Two nights ago when I was reading in bed by the gentle light of my upright IKEA crepe lamp, I saw another earwig slip out from by the wainscotting and skitter across the attractive hardwood floors of my Danish Haven. I ended up reaching over and crushing it with a slip of paper I had been using as a bookmark.
Last night at the bar the gangly-pud boyfriend of my nemesis came into the bar near campus where all the students go, and where I was drinking and chit-chatting with a friend. The doorman and the bartender gave him enthusiastic hellos and shook his hand, which threw me off guard. Since his girlfriend is such a little ray of sunshine, I assumed both of them were equally well-loved, but I guess I was wrong. Whatever's up with that, though, one thing is clear -- he's only in the relationship for the ass. That was clear long ago. Whenever they're together he seems stressed out and overwrought like she's unloading her stress onto him, and he has to have some good reason to want to put up with that.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Learning HBRW: How great is the tetragrammaton?
My Hebrew is going decent. I can sound my way through sentences, but I wonder if I'll ever be able to look down at a page of Hebrew characters and have words jump out at me like they do when I look at Greek now.
The last unit I looked at was about the Hebrew name for God. It's sweet how they don't put in vowel points and just have the consonant series YHWH ("the tetragrammaton") -- leaving out the vowel points makes the word distinctive on the page -- and it's sweet how when you get to it, you just say the word "Adonay" ('my lord') instead, the consonants of which look nothing like the consonants in the tetragrammaton, they're completely different. I've always known that that was Jewish practice, but it's crazy different once you actually get to learning the Hebrew and do it yourself.
The last unit I looked at was about the Hebrew name for God. It's sweet how they don't put in vowel points and just have the consonant series YHWH ("the tetragrammaton") -- leaving out the vowel points makes the word distinctive on the page -- and it's sweet how when you get to it, you just say the word "Adonay" ('my lord') instead, the consonants of which look nothing like the consonants in the tetragrammaton, they're completely different. I've always known that that was Jewish practice, but it's crazy different once you actually get to learning the Hebrew and do it yourself.
Gonna pump you up!
Someone's mixtape they play in the weightroom at the gym on campus has Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" on it.
While we're on the subject of the Carpenters...: today's music.
This past Sunday I asked my friend who mans the library guard desk of the main library on campus what she thought of the Carpenters. She was like, "The Carpenters, who are they? Are they what you young hucklebucks listen to nowadays?"
While we're on the subject of Nixon...: A condolence letter to Richard Carpenter.
Part of Nixon's condolence letter to Richard Carpenter on the death of his sister, dated February 22nd, 1983 (quoted Coleman's The Carpenters: The Untold Story, p. 325):
I remember how impressed I was with her vivacious and captivating warmth. The two of you were a great team and provided a sharp contrast to some of the groups in the Seventies who professed to be musical artists. I know how much you and her family will miss her but just remember that for millions of her fans she left only pleasant memories.
What an odd letter -- a condolence letter is no place to slam degenerate rock music, and is he implying that Karen Carpenter left unpleasant memories for her family? I hope Nixon wrote this in haste.
I remember how impressed I was with her vivacious and captivating warmth. The two of you were a great team and provided a sharp contrast to some of the groups in the Seventies who professed to be musical artists. I know how much you and her family will miss her but just remember that for millions of her fans she left only pleasant memories.
What an odd letter -- a condolence letter is no place to slam degenerate rock music, and is he implying that Karen Carpenter left unpleasant memories for her family? I hope Nixon wrote this in haste.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Memories of the Clown Memorial Service: Proclamation.
The program mostly consisted of an emcee clown introducing different other clowns to read different bits of information, like about the circus accident, or the Showmen's League of America (which had bought the land for the graves for the sixty-four unidentifiable bodies), and other stuff like that. After a bit of that, the emcee clown started talking about how International Clown Week was instituted during the 1970s, and then she was like, "I'd now like to introduce Oopsie-Daisy to read the proclamation of President Nixon."
