Stark Raving Sane

Je me souviens

2009-12-07T04:00:06Z

Twenty years ago on this date, a lone gunman walked into Montreal's École Polytechnique and killed fourteen people before turning the gun on himself. His victims were all female and most were studying to be engineers. Twenty-four people in total were wounded in the attack. When one of the students asked why he was there, he answered, "You're women, you're going to be engineers. You're all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists."

I have never particularly wanted to be an engineer. Or a doctor, or a lawyer, or a politician. But I have never questioned that I could be any of those things if I had had such a desire. Neither did the Montreal students, and neither did the thousands of others who were in Canadian universities and colleges in 1989. I am happy that I have the chance to choose what I will do with my life; I am hurt and angry that those fourteen women will never have that chance. There is no excuse for that.

The title to this entry is a misnomer: I do not personally remember when this happened. I was just over three years old; nobody tries to explain something like that to a toddler. But I have lived with the collective memory of it ever since. Each year at school there were memorials and announcements, and the newspapers still run commemorations and commentaries. The Montreal massacre has become a symbol of equal rights and of the struggle to end violence against women. Whether or not we think that making it a such a symbol is the right way to look at it, the important thing is that we do look at it. It reminds us that even the things we take for granted are sometimes endangered. After all, things are still not perfect ...and twenty years is not such a long time.

Obscure Canadian musicians take on an airline

2009-07-10T18:29:05Z

If I didn't love the Sons of Maxwell before, I would now. Apparently United Airlines broke Dave Carroll's guitar a year ago and has refused to pay compensation. So like any decent musician would, he's written a hilarious country song about it:

Over a 1.3 million plays in four days... not bad!

"For as myn auctour seyde, so sey I."

2009-03-11T15:56:16Z

Some musings on popular culture, spanning several centuries and using ridiculously sweeping generalizations.

Lately I, and many other people, have been lamenting the state of popular entertainment. Reality shows aside (because that would be a rant all in itself), most of the successful shows, movies, etc. are basically remakes of older ideas. A book is made into a movie, which is then made into a televison show; an older movie is remade into a newer movie; comic books become movies and television shows become comics; books and films rely more on sequels and prequels than on new ideas. What hit me today is that this is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the medievalist in me should have embraced it long ago. While the strategy of reworking old ideas has been common for centuries, it really hit its stride in the Middle Ages.

Medieval Europe did not generally prize originality. Or rather, they didn't prize it in terms of content. If you can present an old story in a new way, that's fantastic. If you have a new story that you want to tell, you'd darn well better lie and say that you found it in some old book written by a guy with a Latin name. It was almost always safer to have an "authority" (or "auctour") on which you based your work, or at least parts of it. (This was obviously long before copyright laws. But then, the longer your authority has been dead, the better, so the books would have been in the public domain for ages before it was worth stealing from them.) Nearly everything Chaucer wrote is gleaned from other sources -- some of the Canterbury Tales are almost word-for-word translations -- and the genius is that Chaucer told the tales better than anyone else. So really, taking an old story and adapting it is not limited to the present age. The difference is that modern culture claims to value fresh ideas and daring concepts. I think that's where the problem lies. At least the Middle Ages were honest about appealing to the authority of older texts; we're just too afraid to try new concepts.

I'm still mourning the loss of one of the few new, original shows on TV (Pushing Daisies, I still love you!), but it's nice to know that a derivative culture can still produce something great. Well, at least in theory. Setting aside some decent retellings of old myths, I have yet to see Revenge of the Killer Asparagus IX laballed as the next Morte D'Arthur.

smilingplatypus @ 2009-01-16T11:39:00

2009-01-16T16:47:40Z

I think this year's Latin bootcamp is officially getting to me. Case in point: last night I tried to spell "illustrious" as "illustrius." And over the Christmas holidays I declined my cousins' names. Two of them end with -a (first declension) and one with -er (second declension), so it was easy. ;)

Oh, and I am in love with my Chaucer class.

Right, back to studying. There's a quiz today in -- you guessed it -- Latin. I'll do a real update later, and I'll try to keep the medieval languages out of it. I promise.

Christmas Eve

2008-12-24T15:45:13Z

Just a quick note to say Merry Christmas to you all!

Have a wonderful Christmas, and if the weather is as weird where you are as it is here, be careful on the roads!

        ^
    <>
   < >
    <    >
    <___>

Pushing Daisies

2008-11-21T16:40:31Z

Dear ABC,

Apparently you've cancelled Pushing Daisies, one of the funniest, most original shows on the air. Congratulations. Now there is officially nothing on your network that I care about. Feel free to fill that hour with generic, soul-killing reality shows and reruns; I certainly won't be watching. Congratulations.

