I'm going to post my summer reading list here now for Maryposa's sake even though it's quite some time until I get my summer vacation. And even then, summer doesn't come to Seattle until July 4th--or so they say. I'm going to miss Utah. So the goal this summer is to read as many books as there are weeks. I'm not sure how many weeks I get for summer break--math is hard! actually I just don't really care that much--but I think it's sixteen. So here are the sixteen books I plan to read this summer.
First up is The Iliad by Homer. I bought this book six years ago after I saw Troy which I personally didn't think was all that bad--even if there were no gods--but I never actually read the book. I have the translation by Robert Fagles along with his translations of The Odyssey and The Aeneid. Anyway, I think it's time to finally read this war epic.
Next we have Moby-Dick by Herman Melville which I bought in Portland. Harold Bloom says we don't have an American Adam, but Captain Ahab is the American Prometheus. Bloom says it's also the most negative of all American visions and that it explicitly cites The Books of Jonah and Job--perhaps I should read those first.
The Magicians by Lev Grossman is next. I don't know much about it except that it's highly recommended. But I love me some fantasy every now and then. And something less heady than epics.
I heard about Low Country Summer by Dorothea Benton Frank at PLA, and it sounds like a perfect summer book. If I remember right it's about a family coming back to their Southern home after their father dies. I already have my copy reserved at the library.
The Corrections is a big fat book by Jonathan Franzen. I hope it's as good as everyone says.
My sixth book is Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. I've only read Beloved so far.
I decided to read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley after reading Empire of Illusion. Chris Hedges, following Neil Postman, says Huxley's vision is much closer to our world today than Orwell's 1984.
I bought Death in Venice (and Other Stories) by Thomas Mann when the UW book store was having its sale. Sadly I've never heard of the translator. Still Venice is a very short novella which will make a nice change.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon's magnum opus, has sat plaintively on my desk for many, many weeks. My goal is to push through it this summer. Sometimes it's just so damn Dickensian.
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino is a slim book of short stories where Marco Polo is the tale-teller and Kublai Khan is his audience.
Many people have told me that I need to read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, so why not this summer?
I started reading Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia last summer, and intermittently over the school year, maybe I can finish it this summer. It's fascinating but very long.
I will also be reading Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. This will go nicely with Brave New World. and harshly critique my TV habits.
I have three more non-fiction books, but only two more slots. They are Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm, Republican Gomorrah by Max Blumenthal, and American Fascists by Chris Hedges. I guess it will depend on what I feel like.
I also have a library hold on Judith Jones's cookbook The Pleasures of Cooking for One. I don't know if it will come this summer or after school starts again, but I look forward to cooking through it (it's not that long).
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
These Precious Illusions
Last Saturday, Chloe and I went to the SPL book sale which was a complete madhouse. Still, we survived, and I got some lovely items for $1 a pop. I got Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth in hardback and a paperback of Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. All are in pretty good condition. The Corrections and Song of Solomon are on my tentative summer reading list. If the book section of the sale was crazy, that was nothing compared to the audiovisual component which was in a separate building. Anyway, I figured if the CDs were only one buck, I might as well just grab anything that looked interesting. I got Spoon's Gimme Fiction, the soundtrack to Juno, M. Ward's Post-War, Kate Bush's The Sensual World, and Elliott Smith's From a Basement on the Hill. I think I made out pretty well.
On Sunday I pretty much had a breakdown as major projects were due while I had majorly procrastinated. I've taken to saying that my SUU professors should have known better that I don't have the managerial skills to handle grad school when they wrote my letters of recommendation, but whatcha gonna do? This week has gotten better, for the moment anyway. During semesters, you get to sort of semi-languorously make your way through the fifteen weeks. As least that is my experience. During ten-week quarters, my preferred languid pace doesn't work so well. There is always something due.
So what I really want to write about is this fairly provocative, polemical book I just finished. It's entitled Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Chris Hedges. It's pretty strong stuff. He comes from a working-class family, earned a BA in English from Colgate University and a Master of Divinity from Harvard. He has worked as a correspondent from the NYT and earned a Pulitzer for his coverage of global terrorism. He is a socialist and a Christian, which is rarely explicit in the book though never far removed. He has previously written several books including War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning--writing "war is a drug" that became the epigraph for The Hurt Locker--and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (a mouthful right there) wherein he argues that the Christian fundamentalist movement is a threat to American democracy. (See the current history textbook controversy going on in Texas.) This might also go on my summer reading list.
Hedges follows in the tradition of other Cassandras including Noam Chomsky, Sheldon S. Wolin, Jared Diamond, Howard Zinn, Ralph Nader, and Neil Postman, whose book Amusing Ourselves to Death is also on my list. He often comes off as a Debbie Downer and seems to alienate any possible reader taking on the left and the right, critiquing not only pornography, corporations, and pop psychology, but also The New York Times NPR, and our education system, especially our universities. As a polemic it's often rage making, and he doesn't offer any easy answers (because there are none) except the enduring power of love, which seems pretty flimsy.
The book is comprised of five chapters, each tacking a different illusion. The first is the Illusion of Literacy. Hedges begins, naturally enough, with Plato's Allegory of the Cave, and argues that our society is functionally illiterate since even if we may know how to read and write, we are mesmerized by the shadow plays, unable to distinguish reality from illusion. He makes the analogy to Fahrenheit 451 where books are burned, but nobody seems to mind since they are enchanted by the parlor walls, an obvious metaphor for television. Our world is less 1984 and more Brave New World (also on my list). We don't need to censor people if we can endlessly amuse them. In this chapter, Hedges explores our cultural illiteracy through WWE, reality TV, and our celebrity culture. Today celebrity is everything, even if it's only the 15 minutes found on reality TV shows most of which, if not all, are puerile, voyeuristic, and morally reprehensible. Over the summer my family watched I Survived a Japanese Game Show and Wipeout, and even then I thought, what is the merit of this show? There is none intellectually or artistically.
Now I love television, scripted please, since reality TV has nothing in common with reality. Episodic television, at its best, can address complex ethical and moral issues, dysfunctional families, and serve as biting satires of pop culture, etc. Sometimes it's a little over-simplistic, that's the medium, but it can at least get you thinking. Shows that come to mind include The West Wing, Battlestar Galactica, Six Feet Under, Arrested Development, and The Simpsons. At it's worst, TV shows can be glitzy, showy, and glamorous distractions or even puerile and mind-numbingly stupid, but at the very least some artistic merit went into the work from the writing and acting to the directing and production. In this chapter, and through the rest of the book, Hedges seems in search of lost time, his own illusion of the good old days, the illusion of Norman Rockwell's America. Yet he also notes that historically kings led their courts in elaborate intrigues to distract everyone from the dirty business of governing. This isn't new. As I read this chapter Lily Allen's "The Fear" came to mind. I'm not sure Hedges would approve of reducing his book's ideas to pop songs, but "The Fear" really captures everything Hedges is saying--cultural programming, massive consumption, and the inability to separate reality from fantasy. MGMT's "Time to Pretend" also seems to apply.
The second chapter is the Illusion of Love. Here he discusses pornography, often with an unsettling, graphic frankness. I don't think anyone confuses pornography with love, but Hedges says it's not even about sex. It's the auto-erotic, masturbatory fantasy of the subjection of women by men. He discusses at length how far porn has gone since the advent of the home video and especially the Internet, continually pushing boundaries, becoming more extreme, violent, and deplorable. He attends a porn convention in Las Vegas calling the city our cultural capital--the ultimate simulacrum where nothing is real. He talks to current and ex porn stars, illustrating how they are treated not as people but as commodities. The producers and directors are pimps. I've often wondered why it's illegal to pay someone for sex, but not illegal to pay 2 (or 50) people to have sex with each other and film it.
