Quodlibets

Happy Halloween!

Wanna see my pumpkin?  I bet you do.  But before I reveal it, I just want to say that it's nowhere NEAR as good as Kate's, but that it's so much better than last year's lamey pumpkin that I was voted most improved pumpkin carver.  Theoretically, I could have won a prize, but my sister won the best pumpkin (only because last year's winner really won again but absolutely REFUSED to take the prize) prize and my mom hated the idea of her two daughters (and the co-hostesses of the party) winning the only two prizes.  Alas, the nerd ghost pin is not mine.

This pumpkin, while cute, is sadly just as lopsided as last year's.  I just don't have the hang of symmetry.  Oh well.  Happy Halloween!

Update:  To see the process of carving, check out S's carving gallery.

Fall is like home

I'm at a bit of an impasse.  It's a waiting game now--waiting for the Disney trip, waiting to get another colorbook, waiting to hear about the jobs, waiting to read books from the Time top 100, so my sister can do some catch-up, waiting 'til after Disney to do the grocery shopping.  Just waiting.

I love this season; I feel happy when it gets dark earlier (unlike everybody else in the world, I guess) and I love the crisp air.  There's nothing better than smelling a fireplace, or the leaves burning.  Spring is nice, but fall is like home.  I can't stand the thought of not having a proper autumn. 

That's all I have right now.  Tomorrow and Tuesday could be spectacularly boring, if I don't find something to do with myself.  Waiting, waiting.

Update:  Best line in tonight's episode of Rome?  When Niobe is draping Lucius Verenus in his toga for the first time (Verenus has accepted a position as a magistrate; the toga is something only important men wear), Titus Pullo, observing, says, "You look like laundry."  There are five million reasons to watch the show, but my reasons are simple.  Titus Pullo and Lucius Verenus.

SmallFlower

I read the Chicago Tribune online, daily.  I pick and choose various articles, based on interesting headlines.  Because I read online, I don't ignore the Business section, as I do when I read the actual paper format.  Today, it paid off.  There is an article about a local apothecary, old world style.  This apothecary has a website, SmallFlower, that I've looked at.

Friends, it is fantastic.  There are tons of products I'd like to try.  L'Aromarine make a peach eau de toilette; I adore peach-scented body products.  Right now, my favorite perfume is a Fuzzy Navel by Demeter, but I'd love to branch out and try other peachy products.  Some of the lip balms look addictive as well, both because of flavor and presentation.  There are virtually hundreds of interesting European bath products to peruse--and it's nice to know that if you purchase from Smallflower (which I would, if I had the funds), you're supporting a family-run, independently-owned store.

Need something to do at work?  Trying to procrastinate?  Check it out.  I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Friday Random Ten--"The House Better Be Clean by Five" Edition

1. Stuck On You -- Elvis Presley
2. Endgame -- REM
3. Smooth Rider -- Dave Matthews Band
4. Here, There and Everywhere -- The Beatles
5. Jus 1 Kiss -- Basement Jaxx
6. Say It Ain't So -- Weezer
7. Bridge Over Troubled Water -- Simon and Garfunkel
8. Eleanor Rigby (Live) -- Paul McCartney
9. Answering Bell -- Ryan Adams
10. Do the Evolution -- Pearl Jam

S will be ecstatic.  PJ on my random ten list?  It's almost too good to believe.  And that Basement Jaxx song is all about the workout, for me.  Great song to workout to.  Or, this afternoon, clean to.

One Down, Seventy-Three To Go

If you read my sister's blog, then you know that we're attempting to read all of the books on the Time Top 100 list.  I think it was her idea, but I'm game.  (Even if it means I have to re-attempt the monstrosity that is Infinite Jest.)  Anyway, I just finished my 27th book from the list, Catcher in the Rye.  It's pretty embarrassing that I escaped the American educational system without reading the book, but I think that my other 26 books read kinda make up for it.  I also had NO idea what CitR was about, before I read it.  Somehow, over the course of my education, I got the idea that it was about a boy who lives in sewers.  (That idea came from the same place that created the idea that my grandpa worked at a forest preserve; no, really.  When I was little, I thought my grandpa worked at the forest preserve.  I can even still point out the building he supposedly worked in; but I was wrong, because he worked for the union.)

