burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

I've gotta say, i really appreciate the validation of my post-graduation plans.  I get all stubborn independent "my life, therefore my opinion wins," but it's still comforting and strengthening to be affirmed, to have other people agree with me.  And Gillian and Briana both say i'll be the best date ever ;)

So anyway, Commencement Weekend.

Rehearsal Friday morning was lame.  It did give me a better idea of how the ceremony was gonna go, and Meg and i got to feel cool 'cause we know what "speech act" is [and it sounds so much like a marriage pronouncement, too -- "by the power vested in the Board of Trustees and delegated..."], and i enjoyed the projector images even though they were hard to see, but it wasn't tremendously helpful, and oh the stupid questions people asked.  There were i think 2 valid questions -- neither of which the woman was able to answer well (how early will the ITT be open if graduation is inside, and how are we supposed to do our graduation hoods).  Liked the German guy running things, though.  Afterward, we took the class picture on a steep grassy knoll, which was ever so much fun.  Lunch was good.  Danne gave me a rose.  I got a graduation card from a couple at First Churches whose faces i can't even think of to match with their names.

My parents arrived Friday evening and we went to see Six Characters in Search of an Author.  Well-acted.  Unsure how i feel about the play itself.  Interesting ideas about how no one else can really be you.  But characters in a play aren't actually existant persons, they're characters created to be performed by other people.  (As opposed to characters in books, who were created to exist within their own world and not to be embodied by other people.)  The immutable is more real?  Yes reality is always changing (as they say) but does that make the past an "illusion"?  Is saying "No, it's memory; that's different" a cop-out?

Ivy Day was Saturday morning.  Side-zipping dresses are a bitch, and i owe Poorn much love.  It was actually pretty.  (They should have told us the reason to arrive 45 minutes early was so that everyone could take pictures of us.  Have i mentioned how the Commencement/IvyDay rehearsal didn't actually include anything about Ivy Day?)  After all the processions, though, when we sat down and listened to people talk, i was cold and bored.  [When i said i wanted winter back, i didn't mean when i was sitting outside in a sleeveless dress.]  Reminiscent of Class Day.  The box lunch following was yum, and i first went home to change into real clothes, so sitting outside and eating was nice.

We went to SCMA next, and i abandoned my family partway through for the departmental reception to search for Jessie.  I hung out with Meredith, and Joan (whom i don't see enough), and saw Mary Barbara [Sherborn lady], and finally found Jessie.  Also Skarda -- who was giving out department pins for regalia, which apparently they've been getting rid of for at least 2 years.  I rather liked them, though i actually forgot to attach to my robe come Sunday.  After my family finished with SCMA, they went to Lyman and then found me.  They got a rather full Skarda experience.

Skarda suggested i write about massage in literature -- seedy and all.  I said it would be like my seminar paper -- fun to research but not so much to write.  She said she doesn't think of her massager as the brightest bulb.  And it's hard to get employ as the market is glutted -- but then, she pays one.

Skarda said only about 300 people (recent stat, probably from Atlantic Monthly) support themselves from their writing.  My father suspects this doesn't include, say, journalists.  He says i seem very comfortable with words -- very comfortable in front of a keyboard, using words.  So true.

Skarda told Joan's mom that she could always count on us to say smart things in Telling and Retelling.  Joan didn't remember speaking much at all in that class, and i'm inclined to agree (though i know i talked a lot) but whatever.  Reminded me a touch of Liz Carr's effusiveness, which was amusing.

Saw Prof. Kaminksy, who asked about my post-graduation plans.  I told him bartending and massage school.  "See, that's that look i was talking about."  No, actually, he was thinking about all that practice you have to do, and would i be local.  And he managed to not make it sound skeezy.  I mean, i know him, so i know it's not skeezy, but it's so the kind of thing that would have come out skeezy if i'd said it, so i was impressed.

We had dinner at Fresh Pasta, which was yum as usual.  And because our reservations were for 5pm we beat the dinner rush.

There was time to kill before Illumination Night, so i picked up my Zaleski final, since i'd been forgetting to that for days. ( cut for professorial commentage )

When i was finally hungry again we went to Burdick and i got a $4 hot chocolate.  Not the sex-in-a-cup i was recalling from Winter Weekend, but still good.

Illumination was one of the few graduation exercises i was kind of excited about, and it disappointed.  The lanterns looked like balloons (pink, yellow, yellow-green, blue) though they were less bad when one was close-up (they had shrubbery designs on them) or when they were illuminated.  The Senior Candle Lighting was kinda lame -- we all got white candles and the class president lit them and then it was like "okay, yay you, you can go wander the illuminated paths now."  I was expecting some sort of procession -- since that seems to be a theme this weekend, and a procession of people holding candles would be cool.