In The West Wing Amy Gardner tells Josh that prostitution is about the subjugation of women by men for profit and dire economic needs are a form of coercion. Not to mention that being a prostitute is bad for you. I think that applies to pornography as well. This chapter reminded me of Tori Amos's songs "Amber Waves" and "Don't Make Me Come to Vegas" both from Scarlet's Walk. Actually most of Amos's road-tripping, agit-pop record of America serves well as a companion piece to the book including "Wednesday," "Crazy," "Pancake," and "Scarlet's Walk." I just want to quote Neil Gaiman's description of the album: "The CD's about America -- it's a story that's also a journey, that begins in LA and crosses the country, slowly heading east. America's in there, and specific places and things, Native American history and pornography and a girl on a plane who'll never get to New York, and Oliver Stone and Andrew Jackson and madness and a lot more. Not to mention a girl called Scarlet who may be the land and may be a person and may be a trail of blood."
The middle chapter is the Illusion of Wisdom, wherein he takes on our contemporary institutions of "higher" learning. I think he would have a friend in Harold Bloom who has little patience for today's university--media circuses and undead professors. Hedges notes that most of our multiple failures can be laid at the doors that educate our elite. He says our universities are owned by corporations and that our public institutions are high-security national laboratories. If we remember in Dollhouse, Rossum uses college laboratories for its experiments. Hedges tells us that universities focus on analytic intelligence and condition students to value success above all else through standardized test scores and GPAs. They teach increasingly specialized subjects, riddled with academic jargon, divorced from other disciplines and often from context and reality. Many of our liberal arts colleges have folded, and the large universities are politically silenced. Hedges writes, "The elite universities disdain honest intellectual inquiry, which is by its nature distrustful of authority, fiercely independent, and often subversive." Today they embrace a moral nihilism.
This led me to a fascinating article written by Dorothy L. Sayers, "The Lost Tools of Learning" which argues for a return to the trivium: grammar, logic (dialectic), and rhetoric. These are not subjects, they are the raw tools of learning across subjects. The tools we need to be truly literate. Sayers was a Christian humanist in the first half of the 20th century. This article was presented in 1947. And while she wants to teach theology again, I would not agree except that I would not be opposed to teaching some type of (secular) morality. I have no songs for this, only the authentic wisdom of Oscar Wilde's maxims. Borges tells us that the Great Aesthete was almost always right.
"All bad poetry is sincere."
"In the old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody."
"One should never listen. To listen is a sign of indifference to one's hearers."
"Public opinion only exists where there are no ideas."
"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."
The fourth chapter is the illusion of happiness. Here he tackles the pop psychology of positive thinking. Perhaps because I've grown up with the myth of choosing to be happy, this one got under my skin. I don't believe in New Age philosophy or in "The Secret" though I do think that at some level if you visualize what you want that can help you set a goal and provide the motivation to achieve it. But focusing on riches isn't going to make you wealthy, which I think is Hedges point. Choosing to make the best of bad circumstances is one thing, but creating positive illusions creates a delusional society that is disconnected from reality. He spends most of the chapter discussing how widely this idea is promoted by the media conglomerates and especially how ruthlessly it is used by corporations to mold compliant "happy" workers. "[Positive psychologists] condemn all social critics and iconoclasts, the dissidents and individualists, for failing to surrender and seek fulfillment in the collective lowing of the corporate herd. They strangle creativity and moral autonomy. The seek to mold and shape individual human beings into a compliant collective."
I definitely think we need more iconoclasts and subversives, and from my favorite iconoclast, Tori Amos, we have "Almost Rosey" and "Sweet Dreams."
In the final chapter, we have the Illusion of America. He admits that this country was never perfect, but that is used to be something. Today a very few companies and people control almost everything that we see, read, and hear. Corporations have sucked dry the blood of the working class and control the political landscape. Thank goodness they are recognized as "people" now. He chastises the Democratic Party and Clinton for selling out the working class for corporations--for ditching labor unions, for signing NAFTA, for crippling welfare with reform, for demolishing the Glass-Steagall Act, designed to prevent the economic meltdown we are experiencing. Health care was/is still broken (dismantling the entire health care system is probably the only way to fix it), the environment is being destroyed, the press is controlled by media conglomerates, politics are controlled by corporations who are getting richer while people are getting poorer. He also notes that corporations exhibit six traits displayed by clinically defined psychopaths. If they're people now, can we do something about this? Listening to "Talkin' Bout a Revolution" by Tracy Chapman is appropriate here ("Fast Car" is also nice for showing the dark side of the American Dream). Hedges says none of this is sustainable. We are talking about a revolution. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Extreme stuff. So thank goodness, we have written him out of our history textbooks, the man only wrote the Declaration of Frickin' Independence.
Again, this is polemic, and I while I have argued in my head with him and quibbled with several points, in the end I agree with Hedges's thesis. It is definitely interesting, probably an important work, and I would recommend that you read it. You are free to argue with it, Chris Hedges would probably be disappointed if you didn't. I will leave you with one last quote:
This cultural retreat into illusion, whether peddled by positive psychologists, Hollywood, or Christian preachers, is a form of magical thinking. It turns worthless mortgages and debts into wealth. It turns the destruction of our manufacturing base into an opportunity for growth. It turns alienation and anxiety into cheerful conformity. It turns a nation that wages illegal wars and administers off-shore penal colonies where it openly practices torture into the greatest democracy on earth.
On Sunday I pretty much had a breakdown as major projects were due while I had majorly procrastinated. I've taken to saying that my SUU professors should have known better that I don't have the managerial skills to handle grad school when they wrote my letters of recommendation, but whatcha gonna do? This week has gotten better, for the moment anyway. During semesters, you get to sort of semi-languorously make your way through the fifteen weeks. As least that is my experience. During ten-week quarters, my preferred languid pace doesn't work so well. There is always something due.
So what I really want to write about is this fairly provocative, polemical book I just finished. It's entitled Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Chris Hedges. It's pretty strong stuff. He comes from a working-class family, earned a BA in English from Colgate University and a Master of Divinity from Harvard. He has worked as a correspondent from the NYT and earned a Pulitzer for his coverage of global terrorism. He is a socialist and a Christian, which is rarely explicit in the book though never far removed. He has previously written several books including War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning--writing "war is a drug" that became the epigraph for The Hurt Locker--and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (a mouthful right there) wherein he argues that the Christian fundamentalist movement is a threat to American democracy. (See the current history textbook controversy going on in Texas.) This might also go on my summer reading list.
Hedges follows in the tradition of other Cassandras including Noam Chomsky, Sheldon S. Wolin, Jared Diamond, Howard Zinn, Ralph Nader, and Neil Postman, whose book Amusing Ourselves to Death is also on my list. He often comes off as a Debbie Downer and seems to alienate any possible reader taking on the left and the right, critiquing not only pornography, corporations, and pop psychology, but also The New York Times NPR, and our education system, especially our universities. As a polemic it's often rage making, and he doesn't offer any easy answers (because there are none) except the enduring power of love, which seems pretty flimsy.
The book is comprised of five chapters, each tacking a different illusion. The first is the Illusion of Literacy. Hedges begins, naturally enough, with Plato's Allegory of the Cave, and argues that our society is functionally illiterate since even if we may know how to read and write, we are mesmerized by the shadow plays, unable to distinguish reality from illusion. He makes the analogy to Fahrenheit 451 where books are burned, but nobody seems to mind since they are enchanted by the parlor walls, an obvious metaphor for television. Our world is less 1984 and more Brave New World (also on my list). We don't need to censor people if we can endlessly amuse them. In this chapter, Hedges explores our cultural illiteracy through WWE, reality TV, and our celebrity culture. Today celebrity is everything, even if it's only the 15 minutes found on reality TV shows most of which, if not all, are puerile, voyeuristic, and morally reprehensible. Over the summer my family watched I Survived a Japanese Game Show and Wipeout, and even then I thought, what is the merit of this show? There is none intellectually or artistically.
