What Happens in “A Family Daughter” by Maile Meloy

Posted on by weeks4send

Abby, aged seven, goes to stay with her grandparents one summer while her parents go through a divorce.  Unfortunately, she gets chickenpox and can’t go out, so her uncle comes to visit so he can cheer her up.  Apparently, this is why they have an affair ten years later.  The moral of the story is, don’t let kids near their uncles.

After the divorce, Abby lives with her dad, while her mother goes off to “find herself” (read, sleep with as many people as she can).  Then Abby goes to university, and has an Italian boyfriend who won’t marry her because she’s not rich.  Then her dad dies in a car accident because she wouldn’t go skiing with him (I think).  Her uncle comes along to comfort her, and they begin an affair.  Definitely don’t let kids near their uncles.

Abby sends her uncle to see her therapist, who is surprisingly non-judgemental about the whole incest thing.  Because she’s a true professional, the therapist tells him that he might be his oldest sister’s secret illegitimate son (spoilers- he’s not).  Then Abby’s mother gets a new girlfriend, and asks her own mother if she had an affair with a photographer when she was young (spoilers- she didn’t).  Then her uncle starts going out with a spoilt heiress, who may or may not be cheating on him with her childhood friend (spoilers- she is).  We then get a whole chapter devoted to the heiress’ mother in Argentina, because plot focus is for losers.  The heiress’ mother worries about her failing health, so she asks the heiress to take custody of her five-year-old son, adopted from Romania on a whim.

Then Abby dithers about for ages before finally deciding to sleep with a guy from university instead of pursuing her uncle.  Unfortunately, this is quickly rendered moot because her uncle asks her to come to Argentina with him and the spoiled heiress.  Almost as soon as they get there, the mother dies and the son’s biological mother shows up.

Then Abby’s grandfather has an operation to improve his eyesight.  This also gets an entire chapter to itself.

Abby’s uncle sleeps with the biological mother, and decides to marry her and raise her son as his own.  Abby then publishes a book about her family history, including the part about sleeping with her uncle.  She doesn’t bother to warn her family about this before they read it, because she’s a troll like that.  Abby’s aunt reads the book and is reminded of a priest she had an affair with years ago.  Then the uncle’s adopted son steals a chocolate bar, and the uncle makes him pay for it.  The biological mother gets in touch with her lawyer and says she wants to go back to Romania, after which Abby’s aunt gets back in touch with the priest and starts up the affair again, after which Abby’s mum breaks up with her girlfriend and gets back in touch with her childhood sweetheart.  Everything in that last sentence happened in the course of about twenty pages, by the way.

The whole family meets up for Thanksgiving, except for Abby’s aunt, who’s off with her new boyfriend.  Unfortunately, her boyfriend goes bananas in public after her son comes to get her, causing her to leave.  Then Abby sleeps with her uncle again.  A few weeks later, they all meet up again for Christmas, joined by the spoiled heiress, who has a new baby and wants him to spend Christmas with a nice, wholesome family.  There doesn’t seem to be one around, though, so this lot will have to do.

Unfortunately, the baby’s arrival seals their doom, because he gives the entire family flu and Abby’s grandfather dies.  Abby blames herself for this, since the baby wouldn’t have been there if the heiress hadn’t read the book, but honestly, this story is such an unconnected series of events that she might just as well blame Timmy Mallett.  The good news is that she ends up with her university boyfriend instead of her uncle, so maybe there’s hope for her after all.

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“You changed what I said into a bizarre absolute.”

Posted on by weeks4send

I first read that sentence on the 16th of May 2003- my sixteenth birthday. To say that it changed my life would be a bit of an over-simplification, but not as much as you might think.

I read it in Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel by Scott Adams, which had been one of my birthday presents (along with three of REM’s 1980s albums, because I was cool like that).   Obviously, I wouldn’t have asked for it if I hadn’t already known that I liked Dilbert, but I liked it because it was clever and funny and contained weird little surreal bits featuring talking animals.  Until then, it hadn’t occurred to me that it might actually teach me something.

