A Green Thought in a Green Shade

Snow Thoughts and Sunday Thoughts

2011-12-11T08:54:00.000-08:00

Every day I wake up and I look out the window and I hope that it has snowed. But it never has. Super lame.

Also last night I couldn't sleep at all so I read this lovely collection of poems by Louise Gluck. I'm not very smart and I don't know exactly what's meant to be happening in all these poems, but it was going through the cycle of the year and some of them were from the perspective of various flowers, others were from the perspectives of various natural elements/God, and others prayers, either Matins or Vespers. A lot of the poems that I liked the most seemed to be from a human perspective questioning God's apparent silence; the cycle ended with humans learning from darkness and silence and growing into a rebirth. It was really cool, and important to me because this is something I feel like I have a hard time with, since it seems like God is so often silent. Anyway, here's a poem from the beginning of the cycle that I really liked, and here's one from the end.

Matins
Unreachable father, when we were first
exiled from heaven, you made
a replica, a place in one sense
different from heaven, being
designed to teach a lesson: otherwise
the same--beauty on other side, beauty
without alternative--Except
we didn't know what was the lesson. Left alone,
we exhausted each other. Years
of darkness followed; we took turns
working the garden, the first tears
filling our eyes as earth
misted with petals, some
dark red, some flesh colored--
We never thought of you
whom we were learning to worship.
We merely knew it wasn't human nature to love
only what returns love.

The White Lilies
As a man and woman make
a garden between them like
a bed of stars, here
they linger in the summer evening
and the evening turns
cold with their terror; it
could all end, it is capable
of devastation. All, all
can be lost, through scented air
the narrow columns
uselessly rising, and beyond,
a churning sea of poppies--

Hush, beloved. It doesn't matter to me
how many summers I live to return:
this one summer we have entered eternity.
I felt your two hands
bury me to release its splendor.

Some Thoughts

2011-11-05T16:19:00.000-07:00

Good movies I've seen lately:
Batman Returns, especially every part with Catwoman, but also every other part.

Poltergeist

Fun fact: that is an actual dead body. Apparently they were cheaper to use than fake ones. They didn't tell the actress until afterward.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (non-Keanu Reeves-style)

Bad movies I've seen lately:
Captain America

OH AMERICA YOU ARE SO RIGHTEOUS WITH YOUR PECTORALS OH AMERICA THANK YOU FOR HAVING BLACK AND ASIAN MEN IN YOUR WWII CORPS YOU ARE SUCH A SYMBOL OF DEMOCRACY oh wait there was no integration until the Korean War. I'm just saying.

Thoughts about Harry Potter and death:
HP starts out as the boy who lived. He ends as the boy who died. Accepting death = becoming "master" of death and therefore life, unlike Voldemort, who kills people so he can stay alive. Ergo, staying alive forever = death, while accepting that we all die = life. Or dying = life. I love this series.

Good books I've read recently:
Crown of Earth by Hilari Bell. Feuding religions between a pantheon of gods and a narrow god? Paganism vs. early Christianity/Judaism, which selected the most warlike God from the pantheon and made him Elohim? In a children's book? What? Awesome. Coolest book award.
True Grit--just as funny as the movie, if not more so, and also very serious. Violence = you will lose a body part, symbolically representing the toll violence takes on a person. The old West! You will pay for all your sins. Awesome.
When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris. True Grit is the only thing I've encountered that has made me laugh as hard as I did reading this book this whole semester.

Going through a graphic novel phase right now. Recommendations appreciated.

Why is it that when you put some political statement on facebook, some kid you barely knew in the eleventh grade jumps in? Why does he feel like he has to make a statement? Why did you feel like you had to make a statement? Isn't that why you were putting it up there in the first place--to spark a debate, even if you're doing it unconsciously? So isn't it your fault anyway, not necessarily his?

Supernatural: a show that was awful last season but that is kicking so much ass this season. Love it.

Some days you just gotta feel a little bit like Sammy Winchester. Especially days when you forget to take your birth control so your hormones are all screwed up and you are crying for no reason and someone is punching you in the grief bone and you are terribly, terribly, terribly alone. All this without even reading Maus--it's still sitting on the bed next to me, glaring and weeping and gnashing its teeth.

I promise that this doesn't mean I will not shoot every person. Supernatural just gives me FEELINGS.

Poet of the Week: Richard Siken

2011-08-19T09:39:00.000-07:00

Scheherazade

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
Until they forget that they are horses.
It’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means
we’re inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.

Five Favorite Albums

2011-08-17T09:37:00.000-07:00

Afterglow, Sarah McLachlan
The Reminder, Feist
Tropical Brainstorm, Kirsty MacColl
Hopes and Fears, Keane
Amarantine, Enya

Other good albums:

Fumbling Toward Ecstasy, Sarah McLachlan
Acadie, Daniel Lanois
Picaresque, The Decemberists
Woman King, Iron and Wine
The Crane Wife, The Decemberists
The Village (soundtrack), James Newton Howard
Harry and the Potters and the Power of Love, Harry and the Potters
Dive, Sarah Brightman
All of the Lord of the Rings soundtracks, Howard Shore
The Suburbs, Arcade Fire

Mostly, I just like making lists, so I did. Also, I'd love to know what your five favorite albums are too.

THE END.

A Sunday Thought

2011-07-31T12:47:00.001-07:00

Sacrament

God, I have sought you as a fox seeks chickens,
curbing my hunger with cunning.
The times I have tasted your flesh
there was no bread and wine between us,
only night and the wind beating the grass.

-Alden Nowlan

My brother, my captain, my king

2011-06-14T21:59:00.000-07:00

I have finally reached a very satisfactory end to a relatively shitty day, shitty in both the literal and figurative sense. I went to two doctors today, one of whom gave me no real advice on my stomach ("Try eating no food except popcicles for a day and see if that makes it better." "Alas, you seem to have forgotten that I JUST TOLD YOU that I have eaten nothing but nothing since FOUR WEEKS AGO, and I have to go to work tomorrow without fainting, but whatever.") and the other of whom advised me that I might have a yeast infection as a follow-up to my other mysterious infection, contrary to the opinion of a different doctor. Good times abounded. I came home and ate some crackers, and felt quite nauseous.

And then.

LORD OF THE RINGS. HOLY EFF.

Here is the only thing nerdier than going to see The Fellowship of the Ring remastered in theaters for one night only with your younger brother:

Composing an essay on the environmentalism of Jackson's interpretation of Tolkien's fantasy world in your heard during the entire movie.

While composing your own answer, should you choose to do so, you might want to reflect on certain scenes, which might help if you're seeing the whole thing remastered and on a gigantic screen, so you can drool at the awesomeness of the gigantic landscape shots and the BEAUTIFUL landscape contained therein.

Things to consider would include:

-The Shire's/the Hobbits' obvious connection to nature
-Saruman = evil = a symbol of industrialization and the destruction of nature (cf "a wizard should know better")
-The GORGEOUS landscape shots throughout, as previously mentioned

HOWEVER, you should also consider that:

-Even though the Ringwraiths are destroyed by natural elements--fire, water--they still ride horses, who seem down with that even though all the other animals are afraid of them, like that one cute dog, who backs away while wagging her tail frantically. Good dog. Good acting skillz.
-The Ringwraiths have a weird affinity with nature too--see the Nazgul and also that super weird time when the little hobbits are hiding under a log and all these bugs come out and Elijah Wood's face gets all fat, so that's weird
-The Crebain! From Dunland! They are aminals/nature, but they are EVIL AND MEAN
-Also, why do Jackson's Uruk Hai get borned out of mud? Because that suggests a connection to nature too, albeit a kind of gross one, which messes up my whole nature is good/industry is evil paradigm.

My conclusion is that like good and evil in the film, nature is polarized too, suggesting that EVERYTHING has free will and agency but also that good and evil are fairly black and white. But since it's Tolkien and since we're a Western audience, the evil things are crows and wolves, things Westerners have typically vilified, so there's that too and it's kind of unfair. Typically, though, nature is good (cf the Ents) and industry/mining is evil, which makes perfect sense to me.

OTHER THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE BEAUTY THAT IS THE LORD OF THE RINGS:

-I have SO DESPERATELY missed the sound of a theater full of people sobbing quietly while Gandalf and later Boromir die tragically.
-I myself was tempted to cry at these scenes for the first time in my life, but the best I could do was make weird sobbing noises which just made me want to throw up rather than cry. Probably I'm too dehydrated for tears.
-I feel like I FINALLY GET IT. Because when I saw these movies ten years ago and I was all little, I loved the ANGST and the VIOLENCE and the EMO PARTS OF IT, but I feel like it just clicked in my head that this movie/these books are a reflection of the world as it is. Just like The Road. They're fictional places and characters and worlds, but the things the characters go through--the confusion, doubt, fear, despair, whatever--are just reflections of our own lives.
-I tried to make a list of all the things the Ring could symbolize, but mostly (and predictably) I just settled on how having it is like having depression.
-Why does Aragorn son of Arathorn wear a black glove on his RIGHT HAND ONLY. By the end of his awesome battle, though, his left hand is so grimy that it's black, so maybe that counts.
-I spent the entire troll battle scene trying to figure out if it was wearing a loincloth like I'd always thought or if I had just seen these giant dangling troll balls. Turns out it's a loincloth--but a rather diaper-ish and therefore quite bulging loincloth, so it almost doesn't count, maybe.
-Also, the first time I saw these in theaters, the characters weren't my bros yet. Now, after we all successfully got through high school together, we really are bros. I want to reach through the screen and give my bros a hug and tell them it's going to be okay and sit there and cry and cry and cry. Or at least make weird little sobbing/vomiting noises with my poor kidnapped/ring-carrying/arrowed/Heir of Gondor-esque babies.

In conclusion, Lord of the Rings once again saves both my life and my testimony. Aww.

AND I CAN'T BELIEVE I WAITED A YEAR IN BETWEEN EACH ONE no wonder I saw the first one nine times in theaters HOW AM I GOING TO WAIT A WEEK EVEN THOUGH I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS GAH.

The end.