Memories of the Clown Memorial Service: Raffle.
They had a raffle for the kids who came. Prizes were Harry Potter books, and the winners had to go stand around a grave from the circus accident for a man named "Harry Potter".
Getting ready for marriage...
On the bus home from the concert last night there was this couple sitting across from me who couldn't have been more than 16 each. The girl had a lot of makeup on and a purple polo shirt and white shorts that ended only a couple inches from her hoo-hah, and the guy was in khakis and a polo shirt and had his hand just kind of plopped on her upper inner thigh. But, she had this bored look on her face and would just look out the window, and he was really into "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", which he was reading. The hand-on-the-thigh thing was totally perfunctory and reminded me of those walking-dead marriages you always hear about. This was totally like the beginning of one.
Great livestock-themed t-shirt I saw yesterday.
I was drinking coffee and studying outside and people-watching and this frat-type guy came by wearing a blue version of this.
Stormy weather with a musical program.
Last night I went to an outdoor concert where Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony was played. There was thunder and distant lightning for the first three movements, and during the fourth movement, which Beethoven wrote to be an imitation of a rainstorm, it kept getting closer, but it was only in the fifth movement, which was supposed to be a musical representation of country people rejoicing after a storm, did it start raining piss out of a boot. The lightning was really close, too, and I kept thinking about how funny it would be if lightning struck and several people died at an outdoor classical music concert during the last movement of the Pastoral Symphony, but then I didn't think it would be so funny because one of those people could have been me.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
An undergraduate thesis on Marcus Aurelius's Meditations.
This cool-as-all-hell undergrad I know who works the library desk at the main library on campus was bitching to me last night about how to graduate with a Classics major -- this is apart from honors standing! -- you're required to be in a senior-year seminar and write a 30-60 page research paper. She's kind of ticked, since she says it eats up her time and most people's Greek and Latin might just now be getting to the decent stage, in the best of cases.
Anyhow, though, not since she thinks she can write a revolutionary paper (which she thinks she won't) or because she wants to know something about Stoicism (which she does), she's decided to write on Marcus Aurelius's Meditations and his advice for dealing with irritating people, since it's interesting and she says she needs help working on that as a person. "Plus," she was like, "maybe it'll help me deal with the people in my seminar who are preparing to make a major contribution to scholarship. They annoy the hell out of me."
Anyhow, though, not since she thinks she can write a revolutionary paper (which she thinks she won't) or because she wants to know something about Stoicism (which she does), she's decided to write on Marcus Aurelius's Meditations and his advice for dealing with irritating people, since it's interesting and she says she needs help working on that as a person. "Plus," she was like, "maybe it'll help me deal with the people in my seminar who are preparing to make a major contribution to scholarship. They annoy the hell out of me."
"Stardust" and the fantasy genre.
The NYTimes had this interesting article a week or so ago about the new movie "Stardust" and how, among other things, it violates fantasy genre expectations that arose post-1970s:
Set in two parallel worlds, a quaint Victorian village named Wall and the fantastical kingdom of Stormhold, and with a plot that involves both a witch and a posse of murderous princes chasing after a fallen meteorite that is really a young woman, “Stardust” is also written in a consciously old-fashioned manner. Mr. Gaiman composed it in longhand, using a fountain pen and a leather-covered notebook, he said in New York recently, and the result was that he eliminated “a lot of computery bloat.” His aim was to evoke the manner of early-20th-century writers like Lord Dunsany and Hope Mirrlees, who wrote fantasy stories of a sort that was sometimes called “faerie.”
“In the first half of the century there was no genre distinction,” he said. “People who wrote fantasy were just novelists. Hope Mirrlees, for example, was a friend of Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot. In this country you had someone like James Branch Cabell, who was a very distinguished figure. There was no sense that fantasy was in any way less than respectable. Then in the middle of the century you get Tolkien, who at first wasn’t pigeonholed as a fantasy writer either. But by the early ’70s ‘Lord of the Rings’ was a cult, and it spawned a whole genre, with genre expectations.”
