Lycka Utan Gräns

yeahh

2011-09-22T16:08:00.001-07:00

I think this says it all:

...

2011-06-30T20:58:00.001-07:00

"You have got to find less debilitating outlets than humilating people. I hear bowling is more fun than stalking."

"But I'm better at this."

2011-06-30T16:47:00.001-07:00

Henrietta is the most gullible chicken on the face of this earth.

10 hrs. :)

2011-06-30T14:59:00.000-07:00

I've taken care of the plants by distributing the small ones that I care about among people who shall hopefully take care of them, and moving the big ones within range of my neighbor's sprinklers. :P

i had this really weird dream in Russian. :D

Note to self:

2011-06-30T12:12:00.000-07:00

Rufus does not like being called Bogdan Milachkuvich.

Ow.

ahoj

2011-06-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

It is so weird to think of Hugh Laurie with an american accent. I can't get over how weird it is. Also, it's weird, because House is the only thing he's acted in where he hasn't been a total idiot. Actually, I guess I'm not technically watching House. I'm skipping all of the climactic medical bits and watching Hugh Laurie going around insulting everyone.

Rufus

2011-06-27T11:35:00.000-07:00

is adorably cute and that's all I have to say at the moment. Thank you, and if you could praise his feathers or something like that, that would be great, thanks.

And I made a key lime pie.

There.

2011-06-24T19:52:00.000-07:00

It's really big. :P

The survivors. Not bad, considering I started out with a large bag full of yarn.

Bwahaha

2011-06-24T18:57:00.000-07:00

I've knitted about five feet on my ginormous needles and I'm coming to the end of my yarn stash, finally. I spent the afternoon knitting and watching movies with Kit. (David Tennant and Matt Smith are currently competing for the best Doctor award, but I didn't like The End of Time.) We also watched Oceans 12 and 13. I also used several key physics principles in passing people on the way home. More specifically, the relation of acceleration to displacement via the displacement equation. :P And I just realized that casting this huge pile of yarn off of these huge needles is going to be difficult. I didn't know how much yarn I had.

Knitting project

2011-06-22T18:26:00.000-07:00

This is to use up all of my old yarn. The knitting needles are made out of old closet rods. :P So far I'm using fifteen balls of yarn all together.

yay

2011-06-22T15:56:00.001-07:00

I had orientation today, so I got my student id, registered for classes, got my laptop, and got out of there. :P We were split up into teams and mine was really dysfunctional. Mine didn't win anything. (It always seems like I'm on the team that never wins. But this wasn't my fault.) So then I was tired, so I went across the road and visited Kit and we talked about knitting and her mom loaned me this ginormous pair of knitting needles that I'm going to use to use up a ton of my old yarn. And then we went to someone else's house and I borrowed their spinning wheel to play with since mine isn't working now. But I registered for classes in the fall! I'm taking 17 credit hours, most of them humanities to get them out of the way. The honors program isn't too happy about that, but they will have to deal with it.

jogging

2011-06-21T19:06:00.000-07:00

I'm not really a competitive person. If you want to race me down the hall, I won't respond. I just don't care to be able to be the one who says 'I beat you!' But I realized that academically, I'm extremely competitive. But I don't want to be the one about whom my teacher always says 'look at her, what a good job she does.' It's more of a sneaky competition, the kind only one person knows about. It's like when you're jogging and you see another person running the same route you are, so you try to see if you can beat them to a certain point, or run much faster than them. I don't want them or anyone else to acknowledge that I'm faster, I just want to see for myself if I am. And the person that I am competitive with academically is almost always the person who comes into class with a smirking attitude of 'I'm a genius at this stuff.' And I almost always can't stand that person. If they get a 100 and I get a 98, I get annoyed with myself because they did better than me. If I get a 100 and they get a 98, I get annoyed with the material for being to easy. If I get a 98 and they get an 89, then I feel bad for them and annoyed with myself for not getting a 100. But I still don't like those people, maybe because they come in the class with this attitude of 'I'm going to do better than you becuase I'm smarter/already had this class & teacher/I already know this language'. I don't mind the people who just come to learn, until they start saluting me as a child genius. Then I get a little frustrated. Basically, I'm a jerk to everyone and I want to do better than everyone else without them knowing it.

what goes up must come down

2011-06-12T15:55:00.000-07:00

My spinning wheel has something wrong with it, so I can't use it until I get it fixed. Until then, I have a really fun drop spindle that I drag with me everywhere. It's fun. But I want my wheel to work.

I feel guilty...

2011-06-02T04:53:00.000-07:00

But I don't really have a computer, and it's kinda hard to post via iPod, and I've been very very busy playing Angry Birds, so yeah.

2011-05-24T20:47:00.000-07:00

Rufus is in big trouble

2011-05-16T08:50:00.000-07:00

He stole some of my coffee. Silly bird. Why didn't anyone stop him?

also,

2011-05-10T12:25:00.001-07:00

Now that I don't need sleep anymore, I am becoming a complete coffee addict. I need to learn how to make it.

I'm lazy

2011-05-10T12:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, indeed. And here's a story for you:

In Wisconsin, I was at a park, and there were some lovely waterfalls, and there was also a silly sign that said 'park patrons not permitted in falls'. So I walked over the bridge and on the boardwalk for a bit, and then there were these big flat rocks with water going over them, so I clambered across them to the other side and then when I was coming back, there was a marked decrease in the coefficient of static friction between the soles of my shoes and the rock due to water flow over the surface of the aforementioned slab of sedimentary compounds and I slipped and hit my head on the rock.

Graduating sucks

2011-05-02T16:40:00.001-07:00

I have to buy my own gas now. Blech.

Oops.

2011-05-01T11:05:00.000-07:00

I was doing homework. But I'm done with my finals tomorrow. And then I¨ll be gone for a week, and then Tuesdays and Thursdays, I will be working in the physics lab from 1-5:30, and my Russian class is from 6-10. Then I'll be in Germany for the first three weeks of July, and then probably spend the rest of the summer back in the physics lab on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I love the look of subservient awe on people's faces when I tell them that I am majoring in Math, Physics and English.

Mocha

2011-04-05T06:53:00.001-07:00

Nom nom nom nom nom. I need to do my school.

I'm a horrible person

2011-04-01T12:23:00.001-07:00

And I'm going to keep being one.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHA

2011-03-17T18:26:00.001-07:00

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Gotta work on my evil laugh...

Moon by Zbigniew Herbert

2011-03-07T06:06:00.000-08:00

I don't understand how you can write poems about the moon. It's fat and slovenly. It picks at the noses of chimneys. Its favorite thing to do is climb under the bed and sniff at your shoes.

Song by Zbigniew Herbert

2011-03-07T06:01:00.000-08:00

In memory of Zbigniew "Bynio" Kuzmiak

More rain with snow is being woven
on these great looms of early winter
a string of farm carts and pine coffins
brings the fallen to the forest's center

let a shroud of mist be given to them
and for light hard sparks of hoarfrost
let our remembrance stay with them
in their furnace of eternal darkness

more rain with snow a stormy wind
of boundless plains and arid thistles
that fills the world expands the world
a wind from off the stars and glaciers

2011-03-06T13:20:00.001-08:00

*** (A POEM BY M.Yu.LERMONTOV – 1841)

1.
Alone I come out in the moonlight,
The sandy road glistens through the haze from afar;
The desert harks to God. Still is the night,
And a star speaks to another star.

2.
Skies are solemn and filled with wonder,
The earth sleeps wrapped in a bluish sheen…
What, then, is tearing my soul asunder?
Is it the wait? Or, regret for things that have been?

3.
I await really nothing from life,
No regrets have I for Time’s mighty sweep;
‘Tis Liberty I seek and freedom from strife,
And to find oblivion and fall asleep!

4.
But not into that icy sleep of death
Would I wish to drift for the eternal rest,
I wish life-blood coursed with every single breath
Within my slowly rising and falling chest.

5.
That, night and day, caressing my ear,
A sweet voice sang of love to me,
And that, above me I could always hear
The humming of an ever-green oak-tree.

Translated from Russian By R.R.R.

so.

2011-02-15T05:45:00.000-08:00

there's this one guy who speaks russian, so whenever i see him, i say 'ti bolshaya kartoshka' and he says 'spasiba' and i say 'pozhalsta'

Megabläh

2011-02-06T20:21:00.000-08:00

I have a test tomorrow, cosmology project wednesday, and project c due a week from then and then I've got nothing much for a whilllleeee. I just wrote an annoying paper and I've had wayyy too much curry over the weekend. Curry overdose. I bought a miniature rose plant and rearranged my room because of it. And I'm really tired and I calculated the charge of an electron.

The Song of Honour - Ralph Hodgson

2011-02-05T12:49:00.001-08:00

I climbed a hill as light fell short,

And rooks came home in scramble sort,

And filled the trees and flapped and fought

And sang themselves to sleep;

An owl from nowhere with no sound

Swung by and soon was nowhere found,

I heard him calling half-way round,

Holloing loud and deep;

A pair of stars, faint pins of light,

Then many a star, sailed into sight,

And all the stars, the flower of night,

Were round me at a leap;

To tell how still the valleys lay

I heard a watchdog miles away. . . .

And bells of distant sheep.

I heard no more of bird or bell,

The mastiff in a slumber fell,

I stared into the sky,

As wondering men have always done

Since beauty and the stars were one,

Though none so hard as I.

It seemed, so still the valleys were,

As if the whole world knelt in prayer,

Save me and me alone;

So pure and wide that silence was

I feared to bend a blade of grass,

And there I stood like a stone.

There, sharp and sudden, there I heard --

Ah! Some wild lovesick singing bird

Woke singing in the trees?

The nightingale and babble-wren

Were in the English greenwood then,

And you heard one of these?

The babble-wren and the nightingale

Sang in the Abyssinian vale

That season of the year!

Yet, true enough, I heard them plain,

I heard them both again, again,

As sharp and sweet and clear

As if the Abyssinian tree

Had thrust a bough across the sea,

Had thrust a bough across to me

With music for my ear!

I heard them both, and oh! I heard

The song of every singing bird

That sings beneath the sky,

And with the song of lark and wren

The song of mountains, moths and men

And seas and rainbows vie!

I heard the universal choir

The Sons of Light exalt their Sire

With universal song,

Earth's lowliest and loudest noes,

Her million times ten million throats

Exalt Him loud and long,

And lips and lungs and tongues of Grace

From every part and every place

Within the shining of His face,

The universal throng.

I heard the hymn of being sound

From every well of honour found

In human sense and soul:

The song of poets when they write

The testament of Beautysprite

Upon a flying scroll,

The song of painters when they take

A burning brush for Beauty's sake

And limn her features whole --

The song of men divinely wise

Who look and see in starry skies

Not stars so much as robins' eyes,

And when these pale away

Her flocks of shiny pleiades

Among the plums and apple trees

Sing in the summer day --

The song of all both high and low

To some blest vision true,

The song of beggars when they throw

The crust of pity all men owe

To hungry sparrows in the snow,

Old beggars hungry too --

The song of kings of kingdoms when

They rise above their fortune men,

And crown themselves anew, --

The song of courage, heart and will

And gladness in a fight,

Of men who face a hopeless hill

With sparking and delight,

The bells and bells of song that ring

Round banners of a cause or king

From armies bleeding white --

The song of sailors every one

When monstrous tide and tempest run

At ships like bulls at red,

When stately ships are twirled and spun

Like whipping tops and help there's none

And mighty ships ten thousand ton

Go down like lumps of lead --

And song of fighters stern as they

At odds with fortune night and day,

Crammed up in cities grim and grey

As thick as bees in hives,

Hosannas of a lowly throng

Who sing unconscious of their song,

Whose lips are in their lives --

And song of some at holy war

With spells and ghouls more dread by far

Than deadly seas and cities are,

Or hordes of quarelling kings --

The song of fighters great and small,

The song of pretty fighters all,

And high heroic things --

The song of lovers -- who knows how

Twitched up from place and time

Upon a sigh, a blush, a vow,

A curve or hue of cheek or brow,

Borne up and off from here and now

Into the void sublime!