Africa pics + apologies for this post being so long

2011-06-07T08:01:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time, I went to Africa. I put a bunch of boring pictures on my facebooks, but here are some pretentious artsy pictures that aren't very good because my darkness compensation setting was waaaaay too high. Or low. Whichever one means that most of them are too dark. Also, JUDGE ME I'M SO SORRY THIS POST IS SO LONG but it's just pictures and not words so try not to be too overwhelmed. MY HEARTFELT APOLOGIES NONETHELESS.

First of all, pictures from the kids' schools at Touba, the Mouride holy city:

Now pictures of the giant super old mosque at Touba.

First, Flor, a girl who worked for/was related to the Senegalese author who set this all up for us, being super hot:

Now some dude sleeping by one of the entrances, because mosques are cool because people just go there to sleep and hang out and be generally awesome:

Peeps from our group:

Beggar kids outside the mosque:

And now for ten thousand pictures of the cutest kids in the world, i.e. the kids in the Peul village that we visited while we were in Saint Louis. On our first night there, they had a huge celebration and all the kids dressed up in traditional clothes and had a huge dance party, so here are the pictures of that.

Kids looking at Mme Thompson in her new boubou, probably because white people don't usually wear boubous, which is the traditional and super awesome clothes that people wear all the time. Boubous are GORGEOUS.

OH HEY ARE YOU STILL THERE KEEP HANGING IN THERE THE END IS ALMOST NIGH
By which I mean there are still like fifteen more deal with it.

Here is a woman at the dying tiny village on top of a mountain where it was pretty and windy:

And Charles, a little boy who followed us around the whole time we were there and balanced this lumpy thing on his head perfectly, while scrambling up and down the rocky mountain:

In Saly, at poet/president/incredibly crazy person Leopold Senghor's house:

At seashell island, aka the island made entirely of seashells, even though I don't know that you can tell how seashelly it was in these pictures:

Pretty flowers by the hotel pool:

And some final pictures of Dakar:

The end! Congrats if you made it to the bottom of the page.

Guys, this is darling and wonderful and important.

2010-12-11T11:07:00.000-08:00

Probably you should read it!

Here it is.

I hope I posted that right...my internet skillz are rusty.

This is cool. Check it out.

2010-11-07T17:58:00.000-08:00

I got this link from Riley, and I think I actually agreed with it 100%. It completely tallied with my young women's experience, and I think these suggestions here are useful. I wish there were a way to move along the process of revamping the manuals used for the young men and young women: they're (we're) going to be in charge of the church soon, and I really, honestly think this should be a top, top priority.

In other news, I am watching How to Train Your Dragon, am reading Speaker for the Dead, and am about to watch Sherlock. So far I have done 5 minutes worth of homework. BEST WEEKEND EVER YEAH but tomorrow might be a little crappy.

The rest of this is a quote from the article, and something we should probably think about and live by:

http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/?p=3354

I would like to end with a list of Thirteen suggestions for helping Mormon women have more sex-positive experiences:
1. Overhaul the YW manuals, specifically emphasize chastity, virtue, and modesty as positive powerful choices, affirm the sacred nature of our bodies and our respect for God.
2. Remove the defensive fear-based vignettes, change emphasis from ‘camel-nose-rape-one-slip-n-you’re-toast to the healing power of the Atonement.
3. Ask Youth leaders/teachers specifically to avoid object lessons that demean our divine nature or compare young women to objects (wilted flowers, tainted food, chewed up gum, battered wood, cabbages or licked cake).
4. Stop talking about modestly as anything other than a sign of self respect. Make boys guardians of their own virtue, girls have no stewardship over boys thoughts or actions.
5. Ask teachers not to have activities emphasizing outward appearance (like make overs and fashion shows) because teaching girls they must always be “modestly hot” in order to attract a husband is still teaching the false illusory power of attracting male attention with our bodies.
6. Root out references to the myth of male weakness. Emphasize that men can control themselves.
7. Include nuance in discussions about sex thoughts, sex discussions, sexual desire, and porn. Our Young Women will think about sex, they will see porn, they will feel desire, they need to talk about sex with reliable adults, they need tools, not blanket prohibitions and condemnation.
8. Include lessons on physical sexual and emotional abuse, and unrighteous dominion.
9. Empower girls to listen to personal revelation.
10. Emphasize that girls who are raped and abused are not responsible for their abuse. That there is no loss of chastity or virtue.
11. Train bishops on what date/acquaintance rape looks like. On my small blog alone, I can think of dozens of women who were called to repentance after being raped.
12. Encourage parents to have ongoing explicit age-appropriate discussions with their children about sex. It is vital that we lift the veil of silence and discomfort. Many Mormon parents are naively worried that they will give their children ideas, or somehow corrupt them with facts. The fact is that children are surrounded by sex, lots of bad information, and tons of sexually explicit materials. But it is a proven fact that the more reliable factual knowledge kids have about sex, the more they talk to their parents about sex, the less likely they are to engage in it. It may be too much to ask, but I dream of a day when the church provides parents with age appropriate manuals for a comprehensive factual approach to sex-education that uses words like penis and vagina and sex.
13. I am going to introduce my final and perhaps most pressing suggestion with another comment from fMh by AJ:

Sexual abuse in my childhood had spurred in me an odd fascination with sex, leading to experimentation with masturbation and pornography. These issues were never addressed directly in YW. Everything I knew about the church’s stance on these issues came from reading the priesthood session talks in the conference ensigns. I felt such deep shame–not only was I a sinner, I was sinning in a way only boys were supposed to sin.

Talking to bishops was awkward at best, harmful at worst. I was asked such inappropriate questions as “did you orgasm?” and was even manipulated and seduced into a physical relationship with one of my bishops. More often the issues I faced when trying to confess these transgressions was embarrassment–more on the part of the bishop than myself.

These men intended to help me would turn bright red and stutter that I should just stop these behaviors. They were too embarrassed to provide real support.

Now–I think bishops are in general very good men trying hard to do God’s work. But I was very, very deeply hurt by the actions of some of the bishops I worked with as a teen.

The amount of pain and confusion caused by the bishop who developed a physically romantic relationship with me is immeasurable and ongoing. I believe he was essentially a good man who just made some very, very bad mistakes. He’s received his punishment and forgiveness and he continues to takes steps to ensure that he never hurts anyone that way again.

But after what I endured at his hands I feel it is absolutely 100% inappropriate for YW to be taught that they must discuss sexual transgressions with an untrained older man in order to obtain the Lord’s forgiveness. I won’t pass on that teaching to my daughters, and you can bet I’ll never be turning to a priesthood leader for counsel regarding my sexuality again.

AJ’s life unfortunately encapsulates all the problems that exist in the current system of women confessing to men. Even in the best case scenario, it is deeply inorganic, brutally awkward, and let’s be frank, it’s just plain old’ creepy. Young women should not be locked in a small office with a middle aged man who has not been trained in any way to counsel young people about sex, and then asked explicit questions about her sex life. Even if he is the most spiritual kindly man in the world, the situation is just wrong. And when he is not that man, when he is a weaker man, the situation is ripe for abuse, and it is abused, far too frequently.

I can see two possible solutions to this problem, the first is to require that young women have a parent or YW leader present in her interviews with the bishop. I still see this as an imperfect solution, because while it does protect her, it also intrudes further on a her privacy.

My preferred solution would be to turn the stewardship of women’s sexuality over to women. Just as in the temple there are certain settings where it is inappropriate for a man to interact with women, and in those situations women are given stewardship. So too is it inappropriate for men to be taking sexual confessions from women and to be asking sexually explicit questions of women. Relief Society presidents and Young Women’s presidents could be given this stewardship as part of their calling, to exercise those keys in a limited way, just as matrons do in the temple.

We Mormon’s have a well-deserved reputation as some of the most innocent/uptight people on the planet. Which is ironic considering our beliefs about sex and marriage. unlike many other faiths we believe that sex should be enjoyed and even celebrated between a wife and her husband. And given that Mormonism is a religion of embodied parent Gods, and we believe our bodies are a sacred gift and that sex may just be an eternal part of our celestial existence (rather than a Catholic-style sin encrusted burden to be cast off with this mortal coil), I think we need to look at this problem with profound seriousness. And make the changes necessary for Mormon women to feel empowered by their positive sex choices and celebrate their bodies as divine sexual beings.

Thank goodness.

2010-10-08T15:32:00.000-07:00

http://mormonsformarriage.com/?p=299

Anagrams

2010-08-08T18:57:00.001-07:00

So I was having a good time with this website trying to decide what I would do if I needed to suddenly anagram my name to, say, take over the known world while using a catchy made-up name that resembled my real name in that it used the same letters. Like Voldemort. The best options I have found are:

Miracle Ye Quirk
Acquire Rye Milk
Lace Rime Quirky
Creamy Lie Quirk
Clam Eyrie Quirk
Email Rick Query
Lea Quicker Miry
Air Quick Merely
La Quickie Merry
A Mercy Lie Quirk
Eclair Key Qi Rum
Camel Rye I Quirk
Uremia Cry Elk Qi
Lake Cry Quire Mi
Make Icy Ruler Qi

All in all there were 4207 anagrams for my name. No news on if some of them featured words like Qi, which, according to wikipedia, is a Chinese principle referring to an active principle forming part of any living thing. Chi, I guess? Just spelled different?

BEWARE THE DARK LORD EMAIL RICK QUERY. ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR.

Also I am so amused that my last name could be Rum or Quirky or Quirk and that my first name could be Camel. Hee.

Superhero

2010-07-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

My thighs are very, very sunburned. HOW THEY BURN. So last night Nathan decided I should have a superhero name:

THUNDAH THIGHS OF FIRE

My arch nemesis is ICY BICEPS.

THUNDAH THIGHS OF FIRE
VS
ICY BICEPS

And Miranda rewrote that ridiculous (ly popular) Owl City song to say, "blah blah blah ten thousand fire thighs light up the world as I fall asleep."

MORE PITCHERS LATER <333

Where I was and Where I am

2010-07-18T18:09:00.000-07:00

SORRY THE PITCHERS ARE SO SMALL.

Where I was last summer:

Where I was a month and a half (two months? Two and a half months?) ago:

Where I am now:

None of these pictures is of me. Also, I just discovered the white and black option on my camera. Whee!