“Stardust,” in other words, was intended to be pre-Tolkien, a fantasy novel that didn’t read like one, and the movie’s creative team — the director, Matthew Vaughn, and the screenwriter, Jane Goldman — have attempted much the same thing: a fantasy film that can be watched not just by the “Lord of the Rings” crowd, or even by Mr. Gaiman’s worshipful following, but also by people who wouldn’t be caught dead at a fantasy film.
It's interesting to think of a time when Dungeons and Dragons-type things weren't a given, or even on the radar. For many people my age, or at least up until a few years ago for many people my age, it must have been like imagining the Catholic church without John Paul II at its helm.
Set in two parallel worlds, a quaint Victorian village named Wall and the fantastical kingdom of Stormhold, and with a plot that involves both a witch and a posse of murderous princes chasing after a fallen meteorite that is really a young woman, “Stardust” is also written in a consciously old-fashioned manner. Mr. Gaiman composed it in longhand, using a fountain pen and a leather-covered notebook, he said in New York recently, and the result was that he eliminated “a lot of computery bloat.” His aim was to evoke the manner of early-20th-century writers like Lord Dunsany and Hope Mirrlees, who wrote fantasy stories of a sort that was sometimes called “faerie.”
“In the first half of the century there was no genre distinction,” he said. “People who wrote fantasy were just novelists. Hope Mirrlees, for example, was a friend of Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot. In this country you had someone like James Branch Cabell, who was a very distinguished figure. There was no sense that fantasy was in any way less than respectable. Then in the middle of the century you get Tolkien, who at first wasn’t pigeonholed as a fantasy writer either. But by the early ’70s ‘Lord of the Rings’ was a cult, and it spawned a whole genre, with genre expectations.”
“Stardust,” in other words, was intended to be pre-Tolkien, a fantasy novel that didn’t read like one, and the movie’s creative team — the director, Matthew Vaughn, and the screenwriter, Jane Goldman — have attempted much the same thing: a fantasy film that can be watched not just by the “Lord of the Rings” crowd, or even by Mr. Gaiman’s worshipful following, but also by people who wouldn’t be caught dead at a fantasy film.
It's interesting to think of a time when Dungeons and Dragons-type things weren't a given, or even on the radar. For many people my age, or at least up until a few years ago for many people my age, it must have been like imagining the Catholic church without John Paul II at its helm.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Another bug at the Danish Haven: a second earwig.
So last night I came out of the bathroom after taking a shower and was crossing my tasteful natural-fiber IKEA rug to turn on the gentle-lighting IKEA upright crepe lamp, and when I stepped on the lamp turn-on switch, an earwig skittered away from the floor by there and I had to coax it out of the floorboards to crush it. The earwig was over by the part of the floor where I had treated scrapes with olive oil where the porn-loving Asian tenant who had preceded me in the premises had had his bed, which he had never put rubber scrape-protectors on. I'm wondering if the earwig was attracted to the food or something -- do earwigs love olive oil?
A dream I had last night involving shit.
I think my dream last night was the first dream I ever had involving shit. I dreamed I was in a giant bathtub full of water and for some reason I decided to shit in it and I was convinced it wouldn't be that bad, but the shit just lay across the drain and wouldn't do anything, even when the water was draining out, so I had to poke it and break it up so it'd drain away, and all the water around the shit got full of brown particulate matter in greater or lesser clumps once I poked it, and it began to drain away, but then someone came in and got pissed that I had shit there and I had to justify why I had come to shit in the tub.
(This is supposed to be the part where I wake up and find I've shit myself, but I woke up quite happily and went to go make toast and study my Hebrew.)
(This is supposed to be the part where I wake up and find I've shit myself, but I woke up quite happily and went to go make toast and study my Hebrew.)
