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Access: General A General Note - Where to Find Me 13:13 Tuesday 07.03.06 Hello all. I've let my paid account here lapse - I post rarely enough lately that it hardly seems worth it. I'm going to move back to my old username, which many of you already know, since that's an early adopter account. I do want to start posting more, though chances are it will be mostly about school and things I'm reading for school. In any case, those of you on my flist will find yourselves added this evening to my new/old journal, and I won't be posting in this one anymore. See you on the other side. mood: pleased music: v'adoro, pupille (+7) post Access: General ? 11:40 Thursday 02.02.06 I just got this message in my SPAM Inbox: cumbersome angles sisal, meander alan whiplash. doubleheader parakeet meantime. doctrine iliac extent? elude exterior maldive siam phenomenology, torr tad brett, I know it has to mean something. (+2) post Access: General 11:06 Monday 30.01.06 Hwaet, I sang in my first recital on Saturday, in the common room at the Cathedral school. La Scala it wasn't, and Callas I wasn't, but at least I can actually bring myself to make noise in front of people now. And Mira and Kali, along with my mom, suffered through the entire thing. I sang "Non So Piu" from Le Nozze di Figaro, and while I didn't exactly nail it, I didn't disgrace myself utterly either. Mostly I'm glad I didn't look as nervous as I was. I've had one class meeting each for three of the four courses I'm taking this term. Thursday is Pagans and Christians, with the same professor I had for Magic and Science in Antiquity last term, who is also my Greek teacher and the Classics department chair. She's kind of a rock star - the course is even more swarming with auditors than the last one. I'm going to have to get there early from now on to get a seat where I can hear. We're starting with Hellenism and working our way through the Crusades. Friday, my first class is Homer and Virgil in translation. We're starting with the Odyssey, then on to the Aeneid and then the Iliad. The reading is pretty intense (three books each class meeting), and the major writing project looks fantastic: we will each be assigned one scene from the Odyssey, and we're basically to change one major element, plot out how it affects the rest of the story, and rewrite it. As Kali said, *coughfanfictioncough*. I haven't had to write fanfic for school since the Faulkner-fic debacle in my Intro to Lit course. This course is taught by my first-year Greek teacher, and Homer is her specialty. After that is History of Jazz, taught by a young jazz trombonist. I don't know much about this one yet, except that we get to listen to a lot of really great music, and that our teacher is really excited about the material, which is always a good omen for a class. Tonight is my first Greek class of the semester. It's entirely Plato this semester: we started The Apology in November, and we're wading slooooooowly through it. There is an orange cat dozing on my bed. In addition to my school reading, I'm making my way through a beautiful book that Mira lent me, on the art and life of Remedios Varo. There are carnations on my window sill, orchids on my bookshelf and roses on my desk. The city itself seems to think it's Spring. I'm sure that I have forgotten many things I wanted to tell you all. I'll post them as they come to me. (+5) post Access: General Two questions 10:42 Thursday 05.01.06 1. Can the word "hove" ever be in the present tense? 2. In the new King Kong, are the ape-shaped rocks and spinal-column-like walls on the island supposed to be: a) Man-made representations of the beast? b) The remains of ancient, even more giant apes? c) Some mysterious extension of the same life-force that caused the giant apes in the first place? d) Added purely for effect by Peter Jackson? Also, would YOU climb the top of the Empire State Building in character shoes? I think not. mood: er? music: put a bengal tiger in the kaiser's latrine... (+6) post Access: General I know I'm late to this party, but 14:45 Tuesday 27.12.05 Pandas! That is all. (+4) post Access: General Narnia 16:03 Monday 26.12.05 Forget the ideological tug-of-war that surrounds this film, forget what you know about Lewis and his beliefs. If you're generally allergic to child actors, forget that too. It's all utterly beside the point. It was perfect. It's the world I've been dreaming since I was seven years old. I can't even get more specific than that right now - the details are amazing but it's really the gestalt of the thing that shocked me with its rightness - and I'm supposed to be working anyway. But oh! If you loved the books, see it. (+4) post Access: General "It's turtles all the way down" 15:32 Wednesday 21.12.05 o/~ Patashoqua's really neat; she is wearing turtle feet! * o/~ * Actual turtle slippers seem to be sold out, but they're basically identical to this, only they're ON MY FEET! They were a gift for my mom from her Secret Santa at work, only for some reason she doesn't want to wear them. So they're mine all mine. (+8) post Access: