love affair. While this is sort of "postmodernism as art-killer," it is actually REALLY weird, since Firth ends up playing another main character in the movie version of the book, a character ALSO named Darcy. It was weird. And it tickled.

So, in other news, today is much better. Last week I was seriously on the edge of reason (haha: another B. Jones reference...I am such a loser. gawd.), but I feel a lot better now. This is due in no way to any change in the amount of work I have hanging over me, but simply a reconnecting of sorts with Thomas, after a week of estrangement. We have these days sometimes of being strangers living in the same house. It's stressful, but I wasn't in any kind of a place to interact like a human being. --Makes it difficult to be an adult at such times.

Anyhoo. Signing off now; I didn't really intend to rant about Colin Firth, but you know how he can distract one.... So as a closing note, let me simply give this essential and useful bit of info, and a photo: Jennifer Ehle's last name is pronounced "eeee-lee" so far as I have been able to discern. Here's a photo. See y'all.