Still here for another week, so maybe I'll take some more pictures and put them here.

THE END!

A WORD TO THE WISE

2010-07-05T01:07:00.001-07:00

Be careful what you say on facebook. I'm sure you already knew this, but did you know that your ultra-conservative relatives might read your words and try to persuade you of the error of your ways? It is just the worst.

...Now I'm gonna find out they read my blog, too, and then I WILL NEVER BE FREE AGAIN. As much as I love them, I sometimes do not like them on the internets. But I like them at other times, I promise.

Rhetorical Analysis #THE LAST ONE.

2010-06-12T16:49:00.001-07:00

Topic: An encounter with a salesperson.

Scenario, as happened to me the last time I was at the mall: The saleswoman for some weird kind of lotion tries to nab me and Margaret as we walk out of some clothing store by saying, "Let me rub some of this on your hands! It has shea butter in it; it will make your hands feel like new!" I say, "No thanks," and we walk away.

#1: What is the saleswoman's goal?
To sell us her product, meaning the fancy lotion.

#2: What is her argument?
We should try some of her product because once we do, we'll be unable to not buy the product because we'll be so in love with how it will make our skin feel.

#3: Who is her audience?
Her broad audience is anyone who walks past her at the mall; her more specific audience is women who like to wear yummy-smelling lotion or men with wives/girlfriends who like to wear yummy-smelling lotion.

#4: How does she sell her argument?
The saleswoman was mostly relying on ethos to sell her argument; she only had a few brief seconds to build up her credibility before Margaret and I walked away, and the main way she did this was by trying to get us to try the lotion for ourselves. Her argument was that if we tried the lotion, then we would know for ourselves that we couldn't not buy it. She thus tried to use the product itself to establish her credibility by claiming that if we tried it, we'd fall instantly in love with it.

She thus also relied on pathos to sell her product by telling us that if we tried it, our hands would feel like new. She relied on her belief that we, as average college-age girls browsing the mall, naturally want yummy-smelling, smooth hands. She was therefore trying to create in us a sense of beauty or maybe maturity, and by trying to rub the lotion on us herself she was probably trying to create in us a sense of being coddled and pampered, which she hoped would warm us up to her and her product.

STAR
Sufficient--nope. All she had to go on was her own advertisement, which evidently didn't work since Margaret and I didn't try on the lotion. She offered us no evidence other than her own advice that we should even try the lotion, which wasn't sufficient evidence to persuade your average person to try on the lotion.

Typical--Margaret and I are both fairly reasonable, and we didn't accept her evidence, so I would say no, it wasn't typical.

Accurate--nope. She didn't present enough evidence to combat our counterargument that we were busy and that trying on the lotion would be an inconvenience.

#5: Effective?
Nope. Margaret and I didn't give the lady any time to explain her product because she didn't sell it well enough in the few seconds she had to convince us. Analysis: fail.

Rhetorical Analysis #5: Analysis of Aragorn's speech.

2010-06-05T14:28:00.000-07:00

I forgot to do #4. I am fail :(

The speech I'm analyzing for this analysis is Aragorn's speech to the Men of the West in The Return of the King movie. It goes like this:

"Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends, and break all bonds of fellowship; but it is not this day! An hour of wolves, and shattered shields, when the Age of Men comes crashing down; but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!"
-Aragorn.

I got that transcript off of wikipedia, which is cool.

#1: What is the speech's goal?
The goal is to persuade the Men of the West to make a last stand against Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor.

#2: What is the speech's argument?
That the Men of the West should stand and fight because they will be victorious--the Age of Men will come crashing down at one point but, if they fight, that won't happen today. Ergo, they should fight to salvage the Age of Men.

#3: Who is the audience?
The audience is the small group of men of Gondor and Rohan (and also some hobbits and a dwarf and an elf and also Gandalf) who are gathered on the field in front of the Black Gate of Mordor who are about to fight Sauron's forces in the culminating battle of the war against Sauron.

#4: How?
Aragorn first appeals to ethos by establishing his credibility with his audience. He reminds them that he shares similar values with his audience by calling them his "brothers." He also appeals to pathos by reminding them of "all that [they] hold dear on this good earth." Aragorn thus appeals to their sense of rightness and justice, but, most importantly, to their desire to defend Middle Earth's goodness against Mordor's evilness. He also addresses the audience's fear that they will fail by describing the day when the Age of Men will finally fail as "a day of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of Men comes crashing down." However, he uses this fear to spur the audience to fight: "It is not this day. This day, we fight." Aragorn thus successfully uses both ethos and pathos in his short speech to encourage his men to fight for their freedom.

STAR:

Sufficient--Aragorn doesn't really offer any evidence that the Men of the West will succeed and Mordor will fail. His role as Elessar perhaps encourages his men to believe that since Aragorn says that the Age of Men won't fail today, he's probably right. Aragorn's speech is mostly emotional and not logical; he doesn't draw from facts, since the army of Mordor is much larger than his own army. Therefore, the evidence he gives is all emotional--because they believe in their cause, the men of the West will prevail. Therefore, depending on how you look at it, Aragorn either fails to give sufficient logical evidence, or he succeeds at giving sufficient emotional evidence to encourage the Men of the West to fight.

Typical--the Men of the West are all pretty typical people, and they all accept the speech, so the evidence Aragorn gives obviously worked for them. I don't know that a rational person under less emotional duress would accept the argument, though, since the odds are obviously against them. However, a cause-driven person wanting to believe that they aren't about to be massacred by the overwhelmingly large opposing forces would probably still buy into Aragorn's argument.

Accurate--He does present the counterargument that one day the Age of Men will fail, and his frightening description of that day doesn't set the counterargument up as an easy thing that he can just push over. Instead, he assuages his men's fears by conveying the idea that while the Age of Men will one day fail, if they fight, they can stave off that time until later, which seems to be pretty effective.

Relevant--The speech is short and to the point, so I think there isn't any extraneous material here. Everything he says is directly related to encouraging the Men of the West to fight; there isn't anything extraneous or anything that could be interpreted as a red herring.

#5: Effective?
Yes. The speech is obviously effective in that it does rally the Men of the West in the movie, encourage them, and enable them to fight and win. I think the speech is largely emotional and doesn't draw from anything logical except for Aragorn's drive to win, which might not make it effective to any other audience; however, for this particular audience, the speech is just perfect.

Here is a picture demonstrating the speech's effectiveness:

THE END!

Ps. The best part of this experience was that I wrote this post while watching this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltps17if3t8&feature=related
Watch it until you start to really understand the intensity of that hair. It kept surprising me all the way through, springing out at me in every screen shot like a tiger. A terrifying, but engaging, experience.

Rhetorical Analysis #3: Source for Paper B

2010-05-22T11:50:00.001-07:00

I forgot to do #2. :(

The article I am analyzing is this one:
Golub, Lester S. “The New American Revolution: Multi-Cultural Literature, in the English
Program.” The English Journal 64.6 (Sep. 1975): 23-26. Web.

#1: What is the article's goal?
The article's goal is to persuade the reader that literature written in English by ethnic groups who didn't originally speak English should be taught in secondary schools.

#2: What is the article's argument?
Literature written in English by different ethnic groups should be taught in high school classes because it reflects the mutlicultural roots of our society, validates other cultural groups, and helps students live in and deal with a pluralistic reality.

#3: Who is the audience?
The narrowest audience is readers of The English Journal. In other words, the main audience is high school English teachers across America who have the power to change their curricula to include multicultural literature.

#4: How?
The author appeals to logos by presenting a clearly outlined map of how teachers could change their curricula to include other English language literatures in their courses. One of the biggest arguments against including multicultural literature in the high school English classrooms is that it would take a very, very long time for individual teachers to rearrange the course curriculum and to figure out how to teach literature from a culture the teacher isn't familiar with. By presenting a clear outline for how the teacher should teach this literature and by outlining literary and psychological concepts that the teacher should consider while teaching this literature, the author makes it clear that teaching so-called "ethnic" literature isn't as hard as it appears. His logical outline of how to apply the concepts he lists appeals to the reader's sense of logic. It also establishes his credibility as an educator and leads the reader to trust him more, thus appealing to ethos. Finally, it also plays on the reader's emotions by making them feel more at ease with this topic, thus appealing to pathos.

The author also appeals to the reader's sense of logic by emphasizing that this literature deserves to be a part of the high school teaching canon by virtue of history. He quotes Chinua Achebe as saying, "I have been given this language [English] and intend to use it." The author continues that for many cultural groups, English is not their original language, but it has of necessity become the tongue that many of them use. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to exclude other literatures from high school English classes--all groups who write in English ought to be taught in English classes, rather than solely American or British writers. This also appeals to the reader's sense of injustice, since he argues that other writers should be included in the canon because, he says, "Fifty years ago, no African literature was discussed in the school and universities of the Western world." By emphasizing that many African writers write in English and therefore should be included in the English language canon, Golub implies that it would be unjust to continue to exclude and neglect them, as they have been for so many years.

STAR:

Sufficient: I think the evidence the author gives is sufficient for his audience. His outlined curriculum, his quotes from authors like Chinua Achebe, and his examples of multicultural works with themes that are important to high school students but that aren't usually taught in high school all evidence his main point: that this literature needs to be taught in high school.

Typical: I think a reasonable person would accept this evidence, especially in his section on "national and ethnic literature," where he lists several authors and works of note that should be included in high school curricula. The author establishes himself as credible and provides, I think, enough evidence to support his claim.

Accurate: He's fair. He addresses the counterarguments, especially that changing the curriculum of any class takes time and that Western readers might not identify as readily with non-Western literature. He doesn't set these up as easy questions to topple over easily; instead, he spends the majority of the paper addressing these questions and proposing viable solutionsl.

Relevant: I think everything in this article applies. It's short--only 5 pages long--and stays on-topic the whole time.

#5: Effective
Yes, I think the piece is effective. It outlines viable solutions and addresses the counterarguments in a logical way, making his way seem very smart and very doable.

The end.

Rhetorical Analysis #1

2010-05-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

The ad I'm advertising comes from the back of the May National Geographic and is an advertisement for the iPad. In the ad, the iPad is in the foreground. On the screen is a page from Nicholas Sparks' novel The Last Song. A woman is holding the iPad on her lap and has her feet up on the couch while she reads the electronic book.

