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Post by Songbird on Aug 4, 2013 11:36:04 GMT -5
That was literally my favorite line in the whole book, especially because he's describing how its like for a girl, I pretty much burst out laughing at the accuracy and comparison.
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Post by Kit's tits kick ticks on Aug 4, 2013 12:08:31 GMT -5
Doesn't that make lots of teenage girls who read the book scared of having sex?
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Post by Hermes on Aug 4, 2013 12:14:04 GMT -5
Moving hurriedly on...
We've already discussed the Al scene. Are Min and Al together at the end? There's one reference to them not kissing, which might be taken to mean either that they were or that they weren't. I guess their romantic relationship would be quite like their friendly relationship anyway, lots of banter and artistic talk.
So, the breakup. First, 'sorry I embarrassed you in front of your friends' is a quote from TBL. This is the clearest of the little ASOUE references. Other possible ones are Lottie Carson's real name, Bettina Vaporetto, and 'I'm not a triplet' in the list of things Min isn't - it seems to be a rather odd thing to mention.
What happens in the later part of the chapter is a bit hard to follow - it took me a couple of readings to work out that Min is tearing down the poster of Lottie Carson, which shows that she has been dead for years and Ed always knew that (probably not always, actually, as he had difficulty remembering her name at first, but for a while). More 'star' ambiguities here. Also, Min having walked off with the poster puts it in the box for Ed, not considering that the florist might want it back.
So, what was happening? Was he really with Annette all the time, through all the previous girlfriends? I did wonder if Jillian might have dumped him because of her as well, which would explain why she knows what's going on as soon as she sees Min crying; but then she would hardly have been with Annette at the bonfire party the next week. The other possibility is that what Min says - that he dumped her for someone else without telling her - is nearer the truth; the (romantic) thing with Annette is quite new, and comes out of his frustrations with being with Min. Certainly references to Annette do accumulate more as the story goes on. The florist assumes his girlfriend must be Annette, so he must have sent her flowers quite a lot - yet he has bought flowers there for other girlfriends in the past. (Perhaps he doesn't need to send flowers to them, though, as he can just hand them over.) Annette's own attitude is also puzzling - she helped him pick out earrings for Min, so she seems on the face of it to be cooperating with what he was doing. Much is mysterious - and how you see the whole story depends on this.
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Post by Kit's tits kick ticks on Aug 4, 2013 12:19:24 GMT -5
I think it's strange that Annette seems to be okay with being the secret non-official girlfriend all the time. Maybe it makes her feel superior that she knows about Min, but Min doesn't know about her. And yes, I think she has been there while there were other girlfriends too.
She probably knew that Min wouldn't like the earrings. Maybe she even picked them because she wanted to get rid of her?
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Post by Songbird on Aug 5, 2013 8:41:58 GMT -5
I agree with Anka. I wouldn't put it past her. I also think that Annette complained about Jillian way too much and from the looks of it they were supposed to be friends. Maybe Ed really liked Jillian and Annette viewed her as more of a threat and did something awful to her. I really liked that Jillian was the one that picked up Min from the flower shop.
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Post by Hermes on Aug 5, 2013 12:03:09 GMT -5
One thing that puzzles me is that Min implies at one point that everyone knows - OK, that must be an exaggeration, but some people do know, as Jillian clearly does - and yet presumably everyone didn't always know. (Ed's previous girlfriends were from his own social circle, so if it was a a well-known fact they would have known about it.) So that does suggest it's something quite new. Also it makes more sense for Annette to accept it that way - he can sort of convince her that he just hasn't quite got round to breaking up with Min yet. But the florist's evidence certainly points the other way.
I guess what confuses me is that the story is meant to be about why they broke up, which suggests something actually went wrong with their relationship - and yet the ending rather suggests that nothing really went wrong as such, because they never had a relationship in the first place; all the claims about how 'you could never see the movies in my head', and so on, are beside the point if he never really cared for her. (There again, its being a new thing would help - he turns to Annette because he finds he can't really relate to Min.) But then, did he really not care, was she just a trophy wife, or a challenge - or was he, as it were, cheating in both directions (and this is something I have witnessed in real life), convincing Annette that Min didn't really matter to him, when actually she did (though not enough to make him faithful to her)?
I don't have anything to say about the final bit, except one thing - the lemon drink. At one point she comments on its not having a name. Does it have a name? I did wonder if its name might be Lemony Snicket, but the Lemony Snicket cocktail is quite different.
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Post by Kit's tits kick ticks on Aug 5, 2013 13:10:44 GMT -5
Doesn't the book basically say that a boy and a girl can not be just friends? Ed and Annette, Al and Min...
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Post by Hermes on Aug 5, 2013 13:20:08 GMT -5
Yes, that worries me. Of course, that's just four people, but still, when it's specifically about Al that Min says it is possible to be friends, and she turns out to be wrong...
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Post by Songbird on Aug 11, 2013 7:51:48 GMT -5
Well isn't that girl Lauren also friends with Al?
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Post by Kit's tits kick ticks on Aug 11, 2013 11:13:27 GMT -5
Well, yes, that's true.
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Post by Charlie on Aug 14, 2013 2:59:03 GMT -5
Ah, but she might be having a thing with Min's other male friend, whose name evades me.
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Post by Hermes on Aug 15, 2013 9:25:20 GMT -5
Friends in a 'member of the group' way, though, I think, rather that in a one-to-one way.
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Post by Hermes on Aug 20, 2013 10:20:26 GMT -5
Any news about a possible interaction with Daniel Handler over this?
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Post by Songbird on Aug 23, 2013 15:25:55 GMT -5
nope....i'm kind of disappointed about that.
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Post by Charlie on Aug 25, 2013 3:24:43 GMT -5
Bummer.
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