Sincerely,
Me.

Computer troubles

2008-10-17T21:03:34Z

So my computer died yesterday. I took it in to the repair place and was told that it's probably the hard drive. Fantastic. I'm hoping that they can fix it, or at least that they have new hard drives on sale...

Ergo, I'm computer-less for awhile and writing this at one of the campus computer labs. The point of this is: don't send me anything urgent via the Internet!

Fun fact for the day

2008-09-25T21:52:40Z

Apparently at Kalamazoo (where the university holds a huge annual medieval studies conference) there's a group that gives mock papers. One year they wrote and presented a paper examining the time when Dante went to Ireland. "Apparently" while he was there, he invented limericks! Hahahahaha.

Now I have a new goal in life: write one of those papers. Maybe I'll pretend to discover new documents proving that Chaucer's cat allergy was the inspiration for the Canterbury Tales. Oh, and he went to Ireland too. To see Dante.

ETA: For Lord of the Rings fans, especially people who've read the books as well as seen the movies, here is LOTR Breadbox, a parody of all three films. Bwahaha, genius.

Community Plug

2008-06-17T17:24:05Z

For any Harry Potter fans who have some time on their hands this summer, I present...

Application & Rules || Character Stamping || Apply for a Shop || Try out for Quidditch

Diffindo Elite is a Harry Potter hybrid sorting community. This means that, unlike other Harry Potter sorting communities, there are six houses, all mixtures of the four in canon: Gryffinpuff, Ravendor, Ravenpuff, Slytherclaw, Slytherdor, and Slytherpuff. Once you have been sorted into one of the houses, you have the opportunity to earn your house points by participating in various contests, Quidditch, and by opening a Shop! We all have a great time, and we would love for you to join today!

Click on the banner or click diffindo_elite to view the community!

We need new members! It's fun, in a nerdy sort of way. I know that some of you are familiar with this community or similar ones, but I'm putting it out there anyway. Come join! The people are lovely (if I do say so myself.) I'm a Ravenpuff (which means I'm a mix of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw). ~~And when people vote on where to "sort" you, it's like free psychoanalysis.~~ If you do join (dooo it!), write that I referred you.

News from Dog River

2008-04-14T18:21:17Z

This coming season will be the last one for Corner Gas. This is tragic. The series finale will be in spring 2009, according to my friends down at the Internet.

Apparently they want to end it while they're on a roll, rather than have it continue indefinitely until it's no longer funny. I suppose I understand, but it's hard to accept the immanent end of one of the best shows out there (in my humble opinion).

Excuse me while I go mourn.

So excited it merits a public post

2008-02-19T23:42:01Z

Amazon, I love you. I've been looking for a copy of the Hilliard Ensemble's CD "Gesualdo Tenebrae" for years. I finally found one at a reasonable price (it normally retails about $35), so that even with international shipping, I paid about $25 for the two-CD set.   Not bad for a CD that you can't find in stores and was even out of stock at Amazon for awhile. I had to go to amazon.com, since the prices were lower there (nobody seems to have told amazon.ca that the dollar's at par).

Anyway, it arrived today! My not-so-hidden nerd self is in ecstasies. It's so good. I adore a cappella voices. The bass singer has a lower register that actually makes me weak in the knees, and the harmonies in general are fantastic.  Weird (for the Renaissance) dissonances, and then the resolution, always right in tune. Ohmygoodnessitisamazing.

For Humanities people, this CD has the Miserere that we heard in second year (not the Allegri, the other one).  You might not remember it, but I do, and I've been looking for it ever since. Luckily the rest of the recording is also gorgeous, or I would feel silly.

So my quest is finally accomplished! Not quite the Holy Grail, but what can you do.

(As I went back to Amazon to get the link, I noticed that the price had gone back up a little. HA!)

A Rant on Capital Punishment

2008-02-03T01:37:51Z

This has been bugging me for awhile now The Canadian government has stopped petitioning for clemency on behalf of criminals on death row. I don't mean in general -- I mean Canadians being held in countries that have the death penalty. How do the Conservatives justify this? Is it just that it was outside out borders, so they don't have to bother? What's next, saying, "No, we don't torture, but we'll send you to some country that does so we don't get our hands dirty?" (It's not like we'd be the first country to do it.) Or will we start buying nuclear weapons and storing them on American soil? That would be ridiculous. If that doesn't make sense, then surely doing nothing while a Canadian citizen is executed doesn't make sense either.

