And now I won't ever have to read it again

Because the almost always unreadable XX Factor just wasn't enough, Slate created a new site called DoubleX, which is very purple so women are really going to read it now. Anyway, I decided I would give it a chance and here is what was up earlier this morning.

Hey guys women shouldn't bully each other and keep each other down!

OH MY GOD TAKE THAT PHOTO OF YOUR KID OFF FACEBOOK YOU DULL, SOULLESS PARENT-DRONE

HEY MICHELLE OBAMA PUT ON SOME GODDAMN PANTYHOSE, US LADIES NEED IT UNLESS WE WANT TO GET SURGERY ON OUR LEGS TO REMOVE THOSE UNSIGHTLY THINGS LIKE KNEES, AND VEINS

BLARRGH KATE GOSSELIN I HATE YOUR HAIR SOMEONE PAID ME TO WRITE AN ENTIRE POST ABOUT IT

Wow I sure am glad that someone is on top of issues that really affect women all over the world! Who cares about limited opportunities to get an education, rape, relationship abuse, AIDS, clean water, geez I don't know what else but I'd better go pick up some pantyhose tomorrow morning.

A tattoo idea?

"Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day."

I'm new to this whole idea -- maybe it's a bad idea to open it up to public opinion. The quotation is from Macbeth in 1.3. I like the idea of using a text, but I wonder if I would just get sick of rereading it after a while.

Also, I decided Macbeth truly is my favorite Shakespeare tragedy. Sorry, Lear.

The light at the end of the tunnel

seems much farther away than it actually is. In about six more weeks my undergraduate career will finally be over, meaning my thesis will (somehow) be finished. I don't know why it seems so much harder to do work that is much easier than what I'll start doing this fall. Looking over the syllabuses I got from IU is both exciting and terrifying. My plan for the summer is to relax and not even attempt any critical reading, but I do want to get through a ton of 19th century novels since I haven't actually read that many. More Eliot, Collins, Gaskell, Dickens, and Brontë(s). Hardly work, right?

I still haven't figured out how to pronounce Brontë. If it was originally Brunty, shouldn't it be Bront-ee and not Bront-ay? I've heard both. I'm going to have to figure this out. There are so many words that I have only read and would never dare to guess out loud. Including everything French -- if I'm ever forced to say Fin de siècle, I just cough. And who knew that St. John from Jane Eyre is pronounced Sin-jinn? In class today I learned Jekyll should actually be pronounced JEEK-ull -- my mind has been sufficiently blown for now.

A confession: I can't resist tormenting my cat with these balloons.

Also: When I got back from my trip to Indiana, pretty much the first thing I did was burn the shit out of my left arm while being totally, inexcusably negligent with a pan full of hot peanut oil. Now I have a second degree burn that is probably going to leave a ridiculous splash-shaped scar. Anyway, I guess I at least learned a Valuable Lesson.

Plans for next year

Headed here to study 19th century British literature. I want to roll around in a big pile of Fraser's and Household Words!

Politics

I've noticed online that conservatives complain about Obama constantly now. Blah blah Obama flew somewhere in a helicopter. A cartoon of Obama as a chimpanzee couldn't possibly be racist. During the campaign this would have distressed me, but now I don't care if every comment on an online newspaper article refers to "the spendulus package." We won. I guess this is how Republicans have been feeling for the past eight years.

Time is passing glacially as I wait to see where I might be going to graduate school next year. So far I have only been accepted to one school, UW Madison. Now instead of worrying about never being a professor, I'm worried about having to actually teach a class. Can I do it? I do like talking at people about literature when they probably don't want to listen to me. Madison would mean a very very excellent program, living in poverty, but also owning a dog. At least once a week I dream that I'm walking my own dog.

Lizard people

The Senate recount has begun in Minnesota. If you're curious about what a "contested ballot" looks like, I highly recommend checking out this article.

Also, I'm starting to get my winter neck and shoulder cramps from involuntarily cringing against the cold. Minnesota!

Instead of getting songs stuck in my head,

it's lines of poetry -- especially while climbing stairs. Right now I've got Goethe, as transcribed by Carlyle (and beginning Sartor Resartus):

Mein Vermächtnis, wie herrlich weit und breit!
Die Zeit ist mein Vermächtnis; Mein Acker ist die Zeit.

Translated accurately enough by my man T.C., "My inheritance how wide and fair! Time is my fair seed-field, of Time I'm heir." I'm not usually one for Goethe's pithy quotations, as they usually make me feel lazy and unaccomplished. (Neither of these guys is a good match for someone who will never believe in the virtue of labor in itself.) However, something about "wie herrlich weit und breit!" is as refreshing as a gulp of water. Maybe the long vowels of weit and breit and Zeit (time) together are what make it, for me, so open and hopeful.

