Blackout Poetry 2

See previous post. Pages from paperback book that was already falling apart, black colored pencil, black crayon.

My shortest iTunes playlist

Books
-"B*tches in Bookshops" by Annabelle Quezada & La Shea Delaney [better than the original (Jay-Z & Kanye West's N****s in Paris) imho. Lyrics at the above link]

-"Book People Unite" by The Roots & friends for Reading is Fundamental

Blackout Poetry

A popular thing to do on Tumblr is to make blackout poetry from single pages of books by blacking out with a marker or something all the words except for the ones you want to have, thus creating a poem from existent text. Book lovers often decry this as needless destroying of books. I kinda agree with them, but the result is often quite beautiful. Some of my favorite poems are blackout poetry. I think as long as they're old books that are going to be destroyed or thrown away anyway it's ok, but people shouldn't do that to perfectly good books. It's probably best not to think about where the sausage comes from. Anyway, I rediscovered a copy of That Hideous Strength that I had bought for like a quarter at a yard sale but had to replace with a similarly priced copy (with the same cover, of course) because the first 86 pages are missing and the rest are starting to fall out. It is an old book, from the seventies, and paperbacks are not very long-lived, especially if they are read a lot. I didn't have the heart to recycle it as I love C.S. Lewis and that is one of my favorite books, and I thought maybe I could make some book craft with the pages (the cover is this garish hideous '70s sci-fi thing that doesn't lend itself to lovingly created book art simply because it is too ugly). I wasn't quite sure what until I discovered blackout poetry. I decided to try my hand on it with the first remaining page.

Page from a paperback book, black colored pencil, black crayon

This one is actually three short poems since I couldn't think of a longer one. lol They are not connected. They read as follows:

the pale edges of

silence

seemed to be calling

~

the anachronism

met

the person in

her

~

things read and wrote 

were the substance;

to write

and

believe in the reality of

things not seen.

I'm kind of proud of it. The second one (the other side of the page) isn't quite as good, but I still like it, although my coloring job was like a million times more sloppy. Hazards include tearing the page and accidentally coloring over the word I wanted to keep.

Page from a paperback book, black crayon

 

This one is one poem. It's way less colored in/neatly since I was afraid the page might tear if I used the black colored pencil on both sides, so I just used black crayon. Poem is as follows:

a place

of

sunlight,–

of laughter and

wonder

and

better things

Not bad for my first try at it. I've already tried to do the next page but so far I'm not seeing anything. I could have been distracted by the Christmas music I'm listening to.

Pop Music Through the Ages with someone who knows little about either pop music or the ages

I've been toying with the idea that the pop music from different decades is characterized by its influences or flavors. I can't really examine this with pop music from before I was born since I'm not familiar with it, but I think this theory sort of holds up:
The 1990s: R&B-flavored pop (lots of vocal trills, ballads, etc.)
The 2000s: rock-flavored pop (idk, like Avril Lavigne and Kelly Clarkson or whatever)
The 2010s: electronic music (the stuff they play in clubs, like house or dubstep or whatever. I don't know music terms)-flavored pop. Perhaps as a reaction, folk-flavored alternative music seems to be growing in popularity as well (Mumford & Sons). I am not doing a list like this for alternative music because I know even less about that than I do about pop music.
Also, retro-flavored pop (stuff that sounds like Motown or other music from the 1960s, e.g. Amy Winehouse and Adele) became A Thing in the mid-2000s to the present, as well.