#1: What as the ad's goal?
-To sell the iPad.

#2: What is the argument?
-You should buy the iPad because it's classy, fashionable, and comfortable, allowing you to do relaxing things around the home, like read a book, with greater ease.

#3: Who is the audience?
-The broad audience is people, mainly women, who are reading National Geographic; the narrower audience is people reading the magazine who are 1) women, 3) middle-class, 2) enjoy doing things associated with relaxing around the house, like reading romance novels, and 4) perceive the iPad as something that only businessmen would want to buy and use.

#4: How? What rhetoric does the ad use?
The ad uses pathos to sell its argument by appealing to the reader's sense of comfort, relaxation, and ease. The woman in the ad has her feet up and is obviously relaxing in her own home; we can see the curtains billowing in the window by her feet and light streams into what is presumably her living room. She is wearing fashionable shoes and a classy skirt but is relaxing on the couch, enjoying her romance novel. Her hands are smooth and she holds the iPad up easily. By making the ad so we can't see the woman's face, the reader automatically becomes the viewer and steps into the woman's shoes, making the reader feel like they, too, can enjoy this sense of peace and relaxation by holding the iPad in their hands and relaxing in their own home. The ad also uses pathos to appeal to readers of romance novels by putting Nicholas Sparks' novel on the computer screen; the romance-obsessed reader (or the reader of pulp fiction or the viewer of popular movies) is thus automatically hooked and feels connected to the iPad right off the bat. The novel also uses pathos by establishing that the iPad isn't just for computer geeks or for people who need to work on some computery project. Instead, it's also for people who just want to relax and read a book.

The ad also uses logos by logically connecting the reader to the woman in the ad. The woman is relaxed and is obviously enjoying herself; by placing the iPad in the foreground and making the words on the page large enough for the viewer of the ad to read, the ad places the viewer of the ad in the place of the relaxed, comfortable woman with classy shoes who is relaxing in her home. We can't see any part of the woman but her hands, legs, and skirt, which makes us, the reader, her face; the iPad looks comfortable for the woman and thus logically looks comfortable to us. Therefore, the ad's use of logos connects the reader to the woman, making them feel (using pathos) that, logically, whoever holds the iPad will also experience the same sense of comfort and relaxation as the woman in the ad.

Evaluating the evidence:
Sufficient: I don't think the evidence the ad gives is sufficient. There isn't anything in the ad about the iPad itself; the ad relies wholly on pictures to sell its product. It portrays the product as being easy to hold and comfortable, and it demonstrates that the iPad can be used for more things than just business, and so it might seem credible to people who need to be persuaded that the iPad can be used to do fun recreational things, not just business-y things. However, the ad doesn't list any statistics or facts about how much the iPad costs, how to download ebooks, how much those cost, and what kinds of books are available to be read on the iPad. Thus, the evidence as for why you should buy the iPad doesn't seem sufficient for me.

Typical: I don't know that a reasonable person would accept this ad, because a reasonable person probably a) does not read Nicholas Sparks, and b) needs more evidence than just a woman with fashionable shoes reading a Nicholas Sparks novel to be persuaded into buying something as expensive as the iPad.

Accurate: There isn't really a counterargument presented here, except for the idea that only wealthy businessmen buy the iPad. In that case, I think it addresses the counterargument fairly by presenting a middle-class woman who is obviously enjoying herself. I don't know if "accurate" applies to this argument in other ways, though, since fashionable shoes doesn't automatically mean you want to read The Last Song on your iPad.

Relevant: I think everything in here is directly connected to the argument that middle-class women who like romance novels should also consider buying the iPad.

#5: Is it effective?
I think the argument would probably be affective for its target audience. However, I think it's trying to sell itself to too narrow an audience (i.e., women who like Nicholas Sparks) to be effective in any broader way.

YAY

2010-05-05T15:20:00.000-07:00

I dropped my D&C class!
I am taking adolescent lit instead!

EEE!!

My life has improved dramatically.

I have to read thirty books for this class over the next seven weeks, so I'm going to try to keep track of them on here. So far I have read:

UNWIND, by Neil Shustermann. THIS IS ONE THE BEST BOOKS I HAVE READ IN A LONG TIME. GO FIND OUT ABOUT IT AND READ IT PLEASE I AM BEGGING YOU. OH MY GOSH.

Also I have read

Guinea Pig Scientists, which was boring and gross but informative, I guess, and

Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World, which I've read before and which I love, and

I'll be seeing you, by Lurlene McDaniel. Guys. First of all I have to point out that in the copy I read, Kyle on the front cover has long, stringy, billowy Fabio hair. Apparently they later altered this physical feature. Sad.

"Carley Mattea never expected to meet a boy as handsome as Kyle Westin--certainly not in the hospital. Seventeen-year-old Kyle was blinded when a chemistry experiment exploded. His doctors don't know if he'll get his vision back, and he's deeply depressed. Sixteen-year-old Carley understands how miserable it is to be in the hospital. She's had plenty of experience. soon Carley and Kyle become good friends. But Carley is keeping a secret from Kyle. She knows that boys like girls who are pretty--and she is not. Scarred by a facial deformity, she has, over the years, used her sense of humor to cope. But now that she's become so close to Kyle, she's worried that once his bandages are removed...and he sees her, it will be the end of their relationship."

Here is an example of Carley's sense of humor: after Kyle flies over the school on Valentine's Day with an airplane trailing a banner that reads, "CARLEY, BE MINE, K.W.," Carley says, "I think I will make that call. I'd hate to leave that guy hanging." Following this statement, Carley's sister Janelle "groaned over Carley's bad joke, but Carley scarcely heard her. She looked up to see the plane cut a wide circle, dip its wing as if in greeting, and head off. The sign fluttered behind it in the wind, the large crimson letters stamped across the face of the sky, bright as the flare of a rocket."

I don't know if the final sentence was supposed to refer to the rocket that exploded and thus temporarily blinded poor Kyle. Also, Carley gets plastic surgery in the end, and thus she will once again be beautiful.

Yay!

I'll never get that half an hour of my life back.
Also, while typing this, I had to listen to a BYU tutorial about using the library. I learned all about internet safety. At long last! Thanks, BYU, for this valuable, timely information.

CHEERS.

Heeeeey BYU: stop controlling my life.

2010-04-29T10:55:00.000-07:00

Or rather, stop controlling my electronic life, because for some reason, I have a new class that assigns me to post rhetorical analyses of various things on my blog. Guys. This is not the purpose of a blog. The purpose of this blog is to write random things about my random life, and, as Jon pointed out the other day, professors might think they're being hip with the kids by having us blog assignments and crap, but they're messing up the format and purposes of "the blog" by making it into a freaking analysis. FYI: THAT IS NOT A BLOG. Anyway. I'm annoyed. GAH. So when there are random things that are boring posted on this blog, feel free not to read them, because they really are assignments that should be typed up and turned in, not randomly posted on a blog FOR NO REASON other than that BYU likes to control everything I ever do ever.

WHAT LARKS!

Anyway, lots of ranting in recent times because English 312 is boring and my D&C class sucks. This is because, for some reason, every religion class at BYU (basically) is like glorified seminary. HEY D&C TEACHER: stop making jokes about marriage! Stop inviting all of us to get married! Stop being so in-your-face and American! Stop making the D&C so damn trite!

These words were actually said in class today: "So go out and find that right girl or that right boy and get married! Now! As soon as you can!" Yeah. When his son brought home a girlfriend for the first time, this man taught an FHE lesson to them about temple marriage and then sat down with the girlfriend and talked to her about the importance of marriage. Can you say creeper?

Okay. End/rant. I will try to be positive and optimistic and all that crap, but it's a liiiittle tricky when your smiling old man religion professor keeps trying to shove marriage down your face.

On a happier note, even though I really, really do not want to be doing all this stuff spring semester, it is at least a little bit more chill, which means my life can go back to being all about tv! Making tv my life is maybe not so great, since there was lots of tv trauma this week (Joyce dying, Gabriel dying, House being emo. You know. The usual). However, I do so like it when my world revolves around television. This includes these people:

This person:

And perhaps these wonderful people, since I have been craving some good Sci-Fi recently:

Also, if this man dies next Thursday:

I will be seriously pissed.

Anyway.

In closing, this actual conversation was had in class yesterday. I wrote it down because I thought it was funny.

Student: "I just think it's important when arguing to remember that in this life, there is no absolute truth. We just can't find one absolute truth in this world, there isn't any ideal truth."
Teacher: "That's great. I think that's absolutely true."

...

KIDS I LOVE YOU I will go and do my oodles of D&C homework now and perhaps eat lunch. Maybe I'll have to take this down later because I don't want the teacher who grades my rhetorical analyses to see this. At least not really. Theoretically.

GO OUTSIDE NOW AND ENJOY THE SPRINGTIME SUN I mean the snow. :(

Ps when I hit "publish post" and it went to the splash page or whatever, there was an ad on the side for an online dating side for gay Asian singles. Alas, none of those terms apply to me, but I appreciate the ad anyway.

A JANE AUSTEN BLOGFEST!

2010-04-19T10:17:00.000-07:00

Most people on BYU campus are familiar with this woman:

Contrary to popular belief, she is neither this woman:

Nor this woman:

She is, however, the authoress of these items, which, alas, many people on BYU campus are not familiar with:

However, many BYU students, particularly girls, are familiar with these items:

Lots of girls on BYU campus get together with their family members, friends, or roommates to watch the above films. In the research paper I wrote on this BYU ritual, I decided to call this phenomenon the "Jane Austen Movie Night."

Why do a research project about Jane Austen movies on BYU campus?

Lots of people all over the country watch Jane Austen movies obsessively, but I wanted to know why, specifically, Jane Austen movies appeal so strongly to BYU audiences. I concluded that BYU's fascination with Jane Austen movies has something to do with this:

I.e., MARRIAGE.

How do these three things (marriage, Jane Austen, and BYU culture) connect?
Well, this novel:

was written by a woman who lives in Utah Valley, and her novel describes the "Jane Austen Movie Night" perfectly. The story's protagonist, Jane, had

"first read Pride and Prejudice when she was sixteen…But it wasn’t until the BBC put a face on the story that those gentlemen in tight breeches had stepped out of her reader’s imagination and into her nonfiction hopes" (Hale 2).

