Monday, December 29, 2008
Wanted
Sunday, December 28, 2008
On "Fashion"
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Not That I'm Humble...
I don't like these. I'm fairly sure they violate all of my moral convictions. And yet, because Ilana recommended them to me without skipping a beat when I asked what about myself I could improve, I am suffering through them.
A) They make me gag. B) The gel that is left in your mouth afterward is gross. C) They are vain. D) They prevent you from properly speaking when you have them in. This is, perhaps, the most irritating part to me.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
On Shopping (-ish)
"I'm really mad at you because you won't post anything on my blog and you manipulate everyone into sledding with you." --Emily to Stearns
"Don't say hate." (distractedly, while reading the ads for sales tomorrow) --Mama Leopard
What Stearns should have posted is the lament of Gypsy, Stearns and I this Christmas season: the closing of the extraordinarily wonderful store, B. Moss. I had my heart set on a B. Moss coat on clearance after Christmas. What sales they had! What does this show about the state of our nation? Our taste in clothing must be entirely out of control for this reasonable, simple, sophisticated style to be out of demand.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
From My Delightful Polish Correspondent
Monday, December 22, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
On Book Stuffing
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Kanye West - RoboCop
Okay, so I don't like the "okay, okay, okay, okay" line at all. That is really weird (although sort of funny). And the end of this song is annoying. But other than those things, I really do like this song (although my siblings tell me that Kanye can't sing).
Friday, December 19, 2008
On Poetry and Practical Politics
"Is it too late to convince the President-elect not to have a poem written for and read at his Inauguration? The event will be a great moment in the nation’s history. Three million people will be listening on the Mall. Many of them will be thinking of another great moment that took place forty-five years ago, at their backs, when Martin Luther King stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Such grandeur would seem to call for poetry. But in fact the opposite is true.
For many decades American poetry has been a private activity, written by few people and read by few people, lacking the language, rhythm, emotion, and thought that could move large numbers of people in large public settings."
...
"On all these occasions, the incoming President seemed to be claiming more for his arrival than he deserved, and to be doing it by pretending that poetry means more in American life than, alas, it does."
...
"Obama’s Inauguration needs no heightening. It’ll be its own history, its own poetry."
Goodness gracious--so poetry has disintegrated from a public to a private activity and now we will be denigrating things to include poetry there? I mean, how exactly do we seek to make poetry more public again except by including it at public events? Do we take things like music away from the inauguration, since it "needs no heightening"? Granted, I would be very surprised if the poet composed something very great for the inauguration. Which is all the more reason to choose a great poem from the past, as opposed to feeling absolutely compelled to compose something new (an anecdote in the article about Frost reinforces this point).
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Cancer and Sleep
Sleep 'could help fight cancer'
Disrupted sleep link to skin cancer
Putting cancer to sleep
Song for a Winter's Night
I listened to this song non-stop during winter finals my junior year of college. It was the year I saw the Northern Lights and was roomming with Parker. It is one of my favorite songs for this time of year. (I don't know exactly what's up with the video, alas.)
Advent Prayers (Broadly Understood)
"I shall wait for my Lord and Savior and point him out when he is near, alleluia." (This reminds me of Anna and Simeon, who are two of my favorite people in the Bible [I really like Elizabeth, as well]. I like this job--it sounds simple: wait for the Lord and point Him out when He is near. Plus, pointing him out when He's in unexpected places could be quite fun.)
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
On Hooking Up
Rochester Garbage Plate
Monday, December 15, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Busman's Honeymoon
This Whole Poem is Quite Nice (Abridged Here for Ilana)
This poem captures the continuity and change that are inherent in families. Furthermore (and it is more striking when the poem is read as a whole, which is really the only way to read a poem), it breaks down, with more and more enjambment at the end of the poem, paralleling the possibility of leaving.
There Will Be Blood
The mirroring in the film was beautiful--the relationship between the father and the son was touching (Emily, snarkily, when someone talked at the wrong moment [as if I don't talk during movies...]: "This is a very touching scene, you know!"). When the man adopts the child, he feeds him milk mixed with a little whisky (clever, I know!); later, when the child goes deaf, he mixes whisky into his glass of milk to help him sleep, and then tilts the glass as if it's a bottle for his son to drink. The relationship between Daniel (the father) and the preacher is also a power struggle in which the power repeatedly changes hands, each time accompanied by slapping and each causing the other to repudiate his beliefs and loudly profess the other's.
Monsignor Quixote on Faith.2 (Plus a Little Marx)
Monsignor Quixote: "Oh, I know what you think. You think my God is an illusion like the windmills. But He exists, I tell you, I don't just believe in Him. I touch Him."
Father Quixote began to raise himself in wrath from the grass.