I don't know music well enough to be as certain about pop music earlier than that (as if I'm even sure about the pop music in my own lifetime), but I think it's tentatively like this:
1980s: electronic-flavored pop (Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince. This kind of electronic means synthesizers [?] rather than the clubbing/remix-music sound popular today)
1970s: folk (Peter, Paul and Mary; Bread, etc.) and rock (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, etc.)
1960s: rock 'n' roll- (Elvis?) and soul/blues-flavored (Motown, Aretha Franklin etc.)
1950s: idk, rock 'n' roll also? Getting over big band (Elvis?)
1940s: big band
1930s: possibly jazz, medium band, folk (I don't know. All my knowledge of '30s music comes from O Brother, Where Art Thou?)
1920s: jazz, stuff that sounds like classical music to us now
1910s and before: Ragtime?, stuff that is classical music now

At some point Mozart was popular music, dude. Sixteen year old girls probably stayed up at night crying over Felix Mendelssohn.

Michelangelo's paintings on the Sistine Chapel ceiling

On this day, November 1, 1512, Pope Julius II unveiled Michelangelo Buonarroti's frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome for the first time. It took Michelangelo four years to paint them, and he hated it. He wrote this poem about it, which I love because it's one long complaint:

To Giovanni da Pistoia
"When the Author Was Painting the Vault of the Sistine Chapel"

I've already grown a goiter from this torture,
hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy
(or anywhere else where the stagnant water's poison).
My stomach's squashed under my chin, my beard's
pointing at heaven, my brain's crushed in a casket,
my breast twists like a harpy's. My brush,
above me all the time, dribbles paint
so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!
My haunches are grinding into my guts,
my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight,
every gesture I make is blind and aimless.
My skin hangs loose below me, my spine's
all knotted from folding over itself.
I'm bent taut as a Syrian bow.
Because I'm stuck like this, my thoughts
are crazy, perfidious tripe:
anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe.
My painting is dead.
Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor.
I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.

Not a painter! I love him. I went to the Sistine Chapel when I was in Italy, and it was glorious. Absolutely gorgeous and breathtaking. I'm sad he was forced to do it and that he suffered, but I think it was worth it because of the beautiful legacy he left to the world. Think of all the people who have been uplifted by its beauty.

You can read all of Michelangelo's poems here
The text of the poem is from this Slate article, which is excellent and you should totally read it
Image source
History info is from The Writer's Almanac's enewsletter for today

Halloween 2012

welp

Go On and Community comparison

So I've added Go On (plot synopsis: Chandler's wife died and he has to go to a support group full of loveable weirdos to cope and ends up befriending them) to my shows that I watch, and I've realized the reason I like it so much is because it reminds me of Community.

Chandler Bing Ryan King: Jeff Winger, obvs
Lauren (the group leader): a combination of Britta and Annie. Like Britta, she is the girl the sarcastic main character is totally going/supposed to end up with, and is a fake therapist who wants to help people. Like Annie, she has gorgeous brown shiny hair and adorable clothes I want to steal, and she wants him to be a better person (wait, Britta does too. And Annie is also cute together with Jeff).
Anne: much like Britta as well. She's angry, blonde, and constantly calling Ryan out on his ish. Also a recurring joke on Community is that Britta is lesbian and Anne actually is (her wife also died, like Ryan's).
Yolanda: Shirley! Also Annie, the overachieving, sweater-wearing, persnickety prude version of her.
Owen: A combo of Abed and Troy? idk.
Mr. K: Pierce, obvs. Also Abed. And Chang but not malevolent. And Dean Pelton? Like if you put the Dean and Pierce and some Abed and Chang together. Yeah this makes no sense.
Sonia: Britta (blonde single cat owner) but also some Annie and Shirley?
Fausta: Pierce? I have no idea. They don't have a Hispanic stereotype on Community (yet).
Danny: No idea. A bit Abed-ish.
George: Pierce because of the oldness. He's not been on lately.
Carrie: Annie-ish but not really anything.
Steven: No idea.

Yeah, that ended up being less clear-cut than I thought. Oh, I just remembered that Jeff is always being compared to Ryan Seacrest and Ryan King is always being mistaken for Rachel Maddow. So that's funny.

Disney's First Hispanic/Latina Princess?