Words: "disproven", "indeed', "throw up".
Today I was writing and I wrote "proven or disproven". Oops.
I think the word "indeed" is interesting. We use it like "truly" or "in truth" or "how so!", but if you look at it, it probably comes etymologically from "in action" (i.e., "in deed"). That is, it probably didn't used to function like this --
Person 1: What an asshole!
Person 2: Indeed!
-- but rather like, "He is an asshole in deed" (i.e., he has proven himself through his actions to be an asshole).
I also find "throw up" interesting. We use it all the time but don't think about the "throw" part, but if you look at it, the word talks about the actual act of projecting forth vomit from your stomach through your throat.
I think the word "indeed" is interesting. We use it like "truly" or "in truth" or "how so!", but if you look at it, it probably comes etymologically from "in action" (i.e., "in deed"). That is, it probably didn't used to function like this --
Person 1: What an asshole!
Person 2: Indeed!
-- but rather like, "He is an asshole in deed" (i.e., he has proven himself through his actions to be an asshole).
I also find "throw up" interesting. We use it all the time but don't think about the "throw" part, but if you look at it, the word talks about the actual act of projecting forth vomit from your stomach through your throat.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Was reading Cosmo today.
The last time I read Cosmo it was like eight years ago and it was actually read to me by this mouthy girl who was going off on empowering women and somehow decided that she should read to me about "7 Naughty Things You Can Do with a Loofah Sponge". Today, however, I read a Cosmo of my own volition. There was this article about the mysterious disappearances of college-age young men under similar circumstances in towns near rivers and lakes where they all were out drinking and separated from a group and got drowned, and the article concluded that it was not a serial killer killing the kids but rather drunk kids accidentally drowning, and it ended with tips on how to keep your man from getting accidentally drowned.
Bugs at the Danish Haven: an earwig, a mosquito (?).
I was sitting at home yesterday on my dark green 1950s sectional and basking in the soft natural light of my upright IKEA crepe lamp when I saw an earwig skitter across the crisp, natural-fiber pattern of my hemp-and-dark-brown-thread IKEA rug. I killed it with a swift hit from my H&M palm-fiber-and-cheap-foam house sandal.
Later, I got up from my dark green 1950s sectional and felt a very pointed itching in the center of my right buttock. I didn't look in the mirror, but I think it's a mosquito bite, somehow mysteriously acquired while I was sitting there reading.
Later, I got up from my dark green 1950s sectional and felt a very pointed itching in the center of my right buttock. I didn't look in the mirror, but I think it's a mosquito bite, somehow mysteriously acquired while I was sitting there reading.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
My nemesis is everywhere.
My nemesis is everywhere lately. Like a month ago before vacation she and gangly-pud boyfriend walked into the theater I was at to see Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, but by the time I got up and left the theater they had already exited and hadn't seen me at all. The other night she was at the bar the other night and gave me the nastiest look ever. This morning she and her gangly-pud boyfriend were outside at the bakery where I usually read the paper, she in her usual scowl and dark top, smoking up a storm and hogging the Sunday New York Times. I was debating going up to ask for a section and texted some friends about whether I should do it, and while one texted back "Hell yes!", the other one texted back "Only if u want yo ass kicked." I decided against it, since I couldn't see if it was the bakery's copy or not -- they usually write the store name across each section in black magic marker, but I couldn't tell if their sections they had had that on it -- and I had to go take a piss anyways, and since the store doesn't have a public restroom it seemed like an opportune time to leave.
Banned songs -- YOU MUST HEAR THESE.