Monsignor Quixote: "I believe what I told her," he told himself as he went to find the Mayor, "I believe it of course, but how is it that when I speak of belief, I become aware always of a shadow, the shadow of disbelief haunting my belief?"
"God forbid," Father Quixote said. "Then he would be living in a desert without end. No doubt. No faith. I would preder him to have what we call a happy death."
"What do you mean by happy death?"
"I mean the hope of something further."
"The beatific vision and all tht nonsense? Believing in some life eternal?"
"I'd be glad, of course."
"I wonder."
Friday, December 12, 2008
The BBC
The title: "Kiss of Deaf"?! What a morbid pun!
The subtitle: "A young Chinese woman was left partially deaf following a passionate kiss from her boyfriend"--it's good that they mentioned it was her boyfriend, at least we know they were in a committed relationship (really--why do I care about this story at all, not to mention that particular fact?).
The first line: "The 20-something from Zhuhai in Guangdong province..."--this line varies between vagueness and overly specific detail.
Second line: really?!, there were local media warnings about the dangers of excessive kissing?! I really wish that they'd translated some of these ads!
Third line: at least they acknowledged that kissing is normally quite safe.
The rest of the article: some rather gross explanation of what happened to her ear.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
What Makes Man Different from Animals.8
Marx, "Alienated Labor"
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
I Love Baltimore.4
Designed by Benjamin Latrobe, who also designed the U.S. Capitol, the Baltimore Basilica is actually less exciting to me (from what I've heard recent renovations are closer to the original look, but lose some of the built up layers--it really looked all too shiny and new and clean to me for my taste) than the crypt, which is lovely with rows and rows of brick arches. It is also notable for four inverse arches under the upstairs dome. This is unusual, as far as I know, and very lovely.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
I Love Baltimore.3
Monday, December 8, 2008
I Love Baltimore.2
Baltimore's Walters Art Museum is delightful, in part because "art" is broadly understood--it's more just a collection of beautiful things. There is a moose head and an armadillo (and other strange animals, one of which contributed to a later nightmare, I think) in the same room with a painting of a wedding feast by Pieter Brueghel the Younger. Everything is just packed into these rooms, which means that some of the art is displayed in a European fashion--covering the whole wall (as opposed to the way we typically do it in America--a couple of pictures on one wall, all at the same height). And then there was a jewelry exhibit! And a room full of vases and clocks and a Faberge egg (for some reason I've had a fascination with Faberge eggs since I learned about them from the tour guide on a bus during my first visit to New York City--remember that doubledecker bus with an open top in the rain and grating over the window in the bottom, Diana? And your father's window getting stuck down on the way home? And Ellis Island and Emma Lazarus?).
Sunday, December 7, 2008
I Love Baltimore
Also, I find it interesting that I go around spouting agrarian things and really, really adore cities.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Another Project for You, Sterns
The Art of Losing.2
S: "Where'd you park?"
Emily: "I have no idea. P Street."
JBL [as we walk down P Street and my car isn't there]: "One of those was a lie. I think it was the second one."
Emily: "I wouldn't call it a lie, exactly: I didn't intend an untruth. [Revelation:] I parked on O! I'm positive!"
S [unbelieving]: "Let's drive around in my car to find your car."
Emily: "But does the key fob [which unlocks the door and flashes the headlights, modern, modern car that I have!, with such a clever way of allowing you to find it] work from inside another car?"
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
The End of the Semester.2
Emily: "Professor Bluerd, it's good to see you! I'm actually on my way to my very last discussion section."
PB: "You know, I just this very minute got done teaching my last class of the semester!"
Emily [with a sigh]: "Aren't you sad?"
PB [giving me a rather confused, confused look]: "Well, I guess it's sort of bittersweet." (I think he meant to say, "What sort of wet-behind-the-ears teacher are you to be sad about the end of the semester?")
So, I proceeded to my last discussion section of the semester, which was fortunate (not the fact that I proceeded there, but that it was my last of the semester) because I have been losing control of my Wednesday section since my return from Spain (lest you judge too harshly my ability to manage a classroom, which are, as you, my dear, generous reader shall see, in fact, limited, it's only been three discussion sections).
Well, today was the most lost control of. I won't say the worst, because it actually increases my enjoyment of class. Anyway, this class, I couldn't, for the life of me, get them to focus on Marx (which wasn't a strictly necessary, actually, since we'd [the half of the class that didn't leave early for Thanksgiving break] talked about him last class, and two discussions may be just too much Marx). At one point, I went off on, and I mean really got fired up about, Marx's use of stages, which other thinkers we've read this semester didn't employ. I was emotional on this point, but just as I was reaching the culmination of my rant, I realized I had no idea what it all related to. So I finished calmly with, "I don't really know where I was going with that."