And crying loves and passions still

In every key from soft to shrill

And numbers never done,

Dog-loyalties to faith and friend,

And loves like Ruth's of old no end,

And intermission none --

And burst on burst for beauty and

For numbers not behind,

From men whose love of motherland

Is like a dog's for one dear hand,

Sole, selfless, boundless, blind --

And song of some with hearts beside

For men and sorrows far and wide,

Who watch the world with pity and pride

And warm to all mankind --

And endless joyous music rise

From children at their play,

And endless soaring lullabies

From happy, happy mothers' eyes,

And answering crows and baby cries,

How many who shall say!

And many a song as wondrous well

With pangs and sweets intolerable

From lonely hearths too gray to tell,

God knows how utter gray!

And song from many a house of care

When pain has forced a footing there

And there's a Darkness on the stair

Will not be turned away --

And song -- the song whose singers come

With old kind tales of pity from

The Great Compassion's lips,

That makes the bells of Heaven to peal

Round pillows frosty with the feel

Of Death's cold finger tips --

The song of men all sorts and kinds,

As many tempers, moods and minds

As leaves are on a tree,

As many faiths and castes and creeds,

As many human bloods and breeds

As in the world may be;

The song of each and all who gaze

On Beauty in her naked blaze,

Or see her dimly in a haze,

Or get her light in fitful rays

And tiniest needles even,

The song of all not wholly dark,

Not wholly sunk in stupor stark

Too deep for groping Heaven --

The alleluias sweet and clear

And wild with beauty men mishear,

From choirs of song as near and dear

To Paradise as they,

The everlasting pipe and flute

Of wind and sea and bird and brute,

And lips deaf men imagine mute

In wood and stone and clay;

The music of a lion strong

That shakes a hill a whole night long,

A hill as loud as he,

The twitter of a mouse among

Melodious greenery,

The ruby's and the rainbow's song,

The nightingale's -- all three,

The song of life that wells and flows

From every leopard, lark and rose

And everything that gleams or goes

Lack-lustre in the sea.

I heard it all, each, every note

Of every lung and tongue and throat,

Ay, every rhythm and rhyme

Of everything that lives and loves

And upward, ever upward moves

Form lowly to sublime!

Earth's multitudinous Sons of Light,

I heard them lift their lyric might

With each and every chanting sprite

That lit the sky that wondrous night

As far as eye could climb!

I heard it all, I heard the whole

Harmonious hymn of being roll

Up through the chapel of my soul

And at the altar die,

And in the awful quiet then

Myself I heard, Amen, Amen,

Amen I heard me cry!

I heard it all, and then although

I caught my flying sense, oh,

A dizzy man was I!

I stood and stared; the sky was lit,

The sky was stars all over it,

I stood, I knew not why,

Without a wish, without a will,

I stood upon that silent hill

And stared into the sky until

My eyes were blind with stars and still

I stared into the sky.

The Old Astronomer to His Pupil - Sarah Williams

2011-02-05T12:47:00.001-08:00

Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet,
When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet;
He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of how
We are working to completion, working on from then to now.

Pray remember that I leave you all my theory complete,
Lacking only certain data for your adding, as is meet,
And remember men will scorn it, 'tis original and true,
And the obliquy of newness may fall bitterly on you.

But, my pupil, as my pupil you have learned the worth of scorn,
You have laughed with me at pity, we have joyed to be forlorn,
What for us are all distractions of men's fellowship and smiles;
What for us the Goddess Pleasure with her meretricious smiles.

You may tell that German College that their honor comes too late,
But they must not waste repentance on the grizzly savant's fate.
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

THANKSGIVING (1956) - e e cummings

2011-01-23T09:44:00.001-08:00

a monstering horror swallows
this unworld me by you
as the god of our fathers' fathers bows
to a which that walks like a who

but the voice-with-a-smile of democracy
announces night & day
"all poor little peoples that want to be free
just trust in the u s a"

suddenly uprose hungary
and she gave a terrible cry
"no slave's unlife shall murder me
for i will freely die"

she cried so high thermopylae
heard her and marathon
and all prehuman history
and finally The UN

"be quiet little hungary
and do as you are bid
a good kind bear is angry
we fear for the quo pro quid"

uncle sam shrugs his pretty
pink shoulders you know how
and he twitches a liberal titty
and lisps "i'm busy right now"

so rah-rah-rah- democracy
let's all be thankful as hell
and bury the statue of liberty
(because it begins to smell)

from "towards a science of non-existence" by Eugeniusz Tkaczysyn-Dycki

2011-01-23T09:37:00.000-08:00

it's fall already lord and i've no home but for
needful things in life which can be fine
but for needful things there's nothing i can lift
though i do what i can to break free of the past

whereas if i only possessed a few rooms
in one for sure i'd lock up sin
let it stop misbehaving as i leave the church
of st. stanislaus kostka if only i possessed

a sunlit room i'd be gone from here

Phonemes - Christian Bök

2011-01-22T09:01:00.000-08:00

for Arthur Rimbaud

Phantoms, infernal,

without refuge or return -- phonemes.

We will hark if such

resurgent souls ordain a dreamt verse:

A (offspring of perfect

murders, so unseen that stranglers

fulfill no crime, and thus

mourners must call the unjust schemes

overdoses); E (charmed

slumber that engulfs the sleepers,

cradled by dreamlike

Sirens who sing mankind forlorn themes);

I (corrupted archangel,

shriven when mercy redeems

all shadowy spectres

who plunder shipwrecked believers);

U (the Sphinx, beheld

by disciples, then by infidels:

a riddle that grieves

a king; a truth that crippled minstrels

must bewail in epics,

like staunch martyrs whom Furies spurn);

O (untempted Saint,

who lends this typewritten utterance

its fervency

--an endless cycle of perseverance).

O, how the Bards

abolish symbols, when the letters burn....

Uni-Verse by Boris Novak

2011-01-21T20:23:00.000-08:00

The light and it's night: shapes and their shades, waves and shores--their graves,
and the moon not only full but fulfilled: and a field--a handful of distance,
and the wind--a forefinger of the air, and a bird--a wedding ring of nothing:

and a traveler and his traveling toward the end of steps, into the root
of an endless circle: a voice, and yet a silence of everything,
the silence, and yet a praise to everything: wondering blossoms among petal
of senses:

touch is the nearest neighbor of the untouchable: a secret weaving of birth: a native
death: a mystery of word, a word of mystery: universe, a unison of unheard star
chimes,
universe, an unspeakable rhyme of rhymes, universe, one and only cosmic verse...

translated from the Slovenian by the author

The Fragment - Seamus Heaney

2011-01-21T20:06:00.000-08:00

   "Light came from the east," he sang,
"Bright guarantee of God, and the waves went quiet.
I could see headlands and buffeted cliffs.
   Often, for marked courage, fate spares the man
It has not marked already."

And when their objection was reported to him--
That he had gone to bits and was leaving them
Nothing to hold on to, his first and last lines
Neither here nor there----
   "Since when," he asked,
"Are the first line and the last line of any poem
Where the poem begins and ends?"

from at the back of the north wind

2011-01-21T19:59:00.001-08:00

There was hay at his feet and hay at his head, piled up in great trusses to the very roof. Indeed it was sometimes only through a little lane with several turnings, which looked as if it had been sawn out for him, that he could reach his bed at all. For the stock of hay was, of course, always in a state either of slow ebb or of sudden flow. Sometimes the whole space of the loft, with the little panes in the roof for the stars to look in, would lie open before his open eyes as he lay in bed; sometimes a yellow wall of sweet-smelling fibres closed up his view at the distance of half a yard.

It was a clear night overhead, and the stars were shining. Orion in particular was making the most of his bright belt and golden sword. But the moon was only a poor thin crescent. There was just one great, jagged, black and gray cloud in the sky, with a steep side to it like a precipice; and the moon was against this side, and looked as if she had tumbled off the top of the cloud-hill, and broken herself in rolling down the precipice. She did not seem comfortable, for she was looking down into the deep pit waiting for her.

But when he got round the weeping-ash that stood in the corner, the wind blew much stronger, and it grew stronger and stronger till he could hardly fight against it. And it was so cold! All the flashy spikes of the stars seemed to have got somehow into the wind.

The stars were very shiny over his head; but they did not give light enough to show that the grass was green;

Another bound, and they stood in the road by the river. It was full tide, and the stars were shining clear in its depths, for it lay still, waiting for the turn to run down again to the sea. They walked along its side. But they had not walked far before its surface was covered with ripples, and the stars had vanished from its bosom.

The next moment he was rising in the air. North Wind grew towering up to the place of the clouds. Her hair went streaming out from her, till it spread like a mist over the stars. She flung herself abroad in space.

By and by he raised himself and looked over the edge of his nest. There were the houses rushing up and shooting away below him, like a fierce torrent of rocks instead of water. Then he looked up to the sky, but could see no stars; they were hidden by the blinding masses of the lady's hair which swept between.

And lo! it was a blue night, lit up with stars. Where it did not shine with stars it shimmered with the milk of the stars, except where, just opposite to Diamond's face, the grey towers of a cathedral blotted out each its own shape of sky and stars.

The church was dark. Only a little light came through the windows, which were almost all of that precious old stained glass which is so much lovelier than the new. But Diamond could not see how beautiful they were, for there was not enough of light in the stars to show the colours of them. He could only just distinguish them from the walls, He looked up, but could not see the gallery along which he had passed. He could only tell where it was far up by the faint glimmer of the windows of the clerestory, whose sills made part of it. The church grew very lonely about him, and he began to feel like a child whose mother has forsaken it. Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.

It was a moonless night, and very dark, with glimpses of stars when the clouds parted.

As THEY flew, so fast they went that the sea slid away from under them like a great web of shot silk, blue shot with grey, and green shot with purple. They went so fast that the stars themselves appeared to sail away past them overhead, "like golden boats," on a blue sea turned upside down.

He jumped up, but all was still about him. The rose-bushes were pouring out their odours in clouds. He could see the scent like mists of the same colour as the rose, issuing like a slow fountain and spreading in the air till it joined the thin rosy vapour which hung over all the wilderness. But again came the voice calling him, and it seemed to come from over his head. He looked up, but saw only the deep blue sky full of stars—more brilliant, however, than he had seen them before; and both sky and stars looked nearer to the earth.

The lightning and thunder
 They go and they come;
 But the stars and the stillness
 Are always at home.

Ten Glosses - Seamus Heaney

2011-01-21T19:51:00.000-08:00

1. The Marching Season

"What bloody man is that?" "A drum, a drum!"
Prepossessed by what I know by heart,
I wait for Banquo and Macbeth to come
Unbowed, on cue, and scripted from the start.

2. The Catechism

Q. and A. come back. They "formed my mind."
"Who is my neighbour?" "My neighbour is all mankind."

3. The Bridge

Steady under strain and strong through tension,
Its feet on both sides but in neither camp,
It stands its ground, a span of pure attention,
A holding action, the arches and the ramp
Steady under strain and strong through tension.

