borrowed words

Whenever I find interesting quotes that resonate with me, I jot them down into a notebook (that's it up there). It's like a diary - perhaps just as sensational to read, but a whole lot less embarrassing to revisit because it's mostly filled with borrowed words. These are a couple of my favorites this year, many of which have a very feminist undertone (haha). Enjoy!

Peggy Olson - Mad Men Season 3

film / television

"You're smooth. And charming. You turn it on like hot water from the faucet. But I've had measles once. Now I'm immune." -Linda Gilman, June Bride (1948)

"You're like an old coat that's hanging in his closet. Every time he reaches in, there you are. Don't be there once." -Desk Set (1957)

"The odd thing about this form of communication is that you’re more likely to talk about nothing than something. But I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings." -Kathleen Kelly, You've Got Mail (1998)

"You have set up a way of life that basically makes it impossible for you to have any kind of human connection. And now this woman comes along and somehow runs the gauntlet of your ridiculous life choice and comes out on the other end smiling just so you can call her 'casual'? I need to grow up? You’re a 12-year-old." -Natalie, Up in the Air (2009)

"I don't wanna make a career out of being there so you can kick me when you fail." -Peggy, Mad Men Season 3, Episode 13 "Shut the Door. Have a Seat."

Richard Burton

people

"He always thought that he had to do something about endangered species, forgetting that he himself was an endangered species the way he drank." -Billy Wilder on William Holden in Billy Wilder Speaks (2006)

side note: William Holden was an alcoholic. He drank too much and died from a blow to the head from a night stand.

"I'm not sure if it's a function of advancing age or just the times we're living in, but it's almost impossible for me to find complete external validation in any one thought, desire, instinct, or vision anymore." -John Mayer

"I feel like a discarded floppy disk." -moi

courtesy of Ms. Amanda

"He wanted the milk without the cow." -Amanda

"One of these days I will wake up - which I think I have done already - and realize to myself that I really do love. I find it very difficult to allow my whole life to rest on the existence of another creature. I find it equally difficult, because of my innate arrogance, to believe in the idea of love. There is no such thing, I say to myself. There is lust, of course, and usage, and jealousy, and desire and spent powers, but no such thing as the idiocy of love. Who invented that concept? I have wracked my shabby brains and can find no answer." -Richard Burton in a letter to Elizabeth Taylor

"All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love." -Leo Tolstoy

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder/yonder." -Amanda

 books / plays

"He is collecting pleasures and pains, gathered from his relationships with ballerinas and librarians, decent females without the right pheromones, and nut-balls. He is like a child learning what is too hot to touch, and he hopes all this experience will coalesce into a philosophy of life, or at least a philosophy of relationships, that will transform itself into instinct." -Shopgirl

"[Y]ou neither think nor talk like the man I could bind myself to. As soon as your fear was over - and it was not fear for what threatened me but for what might happen to you - when the whole thing was past, as far as you were concerned it was exactly as if nothing at all had happened. Exactly as before, I was your little skylark, your doll, which you would in the future treat with doubly gentle care because it was so brittle and fragile." -Nora, A Doll's House

"I got to know you. You cured me of you." -Emma, One Day

Technology and the Single Girl

As we progress towards new technology, newer, hipper modes of communication are becoming increasingly impersonal. Face-to-face interaction would be ideal when you're trying to get to know someone; however, busy schedules or even physical distance become viable, prime barriers for a lack of personal interaction. When minimal face-to-face interaction occurs, what happens? My friend Amanda has suggested that "absence makes the heart grow fonder/yonder." But which is it? I've felt fonder and yonder with different men on various occasions before, but what tips the scale over from yonder to fonder or vice versa? Does someone feel fonder of someone else because that person is not readily available? Is it the idea of a chase that creates this (illusion of) fondness?

Before texting and the Internet, people resorted to telegrams, letters, and the telephone. If you look at mail correspondence, this is still considered as impersonal communication because there is a barrier preventing you from having direct, personal correspondence. A letter would have to go through a middle man, the post office, before arriving at its final destination. Certainty for a single girl, this whole waiting for a letter to endure a long physical journey to get to you is completely romantic and sentimental. The idea of a letter from a guy you adore makes you smile because as sappy as this may sound, he once held the letter you are holding, and plus he handwrote, or more like scrawled, the letter you are reading. You can't help but feel special - because this letter is for you and no one else.