All right, finally found something to blog about! I have no idea how I missed reading about this earlier, but apparently Disney is going to have its first Latina princess. Her name is Sofia and she becomes a princess because her mom marries the king of Enchancia (yeah, I know). Read this article and this one too. What I find weird is this:

• while Sofia's mom is clearly Latina (she is voiced by Sara Ramirez from Grey's Anatomy, while Modern Family's Ariel Winter voices Sofia) and has dark brown hair and eyes and brown/tan skin, Sofia has auburn hair, blue eyes and basically just looks white, and
• Sofia is going to be in a computer animated Disney Juniors television show, not in a full-length feature film like any of the other Disney Princesses.

Being Latin@ is an ethnicity, not a race, so obviously there is a great deal of physical variation among Latin@s or Hispanics (Latin@ [the @ is used as a combination 'o' and 'a' symbol; in Spanish males' words end in o and females' words end in a, so this way both genders are included] is a newer term that roughly means the same thing as Hispanic, but the latter is a word applied to our ethnic group by the US government [aka white people] to classify us, so many Latin@s prefer this word. It's roughly the same to me, although I grew up using Hispanic because my parents do). I myself am a 'white' Latina; my dad is Mexican and my mom is of Cuban descent, but there is so much Spanish blood (my dad's family were land owners and he had a French whoknowshowmany-great-grandfather, while my mom's family are Cubans who also pretty much directly descended from Spaniards) that my immediate family pretty much all pass for white (my sister is blond, even). You don't have to dig very far in this blog to find pictures of me; I do have dark brown hair but I also have white skin and blue eyes. I'm whiter than most white people. Obviously, just because someone has light skin, hair and eyes does not mean they can't be Latin@.
The problem is that this is Disney's first Latina princess. This is a big deal. I think this is just about the only ethnic group the Disney movies haven't covered. Quick rundown of Disney Princesses: Snow White (come on. It's in the name/fairy tale), Cinderella (blonde/blue-eyed), Aurora (ditto), Ariel (first redhead! still white even though she is a mermaid), Belle (brunette and brown-eyed, French), Jasmine (first non-white princess! Arabian? Clearly Middle-Eastern. Agrabah is not I think a real place), Pocahontas (Native American, an actual person but she was so not like that), Mulan (Chinese, what I said about Pocahontas although technically she is not a princess since her dude wasn't a prince), Tiana (first Black princess! also from a real place, New Orleans, and is African American), and Rapunzel (after all that diversity I guess we needed to return to a blonde, white princess. She has green eyes, though). Oh, and Pixar's Merida (Scottish; red, crazy curly hair; blue eyes. Love her). These are the official Disney Princesses™, although Giselle (played by strawberry blonde Amy Adams), Kida (Atlantean princess with tan/brown skin, white hair and blue eyes who is all *~exotic~*), Ariel's daughter Melody (also white and has black hair like her dad Prince Eric), and Eilonwy (princess from The Black Cauldron. She's your basic blonde/white/blue-eyed princess but in her defense TBC is based on a book that was heavily influenced by your typical European fairytales) also exist. There has been no Latina princess, though, so it's rather disappointing that this one looks like your basic white girl. Yes, white-looking Latina girls like me exist (obviously), but we already have enough princesses to look up to or hold up as being or looking like me (Belle 4eva). What about the brown-skinned girls? There's just Pocahontas, Jasmine and Tiana for them, but none of these are Latina.
I think it's been a long enough time since the only two Hispanic-adjacent movies in this vein that we can do another movie set in pre-Columbus America about Mesoamerican peoples. The Road to El Dorado (which was made by DreamWorks but was clearly trying to mimic Disney's movies/success) was about two bumbling conquistadores trying to find/steal from a city of gold with a wily Mayan babe's help (can't remember if she's royal but I doubt it), while The Emperor's New Groove (set loosely in the Incan empire in Peru) does not have Emperor Kuzco actually get married (his wife would be an empress, though) since it is an odd-couple buddy movie. Despite Tumblr's lovingly referring to Kuzco as the best Disney princess, he does not actually count (although he is entertaining). It would be really neat to have an Aztec or Mayan princess, but it would be just as neat to have a standard princess with the dress and tiara and everything who just happened to have brown skin and dark hair/eyes. The Disney representative mentioned as the source of this information in one of the articles linked to above said that they're not flouting her ethnic background, just treating it matter-of-factly, which I think is fine. It would be nice if a brown-skinned princess were treated as normal.
This is especially a bummer since Sofia's show is set in Enchancia (ugh), a made-up country. The people there could look like anything you want (although at least it does seem rather diverse, judging from the trailer), and you have that girl and the ruling family looking white? Disappointing. I'm definitely not saying I want a sombrero-wearing stereotype or a story you can't watch without 'Cielito Lindo' constantly being played (I'm looking at you, From Prada to Nada), but why would you say a character, especially one you're trying to market as a Disney Princess, is Latina but then not have their culture be anything relevant? As the EW article says, "Sofia is half-Enchancian and half-Galdizian. The two kingdoms are in a world where a few real countries like France exist, but they’re still fictional, making words like Latina and Hispanic less clearly applicable." Some of the light-skinned Latin@s talking about Sofia on Facebook (link from the Mashable article) are angry that other people think she's too white, pointing out that skin color doesn't determine Latin@-ness (which is true) and that the white princesses and famous people don't share our culture and experiences. However, it's not like we light-skinned Latin@s are finally getting representation either; the child's from made-up lands. How does that count as Latin@? It doesn't, in my book. It feels like Disney's trying to seem diverse without really being so. Dora the Explorer's better than this. We're getting the short end of the stick, representation-wise.
I also think it's weird that Sofia is from a (pretty basic-sounding) TV show for young children. All of the 'real' Disney Princesses were at least in their teens, of marriageable (for their medieval/fantasy settings, anyway) age, and this one is clearly a little girl. This is Disney's first Latina princess, and she doesn't even get her own movie? That plus her age makes her not really count as a Disney Princess; it makes her not very important. I just barely heard about her today, and the show starts next month. Maybe they will do a real, brown-skinned Latina princess with her own movie in the future. Who knows. It feels like we still have a ways to go.