4. A Suit

"I'll make you one," he said, "and balance it
Perfectly on you." So I could almost feel
The plumb line of the creased tweed hit my heel,

My shoulders like a spar or arms of a scale
Under the jacket, my whole shape realigned
In ways that suited me down to the ground.

So although a suit was the last thing i needed
I weighed his words and wore them and decided
There and then it was going for a song.

5. The Party

Overheard at the party, like wet snow
That slumps down off a roof, the unexpected,
Softly powerful name of Wilfred Owen.
Mud in your eye. Artillery in heaven.

6. W. H. Auden, 1907-73

After Oxford and Iceland and Spain and Berlin and Freud,
After Marx and the Thirties, it was New York and Chester and
   God.
A pause for po-ethics. The moral ascent of Parnassus.
Then retrenchment, libretti, martinis, the slippers, the face.
Conceived in the Danelaw, a language shift and a ruction,
He was a barker of stanzas, a star turn, a source of instruction,
And the definite growth rings of a genius rang in his voice.

7. The Lesson

According to Hammond, who heard it out on a spree
From a man who had know the priest who was a chaplain on duty
The morning the last man was hanged in Crumlin Road Jail,
What the man said as he shook hands and went to the hangman
Was, "Father, this is going to be a lesson to me."

8. Moling's Gloss

Among my elders, I know better
   And frown at any carry-on;
Among the brat-pack on the batter
   I'm taken for a younger man

from the Irish

9. Colly

Niamh's horse for Oisin was grand, but saddle me colly,
Giddy on wind and black as the hair on King Billy,

Chimney flakes flecking the air, carbon-dotting the white
Wash on the line, a fly-past, a freak-out of soot.

10. A Norman Simile

To be marvellously yourself like the river water
Gerald of Wales says runs in Arklow harbour
Even at high tide when you'd expect salt water.

Cardiogram -- Kirmen Uribe

2011-01-21T16:15:00.001-08:00

--Describe, if you would, his heart for me.
--It's like a frozen lake,
and the face of the child that he once was
is erasing itself in there.

translated from Basque by Elizabeth Macklin

[they dance far] - tor ulven

2011-01-21T16:13:00.000-08:00

they dance far
into the woods
accompanied by the silence
of fiddles
without strings.
only the brook's clatter
that shakes through
the stone age.
and for the sharpest
ears--the sound
of erosion.

they dance and dance,
without thinking of you.

translated from norwegian by siri hustvedt

Conversation with an American Writer - Yevgeny Yevtushenko

2011-01-17T15:36:00.001-08:00

"You're a fearless young man—“

they tell me…

It’s not true.

I’ve never been fearless.

I’ve considered it unworthy, simply,

to sink to my colleagues’ cowardice.

I didn’t shake any sort of foundations.

Laughed at the false and pompous,

that’s all.

Wrote—that’s all.

Never wrote denunciations.

And tried to say

just what I thought.

Yes,

talented people I defended,

branded the incapable,

into literature crawling,

but did this because, in general, one has to,

and now about my fearlessness they’re talking.

Oh, with feelings of bitter shame

our descendants,

debunking worthlessness,

will remember

those times

so strange

when simple honesty

was called fearlessness.

Requiem - Robert Louis Stevenson

2011-01-09T16:23:00.001-08:00

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Gladly did I live, and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you 'grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

Cooking.

2011-01-06T15:11:00.000-08:00

I had a few recipe mishaps, but everything turned out ok anyway.

Nisu (Finnish cardamom bread) with poppyseed and almond filling

Nisu with chocolate and almond filling

fake lemon curd...I forgot a few things on how to make it...

from The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

2011-01-04T08:54:00.001-08:00

Silas said, "Out there, the man who killed your family is, I believe, still looking for you, still intends to kill you."

Bod shrugged. "So?" he said. "It's only death. I mean, all of my best friends are dead."

"Yes." Silas hesitated. "They are. And they are, for the most part, done with the world. You are not. You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished."

1/1/11

2011-01-01T12:49:00.001-08:00

I don't have anything to say. I just like how that looks. Now back to Goethe.

Books!

2010-12-31T07:37:00.000-08:00

the awesome shelf...

nom nom nom

2010-12-30T19:21:00.000-08:00

messssssyyy

so far, chocolate cake, with some ganache for walls and chocolate whipping cream

pomegranate seeds

i love cherry pie filling.

SPY CAKE!!!

oh yeah!

Translation of Klopstocks' "Die Frühlingsfeier"

2010-12-30T19:04:00.000-08:00

The Rite of Spring - Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock

Not into the ocean, of all the world

Will I throw myself! Soaring not,
Where the first created things, the rejoicing choirs of the sons of light,
Worship, worship deep! and go in delight!

Just a drop in the bucket,
Only about the earth will I soar, and worship!
Halleluja, Halleluja! The drop in the bucket
Also ran from the hand of the Almighty!

Then the hand of the Almighty
shrank the great earth!
The currents of rushing light and the seven stars became
because you, drop, escaped the hand of the Almighty!

Then, a current of the rushing lights, and our Sun was
A crash of waves fell down on the rock,
the clouds pinned down, and Orion girded,
because you, drop, escaped the hand of the Almighty!

Who are the thousands of thousands, who all the myriad
which made up the drop and inhabit it? and who am I?
Halleluja to the originators! more like the earth, the fount!
more like the seven stars, the rays all streaming out together!

But you, little spring worm,
that greenish gold that plays next to me,
you live; and are perhaps
oh, not immortal!

I have gone out to worship,
and I weep? Forgive, forgive,
Also these tears that will end,
Oh you, who will be!

You will reveal all my doubts,
Oh you, who will lead me through,
the shadowed valley of death! I then will learn
whether the little golden worm has a soul.

You are only the more educated dust,
Son of May, so then,
become again fleeing dust,
Or what else the Lord wills!

Pour out anew, you, my eyes,
Tears of joy!
You, my harp,
Praise the Lord!

Entwined again, with palms,
is my harp wound! I sing to the Lord!
Here I stand. All around me
Is everything glorious! And everything marvelous!

With a deeper awe, I look at creation,
then you!
nameless you!
have made them!

Breezes that waft around me, and gently cooling,
breathe on my scorched face,
you, wonderful breezes,
sent from the Lord, the Infinite!

But now they are still, scarcely breathing
the morning sun will be oppressive!
the clouds are streaming back!
it is visible that He comes, the Lord!

Now they soar, rush, whirl the wind!
How they bend the forest! How they lift up the streams!
It is visible, how you can make it be mortal
Yes, that is you, visible, Infinite One!

The forest inclines itself, the stream flees, and I
am not falling onto my face?
Lord! Lord! God! Merciful and gracious!
Near you! Have mercy on me!

Are you angry, Lord
as the night is your raiment?
This night is the blessing of the earth.
Father, you are not angry!

They come, distributing refreshing things
Over the strengthened stalk!
Over the heart-warming grapes!
Father, you are not angry!

Everything is still before you, near you!
All around is everything quiet!
Even the little worm bedecked in gold, notes this!
Is it possible that it is not soulless? Is it immortal?

Oh, how I thirst, Lord, to be able to praise you!
Ever more lordly, you reveal yourself to be!
Darker and darker the night around you,
And full of blessings!

Do you see the drawing light, evidence of the approaching storm?
Do you hear Jehova's thunder?
Do you hear him? Hear ye him,
the shattering thunder of the Lord?

Lord! Lord! God!
Merciful, and gracious!
Hallowed and exalted
Be thy divine name!

And the stormy winds? They carry the thunder!
How they rush! As with loud surges, they flow through the forest!
And now are silent.
The black clouds slowly transform.

Do you see the new evidence of the approaching storm, the flitting beams?
Her ye, high in the clouds, the thunder of the Lord?
It calls: "Jehova! Jehova!"
And fumes all over the smashed up woods.

But not our cottage
Our father commanded
His destroyer
To pass over our home

Oh, it whispers, it whispers
Heaven and earth, by the merciful rain!
Now, how they thirsted! The earth refreshed,
And the heaven were relieved and filled with blessings!

See, Jehova no longer comes in the storm
In a quiet, gentle ripple,
comes Jehova,
And below him, the bow of peace is drawn

from The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe

2010-12-28T12:02:00.001-08:00

Immense mountains surrounded me, chasms yawned at my feet, streams swollen by rain tumbled headlong, rivers flowed before me and the forests and mountains resounded; and I could see those immeasurable and incomprehensible powers at work in the depths of the earth, and above the earth's surface, beneath the heavens, there teemed all the infinite species of Creation. Everything, all of it, is peopled with myriad forms; and then mankind comes building its nests, crowding together safely in little houses, and supposes it rules over the whole wide world! Poor fool! imagining everything to be so small, because you yourself are so small. --From the most inaccessible of mountains, to the desert where no man has ever set foot, to the very ends of the unknown ocean, breathes the spirit of the eternal Creator, rejoicing in every speck of dust that is alive and knows Him. --Ah, how often in former times did I long for the wings of a crane that passed overhead, to fly to the shores of the measureless sea, and there drink the full joy of Life from the foaming goblet of the Eternal, and taste, if only for a single moment, with the limited power that is in my breast, one drop of the blessed serenity of that Being who makes all things, in Himself and through Himself.

Lyss Rocks

2010-12-23T13:54:00.000-08:00

From Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard

2010-12-22T20:45:00.000-08:00

Valentine: If you knew the algorithm and fed it back say ten thousand times, each time there'd be a dot somewhere on the screen. You'd never know where to expect the next dot. But gradually you'd start to see this shape, because every dot will be inside the shape of this leaf. It wouldn't be a leaf, it would be a mathematical object. But yes. The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is. It's how nature creates itself, on every scale, the snowflake and the snow storm. It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing. People were talking about the end of physics. Relativity and quantum looked as if they were going to clean out the whole problem between them. A theory of everything. But they only explained the very big and the very small. The universe, the elementary particles. The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about -- clouds -- daffodils -- waterfalls -- and what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in -- these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks. We're better at predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than whether it'll rain on auntie's garden party three Sundays from now. Because the problem turns out to be different. We can't even predict the next drip from a dripping tap when it gets irregular. Each drip sets up the conditions for the next, the smallest variation blows prediction apart, and the weather is unpredictable in the same way, will always be unpredictable. When you push the numbers through the computer you can see it on the screen. The future is disorder. A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought was wrong.

AHHHHH

2010-12-20T14:13:00.001-08:00

YOU GUYS IM DONE!! and i don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing...

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

2010-12-16T17:27:00.001-08:00

AHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I'M FREAKING DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! with calc, that is...one more paper due tomorrow and then physics final on montag!!

The Elusive Indian Ringneck in His Native Habitat

2010-12-11T08:02:00.000-08:00

Chekov's "Uncle Vanya"

2010-12-11T06:36:00.001-08:00

Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya” contains immense emotional violence, which fits nicely with Bentley’s arguments that violence is essential to drama. A large part of that violence is in the environment, and Chekov uses the environment to manipulate characters. As Astrov tells Sonia: “Do you know I could not stand living in this house for even a month?” Or, Yelena says: “Something is wrong with this house.” Serebryakov also says: “I hate this house.” The inhabitants of the house contribute to the negative atmosphere, which creates a vicious cycle.

However, there is no sense of dramatic inevitability until part of the way through the play--everyone in the play could have gone on fighting in their passive-aggressive way, until Sonia admitted to Yelena that she loved Astrov. Compared to what is going on with the rest of the household, Sonia’s love for Astrov is a minor problem. But once Yelena tries to take care of that, the rest of the household problems erupt. Everyone in the house has been hating one another for years, but no one really did anything about it.