Now I love television, scripted please, since reality TV has nothing in common with reality. Episodic television, at its best, can address complex ethical and moral issues, dysfunctional families, and serve as biting satires of pop culture, etc. Sometimes it's a little over-simplistic, that's the medium, but it can at least get you thinking. Shows that come to mind include The West Wing, Battlestar Galactica, Six Feet Under, Arrested Development, and The Simpsons. At it's worst, TV shows can be glitzy, showy, and glamorous distractions or even puerile and mind-numbingly stupid, but at the very least some artistic merit went into the work from the writing and acting to the directing and production. In this chapter, and through the rest of the book, Hedges seems in search of lost time, his own illusion of the good old days, the illusion of Norman Rockwell's America. Yet he also notes that historically kings led their courts in elaborate intrigues to distract everyone from the dirty business of governing. This isn't new. As I read this chapter Lily Allen's "The Fear" came to mind. I'm not sure Hedges would approve of reducing his book's ideas to pop songs, but "The Fear" really captures everything Hedges is saying--cultural programming, massive consumption, and the inability to separate reality from fantasy. MGMT's "Time to Pretend" also seems to apply.
The second chapter is the Illusion of Love. Here he discusses pornography, often with an unsettling, graphic frankness. I don't think anyone confuses pornography with love, but Hedges says it's not even about sex. It's the auto-erotic, masturbatory fantasy of the subjection of women by men. He discusses at length how far porn has gone since the advent of the home video and especially the Internet, continually pushing boundaries, becoming more extreme, violent, and deplorable. He attends a porn convention in Las Vegas calling the city our cultural capital--the ultimate simulacrum where nothing is real. He talks to current and ex porn stars, illustrating how they are treated not as people but as commodities. The producers and directors are pimps. I've often wondered why it's illegal to pay someone for sex, but not illegal to pay 2 (or 50) people to have sex with each other and film it.
In The West Wing Amy Gardner tells Josh that prostitution is about the subjugation of women by men for profit and dire economic needs are a form of coercion. Not to mention that being a prostitute is bad for you. I think that applies to pornography as well. This chapter reminded me of Tori Amos's songs "Amber Waves" and "Don't Make Me Come to Vegas" both from Scarlet's Walk. Actually most of Amos's road-tripping, agit-pop record of America serves well as a companion piece to the book including "Wednesday," "Crazy," "Pancake," and "Scarlet's Walk." I just want to quote Neil Gaiman's description of the album: "The CD's about America -- it's a story that's also a journey, that begins in LA and crosses the country, slowly heading east. America's in there, and specific places and things, Native American history and pornography and a girl on a plane who'll never get to New York, and Oliver Stone and Andrew Jackson and madness and a lot more. Not to mention a girl called Scarlet who may be the land and may be a person and may be a trail of blood."
The middle chapter is the Illusion of Wisdom, wherein he takes on our contemporary institutions of "higher" learning. I think he would have a friend in Harold Bloom who has little patience for today's university--media circuses and undead professors. Hedges notes that most of our multiple failures can be laid at the doors that educate our elite. He says our universities are owned by corporations and that our public institutions are high-security national laboratories. If we remember in Dollhouse, Rossum uses college laboratories for its experiments. Hedges tells us that universities focus on analytic intelligence and condition students to value success above all else through standardized test scores and GPAs. They teach increasingly specialized subjects, riddled with academic jargon, divorced from other disciplines and often from context and reality. Many of our liberal arts colleges have folded, and the large universities are politically silenced. Hedges writes, "The elite universities disdain honest intellectual inquiry, which is by its nature distrustful of authority, fiercely independent, and often subversive." Today they embrace a moral nihilism.
This led me to a fascinating article written by Dorothy L. Sayers, "The Lost Tools of Learning" which argues for a return to the trivium: grammar, logic (dialectic), and rhetoric. These are not subjects, they are the raw tools of learning across subjects. The tools we need to be truly literate. Sayers was a Christian humanist in the first half of the 20th century. This article was presented in 1947. And while she wants to teach theology again, I would not agree except that I would not be opposed to teaching some type of (secular) morality. I have no songs for this, only the authentic wisdom of Oscar Wilde's maxims. Borges tells us that the Great Aesthete was almost always right.
"All bad poetry is sincere."
"In the old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody."
"One should never listen. To listen is a sign of indifference to one's hearers."
"Public opinion only exists where there are no ideas."
"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."
The fourth chapter is the illusion of happiness. Here he tackles the pop psychology of positive thinking. Perhaps because I've grown up with the myth of choosing to be happy, this one got under my skin. I don't believe in New Age philosophy or in "The Secret" though I do think that at some level if you visualize what you want that can help you set a goal and provide the motivation to achieve it. But focusing on riches isn't going to make you wealthy, which I think is Hedges point. Choosing to make the best of bad circumstances is one thing, but creating positive illusions creates a delusional society that is disconnected from reality. He spends most of the chapter discussing how widely this idea is promoted by the media conglomerates and especially how ruthlessly it is used by corporations to mold compliant "happy" workers. "[Positive psychologists] condemn all social critics and iconoclasts, the dissidents and individualists, for failing to surrender and seek fulfillment in the collective lowing of the corporate herd. They strangle creativity and moral autonomy. The seek to mold and shape individual human beings into a compliant collective."
I definitely think we need more iconoclasts and subversives, and from my favorite iconoclast, Tori Amos, we have "Almost Rosey" and "Sweet Dreams."
In the final chapter, we have the Illusion of America. He admits that this country was never perfect, but that is used to be something. Today a very few companies and people control almost everything that we see, read, and hear. Corporations have sucked dry the blood of the working class and control the political landscape. Thank goodness they are recognized as "people" now. He chastises the Democratic Party and Clinton for selling out the working class for corporations--for ditching labor unions, for signing NAFTA, for crippling welfare with reform, for demolishing the Glass-Steagall Act, designed to prevent the economic meltdown we are experiencing. Health care was/is still broken (dismantling the entire health care system is probably the only way to fix it), the environment is being destroyed, the press is controlled by media conglomerates, politics are controlled by corporations who are getting richer while people are getting poorer. He also notes that corporations exhibit six traits displayed by clinically defined psychopaths. If they're people now, can we do something about this? Listening to "Talkin' Bout a Revolution" by Tracy Chapman is appropriate here ("Fast Car" is also nice for showing the dark side of the American Dream). Hedges says none of this is sustainable. We are talking about a revolution. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Extreme stuff. So thank goodness, we have written him out of our history textbooks, the man only wrote the Declaration of Frickin' Independence.
Again, this is polemic, and I while I have argued in my head with him and quibbled with several points, in the end I agree with Hedges's thesis. It is definitely interesting, probably an important work, and I would recommend that you read it. You are free to argue with it, Chris Hedges would probably be disappointed if you didn't. I will leave you with one last quote:
This cultural retreat into illusion, whether peddled by positive psychologists, Hollywood, or Christian preachers, is a form of magical thinking. It turns worthless mortgages and debts into wealth. It turns the destruction of our manufacturing base into an opportunity for growth. It turns alienation and anxiety into cheerful conformity. It turns a nation that wages illegal wars and administers off-shore penal colonies where it openly practices torture into the greatest democracy on earth.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Bucket List
So a few weeks ago Maryposa posted her life list, and it made me think of my own life list that I started way back in Mrs. Riley's AP English class. A couple of years ago I posted in on my MySpace blog, and I thought it was time to dust it off and see how it's coming along.
1. Read an erotic romance novel.
Check (but I'm not going to tell you which one). This was a just for fun, everyone should read a trashy novel thing. The original goal was to read Finnegans Wake but then I decided to be realistic. I've read some of Dubliners, I even want to read A Portrait of the Aritist As a Young Man someday. I may one day decide to buy Ulysses, or at least one of the manifestations of Ulysses. But Finnegans Wake--never. Furthermore, if I become a public librarian I will have to read a (very small) range of romance novels.
