Someone mentioned the Palliser books, proving the Buffista Hivemind Is One. I finished Can You Forgive Her? this morning.

I think that was me. Most of Trollope's people come across as very nice people. Even the cads.

Then there's The Way We Live Now, where even most of the people who are trying to do the right thing have their caddish streaks. Although the Masterpiece Theatre production did a good job of expanding to show some things Trollope could reasonably have expected his characters to do, but would never have gotten away with talking about.

Please tell me Trollope stops trying to write about The Perfect Man. He is much better writing about people he doesn't approve of.

He says in one of his essays that Glencora is the perfect lady. Low standards much? (He also says that Planty Pall is the perfect gentleman, which I suppose he is by prevailing local standards.)

Well, by "someone who has been drinking" do you mean someone who is impaired? Or a friend who I've been with for four hours and who had one drink during that time? Cause I'll drive when I've had one drink. Sometimes when I've had two, if it's been over a fair amount of time/with food.

Yes. This. Though one friend did get in the car with somenoe she was a bit askeered about. She's been harangued since then.

I read about a comic last night in BUST magazine that I want to read -- Scooter Girl. Looks cool-o.

I do have the first issue. Scola has the whole run, however. It's by Chynna Clugston-Major, and she did another very cool comic titled Blue Monday and I have a lot of that. (Including some snazzy pins.) I'm sendnig her a Mod Package which will include the Mad Mod episode of Teen Titans.

And I'd really like some old kinky Wonder Woman comics -- like from the 1940s.

They are collected in hardbound form and in print. Also, they were reprinted in the back of DC annuals in the 70s.

Well, Plantagenet did surprise me, and favorably, about three-quarters of the way through, and I felt quite a soft spot for him before he reverted to norm.

I expect it's just having read fanfiction that made me think Alice and Glencora should abandon their unsatisfactory suitors and spouse and run off to the Welsh hills to set up housekeeping like the Ladies of Llangollen. But really they did seem to see each other more clearly and like each other more honestly than they saw or liked any of the men in the books, or any of the men saw and liked them.

Tell me about the Ladies of Llangollen.

There's a real sense in Trollope that women are, in general, clearer-sighted and more honest with themselves (and sometimes one another) than men.

The Ladies of Llangollen were two Irish gentlewomen, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, who fled their unhappy home lives for a Welsh cottage in the late eighteenth century. They turned their home into a fairly fashionable retreat, were popular with the local society, and lived together for, IIRC, forty or fifty years. The biography of them by Elizabeth Mavor says they weren't lovers, although it was widely rumored they were.

And I'd really like some old kinky Wonder Woman comics -- like from the 1940s.

They are collected in hardbound form and in print. Also, they were reprinted in the back of DC annuals in the 70s.

Didn't they "reprint" recently? Like, last year or so?

DC Comics' website has a video interview with Neil Gaiman.

I love the Barchester novels best, esp. the early ones in which Mrs. Proudie is still wreaking havoc. I've read the Palliser novels but none of them really stuck with me. That said, Trollope is still my favourite Victorian author for entertainment reading - he wins out over everything Dickens and all of Eliot except Middlemarch.

Nutty, I found the abstract for that JAMA study on PubMed. I don't think you can link directly to search results so here it is:

Dating violence against adolescent girls and associated substance use, unhealthy weight control, sexual risk behavior, pregnancy, and suicidality.

Silverman JG, Raj A, Mucci LA, Hathaway JE.

JAMA. 2001 Aug 1;286(5):572-9.

CONTEXT: Intimate partner violence against women is a major public health concern. Research among adults has shown that younger age is a consistent risk factor for experiencing and perpetrating intimate partner violence. However, no representative epidemiologic studies of lifetime prevalence of dating violence among adolescents have been conducted. OBJECTIVE: To assess lifetime prevalence of physical and sexual violence from dating partners among adolescent girls and associations of these forms of violence with specific health risks. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Female 9th through 12th-grade students who participated in the 1997 and 1999 Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Surveys (n = 1977 and 2186, respectively). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Lifetime prevalence rates of physical and sexual dating violence and whether such violence is independently associated with substance use, unhealthy weight control, sexual risk behavior, pregnancy, and suicidality. RESULTS: Approximately 1 in 5 female students (20.2% in 1997 and 18.0% in 1999) reported being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner. After controlling for the effects of potentially confounding demographics and risk behaviors, data from both surveys indicate that physical and sexual dating violence against adolescent girls is associated with increased risk of substance use (eg, cocaine use for 1997, odds ratio [OR], 4.7; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.3-9.6; for 1999, OR, 3.4; 95% CI, 1.7-6.7), unhealthy weight control behaviors (eg, use of laxatives and/or vomiting [for 1997, OR, 3.2; 95% CI, 1.8-5.5; for 1999, OR, 3.7; 95% CI, 2.2-6.5]), sexual risk behaviors (eg, first intercourse before age 15 years [for 1997, OR, 8.2; 95% CI, 5.1-13.4; for 1999, OR, 2.4; 95% CI, 1.4-4.2]), pregnancy (for 1997, OR, 6.3; 95% CI, 3.4-11.7; for 1999, OR, 3.9; 95% CI, 1.9-7.8), and suicidality (eg, attempted suicide [for 1997, OR, 7.6; 95% CI, 4.7-12.3; for 1999, OR, 8.6; 95% CI, 5.2-14.4]). CONCLUSION: Dating violence is extremely prevalent among this population, and adolescent girls who report a history of experiencing dating violence are more likely to exhibit other serious health risk behaviors.