Image from Mashable. Note Sofia's mom, fourth little box from left.

From Prada to Nada

The sister on the left never dresses like that. She is in cute but comfy clothes in the whole movie, except for the obligatory makeover montage (which doesn't take). And the sister on the right never works, for shoes or otherwise.

I watched From Prada to Nada with my parents a couple days ago, just in time for Mexico's Independence Day. It's a romcom retelling of Sense & Sensibility, which I didn't know and which made me happy because I love retellings of my favorite books (as long as they're good) and because I had been feeling meh about the movie (my dad talked me into watching it). Really, the title is groan-worthy and riches-to-rags stories with shopaholic girls are so done, but this movie was actually surprisingly good. The representations of the Hispanics/Latinos in the movie were real. Usually it's somewhat cringeworthy, but these were real Latino people saying things Latina aunts or whatever would totally say. This is because the director and the script writers were Hispanic, which pleased me. About 70% of what happened with the two main characters (the Elinor ["Nora"] and Marianne ["Mary"] characters) was just as lame/cringeworthy as you'd think, but overall it wasn't half bad. Was it predictable? Yes. I mean, if you've read S&S you know what's going to happen, obviously. And you could probably go through this movie with a Latino movie cliché checklist (cholas? check. La Migra joke? check. And so on). What I found interesting (besides the rather genuine portrayals of Latinos) was the stuff they added to the sisters' characters. Besides making Mary be all swept up in lurve with Willoughby/Rodrigo, they added the dimension that she wanted to go back to her old way of life in Beverly Hills and get out of East LA/the barrio, making her love of the hot TA more gold-digger-y/mercenary and less romantic. And Nora, instead of secretly loving Edward and then finding out he was engaged the whole time, went the standard "we banter! He likes me but I am scared and Turn My Back on Love!" and you know what happens next. It's interesting how they didn't want Elinor to be the boring perfect one and so they made her storyline more standard romcom. In S&S, Elinor really does nothing wrong while the only thing Marianne does wrong is love recklessly without thinking of propriety or consequences (well, she is quite rude and self-centered too). However, it's like for the movie they didn't want the girls to be that blameless, so they made Mary a gold digger and Nora all obsessed with her 10 year plan. idk. Overall I did like the movie and it made me sad I don't have like twelve Spanish names I can trot out at the drop of a hat (at most I have four but only two are Spanish) or a family that throws huge block parties with salsa music for El Grito where I can dress like Frida Kahlo (but I am always wanting to do that anyway. It's a pity I'm so white-looking). Overall I liked this movie, which you can watch for free on Amazon Prime. 3.5 out of 5 tacos.