2. Learn to cook well.
Well, since moving to Seattle, I have been cooking a lot more instead of buying as many prepackaged foodstuffs as I used to. So I am cooking. The well part is a work in progress. I've been watching more Food Network than actually cooking, but I've been slowly accumulating kitchen gadgets, stock ingredients, and some skills. The nice thing about this goal is it's a lifetime thing.
3. Enthuse about wine.
This is another lifelong goal. Sadly since moving away from Dain, Whitney, and Elise, and becoming a poor graduate student, I have been enthusing less about wine and more about the prices of Yellow Tail and Charles Shaw--ignoring Gary Vaynerchuck's dictum to expand one's palate. Lately though I've been trying some Chateau Ste. Michelle wines made here in Washington including my first Gewurztraminer, a most unusual white. Yesterday, I picked up their Riesling as well as a Spanish Rioja--a couple of new entries for my wine journal which I haven't been keeping up.
4. View every Meryl Streep film.
Because she's brilliant. 'Nuff said.
5. View every Mike Nichols film.
He's one of my favorite directors, but I think instead of working toward this goal, I'm going to focus more on working my way through 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. A much larger range of film.
6. See a show on Broadway.
The one time I went to NYC, we did not go to a show. Nor when I was in London, did I see a West End show at the cheap student prices. Wasted opportunities. While I'm in Seattle though, I should partake in some high quality theatre.
7. Continue to study canonical literature.
Another lifelong pursuit. I haven't started working on my summer reading list yet, but I'm thinking The Iliad and Moby-Dick will be on it. Two big fat books to check off.
8. Learn how to knit.
Yeah, this one hasn't happened. yet. One day I hope to stitch and bitch. Ernl may have to teach me.
9. Play the piano.
I haven't played seriously since high school, and when I was living at home again, I didn't take advantage of having a piano around. In the future, I'm probably going to have to buy my own piano, or at least a keyboard, if I want to pursue this goal. I would love to get some Tori Amos piano books and to play some Chopin. Well, we'll see what happens...
10. Study Gnosticism
I'm not really feeling this goal anymore, but perhaps in my study of literature, I will read some gnostic texts.
11. Play tennis and swim.
Nope and nope. Not right now anyway.
12. Attend the Sundance Film Festival.
Well, I did this once, but I'd love to do it again. This may translate instead into attending local film festivals wherever I live. Like this year going to SIFF later this spring.
13. Obtain a Master's Degree.
Well, in another seven/eight weeks, I'll be halfway done with this goal. Go me!
14. Garden.
Well, as long as I live in apartments, this isn't going to happen. Though I am thinking it would be nice to grow some little pots of kitchen herbs--maybe this summer.
15. Learn how to ballroom dance.
Well, I'm half decent at the waltz, not great, but okay. I think now I just want to learn how to tango--so sexy! And I have a deep love affair with tango scenes in film.
16. Spend one, but only one, New Year's Eve in Times Square.
I'm less enthused about this goal, but if the opportunity presents itself, hey, why not? New Year's Eve though is wherever your friends are, and for the last eight? years, that has been Megan's house.
17. Speak fluent French.
Or maybe just watch French films and listen to French music.
18. Travel extensively.
Because it's awesome.
19. Live in London.
Even though it's like the coolest city on the planet, London is very expensive, and I'm less excited about London since learning that the UK is basically a police state. I'd much rather go to the Continent.
20. Live in Paris!
Much better. and this would help with that whole speaking French thing.
21. See Tori Amos in concert.
Check! And it was just . . . amazing! The next time she goes on tour, I will be there.
I also want to see Hey Marseilles sometime while I'm in Seattle.
22. Learn how to bartend.
I'm pretty awesome already with the help of my cocktail books and blogs. But there is at least one bartending school in Seattle--holla!--and that would be pretty fun, I think. There are also some pretty good cocktail bars/lounges in Seattle that I need to check out while I'm here.
23. Practice yoga.
Currently I'm in iRun, and I just discovered the wonderfulness that is the elliptical machine. I also thought, once, that I wanted to run a marathon. That thought's on hold, but maybe a 5K soon--three miles is no biggie. But I need to do some yoga again to strengthen my core and increase flexibility. I think fall quarter, I'll try to work in a yoga class.
24. Publish an article or short story.
Well fiction isn't my forte, and it's not unforeseeable that I might be writing a journal article as a librarian. But I'd really like to publish something in a magazine. My dream job, other than librarian, is to be a freelance writer.
25. Marry Kristyn Orgill.
Jessica told me I couldn't do this since she and Kristyn were going to be crazy old ladies together, but now that Jessica's getting married, Kristyn is mine again. ;) I think we said if we we're both 32? and single, we would get married. Plus, gift registry! And if this doesn't pan out, I totally plan to become a crazy cat lady.
So that's where I am with my life list. Maybe in another two years, I'll revisit it again.
1. Read an erotic romance novel.
Check (but I'm not going to tell you which one). This was a just for fun, everyone should read a trashy novel thing. The original goal was to read Finnegans Wake but then I decided to be realistic. I've read some of Dubliners, I even want to read A Portrait of the Aritist As a Young Man someday. I may one day decide to buy Ulysses, or at least one of the manifestations of Ulysses. But Finnegans Wake--never. Furthermore, if I become a public librarian I will have to read a (very small) range of romance novels.
2. Learn to cook well.
Well, since moving to Seattle, I have been cooking a lot more instead of buying as many prepackaged foodstuffs as I used to. So I am cooking. The well part is a work in progress. I've been watching more Food Network than actually cooking, but I've been slowly accumulating kitchen gadgets, stock ingredients, and some skills. The nice thing about this goal is it's a lifetime thing.
3. Enthuse about wine.
This is another lifelong goal. Sadly since moving away from Dain, Whitney, and Elise, and becoming a poor graduate student, I have been enthusing less about wine and more about the prices of Yellow Tail and Charles Shaw--ignoring Gary Vaynerchuck's dictum to expand one's palate. Lately though I've been trying some Chateau Ste. Michelle wines made here in Washington including my first Gewurztraminer, a most unusual white. Yesterday, I picked up their Riesling as well as a Spanish Rioja--a couple of new entries for my wine journal which I haven't been keeping up.
4. View every Meryl Streep film.
Because she's brilliant. 'Nuff said.
5. View every Mike Nichols film.
He's one of my favorite directors, but I think instead of working toward this goal, I'm going to focus more on working my way through 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. A much larger range of film.
6. See a show on Broadway.
The one time I went to NYC, we did not go to a show. Nor when I was in London, did I see a West End show at the cheap student prices. Wasted opportunities. While I'm in Seattle though, I should partake in some high quality theatre.
7. Continue to study canonical literature.
Another lifelong pursuit. I haven't started working on my summer reading list yet, but I'm thinking The Iliad and Moby-Dick will be on it. Two big fat books to check off.
8. Learn how to knit.
Yeah, this one hasn't happened. yet. One day I hope to stitch and bitch. Ernl may have to teach me.
9. Play the piano.
I haven't played seriously since high school, and when I was living at home again, I didn't take advantage of having a piano around. In the future, I'm probably going to have to buy my own piano, or at least a keyboard, if I want to pursue this goal. I would love to get some Tori Amos piano books and to play some Chopin. Well, we'll see what happens...
10. Study Gnosticism
I'm not really feeling this goal anymore, but perhaps in my study of literature, I will read some gnostic texts.
11. Play tennis and swim.
Nope and nope. Not right now anyway.
12. Attend the Sundance Film Festival.
Well, I did this once, but I'd love to do it again. This may translate instead into attending local film festivals wherever I live. Like this year going to SIFF later this spring.
13. Obtain a Master's Degree.
Well, in another seven/eight weeks, I'll be halfway done with this goal. Go me!