Jane’s behavior mimics that of many Mormon female students at BYU or in Utah Valley, who frequently get together with their roommates, friends, or family members to watch Jane Austen movies and fall in love themselves with the film's versions of various Romantic gentlemen, like this man:

And like this one:

Jane watches Jane Austen movies because she sees in them the man of her dreams--i.e., this man:

Behavior like Jane's is also evident in many BYU students' behavior, particularly among girls. For instance, when this movie came out:

my friends and I went and saw the movie and obsessed over this beautiful man:

We squealed so much so that the woman sitting next to us at the movie theater asked us to be quiet. However, the movie theater was packed (mostly with women), and we were definitely not the only ones squealing during this scene:

We weren't BYU students then, although we all are now--we all grew up in Utah Valley, though, and were familiar with BYU's marriage culture. I can only speak for myself, but I know that while watching the movie, I was thinking about how much I wanted my own "Mr. Darcy" and a similarly romantic love story to play out in my own life, even though I was only 15. I wanted a boyfriend, dangit! I wanted to be kissed like Elizabeth Bennet in a dramatically romantic fashion!

I attribute my early obsession with marriage to the culture I grew up in. Even at age 15, I had already had a lot of lessons in church about the importance of marriage, and I knew a lot of girls who were only 19 who had gone to BYU or UVSC and had immediately gotten married. Based on this, then, it didn't seem like marriage was that far off for me.

I think the mentality that me and my friends exhibited through our squeals and rapture while watching various Jane Austen movies connects Jane Austen movies with BYU's marriage culture: BYU students watch Jane Austen movies on campus at least in part because they are obsessed with marriage, and watching the characters' romances played out on screen enables them to live out their own mental fantasies of marriage and romance, which, they hope, will eventually end in marriage.

HOWEVER, not all students are comfortable with BYU's marriage culture OR with BYU's perception of Jane Austen.

The girl on the left of this picture

is named Tiffany. She said that both Jane Austen and BYU

"put way too much pressure/emphasis on marriage and not enough on education and thinking before doing something stupid that will affect the rest of your life."

She thus sees a connection between BYU's obsession with Jane Austen movies, and BYU's obsession with marriage, and she doesn't particularly like or agree with the connection.

This boy

is named Jon. He is an English major at BYU. He said,

"I don’t think [BYU students] read [Jane Austen] correctly, that she’s misunderstood and misinterpreted by a BYU…she’s been like 'chickified' somehow and it’s turned into some sort of… teenage thing where everyone’s just 'yay Jane Austen yay!' and it’s funny and it’s cute and all the girls squeal and the social critique has sort of been lost."

He doesn't like how BYU interprets Jane Austen movies and novels. This doesn't mean that he doesn't like either marriage or Jane Austen, though. In fact, he still believes Jane Austen novels and movies are important to BYU culture and to understanding marriage and relationships:

"[Austen’s] stuff on relationships and how we see people and how we treat people and what is appropriate and inappropriate and everybody interacting with one another and why they marry or don’t and why they do or don’t like people is I think very important for BYU."

IN CONCLUSION:

I decided with my project that many people on BYU campus are a part of the "Jane Austen Movie Night," especially girls like me and my friends.

I also think that BYU's obsession with Jane Austen movies highlights its obsession with marriage.

However, many people are opposed to BYU's interpretation of both marriage and Jane Austen, which doesn't mean that they don't like marriage or Jane Austen--it only means that they have a different view of both of them.

BUT DON'T FEEL BAD, NO MATTER WHICH GROUP YOU'RE A PART OF!

The girl in this picture

is me. I believe that, based on my own experience, it's possible to be a member of both groups. I watch and like Jane Austen movies and I fantasize about marriage like a lot of girls on BYU campus. However, I also dislike parts of BYU's emphasis on marriage. For instance, even though I'm only twenty, lots of people I know ask me if I'm dating anyone and if I'm planning on getting married soon.

I don't know why they ask me this when I'm only twenty.

I also think there's more to Jane Austen than just marriage. Marriage is certainly an important part of her novels, but what she's saying about marriage--Is it always a good thing? Why do people get married? What makes a good marriage? Is love as important as wealth?--isn't always simple or straightforward.

What this project shows most of all is that Jane Austen was a smart, complex women. Her novels weren't meant to be merely "chicklit" or romantic fantasy; they were, and still are, deep novels with multiple levels of meaning--although they are, of course, romantic in their turn.

Congratulations, Jane Austen, on a job well done. Your influence is felt near and far, from England to BYU campus, and your books have changed a lot of lives--including mine.

In conclusion, if you are part of the first group (i.e., the whole-hearted Jane Austen Movie Night watchers), this video will make you squeal with glee. If you are part of the second group, or the anti-Jane Austen/BYU culture group, you will probably roll your eyes a lot. If you are part of the third group, who love certain parts of Jane Austen chickflickyness but criticized it at the same time (which, I believe, the majority of the people I interviewed were, including me), then you might outwardly mock this video, but inwardly squeal with joy. Alternatively, you might laugh while watching it but also say things like, "Oh, I love North and South! I love you, Mr. Thornton!!" and then, depending on who you are watching it with, feel embarrassed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOFps_Naytg

Works Cited:
Hale, Shannon. Austenland. New York: Bloomsbury, 2007. Print.

P.S.
A shout-out to Kris, who I also interviewed for this project and who would like it to be known that she finds this man

aka, Mr. Rochester, infinitely more attractive than these men:

these men:

or, alas, this man:

Sad!

It's okay, though. Rochester is, yes, pretty dang hot. Kudos to Kris!

Happy Poetry Month!

2010-04-06T20:14:00.000-07:00

Ah, the blessed month of April. Fraught with windstorms, snow flurries, ice slicing up your cheeks, your red calves quivering in the wind and longing for sunshine and a good pair of shorts, and a month full of 40% off poetry discounts at the BYU Bookstore! I keep missing my office hours because I'm so distracted by the 40% off display table. It's okay. No one comes anyway. To kick of poetry month (six days late) and to distract myself from the task at hand, namely writing my African lit paper (due tomorrow), here's a snarky little prose poem that I find both pretty and fairly amusing in its own special way.

Metaphors

It is pleasing to know there are so many metaphors in this world. And I'm told the number is growing all the time. Last week an Asian newspaper reported that an immense metaphor surfaced just off the coast of India and was creating quite a stir. Christians and Muslims forbad the faithful to gaze upon it. Hindus showered it with flowers. Buddhists claimed it had been there all along. A single metaphor can upend the world and soon everyone is wearing orange or speaking in falsetto or weeping in the streets. Before they present themselves to mankind, most prophets spend years gathering metaphors in the desert, which is like an orchard where metaphors flourish without a trace of rain.

-David Shumate

Lame civ class. Poem of the Week.

2010-04-03T15:27:00.000-07:00

I hate, hate, hate TAing for the civ class I am accidentally TAing this semester. I hate ancient civ. It's awful. And so boring. I REALLY DON'T CARE about ancient Greek dead people. Sorry. Except for some of them, like Aeschylus and Sophocles. Anyway. This is a lovely poem that is better than ancient civilizations and is much better than ancient philosophers, because really? Who cares. The end.

Etymology

Her body by the fire
Mimicked the light-conferring midnights
Of philosophy.
Suppose they are dead now.
Isn't "dead now" an odd expression?
The sound of the owls outside
And the wind soughing in the trees
Catches in their ears, is sent out
In scouting parties of sensation down their spines.
If you say it became language or it was nothing,
Who touched whom?
In what hurtle of starlight?
Poor language, poor theory
Of language. The shards of skull
In the Egyptian museum looked like maps of the wind-eroded
Canyon labyrinths from which,
Standing on the verge
In the yellow of a dwindling fall, you hear
Echo and re-echo the cries of terns
Fishing the worked silver of a rapids.
And what to say of her wetness? The Anglo-Saxons
Had a name for it. They called it silm.
They were navigators. It was also
Their word for the look of moonlight on the sea.

-Robert Hass

That was a picture I took of the place mat that the nice lady who owned the rockin bed and breakfast in Weymouth had at her breakfast table. I took a picture because I thought it was the prettiest place mat I had ever seen and I did not want to leave the ocean. I am spending a lot of time torturing myself because I WANT TO BE AT THE OCEAN and not here, where I need to write two papers that are due next week, since we only have one more week of school which is SCARY. To cheer myself up about not being at the ocean, here are some pictures that make me happy.

On the cliffs at that place where Arthur's castle was. What was that place called? The New Age place where Nicholas Cage randomly was. TINTAGEL. It was gorgeous there.

Jon, after surmounting the tallest peak of the epic Jurassic Coast.

Glastonbury is a beautiful place full of beautiful people.

AND IT'S ALMOST SUMMER SO IT'S ALMOST TIME FOR US TO GO BACK HERE! :

Here meaning Bryce Canyon, which is LOVELY.
And truly, it is almost SUMMERTIMES, which are exciting times.

Book of the Week!

2010-03-15T16:01:00.000-07:00

So I have this problem where I think everything is interesting. Like all the different cultures of the world are cool and I want to learn about them all. Therefore I have books of poetry from Australia, India, the Caribbean, and Polynesia scattered across my floor and am having a hard time processing them all. Sooo I am going to try to focus on a different region that interests me every couple of weeks and switch off every once in a while. Thus, this week's focus is PALESTINE.

I just finished reading a book of poetry called 19 Varieties of Gazelle by Naomi Shihab Nye, which was LOVELY. She's an Arab-American author and poet who ANNELISE HAS ACTUALLY MET WHICH IS SO GREAT. Her poems about the Middle Eastern Palestine conflict are just so great. And I have to say, I really don't understand why America is so pro-Zionist...because it doesn't make actual sense. Idk. So now I'm reading another book of her poetry called Honeybee, and here is a poem she wrote about George Bush, which makes me sad and pleases me.

Letters My Prez Is Not Sending

Dear Rafik, Sorry about that soccer game
you won't be attending since you now
have no...