When I read that sentence (in a strip that can be found here), I did a bit of a double take.  That conversational tactic, that thing of “changing what I said into a bizarre absolute,” was exactly the kind of trick my parents pulled on me just about every time we argued.  You know the kind of thing- I’d disagree with something they said or did, and it would be, “Oh, so I suppose we’re the worst parents in the world, are we?”  And then the whole discussion would devolve into them naming other parents who they knew for a fact were worse than them, and me trying to reassure them that of course that wasn’t what I meant.  On some level, I realised that this tactic was less a response to whatever I’d said and more a way of getting me to shut up, but I could never find a way to properly respond to it.

Until now.

Over the course of that year, I learned a lot about how to argue and express myself.  I picked up skills from reading Dilbert, from watching Daria and the film version of Ghost World, and, strangely enough, from Ricky Gervais’ stand-up routines.  All these things taught me how to be precise about what I objected to and what I wanted instead, how to cut through meaningless waffle and find the truth, how to dodge attempts to derail my argument, and, maybe most importantly, how to be funny while I did it.  There’s always the temptation to idealise certain sections of the past and forget the more complicated details, but I don’t think it’s that much of an exaggeration to say that I started 2003 as an insecure fifteen-year-old who was pretty sure everything she said was somehow the wrong thing, and ended it as somebody who could sharpen words into weapons and aim them at any injustice I came across.  That sentence I read on my sixteenth birthday, along with hundreds of other sentences like it, helped me learn how to speak.

All of which is why it’s so upsetting to me that, since then, Scott Adams has gone completely bananas.

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Ivy (part three)

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We drove up to my father’s estate just as the sun was setting.  Despite my trepidations, I tried to face it with my head held high and a smile on my face.  I’d always been an eternal cockeyed optimist, searching for a rainbow after every sorrowful storm, and that guitar-shaped swimming pool I’d just spotted in the corner of the garden would do nicely, thanks.  He was loaded!

A strikingly handsome couple appeared at the door.  The husband, a dark-haired man with long, strong, beautiful legs and firm, round buttocks, smiled down at me.  “You must be Ivy,” he said, before glancing up at my mother.  “Hello, Gigi.  It’s been a while.”

“Yeah, and it’s going to be a while longer if I have anything to do with it,” said Mama, her hands on her hips, “Now, look, I’ve spent the last fifteen years raising your kid, and it’s worn me out.  Time for you to do your bit, sunshine.  You can give her back when she’s thirty.”

The wife, an elegant beauty in a camel-fur coat, scowled down at us.  “She can’t stay tonight,” she snapped, her face twisting into a grotesque parody of a smile, “We have plans.  Clive and I have tickets to the opera tonight- we’ve been planning it for months.”

“Now, Tamsin,” said my father, his smile small and pleased, “Love Never Dies isn’t exactly an opera, per se…”

“We’re going, Clive!  I’m getting my Phantom fix, or somebody’s getting hurt, you hear me?”

“Tough titties, blondie,” said Mama, flicking V’s at her, “She’s on your doorstep now, and she’s your problem.”  And before Tamsin could say anything in response, she jumped back into Abelard Cephalopod’s Mini and the two of them drove off.

To lift myself above the despair I felt at her departure, I gazed with interest at that awesome pool I’d seen earlier.  I watched the pet dolphins they kept in the deep end perform a perfect dance routine to “Don’t Stop Believing,” and, for a moment, I felt less alone.

My stepmother let out a long, resigned sigh.  “I guess you’d better come in.  Damn it.”

As soon as I got through the door, I turned in slow circles, my breath caught, my eyes wide, staring, staring, until I got too dizzy and collapsed on the floor.  My stepmother prodded me with her shoe until I got up.

“I’ve never seen a house as beautiful as this,” I breathed in wonder.

“Nobody has,” said my father happily, “My parents had it built to their exact specifications back in the Seventies.  When I was a boy, I used to think there wasn’t a house anywhere in the world as fine as the one where I lived.”

“None with cocaine dispensers built into all the bathrooms, anyway,” grumbled my stepmother.  She turned on me like a vicious tiger protecting her young.  “Now, look here, missy.  If you’re going to be staying here, there’s a few things you need to understand.  I don’t want you telling anyone you’re Clive’s daughter.  It’s embarrassing enough to have everyone know he used to go out with that slapper Gigi Pratt, let alone that there’s some kid of hers knocking about.”

