This just made us laugh.

According to a recent worldwide survey by SonicWALL, a computer network security firm, 10 percent of telecommuters work in the nude. Thirty-nine percent wear sweats. And only 44 percent of women and 30 percent of men reported taking a shower on their don’t-bring-your-funky-body-odor-to-work days.

This means that if all remote and mobile workers suddenly materialized into their central downtown offices, they would make Casual Friday look like a regency ball from a Jane Austen novel.

Well, it’s not like they had Super Speed Stick in Jane Austen’s time or anything.

An article about films currently in production in Ireland includes a tidbit of news about BECOMING JANE (as well as repeating the stuff we’ve been snarking for the past several weeks).

Top actresses Dame Maggie Smith, Julie Walters and Brokeback Mountain starlet Anne Hathaway will begin shooting scenes in Charleville Castle in Co Offaly as well as in Ardmore Studios just outside Bray, Co Wicklow.

A castle? Goodness. We dare say that it inspired that well-known Gothic novel Northanger Abbey, set in a crumbling castle on a lonely moor… (or was that Longbourn? Can’t keep ‘em straight).

(Private to lurking media: that was a joke.)

Also, Alert Janeite Jen P. sent us this article, which also repeats the usual crap and also says, to our high amusement,

They had to do a biopic at this point…after Bride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones’ Diary and Clueless, they’re beginning to run out of ways to re-tell Austen novels as well.

Obviously they haven’t been to any Austen fan fiction sites lately! Of course, a film studio would actually have to PAY the fan fiction authors to use one of their stories…

Visit Winchester has put together a two-day package in Hampshire just for Jane Austen fans. There is a choice of two inns at two different price points, and the package includes lodging, a dinner, a one-hour tour of Jane Austen’s Winchester, entry to Jane Austen’s House Museum, and the Jane Austen Pitkin guide.

We were amused by this sentence:

Perfect for Janeites and fans of the Pride and Prejudice film alike.

One would think they would be the same cohort. Wouldn’t one?

Nicole Laskowski wrote a very sweet editorial about how she and a college friend came to love Lizzy Bennet (and Pride and Prejudice) in spite of themselves.

It makes sense to me why she has become Austen’s most widely known, most celebrated heroine. Because Elizabeth Bennet defines the word classic.

Jane Austen wrote that Lizzy was “as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print.” We concur.

The Detroit News, apparently.

Jane Austen purists — whose feathers you do not want to ruffle, trust us — are miffed Anne Hathaway (”The Princess Diaries”) has been cast to play the English author in the forthcoming “Becoming Jane.”

Yeah, go crawl under the bed, Grandma. Jane Austen is not for wimps!

(And is it just us or does Anne Hathaway totally look like Julia Roberts in that photo?)

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