Dear Fawziya, You know, I have a mom too
so I can imagine what you...

Dear Shadiya, Think about your father
versus democracy, I'll bet you'd pick...

No, no, Sami, that's not true
what you said at the rally,
that our country hates you,
we really support your move
toward freedom,
that's why you no longer have
a house or a family or a village...

Dear Hassan, If only you could see
the bigger picture...

Dear Mary, I'm surprised you have
what we would call a Christian name
since you yourself...

Dear Ribhia, Sorry about that heart attack,
I know it must have been rough to live
your entire life under occupation,
we're sending a few more bombs over now
to fortify your oppressors,
but someday we hope for peace in the region,
sorry you won't be there to see it...

Dear Suheir, Surely a voice is made to be raised,
don't you see we are speaking for your own interests...

Dear Sharif, Violence is wrong
unless we are using it,
why doesn't that make sense...

Dear Nadia, I did not know about
your special drawer, you know I like
to keep a few things too that have meaning to me...

Dear Ramzi, You really need to stop crying now
and go on about your business...

Dear Daddo, I know 5 kids
must feel like a lot to lose in one swoop
but we can't stop our efforts...

Dear Fatima, Of course I have feelings
for your own people, my college roommates
was from Lebanon...

Dear Mahmoud, I wish I had time
to answer your letter but you must understand
the mail has really been stacking up...

I realize I'm a little bit strange, but...

2010-03-10T11:10:00.001-08:00

Did the last devotional annoy anyone else? I didn't actually watch it, as per the usual, but they always have a summary in the Daily Universe, and while I was sprinting (...walking briskly) to class this morning, the headline caught my eye:

SPEAKER HIGHLIGHTS WORTH OF WOMEN

Feeling optimistic but preparing myself for disappointment, I read the opening sentence:

"Women have a sacred role in the purification and sanctification of men, said a member of the Quorum of the Seventy at Tuesday's devotional."

Elder Pace, who looks in his picture like a precious and adorable man, so no offense meant, says "women have...the destiny to complete men."

Hm. Now, I think that's all fine and dandy. I think we all have a role to play in helping complete the lives of others. But I think that goes for men as well as women--we complete each other. Putting the role squarely on women's shoulders makes for a kind of parasitic relationship.

Also, this quote made me laugh, but I think reading it out of context made it a little more oedipus/elektra-complex than it was meant to be: "If all men had the perspective of seeing women the way a father sees his daughters, 'respect for and treatment of a young woman during his dating years would improve significantly.'"

Okay, so don't be freaked out that I'm apostatizing (Mother...), but I kind of think this whole talk is being smothered in Victorian sentiment and is therefore pretty ridiculous. It sounds angel in the house/madwoman in the attic, if you know what I mean. I'm all for divine nature and completing each other, but really? Dang it, men, purify yourselves, because I'm not into accepting that it's my divine destiny to do it for you. And it's not your divine destiny to "purify" me. Either we help purify and sanctify each other, equally and as equal partners, or it's a bogus relationship with too much pressure being put on one party or the other.

Okay, my rage has been diluted somewhat. I should be carefuller (...it's not being underlined in squiggly red. Spellcheck!fail) about what I put on the internets, and I didn't actually see the devotional, so I can't really judge what Elder Pace was trying to do. And he seems like a nice old 70 dude who really was trying to emphasize that women are of worth, so that was nice of him to do, and kudos to him.

But I still disagree with him, in spite of his cuteness.

Also, 200-ish people were massacred in Nigeria the other day, which sucks. I'm sorry, Nigeria. I really am.

:(

What I Have Gained From My College Education.

2010-02-26T14:33:00.000-08:00

What? Do my homework instead of posting on this blog? Back, you scurvy knaves and demons of my mind! My homework shall remain undone while I write down various quotes heard a) in my classrooms, from various professors; b) from random students across campus, and c) my blithely innocent young roommates. Hee hee.

FIRST, THE PROFESSORS. Ah, the almighty power of the PhD.

In religion class:

You have to read your scriptures on your anniversary, and the Song of Solomon is a great warm-up act.
Why do you all freak out every time I talk about sex? It's like you're in high school or something. Don't freak out about things I get to do that you don't. Ha! If you're not married, go get married. It's good stuff.

In a different and much better religion class:

Mormonism is the ultimate sci-fi religion.

In African lit class:

Say a cheetah sees an antelope. The antelope's not too thrilled. But say the cheetah says, heeeeeeeey everybody! An antelope!! Suddenly you've got thousands of people on your case, and you're not too happy.

In African geography:

Rwanda is like...so we're here in Utah, we're doing okay, but California's doing really bad. They have no health care, their governor has machine guns for hands. So they come over and kill us all. Yeah, it's like that.

VARIOUS STUDENTS HAVE SAID THESE WORDS WITHIN MY HEARING RANGE:

I'm writing, like, twenty missionaries. One gets home soon. I, like, *screams* CAN'T BELIEVE IT!!

You should totally see The Princess and the frog. It's like not Victorian, or like all medieval like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. It's, like, modern.

Bridgett is /always/ nice to kiss.

FROM VARIOUS ROOMMATES, INCLUDING AND NOT LIMITED TO MYSELF.

That's a huge carrot! I bet it's name is...Caldwell.
Thomas, we do not name our carrots. We just eat them.

You're a laxative waiting to happen?

THE END.

You want to watch this video.

2010-01-17T11:23:00.001-08:00

http://vimeo.com/2113477

Right now.

It's a party in the USA.

2010-01-01T17:53:00.000-08:00

By which I mean HAPPY NEW YEAR. I am happy to report that I have spent the first day of the new year watching the extended versions of LotR with my estimable father, which is almost making me wish it was last winter semester, because I miss my Tolkien class. Greatest class ever. Anyway, GOOD TIMES HAVE ABOUNDED today and why haven't I seen these movies for two years hello. Also I have been doing crosswords. And taking down the Christmas tree, which is very very tall.

Also what happened today is we thought my dumb dog ate some rat poison she found in the extra wing, so she got to spend today throwing up in the backyard because we forced salt water down her throat. Sad for her. Poor dumb dog that I love. So here is a cute poem about dogs and love. For some reason the collection I have only has a part of this poem, but I can't figure out what parts got cut out of it, so...go figure.

Falling In Love is Like Owning a Dog

First of all, it's a big responsibility,
especially in a city like New York.
So think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives a sense of security:
when you're walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain't no one going to mess with you.*

Love doesn't like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.

Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.

Sometimes love just wants to go for a nice long walk.
It runs you around the block and leaves you panting.
It pulls you in several different directions at once,
or winds around and around you
until you're all wound up and can't move.

But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.

Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.

-Taylor Mali

*unless you are Patrick Swayze, in which case you will get shot and die even though you are in love, which will likely result in an awkward three-way makeout scene involving your ghost, Whoopi Goldberg and Demi Moore. Gross.

So here are some pictures of some things that I love, including my cute cute dog:

Aw see she is cute.

And of course I love these people.

Picture edited by Josie. You go, Josie. You go.
AND OF COURSE I also love these people:

In a photo I think Jon took that I stole off our lovely England blog. Sorry for being an internet thief. AND AGAIN:

Also I think Jon took one of those pictures and Tiffany probably took another; they were on my facebook page, yey. I took the last one, though. Hee.

And of course, where would I be without any of these lovely people?

Dear Ellis is, alas, not pictured. She was probably taking the picture.

In conclusion, Happy New Year, my dearlings.

Probably I would have more pictures of even more people who I love if I ever took pictures of anyone besides myself.

I will conclude this inspirational post with these inspirational lines:

In place of a dark lord, you would have a queen.
Not dark, but beautiful and terrible as the morn!
Treacherous as the Sea!
Stronger than the foundations of the Earth!
All shall love me and despair.

Hearts!!

In which Twilight ruins more lives.

2009-12-30T23:22:00.001-08:00

So when I was at Borders today, I discovered that Twilight appears to have hijacked the love of my life, namely young adult fiction. Because there were 123098123098 new young adult series and they were all about VAMPIRES. And worst of all to meet my gaze was this monstrosity, the sight of which triggered my gag reflex and made me want to vomit all over the mothers of five who were traipsing around the bookstore with their small children in tow ACTUALLY WANTING TO BUY WUTHERING HEIGHTS JUST BECAUSE IT HAS NOW BEEN ENDORSED BY BELLA AND EDWARD.

Hey guess what?

THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR. NEITHER IS READING TWILIGHT, YOU CREEPY SEX-STARVED MORMON WOMEN. Yeah, I just said that. Sorry. But hey you know what else? EDWARD CULLEN IS NOT A REAL PERSON, AND IF HE WERE A REAL PERSON, HE WOULD BE A SERIAL RAPIST.

Thus, in order to rid myself of the terror of thinking that everyone now thinks that romance = abusive creepy paranoid sparkly stalker + hot vampire sex (? wtf) and/or the EVEN MORE DISTURBING ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS of Wuthering Heights, which, spoilers, are NOT romantic but rather encompass physical, emotional, and sexual abuse (mm except for Catherine and Hareton...so cute <3)...I can't remember where that sentence was going. But so anyway. So I went and found my favorite romantic lines about healthy romantic relationships from books that are neither Twilight nor Wuthering Heights (which novel, by the way, I adore, except for all the parts with Heathcliff, who is terrible and who I hate hate hate. I am just saying.), and this reassured me that humanity can actually potentially maybe have meaningful relationships, in spite of this most terrible portrait of humanity/my local bookstore.

"Please remember me," said Dorothea, repressing a rising sob.
"Why should you say that?" said Will, with irritation. "As if I were not in danger of forgetting everything else."

-Middlemarch. Aww.

This whole poem is just the greatest thing, but especially this part:

They were talking about fishing,
then one changed the subject,
and, I swear, they began talking about you.

heart/Billy Collins.

Also, from my absolute most favorite book of all time:

She said, "Who am I, that you should love me?"
"You are My Queen," said Eugenides. She sat perfectly still, looking at him without moving as his words dropped like water into dry earth.
"Do you believe me?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered.
"Do you love me?"
"Yes."
"I love you."
And she believed him.