Yelena and Aleksandr Serebryakov are the causes of all of the problems in the house; Serebryakov, because of his egotism, and Yelena because of her laziness. Serebryakov is demanding and makes everyone’s lives miserable; Yelena makes everyone else in the house lazy. Even though she complains that she is dying from boredom, she still refuses to work. The beginning emotional tensions are caused both by Serebryakov’s egotism and Vanya’s infatuation with Yelena. However, Vanya would probably not have been infatuated with Yelena had he been busy; he would have been busy had not Yelena, as Astrov said, caused an indolent atmosphere.

The situation manages to mostly right itself, and things are more or less resolved. Serebryakov is still an overbearing jerk, but by removing himself, he has relieved the emotional tensions in the house. Sonia and Vanya are changed for the better by this, but Serebryakov has not changed” ““Let the dead Past bury its dead.” After what has occurred in these few last hours, I have experienced so much and done so much thinking that I believe I could write a whole treatise on the art of living for the edification of posterity. I gladly accept your apologies and in turn ask you to forgive me.” While this makes Serebryakov seem as though he has mostly changed, the translator’s note indicates the opposite: “I have chosen a quotation from Longfellow (from his Psalm of Life) to indicated the hackneyed nature of the Professor’s remark. In the original Russian, Serebryakov quotes a proverb, “He who bears a grudge should have an eye plucked out.””

But in all of this, Chekov cannot be seen. None of the characters were forced to do anything that broke the initial conditions. All that has happened, it seems, is that Chekov has set up a delicate structure of thin paper next to a fire and waited for the paper to be blown into the fire by a delicate breeze. But neither did it seem inevitable that the paper would catch fire until it was caught by the flames. None of the characters attempted to take matters into their own hands concerning the family matters; a little gust of wind was enough to set the entire heap burning. “Uncle Vanya” is written in such a way that one isn’t quite sure as to whether it was written, or merely someone transcribing a series of events that took place.

Woohoo!

2010-12-11T06:26:00.000-08:00

I get to be a jerk and brag coz DrMcM gave me a 100 on my paper! Why he did, I have no idea, coz it wasn't that good, but I'll take it anyway....one of the comments he made was hilarious, though:

""Dimension" as a verb makes my teeth itch, and makes me want to bite an oak table leg or something...but it is attested in the dictionary. It's really a noun, though."

Whiiich...drat, I kind of liked it as a verb. Oh well....

And then, since I'm being an arrogant jerk: (HUBRIS, ANYONE? sorry...couldn't help it..please don't kill me.):

"I think I would never have thought to compare these two, but the comparison is inspired. Brilliant."

Teehee. Misers ftw!

"This is a good perception...though the comedy in “King Lear” (of which there is a good deal) is still almost all at the disposal of the overarching tragic purpose."

Hm. Glad I put that in. I think the only reason why I put it in was because I knew that there had to be some comedy in there but I couldn't find it.

And then, since I'm such an overbearing egotist (and proud of it!!):

"This is almost alarmingly short, but you make every sentence count, and unfold a genuinely intriguing set of ideas. Hats off to you."

So, it sounds like for the next time: a little longer papers and, well, I don't know. I think the only reason why he really liked it was because I didn't just bung off and do something easy, although after I threw out Shylock (who DrMcM said in class was the most like Harpagon) King Lear came to mind. So I don't really see why the comparison is that novel. But hey, I got full points so I don't care! Now I have to study calculus because I can guarantee you that that teacher couldn't care less about Regin or Cordelia.

Oh, yeah, and Murphy's Law dictates that I'm going to do really badly on the next one.

awwwwh

2010-12-10T13:39:00.001-08:00

Rufie is so cute. He flew 65 feet today. And he was all birdly and chewed bits off of the Christmas tree. And screamed and made a mess. awwwwwwwh.

Hmm...

2010-12-09T07:24:00.000-08:00

Don't these two remind you of each other?

(that bald guy shows up in the music vid for Lithuania's 2010 entry.)

cosmos - i hear your heart

2010-12-07T10:00:00.001-08:00

Cosmic Gall - John Updike

2010-12-06T20:14:00.000-08:00

Neutrinos, they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photos through a sheet of glass.

from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard

2010-12-06T20:11:00.000-08:00

Guildenstern: A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds, or to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy: until--"My God," says a second man. "I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn." At which point, a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness, you understand, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience..."Look, look!" recites the crowd. "A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It must have been mistaken for a deer."

[two columns of smoke] by krzysztof koehler

2010-12-05T10:03:00.000-08:00

two columns of smoke
and an open field.
vivid colors of leaves:
infinity
touches us here.

space that opens
to the edge of the woods.
the gaze penetrates no further,
but beyond is
precisely that
which changes colors,
seasons,

and gives
a meaning to
sky and plain.

There mushrooms
are born and beneath
shade-filled branches
animals slink past.

And right there
is the limit. The staying
of the the landscape,
the form in which
fate is manifest.

woods beyond woods.
space beyond space
we are reaching the essence.

translated from Polish by Bill Johnston

Dreams

2010-12-05T09:50:00.000-08:00

is the murderer here? i asked the old man
i shook him -- i wanted to know

...

I was just about to wake up
When I found that you had come and murdered my dreams.

2010-12-03T06:55:00.001-08:00

12: Select one of Molière’s characters and compare him or her with a similar character from one of Shakespeare’s comedies. There are a lot of directions to go with this question. Which is better rounded? Which serves the comic impulse more successfully? What are the respective strengths and weaknesses of each of the characterizations? (I am not, of course, asking about the personal strengths and weaknesses of the characters!)
Friday, Dec 3.

Molière and Shakespeare dimensioned their characters according to the purposes those characters served in the play. The dimensions of the characters are intrinsically related to the entire purpose of the play. Since Molière was using his plays foremost as a tool to discuss social and moral issues, and secondarily to entertain (amusement is not necessarily essential to this use of the term) the viewers, his characters are flat. Shakespeare, on the other hand, seems to have been more interested in telling a story and entertaining the viewers than discussing social or moral issues (and the discussions were limited due to regal censorship), and so has more rounded characters.

Molière’s Harpagon and Shakespeare’s King Lear illustrate this nicely. Both of them are obsessive fathers, and both of them are trying to collect something. Harpagon is trying to amass money; King Lear is collecting love. Both of them are, throughout the course of the play, taught a lesson. Harpagon’s lesson doesn’t change his character any, nor does it really affect his life. The only thing he has lost are his two children, who to him are simply recalcitrant commodities to sell for more money. At the end of the play, he is still obsessing over his gold. King Lear, on the other hand, learns his lesson and is devastated by it. His entire life is changed in the process.

Because King Lear learns his lesson, he is the more rounded character. Harpagon, in not changing, is lacking a dimension. While readers may initially find Harpagon to be amusing, by the end of the play, his lack of change, lack of dimensionality cause him to be frustrating and not amusing. King Lear, on the other hand, is much more appreciated as a character because of his humanity, and his ability to change. While “King Lear” is a tragedy, it follows generally that the more human a character is, the more humor there is in the play, and while flat characters allow situational irony that eventually grows stale, the rounder characters are able to have more kinds of humor.

The strengths of each characterization, then, also depend on what the play is being used for. A flat character used in a play meant to engage the reader’s mind is not going to serve the purpose as well as a rounded character. However, a rounded character will cause the focus to change from the environment to the character, and so if the purpose of the play is to describe that environment, a rounded character will not do. The strength of the characterization lies in the context.

Boomerang

2010-12-02T10:08:00.001-08:00

Oh, no! It's Joe!

Send him to a château!

Anything to get him to go!

Use a match--set him aglow!

No, wait, no

He needs to show

The physics of a violin bow

Put him on a game show

No, wait, no

That wouldn't get him to go

Does it depend on how hard I blow?

How the iridescent bubbles out grow

Their beginning ice floe?

I talked to Rousseau

Who referred me to Diderot

"Put him on a plateau!"

He said, over some bordeaux.

How I wish it would snow--

Then, Joe would go.

Right?

But no, oh no.

This is Joe.

He'd be back, e'en from the death row

No matter how far you throw--

He's back, like a hungry crow

And this just goes to show

Apropos

(This isn't a quid pro quo)

But this seeming carrion crow

Is smarter than the status quo

Smarter than Thoreau

Better than turbulent flow

But all I can say is: "Oh, no, it's Joe!"

Indonesianesque spiced cocoa

2010-12-02T08:57:00.001-08:00

in a sauce pan, on a burner:

~1 c milk
~ 2 tbs dark cocoa powder
~2 tbs sugar
some cinnamon
some nutmeg
some powdered ginger
some vanilla extract

The Scientific Colossus: A Semi-Sonnet

2010-12-01T20:52:00.000-08:00

If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants...

I haven't stood on the shoulders of giants

I've not seen the top of the arcane peak

I'm still climbing up, hoping to reach

That faméd observatory. But it's a long climb.

And I still have so far to go.

While wishing to be at that point,

I know I'll never reach it. But would

That I could at least come close; a taste

Of that Newtonian nectar has fallen to me

And I must find that elusive Elysium.

Knowing it is out of reach, indeterminably,

My mind is content for one small part, a foot,

But my heart will always yearn to be there:

Sometimes I'm only reaching for thin air.

cookies

2010-11-30T10:06:00.001-08:00

2 1/4 c flower

1 tsp baking soda

salt

2 eggs

1/4 c sugar

3 spoonfuls honey

1 tbs almond extract

3 tbs milk

~ 3tbs vodka, probably more

1 c peppermint flavored chocolate chips

1 c unsweetend baking chocolate, cut into chunks

1 c mix of walnuts and pecans

some cinnamon sugar

some (a lot) cocoa powder mixed with sugar

mix it all together and cook it for like tenish minutes @350. serve with tea

1s2 2s2 2p6

2010-11-28T18:36:00.001-08:00

in an excited state

from a high voltage electric field

is this a frenzied fancy

or do i see

rose pink beside that orange red glow

and yet

with those bright colors

nothing compares

can compare

casually or compositionally

to the sublime spectrum

for me it is

serendipitous with the stars

xylophonic i think

is the word i would use

whenever i choose

to think

about the way i would run

my hands along that

tri dimensional line

running across in my mind

awesome inspiring avidly bright

avian in hue maddening light

epic bereft of dactyls

drowning delight

majestically splendiferous

each color

bursts in my mind

Yesenin-Volpin's translation of Poe

2010-11-27T13:33:00.000-08:00

And if you want to see Poe's original to compare, you can google it.

The Raven

Once at night, in time of terror, I was reading Thomas More,
Less ignoring his Utopia might be laid at my own door.
In the long, dull exposition I was seeking confirmation
Of arrests for vagrancy in the land exempt from war,
Since this sort of vagrancy necessitates no form of war.
                       Is he deep, this Thomas More?