On Saturday afternoon me and my friend went to a local museum devoted to free speech. As part of their exhibit, they had this interactive exhibit where you could listen to songs from each decade from the 50s to the present that have been banned for some reason or another. The two best were
1) Loretta Lynn's ode to birth control "The Pill", which has fantastic lyrics like
"miniskirts, hot pants and a few little fancy frills/
yeah I'm makin' up for all those years/
since I've got the pill"
and
2) Phil Ochs's folksy burlesque of societal indifference, "Outside a Small Circle of Friends", which also has great lyrics, like
"Look outside the window, there's a woman being grabbed/
they've dragged her to the bushes and now she's being stabbed/
maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain/
but Monopoly is so much fun, I'd hate to blow the game."
I also found out this song I've always known but never knew the name of is Janis Ian's "Society's Child", the video of which I linked to is from the Smother Brothers Comedy Hour and has elicited user comments like:
thank you thank you thank you..so many excellent songs like this helped me get through when i was young....what an amazing time back then, full of rebellion and promise..todays kids (i never thought I would ever start a sentece that way) have pap for music....
1) Loretta Lynn's ode to birth control "The Pill", which has fantastic lyrics like
"miniskirts, hot pants and a few little fancy frills/
yeah I'm makin' up for all those years/
since I've got the pill"
and
2) Phil Ochs's folksy burlesque of societal indifference, "Outside a Small Circle of Friends", which also has great lyrics, like
"Look outside the window, there's a woman being grabbed/
they've dragged her to the bushes and now she's being stabbed/
maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain/
but Monopoly is so much fun, I'd hate to blow the game."
I also found out this song I've always known but never knew the name of is Janis Ian's "Society's Child", the video of which I linked to is from the Smother Brothers Comedy Hour and has elicited user comments like:
thank you thank you thank you..so many excellent songs like this helped me get through when i was young....what an amazing time back then, full of rebellion and promise..todays kids (i never thought I would ever start a sentece that way) have pap for music....
Went to the black bar near me Friday night.
I went to the black bar near me on Friday night with my one friend who was in town. The place has a good jukebox and I feel in touch with pop culture just by being in there. That night they, had, among other songs, Eminem's "Guilty Conscience" (loved it -- they sample Petula Clark's "I Will Follow Him" in the background with slightly changed lyrics, and the theatrical presentation of the scenarios is awesome, and the second scenario itself is kick-ass) and Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" (loved it; people have been telling me to listen to it forever, and I avoided it because I thought I'd hate it, but I do indeed love the 60s-flavored parts, especially the transition from the chorus to the verse and the incessant hand-clapping).
Anyhow, there was this black chick in there with this enormous ass who was dancing to everything, and this thin black guy who was circling her like a fly around a honey pot, while she just kept going shaking her ass. This one song came on, too, and she kept waving her hands on her head and then her shoulders and then her butt and then her shoes in order to the chorus, and at this one part she kept her frame all still and held her hands out together in front of her head and stared forward really intense, but somehow her ass was shaking two inches to either side back and forth really violently while she kept the rest of her body perfectly still. It was intense, and I asked my friend who I was there with if he knew what song it was. He was like, "If people are moving like that, I probably don't know the song."
As it turns out, it was Lil Boosie's "Wipe Me Down".
Anyhow, there was this black chick in there with this enormous ass who was dancing to everything, and this thin black guy who was circling her like a fly around a honey pot, while she just kept going shaking her ass. This one song came on, too, and she kept waving her hands on her head and then her shoulders and then her butt and then her shoes in order to the chorus, and at this one part she kept her frame all still and held her hands out together in front of her head and stared forward really intense, but somehow her ass was shaking two inches to either side back and forth really violently while she kept the rest of her body perfectly still. It was intense, and I asked my friend who I was there with if he knew what song it was. He was like, "If people are moving like that, I probably don't know the song."
As it turns out, it was Lil Boosie's "Wipe Me Down".
Some mother-love at the blues club this past Saturday.
I went to a blues club last night with a friend who was in town. I don't like the blues -- I don't tend to like music where there's extended non-virtuosic slow variations that are supposed to have immediate emotional power (those "jams" that everyone talks about nowadays); I'm into short snappy songs with peppy lyrics and catchy hooks -- but I ended up having a half-way decent time anyways because there was this mom-type woman there on a date and she kept getting ass-grabbed all night. I couldn't look away.