General They call it the subway school for a reason 10:49 Wednesday 21.12.05 So, my exams are all postponed until the new year; yesterday's will be on January 10th, today's on January 11th and tomorrow's on January 12th. This is in some ways a godsend and in some ways a major pain in my ass, but regardless, it's how it is. I still have things to write for my Magic and Science class, and since I'm going to Montana on Friday, I'll be trying to get across the park tomorrow to turn them in. At least my Greek class will be all the same people next term, so she'll just give us the exam next semester and take our final grade for this one from what we've got so far. Ugh! mood: aggravated music: Ute Lemper - It's All a Swindle post Access: General oi 08:51 Tuesday 13.12.05 It's that time of the year when everything - social, domestic, medical, literary - will happen "in January". Ugh. In a week and two days, it's over whether I survive it or not. Must keep telling myself that. P.S. As I wrote in a comment to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} miep just now, CDs are in the process of being burned (by my sweet askeladden). They will go out - you guessed it - in early January. I don't have my address book anymore, so those of you who wanted one, please email me your actual postal address. I promise I won't send you a dead marmot.(+5) post Access: General ObBlog 08:49 Monday 05.12.05 I've been gently bullied by my girl into blogging, though I have nothing to say. Or rather, I have so much to say that it amounts basically to nothing. My life is happy and peaceful for the most part, though I think I've gone a bit strange from all the muttering in Greek. I have a meeting with my advisor this morning, to finalize my schedule for next term and make sure I'm not missing anything vital. I'm taking: Greek Reading 202: Plato History of Jazz Homer and Virgil in translation and then I'm torn between: The Hero and the City Pagans and Christians We're flying to Montana for a few days over Christmas. I can't wait. (+8) post Access: General 14:23 Friday 11.11.05 I have crawled out from under the massive, teetering pile of exams and term papers that threatens to engulf me for just long enough to make my first CD for the twice-yearly music swap that occurs among Mira's blogmass. I'm rather pleased with it. I think it may make a few of you giggle, for diverse reasons. ( Orphic Pop - tracklist, explication, and cover art ) If anyone not already involved in the Blogswap would like a copy, email me your address and I'll send you one in a couple of weeks when I've got them all burned. Now, back to obsessive Ancient Greek lexicography. (+6) post Access: General 19:01 Sunday 25.09.05 Some of these are very easy to picture. I'm not saying which ones. ( A silly, silly meme. ) Ok, back to work. I swear. (+4) post Access: General 18:52 Sunday 25.09.05 Inspired by prosicated and inahandbasket's recent photographic posts, I've posted ten of my own pictures to the LJ photo thingy, five each from my trips to Greece this summer and Rome in 2002. I'm not sure they're new to anyone, but they're my favorite of the photos I've taken. Here they are. (+2) post Access: General 18:27 Sunday 25.09.05 Thucydides is kicking my sorry ass all over the Peloponnese. Well, it's actually conditional clauses that are doing it, but Thucydides is NOT HELPING. mood: kill me now music: that whistling sound you hear is my GPA plummeting (+3) post Access: General Shakespeare 12:51 Saturday 24.09.05 There seems to be a meme to this effect going around, and I woke up with this in my head today. I played this role in a summer camp production at age 11 and for some reason still remember it verbatim. This is probably full of errors, and I'm not even going to attempt the punctuation, but here it is more or less in its entirety. ( Hamlet 1:V ) I could probably be using that storage space for something. mood: procrastinatudinous (+7) post Access: General new layout 13:43 Friday 23.09.05 It's Another Gratuitous Owl Post! And yes, I'm still using S1. Wanna make something of it? (+2) post Access: General 22:55 Thursday 22.09.05 Gave blood today. After some digging around in my left arm, blood was taken from my right. The right is fine of course, and the left hurts like a bastard. But they gave me emerald green crepey bandages around each elbow, and it was all very punk rock. mood: drained. haha. (+2) post Access: General 11:24 Wednesday 21.09.05 Last year, in the course of researching a paper for my intolerable Alchemy class, I found an engraving by one Heinrich Khunrath. Ever since, I've been wanting to make a bookplate out of it, and yesterday I found the image online, printed out a bunch, and did just that. ( Owl! ) mood: pleased (+8) post Access: General pardon my meme 10:46 Wednesday 21.09.05 Billie Holiday: I grew up listening to scratchy recordings of her fragile slate-blue voice. As a small child, I always liked the saddest, slowest songs best ("Crazy He Calls Me" was a particular favorite); lately, I appreciate the snark of "Some Changes Made" and the twinkle of "Miss Brown To You" even more. Though it's a cliche to