Sunday was Pentecost.  I did the Scripture Reading (Acts 2:1-21 and 1 Corinthians 12:4-13) and was also asked to do the Call to Worship, which i willingly did, though i'm not sure how i feel about it.  ( Read it if you're interested. )  (Googling, it's apparently a poem by R.S. Thomas -- a 20^th-century Welsh poet.)

Apparently Pentecost is considered the birth of the church, so they did confirmation this Sunday.  In... South America i think Tessa said it was... they pour flame colored rose petals over heads as symbolic of the flames of the Pentecost story, so she had the little kids do that to the confirmands.

Peter's sermon was called "In Our Own Native Language," and he talked about the confirmation class kids' statements of faith and how we each have our own frames of reference and things that are particularly important to us and so on, so when we talk about our faith it's like we have our own individual language, but people are still able to understand us, and it is due to the Holy Spirit that we are able to bridge some of the more difficult gaps.  I was a little confuzzled because my interpretation of the Acts account was that the disciples -- who were all from approximately the same linguistic region -- spoke and all those gathered (who came from a multitude of linguistic regions) heard their words in their own native tongues, not that the disciples all spoke in their own native tongues and everyone present was somehow able to understand them.

During her statement of faith, Isabelle used the phrase "war-torn," and i want people to understand why God sometimes demands -- or is interpreted as demanding -- violence or other things that we perceive as not good.  I had a moment of intense contra-left-ness and wished for God to be full of wrath and vengeance and pro-killing-people.  More sanely, i want people to realize that it is not true that the Bible fully supports what they value and that they're opponents are just wrong and misinterpreting; i want them to realize that it is complicated.  (Gee, look at how that is always my desire.)

Back when Peter first asked i wanted to be involved in a graduation service, my mom suggested that i ask for "Here I Am, Lord" to be included.  I didn't, since there wasn't really an opening to do so.  However.  What was the closing hymn?  "I Danced in the Morning"  I learned that i don't dislike the tune -- though it doesn't feel quite right -- and it's so not as obnoxious as it sounds when F. sings it ;)

I got so many congratulations after the service.  MJ gave me a card with a Starbucks gift card -- because i so frequently do tea duty and she comes over and chats with my while she drinks her coffee.

They were having a luncheon thing, so we went back to campus for brunch.  My brother said that people should just pay off portions of his student loans instead of giving him physical gifts.  (He's gonna graduate RPI with way more loans than i have from Smith).  I like that idea :)  (2 graduation cards arrived for me on Saturday -- both containing checks :) )

Like Ivy Day, Graduation seemed to require arriving 45 minutes early in large part for the photo ops.  I was rather indifferent.  I did actually get excited when we started to process, though, feeling all official and proud, and the happy face.  I saw a whole lot of people i knew on the sidelines and had a good view of the faculty procession.  It was a bit chilly, but i had jeans and other appropriate clothes on under my robe, so i didn't mind much.  And the college had thoughtfully provided us with bottled water underneath our seats.

There were a few drops of rain at the beginning of the procession, but otherwise it was completely fine.  And i actually liked both speeches -- Lauren Wolfe (to whose election as my class president [insert "She's not my president" joke here] my near immediate reaction was dread of Commencement) and Shelly Lazarus -- and approved of the honorary degrees.  Lazarus, class of 1968, talked about expectations and about what things were like when she graduated.  She said the question now isn't whether you can have at all but whether you want it all.  She talked about a Manhattan waitress who loves her job, saying, "Don't judge!" [Edit: link to full speech]

The whole thing only took about two hours.  A half hour of procession, a half hour of speeches, 45 minutes graduating us, plus about 10 minutes for the masters candidates, and then we were done.  Except for the Diploma Circle.  It sounds like a neat tradition in theory, but we had like the most ineffective diploma circle evar.  You're supposed to pass diplomas in concentric circles, passing the diplomas you've already seen into new circles, but we just ended up passing the same diplomas, and sometimes we had stacks of them and sometimes our hands were empty, so we finally just made one big circle -- which feels to me like how it should work anyway -- and i got mine relatively quickly at that point.  Immediately post-Graduation is an impossible time to see people, and i was impressed by the speed at which i connected with my family, but i was lucky enough to see Layna at the CC (where i used up my remaining OneCard money on more drinks). And hopefully now that we're residing in the same vicinity i'll get to see more of her.