Oh!  How those cruel words tore at my heart!  No sooner had I been reunited with my father, the kind, handsome daddy I had longed for all my childhood, than…

“We’ll just have to tell everyone you’re a visiting MI5 agent,” she added, “They stay with us from time to time.”

Oh.  Actually, that sounded really cool.

“Well, I’m glad that’s settled,” said my father, with a hearty laugh, “Now come through and meet your stepbrothers.  I’m sure you’ll get along famously.”

Stepbrothers!  My heart fluttered in delight.  How I’d longed for a brother as a child!  The happy days we’d share… the walks in the park… the games of “fetch” and the trips to the vet…

“You’re thinking of a labrador,” said my father, “Brothers are different.”  But I was so enraptured that I barely heard him.

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Reactions to Michael Stipe’s Tribute to David Bowie

Posted on by weeks4send

(As taken from R.E.M.’s Facebook page)

“Amazing”/”Wonderful”/”Beautiful” – Gave up counting after 90 comments.

Discussion of how R.E.M. need to come back and save the music world from Justin Bieber- 9 comments

“Love Bowie, hate tributes”/ “Go be deep somewhere else” – 8 comments

Overuse of ellipses – 9 comments

Overinvested Debbie Harry fanboy- 1 comment

Overinvested Debbie Harry hateboner guy – 3 comments

People who are pretty sure they know what David Bowie would want and it’s not this – 4 comments

Guy who keeps posting dodgy-looking movie links and quizzes – 7 comments

Quoted lyrics / lists of commenter’s six favourite R.E.M. songs – 8 comments

Support of Michael Stipe’s Bernie Sanders T-shirt – 22 comments

Frothing at the mouth over Michael Stipe’s Bernie Sanders T-shirt – 13 comments

Intense Jimmy Fallon hate – 3 comments

“Why is David Bowie more important than the countless people who die daily across the world?” – 2 comments

Comparisons of Michael Stipe’s version of “The Man Who Sold the World” to Nirvana’s – 15 comments

Beard jokes – Gave up counting after 135 comments

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Why Nobody Listens to Teaching Assistants

Posted on by weeks4send

Scene One

(A Science lesson.  The TEACHING ASSISTANT is helping the STUDENT with his work.  Occasionally, the student stops to play with his pet octopus, who he keeps in his pencil case.  After a while, the SCIENCE TEACHER comes by.)

Science Teacher:  Derek, how many times must I tell you- put that octopus away!

Student:  Sorry, miss.

T.A.:  I’m sorry, I didn’t realise…

Science Teacher:  Look, I know you’re new here, but the school has a very strict anti-sea-creature policy.  If you see a student playing with a sea creature in a lesson, you absolutely must take it off them.  Tell the class teacher if necessary.

T.A.:  I understand.

 

Scene Two

(A Maths lesson later that same day.  The teaching assistant is now with a different STUDENT.  After making a couple of attempts at his work, the student gets his pet seahorse out of his pencil case.)

T.A.: (spotting this) Ernie, give me that.

(The student not only ignores this, but opens his friend’s bag, gets out a goblin shark, and starts playing with that as well, much to the amusement of his friends.)

T.A.: Ernie, seriously, hand those over.  You’re not allowed sea creatures in the lesson.

Student:  (shoving both the seahorse and the goblin shark in her face)  Wooo!

(His friends collapse with laughter.  The teaching assistant, quite annoyed by this, goes to to the front of the room and tries to get the MATHS TEACHER’s attention.)

T.A.:  Excuse me…

Maths Teacher:  (to the class)  Make sure to check your work after you’ve finished!  (to the T.A.)  Yeah?

T.A.:  Ernie won’t stop playing with sea creatures.  I’ve asked him to put them away, but…

Maths Teacher:  (to the student and his friends)  Oi, lads!  Is that a real goblin shark?

Student:  Yeah!

Maths Teacher:  Haven’t seen one of those in ages!  (to the T.A.)  Is he hurting anybody?