listen to Billie when one is wallowing in misery, she's always been more of a chin-up-shoulders-down, fuck-em-if-they-can't-take-a-joke kind of companion to me. Clive Barker: I'd like to say that I envy Barker most for the scope of his imagination, his weirdly natural ear for dialogue, or his goatee. But it's actually his complete and utter lack of fear of embarrassment that I covet most. His work is unabashedly pulpy and deeply romantic, filled with names that should sound silly but somehow delight the eye and tongue (see username). He doesn't worry about using old ideas, either, because he knows he has something new to do with them. Names are a big writing bugbear for me -- for some reason, I don't mind the thought of someone snickering at certain plot elements or dialogue in my stories, but if the name of the central character or place makes you smirk and roll your eyes, it casts a pall on the whole thing. Additionally, he's cute as the dickens. drag kings: Drag kings are hot. *shrug* German: Given that I study both archaeology and opera, I will eventually have to come face to face with The Awful German Language. I'm kind of looking forward to this, as my brief sallies into the dictionary and grammar books have revealed a system which, while completely unfamiliar to me, has a logical beauty to it that even a non-speaker can appreciate. It seems like an interesting puzzle of a language to learn, and they say that having Ancient Greek helps immeasurably. Janus: The god of doorways, of things that are endings and beginnings at once. Two-faced. An element in innumerable childhood games. At the temple of Janus in Rome, the doors were closed while the city was at peace, and open in times of war. He's just always been a symbol that tugged at my mind - it's hard to articulate. And he pops up in the strangest places and contexts. madrigal: Madrigal chorus was one of the few (school-sanctioned) extracurricular activities I enjoyed in hs. I love the feeling of voices, with little or no instrumental accompaniment, twining together to create new textures. It's impossible to talk about this without sounding completely dippy, but anyone who has sung in a choir knows the feeling I mean. All this despite early trauma involving a jhs music class and a madrigal entitled "Sweet Kate". Oi. nature documentaries: They are my shame, my ambrosia, my secret addiction. Okay, not so secret among my friends, who know me as Weird Nature Fact Girl. I have a limited tolerance for watching humans on television - they start to irk me pretty quickly, unless they're Jon Stewart - but I love watching shows about critters, and the more bizarre and random the better. Deep-sea life is favorite, as are lemurs, lions, and rhinoceroi. Even worse than legit documentaries, sometimes I watch those crappy, gimmicky Animal Planet shows* ("The Future Is Wild" still ranks as one of the funniest, lamest things I've ever seen ). The narration and framework is stupid, but if you get to see lizards squirting blood out of their eyes, who really cares? * I have never watched and will never watch "The Crocodile Hunter". Even I have my limits. political science: I was raised to be politically aware and involved. I really didn't have a choice in the matter. Studying political science from an academic perspective is both very difficult and very important for me -- it helps counterbalance the emotional investment, and forces me to articulate things that are obvious to my gut. style not fashion: Style is individual, precise, and enduring. Fashion is evanescent and designed for maximum scatter radius. Style is about what looks good. Fashion is really about something else entirely. I am not a fashionable creature. Far from it. But I know what I like and I know what suits me. Umberto Eco: I discovered "Foucault's Pendulum" at the age of maybe 15, and was instantly hooked. I didn't know anything about Eco, but here was a novel that encompassed Templars, Candomble and medieval contraptions, at once an adventure through various systems of thought and a cautionary fable about critical thinking. He's massively erudite, but has an impish sense of humor. I devoured several more of his novels, some of which I enjoyed more than others, as well as a few books of essays. He came to read at my local bookstore, and rather than read from his newly published book, he basically ended up presiding over an informal seminar lesson. Some people find his writing stuffy and pompous, but to those people, I say "feh!" Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list. mood: coffee (+2) post Access: General 15:03 Tuesday 20.09.05 How to improve a sickly, humid day: Ingredients: 69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields (minus "Punk Rock Love" and a few others) 1 can shoe polish (black) 1 old washcloth 1 boot brush 3 pairs of boots several tons of old newspaper Polish, while humming vigorously Repeat Roman Archaeology later. mood: not so bad music: fido, your leash is too long (+2) post Access: General And before I forget 08:57 Thursday 15.09.05 Project Steve. post |
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