"Jump, jump, jump so high / Watch me let you down / If I stumble I will stumble"

"You don't have the devil in you; I don't care what you write on the web." -Meredith, to me

I think i said "I love you" to Emma at least a half a dozen times on Friday. So many people i'm gonna miss when i graduate.

She and i were talking about porn and Felicia and Liz started talking about volunteer work, in an attempt to move the conversation in a more wholesome direction. Then Emma and i brought the remains of tea back to the kitchen (something we weren't personally obligated to do but which needed to get done) and on our way back Emma said we were good and virtuous, which was true, and so ironic given the immediately preceding.

     "You should focus on quality," says Dana Zemack, who teaches classes about chocolate through her business the Tasty Show. "You don't want to give someone a box of chocolate the size of a bed, because they'll get lost in an ocean of chocolate and feel overwhelmed and not very sexy. You want to give them something small, so they're able to savor each individual piece."
-from "Sweet Surrender" by Christopher Muther (The Boston Globe, Calendar, Feb. 10-16, 2005; page 6)

Who needs to feel sexy when you've got a box of chocolate the size of a bed?

Watched High Fidelity. (I wasn't interested in the story enough to sit through the Nick Hornby book, but i was willing to sit through the movie.) Reminded me a lot of Empire Records.

Okay, so things like making About a Boy into a movie make me cranky (screenplays and novels are entirely different mediums, does no one have an original ideal in zir head anymore? etc.), but making a fucked-up queer version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland i wholeheartedly endorse.

Bonny Doon has Loves Me / Loves Me Not packages i was so tempted to get except that they're over $25 each.
Loves Me: milk chocolate, massage oil, mood candle and matches, Framboise raspberry liqueur
Loves Me Not: bittersweet chocolate, voodoo doll, soap and eraser, Madiran Heart of Darkness

[Okay, hours later i'm still really tempted to purchase the Loves Me Not package for the Madiran Heart of Darkness -- and the voodoo doll.]

[Poll #436728]

Cat was telling me about Songs Inspired by Literature. I'm tempted to purchase, though i know almost none of the original texts.

Dude, i had better get a damned good fic for the Ethan Ficathon ‘cause i am displeased with my assignment.

"Fascinating how many of the questions provoked by the portrayal of Aslan echo debates in theodicy!" -prof who has been described as "pleasant, but she's a bit of a nutter"

Doing some Googling for ideas about presenting on Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" gets me some bizarro shite.

My father says "The semi-colon is the Rodney Dangerfield of punctuation." ["I don't get no respect."]

Emma, reading "But general rules often undergo exceptions, even as in grammar, so also in morals" (from Libellus de Auferibilitate Papae ab Ecclesia, which she's reading in parts and in translation for a history class) writes, "so I'm assuming that somewhere out there, there is the moral equivalent of how to use a comma"

Jane Eyre is, on the whole, a more enjoyable book than Tess of the d'Urbervilles, but i am well and truly glad to be done with it. And oh, damn, look at the time -- reader response, what? (Oh, the joys of cohabitation and how it keeps me from my work. Second violin pride! Now i want my violin and sheet music.) I think i'm skipping the Rare Book Room lecture at St. Johns on the Bible tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon, though, which gives me more time. (I still have to read and respond to Out of the Silent Planet [cosmic space trilogy: book 1] and prepare discussion questions for "A Rose for Emily," nevermind my seminar work.)

Our readings in weeks 1-4 all in one way or another raise the question of what we mean by a piece of "authentic folklore" and what authenticity means. Write an essay of about 4 pages that tests a particular piece [or type or kind or tradition or whatever] of folklore against your own ideas about authenticity.

I'm doing mine on the Grimms, of course. We're not required to do reading outside of the assignments for class, but of course i got out from Neilson an obscene number of books i'm never going to have the time to read.

I've already started thinking about what i wanna do my final (15-20 pages) seminar paper on. I'm thinking something about sexuality/sexualization in contemporary retellings (Angela Carter, Anne Sexton, Francesca Lia Block).

Tuesday, February 15
5 p.m., Graham Hall, Hillyer, Brown Fine Arts Center
Anthony Cromwell Hill, grand nephew of Otelia Cromwell, shows his film Return to Glory in conjunction with the exhibition Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Master of American Sculpture. The film focuses on the Saint-Gaudens memorial honoring the 54th Massachusetts regiment, the first African-American regiment in the Civil War.

This photo shoot should do it for me but doesn't. I like some of the other photoshoots, though.

( icons and an angel/demon quiz )