She was kind of short with brown hair and a Jewish-looking forehead-nose structure, and she had an ass you could crack an egg on. It was very odd, since she had these major triceps and lines in her calves, but she also had on some thick, tall high heels and a mini-skirt that was at least a couple of inches above the knee. The guy she was with had a belly and that smooth, kind-of-scaly face you see on older guys who've had facelifts. He also had a short gray goatee and a dress shirt that was too baggy for him, and he was nowhere as near as hammered as she was; she kept swaying back and forth to the music and would turn to the stage and away from him -- they were sitting on barstools near the bar -- whenever the music came on. He kept leaning over and putting his hand on her seat so she would occasionally place her ass against it, and then he would usually move his hand up to the lower back/upper part of the ass region, though by the end of the night he had both of his hands out and under her so her just ass rested all the way up his forearms and she would lean back into him while swaying her head and looking at the stage.
My favorite part was when she was into the piano player and scampered up to take pictures of him on her digital camera. She kept leaning over him, and you could see the guy she was there with looking over and getting pissed -- someone came up to ask for her empty barstool and the guy made this pissed gesture over to her general direction and a clicking-a-camera gesture to the guy who was asking -- and at one point she squatted to take a picture, and she just squatted so her hips were parallel to the floor and she sat like that taking pictures and not holding anything for like three or four minutes, which is a fuck of a long time to squat like that, which is tough. She also had a hard time wearing a skirt and would keep striding around authoritatively and sitting with her legs wide open. I could picture her in a business outfit with shoulder pads.
Me and my friends definitely didn't like the guy, though, "Trish," we were like -- we nicknamed her Trish -- "why do you keep making these bad choices?" She was definitely on a first date and we all felt that she had been divorced a few times before. She seemed like a hot one. We all got pissed when the guy gestured over to her to come back and pointed at the empty barstool like she was a dog he was calling or something like that.
She was kind of short with brown hair and a Jewish-looking forehead-nose structure, and she had an ass you could crack an egg on. It was very odd, since she had these major triceps and lines in her calves, but she also had on some thick, tall high heels and a mini-skirt that was at least a couple of inches above the knee. The guy she was with had a belly and that smooth, kind-of-scaly face you see on older guys who've had facelifts. He also had a short gray goatee and a dress shirt that was too baggy for him, and he was nowhere as near as hammered as she was; she kept swaying back and forth to the music and would turn to the stage and away from him -- they were sitting on barstools near the bar -- whenever the music came on. He kept leaning over and putting his hand on her seat so she would occasionally place her ass against it, and then he would usually move his hand up to the lower back/upper part of the ass region, though by the end of the night he had both of his hands out and under her so her just ass rested all the way up his forearms and she would lean back into him while swaying her head and looking at the stage.
My favorite part was when she was into the piano player and scampered up to take pictures of him on her digital camera. She kept leaning over him, and you could see the guy she was there with looking over and getting pissed -- someone came up to ask for her empty barstool and the guy made this pissed gesture over to her general direction and a clicking-a-camera gesture to the guy who was asking -- and at one point she squatted to take a picture, and she just squatted so her hips were parallel to the floor and she sat like that taking pictures and not holding anything for like three or four minutes, which is a fuck of a long time to squat like that, which is tough. She also had a hard time wearing a skirt and would keep striding around authoritatively and sitting with her legs wide open. I could picture her in a business outfit with shoulder pads.
Me and my friends definitely didn't like the guy, though, "Trish," we were like -- we nicknamed her Trish -- "why do you keep making these bad choices?" She was definitely on a first date and we all felt that she had been divorced a few times before. She seemed like a hot one. We all got pissed when the guy gestured over to her to come back and pointed at the empty barstool like she was a dog he was calling or something like that.
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