Yes, people who break the law ought to be punished and yes, all countries have a right to determine that punishment. But the Canadian government should try to mitigate the sentence so that it is in accordance with Canadian policies. Isn't that what embassies and diplomats are for, to intercede on behalf on citizens in foreign countries? It can't be all about finding lost passports. A Canadian citizen is a Canadian citizen, with all the rights that involves. And that includes a right not to be executed, in my books. Life in prison, fine; lethal injection, definitely not fine. This sudden shift in policy is appalling. The government's silence on capital punishment now looks like tacit consent, and that worries me.

Also, on a semi-related side note: I've never understood how people can be against abortion but in favour of the death penalty. I mean, is the pro-life label selective? (The pro-choice label doesn't really work the opposite way...most people wouldn't choose to be executed, I'm thinking.) It's a bigger issue in the States, I think, where most Republican candidates tend to be anti-abortion but pro-capital punishment. The Conservatives seem to be leaning in that direction, though. It just sounds like hypocrisy to me.

And really, I don't hate Americans. Just to clear that up. I'm angry at certain policies that the Canadian government should disapprove of, and used to disapprove of, that's all. /disclaimer

Narnia gushing

2007-12-13T03:19:09Z

Because I'm still not over the Prince Caspian trailer (squeee!), I had to share some of my favourite quotes from the Narnia books. There are some plot spoilers, but ...well...you should all have read the books. If you haven't read them -- and I mean all of them, because just reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe doesn't count -- then go to the library! Right now!

"No, we're not [lettuce], honestly we're not," said Polly hastily. "We're not at all nice to eat."
"There!" said the Mole. "They can talk. Who ever heard of a talking lettuce?" (MN)

If you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you--you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again. (LWW)

"A boy in the street made a beastly joke about Queen Susan" said Prince Corin, "so I knocked him down. He ran howling into a house and his big brother came out. So I knocked the big brother down. Then they all followed me until we ran into three old men with spears who are called the Watch. So I fought the Watch and they knocked me down." (HHB)

"Beware! Beware! The bolt of Tash falls from above!"
"Does it ever get caught on a hook half-way?" asked Corin. (HHB)

Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I'm afraid, even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again: so that years later, when they were grown up, they were so used to quarrelling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently. (HHB)

"Now, once and for all, Nikabrik," said Trumpkin. "Will you contain yourself, or must Trufflehunter and I sit on your head?" (PC)

"You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth." (PC)

There once was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. (VDT)

"And finally, if your Lordship will give me a sword I will prove on any man's body in clean battle that I am Caspian the son of Caspian, lawful King of Narnia, Lord of Cair Paravel, and Emperor of the Lone Islands." (VDT)

Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon's lair, but, as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books. They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons. (VDT, which is clearly not one of the wrong books)

"With Your Majesty's leave--" began Reepicheep.
"No, Reepicheep," said the King very firmly. "You are not to attempt single combat with it. And unless you promise to obey me in this matter I'll have you tied up." (VDT)

"You can say what you like, Reepicheep. There are some things no man can face."
"It is, then, my good fortune not to be a man," replied Reepicheep with a very stiff bow. (VDT)

"Two strangers, my lord," said the Owl.
"Rangers! What d'you mean?" said the Dwarf. "I see two uncommonly grubby man-cubs. What do they want?"
"My name's Jill," said Jill, pressing forward. She was very eager to explain the important business on which they had come.
"The girl's called Jill," said the Owl, as loud as it could.
"What's that?" said the Dwarf. "The girls are all killed? I don't believe a word of it. What girls? Who killed 'em?"
"Only one girl, my lord," said the Owl. "Her name is Jill."
"Speak up, speak up," said the Dwarf. "Don't stand there buzzing and twittering in my ear. Who's been killed?"
"Nobody's been killed," hooted the Owl.
"Who?"
"NOBODY."
"All right, all right, you needn't shout. I'm not so deaf as all that. What do you mean by coming here to tell me that nobody's been killed? Why should anyone have been killed?"
"Better tell him I'm Eustace," said Scrubb.
"The boy's Eustace, my lord," hooted the Owl as loud as it could.
"Useless?" said the Dwarf irritably. "I dare say he is. Is that any reason for bringing him to court? Hey?"
"Not useless," said the Owl. "EUSTACE."
"Used to it, is he? I don't know what you're talking about, I'm sure. I'll tell you what it is, Master Glimfeather; when I was a young Dwarf there used to be talking birds and beasts in this country who could really talk. There wasn't all of this mumbling and muttering and whispering. It wouldn't have been tolerated for a moment. Not for a moment, Sir." (SC)

Puddleglum, after a little too much to drink: "Marsh-wiggle. Marsh-wiggle. Very respectable Marsh-wiggle. Respectowiggle." "Nothing wrong with me...Not a frog. Nothing frog with me. I'm a respectabiggle." And my favourite, "Reshpeckobiggle." (SC)

"One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things -- trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia." -Puddleglum. (SC...Isn't it a fantastic quote? I LOVE HIM!)