14. Garden.
Well, as long as I live in apartments, this isn't going to happen. Though I am thinking it would be nice to grow some little pots of kitchen herbs--maybe this summer.
15. Learn how to ballroom dance.
Well, I'm half decent at the waltz, not great, but okay. I think now I just want to learn how to tango--so sexy! And I have a deep love affair with tango scenes in film.
16. Spend one, but only one, New Year's Eve in Times Square.
I'm less enthused about this goal, but if the opportunity presents itself, hey, why not? New Year's Eve though is wherever your friends are, and for the last eight? years, that has been Megan's house.
17. Speak fluent French.
Or maybe just watch French films and listen to French music.
18. Travel extensively.
Because it's awesome.
19. Live in London.
Even though it's like the coolest city on the planet, London is very expensive, and I'm less excited about London since learning that the UK is basically a police state. I'd much rather go to the Continent.
20. Live in Paris!
Much better. and this would help with that whole speaking French thing.
21. See Tori Amos in concert.
Check! And it was just . . . amazing! The next time she goes on tour, I will be there.
I also want to see Hey Marseilles sometime while I'm in Seattle.
22. Learn how to bartend.
I'm pretty awesome already with the help of my cocktail books and blogs. But there is at least one bartending school in Seattle--holla!--and that would be pretty fun, I think. There are also some pretty good cocktail bars/lounges in Seattle that I need to check out while I'm here.
23. Practice yoga.
Currently I'm in iRun, and I just discovered the wonderfulness that is the elliptical machine. I also thought, once, that I wanted to run a marathon. That thought's on hold, but maybe a 5K soon--three miles is no biggie. But I need to do some yoga again to strengthen my core and increase flexibility. I think fall quarter, I'll try to work in a yoga class.
24. Publish an article or short story.
Well fiction isn't my forte, and it's not unforeseeable that I might be writing a journal article as a librarian. But I'd really like to publish something in a magazine. My dream job, other than librarian, is to be a freelance writer.
25. Marry Kristyn Orgill.
Jessica told me I couldn't do this since she and Kristyn were going to be crazy old ladies together, but now that Jessica's getting married, Kristyn is mine again. ;) I think we said if we we're both 32? and single, we would get married. Plus, gift registry! And if this doesn't pan out, I totally plan to become a crazy cat lady.
So that's where I am with my life list. Maybe in another two years, I'll revisit it again.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Vino
I had lunch today with Rae in Olympia along with her mother and another friend. We ordered a Gigondes Rhone, and Rae stated that I should come up with a list of wine movies. Alcohol and film--you know me well, Rae. Everyone loves a top ten list--what is it about the number ten? However, I don't know if I've even seen ten wine films, so my list just includes five entertaining movies to whet the palate.
We begin with the 1995 romantic comedy French Kiss with Meg Ryan doing what she did best. This film taught us about terroir with this classic exchange between Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline:
"A bold wine with a hint of sophistication and lacking in pretension. Actually, I was just talking about myself."
"You are not wrong. Wine is like people. The wine takes all the influences in life all around it, it absorbs them, and it gets its personality."
Kline goes on to show Ryan how the soil can affect the taste of wine. Also, the movie is lots of fun.
I just watched Bottle Shock tonight, available for instant viewing on Netflix. It tells the story of how in the '70s a bunch of hippies in Napa Valley changed the wine world, which makes it an excellent companion piece to The United States of Arugula. In 1976, America's bicentennial, Napa Valley wines went head to head with French ones in a blind taste test, and California came out on top. It stars Alan Rickman as a Francophile British wine snob (I'm sorry, was that redundant?), and Chris Pine's hard body in '70s shirts that are more revealing than Starfleet uniforms. Rickman states, "'Wine is sunlight, held together by water.' The poetic wisdom of the Italian physicist, philosopher, and stargazer Galileo. It all begins with the soil, the vine, the grape. The smell of the vineyard--like inhaling birth. It awakens some ancestral . . . some primordial . . . Anyway, some deeply imprinted, probably subconscious place in my soul." And one of the winemakers says, "You have to have it in your blood, you have to grow up with the soil underneath your nails, and the smell of the grapes in the air you breathe. The cultivation of the vine is an art form. The refinement of its juice is a religion that requires pain and desire and sacrifice." Anyway, it's a pretty good movie especially for anyone who enjoys California wine. It also features TV favorites Freddy Rodriguez (Six Feet Under), Eliza Dushku (Dollhouse), and Bradley Whitford (The West Wing).
This brings us to the 800 pound gorilla of wine films: Sideways. Californian winemaking has grown up, but Miles and Jack--not so much. Alexander Payne's film is a road trip and journey of self-discovery set in California's wine country. It is also famous for Virginia Madsen and Thomas Haden Church in (short-lived) comeback roles, and notorious for its instant popularization of pinot noir while denigrating merlot. Paul Giamatti waxes poetic on pinot, but it's Madsen who delivers the film's emotional center:
"I like to think about the life of wine. How it's a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing; how the sun was shining; if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it's an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I like how wine continues to evolve, like if I opened a bottle of wine today it would taste different than if I'd opened it on any other day, because a bottle of wine is actually alive. And it's constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks, like your '61. And then it begins its steady, inevitable decline. And it tastes so fucking good."
A Good Year is a quaffable flick for anyone looking to spend a couple of hours in Provence. Russell Crowe plays Max, a hard-working London businessman who wakes up one day to inherit a vineyard left to him by his late uncle. He goes down to France planning to sell the place for a quick buck, but in the Hollywood turn-of-events, Crowe falls in love with the feisty Marion Cotillard, learns a life lesson, and, of course, chooses life over money as he sets about to restore his uncle's vineyard and home.
Our last film is considered to be one of the finest films of all time (along with Citizen Cane). It's Casablanca of course. Out of all the gin joints, the champagne flows freely in Rick's Cafe in elegant coupe glasses. Most of the action takes place in the seedy yet glamorous bar, and the next time you decide to play it again, why not enjoy it with the classic Champagne Cocktail, a French 75, or simply a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, "if you can afford that kind of thing and rent too."
So there you have it. Not a definitive list or even the top five films about wine, just five movies that feature wine in a central or secondary role. Cheers!
We begin with the 1995 romantic comedy French Kiss with Meg Ryan doing what she did best. This film taught us about terroir with this classic exchange between Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline:
"A bold wine with a hint of sophistication and lacking in pretension. Actually, I was just talking about myself."
"You are not wrong. Wine is like people. The wine takes all the influences in life all around it, it absorbs them, and it gets its personality."
Kline goes on to show Ryan how the soil can affect the taste of wine. Also, the movie is lots of fun.
I just watched Bottle Shock tonight, available for instant viewing on Netflix. It tells the story of how in the '70s a bunch of hippies in Napa Valley changed the wine world, which makes it an excellent companion piece to The United States of Arugula. In 1976, America's bicentennial, Napa Valley wines went head to head with French ones in a blind taste test, and California came out on top. It stars Alan Rickman as a Francophile British wine snob (I'm sorry, was that redundant?), and Chris Pine's hard body in '70s shirts that are more revealing than Starfleet uniforms. Rickman states, "'Wine is sunlight, held together by water.' The poetic wisdom of the Italian physicist, philosopher, and stargazer Galileo. It all begins with the soil, the vine, the grape. The smell of the vineyard--like inhaling birth. It awakens some ancestral . . . some primordial . . . Anyway, some deeply imprinted, probably subconscious place in my soul." And one of the winemakers says, "You have to have it in your blood, you have to grow up with the soil underneath your nails, and the smell of the grapes in the air you breathe. The cultivation of the vine is an art form. The refinement of its juice is a religion that requires pain and desire and sacrifice." Anyway, it's a pretty good movie especially for anyone who enjoys California wine. It also features TV favorites Freddy Rodriguez (Six Feet Under), Eliza Dushku (Dollhouse), and Bradley Whitford (The West Wing).