T.A.:  Well…  No, but…

Maths Teacher:  Then let him get it out of his system.  He’ll get back to work eventually.  (to another group of students)  Oi, you’d better be talking about the work over there, you lot!

(He goes over to talk to them.  The T.A. goes back to her table, where the student and his friends giggle and talk about her strange obsessive grudge against sea creatures.  Luckily, a few seconds later a giant squid gets loose and eats the lot of them.)

The End

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Now That April’s Here

Posted on by weeks4send

If you’re happy and you know it, thank your ex!  All you really need in life is someone who sees the psycho you are and likes you anyway.  It’s important to be yourself.  People don’t have to like you… and you don’t have to care.

As we grow up, it becomes less important to have more friends, and more important to have real ones.  You see, I’m a nice person, so if I’m a bitch to you, you need to ask yourself why.  I don’t have a short temper- I just have a quick reaction to bullshit.  I literally love being at home, in my own space, not surrounded by people.  Sometimes it takes me all day to get nothing done.  And maybe that’s not surprising- after all, I’m so old, I can remember going through a whole day without taking a picture of anything.

And I’m sorry if anyone’s upset at finding out that the world doesn’t revolve around them.  Here, let me pour you a nice cup of Get the Fuck Over It.  Personally, though, I’m doing my part to conserve water by drinking wine instead.

 

(Edited to add:  This was an April Fool’s joke.  Those Facebook memes sound really aggressive when you string them all together.)

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The NHS versus the Weasels

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I’m going to have to repeat what I said on Facebook:  What fuckery is this?

https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/richard-grimes/government-moves-to-consider-nhs-user-charges

Now, I’m not stupid- I know this isn’t exactly an unbiased source.  I know this article was written last July, and a lot of things have changed since then (Jeremy Corbyn things!).  I know my Facebook feed is largely made up of hardcore left-wingers, which means I’m probably primed to accept any story that makes David Cameron look bad.*  And I know these quotes could easily have been taken out of context- maybe every other peer in the room responded with shouts of Eh?  What are you smoking? and the article just didn’t mention it.  But a) I doubt the writers made these quotes up out of whole cloth, and b) the fact that they were even brought up with a straight face should provoke howls of rage in the citizenry.

I mean, just look at these things.  It’s not even just the Tories:

 Another Labour peer, Lord Desai, suggested bizarrely that patients should be issued with an “Oyster card” which is deducted whenever a patient uses healthcare, and patients should receive a “bill” at the end of the year, saying this would “help make it clear to people that a free National Health Service is not a costless one.”

In other words, “let’s charge sick people for getting sick.”  You know, the exact thing the NHS was created to avoid.  (Also?  “Free” and “costless” mean the exact same thing, numpty.)

It’s a terrifying vision of a dystopian future- attempts to take away our rights couched in weasel words like “begin the process of helping the public engage in a discussion,” just to add insult to injury.  But luckily, Britain is still a democracy, and our MPs all have email accounts.  Let us join forces and spam them into submission.

 

 

* Although David Cameron himself hasn’t exactly helped in this regard- not one of us saw Piggate coming.

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The Tale of the Bisected Snake

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(A story I wrote with my friend Pippa a few years back.)

Once upon a time, there was a snake in the middle of the desert.  Although he was a beautiful creature with bright green scales, he was sad.  You see, some time ago, an explorer walking through the desert had put a tentpole through the snake’s body, cutting the end of his tail in half.

This made the snake feel victimised, so he went to see his lawyer to see if he could claim compensation for the injury, as he felt he was not to blame. However, the lawyer said that he was silly, as he was bright green, and this was not a very good colour for a desert snake. As he was not even trying to blend in with the desert, he was to blame for the incident, for being a vain and ignorant snake.

Feeling that the lawyer was not being sensitive to his needs, the snake promptly ate him.  He then went on his way, looking for other methods of revenge.

Coming to a square in the centre of town, he saw a protest against the use of the word “antidisestablishmentarianism” on TV.  The protesters claimed that said word was too long and nobody knew what it meant, making millions of innocent people feel stupid.  The snake watched them wave their signs about, and felt a tear come to his bright yellow eye.