Elinor: Uptight Career Woman Who Don't Need No Man (law student version). Can't speak Spanish but tries to learn. Played by a half-Brazilian actress (I was worried for a bit that they cast a white actress until I looked the movie up on IMDb).
Marianne: slutty shopaholic party girl with gold digger tendencies. Can't speak Spanish and tries to deny her Mexican heritage. Played by a half-Venezuelan actress (Carmen from Spy Kids!).
Mrs. Dashwood: dead, obviously was just like Marianne/Mary. Represented by painting.
Margaret Dashwood: axed (not necessary to story)
Mr. Dashwood: Gabriel Sr. models his mustache after Pedro Infante's, dies within the first 8 minutes of movie. Represented by topiary.
Edward Ferrars: Edward Ferris, hot lawyer. White but looks more Mexican than Nora does for some reason (played by Italian actor). Speaks Spanish badly.
John Willoughby: Rodrigo something, hot Mexican TA who turns out to be married and was just using Mary. Well, at least he got her to read a book.
Colonel Brandon: Wilmer Valderrama, hot thuggy vato who is secretly an artist/carpenter with a heart of gold. The above two actually speak Spanish well.
Sir John Middleton: actually became the girls' tia, an awesome lady who with her two comadres is also Mrs. Jennings.
John Dashwood: Gabriel Jr., who turns out to be Gabriel Sr.'s illegitimate son and has daddy issues because his father never acknowledged him, wanting to save his marriage to the girls' mom. A pushover and super wimpy, lets his wife control him, so just like the book.
Fanny Dashwood: forgot her name but she is a right bitch, just like in the book. Blonde WASP.
Lucy Steele: Bitch-in-law's bestie, is set up with Edward and he's engaged to her like immediately. Also white, but interestingly she does no scheming, just passively does whatever "Fanny" says. Is only relevant as an obstacle to Edward and Nora getting together.
Setting: Beverly Hills, East LA
Recurring themes: cultural heritage, importance of family (obvs, that's in every movie with more than one Latino person), Cielito Lindo song

On Habakkuk 2: 18-19

by Doug Groothius

This glamorous gusto for godlets;
this voracious volition for vacuity;
this incessant insistence for idols.

Grasping a fistful of falsehood.
Consuming a stomach-ful of stupidity.
Filling a mind full of maddening mush.

Perform! Oh, you purveyors of nothingness.
Entertain our eyes, fill our years.
Enthrall our ears.
Give life to our living, and
deal the death blow to death.

We made you,
Now re-make us.