Klara (Margaret Sullavan) reading a letter in The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

If a single girl regularly receives some kind of correspondence, such as letters, from her object of affection and suddenly that correspondence ceases, she can feel unwanted, abandoned, unnerved, or worse - inadequate. (Ladies, we don't need validation from men to be/feel amazing.)

Inbox empty. Better luck another day, Klara. Poor lady... don't cry, Shopgirl.

No one likes this kind of needy behavior of waiting for that other person to respond back, but many of us are guilty of waiting for an e-mail back or even a telephone call back (myself included) because our singleton heart craves attention and affection. It's nice to be wanted and/or needed. I'm a little old fashioned but men who are able to write beautiful letters, or at least attempt to handwrite a personal letter to their object of affection, are a dying breed. I wish this wasn't the case, but it is. Nowadays, men can steathily or awkwardly dodge unwanted females by plainly ignoring those girls' e-mails, ims, and texts with the reasoning that one isn't obligated to reply back immediately or ever to electronic/digital messages.

When it comes to the telephone, especially before cell phones came along, one often pictures a single girl waiting at home next to the telephone. It is such a depressing image. Imagine the time wasted on waiting for a jerk who said he'll call but he won't. Why do we have such a passive image of single females waiting? There is a double standard that women aren't supposed to make the first move when it comes to dating men. Honestly, I initiate things anyways. I know it comes off as "unlady-like" but you know what - sometimes men don't have the nerve to make the first move. Women should give men a little push, and if that little push doesn't work, you move along to another guy. It's all trial and error. I refuse to wait for one guy too long; I'm not getting any younger, and it's not like that guy is going to grow another pair of balls anytime soon (plus, that would be really disgusting).

The good thing about talking on the phone is that even though you can't see the person you're talking, you can hear the tone of that person's voice and so there's a smaller chance of misinterpreting what that person is saying. Flirting via the telephone is always fun. It's a great way to be coy and indulge your object of affection and yourself with some witty repartee (which I love). I'm sure phone sex occurred way before that term was actually coined as well.

split screen telephoning between Doris Day and Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk (1959)

some telephone action in Pillow Talk remake Down With Love (2003)

I really doubt that any guy would do push-ups with a phone on his shoulders, but whatev - it's the movies.

Then along came the Internet - with instantaneous e-mails and instant messages. Instead of face-to-face interaction, it's you and the screen with text sent over not so long ago. Since it's an impersonal form of communication, many people feel like they can get away with typing certain things over the Internet that they normally wouldn't be able to have the nerve to say in person. No one likes confrontation and so the Internet removes that fear behind possibly saying something confrontational or inappropriate. Guys can easily flirt with single gals with a keyboard and a mouse, without witnessing those girls' possible looks of disgust. Getting rejected online reminds me of what George said in You've Got Mail (1998): "Well, as far as I'm concerned, the Internet is just another way of being rejected by women."

 

Inappropriate e-mail messages from Daniel Cleaver in Bridget Jones's Diary (2001):

 

Although communicating over the Internet is impersonal, there is that advantage of being able to freely react to messages uncensored in the privacy of your own personal space.

As far as instantaneous communication goes, sometimes technology encourages people to become rude, insensitive human beings, by doing something as brutal and impersonal as breaking up with someone over a text:

 from Up in the Air (2009)

Notice that the date sent was two days before Valentine's Day.

I realize that I kept on harping on the impersonal side of technology, but technology is a double-edged sword: the great thing about it is that you can receive instantaneous messages from anyone all over the world; however, there's that person-to-person interaction that is completely priceless that you can't experience by receiving e-mails, ims, and texts.

I'll leave you with the following quote:

"The odd thing about this form of communication is that you’re more likely to talk about nothing than something. But I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings." - Kathleen Kelly, You’ve Got Mail (1998)

It was a quote I kept on thinking about maybe a year ago. It's something I will never say to this one person I know, but that person kind of brought me back to life with a whole lot of nothings online when I was going through a very dark time. It was an unintentional doing on that person's part, but I am still grateful for all those nothings that meant something to me.

