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By coincidence, I just listened to the audiobook for Redwall at my work this week. The story definitely holds up and I totally recommend the audiobook for when you've finished reading the actual book. I never realized how graphically the more violent scenes were depicted! Jacques' narration is beautiful and having a full cast rather than just a narrator makes it feel more like a radio production than an audiobook. I'll probably continue the audiobooks in the same order I read the books. If you like Redwall, I recommend Mattimeo and The Legend of Luke, the latter being my favorite book in the series. If you want to read them in chronological order, Mossflower is where you'll want to go next.

Question: When did spring start before it was decided that the first day would always officially be on the Vernal Equinox? Surely what season it is depends more on the weather than some arbitrarily chosen celestial event, right? It's been spring for at least a week no in my opinion.

Question: What about the Southern Hemisphere? Is it spring there too just because today is the Vernal Equinox?

Don't talk like that. You're a beautiful and wonderful person who just happens to get pinched a lot. The way you're degrading yourself here just shows how much we need pinch positivity in the world.

Well, I highly recommend reading it, or at least listening to the fantastic audiobook by Jeremy Irons. Just whatever you do, make sure you take it seriously and avoid thinking about the controversy surrounding it. Otherwise it comes up short compared to how it's built up.

Yeah, I just figured that the fact that it had to be published as pornography in France meant that it wasn't held in high regard. Here in the Western Hemisphere, porn is thought of as scummy underworld of the entertainment industry, so I assumed it wasn't a respected genre in most other places.

Spoiler: Lolita Plot Summary

In the book, Lolita is a nickname for a girl (10 when we meet her, 17 by the end of the book), Dolores Haze, who is the subject of the sexual attraction of Humbert Humbert (HH), our middle aged narrator. The book follows his relationship with her as he gradually becomes more depraved and dependent on what he does to her and becoming more and more abusive in it, both physically and emotionally until she finally manages to run away with a different person with the same disease as HH. When we last see her, it's easy to tell that she's a broken mess, though she still gets what is arguably the happiest ending in the book (which isn't saying much). The story is told through the framing device of a book based on his testimony in a court case revolving around his crimes. It is also extremely well known and controversial, to the point where the name Lolita is now extremely rare all around the world. The book was published in France as pornography, which may be why you don't see to be as aware of the word's origin as many others.

I don't think Lolita has any actual meaning in English besides as a (now exceedingly rare for obvious reasons) name for a girl or nickname for Dolores or Lola or to refer to Lolita fashion, which I don't understand and still disapprove of, but can't do anything about. In Japanese the word is where the term "lolicon" comes from, being a shortening of "Lolita Complex" which is a direct reference to the book. Lolita fashion also got its name in Japan, though the actual style started its life in North America, and as you can see from this thread, its relevance to the book is very debatable. Thanks for pointing out the French meaning, by the way.

Personally, the fact that it's unattractive is why I find the idea behind the aesthetic somewhat appealing. It's refreshing to see something that I find unattractive that I can still recognize as an objectively (in the loosest sense of the word) good look.

I get all that and actually read that quote while I was doing research to figure it out myself, but considering the fact that word also has problematic implications in Japan, as it is used in the term "Lolita Complex" (which incidentally came into use around the same time as Lolita fashion became popular in Japan), I feel like there's more to it than just Lolita being a cool sounding word. My best guess is that it has to do with the doll-like aesthetic of Lolita fashion, which could have easily come from the way HH often treats Dolores "Dolly" Haze (the titular Lolita) like a doll, but that feels like a stretch too. Even so, I'm positive there's some connection between the book and the fashion style.

When did I indicate that I thought it was about men in the way I assume you mean? On the contrary, I believe that it's about men (or women, to acknowledge the straight guys and gay gals who do it too) in the same way that the American Revolutionary War was about the Colonies being ruled by Britain. The whole point was to make it so the Colonies were not ruled by Britain. I know that's a sloppy metaphor, but I can't think of a better way to put it.

Thank you.

TW: Rape mention, gore, generally directed insults based on intelligence, angry tone, not necessarily in that order.