This brings us to the 800 pound gorilla of wine films: Sideways. Californian winemaking has grown up, but Miles and Jack--not so much. Alexander Payne's film is a road trip and journey of self-discovery set in California's wine country. It is also famous for Virginia Madsen and Thomas Haden Church in (short-lived) comeback roles, and notorious for its instant popularization of pinot noir while denigrating merlot. Paul Giamatti waxes poetic on pinot, but it's Madsen who delivers the film's emotional center:
"I like to think about the life of wine. How it's a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing; how the sun was shining; if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it's an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I like how wine continues to evolve, like if I opened a bottle of wine today it would taste different than if I'd opened it on any other day, because a bottle of wine is actually alive. And it's constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks, like your '61. And then it begins its steady, inevitable decline. And it tastes so fucking good."
A Good Year is a quaffable flick for anyone looking to spend a couple of hours in Provence. Russell Crowe plays Max, a hard-working London businessman who wakes up one day to inherit a vineyard left to him by his late uncle. He goes down to France planning to sell the place for a quick buck, but in the Hollywood turn-of-events, Crowe falls in love with the feisty Marion Cotillard, learns a life lesson, and, of course, chooses life over money as he sets about to restore his uncle's vineyard and home.
Our last film is considered to be one of the finest films of all time (along with Citizen Cane). It's Casablanca of course. Out of all the gin joints, the champagne flows freely in Rick's Cafe in elegant coupe glasses. Most of the action takes place in the seedy yet glamorous bar, and the next time you decide to play it again, why not enjoy it with the classic Champagne Cocktail, a French 75, or simply a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, "if you can afford that kind of thing and rent too."
So there you have it. Not a definitive list or even the top five films about wine, just five movies that feature wine in a central or secondary role. Cheers!
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Nor Shady Cypress Tree
"Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs."
--The Secret History
Today, as I was walking home from class in the very grey, very chilly Seattle weather, I was thinking about songs I would like to be played at my funeral, which may seem rather morbid for a twenty-three-year-old on a Tuesday morning, but then I share Richard Papen's longing, though I think my own fatal flaw is my deep-set ambivalence. So you can leave the song up to your family, they will be the ones in mourning after all, but there's a large chance they will choose "Wind Beneath My Wings," which is fine for some. If you would like to choose your own song though, you must let your family or someone know.
We had bagpipes at my Grandma Burbank's funeral as they were her favorite instrument. We are also Scottish. I, too, like the bagpipes, and so it might be nice to have them play "Taps" or something (is "Taps" even allowed for a civilian?) at the burial. Unless I decide to be cremated. Hrm.
At the funeral though, I have been toying with two Tori Amos songs, surprise, surprise. Neither are top favorites of mine; in fact both are pretty deep cuts in both my own collection and the Tori Amos catalog at large. The first is her cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Her acoustic piano arrangement is properly mournful and her ethereal voice loses Cobain's grunge screamo making the song very haunting. "With the lights out it's less dangerous / Here we are now entertain us / A denial, a denial, a denial..." The second song I think is even more fitting: "Upside Down." Here are some of the lyrics: "I said I found the secret to life / I found the secret to life / I'm okay when everything is not okay / is not okay / Oh, we turn and we turn our little blue world upside down / I said don't we love to turn our little blue world baby upside down."
I like the juxtaposition of life and death (in addition to being upside down--my natural state). My latest entry into my wisdom journal is from Virginia Woolf's fine novel Mrs. Dalloway (exceeded only, in my estimation, by To the Lighthouse and Between the Acts). It's the passage I always think of immediately when I think of Mrs. Dalloway: "Oh! thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, here's death, she thought."
--The Secret History
Today, as I was walking home from class in the very grey, very chilly Seattle weather, I was thinking about songs I would like to be played at my funeral, which may seem rather morbid for a twenty-three-year-old on a Tuesday morning, but then I share Richard Papen's longing, though I think my own fatal flaw is my deep-set ambivalence. So you can leave the song up to your family, they will be the ones in mourning after all, but there's a large chance they will choose "Wind Beneath My Wings," which is fine for some. If you would like to choose your own song though, you must let your family or someone know.
We had bagpipes at my Grandma Burbank's funeral as they were her favorite instrument. We are also Scottish. I, too, like the bagpipes, and so it might be nice to have them play "Taps" or something (is "Taps" even allowed for a civilian?) at the burial. Unless I decide to be cremated. Hrm.
At the funeral though, I have been toying with two Tori Amos songs, surprise, surprise. Neither are top favorites of mine; in fact both are pretty deep cuts in both my own collection and the Tori Amos catalog at large. The first is her cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Her acoustic piano arrangement is properly mournful and her ethereal voice loses Cobain's grunge screamo making the song very haunting. "With the lights out it's less dangerous / Here we are now entertain us / A denial, a denial, a denial..." The second song I think is even more fitting: "Upside Down." Here are some of the lyrics: "I said I found the secret to life / I found the secret to life / I'm okay when everything is not okay / is not okay / Oh, we turn and we turn our little blue world upside down / I said don't we love to turn our little blue world baby upside down."
I like the juxtaposition of life and death (in addition to being upside down--my natural state). My latest entry into my wisdom journal is from Virginia Woolf's fine novel Mrs. Dalloway (exceeded only, in my estimation, by To the Lighthouse and Between the Acts). It's the passage I always think of immediately when I think of Mrs. Dalloway: "Oh! thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, here's death, she thought."
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Post the 100th
Hello Readers!
Well, here it is, my bloggy blogger blogthing--started way back on Christmas Eve 2008--has turned 100. Thank you to everyone who has ever read or commented on a post, especially my regular readers. If no one read this, I would probably still send send my thoughts out into the ether, or rather the void of cyberspace, but it's nice to know some of you are out there.
So I finished the first week of my third quarter. After nine more weeks, I will have finished my first year of library school. Crazy! And I'll only have one more year left. Two-year graduate programs are kinda short. I was talking to a law library student the other day, and they only have a one-year track. I couldn't imagine graduating after only one year--but then they already put three years into law school.
On Mondays I have two classes. I start the week at 10:30 am, not too shabby at all for a Monday, with Information Literacy for Teaching and Learning, which we helpfully shorten to Info Lit. Or when we can't remember the course name, we refer to its call number: 568. What's crazy is that since we only met once a week for this class, there are only eight more sessions left; we already meet this last week and there's no class on Memorial Day. It's a small class that's roughly half first years and half second years. Our teacher is Sarah Evans, a PhD candidate who has a lot of energy as a former cheerleader and former teen librarian and middle school teacher. She said she might do cheers in class but promises that she's not talking down to us. The energy is really helpful for a three-hour class. I'm not really sure what the class is about yet--for Monday we all have to bring our own definition of Information Literacy. (I also need to buy the textbook this weekend!) Anyway, I've only heard good things about Sarah Evans, and she seems wonderful. This class shouldn't be too bad.
On Mondays, after three hours of 568, I have ten minutes to make my way across campus for my one core class this quarter: Instructional and Training Strategies for Information Professionals. There's no real shorthand for this except to call it 560, and then we just know it's that required teaching class. The logistical problem with Mondays is that I have five hours of class from 10:30-3:20 with only very short breaks. First of all, that's a lot of time in class. But more than that, it's a long time to go without eating lunch. I guess I can go eight more Mondays with just a PB&J (peanut, peanut butter and jelly!).
Our 560 professor is Dr. Trent Hill who never wants us to call him "Doctor." You know how some people resemble animals? Trent strongly resembles a turtle--it's endearing. He's also from ... North Carolina (I think), and still has a slight southern accent, which he says is sometimes nice since people never think he's smarter than they are. He also used to be a former English professor. Anyway, our program is the only MLIS program that has a required instruction and training course, so lucky us. But it does make sense that whether you're going to teach courses as an academic librarian or simply lead a committee or train new employees, it is imperative that you know good instruction techniques. Our four foci are info literacy, learning theory, critical thinking, and instructional practices. As it's my only core class this quarter, it shouldn't be too bad. And Trent already seems like a great instructor. I also have his class on Wednesday afternoons.