One of my students, who, as I found out tonight, is a fan of mine, we shall call her, "C," said, "No! That was really interesting." And proceeded to explain why. She followed her explanation with a declaration of how much she liked me as a TA and how the boys in the class better not try to make any moves on me.
One final point: I once again reflected on the absurdity of picking out three words to describe your TA on the TA evaluation form. So when I returned to the room when they were [mostly] finished filling out the forms, I wrote on the board:
intelligent
articulate
beautiful
and told them that those three words were, in fact, the proper answer to that question on the form. I guess I forgot "clever."
Also, he (JVS, a little old man at 81-ish) told me a story about being on a train on the way to his nephews and trying to get a water bottle from his bag. The bag, however, had slipped and was wedged down into the rack. The little old woman who was next to him (he described her as more than a hundred years old) asked him if she could help him. He said that he now knows that he's "gone over" when someone older offers to help him--and a woman at that!
The End of the Semester
I won. It was Reese's Christmas bells. How ridiculous we are--Christmas bells?
Oh my goodness, is this not the prettiest dress you've ever seen? Sterns--learn how to make this!
As always, I'm in awe of The Sartorialist, except for the girl's bag, which I'm not crazy about, although I do like the shoes.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Lullabies
When Did My Brother Become So Clever?
Love,
Silmarillion (HADSPOGH)
Actually, I do remember precisely when it was that he became so cute/manly:
Yo...so we have to keep some form of communication going between us. How about each person has provide one interesting fact (about themselves or someone we know), a joke, a picture, or something else everyday. It might be easier to use email...whatever.
My interesting fact is that i sat through 2 firework displays on two consecutive days while sitting with the same girl last week.
The Globalization of Prayer
Monday, December 1, 2008
Little Lent
This Advent moon shines cold and clear,
These Advent nights are long;
Our lamps have burned year after year,
And still their flame is strong.
“Watchman, what of the night?” we cry,
Heart-sick with hope deferred:
“No speaking signs are in the sky,”
Is still the watchman’s word.
The Porter watches at the gate,
The servants watch within;
The watch is long betimes and late,
The prize is slow to win.
“Watchman, what of the night?” but still
His answer sounds the same:
“No daybreak tops the utmost hill,
Nor pale our lamps of flame.”
One to another hear them speak,
The patient virgins wise:
“Surely He is not far to seek,”—
“All night we watch and rise.”
“The days are evil looking back,
The coming days are dim;
Yet count we not His promise slack,
But watch and wait for Him.”
One with another, soul with soul,
They kindle fire from fire:
“Friends watch us who have touched the goal.”
“They urge us, come up higher.”
“With them shall rest our waysore feet,
With them is built our home,
With Christ.” “They sweet, but He most sweet,
Sweeter than honeycomb.”
There no more parting, no more pain,
The distant ones brought near,
The lost so long are found again,
Long lost but longer dear:
Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard,
Nor heart conceived that rest,
With them our good things long deferred,
With Jesus Christ our Best.
We weep because the night is long,
We laugh, for day shall rise,
We sing a slow contented song
And knock at Paradise.
Weeping we hold Him fast Who wept
For us,—we hold Him fast;
And will not let Him go except
He bless us first or last.
Weeping we hold Him fast to-night;
We will not let Him go
Till daybreak smite our wearied sight,
And summer smite the snow:
Then figs shall bud, and dove with dove
Shall coo the livelong day;
Then He shall say, “Arise, My love,
My fair one, come away.”
In Defense of Christmas Music
A) There is a jackhammer outside of my window. It is 8:30 p.m. This is curious. I refuse to believe that whatever activity is involved is legitimate.
Myrrh: "Coolidge or Coleridge?"
Me: "I don't know; I've forgotten."
Myrrh: "Here's a gravestone that says Hosmer; that's just like Homer."
D) As far as I can tell, the majority of people I've been around for the first few days do not appreciate radio Christmas music. Gasp! I know--this is very surprising. And, combined with the inability of my old radio in my room (which must have grown accustomed to only the main pop and country radio stations) to pick up any Christmas music stations except when combined with a classical music station, is very disheartening. There is something to be said about Christmas music--first of all, it is a reason to look forward to Thanksgiving. Second, listening to it makes you happy because you remember listening to it while decorating the house and tree, which are wonderful activities. (This makes me think of that angel with a large silver skirt that turned around and played some beautiful song, and that pair of pink poodles that were a holiday ornament only because of the holly at their throats, and that glass nativity scene of which you broke two, Sterns, and claimed the third for yourself.) Third, it makes you think about snow, which is a delightful thought in December. Fourth, I love roommates who bring me chocolate. That is all.