Sorry to digress (and kind of go on a rant) here, but I actually never understood that's such a common misinterpretation. For god's sake, Dolores even refers to the hotel where earlier HH claims that she seduced him as "The one where you raped me." If that doesn't drive it home to the thick skulled masses that the "young tempting seductress" fantasy isn't the point or even present in any way shape or form, what will? Even after one reading, I understood that the whole point was to show how much people with HH's condition need psychiatric help as soon as they discover their condition, that we as a society need to get over our pedophobia and create an environment where such people can feel safe in getting that help, and to blow up the potential consequences of their not getting help into a logical extreme that can't be ignored: A depraved lunatic who only overcomes his condition (and even then only according to him and even then only sort of) after he's broken a human life to the point of no repair. And that's not even half of it. There's symbolism discussing the aftermath on the part of the broken life, multilingual wordplay that reveals even more undertones, and all sorts of little details that make it one of the richest reading experiences available to anyone who can look past the controversy. Listening to the audiobook, read by Jeremy Irons, last week confirmed that for me even more. It's as if the point is an arrow shot by an archer who can normally pin a fly to a tree from a mile away without killing it while the average reader (who is almost certainly reading it just for the controversy surrounding it and completely ignoring that it's also a really good book) is a target that moves to the side at the last second, causing the arrow to hit an innocent bystander square between the eyes.

Sorry about the rant. That particular sentence just struck a nerve on the subject is all. I'm glad to see that someone else gets it.

The book I'm thinking of is Lolita. It is, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest books in literary history, but also probably the most disturbing thing anyone will ever read and certainly not the kind of thing that pretty, doll-like, pseudo-Victorian fashion should be named after.

Try asking Yahoo Answers.

I actually don't have a problem cleaning restrooms, though a recent experience has left me with a major aversion to even stepping inside of a women's restroom.


Warning: I may have recently listened to the audiobook of a long winded novel with an exceedingly pretentious and unreliable narrator whose narration style may have slightly seeped into my own. If you decide you still want to read my story, it would do you well to know that my internal voice is currently that of Jeremy Irons, so conditioning your internal voice to be the same way might provide the best experience.

I would like you to picture the layout of my work's break room. It is a large cafeteria sized room whose primary seating arrangement consists of long rectangular tables like you might see in a school cafeteria. Entering from the main entrance, facing eastward, you are greeted by some lounging chairs and coffee tables that graced the building's lobby until about a year ago. An eighth of the way in are the aforementioned rectangular tables for about three quarters of the room. The remaining three eighths are occupied by several round tables, some microwaves, and a series of refrigerators for people's lunches.
Extending from the eastmost end of the room are minor exits (but only from your perspective, as you are inside the room) that are closer to the work areas. Immediately west of the southern exit, lining the wall, are four computers and a printer, there to help us apply for health care benefits and the like.

On the northern wall near the exit is a fair sized vestibule containing several vending machines and two more microwaves. Further west on the northern wall is the Men's Room and even further west, near the main exit, is the Ladies' Room. Both restrooms are split into two further rooms, which serves the dual purpose of allowing them to be cleaned withing having to close entirely and, more to the point of the story, ensuring that in the event that one restroom does need to be closed entirely, one side of the other restroom can be temporarily redesignated for either gender. This was the case a couple of weeks ago when there was a bit of vandalism by a disgruntled male employee who was laid off.

So, the eastern side of the Ladies' Room was made into a temporary Men's Room which I happened to have to the great misfortune of entering many hours after its last scheduled cleaning. I had heard horror stories about how Ladies' Rooms are foul smelling dens of bacterial infection and misery and so I hesitated, but in the end the gender stereotypes with which I had been indoctrinated during the better part of my life prevailed and I thought something to the effect of, "Women are cleaner than men. There's no way the stories I've read are true. If anything, I should feel privileged to use the Ladies' Room instead of the disgusting Men's Room." I will spare you the details, dear reader, but I was completely taken aback, as the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen in a Mens' Room was a little bit of misaimed urine on the floor. That day, I questioned and lamented my unchangeable condition known as heterosexuality.

Maybe I should have worded that better. It's not so much that the articles themselves are gross, but more more that I feel gross handling them. I work BORIS for Victoria's Secret Direct (that is, when people Buy things Online and Return them In the Store, I'm the next employee after the people in the store to handle the item) and often the reasons provided for the return are things like "Do Not Like" or "Too Big/Small" where the only reasonable way to know to return the product for that reason is to use it or try it on. The point I've slightly digressed from here is that having this knowledge and thinking about it as much as I have since I realized it makes me feel like a creep, even though I'm just doing my job and hating it.

I don't know about most brands, but for VS and its sister brand, Pink, most panties have a plastic adhesive thing on it so that the customer can ensure the product looks and feels good against her skin rather than over her normal underwear.

This is why I only ever buy clothes for myself online, and even then quite rarely. When I receive clothing as a gift (which is how I get most of my clothes), I wash it before wearing it.

Wait, they're making a Legend of Zelda series? When did this happen?

It's Red Raspberry, you dyeist candyass.

It's also the day with the smallest number of hours in the year.

Yeah, she's basically Scottish Kamina.