On Tuesday and Thursdays, I have Principles of Information Services generally known as 521 or that reference class. Our professor is the magnificent Joe Janes who is a fabulous and hysterical gay man. He also has the best stories. I've heard that he's a very hard grader though, and looking at the syllabus this quarter's going to be intense. After one week though, I think this will be my favorite of the three classes I'm taking. On Thursdays we talked about bibliographies including library catalogs, trade, national, and subject bibliographies. He referred to reference bibliographies as porn, especially Books in Print and the National Union Catalog of Pre-1956 Imprints. I think I like reference, and I think this course will be very helpful in determining whether or not I really do.
Last quarter I had 8:30 classes on Wednesdays and Fridays, followed by four more hours of class (and an hour lunch break) so that I was on campus till 3:30. What's nice this time is that on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I get to come home at 10:30--already showered, dressed, and awake. Last quarter, when I didn't have class, I was usually still in bed by 10:30, much less ready for the day. Like my first quarter, I don't have classes on Fridays which is loverly. However, this quarter I definitely need a job. Meagan said there were a lot of UW library openings currently and by a lot, she meant like four. So I need to get on that so I can pay for silly things like rent and groceries this summer.
In other news I finished Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil which I already mentioned started out well enough. It is, however, a stupid book (yes, Slarue, I know "stupid" is not an academic argument). So again, it starts out somewhat engaging, and then he steps into a taxidermist's shop and his "life is changed" according to the synopsis on the back cover. This is the momentous occasion we readers have been waiting for, and we meet the taxidermist, named Henry but who might as well not have a name since he is entirely devoid of character or development. This is purposeful, but it makes for tedious and frustrating reading, a tedium and frustration felt by the protagonist. The taxidermist is writing a play, which itself starts out interesting, but becomes increasingly absurd. There is an explicit reference to Samuel Beckett, but this is no Waiting for Godot. And much like the man-eating island in The Life of Pi and the two alternate versions of the events, there is a "twist" at the end of this novel which is pretty, well, stupid, and I threw the book very hard at the wall. I won't give it away in case you do want to read this book despite me recommendation to avoid it, but there's also something contradictory about the taxidermist. Aside from that, it's all too clever while thinking it's profound. Now I'm reading Angelology by Danielle Trussoni which came out in March. I'm only fifty pages in, but it seems promising. The movie rights have already been bought by Sony Pictures, and Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace, The Kite Runner) is set to direct. Also, after reading The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake I just had to make my own lemon cake, and I had to buy this Microplane zester/grater, to zest a lemon, and it is my favorite kitchen gadget currently. It zests citrus effortlessly, and shreds my Romano into pillowy hills of salty, cheesy goodness. I can't wait to use it on ginger. Maybe I'll be making my own zenzerino this year.
Since we attend the iSchool, there is a tendency to name all things "i" like the iBall this spring which is like a drunken prom for the iSchool. iBall is kinda funny, but most of the time it makes us sound like Mac products. All of this is to say that a few of us unofficially started the iRun club this week. Megan, who is an intense runner, got me to agree to work out with her (and Susan and Andrew) at the IMA which my tuition already pays for, so why not use it? So on Thursday we all got together to run. God, I haven't worked out since I did yoga my junior year in college, and I haven't run since 10th grade. This was my first time in a locker room since high school and I had forgotten how fraught I find locker rooms. Meagan decided I should alternate walking and running since I didn't want to hurt myself, which Susan also did. I did run over 2.5 miles. and got blisters on my feet. I should buy some real running shows instead of my Adidas Sambas which are technically a soccer-training shoe. I've decided they're more for looks than performance. I also got to test my workout playlist, to which I will be editing and expanding. Anyway, we're going back on Sunday. I've also decided to walk to campus, up the hill, when I don't have 8:30 classes. Hopefully this, combined with less beer consumption, will help turn my weight around a little bit.
On Thursday night a bunch on students were going to College Inn Pub, and I was too--basically to invalidate all the work I did at the gym. But once I got home and showered, I didn't feel like walking there or back. It's a shame though, because I want to be more outgoing. About a month ago I caught Yes Man on HBO, and I'm not really into Jim Carrey comedies, but I watched it because I was being lazy and I love me some Zooey Deschanel. And I decided I should be more of a yes man, so life doesn't pass by me. But last night I did go to an ALISS event where we watched Party Girl which is probably the best movie about librarians ever, and I thought to myself if Parker Posey can be a librarian, then dammit, so can I! The movie also reminded me a little bit of HBO's series How to Make It in America (updated for the 2010 set) which, truth be told, I've only seen like half an episode and the previews. (It also has nothing to with libraries.) Speaking of HBO, they're running an encore presentation of True Blood season two which I am giving a shot. I was so excited when I started watching the first season, but by the end, I was like, meh. But really, what else am I going to do with my Sunday nights--homework? I don't think so. Anyway, I have to take advantage of having HBO while I can since who knows if I'll even have cable next year.
And that brings us to today, tomorrow being Easter. There was a couple on the MAX in Portland discussing the holiday dismissively as in that crazy holiday wherein our country collectively celebrates the resurrection of our lord and savior. To the agnostic in me, it did sound like an absurd holiday (like April Fool's!), but it also felt like a slight, and I have realized (a realization that's been a long time coming) that I am a "Cultural Christian." I always wanted to a be a secular Jew and to have aunts using their Jewish guilt on me, and for a while I wished we were a big fat Greek family (after seeing My Big Fat Greek Wedding of course); I just didn't want a large, Mormon family. Maybe I just wanted a family that drank--take my family and make it more dysfunctional with alcohol! But my family is not Jewish or Greek, they're just Mormon, and you can take the boy out of Utah, but there's still some Mormon in the boy. But I will always celebrate Christmas since I love presents and I'm a greedy SOB, and I like Easter too if only because of Cadbury eggs! I have some dark chocolate mini eggs right now, and I already finished my Whopper's Robin Eggs. I won't be making ham tomorrow, but maybe some deviled eggs or at least egg salad. Maybe I'll even buy a movie at Blockbuster as a present for myself. And while our country isn't officially Christian, it is socially (for the most part). And so I will celebrate these holidays which are as cultural as they are religious--thank you American consumerism. (And I hope this exegesis didn't offend anyone as it was not intended to.) Happy Easter!
Anyway, I think this will be a pretty good quarter. And I hope everyone is having a lovely spring, especially all those poor souls still stuck in wintry Utah.
Well, here it is, my bloggy blogger blogthing--started way back on Christmas Eve 2008--has turned 100. Thank you to everyone who has ever read or commented on a post, especially my regular readers. If no one read this, I would probably still send send my thoughts out into the ether, or rather the void of cyberspace, but it's nice to know some of you are out there.
So I finished the first week of my third quarter. After nine more weeks, I will have finished my first year of library school. Crazy! And I'll only have one more year left. Two-year graduate programs are kinda short. I was talking to a law library student the other day, and they only have a one-year track. I couldn't imagine graduating after only one year--but then they already put three years into law school.
On Mondays I have two classes. I start the week at 10:30 am, not too shabby at all for a Monday, with Information Literacy for Teaching and Learning, which we helpfully shorten to Info Lit. Or when we can't remember the course name, we refer to its call number: 568. What's crazy is that since we only met once a week for this class, there are only eight more sessions left; we already meet this last week and there's no class on Memorial Day. It's a small class that's roughly half first years and half second years. Our teacher is Sarah Evans, a PhD candidate who has a lot of energy as a former cheerleader and former teen librarian and middle school teacher. She said she might do cheers in class but promises that she's not talking down to us. The energy is really helpful for a three-hour class. I'm not really sure what the class is about yet--for Monday we all have to bring our own definition of Information Literacy. (I also need to buy the textbook this weekend!) Anyway, I've only heard good things about Sarah Evans, and she seems wonderful. This class shouldn't be too bad.