Summation of the weekend: Having events structured as meaningful moments, like, "You're going to do this, and it's going to be meaningful for you," is weird. [Edit: Last week, Stacey said something about me being a control-freak and i said i didn't usually use that phrase, though i definitely use a number of similar phrases/adjectives for myself, but the phrase kept recurring in my head this weekend, since i know i really like to be able to control what i'm doing and i was realizing that that was probably the reason behind a lot of my ragifying moments this weekend. The fact that i didn't know in advance exactly how things were gonna function, trying unsuccessfully to find people, etc. -- all that is the kind of stuff that drives me up a wall.]

P.S. My brother says he's been pleasantly surprised by senior ceremonies (his and mine) and we had similar thoughts about what was good and what wasn't. He was a good sport about being dragged around all weekend, regardless.

I have Palmer orientation this Thursday.  In the mail on Monday i got my Student ID.  Look, i'm officially a student again :)  I really do need to get myself an actual job.  And, um, bugger.  I didn't actually coordinate the transportation before registering for a Palmer class, so i didn't think about the fact that i'm dependent upon two commuter rails plus a subway and 10pm is perilously close to when commuter rails stop running in Boston.  So yeah, don't actually have a way home.  Ditto Sunday service for the first day of my bartending class.  Why do i suck?  My mom can drive me in to class on Memorial Day morning, though, so that's not a big deal.  Any volunteers to drive me home from North or South Station in the vicinity of midnight every Tuesday night?  Floors to crash on also appreciated.

I also need to get myself a real job.  Having class at Salem at 6pm makes this whole office job thing difficult, though.  Grr.  See above re: thinking ahead and "I suck."

---

I read "Homestead" by inlovewithnight.  A good solid story that reads like an episode of the show [Firefly].  The voice reminds me of the show i love so much and brings tears to my eyes.

marauderthesn asked for suggestions of "gay movies that are watchable with parents."  I am so a bad person to ask.  I mean, i watched Claire of the Moon with my mom.  (Horrible movie, btw.)  My favorite moment, though, was watching Jeffrey and the phone ringing and hitting pause right on the "sex" frame.

penknife says: "Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe trailer: looks very pretty, but who knows about the acting and the script. Good or not, will clearly be next year's shiny new fandom. I fear the badfic."  All this Narnia movie talk is bringing out my seething loathing of adapting books into movies (Really need to write up that manifesto i do.) but the idea of more Narnia fic is appealing -- but then again, the fic i have loved has dealt with one of the things i hate about The Last Battle, and i don't tend to remember the minor characters in non-LWW books well enough to feel right reading fanfic about them, and i'm not sure how much good fanfic could be created with only the knowledge of LWW -- though White Witch backstory could be really interesting, either as post-MN for those who know it (which reminds me that i want more Illyria fic, also ancient!Dawn, and should check out History Lesson) or as AU for those writing only with knowledge of LWW, and the theology geek in me would be really interested in seeing any of the LWW characters post-LWW back in their own world.

I finally got a feedback on "Osiris Serenity" over on Blood Sings.  Brought tears to my eyes.  Interestingly, rereading the fic, i am less satisfied with it than i used to be.

Look at me not hating Maureen Dowd. This is such a rare occurrence that it needed an LJ post.

"To celebrate World Book Day, we asked the leading lights of British letters to name the characters who give them the greatest reading pleasure" -The Independent
I am much with the boggling, of course.

So much mutant_allies to read. (And i'm 2 episodes behind on ats_nolimits.)

Hey, Allie. Look.

I have now read Tam Lin. GorgeousJessica led seminar discussion, starting with contemporary performances of some of the ballads we read. "The Unquiet Grave" by Solas, "The Wife of Usher's Well" by The Chieftans, and "Lord Randall" by The Prodigals. This last group she called a "Celtic rock band" and said the refer to themselves as "jig punk." Listening to their "Lord Randall" i was in love. Too bad i can't find Dreaming in Hell's Kitchen in any library catalog.

Why is everything i write this semester such utter crap? I am excited about my seminar paper, though. "Bring on the fanfic," as Gillian put it. And really, i think i could legitimately use fanfic in it. I'm doing sexuality and power in the multiple incarnations of what we now call the Little Red Riding Hood tale -- from "The Story of Grandmother" to the didactic Perrault version to Angela Carter retellings. I still haven't figured out what the point will be (sadly, i can't just do a catalog) but appropriation of traditional tales, potential role reversal or at least romanticization of the "beast"... fanfic modeled on the LRRH tale could totally fit into my paper. (P.S. I love this site like whoa.)

"This is a product of sex, and I'm putting my mouth on it." -Cat, on the pear she was eating

I saw After Mrs. Rochester with Moriah. Really interesting interweavings of stories. Wonderful portrayal of the seductiveness of being a kept woman and how sickening power games can be when one party holds all the power.