Anyway, I did know that the main character's name was Holden Caulfield and I knew that he hated phonies.  I'd gleaned that much from a short lifetime of talking about books, reading books, and just imbibing pop culture like mad.  Frankly, that's about it.  Holden Caulfield hates phonies.  The plot of the book.  Done. 

It's not that I didn't like the book, because I didn't not like it.  It's just that I didn't particularly like the book.  I liked the title reference; the poem: "If a body meet a body...."  I thought it was one of the more emotionally resonant parts of the books.  I also enjoyed the parts of the book where Holden interacts with Phoebe, but other than that, I was mostly bored.  I probably could have written a paper about the book in high school (or college) but I wrote a lot of papers about a lot of mediocre books.  (Once, I had to write a paper comparing the book Emma to a book about Paul of Tarsus.  Coincidentally, one of the professors teaching the class (it was a tandem) wrote the book about Paul.  That was the hardest paper I ever had to write.) 

CitR is a classic, of sorts, and that's it.  I'm done with one.

A Moral Problem

I don't read the letters to the editor in Time magazine very often (or Newsweek for that matter) because I get pretty pissed off at the seriously stupid people who get their letters published.  (In the interest of full disclosure, I once had a letter published in Time.  I was 19 and the article I responded to was about the educational trend of mainstreaming, and the practice of abolishing Honors classes; that pissed me off.  I liked my Honors classes.) 

Sometimes, though, when the cover article is very interesting to me (such as the recent cover article about "The Battle Over Gay Teens"), I'll peruse the letters to see how people are responding.  For the most part, the responses to the aforementioned article were respectful.  John Cameron Mitchell wrote in about the characterization of his movie, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and several people pointed out that things are better but things can be better still.  But I should know better, because one letter just infuriated me.

"I was very disappointed with Time's cover.  I am so tired of people trying to force us all to accept homosexuality.  It is really sad that you can't read a magazine, watch television or go to a movie without finding some form of homosexual innuendo.  What is the deal?  Are there no longer any morals?  At what point will America stand up and say, No more?"

No more what?  No more gay people?  You can't get rid of homosexuality, even though the 'ex-gay' movement tries (though, if this woman had read the article, she would read some conflicting views of homosexual rehabilitation.  Because, you know, it doesn't fucking work.  But that's something else.) unless you get rid of gay people, and that's too fucked up to even think about.  If she's advocating a return to mass arrests of gay people, and a return to the closet of the 40's, 50's, 60's and so on, she's an idiot.  If she's so offended by gay people, she should turn on Fox News and watch it 24 hours a day.  That would be safe.

And as for the morality part of the equation, she's right.  In one way.  This country is facing a moral problem, but the moral problem isn't homosexuality.  It's not sexuality at all.  The moral problem is politicians.  The moral problem is that millions of Americans can't afford food, that children starve in one of the most developed countries in the world.  The moral problem is that millions of Americans can't afford basic medicines.  If they have an emergency, they're fucked--and now they can't even declare bankruptcy.  The moral problem is that the politicians keep enriching the rich and fucking over the little guy.  An honest work-week of 40 hours is not enough to keep afloat in many cases.  That's a goddamn moral problem. 

There are people who are playing fast and loose with the lives of Americans--both here and abroad.  We're fucking with the Earth on such a major scale that she's throwing deadly Hurricanes at us faster than we can keep up with.  These are moral problems.  When men embezzle millions and millions and millions of dollars from the companies that employ them, thus ruining the lives of the peons working for them, that's a moral failure.  Rape and murder and theft are moral problems.  Wife battering and child abuse, elder abuse and even blatant abuse of animals--those are moral problems. 

Who you fuck, that's not a moral problem.  When you love someone, that's not a moral problem.  Allowing homosexuals a modicum of dignity, that's not a moral problem.  Helping them jump out of the closet that kept them imprisoned for decades is a triumph.  It's a fucking moral triumph. 