... And I pondered on the nation in whose land debased was freedom...
... Suddenly I heard a rapping ... why so late? A frightful bore!
Racked with doubt and sorrow , whispered: “It could hardly be a friend;
All my friends have been imprisoned... Must be thief come to the door.”
In ecstatic expectation I called :”Thief, come to the door!”
           Someone croaked out: “Nevermore!”
All was clear. Of course, it was the ancient Raven. In great haste I unlatched the window, saw the stately Raven of before! In he rushed impatiently, and stared about the premises...
In confusion I informed him: “You may sit here on the floor;
In this house we have no Pallas, please be seated on the floor.
           There’s the floor, and nothing more!
Sullen and ungainly, like a brooding fowl he settled down...
Somehow Pallas was unearthed ... I have a heap of bookish lore!
Fluttering , he perched once more; and, black as pitch in his appearance,
Blinked there like a drowsy demon, pecking at the title “More”,
           And pronounced he: “Nevermore!”
I was starled, O, Plutonian! Like a Teuton, taciturn!
Perched above, with bitter words my conduct subtly you deplore!
Stop grimacing, wizard bird; reveal least half of your mind;
Your abyss, how penetrate? For I have feared since time before
Yet another such abyss in realms corrupted heretofore...
           Croaked the Raven : “Nevermore!”
Raven, Raven! All the planet waits the warrior, not the poet;
In Plutonia you may not quite understand our discord sore!
O, what genius of tommorow will compose about our strivings
In this age a crown of creations, making cunning use of folklore;
And most likely take as subject our own fancy-fashioned folklore!
           And croaked the Raven: Nevermore!
O Prophet, plainly no mere bird! Impatience has a limit;
Then Voltaire comes in most handy, bombs and hatchets, what is more.
Now that shame has made us pallid - may it come, though not too soon,
Since the terror’s at its’ summit! - will it come, this Thermidor?
... Danton fell, and Robespierre was stricken down by Thermidor?
           Croaked the Raven : Nevermore!
O, Prophet, plainly no mere bird! Is there no foreign country,
Where to argue freely sbout art portends no peril sore?
Shall I ever reach that region, if such be, and not get shot?
In Peru or Netherlands, I’d solve that old contentious chore
Of the realist and romantic still disputing as before!
           Croaked the Raven: Nevermore!
“ Never, never!” quoth the bird ... that foreign land’s beyond the sea...
Hereupon in burst two soldiers, drowsky doorman and a major...
I did not click my heels before them, merely spat into a face,
But the Raven, somber Raven, simply croaked out: Nevermore!
Now I push and push a barrow, keep repeating Nevermore!
           There’s no rising .... Nevermore!

from The Engineer of Human Souls by Josef Skvorecky

2010-11-25T10:50:00.001-08:00

Two years before, they had sold the same paper to a pretty Chinese student from Trinidad by the name of Priscilla Wong Sim, who had turned to Term Papers Inc. at my indirect suggestion--to pass her with a clear conscience I had to have at least one essay from her in which every second word was not misspelled, and there were no such oriental mysteries as "This novel is a novel. It is a great work, for it is written in the form of a book."

from Entanglement by Zygmunt Miłoszewski.

2010-11-20T10:46:00.000-08:00

"Let me tell you a fairy tale. Long, long ago in a small provincial town there lived a carpenter. The people in the town were poor, they couldn't afford new tables and chairs, so the carpenter was penniless too. He had a hard time making ends meet, and the older he got, the less he believed his fate could ever change, although he longed for it more than anyone else on earth, because he had a beautiful daughter and he wanted her to do better in life than he had. One summer's day a wealthy gentleman called at the carpenter's home. 'Carpenter,' he said, ' my long lost brother is coming to see me. I want to give him a dazzling present, and as he is coming from a land that is rich in gold, silver and precious stones, I have decided to give him a jewelry box of extraordinary beauty. If you succeed in making it by the Sunday after the next full moon, you will never complain of poverty again.' Naturally the carpenter agreed, and got down to the job straight away. It was unusually painstaking and difficult work, because he wanted to combine many different kinds of wood, and to decorate the box with miniature carvings of legendary creatures. He ate little, and hardly slept at all--he just worked. Meanwhile, news of the wealthy gentleman's visit and his unusual commission soon spread about the town. Its citizens were very fond of the humble carpenter, and every day someone came by with a kind word and tried to help him with his woodcarving. The baker, the merchant, the fisherman, even the innkeeper--each one of them grabbed a chisel, hammers and files, wanting the carpenter to finish his work on time. Unfortunately, none of them was capable of doing his job, and the carpenter's daughter watched sorrowfully as, instead of concentrating on carving the jewelery box, her father corrected all the things his friends had spoiled. One morning, when there were only four days left until the deadline, and the craftsman was tearing his hair out in desperation, his daughter stood outside the door of their cottage and drove away everyone who came by to help. The whole town took offence, and now no one ever spoke of the carpenter except as a boor and an ingrate, and of his daughter as an ill-mannered old maid. I'd like to tell you that although he lost his friends, the carpenter did in fact enchant the wealthy gentleman with his intricate work, but that wouldn't be the truth. Because when, on the Sunday after the full moon, the wealthy gentleman called at his house, he drove off at once in a rage, empty-handed. Only many days later did the carpenter finish the jewelry box, and then he gave it to his daughter."

from In the Arena of Faith by Erich Sauer

2010-11-20T10:43:00.001-08:00

Many years ago I visited a Press Exhibition in Cologne. In one of the large halls the relationship between the Press and the postal services was shown by various documents and tables. I shall never forget the decoration on one of the main walls. It represented a huge eagle. The exhibition concerned itself with the attainments of the German postal services up to 1928. The effect of this huge eagle was most imposing. But when one came nearer to it and looked at it more closely one discovered that it consisted solely of postage stamps of the inflation period--hundreds of thousands of small inflation postage stamps. I said to my companion immediately: "For estimating things earthly is not this a picture of the values of the world in general? Regarded from a distance, at firth sight, they seem to be grand and imposing. But the nearer one comes to them, the more one discovers that they are all inflated values--huge numbers but little worth. Not only inflation of money but inflation of words, inflation of terms, inflation of ideals, inflation of spirit. Behind this mighty façade only very little actual substance. The more one gets to know them the less one values them. From the distance like an eagle, yet in reality only inflation!"

Hamlet paper

2010-11-20T09:57:00.001-08:00

In “The Embassy of Death”, G. Wilson Knight says that the theme of “Hamlet” is death. The large part of Knight’s highly morbid essay is spent pointing out the many presences of death in the play. As proof of this, Knight says that the plot is set in motion by death, and before the climax, four people are either dead, or as good as dead, and there is a funeral.

The play is ‘remorselessly realistic,’ as proven by the graveyard scene, and the very first scene ‘strikes the note of death.’ The theme of death is ‘suffused throughout the play,’ but is only embodied by Hamlet; unlike "King Lear" or "Macbeth", there is not an aura of doom and gloom.

Hamlet and his father’s ghost, says Knight, are the only blots on an otherwise perfectly happy and healthy kingdom. Claudius has many virtues, and all of his faults, excepting the murder of Hamlet’s father, are due only to Hamlet’s presence. And once the king has asked Hamlet to remain, he is stuck. Claudius cannot bear Hamlet, who reminds him of his sin, but neither can he make Hamlet leave. Anything wrong that Cladius does after this point is simply him trying to solve a problem with no nice answer. While Claudius did murder Hamlet’s father, he, at least, is a three dimensional human being with a full and reasonable range of emotions.

Hamlet, on the other hand, while his desire for revenge is perfectly acceptable, is really a superhuman. He has conversed with death, and his consciousness works in terms of death and cynicism. He is without faith in himself or anyone else. Knight calls him: “a poison in the midst of the healthy bustle of the court.” He says that Hamlet has seen the truth; he is the only one who has, and that truth is evil. Therefore, Hamlet is an element of evil. His mental existence is like an acid; the demon of his mind is stronger than the healthy characters. “Futilely, they try to get him out of their country; anything to get rid of him, he is not safe. But he goes with a cynical smile, and is no sooner gone than he is back again...” Knowing the truth has made him mad, and with all of his faults and negativity, Hamlet is still right. One cannot argue with a cynic.

Hamlet watches and analyzes others, tormenting them. Knight says that when the characters are around Hamlet, they know their faults; no one should know those faults, not even the readers. Hamlet exposes faults everywhere; he has a static force, full of nothingness. Hamlet’s mind is a dualized personality oscillating between grace and cynicism. He cannot feel anything passionately for a long time, because passion implies purpose, and he has no one purpose for any length of time. Knight calls Hamlet a ‘living death, in the midst of life.’

"Hamlet" begins with an explosion, the sinister portent of the ghost, and the rest is merely a reverberation of that beginning explosion. The rest of the play is merely a wrap-up for the first death that took place. “The eternity of death falls as an abyss at either end, and Hamlet crosses the stage of life aureoled in its ghostly luminance.” The play begins with death, and ends with death, and the main actor is pretty much death personified. Therefore, Knight concludes, the play is about death.

Knight’s problem is that he is looking at things peripherally. At first glance, the country may seem peaceful and well-organized, but as any divine-right theorist knows, a throne that is acquired by murdering the rightful king is a throne that will have trouble. While Hamlet may seem correct in his wish for unmasking the truth, but once he passed up the opportunity to kill Claudius (while Claudius was praying), in order to not only kill the man, but to additionally damn his soul, Hamlet has overreached his boundaries. It is not for him to decide the placement of Claudius’ soul.

By interpreting "Hamlet" as this superficial slice, Knight loses the entire idea of any of the characters having souls. He concentrates solely on their minds and specifically sanity, mentioning the concept of souls only twice, to say that both the King and Queen’s souls were ‘wrenched with remorse’ because of Hamlet’s play. Even then, one doubts if 'soul' was really the correct word for his meaning. But by perceiving "Hamlet" in this light, Knight overlooks the most important idea of "Hamlet".

In fact, the large part of the play is not, as Knight insists, death, but the soul; "Hamlet" is a look through a microscope at a slide of some souls and their surroundings and conflicts. The result of these conflicts is death, but, as Solzhenitsyn said, “It is not the result that counts! It is not the result--but the spirit! Not what--but how. Not what has been attained--but at what price.” (From the Gulag Archipelago Vol. II, Part IV, Chapter 1) Hamlet has achieved his revenge, but at the cost of his own soul and the souls of others.

yayy

2010-11-18T09:16:00.000-08:00

Rufus learned how to babble a new phrase. He can say (in the adorable parrot voice) "Hey baby, how're you?" He's still working on it. So he can say "Hi, come here, come back here, what? and now he can say hey baby, how're you?"

And, I taught myself some Greek last night, practiced the Bulgarian alphabet and played around with some Romanian diacritics. And wrote "I'm tired" on the whiteboard in the physics lab in four different languages (Russian, Finnish, Czech and Polish) and conjugated some Czech verbs.

And then I made coffeecake this morning. With cherries. And I'm still studying for a test. :P

Also, Dima looks silly, doesn't he? I should name a chicken Dima.

from One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

2010-11-16T11:33:00.001-08:00

Shukhov lay down wit his head to the window, and Alyoshka as on the other side of the bunk with his head the other way so he got the light from the bulb. He was reading the Gospels again.

Aloyshka'd heard Shukhov thank the Lord and turned to him. "Look here, Ivan Denisovich, your soul wants to pray to God, so why don't you let it have its way?"

Shukhov looked at Alyoshka and his eyes were narrow. They had a light in them and they were like two candles. And he sighed. "I'll tell you why, Aloyshka. Because all those prayers are like the complains we send in to the higher-ups--either they don't get there or they come back to you marked 'Rejected.'"

In front of HQ barracks there were four boxes with seals and one of the security guys came along every month to empty them. A lot of fellows put slips in those boxes and they counted the days--a month or two months--waiting to hear.

Either there was nothing or it was "Rejected."

"The trouble is, Ivan Denisovich, you don't pray hard enough and that's why your prayers don't work out. You must pray unceasing! And if you have faith and tell the mountain to move, it will move."

Shukhov grinned and made himself another cigarette. He got a light from one of the Estonians.