I love looking at people's icons, but I don't always *get* them - I often wonder stuff like, "Who's that guy?" or "Where's that quote from?" but I tend not to ask, for various reasons. So come on, here are my icons. Pick one (or more!) you're curious about, and I'll try to explain it. Or at least explain what I like about it.

Who wants to explain to me what reason one would have for not asking? Memes like this strike me as odd since i figure if one has a question, one should just ask the question.

Oh, fandom drama. I forget that it isn't just the intellectuals vs. the teenyboppers. I forget that all the intellectual fen don't sit down over metaphorical tea and chat about inanities and have heated discussions underlaid by mutual respect. I forget that there are intense divisions. Surprisingly, this isn't triggering my usual "People are so immature and stoopid; i hate them all." Perhaps because i'm not really committed to any particular side. I can't handle any of the fandom BNFs enough to have them on my flist but i do like the meta, so i check a lot of the LJs with some frequency, but i haven't really had the time to engage recently. So i'm mostly just glancing and wowing at the hate.

Sometime when I was in college, the Boston Garden was torn down and replaced with a new arena, called the FleetCenter. (There seems to be some mania in business for dropping spaces between words, and it's the dumbest trend since shag haircuts.) Since Fleet Bank no longer exists, having been gobbled up by Bank of America, the naming rights to the arena went on sale. After several charity-related temporary re-namings (Jimmy Fund Center, yes; Derek Jeter Center no, on basis that "Derek Jeter" is basically a swear word in that context, no I am not joking), the arena has a new name: the Garden.

Okay, the TD Bank-North Garden, and I think hyphenation is the new black for business names. But all of the newsies bleated Gahden, Gaaaahden, overjoyed to have the old name back. Having spent the last ten years calling it the Garden anyway (much to the amusement of the peanut gallery), I can only congratulate the universe for conforming to my views on this matter.

[...]

On my trip through the park, in the early evening, past much snow and ice, I saw the bronze ducks modeled after Make Way for Ducklings: all of the baby ducklings were wearing knit hats, with ties to secure them against the wind. I had to check to be sure, because some of the hats were in dark yarn, but yep -- warm-headed bronze ducks in my freezy city.

-Vee Jane

I'm glad it's The Garden again, but the real tragedy is that Great Woods is still the Tweeter Center.

There has been way too much sleep involved in my life these past few days.
Hampshire’s Midsummer was SEX.
There are so many people i will be sad to leave when i graduate this spring.
I finished my Buffy paper. [UPenn asks for “A critical writing sample, 20 pages in length,” and i am pretending praying that this essay fits the bill.] I didn’t manage to fit in everything i had originally hoped to, though it is a full 19 pages. I know i very much need to go back and edit for flow and general suckage. Offers to edit greatly appreciated. Also: Should i include all the quoted episodes in my Bibliography?
Now i have to write my UMass paper. That is a project for after some sleep, though.
Dear Self: You want to go to church. Make sure you get up in the morning.
I miss LiveJournal. (That is to say, i miss having time to read and/or update it.)

Norwood: December 20 - January 1
Smith: January 2 - May 15 (excluding Spring Break: March 12-20)

Monday night:

Went to the library after Self-Defense class to research for my paper.

Went to the Campus Center for food for the first time all semester. Due to being under-staffed there was no milkshake making, so i got french fries but no chocolate milkshake which is what i really wanted. However, Laura's mom sent homemade chocolate chip cookies and Laura shares, so i had 3 and felt much better.

I heart talking to Emma, even though that was hours i should have been writing my paper.

We talked a lot about As You Like It. Bill Oram is convincing me that perhaps Rosalind really is madly in love with Orlando, but i don't particularly buy his argument that the play is about court vs. country (though it's certainly a pastoral play).

Emma talked about how plays, especially in Shakespeare's time, were meant to be performed, and if you need to do really close reading, if you can't see something in a viewing of a play, then perhaps you are stretching things.

In the versions Emma has seen, Rosalind is played cold (which is how i read her originally) and Orlando is an idiot (which is a legitimate reading, just not one i was particularly inclined to; i don't care much one way or the other about him, but i think he's a perfectly good guy who falls madly in love with this lady).

I totally reinterpret stuff in this play not just to make it gay but to make characters' actions/motivations make more sense to me. (I'm totally gonna end up rewriting this play, aren't it?)

Shakespeare was an imperfect human being, not a deity, not even a minor one.