PS I Love You

By the way, I reached 10,000 hits this morning.  Pretty exciting for me.  And I'm guessing that the 10,000th hit was my friend Yalie, unless someone else at Yale is reading my blog.  However, I'll pretend that no matter what, it was her, because that makes it somehow better.

Yay for me!  (Too bad S's photo site has over 100,000 hits.  Holy shit, right?  He's too damn good.)

A Paul McCartney Miracle

After the show last night (at about 11), my dad and his girlfriend, M, went to the hotel bar to have a drink.  S and I went upstairs to sleep.  As soon as I got upstairs, I decided I was starving, so we looked at the room service menu (stinky) and considered ordering a pizza.  But then my cousin Sketch called (nickname not indicative of character, but profession) and said that maybe he and his girlfriend would come to the hotel bar to drink.  That sealed it for me, because I assumed I could get food while telling my dad that Sketch and K might come over. 

Because tons of Macca disciples were staying in our hotel, the hotel bar was crowded.  After waiting at the bar for about 10 minutes without even a whisper of service, we gave up.  (My dad and M already had drinks.)  At this point, Sketch called and said he was at a bar about a block away with my dad's sister P and her husband, the Photog (which was so random; no one knew she'd be at the concert, so the meet-up was by chance).  I thought that perhaps food would be available at said establishment, so I sent S upstairs for our coats, and we set off into the freezing Milwaukee rain.  The bar wasn't far, but it was cold, and when we got there, K said that the kitchen was closed.  Fuck.  What was left to do?  Drink.  So I drank a bit, smoked a little bit (because tipsy and cigs just go together, and my dad and cousin smoke) and closed the bar. 

We straggled out at two-ish (I assume the bar closed at two) and now tipsy (but not drunk) made our way back to our hotel.  If possible, the rain was even colder than before.  It sucked.  And when you're slightly drunk, you're ravenous, especially when you were ravenous three hours before.  As we were walking into the hotel lobby, a pizza delivery guy was walking out.  Jokingly, my dad asked, "Hey, do you have an extra?"  And the pizza guy said yes.  Seriously.  He said he also had an extra order of cheese sticks and cheesy breadsticks.  Now, the pizza was Hawaiian, which is gross, but still.  It was food, we were drunk and hungry, and it was cheap.  The pizza guy gave it to us for far less than the original price. 

Anyway, that's how the four of us (S, me, my dad and his gf) ended up eating pizza in his hotel room at two-thirty in the morning.  I actually didn't eat any pizza, concentrating on the fatty goodness of fried cheese and cheesy breadsticks.  The breadsticks were greasy as hell, but ambrosial, and the fried cheese was nearly cold.  Somehow, that made it better.  Regardless, it's miraculous that the pizza guy had the extra pizza.  It made my night.  And the concert was fine.  Our seats rocked.

(On the way home today, S and I saw two brilliant signs.  One was for the Bong Recreational Area [not kidding] in Wisconsin--one of the those brown signs--and the other was at an adult *superstore*.  The sign on the adult superstore [it was kind of a banner-y type thing] said, "Screw Presents!  Annual Holiday Sale!"  What_the_fuck???  Isn't that too dirty for words?)

Random Meme

Below the fold is a really long, weird meme.  Weird because the person who made it apparently doesn't know how to count. 

The 100 Best Novels of Time's time

The Library Diva posted today about Time magazine's Top 100 books.  The criteria are pretty simple.  All the books are English language novels written since 1923 (when Time began....ha ha ha).  I went through the list and I found that I've read 25 of the books.  That's pretty good, considering that I think that some of the books on the list, while they might be considered good, might also be considered boring.  I also think it's interesting that my list is very different from Kelly's.  You would think that we'd have read a lot of the same books, but I guess schools in different places assign different books. 