"And you must always remember there's one good thing about being trapped down here: it'll save funeral expenses." -Puddleglum, naturally. (SC)

"It's all in Plato, all in Plato; bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?" -Professor Kirke (LB, but he says similar things in LWW)

"Yes," said Queen Lucy. ''In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world." (LB)

Also, apparently Eddie Izzard will be the voice of Reepicheep!

...What?

I'm not sure how I feel about that. I mean, I love him and all, but I never saw him as Reepicheep. Or as...anything connected with Narnia. I have a very clear picture of Reep in my head, so I'll be very disappointed if he's not what I was hoping for! But I guess as long as I'm withholding judgment on Caspian (also not how I pictured him...at all), I might as well withhold judgment on Reep.

smilingplatypus @ 2007-11-27T16:58:00

2007-11-27T22:13:26Z

So the Heidegger-and-Nietzsche-Essay-of-Death didn't kill me.  Shocking, I know. And now it's oooover!

Of course, the monumental feat of finishing that essay means that I don't want to do any more work. My brain is still in the permanent flux of the opposition and unity of Being and becoming! Ahhh! I've still got one more to go this semester, although I've already got about seven pages, so it's under control.
(Edit: Except that Hotmail ate the email with my edited version! That will teach me to do work at school. Ahhhh. I hope I remembered to save it to the right drive so that I can find it tomorrow on the school computers. Argghhhhh.)

Also, I got an email from the Make Poverty History people about a bill to improve aid spending. It's already passed through Parliament and now it's in the Senate. So you should all go sign the petition on the Make Poverty History site. Only if you're in Canada, though...I somehow don't think the Senate cares about voters who don't vote in Canadian elections. Not that the Senate really cares anyway, since they're appointed (grumble, insert rant about electoral reform on various levels). But it can't hurt.

Well, unless they get annoyed by the petition and annoying activists and go, Wait! Let's cancel all anti-poverty spending just to SPITE those pesky people! Mwahaha!  ...I don't suppose that's likely.

smilingplatypus @ 2007-11-03T16:36:00

2007-11-03T20:38:46Z

Dear Coriolanus,

You IDIOT.

Sincerely,
Ellen.

ETA: I had to post this: Youtube clips of Eddie Izzard on empires, the world wars, and various dictators. Funniest man ever. And here, on Stonehenge. And on religion, especially the Church of England. But a warning: lots of strong language (and a really bad Welsh impression in the Stonehenge one). But he's hysterical anyway.

The vanquishing of the graduated licensing monster

2007-11-03T00:40:32Z

I PASSED MY FINAL DRIVING TEST!

That is all.

smilingplatypus @ 2007-10-21T15:43:00

2007-10-21T19:44:38Z

Stolen from coloursofdusk

Comment and I'll...
1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a colour, a photo, etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
7. In return, you must post this in your LJ.

Everybody loves procrastination! Actually, I got a fair amount done this weekend. So there.

smilingplatypus @ 2007-10-08T13:26:00

2007-10-08T17:33:35Z

For anyone else who is fighting the urge to dig Hegel up and kill him again, this might just be the best thing ever. Or at least, it might help me survive the Phenomenology of Spirit.

I'm still lost, though. Argghhh. I miss the days when philosophy used words that actually meant something.

In protest to "The Seeker"

2007-10-05T18:57:20Z

So this travesty of a movie opens today. And apparently they've cut out a vital character and are making one of the Signs Will's soul (oh, look, even more wannabe HP elements). So to vent my disappointment, I'm posting some quotes from the BOOKS. Some are narration and short phrases, because Susan Cooper has some of the most beautiful prose I've ever seen in a children's book. Most of them won't make sense if you haven't read the series (which you should), but the writing is lovely anyway. Some of these do reveal plot developments...just a warning.