Wednesday after class i was having breakfast with a woman in my class and a friend of hers who loves Rosalind and wrote a paper on her. She said that Rosalind wants a guy she can mold, control. I can see that. Rosalind still confuses me, though. In class we were talking about the other couples, and when Phebe is cutting Silvius down for his over the top professions of love, Rosalind jumps in and bitches her out because she sympathizes with Silvius' over-thetop feelings. That's how Bill explained it anyway, and that made sense to be as i've been being converted to the plausibility of the "Yes Rosalind really does fall passionately in love with Orlando" reading of the text. (Though that's not how it's going to be when i rewrite the play.) But then she basically plays Phebe to Orlando's Silvius when she's next with him. Is this her projecting and trying to quell that irrationality within herself?

Wednesday during class, Bill talked about how Silvius' love for Phebe is articulated as holy reverence etc. and i thought "Silvius chastely worships her and Phebe goes off to be a dyke. Their marriage will work after all." Their coupling was the one i was least pleased with, so i was happy to have come up with a satisfying fanwank

Thursday:

C. L. Barber's essay on the Saturnalian Pattern in Shakespeare's Festive Comedy is a load of bullshit.

Also, i wanna stab this one girl in my class. Her Blackboard postings are not unintelligent, but i very much get the feeling of "No, there is no gay here, it is just a game about love, not about gender play, stop forcing your modern fancies with gayness and realistic character motivation onto the divine Shakespeare and stick with the text."

I was telling Emma about this later Thursday night and showing her the posts and realized i could actually articulately argue against what she said (and was also struck by what a pretentious bitch she came off as), so after Emma left to go to bed i returned to Blackboard. I was reminded of the weekend spent arguing about the Olga Broumas and Anne Sexton Little Red Riding Hood poems on Blackboard last semester (which was one of my high points of the semester).

I also got to defend my contention that Barber is full of shit, though Collyn did remind me of an interesting point Barber brought up, about the comedies being not so much about topsy-turvy-ness but about, as he says, "movement between poles of restraint and release in everybody's experience," which makes me look at the comedies in a new way.

In chatting with Emma it also occured to me: "I'm a boy and she's my 'sister' " -- hello Abraham and Sarah. See, see, Celia and Rosalind really were lovers ;)

Tuesday:

Up early to return my reserve books. Not as early as i intended, actually, because i hit the Off button on my alarm while still mostly asleep, but given how late i went to bed and the fact that i didn't have class until 10:30, was still earlier than i would have been up otherwise.

I really enjoy that i can listen to the lecture at my UMass class while writing fic at the same time. About 600 words of my "original fic." Difficult to make the banter between the two characters not sound like the banter between me and my friends. Coming up with names for the characters would be good, too.

We got a list of suggested topics for my Brave New Worlds class.

With the permission of your section instructor, you may do a creative project such as a short story, long poem, screenplay, or hologram ballet. Creative work is acceptable for either the midterm or final, but not for both. No macramé, conceptual art, collage, body painting, or scarification.

The midterm is a 7 page paper and we can use any of the suggested topics or make up one of our own. We can also write about novels we haven't done in class, though obviously they'll be suspicious if we choose to write on novels that were on the syllabus in past years. Some of the suggested ones looked kinda interesting, and i've had thoughts about other issues raised by the books, but nothing felt very compelling.

"In all of the novels we have read, the dystopian societies are patriarchal. Is this mere co-incidence, or is male dominance a necessary ingredient of totalitarianism? Choose any two novels and speculate about gender and power."

I read that one to Emma and she started telling me about The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge (which i haven't read) and we got talking about the original Hans Christian Andersen tale and Narnia and yeah, i think i have a paper topic that i'm very excited about. Woot.

Most of this week there hasn't been anything i wanna eat at any of the houses. My dad e-mailed me a few days ago. "It occurs to me that we should have food stocked for you when you get here. My underactive imagination thinks of orange juice, milk, shells and cheese, corn, and crinkle-cut french fries. Anything else?" He later e-mailed: "I also stocked up on raisin bran and hot chocolate." Um, except for Amy's [they have a weight loss success stories section on their website? ew] veggie burgers, that about covers it.

I put off doing laundry because i knew there was gonna be a fire drill and wanted to be fully dressed. (Though i actually wouldn't have been all that much colder in my jammies.) Seems like half the campus had their scheduled fire drill tonight. Scheduled means donuts. I ate 5 chocolate munchkins and then started on the powdered cinnamon ones, of which i didn't keep count. Hey, don't look at me like that; i've been under-nourished. I really like Emily Cox and, as with so many people, would like to hang out with her more.