Fluff

I used to have an AP English teacher in high school who would publicly humiliate individuals whenever they made careless mistakes in their writing and then proceed to make them grab one of the ancient grammar books in the back of the class and correct the mistakes they made along with citing what grammar rules their mistakes violated in the grammar book. This lady was fierce. I sat in the second row in front of her desk, and I remember sitting in that class, hoping she won't call on me to read another set of lines from Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale" (from The Canterbury Tales). It was impressive how she demonstrated how Old English was supposed to sound like. Even though I was afraid of her for more than half of the time, her AP English course was one of the most memorable and rewarding classes I've ever taken in high school. I vividly remember that she would constantly emphasize how she'll grade students down for writing "fluff." 

If fluff, in terms of writing, is basically b.s. written to make your carelessly thought out thesis seem loftier than it actually is, what is exactly is fluff for food? For dishes, I think herbal/leafy garnishes for dishes are food fluff. This makes me think of Kathleen Kelly in You've Got Mail (1998) when she gets annoyed at Joe Fox ("F-O-X") for taking all of the caviar garnish: "What is that? What are you doing? You're taking all the caviar? That caviar is a garnish!" 

Joe Fox scoops up caviar

"That caviar is a garnish!"

To me, the purpose of food garnish is to make your food visually more appetizing than it might actually be, and thus, tricking you into believing that the expensive meal you just paid for is worth the money even more because it looks great - or in the case of You've Got Mail, making your guests believe the food they're eating is worth more or tastes better than it actually does. I don't remember ever trying caviar, but why would you use caviar as a garnish if it's so expensive in general? It feels pointless to use expensive caviar as garnish if you're only going to be criticized for eating it. It's food... it's meant to be eaten, especially after someone takes the first scoop of food out of the dish that's being garnished. The presentation of the dish is ruined; I'm sure it's okay to eat the garnish by then.

Joe Fox at Starbucks

 
The drink garnish I'm guilty of telling baristas to add to my Starbucks drinks is whipped cream. I like my hot caffeinated drinks to be warm, inviting, and fluffy with milkiness and sugary sweetness. I usually order a "grande hot chai tea latte with extra whipped cream" (my order verbatim). I suppose it classifies me as one of those whole tea leaf enthusiasts who probably prefers to go to Coffee Bean and Tea but will settle for a chai tea latte at Starbucks instead because it's closer.

I notice that some guys who try to appear or make themselves feel manlier use verbal fluff. They use words like baller, boned, and bro. With seemingly cute witticisms, frequent references to popular TV sitcoms, and maybe a wink, these guys provide charming (well, depending on how vulgar they may be) distractions to what you're avoiding to do or think about. I don't mind this kind of verbal fluff as long as people eventually open up about themselves, mix up the conversation topics every so often, and not merely try to impress you and themselves with watered down conversations that really lack any substance. Verbal fluff is a part of everyday life and everyone is guilty of using it; it could be good and bad depending on how and when you use them. There's an endless variety of verbal fluff depending on your demographic, upbringing, and geographical location (oh dear... this is crossing over to linguistics, isn't it?). 

Well, lately I've been feeling that our current society is bombarded with excessive distractions ("fluff" as I call it) that even I'm starting to feel like I have ADD. My new cell phone from Verizon arrived in the mail yesterday (it's an LG Chocolate Touch - love that name because it makes me think of this book I read in elementary school), and I must have spent several hours playing with that thing, trying to add mp3s, pictures, and ringtones to it instead of posting a blog entry about food (Trader Joe's sweet potato frites and Archer Farms Napoli style sun dried tomato pasta salad) like I sought out to do about ten minutes before the Fed-Ex guy knocked on the door.

my LG Chocolate Touch

I feel that with so trivial distractions online (i.e. Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Formspring.me, LiveJournal, YouTube) and also in life, many people can easily forget or lose focus on the what really matters to them. There are so many snarky hipsters on social networking websites trying to out-snark each other with witticisms that it's starting to get a little old. In the end, no one really actually cares if you saw the latest episode of How I Met Your Mother or how many times you've pulled a "that's what she said" moment. I don't detest social networking websites because virtual communities bring people together, but at the same time, I can't say that I'm not concerned about how virtual fluff or just fluff/distractions in general are cluttering up our lives.

P.S. Happy Birthday, sis!