Over Sea, Under Stone
He peered up at the enscription under an engraving. 'The Golden Hind.'
'That was Drake's ship. When he sailed to America and discovered potatoes.'
'That was Raleigh.'
'Oh well,' said Barney, who didn't really care.

' No thinking today today,' Great-Uncle Merry said firmly. 'We can't do anything until tonight. I haven't been in the sea since I came down here this year, I think you should all take me down for a bathe.'
'For a bathe?' Barney's voice rose in amazement.
'That's right.' Great-Uncle Merry glared down at him through bristling white eyebrows. 'D'you think I'm too old to swim, is that it?'
'Er--no, no, not at all, Gumerry,' Barney said, confused. 'I just never thought of you in the water, that's all.'

As they looked, the sun seemed gradually to fall, until the unbearable lightness of it was over the outlined fingers of the group of standing stones, and the stones themselves became invisible in the blaze.

The Dark is Rising
'I think I can make my own judgement on the weather, Will, without help from Miss Greythorne's butler.'

'Hawkin,' he said softly, bleakly, 'liege man, how can you do what you are going to do?'

Then he was flying again, at large in the blue-black sky, with the stars blazing timeless around his head, and the patterns of the stars made themselves known to him, both like and unlike the shapes and power attributed to them by men long ago. The Herdsman passed, nodding, the bright star Arcturus at his knee; the Bull roared by, bearing the great sun Aldebaran and the small group of the Pleiades singing in small melodic voices, like no voices he had ever heard. Up he flew, and outward, through black space, and saw the dead stars, the blazing stars, the thin scattering of life that peopled the infinite emptiness beyond. And when he was done, he knew every star in the heavens, both by name and as chartered astronimical points, and again as something much more than either; he knew the mystery of Uranus and the despair of Mercury, and he had ridden on a comet's tail. (Actually, this whole chapter, where Will is learning the ways of the Old Ones, is gorgeous.)

'Will,' said the rector, staring at him, 'I am not sure whether you should be exorcised or ordained.'

The room had stilled dramatically as he sang, and the boy's clear soprano that always seemed to belong to a stranger soared high and remote through the air. Now there was a small silence, the only part of performing that really meant anything to him, and afterward quite a lot of clapping.

Greenwitch
He had a smooth round face with round eyes, like a clever fish.

'Sounds as if he thought your picture was better than his.'
'Oh, come off it,' Barney said impatiently.
'Well, what was his picture like?'
'Weird. Very peculiar.'
'There you are, then.'
'There I am not. It was weird, but it was good too, in a nasty sort of way.'
'Goodness me,' Will said, looking vacant.

Will lept up light-footed to the crest of Kemare Head and cast himself outwards into the air, into empty sky, arms spread wide, lying on the wind like a bird; and after him went Merriman, his white hair flying like a heron's crest. For an instant the two dark spread-eagled figures seemed to hang in the sky, then with a slowness as if time held its breath they curved downwards, and were gone.

'When the Dark comes rising, it is not as one man, but as a terrible blackness filling the sky and the earth.'

The Grey King
'The only way it is funny is in that English voice of yours.'

...a gasp of energy as unthinkable as the holocaust of the sun...

'I wish you had never come here. I wish I had never heard of the Light and the Dark, and your damned old Merriman and his rhymes. If I had your golden harp now I would throw it in the sea. I am not a part of your silly quest any more, I don't care what happens to it. And Cafall was never a part of it either, or a part of your pretty pattern. He was my dog, and I loved him more than anything in the world, and now he is dead. Go away.'

'John Rowlands, what is the matter with this mad boy you have found, standing up here talking semantics, when he has just come close to breaking his neck? Get him down to the farm before he falls down in a fit and starts speaking with tongues.'

Silver on the Tree
And time and space merged as the twentieth and fourth centuries became for a Midsummer's instant two halves of a single breath...

For an Old One with the tastes and appetite of a small boy, it was hard to despair for long over the eternal fallibility of mankind when confronted with home-made bread, farm butter, sardine-and-tomato paste, raspberry jam, scones, and Mrs. Stanton's delicious, delicate, unmatchable sponge-cake.

'You're in Snowdonia now, boy,' Bran said. 'Mean annual rainfall a hundred and fifty inches, high up. Only place that didn't die of drought, back in nineteen seventy-six. Bring a raincoat. See you tomorrow. '

As the spray parted Merriman turned, tall and triumphant, and caught the blossom before it fell; he swept round, blue cloak billowing, and in a swift breathtaking movement flung it up into the sky.