If i trust that you're going to be responsible, i'll buy you alcohol; i don't think drinking age laws are a terribly great thing. Provided people are educated and responsible, i believe in allowing them to live their lives as they please. (And as long as they're not harming anyone else, people really should be free to live their lives as they please even if they're stupid and irresponsible. Saving people from themselves is a very iffy proposition. I may believe i can improve your life, but i shouldn't be allowed to force those "improvements" on you.)

While i was still having munchkins and chatting with Emily and Laura, Emma came down to get tea and yeah. And we wonder why i'm never on AIM? (Note: I almost always have the GroupWise client up, so if you want me to sign on, just e-mail me.)

Yeah, i suck at being motivated to do work, unless i really care about the material, so hopefully i'll survive grad school. (Assuming, of course, that i ever get in.) I don't wanna jump through other people's hoops, just wanna do my own thing. Maybe i really should just get a desk job and do my own thing in the evenings. ::sighs::

Wednesday afternoon people were already bitching about the cold. Now, lack of heat in the dorms, okay i understand that being a problem, and there is that nasty transition from warm to chill weather, but it hadn't even begun to border on freezing yet, so if you're just talking about walking to class when the temps are in the 40s, then hush. Though as my computer and i worked into the wee hours of the morning as Wednesday turned into Thursday, we both noted without fondness the distinct lack of heat in my room.

From: Priority News
Date: Monday - October 4, 2004 12:53 PM
Subject: Campus Heat

GOOD NEWS ! THE HEAT IS ON IT'S WAY !!

The Heating Plant started the boilers Sunday, October 3rd and is now in the process of charging the steam distributin system. This process takes several days because of the extensive size of the network.

If you are experiencing heat related problems after Thursday, October 7th, please contact Physical Plant Customer Service at Extension 2400

Thank You

I appreciate that in their eagerness to relay this information to us they didn't bother proofreading at all. ::rolls eyes::

I enjoy wearing short-sleeves but will take the worst winter has to offer over the hot and humid misery of New England summers.

My dad: There are some sick people in this world.

Around here the tv weatherpeople also do the "foliage report." I heard one of them say yesterday morning, "Unfortunately, it's still green in the Boston area."

Me quoting Sarah W-W: "These are the days when decay begins, when the dying becomes intense. But they're days of glory; fierce optimism in red and gold against the slowly chilling wind."

My dad: I think of all those 19th century novels where people glowed brilliantly as they died of tuberculosis.

If I had a choice, I'd decline both.

Sounds like i missed nothing having skipped the VP debate. I'm not even gonna bother looking for a transcript.

8:08. "Bored now. May I play with the puppy?"

8:09. Sorry about that last entry. Once again, Vampire Willow somehow took over the blog.

-VodkaPundit (who's on Mountain Time)

See also: rhipowered's Debate in a Nutshell. And antheia was even more succinct:

Cheney: They're just plain inexperienced, and indecisive.
Edwards: Yes, but he's Satan! No really, I can see the tail!

Wednesday:

I say some smart things in my Dead Sea Scrolls paper, but my mental abilities were definitely deteriorating as night turned into morning.

The material for my Dead Sea Scrolls class is really dense. I'm really glad to have someone mediating between me and the text (particularly when we're talking about the relationship of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the New Testament -- which is far more interesting to me than the archaeological aspects) and as always there's the basic fact that doing something in a class means i'll actually do the readings instead of adding them to my list of "things i should/want to read/see/research at some point."

Did i mention Bill called my Shakespeare paper "a promising draft"? That made me feel better, though i still have to do a rewrite for the Wednesday we get back from break, since what we handed in was only a first draft.

Work was so slow, in part because lots of people were at a Staff Appreciation thingy for much of the afternoon. I got about 20 chapters of Exodus read.

On Monday the battle with the copy machine and its toner needs finally came to a close when Stacey realized that to feed the machine you also have to pull out a tab in the toner cartridge itself to open it up. We went back and forth for a while about how to phrase the memo i was to send out to the staff, mostly about what to call the plastic tab thingy. Stacey finally figured out that the official term was "trap door" and i worded the memo as follows. If the copier needs toner, please make sure when feeding it that you have opened the "trap door" not only in the machine but in the toner container itself. (When feeding the toner you should have two plastic tabs pulled out.) When i came in on Wednesday i saw her reply: very clear. nice job! Aww :)

Having breakfast after my 9am class messes up my hunger schedule -- i'm not very hungry during lunch but then my stomach's eating itself around 3 in the afternoon. And i think my metabolism or whatever really does just work better on a grazing schedule than a 3 square meals a day schedule. There was a pizza party at the President's house, so i had cold pizza, soda, and 3 ice cream treats. I saw Friedman people, which was good. I knelt down on the grass to eat and chat and oh, the grass was damp and i got grass stains on the jeans i just washed the previous night. Sigh.