“These people are the victims of unfairness, much like myself,” he thought, “I shall join them in their quest for justice!”  And with that, he swung from a lamppost onto a nearby statue, and began to sing a selection from Les Miserables.

Unfortunately, this was the wrong choice, as the crowd was against anything related to the theatre, which meant he had to slither away as fast as he could and hide up a drainpipe until the mob (who had somehow found pitchforks and lit torches) had passed.

Even more unfortunately, the split in his tail meant that he could not hide himself fully in the pipe! The bisected part stuck out the end! Some eagle-eyed member of the mob spotted this, but could only persuade his group of five friends to come with him to investigate it, leaving the rest of the mob to pass by and  fall into the river which passed by the end of the road.

Not wanting to be caught by these six ruffians, the snake slithered out of the drainpipe and ate the ringleader.

“Gasp!” yelled his friends, “You ate our friend Cliff!”

“Yes, I did!” snapped the snake, “He was going to kill me just for singing showtunes!”

“But…  But…  We loved him!” wailed Cliff’s friends, their eyes brimming with salty tears.

“Listen!” said the snake, “You think you’ve got problems?  An explorer cut my tail in half, and then my lawyer…”  But the rest of the snake’s sentence was drowned out by the ruffians bawling over their dear departed friend Cliff.

“Shut up!” yelled the snake. And he regurgitated the clothes the gang leader was wearing into a heap in front of the rest of the group. As the five big, burly men stared, tears drying on the cheeks of their shocked faces, he knew it was time for a quick get-away.

With angry (but somewhat watery) shouts echoing along the alleyway behind him, the snake sped off, taking as many twists and turns as he could in an effort to lose his pursuers. As luck would have it, he turned around a corner and saw his salvation.

For there, in a yellow suit and hat, stood the very explorer who’d bisected his tail in the first place!  The explorer was cutting the ribbon at the opening of a new wing in the hospital, so he was completely distracted.  The snake grinned.  Vengeance would be his!

With a strangled cry, the snake launched himself off the ground and at the explorer, jaws wide open in preparation for the extremely satisfying meal he was about to have, when suddenly…

The explorer turned, alarmed by the commotion caused by the arrival of Cliff’s gang. Seeing his imminent demise in the shape of the bisected snake, hurtling towards him with reckless speed, the explorer drew a katana and the whole crowd went quiet.

The explorer and the snake froze, looking at each other, watching for the signs that indicate impending movement. Suddenly they were both distracted by an appearance from the lobby of the hospital.

“What is the meaning of this?” bellowed Pythia, the goddess of snakes, who had just materialised in the lobby.

The snake bowed (which was more difficult than you might expect, since he was floating in the air mid-jump).  “Your holiness, this man cut me in half with a tent peg!  Ever since then, I’ve had to go around with a bisected tail, which makes it hard for me to hide in drainpipes, among other things.”

“Is that so?” asked Pythia, turning an angry eye on the explorer.

“How was I to know that there was a snake underneath my tent peg?” the explorer exclaimed defensively.

“I’m bloody bright green, aren’t I?” the snake roared, turning an angry eye on the explorer. “I should be easy enough to see in a desert, shouldn’t I? I’m not exactly camouflaged!”

“But I’m colour-blind!” wailed the explorer.

“I think I can see a way through this predicament.” This was hesitantly said by the new leader of Cliff’s gang (who was named Philip), as he picked his way through the crowd to the steps in front of the lobby. He looked nervously at the still-floating snake as he did so, as if expecting him to swallow him whole for daring to speak.

Which he did.

“Oh, that’s just great!” said the explorer, “He was about to solve all our problems!”

“Well, I’m sorry!” said the snake, “I was just going by my instincts!  And as for you, you allegedly colour-blind twit, I think I’ll eat you for dessert!”

Meanwhile, Pythia had been thinking.  “You know, snakey, if the explorer couldn’t see you, then that renders your lawyer’s argument completely invalid.  It didn’t matter that you were bright green, and therefore you can’t be blamed.”

So the snake and the explorer joined forces to sue the lawyer’s surviving family for a million pounds, completely bankrupting their law firm and sending them into the poorhouse, and then moved to the Bahamas and lived happily ever after.

The End

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