On Mondays, after three hours of 568, I have ten minutes to make my way across campus for my one core class this quarter: Instructional and Training Strategies for Information Professionals. There's no real shorthand for this except to call it 560, and then we just know it's that required teaching class. The logistical problem with Mondays is that I have five hours of class from 10:30-3:20 with only very short breaks. First of all, that's a lot of time in class. But more than that, it's a long time to go without eating lunch. I guess I can go eight more Mondays with just a PB&J (peanut, peanut butter and jelly!).
Our 560 professor is Dr. Trent Hill who never wants us to call him "Doctor." You know how some people resemble animals? Trent strongly resembles a turtle--it's endearing. He's also from ... North Carolina (I think), and still has a slight southern accent, which he says is sometimes nice since people never think he's smarter than they are. He also used to be a former English professor. Anyway, our program is the only MLIS program that has a required instruction and training course, so lucky us. But it does make sense that whether you're going to teach courses as an academic librarian or simply lead a committee or train new employees, it is imperative that you know good instruction techniques. Our four foci are info literacy, learning theory, critical thinking, and instructional practices. As it's my only core class this quarter, it shouldn't be too bad. And Trent already seems like a great instructor. I also have his class on Wednesday afternoons.
On Tuesday and Thursdays, I have Principles of Information Services generally known as 521 or that reference class. Our professor is the magnificent Joe Janes who is a fabulous and hysterical gay man. He also has the best stories. I've heard that he's a very hard grader though, and looking at the syllabus this quarter's going to be intense. After one week though, I think this will be my favorite of the three classes I'm taking. On Thursdays we talked about bibliographies including library catalogs, trade, national, and subject bibliographies. He referred to reference bibliographies as porn, especially Books in Print and the National Union Catalog of Pre-1956 Imprints. I think I like reference, and I think this course will be very helpful in determining whether or not I really do.
Last quarter I had 8:30 classes on Wednesdays and Fridays, followed by four more hours of class (and an hour lunch break) so that I was on campus till 3:30. What's nice this time is that on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I get to come home at 10:30--already showered, dressed, and awake. Last quarter, when I didn't have class, I was usually still in bed by 10:30, much less ready for the day. Like my first quarter, I don't have classes on Fridays which is loverly. However, this quarter I definitely need a job. Meagan said there were a lot of UW library openings currently and by a lot, she meant like four. So I need to get on that so I can pay for silly things like rent and groceries this summer.
In other news I finished Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil which I already mentioned started out well enough. It is, however, a stupid book (yes, Slarue, I know "stupid" is not an academic argument). So again, it starts out somewhat engaging, and then he steps into a taxidermist's shop and his "life is changed" according to the synopsis on the back cover. This is the momentous occasion we readers have been waiting for, and we meet the taxidermist, named Henry but who might as well not have a name since he is entirely devoid of character or development. This is purposeful, but it makes for tedious and frustrating reading, a tedium and frustration felt by the protagonist. The taxidermist is writing a play, which itself starts out interesting, but becomes increasingly absurd. There is an explicit reference to Samuel Beckett, but this is no Waiting for Godot. And much like the man-eating island in The Life of Pi and the two alternate versions of the events, there is a "twist" at the end of this novel which is pretty, well, stupid, and I threw the book very hard at the wall. I won't give it away in case you do want to read this book despite me recommendation to avoid it, but there's also something contradictory about the taxidermist. Aside from that, it's all too clever while thinking it's profound. Now I'm reading Angelology by Danielle Trussoni which came out in March. I'm only fifty pages in, but it seems promising. The movie rights have already been bought by Sony Pictures, and Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace, The Kite Runner) is set to direct. Also, after reading The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake I just had to make my own lemon cake, and I had to buy this Microplane zester/grater, to zest a lemon, and it is my favorite kitchen gadget currently. It zests citrus effortlessly, and shreds my Romano into pillowy hills of salty, cheesy goodness. I can't wait to use it on ginger. Maybe I'll be making my own zenzerino this year.
Since we attend the iSchool, there is a tendency to name all things "i" like the iBall this spring which is like a drunken prom for the iSchool. iBall is kinda funny, but most of the time it makes us sound like Mac products. All of this is to say that a few of us unofficially started the iRun club this week. Megan, who is an intense runner, got me to agree to work out with her (and Susan and Andrew) at the IMA which my tuition already pays for, so why not use it? So on Thursday we all got together to run. God, I haven't worked out since I did yoga my junior year in college, and I haven't run since 10th grade. This was my first time in a locker room since high school and I had forgotten how fraught I find locker rooms. Meagan decided I should alternate walking and running since I didn't want to hurt myself, which Susan also did. I did run over 2.5 miles. and got blisters on my feet. I should buy some real running shows instead of my Adidas Sambas which are technically a soccer-training shoe. I've decided they're more for looks than performance. I also got to test my workout playlist, to which I will be editing and expanding. Anyway, we're going back on Sunday. I've also decided to walk to campus, up the hill, when I don't have 8:30 classes. Hopefully this, combined with less beer consumption, will help turn my weight around a little bit.
On Thursday night a bunch on students were going to College Inn Pub, and I was too--basically to invalidate all the work I did at the gym. But once I got home and showered, I didn't feel like walking there or back. It's a shame though, because I want to be more outgoing. About a month ago I caught Yes Man on HBO, and I'm not really into Jim Carrey comedies, but I watched it because I was being lazy and I love me some Zooey Deschanel. And I decided I should be more of a yes man, so life doesn't pass by me. But last night I did go to an ALISS event where we watched Party Girl which is probably the best movie about librarians ever, and I thought to myself if Parker Posey can be a librarian, then dammit, so can I! The movie also reminded me a little bit of HBO's series How to Make It in America (updated for the 2010 set) which, truth be told, I've only seen like half an episode and the previews. (It also has nothing to with libraries.) Speaking of HBO, they're running an encore presentation of True Blood season two which I am giving a shot. I was so excited when I started watching the first season, but by the end, I was like, meh. But really, what else am I going to do with my Sunday nights--homework? I don't think so. Anyway, I have to take advantage of having HBO while I can since who knows if I'll even have cable next year.
And that brings us to today, tomorrow being Easter. There was a couple on the MAX in Portland discussing the holiday dismissively as in that crazy holiday wherein our country collectively celebrates the resurrection of our lord and savior. To the agnostic in me, it did sound like an absurd holiday (like April Fool's!), but it also felt like a slight, and I have realized (a realization that's been a long time coming) that I am a "Cultural Christian." I always wanted to a be a secular Jew and to have aunts using their Jewish guilt on me, and for a while I wished we were a big fat Greek family (after seeing My Big Fat Greek Wedding of course); I just didn't want a large, Mormon family. Maybe I just wanted a family that drank--take my family and make it more dysfunctional with alcohol! But my family is not Jewish or Greek, they're just Mormon, and you can take the boy out of Utah, but there's still some Mormon in the boy. But I will always celebrate Christmas since I love presents and I'm a greedy SOB, and I like Easter too if only because of Cadbury eggs! I have some dark chocolate mini eggs right now, and I already finished my Whopper's Robin Eggs. I won't be making ham tomorrow, but maybe some deviled eggs or at least egg salad. Maybe I'll even buy a movie at Blockbuster as a present for myself. And while our country isn't officially Christian, it is socially (for the most part). And so I will celebrate these holidays which are as cultural as they are religious--thank you American consumerism. (And I hope this exegesis didn't offend anyone as it was not intended to.) Happy Easter!
Anyway, I think this will be a pretty good quarter. And I hope everyone is having a lovely spring, especially all those poor souls still stuck in wintry Utah.
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