Procuring code numbers to have my GRE scores sent. Remind me again why Duke is one of my top choices? Not that it doesn't look like a good program, but it seems like i don't have much correspondence with people there, so i'm confused as to how it got to be in my top 3.

There are a couple PhD in Communications programs that look like i could do what i wanna do (UIowa and Illinois-Urbana), but would my chances of being able to teach what i wanna teach be severely hindered by such a PhD? Given the odds of my getting a professorship at all does it even matter?

I was really awake and functional all day even though i only got about 2 hours of sleep. I went to bed around 10 and woke up around midnight, dazed and coughing. Got up for real around 9:30 in the morning since i did in fact have class. Definitely sick. Blech.

Thursday:

Real food for lunch! Fake burgers, rice, broccoli, orange slices, hot chocolate, ice cream treats for dessert. I was very excited.

I bought rum for friends (and thus wandered the entire liquor store and learned where everything is located before finally finding the rum) and was wearing one of my nice lizard t-shirts and chatted with the nice guy at the register for a while about the Southwest (he lived there for a few years and plans to retire there).

At dinner tonight the topic of discussion was growing up with farms, particularly chickens. Emma commented on what nasty creatures chickens are and said that's one reason she doesn't feel bad eating them. "So cannibalism would be okay if we just ate the mean people?" i asked. She agreed. Susan M.: "Note to self: Don't get on Emma's bad side."

Went to After Juliet (written by Sharman Macdonald) -- the playreading Kate was in. Was very good. Apparently the Drama Studio in Springfield is doing a full production of it in March.

Shortly before going to said playreading i got a phone call from my brother. "Did you get my e-mail?" "Um, no." "How important is it that i pick you up instead of you taking the bus home?" "Not very." He has a paper to write tonight and the SAT Saturday morning, so he would like to crash Friday after school. Fair enough. And taking the bus is really no problem.

Chatted with Emma tonight. She kept wondering about stuff and i'd Google it. Googling for the Superman who got shot during filming we found this amusing collection of image captions. (We got the answer -- George Reeves, 1959 -- from a piece linked in the cached version.) I also showed her the Orlando Bloom got engaged news article, which included in a sidebar "Orlando made to wear chest wig". There was also a link to DigitalSpy:Gaydar which i'm bookmarking and from which i learned who the gay Simpsons character was.

Have been skimming the flist but only skimming and no commenting. Will catch up for real, um, eventually.

I got a call from some Shakesperean Troupe at 2am on a school night. They reciting some lines from Shakespeare and then ask me to rate them and blah blah blah.
-"kiarascura" in a Jolt Thread about the Whispering Woman

That’s the kind of Whispering Woman thing i find tempting to do. (Also, i have yet to get a call from the Whispering Woman. This makes me sad.)

I slept hardcore and then spent most of the day staring at my computer screen. I think i overloaded this week or something. And i keep thinking Spring Break begins next weekend, but it doesn’t. Just taking a break from staring at Michael’s paper yesterday helped immensely in my ability to finish it, so after hours of staring today i called an intermission and worked on my fic that’s due Mar. 5. Of course, it’s still far from done and then i went to see Equus with hedy and i just finished this entry and looked at the time and bugger.

While the role of the “professionally menopausal” therapist Martin Dysart is associated with stage legend Anthony Hopkins, the gender switch for this production makes for a “different but equally valid play,” said Meg Flaherty ‘05, who plays “Margaret” Dysart. While women and men auditioned for the role, [director Shannon “Max” ‘04] MacMillan believed a woman actor “could embody the passion” of the character more credibly. The change also eliminated any potential homoeroticism between doctor and patient, which has “cheapened” the show’s themes in other productions.
-from “Sexuality, gender and horses questioned in ‘Equus’ ” by Elizabeth Van-Houten in The Sophian, Arts, February 26, 2004

My first thought upon reading that paragraph was “Because clearly viewers only read in unintentional eroticism between members of the same sex,” followed by “Yes, the eroticism of the therapist/patient dynamic absolutely cheapens the drama of a play which is about the psychology of the twisted - oh wait, it’s because the gay eroticism, my mistake.”

I read the play in high school (Petersen... junior year i wanna say?) so i had forgotten some of the details.