-The Queen of Attolia.
GREATEST CHILDREN'S BOOK EVERY WRITTEN HOLY CRAAAAAAPPP.

And, of course, where would we be without the estimable Jane Austen? Answer: nowhere. Or weeping softly somewhere in the darkness, alone and sad and unable to convey our emotions with words. Sad. Day.

"I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening, or never."

-PERSUASION, which by the way is the greatest Jane Austen novel mmhmm you know it's true.

And also, if you want something more epic than friggin sparkly vampires in your epic romance, then you should be made aware of my favorite thing ever written by Tolkien, which is the story of Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion, BECAUSE IT IS SO GREAT.

Also favorite Shakespeare sonnet of my life thus far:

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Yes it is a good one. Plus, it brings us this lovely scene from my favorite Jane Austen film adaptation (even if the Persuasion adaptation is actually better...), because anything Emma Thompson touches = wonderful. Why would you need brooding emo vampires/Heathcliff when you can have brooding emo Sense and Sensibility? Yes it is better this way yes.

OH THE HUMANITY. Okay now go listen to this song because it's actually cute except for the groovy fan video but hey whatevs aww the end. And now that's pretty much all I got, so I'll go back to reading this lovely book and try to forget that Twilight ever happened.

Famblyfamblyfamblyfamblyfambly.

2009-12-27T21:19:00.000-08:00

My family is playing a game where you put cards with words on them down on top of each other in order from largest to smallest, like universe --> Asia --> China --> cemetery. Let me tell you something. This game is lame. Because everything has to be logical. This is what I put down:

Hollywood --> Springtime
Pear tree --> Rainstorm
Alleyway --> Doorway --> Galaxy --> Nun

This is more fun when the card game becomes a fantasy story. Like say you're in this magical fantasy realm and you're sitting on a hill under a pear tree and it's only raining on you. I can see this in my head. Or say you're in an alternate universe and Hollywood is like its own galaxy and it's only springtime in Hollywood and everywhere else it's all dark and drab and everyone is fighting all the time to try to get into Hollywood where it's pretty but they can't because there are big tall gates and only some people can get in sometimes. The end. Do you even know how much more fun that makes this game? But one Shaneus would have none of it, and thus was I ridiculed. Sigh. Life is hard. Probably I am crazy. Does this make sense to anyone else but me? Probably not.

To conclude with a lovely poem by Pablo Neruda:

Twenty Love Poems: #20

I can write the saddest verses tonight.

Write, for example "The night is shattered with stars,
twinkling blue, in the distance."

The night wind spins in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times beneath the infinite sky.

She loved me, and at times I loved her too.
How not to have loved her great still eyes.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.
To think that I don't have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the verse falls onto my soul like dew onto grass.

What difference that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered, full of stars, and she is not with me.

That's all. In the distance, someone sings. In the distance.
My soul is not at peace with having lost her.

As if to bring her closer, my gaze searches for her.
My heart searches for her, and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, of then, now are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, it's true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched for the wind that would touch her ear.

Another's. She will be another's. As before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite space.

I no longer love her, it's true, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is not at peace with having lost her.

Though this may be the final sorrow she causes me,
and these the last verses I write for her.

Christmas. Meh.

2009-12-24T22:05:00.000-08:00

little tree

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid

look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"

-ee cummings

The Beautiful Changes

2009-12-23T00:01:00.000-08:00

One wading a fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne's Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of
You
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that
Says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things' selves for a second finding,
to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to
wonder.

-Richard Wilbur

Also, lyrics of the song I'm listening to right now:

The world is alive now, in and outside our home
You run through the forest, settle before the sun
Darling, I can barely remember you beside me
You should come back home, back on your own now

And even in the light, when the woman of the woods came by
To give to you the word of the old man
In the morning tide when the sparrow and the seagull fly
And Jonathan and Evelyn get tired

Lie to me if you will at the top of Beringer Hill
Tell me anything you want, any old lie will do
Call me back to you.

Two poems today.

2009-12-20T14:35:00.000-08:00

Poem #1

I am grateful, violins, for this day
of four chords. Pure
is the sound of the sky,
the blue voice of the air.

-Pablo Neruda

Poem #2

XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
"I love her for her smile--her look--her way
Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day"--
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,--and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,--
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who is kind of awesome.

After another finals week...

2009-12-18T15:17:00.000-08:00

= Yet another late night at the library, = another list of fabulous children's book titles, many of which are very odd:
Chicken Trek
A Kick to the Head
When I Crossed No-Bob
Pigs Ahoy!
Five Alien Elves
Six Haunted Hairdos
Seven Spiders Spinning
I've Painted Everything!
Insects are my Life
The Cereal Box

Also, a list of things I feel one could only overhear at BYU:
"Augh, I don't even want to pee, I'm wearing so many layers. Just wait til you have garments."
"So then we were engaged for like, a week, and then I, like, broke it off, but like I still wanted him around, and he kept calling home and hyperventilating because I couldn't make up my mind, and his family like hates me now, but I just don't love him."
"Dude, did you get any action last night." "Yeah, dude." "Bro, I hope you gave her something to remember you by." "Yeah, dude." (-Two freshmen boys sitting across from me at the library) (= not something you would only overhear at BYU, but it issomething that is made much funnier by the fact that two freshmen boys were having this conversation right across from me.)

Learned maxim of the week: Alas, it again proves true that it is not finals week unless I procrastinate my final paper, stay up until two finishing an essay that I could have finished a week ago, and cram all day for a test that I really should only have studied two hours maximum for.

PEACE OUT, my darlings, and a happy the last day of finals to all.

Boo ya.

2009-12-17T21:58:00.000-08:00

This is what I wrote as a part of my women's lit final, which is due tomorrow morning at eight o'clock:

A further women’s issue that modern women’s literature especially needs to explore is the issue of female objectification by men as well as male objectification by women. Today’s pop culture especially tends towards objectifying women, from advertisements to tabloids to movies. Furthermore, current fads such as the Twilight and Gossip Girl series depict objectified men, adding to a culture where the sexes view each other merely as objects to be used. Meaningful, important women’s literature of today often addresses the problem of failing to see members of the opposite sex as real individuals, such as Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story “Sexy,” in which a woman objectifies herself in an attempt to find meaningful connections, but realizes that objectification can never be the basis of a real relationship. Lahiri’s story demonstrates that stories and novels by women exploring the devastating social, psychological, and emotional consequences of objectification are crucial topics to discuss for female empowerment into the coming decades. By emphasizing both that neither women nor men should allow themselves to be objectified, nor should they buy into the idea that objectification is in some way “sexy,” as Lahiri says, or at all desirable, women’s literature empowers both sexes. Furthermore, exemplary and important woman’s literature presents alternatives to objectification, like Marilynne Robinson’s Home, which realistically portrays both men and women and explores meaningful relationships between the two, founded not on objectification but on real understanding.

I feel empowered.

Poem of the Day

2009-12-15T13:34:00.001-08:00

This morning, I woke up at nine, looked at the time on my phone, told myself, "If you roll over, you will go back to sleep and not wake up until twelve and feel so so upset with yourself," then promptly rolled over and feel asleep. I woke up at twelve with my phone still clutched in my hand and started having a panic attack about all the things I needed to do today, but I was still secretly pleased that I slept in because I had this cool dream that was a mixture of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Power Rangers, Star Wars, and Diana Wynn Jones. There were these evil vampires in it called The Postmen who could come out in daylight, and I kept trying to pummel them to pieces, but it never worked. Violent, but an engaging dream.

Reading this poem while listening to Mozart's Symphony Number 25 in G minor makes it even more amusing to me.

Tension

“Never use the word suddenly just to
create tension.”
—Writing Fiction

Suddenly, you were planting some yellow petunias
outside in the garden,
and suddenly I was in the study
looking up the word oligarchy for the thirty-seventh time.

When suddenly, without warning,
you planted the last petunia in the flat,
and I suddenly closed the dictionary
now that I was reminded of that vile form of governance.

A moment later, we found ourselves
standing suddenly in the kitchen
where you suddenly opened a can of cat food
and I just as suddenly watched you doing that.

I observed a window of leafy activity
and, beyond that, a bird perched on the edge
of the stone birdbath
when suddenly you announced you were leaving

to pick up a few things at the market
and I stunned you by impulsively
pointing out that we were getting low on butter
and another case of wine would not be a bad idea.

Who could tell what the next moment would hold?
Another drip from the faucet?
Another little spasm of the second hand?
Would the painting of a bowl of pears continue

to hang on the wall from that nail?
Would the heavy anthologies remain on their shelves?
Would the stove hold its position?
Suddenly, it was anyone’s guess.

The sun rose ever higher.
The state capitals remained motionless on the wall map
when suddenly I found myself lying on a couch
where I closed my eyes and without any warning

began to picture the Andes, of all places,
and a path that led over the mountain to another country
with strange customs and eye-catching hats
suddenly fringed with little colorful, dangling balls.

-Billy Collins

Poem of the Day

2009-12-13T19:40:00.001-08:00

Today, I got up on time, and so I did not have psychotic dreams
about rapists and kidnappings like I have had the past few days
where I have slept in until 12 or 1.  Yay, reading days, you have no point.

Walking to church in so much slush = more difficult than walking to church
in the snow.  Today I went to temple prep which engaged persons are supposed
to go to, but there was only one engaged couple and like five prospective
missionaries, and everyone else was just
there because they didn't want to go to Sunday School
because spoilars, it is boring.

List of things I saw yesterday:
a bird outside my window in the pine tree
a pretty picture of a lighthouse
a girl totally biff it right outside the HBLL.  She slid in the snow
and landed on her knees and faceplanted.  Bummer.

List of things I heard yesterday:
a conversation in the library about what the abbreviation "FEC"
in a text meant.  The conclusion reached: "Future Eternal Companion.'
inhuman sounds issuing from a study room on the fifth floor.
The culprits: freshmen watching a movie.
a song about the Berlin Wall

Pablo Neruda writes lovely love poems, but so does ee cummings,
who I love with my whole entire soul.  Also, this poem briefly mentions snow,
which I hope we will start getting instead of this gross grey slushy stuff.