"Don't give me that, Alyoshka. I've never seen a mountain move. But come to think of it, I've never seen a mountain either. And when you and all your Baptists prayed down there in the Caucasus did you ever see a mountain move?"

The poor fellows. All they did was pray to God. And were they in anybody's way? They all got twenty-five years, because that's how it was now--twenty-five years for everybody.

"But we didn't pray for that, Ivan Denisovich," Alyoshka said, and he came up close to Shukhov with his Gospels, right up to his face. "The only thing of this earth the Lord had ordered us to pray for is our daily bread--"Give us this day our daily bread.""

"You mean that ration we get?" Shukhov said.

But Alyoshka went on and his eyes said more than his words and he put his hand on Ivan's hand.

"Ivan Denisovich, you mustn't pray for someone to send you a package or for an extra helping of gruel. Things that people set store by are base in the sight of the Lord. You must pray for the things of the spirit so the Lord will take evil things from our hearts..."

"But listen. The priest in our church in Polomnya..."

"Don't tell me about that," Alyoshka begged and he winced with pain.

"No. But just listen." And Shukhov bent over to him on his elbow. "The priest is the richest man in our parish in Polomnya. Suppose they ask you to put a roof on a house, your price is thirty rubles for plain people. For the priest its' a hundred. That priest of ours is paying alimony to three women in three towns and he's living with a fourth. And he's got the bishop under his thumb. You should see the way he holds that fat greasy hand of his out to the bishop. And it doesn't matter how many other priests they send. He always gets rid of 'em. He doesn't want to share the pickings."

"Why are you telling me about this priest? The Orthodox Church has gotten away from the Gospel. And the reason they don't put them in prison is because they have no true faith."

Shukhov looked straight and hard and went on smoking. "Alyoshka," he said, and he moved the Baptist's hand away and the smoke from his cigarette went in Alyoshka's face. "I'm not against God, understand. I believe in God, all right. But what I don't believe in is Heaven and Hell. Who d'you think we are, giving us all that stuff about Heaven and Hell? That's the thing I can't take."

Shukhov lay back again and dropped the ash off his cigarette between the bunk and the window, careful so's not to burn the Captain's stuff. He was thinking his own thoughts and didn't hear Alyoshka any more, and he said out loud: "The thing is, you can pray just as much as you like but they won't take anything off your sentence and you'll just have to sit it out, every day of it, from reveille to lights out."

"You mustn't pray for that." Alyoshka was horrified. "What d'you want your freedom for? What faith you have will be choked in thorns. Rejoice that you are in prison. Here you can think of your soul. Paul the Apostle said: 'What mean you to weep and to break my heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die for the name of the Lord Jesus.'"

Shukhov looked up at the ceiling and said nothing. He didn't know any longer himself whether he wanted freedom or not. At first he'd wanted it very much and every day he added up how long he still had to go. But then he got fed up with this. And as time went on he understood that you they might let you go out but they never let you home. And he didn't really know where he'd be better off. At home or in here.

But they wouldn't let him home anyway...

Alyoshka was talking the truth. You could tell by his voice and his eyes he was glad to be in prison.

"Look, Alyoshka," Shukhov said, "it's all right for you. It was Christ told you to come here, and you are here because of Him. But why am I here? Because they didn't get ready for the war like they should've in forty-one? Was that my fault?"

From the Gulag Archipelago Vol II. Part IV, the Soul and the Barbed Wire, the Ascent

2010-11-16T07:00:00.001-08:00

And there is one more freedom: no one can deprive you of your family and property--you have already been deprived of them. What does not exist--not even God can take away. And this is a basic freedom.

-----------------------

Millions of our compatriots find it unthinkable to imagine that a human being...might have been motivated by something other than material gain!

To such an extent has everyone been indoctrinated with and absorbed the slogan: "the result is what counts."

Whence did this come to us?

In the first place--from the glory of our banners and the so-called "honor of our Motherland." We choked, cut down and cut up all our neighbors in our expansion--and in our Fatherland it became well established that: The result is what counts.

And then from our Demidovs, Kabans and Tsybukins. They clambered up, without looking behind them to see whose ears they were smashing with their jackboots. And ever more firmly it became established among a once pious and open-hearted people: the result is what counts.

And then --from all kinds of socialists, and most of all, from the most modern, infallible, and intolerant Teaching, which consists of this one thing only: the result is what counts! It is important to forge a fighting Party! And to seize power! And to hold on to power! And to remove all enemies! And to conquer in pig iron and steel! And to launch rockets!

And though for this industry and for these rockets it was necessary to sacrifice the way of life, and the integrity of the family, and the spiritual health of the people, and the very soul of our fields and forests and rivers--to hell with them! The result is what counts!!!

But that is a lie! Here we have been breaking our backs for years at All-Union hard labor. Here in slow annual spirals we have been climbing up to an understanding of life--and from this height it can be seen so clearly: it is not the result that counts! It is not the result--but the spirit! Not what--but how! Now what has been attained--but at what price.

------------------------------------------

"And on the whole, you know, I have been convinced that there is no punishment that comes to us in this life on earth which is undeserved. Superficially it can have nothing to do with what we are guilty of in actual fact, but if you go over your life with a fine-toothed comb and ponder it deeply, you will always be able to hunt down that transgression of yours for which you have now received this blow."

------------------------------------

(And yet...the innocent are those who get punished most zealously of all.) And what would one have then to say about our so evident torturers: why does not fate punish them? Why do they prosper?

(And the only solution to this would be that the meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prosperity, but...in the development of the soul. From that point of view our torturers have been punished most horribly of all: they are turning into swine, they are departing downward from humanity. From that point of view punishment is inflicted on those whose development...holds out hope.)

----------------------------

When was it that I completely

Scattered the good seeds, one and all?

For after all I spent my boyhood

In the bright singing of Thy temples.

Bookish subtleties sparkled brightly,

Piercing my arrogant brain,

The secrets of the world were...in my grasp,

Life's destiny...as pliable as wax.

Blood seethed--and every swirl

Gleamed iridescently before me,

Without a rumble the building of my faith

Quietly crumbled within my heart.

But passing here between being and nothingness,

Stumbling and clutching at the edge,

I look behind me with a grateful tremor

Upon the life that I have lived.

Not with good judgment or desire

Are its twists and turns illumined.

But with the even glow of the Higher Meaning

Which became apparent to me only later on.

And now with measuring cup returned to me,

Scooping up the living water,

God of the Universe! I believe again!

Though I renounced You, You were with me!

Measure for Measure

2010-11-12T08:25:00.000-08:00

“Measure for Measure” barely fulfills the role of a comedy. The only thing that saves it from being a total tragedy is the happy ending. But it’s not exactly a comedy, nor is it fully a tragedy. There isn’t a light-hearted plot, such as in “Midsummer Night’s Dream”, but it’s not chock-full of doom and gloom, either. Another reason it is not a tragedy is that no one dies of unnatural causes. It’s teetering on the brink of being either a comedy or a tragedy, but isn’t fully either one, just like “Romeo and Juliet”. The two plays complement each other nicely as both of them are neither fully manifested as comedies or tragedies, both of them containing fairly dark elements, and both containing humor.

Unlike “Romeo and Juliet”, “Measure for Measure” fails to fulfill all the requirements of the tragedy, even though is has all the makings of a tragedy. The two main impediments are, foremost, the happy ending, and secondly, the kind of humor used in this play, which is nothing like Hamlet’s dark wit. “Measure for Measure” is still much less serious than it could have been, since the Duke has everything under control, and the reader is continually reminded of that by the Duke popping in everywhere and sticking his nose into everyone’s business. This play is a strange mixture of the two elements, and the comedy aids in making the play even darker because one expects it to be lighter, just the opposite of Prince Hal’s being like the sun coming out of the clouds.

A good way to illustrate the mixture of comic and tragic is by use of the Principle of Conservation of Energy. When an object is at the top of a inclined plane, it has only potential energy. When the object arrives at the end of the slope, all of that potential energy has been converted into kinetic energy. If comedies have potential energy, and tragedies have kinetic energy, then “Measure for Measure” has the energy of the object at some point on the slope. It has both kinetic energy and potential energy. It is both tragic and comic. However, it is more like the object three quarters of the way down the ramp because at that point on the slope, the object has a greater kinetic energy than potential; “Measure for Measure” is more tragic than comic.

Skirting close to the boundaries of tragic territory weakens the comedy. The only funny bits were the conversations between Lucio and the Duke. Even then, that was hardly comic, at the end, when Lucio was trying to discredit the friar to save his own skin (albeit hilariously) that discredited Mariana and Isabella. The plot (with the exception of the lack of deaths at the end) was really cut out to be a tragedy, and could have easily been one had the Duke actually left the city like he was supposed to.

While the dialogue is clever, it is also crude. Now, technically, the Duke does play a trick on several people, but it’s not for comedy; it’s a test. His tricks were purely deceptions with no intent to be comical. Probably the funniest part of the play, where the Duke orders Lucio to marry Kate Keepdown, wasn’t actually that funny; the Duke did it in anger, and it is a case of situational irony, the sort of humor that belongs in a tragedy and not necessarily in a comedy.

Perhaps the best way to assess the mixture of comedy and tragedy is to liken “Measure for Measure” to light and its wave-particle duality. If light is examined with the assumption that it is a wave, it will display the properties of a wave. If it is examined with the assumption that it is a particle, then it will display the properties of a particle. And so, if one reads “Measure for Measure” thinking that it is a comedy, then it behaves like a comedy, and if one reads it thinking that it is a tragedy, then it will seem like a tragedy. Really, it is a mixture of the two, but either aspect is more prominent depending on the reader.

Shakespeare as a Dramatist and Historian

2010-11-12T08:23:00.001-08:00

Shakespeare does an admirable job of merging drama with history. Obviously, there are some sacrifices that he had to make, since he could have changed the history more to make the story even more dramatic, or he could have removed some of the drama to make the story more historically accurate. Shakespeare was certainly not averse to changing history in order to give a character a more dramatic speech, and even if he wanted to, he could not be completely historically accurate. He has to establish the legitimacy of the Tudors by proving that they were right to take over the throne, but, at the same time, he cannot belittle the power of the throne.

Since these history plays were dangerous to his career if written wrong, he must have had more of a reason to write the plays than just propaganda, especially since the propaganda contained in the play is not in glowing favor of anyone and looks rather poor when compared to something like Communist propaganda. Thus, there must be a point besides the plays simply being propaganda designed to curry favor with the Queen. Many of the characters have relationships that must have been fascinating to explore through drama, such as the one between Falstaff and Prince Hal. Unfortunately, no one knows exactly why Shakespeare chose to wrote these plays, and it is impossible to impute motives for him.

Shakespeare’s plays reflect the identity of the nation, and not the persons of the kings, since most of the characters are fictional or spin-offs of real people. It is unlikely that Hal had time to hang out in the taverns and rob people since he was too busy fighting in the war. Shakespeare made up Hal’s entire dissolute lifestyle. While this is historically inaccurate, the best parts of the drama are the relationship between Falstaff and Hal, and Hal’s monologue at the end of Henry IV, Act I, scene 2.

Both Hal and Falstaff’s relationship, as well as the evolution of Prince Hal to King Henry V add to the dramatic force. The play would have been fairly boring without those two things. Since this is history lived out, it needs to be dramatic, and thus accuracy is sacrificed. But all of the drama comes from the interaction of people, and it is unlikely that those real people even remembered the conversations they had, and Shakespeare would have been put nobler, albeit false, words to those conversations. Without the speculative drama and emotional interactions, the play would have merely been some sort of narrative saying that the Welsh were rebelling against the Crown and they were duly squashed. Since Shakespeare was never present at these battles, he had to make up characters to fit the names and known actions of the people present, and make up entirely new characters in order to bring an otherwise flat and boring narrative to life.