The play opens with the deeply, textually, erotic boy/horse scene. And they’re worried about the possible eroticism between therapist and patient? (A relationship which is almost inherently erotic by its very nature, no less.) And for the record, there was no eroticism between Dr. Dysart and Alan in this production. Mostly the gender switch was moot (in part because Dysart was almost neutered what with the pantsuit and hair pulled back and all). The stuff about having children would have had a different resonance if it were textual, but knowing that it was a change i knew not to read into that. The only real problematic is that Mr. Strang says a line dissing women which you know he would only say to another man, that he wouldn’t say it to a female doctor, but it’s only one line and again, i knew the sex of the doctor had been changed. The only real change i saw (and this was a positive one) was that it rendered any sexual thing between Dysart and the magistrate moot. Because they were both women it was just a friendship, a relationship between equals, but with all the talk about marriage and stuff, it could easily be complicated by a man-woman dynamic, because of course we read sex into everything.

I almost didn’t go to this because i wasn’t thrilled by it in high school. Watching it tonight, with the sex and religion and sadomasochism i thought “This is fascinating.” There are so many interesting discussions one could have about these themes. (And yes, i totally channeled Angelus during Dysart’s final speech.)

“The premise is kinda like Fight Club.” -people in front of us as we left the production.
Um, in that not at all kind of way. I mean, given the statement i can make arguments about sadomasochism and sexuality and what it takes to fit into society. During parts i was thinking about Gibson’s The Passion of Christ and wondering if they purposefully placed Equus at the beginning of the Lenten season (i really doubt it) but Fight Club would so not come to mind.

Apparently there are a slew of theatre productions at Hampshire this weekend. I always go to stuff by myself and will be reserving tickets Monday evening, but if anyone actually wants to go to anything with me, lemme know.

Cabaret: March 4,5,6, and 7 at 8:00pm (student tickets $3)
All’s Well That Ends Well: March 2-6, 8 p.m. (student tickets $5) [edit: my mistake, this is at UMass]
Cloud Nine: March 4-7 and March 10-12, 8 p.m. (student tickets $3)

The international modern classic from renowned playwright Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine is an innovative theatrical, political comedy. It offers a biting critique of sexism, racism, and imperialism using satire, gender-bending, and music. Cloud Nine "unlocks the imagination, liberates the mind, and leaves you weak with laughter," says Time Out Magazine. While we are taken to Victorian Era Africa at the height of British colonialism and to the 1970's in post-sexual-revolution London, the play asks us to question how far we have really come, both as individuals and as a society.

Stuff at Smith this week:

Monday at 8pm: showing of Philadelphia in Wright Hall
Tuesday at 7:30 in Graham Hall (Hillyer): “Inventing Michelangelo: The Myth of the Creative Homosexual,” a lecture by James M. Saslow, Ruth and Clarence Kennedy Professor in Renaissance Studies, City University of New York, Queens College
Thursday at 7:30 in Seelye 207: Meredith Michaels reading from her new book: The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women

Hopefully i will have as little interest in this week’s Rec Council movie as i did last week’s ‘cause i much enjoy the free movies but haven’t the time. (Though i watched 3 Snow White films for my UMass class. I watched one of them and said that while i'm not sure i would actually recommend to anyone, it does a lot of really interesting stuff, but despite saying it didn't fascinate me as some versions have, i wrote 4 pages without breaking a sweat. [The response paper was to be 2 pages, so i went over what i had written and cut it down to focus on one particular theme -- the women and the glass, if you care.] If I thought anyone would care, i would go through all the symbolism and ambiguity and stuff in the film.)

I have accomplished almost nothing today, or much this entire weekend really. Fie on lack of motivation.

Apparently i haven’t been getting enough sleep, because this is the third day in a row that i have ended up taking 2 naps because reading gives me a headache and causes me to zone. Sigh.

Less than a week ago it broke 90; today it hovered around freezing and snow was threatened. Even for New England the recent weather has been insane.

Layna made my day on Saturday because she fixed my glasses. She has a tiny screwdriver, and when i couldn’t manage to hold the glasses together and screw the screw in, she offered to do it for me. Yay!

Joan was feeling miserable, so it was just me and Rebecca at Hampshire. “Love is Sweet; With Bread it's Better” was, um, interesting. It mixed comedy and political commentary, not entirely effectively.

I like the Hampshire campus a lot. I really should visit more often. It has a lot more open space and woodsy areas than the Smith campus. I was surprised to learn that Hampshire has the fewest (1,176) undergraduates of all the 5 colleges. Discounting UMass Amherst (which with 19,061 undergraduates is more like a large town), Smith actually has the most (2,630) undergraduates of the 5. (Yes, this is the kind of thing i do to procrastinate. Mt. Holyoke is next with 2,065 undergrads, followed by Amherst with 1,695. Again, i had thought of Amherst as having more than Mt. Holyoke.)

30 minutes until Angel.
8 days until new Buffy episodes begin.
19 days until i go home.