Every night I think I'll aim to get to bed early, and yet . . . .

[hermionesviolin]

We didn't have any bread, so I bought lunch today.  I asked for a calzone and the woman said, "It has meat in it.  Do you want this instead?"  (Gesturing to the peppers and cheese stromboli.)  ♥  The stromboli wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either.  The calzone sign said broccoli & pancetta, and having never heard the word "pancetta" I just assumed it was a kind of cheese.  Dictionary.com, AHD, tells me it's "Italian bacon that has been cured in salt and spices and then air-dried."  And gee, isn't this attractive: "Italian, diminutive of pancia, belly"

We got a letter from the Farrs yesterday.  The were ministers at UCN when I was wee and had daughters who bracketed me in age.  We haven't heard much from them in ages, probably since before Phyllis [bestest old lady evar] died, which was when I was in junior high.

"Ron and I are in our sixteenth year at Emmanuel Lutheran UCC in Watertown.  We think you'd both love this lively, progressive church family.  This past year our church voted to become an Open & Affirming, multicultural, multiracial congregation -- which was no surprise because for over a decade our church has attracted a wealth of diverse people from all walks of life, and we are truly enriched by the miracle of each person here.  We also have become a Green Church (earth-friendly, etc.) and are endorsing as many Fair Trade products as we can.  We feel privileged to be the co-pastors of such an intelligent, open-hearted, open-minded family of faith."

My dad says becoming an Open & Affirming church is what all the cool churches are doing nowadays, and it is so true :)  Still makes me happy, though.  The list reminded me so much of First Churches.  And it occurred to me that if they had stayed I would be having recurrent conversations with wisdomeagle about how it made my brain hurt that her ministerpeople experience was so not mine even though we had such similar ministerpeople, and yeah, potentialities are weird.

Speaking of potentialities, classes at Smith are starting up again, so I get to be jealous (though honestly, I'm really not jealous much at all; look at e go, rocking the contentment).

I missed Children's Lit by one year!  *pouts*  (Plus of course mt's modern poetry seminar last semester, which I was bitter about starting like a year ago now.  I'm over it by now, though.)

(Simmons has a graduate program in children's literature?  Oh, and I don't think I ever linked to it, but kidlit & femslash -- discussion in fox1013's LJ.)

I'm also mildly jealous of Catholic Philosophical Tradition.  Except, oops, it's taught by Carol Zaleski.  Not so much.


thistlerose got a Vermont Teddy Bear Company catalogue in the mail today, so she posted a bunch of picture links.  The Wedding Bears come in m/m and f/f as well as m/f, which is pleasing.  I was reminded of the Hallmark kissing bears debacle of February 2002.  [Sidenote: Not being at Smith means no Anti-Valentine's Day party for me :(  But hey, I do have good memories.]  And most are available in 4 different fur colors.

Pride Bear? I, um, may have made him my desktop at work.  I thought of buying some but, um, $80 = meep!  My mom says I should just get a cheap knockoff in the South End.  Oh, and if you wanted to be subtle: cowboy bear ;)

This afternoon I got an LJ comment from Dec. 28/29.  It was a reply to a fic feedback comment I'd left, so no big, but still, weird.

Hey, Ari, up for remixing Sherlock Holmes fic?  remixredux wants you.



Just before I went to bed last night, I saw: Wendy Wasserstein died (hat tip rhipowered)  Smith did Uncommon Women just last year, and Sisters Rosensweig was one of Huntington's majorly plugged shows last season.  And I started reading her stuff years back when ambrent listed The Heidi Chronicles (I think it was) as one of her top plays.

One of the first things I saw on LJ this morning: Coretta Scott King, 78, Widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dies.

In the middle of the day I saw official word that Alito got confirmed.

And tonight is was the State of the Union.  (Oh, fond memories of being defriended 3 years ago.  Not that I have a long memory or anything.)

InstaPundit: "You know, to me Wal-Mart is a lot like George W. Bush. It's not that I'm that big a fan in the abstract, really, it's just that the viciousness and stupidity revealed in its enemies tends to make me view it more favorably than I otherwise would."

What a great summation of how/why I kneejerk at The Left.  Ah, ye Bastion of Liberal Higher Education, look what ye hath wrought.