'Now especially since man has the strength to destroy this world, it is the responsibility of man to keep it alive, in all its beauty and marvelous joy...If you work and care and are watchful, as we have tried to be for you, then in the long run the worse will never, ever, triumph over the better. And the gifts put into some men, that shine as bright as Eirias the sword, shall light the dark corners of life for all the rest, in so brave a world.'

ETA: oh, and apparently Will now has a twin brother. And this twin brother was (get this) held captive by the Dark in something resembling a snowglobe for his entire life. What?!

Oh, how can they do this to these books?!

Petrarch is getting to me

2007-09-11T20:58:51Z

I think this is the earliest in the year I've ever started applying school to...everything. I've been reading Petrarch's poems for Continental Lit, and apart from the obvious Dante comparisons (Laura's actually in heaven, beckoning him upwards! Come on, Beatrice did that ages ago. Find something new.), I've found something else of interest. To me.

One of the sonnets from the Canzoniere has eerie parallels with an episode from Harry Potter: namely, the retrieval of the sword in DH. It's sonnet 190:

A doe of purest white upon green grass
wearing two horns of gold appeared to me
between two streams beneath a laurel's shade
at sunrise in that season not yet ripe.

The sight of her was so sweetly austere
that I left all my work to follow her,
just like a miser who in search of treasure
with pleasure makes his effort bitterless.

"No one can touch me," around her lovely neck
was written out in diamonds and in topaz,
"It pleased my Caesar to create me free."

The sun by now had climbed the sky to midway,
my eyes were tired but not full from looking
when I fell into water, and she vanished.

Okay, yes, I know. The doe is Laura, whom he loves but who cruelly will not love him back. It has golden horns, like her golden hair; it is under a laurel tree, etc. I do see some similarities in attitude between Harry and Petrarch, although Harry isn't quite as whiny as Petrarch tends to be. Thankfully. But still...I wonder if JKR knows Petrarch, or if it's just me reading too much into things as usual. Probably the latter. What else am I going to do with my time? Reading Machiavelli is out of the question, because that would be productive. I should devote my life to making wild, random connections between various nerdy things.

Okay, the silly ramblings on fourteenth-century poetry are over.

I want to go back to school!

2007-08-29T14:55:26Z

Yes, I'm aware that I'm a freak. But I miss Hums, despite the fact that the reading list for the fourth-year core seminar is frigteningly high on Nietzsche and Hegel. I'm terrible at doing nothing, and I think I've reached my limit. I'm in the "worrying about stupid things" phase, and I really need to get some structure. While I've been dogsitting/housesitting almost steady for the last month, it's not enough. I need school!

And it will be fourth year. That is something to worry about in itself. I'm going to have to start deciding what I want to do with the rest of my life, since hiding in Patterson Hall for ten years, stealing food from the microwave when the first-years aren't looking, doesn't seem like a viable option. Grad school seems like a good alternative to that sort of haunting.

Of course, I'm not really looking forward to the commute. And on the first day of classes, I have my first lecture at 8:30am and I finish at 9:00pm. I've got about a three-hour break in there, but it's still going to be a long day. Oh well.

I'm back!

2007-07-13T18:24:13Z

I'm home! Back in the Great White North (although it thankfully wasn't white when I arrived; if it had been snowing in mid-July I would have gone back to England and the rain). Hello everyone! After saying goodbye to the people in Exeter, I met my mum in London and we started our whirlwind tour of Britain. It was the same sort of tour as the one Dad and I went on in Italy over Easter.

Some highlights:

-the Scottish Highlands. The scenery is spectacular and it's so different from anywhere else. And it was fun watching our coach bus manoevre through tiny little one-track roads up the mountainside, praying we wouldn't meet anyone coming in the opposite direction!
-Cardiff and Edinburgh castles. They're very different, but both fascinating. You know me and castles. Cardiff has a Norman keep, which is is excellent shape. The newer part of the castle was elaborately deocorated by a Victorian coal baron and his eccentric architect, so that it looks more like Neuschwanstein than anything else. But less Wagner-inspired. Edinburgh is just cool, and gives a great vantage point over the city. And our guide was great, so that helps.
-Scottish haggis jokes. You can't spend a day in Scotland without hearing about people going haggid hunting, or having someone tell you that haggis have one leg longer than the other, so that they can stand upright on the hills. It seems to be a national joke.
-Glastonbury Abbey, where we saw the hawthorn tree sprung from Joseph of Arimathea's staff and King Arthur's grave. And our guide was dressed as a medieval pilgrim and spoke as if the abbey was still standing (he would jesture to the ruins and talk about the long-gone tombs, and warned us about how to act if we met a monk). He was fun.
-Well, it was true that "the rain it raineth every day," but we were lucky that the worst downpours usually happened when we were on the bus. We got some sun, but it was rare enough to warrant a photo.
-Evensong at York Minster. We got to see inside the Minster and hear an Australian children's choir into the bargain. They were quite good, but in desperate need of altos.
-Culloden Moor, where Bonnie Prince Charlie was finally defeated. It's very interesting, historically, and is marked with memorials and flags showing where the armies advanced and where the clans fell. Also, the bookshop is great (I bought Kidnapped because it's appropriate to the Highlands, and also bought some 2-for-1 Horrible Histories. They're harder to find here.)
-eating haggis and thinking it was strangely spiced cottage pie (because they put mashed potatoes on top). That's probably the best thing that could have happened, since now I can say I've eaten haggis, and I didn't need to think about what was in it.
-London, of course. I love that city.
-St Ives in Cornwall, which is a lovely little town all built on hills. I had some of the best ice cream ever there (made with clotted cream).
-the fact that the naval history monster won't leave me alone. On the second day we went on a tour of Plymouth harbour, and it was NAVYNAVYNAVY.  And I had to grudgingly admit that it was cool.
-seeing some of the colleges in Oxford, and then going into the library and seeing an exhibit on "Italy's Three Crowns: Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio." I am not kidding. There was a 1350 manuscript of the Comedy, illuminated manuscripts for all three, and various other nerdy things. Dante is another one who won't leave me alone, but I'm happier with his company than with the Admiralty.
-Stratford-on-Avon, for obvious reasons. We saw the house where Shakespeare was born!
-the sign in Glasgow cathedral directing people to "Blackadder Aisle." Also in terms of pop culture: Glasgow cathedral is St Mungo's, and it's right next to the hospital. Get it? The hospital in Harry Potter is St Mungo's! Yes, I'm sad.
-the scenery, especially in the Lake District and the Scottish highlands. I have pictures, but if you're sensible you won't ask to see them because I have billions.  That's only a slight exaggeration. It didn't help that Mum forgot to bring a charger for her battery, so I was taking pictures for two yet again, and she takes pictures of everything.

Theatre ~~gushing~~ reviews:
-The Merchant of Venice at the Globe was fantastic. I was a groundling, so I was really close to the stage. Thankfully it didn't rain during the performance. The actors often used the yard (where the groundlings are) as part of the stage, entering and exiting through the house. I nearly got squished by a procession of masked actors during the carnival scene, but it makes the audience a part of the action. They kept the music in it, but didn't always use the same songs as the ones in the script. Some I recognized from high school vocal, when we did that madrigal unit. Anyway, it was fantastic and much funnier than reading it. I never found MV very funny, but the actors managed to bring out a lot of subtext and physical comedy. By the end my feet were killing me, but Mum says the seats weren't any better. It was worth it, though.
-We saw The Drowsy Chaperone on our last night in London. It's the Canadian musical that won all those Tony Awards last year on Broadway, and it's fairly new to the West End. It is fantastic. I nearly died laughing several times. It doesn't take itself seriously at all (basically, it's a musical within a musical, and its main focus is affectionately making fun of...well, musicals). Elaine Page is a West End legend, and we got to see her live. She was very funny, and she's still as gutsy as she was whem she played Evita. But it's really an ensemble show, with half a dozen characters all with their own quirks. One of the funniest devices is the Man in Chair (he doesn't have a name), who is playing a record of his favourite musical to the audience, and the record becomes the performance by the other actors. But sometimes the record skips (so the cast repeats a movement jerkily until he fixes it) or sometimes he'll replay a moment, and he'll often pause it and make the actors freeze while he comments on the show-within-the-show. Anyway, it's great fun, and if anyone gets a chance to see it, they should take it!

Um, yes. Sorry for anyone who actually read that... but anyway, it's good to be home!

Edit: I just saw the Harry Potter movie. I liked it, even though they cut a lot. I'm not going to say more now, because there are reviews all over the place and not everyone's seen it yet. But I will say something that I saw during the previews: they're making a movie out of The Dark is Rising! I am so excited it's almost sad. Actually, it's passed well into the realm of sad. Please please please don't let them screw it up. It looks like they've made Will an American, which wouldn't make sense, and it looks very action-oriented, which is just wrong. And Merriman looks and sounds wrong, too. And he's so great in the books! Ohmygoodness. I love those books to death (I've had to tape my copy of The Dark is Rising together to stop it falling to pieces, and one of the reasons I was so excited to go to Wales and Cornwall was because of other books in the series), and they had better not ruin them. Walden Media, consider yourself warned. Not that I will be able to do anything but rant if it's awful, but still. I might cry, and nobody wants that. But it might make people besides me read the books for a change!

