"i am watching the sun stumble home in the morning"

Work today was eh, whatever, but it was a good day.

I was running late this morning but successfully plungered the toilet, saw the pretty musician girl, and got to work on time.

I got more positive feedback on "This is their own story."

A letter FormerUnitHead wrote made me glee. [Not ego boost personally, just him being great.]

I really enjoyed being around Eric today, and I've been so caught up in this whirlwind of desiring and obsessing that I don't even know what I feel anymore "the butter melts out of habit, you know the toast isn't even warm" and part of it is just wanting someone, and at the moment I'm not even sure if I want that. So I'm just gonna let it be. I'm busy for most of November, and into December, so depending on how December looks I may push for a weeknight hangout or wait to push for during that week we have off. I would like to spend time together outside of work, but I'm feeling less obsessive about it than I was.

I love Ari so much. I really should make a post at some point about how wonderful some of y'all are.

Joule's back.

I spent a lot of today listening to Carrie Cheron clips. Definitely growing on me. I poked at her myspace over the weekend and was tempted to get one solely to say hello. I read her myspace blog today, and this entry makes me like her a lot.

I decided to go to Ladders to God. (So I haven't yet seen tonight's HIMYM or Heroes; no spoiling me.) It was very good.

The best line of the whole play comes very early on, when Bernadette signs off one of her prayers to Jesus: "Liking girls and being loud in Your service." (It has a rationale in context, but does that even matter?)

Waiting in the lobby before the house opened, there was a pretty girl I should have struck up a conversation with, but I'm so bad at (initiating) small talk. During intermission, the girl sitting next to me chatted with me and she really didn't ping me, but I probably would have invited her to coffee or something afterward (in the interest of, yanno, putting myself out there and being social and etc.) if she hadn't had to leave during the talkback.

During the talkback, one of the actors commented about the main character that she finds God in everything -- that she finds joy in everything. I thought of Ari.

Waiting for the return trolley, it wasn't as cold as I had feared it might be. (I hadn't brought a coat.)

On said trolley, there were these two black guys and one of them was on a cell phone, so gay -- "It took me four stops to get my earrings in -- where are we? Pleasant St.? yeah, four stops. And I put on the cologne that I'm allergic to. [...] I'm a drunk sneezy bitch." I was just grinning like mad watching them. The late night drunk folks I encounter on public transit are rarely this entertaining (and benign). They were gonna get off at Kenmore and go to Axis, but he had to pee, so they got off at Blandford St., his companion commenting that he needed to walk that off anyway (he had consumed an entire bottle of Mad Dog).

Also, I loved the bomb episode.

I went to watch last night's Heroes episode online and it told me "Connection Error! Please select another video." So you get to listen to me talking about reaction to a show I don't even watch.

One of the front page teasers on today's Metro is a piece calling Meredith Grey one of the most hated characters on television.

My exposure to Grey's commentary is fox1013, jennyo, and musesfool, and I realize that that means I get a minority opinion (though their commentaries often include mention of popular reactions, so I get a decent spread). I remember Amy coming (back?) to liking Meredith around I think the end of last season, so I guess it's only appropriate that popular opinion would flip.

Regardless of any opinions I may or may not have about the show or the characters, though, I wasn't a fan of the article. It felt like a non-story -- but maybe this is heavily colored by the above mentioned community wherein the biggest problem is not with Meredith but with Derek and what the writers did with that relationship. My biggest problem was with the below paragraph, though.

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in other news...

I've gotten used to opponents of MA Question 1 issue invoking the oppression of the little guy (i.e. the locally owned packies), but today's Metro had Malden Police Chief Kenneth Coye opposing Question 1 and he is quoted as saying (in part): "We are a small city, and there are plenty of places now where people can buy alcohol. What appears would happen (is) that we'd have very small outlets, mom-and-pop places, gas stations with mini-marts selling alcohol. It would be very difficult to monitor." My first thought was of the cognitive disconnect between the discourse I've gotten used to and the statement that it would be bad to have "mom-and-pop places" selling alcohol. My second thought was annoyance at the implication of incompetence (especially because I've been primed after the arguments about whether grocery store cashiers -- i.e., teens -- can be trusted to check IDs).

I also find it interesting [read: "surprising, and somewhat distressing"] when people's animosity toward alcohol comes out in their arguments in opposition to Question 1 (Joe Fitzgerald, for example). "Alcohol, despite being ruinous to lives, marriages, careers and reputations, remains the beneficiary of a great double standard." Er, it's alcohol abuse that's so ruinous. If you come from a history of alcohol abuse and you own that that colors your relationship with the issue, fine, but what's up with the demonization of alcohol, period, being presented as fact? I mean, we do recall that Prohibition didn't work, right? I tend toward legalizing, and thus regulating, everything -- and yes I realize that Question 1 comes under that grey area of regulation. I do appreciate Joe's candidness with: "Highway carnage? Please. There’s carnage now, and anyone who sells or dispenses alcohol, package stores included, is, by definition, associated with it. The little guys are just as complicit." However, the idea that a grocery store selling alcohol encourages people to drink I find insulting (this is my problem with a lot of protective legislation, that we have to save people from theirselves -- which, yes, comes into tension with my understanding that advertising is powerful and manipulative).

Heroes 1.07 "Nothing to Hide" [watched on the web: 2006-11-07]

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( comic #6 )

How I Met Your Mother 2.07 "Swarley" [watched on tape: 2006-11-07]

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"I went out with her for three weeks. Her dad died twice."

I'm surprised at how difficult it is to get a cup of hot chocolate.  I don't know the B Line area well at all, and where I was last night my only options were a Qdoba and a McDonald's.  Tonight, I got some food from the Harvard Square Au Bon Pain, and I didn't see hot chocolate on their menu (though I've gotten it at South Station).  I wasn't especially craving it, but I was surprised.

***

The prof read a student sample for each of the four short answer questions from our midterm.  They were all really really smart.  Like better put together etc. than I would be likely to do even for texts I knew and liked.  I got the lowest grade in the class.  Awesome.  He announced that nobody failed, that the lowest grade was such-and-such but most people got in the B range.  I immediately guessed that I would be one of those people getting that lowest grade, and this was confirmed when I picked up my exam at the end of class.  Woot.  He says I can do better (how he knows this... but I suppose as a teacher it's his job to say/believe that) and we chatted briefly and I explained that I just don't care about anything/anyone in the texts we've read, which is a particular disadvantage in a challenging text like Joyce.  Sigh.  I really don't care that much about the grade, I just dislike that I'm so not getting anything out of this -- other than a solid sense that I'm not a fan of Joyce.

The prof said that some critic -- M.J.C. Hodgett (sp?) -- once said of Chapter 9 ("Scylla and Charybdis"): "This chapter is about Shakespeare and little else."  Heart.

There's a bit in Chapter 8 ("Lestrygonians"): "Flakes of pastry on the gusset of her dress: daub of sugary flour stuck to her cheek.  Rhubarb tart with liberal fillings, rich fruit interior."  The prof said, "If you don't think that's sexual... well there's something wrong with you."

Yeah, that's about all I've got.  I mean, I could discuss the lit crit in Chapter 9, but that would presume that anyone cares.

Edit: Okay, so I do have one thing to say about that. The prof was talking about how he was schooled in New Criticism (which surprised me given the way he taught Portrait; it's more forgivable in Ulysses) and during the break, one of the students (whom I would guess to be maybe thirty) asked about this, the approach apparently foreign to her. Smith was not relentlessly post-modern and didn't invalidate the bearing of sociohistorical factors (including the author's own history) on a text, but I still boggled that this approach seemed so foreign to her.