We saw a commercial during lunch and I was snipping 'cause Brokeback Mountain is so going to win because the Academy likes making statements (plus I was underwhelmed by the film, though I'm still a bitch) but looking at the list (thanks to offbalance), all the nominees are political.  I still think they'll give it to BBM.

BEST MOTION PICTURE OF THE YEAR
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
CAPOTE
CRASH
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK.
MUNICH

My brother and I actually wanted to see Crash.

Oh, speaking of movies to see, Millionaire today had a question about "herbarium" and I thought of "Because it has a fucking H in it" and was said that Mary Alice was unfamiliar with Eddie Izzard.  She does know Douglas Adams, though (Hitchhiker *and* Dirk Gently).  I forget how it came up, but she made a "remember your towel" (something like that) comment and I got it and there was some line that we were trying to place and I couldn't remember if it was in the Hitchhiker books or just sounded like it *could* have been 'cause she has read the Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency books, too, and I haven't.

One of today's questions: Who said "A true friend stabs you in the front" ?  Musing aloud I wondered if it was Oscar Wilde.  Lo he was Option B.  (The girl got it wrong, guessing A: Dorothy Parker.)  I said it sounded like Oscar Wilde, certainly moreso than any of the other options, and Eric said he'd never read any of his work.  I was a bit surprised that he graduated with an English major never having read The Importance of Being Earnest or Portrait of Dorian Grey, though I was never assigned Oscar Wilde in class myself (right?).  Eric's guess was Gertrude Stein (C), whom he called a feminazi.  Mary Alice got that "I'm gonna take you outside and whup you" look.  The only Gertrude Stein I've read was some poetry (from Tender Buttons) in mt's AmLit class, but Eric claims that she says in her writings that she hates men.

Comments

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Gertrude Stein is something else. I haven't read a whole lot of her work--some bits of Tender Buttons (and can I say that her experiments with language get on my freaking nerves) and The Diary of Alice B. Toklas which I adore. The novel purports to be from her "friend" (lover) Alice's POV, but is really Stein writing stuff like, "Gertrude is so awesome," said Alice. LOL

One of my favorite experiences: seeing Wilde's tomb in Paris.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Tender Buttons was fun only 'cause mt pointed out all the sexual imagery therein. Shoes? Who knew?

I really should read The Autobiograph of Alice B. Toklas at some point.

[hedy.livejournal.com]

The Smith bookstore is selling a teddy bear that reads "What Boyfriend?"

I'm interested at the comment you made re BBM as being a political choice, as for all of the OMG gay agenda bellyaching, I found BBM's conclusion to be fairly cliche'd gay punishment (deviate from the sexual norm and will have a one in two chance of getting killed).

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the rugby t-shirt :)

I definitely agree with your assessment about BBM's conclusion. However, given that both sides have been all "omg, it promotes teh gay lurve," I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Academy picked it because of that. All the nominees are political movies, but BBM's gotten the most buzz -- amplified now by the fact that it was 8 nominations (I think I heard somewhere that's the most of any movie this year?).

The fact that the movie really *isn't* all that groundbreaking or progressive adds to my discontent over all the buzz around it. Not that one *shouldn't* make movies about the tragic possibilities of being gay in rural America, but saying, "Look, we love the pretty boys kissing and the sweeping panoramic views, aren't we so progressive?" discomfits me. Of course there are legitimate reasons to like the movie/short story, but the way the buzz has gone -- coupled with the fact that I was personally unimpressed by the movie/short story -- makes me cranky.

[arrrgyle.livejournal.com]

i hate how expensive vermont teddy bears are. my parents bought me one for my birthday last year, and i thought it was so cute. then i looked on their website and got really pissed at my parents for wasting 78 dollars on a freaking teddy bear. it wasn't even soft enough to cuddle or anything. i just hate stuff that's way overpriced.
but pride bear, that's still pretty nifty.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the DeBeers "how else can six months salary last forever?" commercials used to drive me up a wall. If anyone ever dropped six months salary on a piece of jewelry I would throw it at them and scream at them to return it.

I was gonna get the Pride Bear to put up on my desk at work but yeah, so not worth that much money. Maybe if I get a Christmas bonus this year or something . . . .