Even later edit: actually, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the Dark is Rising movie is going to be a disaster. What have they done to it?! It's not supposed to be an action movie, and Will Stanton doesn't go around hitting on girls or saying "awesome" or taking his brother with him on his quests! It looks like they read the basic plot but not the book. And maybe not even the plot...just the character names. I smell a boycott. By...um...me.

smilingplatypus @ 2007-07-01T18:49:00

2007-07-01T17:52:20Z

Just a quick note from the hotel lobby... I'm okay. I'm in Plymouth right now, and we weren't anywhere near any of the attempted (or successful) terrorist attacks. I can't write long, and I probably won't update again (internet is touch and go here...took me ages to figure this out, even), but I just thought I'd let you all know where I am just in case you heard about the car bombs and things.

Having a great time; I'll update when I get home!

Ahh! The Hums rant returns!

2007-06-15T20:54:53Z

(Sorry for all this, but it helps me think. And I need all the help I can get.)
Okay, I'm officially confused. Of course Hums decides to rework the program the year I'm away, just to further complicate things. Steph, did they explain this to you? Or Leah, do you have a clue what's going on?

What I think I have to take, based on Prof. Laird's email from eons ago and the courses offered this year, is...
Hums 3000 (Culture and Imagination)
Hums 3200 (Continental Lit)
Hums 4000 (Politics, Modernity and Common Good)
Hums 4103 and 4104 (Science and Intellectual Thought, or something, 0.5 credits each)
2 research seminars from Hums 4901-4904 (or possibly one research seminar and something else...?)
And what the heck is Hums 4002, Directed Studies in Humanities? It's half a credit I've never heard of, and they seem to be offering it despite the fact that I can't find anywhere that says we have to take it...

Does that...make sense?

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be taking two research seminars, because I'm in Stream B. The email from Prof. Laird via Andrea initially says it's one research seminar and one choice of a bunch of others (most of which don't seem to be offered this year...), but then later it says two research seminars but doesn't specify the stream.

Oh, and the academic audit, which I thought would be helpful and tell me what to take, is still telling me to take the old courses. You know, the ones that aren't offered anymore. And it likes to tell me to take a ridiculous number of courses not in my major. Which I don't have time for. I'm assuming (hoping) it's wrong there too. Ahhhhhhh.

I'm also going to be in the middle of my coach tour of Britain when I'm supposed to register. Hmmm. Now all I need is to find out that I don't have fourth-year standing because Exeter results aren't out yet. Oh please no. I just want someone to tell me what I have to take!

The end is near!

2007-05-28T14:46:02Z

And no, this is not an apocalyptic warning. It's a ramble concerning school, so you are hereby warned. It means that my final essay of the year is in its last stages. And that means that I am compulsively reading it over and changing the order of things, reading it again, and then changing it back. This essay worries me, because I'm relying much more on my own ideas than I have before. 3000 words (or thereabouts), only 18 footnotes (to put that into perspective, my last history paper was the same length and it had 51 footnotes!). If the English department still tells me I'm relying too much on secondary sources, I will probably explode.

I can't decide if this essay is really good or really terrible. It's terribly pretentious, though, that's for sure. I've sunk to a new low, using words like corroborate, appropriate (as a verb), intertext, and auctor. It's gratifying to know that I am able to write this much using mostly my own analysis of the poems, but I'm paranoid that I won't have supported my arguments well enough or that there are huge holes in my argument that I would have noticed if I'd done more secondary reading. Among other things. Ahhhh. I hope I'm just worrying over nothing...but still, 50% of my mark rests on this essay that could be complete nonsense... a little frightening. And really, I actually like this paper. I enjoyed writing it (although I still dislike Piers Plowman), and I think I actually came up with some good points. So if it turns out to be junk, I'll be upset.

Okay, as I'm writing this I'm coming up with even more ridiculous last-minute panics. This is what happens when I have an essay to do but no class to distract me. Am I really making connections across the module? Are my tenses okay? (Spent ages trying to stop myself from switching to past tense, but sometimes things need to be in past tense...) Is my citation style okay? Why is Krishna blue? Is there a point to these questions? Why am I subjecting people to this?

I am pathetic. It will soon be over. Breathe.