Solzhenitsyn - Reflections- (from Stories and Prose Poems) translated by Michael Glenny

2010-11-12T07:21:00.000-08:00

Reflections

On the surface of a swift-flowing stream the reflections of things near or far are always indistinct; even if the water is clear and has no foam, reflections in the constant stream of ripples, the restless kaleidoscope of water, are still uncertain, vague, incomprehensible.

Only when the water has flowed down river and after river and reaches a broad, calm estuary or comes to rest in some backwater or a small, still lake—only then can we see in its mirrorlike smoothness every leaf of a tree on the bank, every wisp of a cloud, and the deep blue expanse of the sky.

It is the same with our lives. If so far we have been unable to see clearly or to reflect the eternal lineaments of truth, is it not because we too are still moving towards some end—because we are still alive?

It may get nerdier than this...

2010-11-09T19:19:00.000-08:00

but not by much.(I was going to say "It doesn't get any nerdier than this, but then dude...I'm so appliqueing physics formulae onto a shirt!! but then I figured someone would say yeah, it does. So...without further ado,)

teehee

2010-11-09T11:03:00.001-08:00

Or maybe she was just a sadist, and knew that Angelo would rather be dead (as I think he said) than have to live with himself.

Yes, well...that's perhaps a little too twisted.

:)

2010-11-06T16:22:00.001-07:00

Alice was still talking, he noticed. “And her skull was cracked, and they had to pry her off the pavement with a spatula, a really big spatula, stainless steel, and even though it was raining, they had to hose all the blood and brains off with a big hose!”

“I don’t understand,” said James. “How can she be dead? Why is everyone dead?” He moved his plate out of the way and put his head on the table.

“People can be dead,” said Alice,” because they fall out of third story windows backward. Or they can be dead because they shoot themselves, or because they get run over by a bus, or--” she kept talking , but James stopped hearing what she was saying. It was like she was just saying, “Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.”

teehee

2010-11-04T11:09:00.001-07:00

Henry keeps surprising us, I think. But the surprises are not just random, either: a character like Henry would just be an antic, or a maniac, if he were a random and unpredictable bundle of reactions. But that’s not the case at all. We have a sense that more has gone into him behind the scenes than actually shows up front.

I think there are two possible things going on here, and both could well be going on in some mixture yet to be determined.

a) Shakespeare himself doesn’t know, but has an instinctive way of bringing action forth from a character that is more complex, and which he understands only inwardly or intuitively, but not explicitly;

b) Shakespeare does know, but isn’t telling — he’s leaving it up to us to connect the dots, so to speak.

What do you think?

I wouldn't put b. past him.

I agree with Kristen

Yes...but isn't a. more interesting?

:-)

It's possible either way. I would like to think that Shakespeare knew what he was doing, but it's also possible that he didn't really know...

Yep.

It is.

I think knew what he was doing; he's too careful to do that blindly.

To have it all worked out seems almost impossible.

Maybe most of it, but maybe not all of it.

Isn't that what were discussing with the Medea, almost?

Euri was trying to isolate decision making.

It's one of the great enduring dramatic questions, Kristen.

But couldn't quite do it

So maybe this is Shakespeare's stab.

Maybe...he was trying to get his wordcount up for NaNoWriMo!

Well, I think it's even more focused in Hamlet, but perhaps there are several stabs.

I think a) is very probably, but I wouldn't call it working blindly. Instead, he's letting the character react as his instinct say Hal should, and Shakespeare is learning about Henry as he goes along. Not blind, but not fully aware. It's in the subconscious.

And it's easier to get more words if you have an unpredictable character.

I think it would be more in the line of Script Frenzy, Kristen.

That's in the spring.

;-)

Nano '10, bit two

2010-11-02T08:39:00.000-07:00

A noise started playing in the background, and it sounded like a message being recorded over the sounds of a rubber duck being squeaked.

“Well, how are you at transcribing things, Shoni?” asked Twix.

“Uh, I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

“Now’s your chance. Write down this message.”

“It’s really strange, I can’t have done it right.”

“What did you get?”

“This is Gina. Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, sorry to spoil the neatness, I just wanted to say it is awesome and you can take this out if you want and put it somewhere else.”

“Oh. How strange.”

Jim and Grim furrowed their brow. “Did it say anything about one of us?”

“What, couldn’t you hear it?”

“Not entirely, now.”

“Wow, and I thought I was deaf.”

Alfred Twix looked mildly appalled during this exchange. It wasn’t exactly the wisest thing to do, to insinuate that your employers were deaf.

Jim laughed affably. “And why would you think you’re death? I mean, deaf?”

“Will you at least tell me what your obsession with deaf, I mean, death is?”

Grim looked pained. Alfred Twix excused himself from the room. Jim and Grim looked at each other.

“Ah,” said Grim, “you see, well...”

Jim intervened. “When you applied here, what kind of a company did you think you would be working for?”

“One that would pay me...?”

“And that’s really all you cared about?”

“More or less, yeah.”

“So, if one were to tell you that Reaper Harvesting Company is just a big disguise, what would you say?”

“Disguise for what?”

“No, what would you say if that’s what someone told you?”

“Disguise for what?”

“I’ll tell you after you answer my question. If someone told you that Reaper Harvesting Company is just a big disguise, what would you say?”

“Disguise for what?”

“I said, I’ll tell you later. What would you say if someone told you that Reaper Harvesting Company was just a big disguise?”

“Disguise for what?”

“Great Spock! Are you just an automaton? And here I was thinking that you were a human being, too.”

“No, I’m not. ‘Disguise for what?’ is what I would say if someone told me that Reaper Harvesting company is just a big disguise.”

“Oh. Ah. Yes, I see. It wouldn’t bother you in any way that it’s not what it was made out to be?”

“Well, it’s clearly not that. No self-respecting, hippie, yuppie baking company would have a monochromatic color scheme to their building.”

“You’re saying that people think that this is a self-respecting, hippie, yuppie baking company?”

“Sure. I mean, look at it.”

“What? Look at it? How?”

“Look at the facts. And can you tell your brother to quit looking like there’s a space vacuum inside his head? I know technically space vacuums don’t exist, but if they did, there’s a good chance that there’s one in his head right now.”

“If he quits looking like an idiot, will you tell us how to make our disguise better?”

“You’d have to tell me what you’re disguising, first.”

“Wellllll, about that death obsession...”

“He’s still looking like an idiot, Jim.”

“Can you call me Beameup?”

“Beameup? What kind of a name is that? What are you guys, anyway? Aliens?”

“Erm. Ah. Yes.”

“Whaat? You’re aliens?!”

“No, no, we’re not. Ah, it’s a joke.” Jim gave Shoni a placating look.

“It’s like this,” broke in Grim, or, rather, Big G. “Beameup here has always been such a Trekkie and he likes to pretend he’s an alien. We’re really not, though.”

Jim nodded feverishly.

“Well,” said Shoni, slightly perplexed. “Oh, what were we talking about that before?” she quickly asked, seeing the crease on Grim’s brow.

“Oh!” exclaimed Jim. “Death obsessions! Right!”

“Do you want the job?” asked Grim, at the same time.

“Hang on!” countered Jim. “Your last name is ‘Necco’? As in those creepy candies that taste like sidewalk chalk?”

“Erm,” said Shoni. “It’s with one ‘c’, but I suppose so, yes....should I get going now?”

“No!” cried Grim dramatically. “I offered her a job! And, besides, those are my favorite kind of candies. Beameup, you got to hire Twix even though I personally think that every one of those chocolate bars has been infused with vodka. And you know that mother said that that wasn’t a good thing.”

“Well, I hired Twix because his personality was infused with vodka. If you hire Ms. Necco Wafer here, then is her personality infused with sidewalk chalk?”

“No!” yelled Grim. “It means she’s sweet. Right?”

“Um,” said Shoni, who then diplomatically backed into a (fake) potted plant on the wall. The plant fell off the white, rectangular stand in such a way that all present thought that the pot would smash into a million tiny pieces.

“AGHHHHHH” screamed Twix, as he dived for the pot, too late. Instead of smashing, the clunk it made as it impacted the floor revealed that it was made entirely out of plastic. Shoni was mortified. Jim and Grim, however, fell into each other’s arms laughing. Twix glared.

“You’re hired,” the two said in unison. Twix coughed in protest, and left after returning the plant to its place, ignoring a whispered ‘sorry’ from Shoni.

“Don’t worry about it, he’ll get over it,” said Jim affably. “Now, about our business here.”

“Does that mean...that I got the job?” asked Shoni.

“Yes, if you’ll take it,” said Grim.

“Of course I will!” she said.

“You don’t want to hear what this company does, or what you specifically will be doing?”

“Well, yeah, but I want the job. I mean, whatever you guys do here can’t be that bad. It’s not like you’re scammers or serial killers or anything.”

“No, but, you see, we. Well, in a way, we are aliens, yes.” confessed Grim. Jim glared at him. “We work for Pluto, you might say.”

“Pluto isn’t a planet.”

“Not anymore, it isn’t. But Pluto is also the Roman god of the underworld.”

“And how can you work for him?”

“Ok, so ignore that. Ah, um, you’ve heard of...the grim reaper, I suppose?” asked Jim. Grim said nothing.

“Fairy tales!”

“Yes, but also true. You see, Reaper Harvesting Co. is in charge of making sure that the world doesn’t become overpopulated. So invoices come in from our...none of your business...and inform us who has to go, and Big G and I go out and harvest the souls. We do the really tricky ones,” Jim continued, anticipating her question, “and we have lesser reapers to go out and get the really easy ones. Big G and I are the experts, and so we have to do the harder ones to avoid lawsuits. That would not be good. We’ve managed to avoid them so far, though. But I suppose you know because you haven’t seen any headlines such as “Death sued for doing job,” have you?”

“And Twix? Is he one? A reaper?”

“No, he’s our PR person.” laughed Jim.

“Oh. How does that work?”

“Not very well. Poor guy gets a lot of mail. A lot of it is the usual whine of ‘why did you take away my friend/spouse/family member/whatever?’ but some of it is actually funny, like the one he got, oh what was it? ‘Thank you for removing this blot out of my life. I do have a non-refundable policy on him, however.’ I guess when you have an obnoxious person removed from your life so quickly, you have to check to make sure there’s no chicanery.”

“So, you guys collect in on dead people. Where do I come in?”

“You...don’t mind what we do?”

“Well, I have three reasons. The first is that, I assume, you’re going to pay me. Second, ensuring that over population doesn’t occur is a good thing, in my mind, and third, if I went and blabbed to everyone about your oh so sneaky operation, how do I know you wouldn’t come for me next?”

“We’re glad to hear that, but we wouldn’t. Our accountants take good care of things.”

“Are there any employee benefits or discounts?”

“I don’t think that in this case you would want them. I mean, most stores offer 15% off on most of their products. Do you really want us to take 15% off of your life?”

“No, not really. What did you mean by ‘tricky’ job?”

“Have you ever heard of Billy Collins?”

“No?”

“Poet. I am now going to declaim a poem by him. It’s called ‘My Number.’
‘Is Death miles away from this house,
reaching for a widow in Cincinnati
or breathing down the neck of a lost hiker
in British Columbia?