I just realized these lines may also be connected to my (bizarre) love for the song "Open Field" off the latest Silver Jews album, which I listen to whenever I am in a bad mood. I really do believe poetry and literature are healing, or at least a source for good mantras. "But screw your courage to the sticking-place,/And we'll not fail."

It's easy to write a blog post

if you're supposed to be doing something else. Now, I got my habit of procrastinating out of my system while in my first year of college after one especially harrowing experience: reading the second half of Middlemarch and writing a term paper on it in the same night. (Of course, I completely hated the book, though I'm sure the next time I read Eliot I will love it.) I think being out of school for two years has also made me more mature -- now I start everything days or weeks ahead of time. Anyway, I've been having a hard time making myself write papers for my current survey class. Now that I know what it's like to research and write about what I want to, these five-page close readings seem like total hoop-jumping. I'm currently writing about one of Donne's sexy, sexy Holy Sonnets, all of which I think I've read at some point, and it's very hard to feel interested. This has made me realize the extent to which I otherwise really enjoy doing schoolwork, most of the time. I'm the student who is always secretly disappointed that class is canceled, i.e. a sicko.

Like everyone else, I've also been having trouble finding things to do now that the election's over. I have to somehow make up for at least four hours of obsessive blog reading a day. My children had better appreciate my intricate trivial knowledge of these past two years someday (I can actually remember what every line of this website refers to). Luckily, working on applications and my thesis has taken up some more time, but I've also resorted to adding myself back to Facebook and studying the Bible. I never took a course on the Bible and while I did go to (Catholic!) Sunday school, I can't say that I remember anything useful. I think I've got the major stories down but I have no idea about their order or history. This could be a good project. I've already been really fascinated by the first two books of Genesis alone -- how completely different they are. And there's no mention of Satan at all!

I do wish I had more self-discipline in studying. It seems like I spend most of my time lying around my apartment. I need to find the resolve to sit in the same chair, reading, for eight hours. Sonnet 7 from Milton's Poems always freaks me out:

How soon hath Time the suttle theef of youth,
Stoln on his wing my three and twentieth yeer!
My hasting dayes flie on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.

Come on, dude. I just turned 23. Let me chill for at least a little while longer.

I'm bad at blog

I am so bad at blogging. I know no one reads this blog, but that also motivates me to never post in it. Of course, that means no one will ever read it. I should start divulging juicy personal secrets. This afternoon, I spent half of my Milton class not taking notes and instead trying to memorize the beginning of Paradise Lost. Let's see what I can do:

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
Sing Heav'nly Muse, who didst inspire
On the secret top of Oreb, or of Sinai, ...
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos

augghh

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

I completely forgot Jesus, who is a pretty important part of the whole thing (and all our woe,/With loss of Eden, till one greater man/Restore us, and regain the blissful seat). Really, after this semester I would be surprised if I didn't end up a Christian through immersion alone.

España es nuestro enemigo

So, McCain thinks that Spain might attack America. But as the Spanish press points out, he might just be confused about who Zapatero is. Oh, okay.

Anyway, is this the best proof McCain is continuing the Bush agenda, or what?

Graphs! graphs! graphs!

I like looking at graphs. Most graphics made to try to explain events in this election have been pretty bad. This one is actually pretty good:



Still, nothing beats this. Or this.

Also: this!

Manmade deltas and concrete rivers

Before I moved away from California, I kind of assumed I never would (and I definitely never guessed I would be living in Minnesota). Now I have the strange experience of seeing California from the outside, this distant and mystical place colored in helpfully by pop culture and, suddenly, my own nostalgia. Panning for gold as a child a dozen times. This one drunk guy at the bus depot in Santa Cruz who told me he was spending his day "snoozin', boozin', and Santa Cruzin'." (In the midwest, strangers don't really talk to each other in public, something I still find kind of weird). I expected to miss redwoods, Mexican food and Santa Cruz fog, but not sock-piercing starthistle, yellow smoke from summer fires, and that pure, dry heat of 110-degree afternoons. To be fair, things I like about Minneapolis:

- the wild rabbits that hop the streets at night, even downtown
- experiencing actual Weather, especially violent summer thunderstorms
- the many excellent places to buy used records
- this mural, which just got painted over.


A California playlist

1. Pavement, "Unfair"
2. The Beach Boys, "California Girls"
3. The Dandy Warhols, "Horse Pills"
4. The Mamas and the Papas, "California Dreaming"
5. Eric Burdon and the Animals, "San Franciscan Nights"
6. The Velvet Underground, "Who Loves the Sun"
7. The Decemberists, "California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade"
8. Pavement, "Two States"
9. Brian Eno, "On Some Faraway Beach"
10. The Dead Kennedys, "California Über Alles"

and then I realized I had to post something

Well, I made a blog. I used to keep an online journal as a teenager that was very personal and ridiculous, and this will, of course, be nothing like that. But I did miss the idea of having a place and a persona on the internet. My hope is that this will turn out to be a partly politics and partly food blog. Go!