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adventures in flippancy at https://janedotx.wordpress.com/ motivated by snacks, status, and spite

Ladner must have offered her something right away that she could live inside. And she didn’t mean by this just that she would be able to accept the importance of the habits of porcupines and the necessity of writing fierce, feuding letters on such subjects to journals that she had never before heard of. She meant also that she knew she would be able to live surrounded by implacability, by ready doses of indifference or possibly scorn.
Mrs. E would go Nazi as sure as you are born. That statement surprises you? Mrs. E seems so sweet, so clinging, so cowed. She is. She is a masochist. She is married to a man who never ceases to humiliate her, to lord it over her, to treat her with less consideration than he does his dogs. He is a prominent scientist, and Mrs. E, who married him very young, has persuaded herself that he is a genius, and that there is something of superior womanliness in her utter lack of pride, in her doglike devotion. She speaks disapprovingly of other “masculine” or insufficiently devoted wives. Her husband, however, is bored to death with her. He neglects her completely and she is looking for someone else before whom to pour her ecstatic self-abasement. She will titillate with pleased excitement to the first popular hero who proclaims the basic subordination of women.
An unlikely inspiration for Sullivan was the film “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.” Sullivan told me he felt like the character in the movie who uselessly shouts “No!” as a steamroller slowly approaches. “How do we make sure we’re controlling the narrative with Russia and denying them the element of surprise?” he wondered.