Because Kelly's point, that many people only read these books in school is certainly applicable to me.  My personal theory is that too many people think a book has to be hard to be good; a lot of the books I've read on the list are modern, as well.  (Modern being the last 20 or so years; I've also disproportionally read books by women, due to my propensity for taking Women's Lit courses in college--as well as attending a all girls school, which believe it or not, increases the number of books by women you read.  In my major, a non-English literature-based major [Humanistic Studies], we read books by women--starting Medieval and moving right into the present.  And then, of course, as I mentioned, I took these courses:  African-American Woman writers, Chicana Lit, and Radical Woman Writers [which is a crafty name for a course on lesbian writers at a Catholic school].)

Where was I?  Oh, that a good book has to be hard.  I think that's what a lot of kids think, because of their education; I read The Fountainhead as a senior, and I've never been compelled to read Ayn Rand since.  I did spend one summer in high school reading only "classics" but gravitated mostly to the Russians, who I happen to love.  College, due to the aforementioned classes, changed that notion a lot.  I love Pascal and Voltaire (not something I read too often, though), and found enjoyment in classical authors, because my professors picked good books--not necessarily hard ones.  We read The Things They Carried and Song of Solomon.  We read CS Lewis in my freshman English class, along with Jane Austen's Emma.  I feel like my reading was balanced in college; far more than it was in high school.  But again, I went to a school with (though I only admit it begrudgingly) a very, very good academic reputation.

Regardless.  Here are my 25 (annotated):
Animal Farm by George Orwell -- I read this as a freshman in high school, and on the whole, I like it.
Are You There God, It's Me Margaret by Judy Blume -- Anh.  Not a huge Blume fan.
Beloved by Toni Morrison -- I don't like this book.  I like Song of Solomon better.
Brideshead Revisted by Evelyn Waugh -- I read this in one of my HUST electives.  Pretty damn good.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller -- I read this in Rome, as a sophomore in college.  It's fair to say that I hated it.
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen -- I don't get the hype.
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell -- I can't even count how many times I've read this book.  I simply LOVE it.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck -- My senior year of high school.  I liked this book, though not as much as some other Steinbeck.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald -- There are other Fitzgerald books that are better.  I think we read this as freshmen in high school, but I can't remember.
I, Claudius by Robert Graves -- I'm a somewhat avid Rome reader.  I found this in the collective library at the Rome campus of SMC, and read it.  I didn't love it.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis -- Anh.  I loved it as a kid.
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov -- I'm not sure what to say about this.  Humbert Humbert, right?  Icky.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding -- Frankly, I found this book distasteful and disgusting.
1984 by George Orwell -- I always liked Animal Farm better.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac -- This book is complicated for me.  I had a best friend in college who worshiped this book.  But for me, other than a few passages, it's a bust.  I can't get into the beats.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey -- I read this as a freshman in high school.  It's a towering, unbelievable book.  I saw the play at Steppenwolf with Gary Sinise a couple of years ago, and it was every bit as good as I remembered.
A Passage to India by EM Forster -- I like Forster.  I've read A Room With a View as well.  This book is better, I think.
The Prime of Ms. Jean Brodie by Muriel Sparks -- I have nothing to say about this book.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson -- I just read this for a class (Reader's Advisory) and hated it.  This sort of sci-fi is lost on me.
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway -- My favorite Hemingway.  I like Hemingway.  I think his sentence construction is fascinating. 
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston -- This might have been one of the hardest things I've read, just because.  I can't explain.  I like Nella Larsen better; Passing is a fantastic, fantastic book.  If you haven't read either of these books, you should.  They're important, I think.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee -- I was so young when I read this.  Probably 12 or 13.  I should read it again.
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf -- I like Woolf.  Surprise surprise.  But even so, this book really, really surprised me with its greatness.  I can't remember if I've read Mrs. Dalloway, but I've definitely read parts of A Room of Ones Own, and all of Orlando.
White Teeth by Zadie Smith -- I sooooo do not get the hype over this either.  I hated it.

Update:  Apparently, I have also read The Blind Assassin.  When I was at home tonight, I found a well-worn copy on my personal bookshelf.  Hence, I've read it.  Pathetic that I couldn't remember, huh?