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
by ee cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Poem of the Day

2009-12-12T20:31:00.000-08:00

The Effort
By Billy Collins

Would anyone care to join me
in flicking a few pebbles in the direction
of teachers who are fond of asking the question:
"What is the poet trying to say?"

as if Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson
had struggled but ultimately failed in their efforts—
inarticulate wretches that they were,
biting their pens and staring out the window for a clue.

Yes, it seems that Whitman, Amy Lowell
and the rest could only try and fail
but we in Mrs. Parker's third-period English class
here at Springfield High will succeed

with the help of these study questions
in saying what the poor poet could not,
and we will get all this done before
that orgy of egg salad and tuna fish known as lunch.

Tonight, however, I am the one trying
to say what it is this absence means,
the two of us sleeping and waking under different roofs.
The image of this vase of cut flowers,

not from our garden, is no help.
And the same goes for the single plate,
the solitary lamp, and the weather that presses its face
against these new windows--the drizzle and the
morning frost.

So I will leave it up to Mrs. Parker,
who is tapping a piece of chalk against the blackboard,
and her students—a few with their hands up,
others slouching with their caps on backwards—

to figure out what it is I am trying to say
about this place where I find myself
and to do it before the noon bell rings
and that whirlwind of meatloaf is unleashed.

Poem of the Day

2009-12-10T16:18:00.000-08:00

It's a long one, but reading it while listening to Hootie and the Blowfish is lightening my day. Is that even a legit verb? Making my day better, I guess. Rather pleasant, and such.

Ode to an Artichoke
By Pablo Neruda
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The tender-hearted
artichoke
got dressed as a warrior,
erect, built
a little cupola,
stood
impermeable
under
its scales,
around it
the crazy vegetables
bristled,
grew
astonishing tendrils,
cattails, bulbs,
in the subsoil
slept the carrot
with its red whiskers,
the grapevine
dried the runners
through which it carries the wine,
the cabbage
devoted itself
to trying on skirts,
oregano
to perfuming the world,
and the gentle
artichoke
stood there in the garden,
dressed as a warrior,
burnished
like a pomegranate,
proud,
and one day
along with the others
in large willow
baskets, it traveled
to the market
to realize its dream:
the army.
Amid the rows
never was it so military
as at the fair,
men
among the vegetables
with their white shirts
were
marshals
of the artichokes,
the tight ranks,
the voices of command,
and the detonation
of a falling crate,
but
then
comes
Maria
with her basket,
picks an artichoke,
isn't afraid of it,
examines it, holds it
to the light as if it were an egg,
buys it,
mixes it up
in her bag
with a pair of shoes,
with a head of cabbage and a
bottle of vinegar
until
entering the kitchen
she submerges it in a pot.
Thus ends
in peace
the career
of the armored vegetable
which is called artichoke,
then
scale by scale
we undress
its delight
and we eat
the peaceful flesh
of its green heart.

It's cool how you can be paradoxically anti-war and empowering women and exploring the importance of everyday life in a poem about an artichoke, which is a tasty food that I now feel like eating, with melted butter and lemon juice. Mm.

Also, while typing this, Hootie and the Blowfish ended, and "Before He Cheats" came up on my ipod. There's another piece of poetry for you to explore, if you will.

Read previous sentence: sarcastically.

Poem of the Day.

2009-12-09T18:52:00.000-08:00

Carry

I want to carry you
and for you to carry me
the way voices are said to carry over water.

Just this morning on the shore,
I could hear two people talking quietly
in a rowboat on the far side of the lake.

They were talking about fishing,
then one changed the subject,
and, I swear, they began talking about you.

-Billy Collins.

Some Lists.

2009-12-06T23:02:00.000-08:00

#1: More Rockin' Library Titles, Many of Which Would Make For Some Nice Band Names of Multiple Genres.
Parrot in the Oven
Leroy and the Cavemen
Girlhearts
Jason's Women
The Stalker
Cowboy on Ice
A Boy No More
The Muffin Child
The Solid Gold Kid
The Girl of His Dreams
Patti's Pet Gorilla
Bizzy Bones and Uncle Ezra
Chameleon Was a Spy
Suza and the Bride Doll

My favorite: Caroline and Her Kettle Named Maud
Title Find of the Week (But Not in the Children's Section) By One Jon Smith: Pop-Porn.
Nice title, bros.

#2: Some Songs That I Had Stuck in My Head, But With the Wrong Lyrics, Which Took Me Forever to Realize
"Bring a corpse, Jeannette, Isabella."
"Traitors and pirates now fight him in vain."

#3: Things I Ate for Dinner Last Week
Wednesday: Andes Mints + Value fries from Wendy's.
Thursday: Lasagna. Yum.
Friday: Dinner at Osaka's, where they have an entire MEAL of GYOZA. HOLY COW. Though it is too bad Yamato doesn't have the same thing, since their gyoza is five thousand times better, I think because they cook it in different oil that doesn't taste quite as burny, but still. It was scrumptious.
Saturday: Moar lasagna.
Sunday: Lentil soup + raw vegan ice cream + a salad of strawberries, greens, sprouts, cauliflower, and Cafe Rio dressing. I've never known how desperately much I like cauliflower. It tastes just like broccoli, but without the Satanic texture.
Also: It started on Sunday because I can't remember what I ate on the other days. Something.

#4: Some Notable Dreams of This Week
Two nights ago: I was an extra on the set of the new Twilight movie. People kept dying on set because everyone hated Twilight so much so they kept sabotaging the set, which looked like the pit underneath the Tower of Isengard. An actress stood on a mountain and gave an epic speech about how Twilight would overcome all things. An old man was sad.
Like a week ago: I was a vampire, which just meant that during the day my face was just a skeleton, which I tried to cover up with a scarf in a department store so people wouldn't know I was a vampire. It kept getting harder to breathe and I kept trying to figure out why, and then I thought, oh, it is because vampires don't have to breathe, so I kept trying to stop myself from breathing, but I couldn't. In retrospect, this is probably a good thing.
Also like a week ago: Miranda and I went to a concert. She was seated by one of the Beatles, who was not a Beatle but looked like a member of Kiss. Then I spent the concert trying to name the Beatles and figure out which one he was, but I could not, because my Beatles knowledge = nothing.

#5: Some Marvelous Things My Swahili Teacher, Who Is Wonderful, Has Said in Class
"No hurry in Africa. Just very relaxing."
"That fish will run away from me on the bus."
"What happens with my cats here?"
"You go to the Rift Valley Area, where the weather is so friendly."
"I know I dream about those scary things myself. They come after me in the night."
"I always remember sometime when I dream."
"You know...is good."
By the way, my Swahili teacher can say 120398123098123098 times more things in English than I can say in Swahili, since all I can say is:
"Jambo"
"Amina" (=amen)
And also the last for months of the year: Septemba, Oktoba, Novemba, Desemba.

IN CONCLUSION, I am going to bed now.

The Library on Saturday Night

2009-11-21T21:55:00.000-08:00

Is a fun place to be! But in the children's section they have some old books with some rockin' titles. Here are some examples:

C, My Name is Cal
D, My Name is Danita
When She Was Good
The Meanest Doll in the World
I LOVE YOU, STUPID!
Monkey Shines
Bristle Face
The Nip and Tuck War
On a Lark to the Planets
The Mystery of the Pilgrim Trading Post
Take a Chance, Gramps
Love and Betrayal and Hold the Mayo!
Something Terrible Happened
The Kidnapping of Aunt Elizabeth
On the Trail of the Space Pirates
Franz a Dog of the Police

On an unrelated note, I've owned these shoes since the 10th grade, and they reek. And yet I refuse to take them off my feet because they are the greatest shoes in the world. Thank you, Margaret, for the greatest birthday present of all time. Excepting the Backstreet Boys cd I got in the year 2000.

THE END.

So sometimes

2009-11-18T22:01:00.001-08:00

You are just sitting there in the library, and you should be doing your homework but instead you are checking your email and some obnoxious student you are paid to help has emailed you blaming you for not emailing him to tell him when he can take his late test, because obviously you are the one responsible for his grade, not him. And then you are annoyed and want to email him a string of obscenities, but you do not and instead divert your attention to other time-wasting activities on the internet, and then you think about the Hogi Yogi turkey you picked up at the yogurt shop the other day and how you wish the bookstore was still open so you could buy crayons to color it in, and then you start looking at the book titles of the children's books on the floor of the library you are on which all have names like Slam! and The Magical Electronic Elephant and then you think about how some men have really, really thick, dark hair on their hands, and how you are glad you have nothing on your hands except for the letters THS because you saw your little brother's school play today and you listened really hard during all the songs so you could hear his trumpet in spite of all the singing. Then you wondered what you would dream about tonight: your cousin coming home with no hair or as an old crippled Asian man with a thin stringy mustache that touched the floor when he walked into the terminal and you didn't recognize him but then you thought, oh, that must be Casey, and then you started crying because he was home and you were happy. Then you thought I really, really don't want to write those papers, so it's a good thing the internet was invented so I could spend five minutes writing a stream-of-consciousness blog post and then post it without reading it just because it's the internet and who is actually going to read this anyway, and then you felt better.

I hate blogging and also bloggers.

2009-07-24T12:28:00.000-07:00

Last night I dreamed that I had to give a report in a huge gym while wearing this white flowy toga nightgown thing about a crazy ghost lady who drifted in and out of trees wearing a white flowy toga nightgown thing. Then they turned off all the lights in the gym and I felt stupid because my poster didn't glow in the dark, but it was okay because there were trees all over the gym with moonlight shining through them so it was kind of bright. The girl next to me sang high-pitched hymns in a loud obnoxious voice. Chris Bennion came around while I lit a candle so he could see my report and copy down everything that was important. A crazy lady came around and told me that she was going to adopt her niece because her parents had been killed by Voldemort, but for some reason she couldn't adopt her nephew. Then I woke up.

The weirdest things I have been in my dreams: Abraham Lincoln. Pregnant with a carrot. A fairy getting rescued by an ogre. Pregnant but a virgin. Tobaggoning. A male African soldier fighting some guerilla battle in front of my house. Able to fly by bouncing really high like a bouncy ball. Making out under a bridge and getting caught by my bishop. Disguised as an Israeli in Palestine after Israel blew up my house.

The end.