Is he too busy making arrangements,
tampering with air brakes,
scattering cancer cells like seeds,
loosening the wooden beams of roller coasters
to bother with my hidden cottage
that visitors find so hard to find?

Or is he stepping from a black car
parked at the dark end of the lane,
shaking open the familiar cloak,
its hood raised like the head of a crow,
and removing the scythe from the trunk?

Did you have any trouble with the directions?
I will ask, as I start talking my way out of this.’

Cute poem, right? Well, it’s not cute when that’s you having to find his blasted cottage that’s in the middle of blasted nowhere.”

“Did you get him, in the end?”

“Nope. I told him that I’d be back though. He’s probably moved somewhere else and we don’t have him in the database. Oh, you know all of the worthless material they ask for when they take a census or when you pay your taxes? Actually, all of that information goes into our database. The taxes are just a cover.”

“So, what other problems have you had, then? I mean, you didn’t run into any velociraptors or anything, did you?”

“Well, Grim was collecting on a kid who didn’t think it was his time. Well, Grim felt sorry for the kid (bad idea, by the way) and the kid wound up kicking poor Grim in the shin.”

“So, what do I do here? And you know what? For some reason this really reminds me of the time when we had to wash my pet weasel. His name was Andre, like my brother. But Andre the weasel got so filthy that we had to dump him in hot water, and then my mom got a bucket of ice cold water and splashed the soap off.”

“Well,” began Grim.

“Now see what you’ve done!” said Jim. “You’re making me think of weasels.”

“Well, sorREE,” she said sarcastically. “How do you think I feel?”

“Yes, right,” said Jim placatingly. “Ah, where do you want to start? You can be an accountant, PR person, well,” --Twix glared-- ”maybe not that, but you can be an assistant. Or a reaper!”

“Mmm, I think I’ll pass on the reaper business. Sounds too dangerous.”

Jim and Grim both laughed. “We’ll get Baxter to take you on a tour of the facilities. We need to talk to Twix. But welcome to the company.”

Twix coughed. He was really getting into his butler role. “Ah, Baxter is...indisposed, I’m afraid. But Maisie would do an excellent job.”

NaNo '10, bit one

2010-11-01T05:44:00.000-07:00

“And watch out for the troll-eating socks!” Shawntelle slammed the door behind her. Andre was so obnoxious sometimes. Her stupid, nine year old brother was whining about cereal and she had a job interview that she was going to be late to. She shivered in the cold weather and started walking. Since she hadn’t had a job since she graduated college, she didn’t have a car. That was why she needed a job. She narrowly avoided the slushy spots as she found her way to downtown Minneapolis. And Andre had thrown dry cereal at her wool winter coat. She had brushed most of it off, but one piece hung on the shoulder valiantly, like a captain aboard a sinking ship. She brushed it off. Captain or no, she had a job interview.

Slush was everywhere. All of the morning zombies running to get their expensive coffee reminded her that she hadn’t yet eaten breakfast. But that was all right, because she had avoided deafness by the screaming of Andre Winston Neco. Stupid kid. The sky drizzled slightly. It looked as if the clouds were drooling. At least, whenever she was told that the weather outside wasn’t raining, merely spitting, she always thought of it as drool. Drool like a dog. Cold and gloomy weather and she was pretty sure she was deaf in one ear. Why did her brother have to be such a brat? Maybe it was because he had been named ‘Andre’. That name is one pertaining to brat-hood.

Her boots skidded in the sidewalk slush. “Tut tut,” said a creepy looking guy walking past her. She glared at him and kept walking. He turned around and followed her. “Are you sure you can even walk in those?” he asked, referring to her combat boots. “Mind you don’t break an ankle!” he called helpfully. “Pish posh,” she said, continuing on. “You suck like a sparkly vampire after blood,” she muttered under her breath.

Finally, after what seemed like freezing ages, she arrived at her destination: Reaper Harvesting Co. The lobby was playing elevator music. Morbid elevator music, which sounded almost decent. But the decor was not the kind she expected to see from a corporation with a name like that. There should have been an autumn decor, with a picture of a harvester who looked as if he stepped out of a Communist propaganda poster. Instead, the walls were tastefully draped in a combination of white, gray and black fabrics and a fountain trickled in the middle.

“May I help you?” asked the stern looking receptionist. Her costume reflected the macabre environment she worked in: in addition to being decked out in a black suit, her hair, tied back in a bun, had the effect (along with her glasses) of making her nose even pointier than Shawntelle had thought possible.

“Ah, yes, I have an interview with Alfred Twix,” she said nervously.

The receptionist clucked. “Don’t think he’s like the chocolate bar, dear, but up you go. Take the elevator to floor 5. His office is number 503.”

The corridor she got off in was less macabre than the lobby. The carpeting was a dark moss green with maroon diamonds, and there were plastic plants at random intervals. Shawntelle had to walk across the entire floor because the elevator had deposited her at the wrong end of where she needed to be. She found room 503 and tapped on the engraved glass door.

“Come in,” called a voice warily. Shawntelle pushed open on the obviously fake gold handle and walked in nervously.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “What did you want again?”

“Um, we have an interview,” she said. Could he have forgotten already?

“Oh, yes, about that,” Alfred Twix rose from his seat and began to walk around the room, poking at random objects on the shelves. He cleared his throat several times before trying to continue. “You see, that advertisement was a mistake. Reaper Harvesting Co. has enough employees. Far too many, you might say.”

“But when I called, I was lead to believe that there was a great shortage...”

“Yes, but, well, the company decided to, hmm, you might almost say, recycle some of their employees.”

“Well, we still need help with the accounting department, but, well, I really don’t know,” he mumbled. Shawntelle mentally tapped her fingers against a non existent desk.

Alfred Twix sat down in his chair and pretended to be immersed in thought.

“Oh, are you still here?” he said.

Just as Shawntelle was about to turn and leave, there was a large commotion in the hallway.

“Listen, Baxter,” said one voice, in a cooing, threatening voice. “You’ve messed up.”

“No I haven’t, Nick!” the other voice protested in horror. “It was only a joke! Honest! I didn’t...”

“You’ve blown it, Baxter,” said Nick’s suave voice. “This time...you’re hired.” Screaming came from the hallway, apparently from Baxter, and it was accompanied by the usual sci-fi elecronic zapping noises.

Alfred Twix sat up in his chair very suddenly. “Ah, it look like we have an opening...what was your name again?”

“Shawntelle.”

“Shawntelle what?”

“Neco.”

“No, no, I mean, give me your full name.”

“All of it?”

“Yes! Including every middle name you have. Although, if the middle is what you get when you take two numbers and cut it in half, then if you have four names total, then you theoretically shouldn’t have a middle name. Or, if you have five names, what do you call the two non-middle, middle names?”

“Extraneous names?”

“Ha! So, what’s your name?”

“Shawntelle Nitoja Neco.”

“Nitoja? What kind of a middle name is that?"

"Uh, it's not one. it's the Finnish word for stapler..."

“And how did it come to be part of your name?”

“I’m not sure, as I wasn’t at the occasion.”

“Very good!” Alfred Twix beamed. “By the way, you don’t happen to have an extra cigarette, do you? There’s an experiment I wanted to try...”

Shawntelle groped around in her purse before coming up with a battered, but still new case. Wordlessly, she handed them to Twix.

“You realize that in our company, smoking is frowned upon, don’t you?” asked Twix.

“Actually, I don’t smoke. I just carry the package around with me so that I have an excuse to avoid an awkward conversation. I just tell whoever it is that I need to have a smoke, take the pack out of my purse and walk outside.”

“And what do you do if the cause of your misfortunes also smokes?”

“I haven’t yet had troubles in such a way,” she admitted.

“So, I’m supposed to be interviewing you, Shawntelle Nitoja Neco. Got any nicknames?”

“Yes, actually, I’m normally called Shoni.”

“Ah, Shoni! Much nicer. Got any siblings?”

“Yes, now that you mention it. I have a 9 year old brother named Andre. Awful rat.”

“You seem to have a bit of a British accent,” he noted.

“Oh. Yes. Sorry about that. Sometimes it just slips out. We lived in London for a couple years.”

“No problem at all! I quite admire a British accent, providing it’s not a fake.”

“How can one admire an accent?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Let’s see, what else am I to ask you?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never had an interview before. Wikipedia was boring and needed citations, and the only other helpful thing I could find was a Monty Python sketch, although I’m not sure that it helped me prepare specifically for this interview.”

“Ah, interesting. So, what do you think of death?” The pager beeped, and Twix swiveled in his chair. “I’ll let you mull that one over, excuse me one moment.”

There were a few eerie screams, but Shoni was too busy thinking and too used to Andre to pay any attention to them. Twix walked back in the room. “Sorry about that, I had to deal with a difficult employee by the name of Lucie. I’ve...fixed...the problem, but we’re even more short of help. So, what did you make of my little question?”

“Well...excuse me, do you have some tissues? I need to blow my nose. Thanks.”

“I know that according to wikipedia, I should ask you what your strengths and weaknesses are, but I find this question to be much more interesting.”

“Well, I don’t know what you mean by ‘what do you think of death?’ I mean, what specifically are you asking for? Are you asking me what do I think about dying, or someone I know dying, or as an abstract concept, or as if it were a person?”

“A person...yes. What would you do if death walked in the room and sat next to you? What would you do?”

“Scream? No, I don’t think so. I hate screaming.”

“Yes, it does get rather tiresome. So, you wouldn’t scream?”

“No, I’ll leave that to Andre. I suppose I would say ‘how do you do?’ to him. I’m not sure.”

“So, you meet death at a party, and what do you do?”

“Oh, that’s easy. I don’t go to parties.”

“Why not? Aren’t you supposed to be enjoying your life?”

“Hah. I’ll probably only enjoy it the most at the moment when I have to give it up.”

“No, you’ll enjoy it if you just hang in there.”

“Hang with what? Fangs that I magically grow?”

“Why so cynical?”

“You’re the one who is talking about meeting death!”

Alfred Twix gave a nervous laugh. “Well, I can introduce you to your new CEOS.”

“You mean...I got the job?”

“Yes, unquestionably. And here they are.”

The door opened and two figures walked in. They were wearing the strangest garb, none of it fitting for the CEO of a large company. They were bickering. “But are they sparkly vampire stats?” one began, but broke off. “What you want, Twix?” said the weirder looking one.

“Ah, yes,” said Alfred Twix nervously. He looked shabby. “May I present miss, ah, what was your name again?”

“Ah, a new employee!” said the first dramatically.

“Yes, so new!” Echoed the other, not to be outdone in the drama.

“Well,” said the first, impressively, “my name is Jim Reaper, and this is...”

“Oh, cut out the twin act,” he said imperiously. “I’m Grim, but you can call me Big G.”

Shoni was still a little in awe of their apparel. Grim was decked out in a bizarre rendition of the latest trend, but Jim was dressed as a crew member of the Starship Enterprise.

“Oh, I’m Shawntelle,” she said.

“FULL name!” bleated Twix.

“Shawntelle Nitoja Neco,” she corrected.

“Nickname,” said Twix.

“Uh, Shoni,” she said.

“Welcome to the corporation,” beamed Jim. “You can call me Beameup.”

“Right.”

“And don’t forget, I’m Big G,” said Grim, grinning.

“So, where do I start?”

from Henry IV, Part I

2010-10-28T08:36:00.001-07:00

Falstaff: "An old lord of the council rated me the other day in the street about you, sir, but I marked him not, and yet he talked very wisely, but I regarded him not, and yet he talked wisely, and in the street, too."

Prince Hal: "Thou didst well, for wisdom cries out in the street and no man regards it"