Rereading Emma

Mr. Knightley scolds Emma for matchmaking because she is meddling in affairs that don't concern her and causing her friend Harriet to think too highly of herself. Harriet, someone's illegitimate daughter, is too low of a social station to think of marrying Mr. Elton the vicar, while the gentleman-farmer Robert Martin is perfectly all right for her. Mr. Knightley is correct in his opinion of it and in telling Emma what he thinks, but I find it interesting because he sort of does the same thing himself. It is he who gives Robert his blessing to marry Harriet, and it feels like he's upset in half because his own neat matchmaking was ruined by Emma's. Later on in the book, too, he lets or sends Robert Martin to London to meet up with Harriet and propose to her (which she accepts, since she is far away from Emma's influence). Mr. Knightley may possibly lecture Emma about matchmaking and having strong, often selfish opinions about things and people because he recognizes such inclinations in himself.
Emma dislikes Jane Fairfax because she is the ideal accomplished, elegant young lady: excellent at music, genteel, quiet, pale, never speaks out of turn, etc. Emma is "handsome", true, but she is strong-willed, chatty, witty and not afraid to show it, likes to take control, doesn't practice her music or read enough, etc., and she feels a grudge towards Jane for being so perfect and so much closer to the Ideal Young Lady than Emma is. No one else in Highbury brings to light her shortcomings, except Mr. Knightley. The latter and Emma are friends, but a good chunk of their friendship is them bickering, mostly about her character flaws and things she does wrong.
Also, can we talk about how creepy it is that Mr. Knightley has been the Woodhouses' family friend since Emma was a child and was always trying to improve her character and correct her behavior, and professed falling in love with her at thirteen? He tells her this towards the end of the book, and while it is clear he didn't realize it until Frank Churchill came into the picture as a plausible love interest for Emma some months earlier and Mr. Knightley became jealous of him and realized why (and Emma is twenty to twenty-one years old in the book), that's still seriously creepy. He's sixteen years older than her! He's old enough to be her dad, which in itself is creepy enough, but he's known her since she was a child?? Someone I was discussing the book with once said that they'd read something comparing Mr. Knightley's behavior to child molesters/predators who "groom" their child victims into mentally accepting them as partners later on, or just to accept their abuse as not being wrong at all. Like, they groom them into becoming their perfect mate. Uggghhhhhh. I don't think that was Mr. Knightley's intention, obviously, but it's still really creepy and weird.
I read Emma mostly on my Nook and partially from my Barnes & Noble Classics copy. The Nook book is "25 Favorite Novels" in one ebook, which is nice because it was 99 cents, but there are no foot- and endnotes like in the B&N Classics, and I think it can only hold like ten highlights at a time? I'm quite sure I highlighted my favorite passages from P&P and S&S in the ebook, along with Emma, but I can only see/read the latter book's. It sucks. Also, each book is treated as a chapter, and while there are "Book I" and chapter divisions within each book, you can't jump to the next chapter within the ebook book. That sucks most of all. For some reason the place wasn't kept between my Nook app on my phone and my Nook ereader, so that was a pain.
Anyway, I read the introduction to my B&N Classics copy of Emma, which was an exhaustive essay in the awesome English journal article style on Emma and its characters and social aspects, etc. Those are quite interesting, if you like literary analysis and criticism, but I don't recommend reading the introductions (for sure in the B&N Classics books) before you read the novel because they will ruin it for you. Besides, it's nice to go back and get insight on the characters and plot points etc. after you've already read the book. Anyway the person who wrote Emma's introduction pointed out that Emma chose to befriend and improve Harriet and manage her love life because she sees her as an extension of herself. Like, Emma herself does not want to have a love life, partially because she does not think she can due to her codependent father, but she can be involved in Harriet's love life. She treats her like a human Barbie, almost. A love life by proxy. A fascinating discussion of control (Emma must be first in everything) and self-absorption. Emma does annoy me but I think I mainly like her.

I read Silas Marner and it was good, sad yet heartwarming at the end in that sympathetic, melodramatic way of most nineteenth century novels. It was good but from all that I'd heard of George Eliot, I sort of expected more? More fleshing out or explanations or whatever. There was a lot of buildup for Silas getting the little girl Eppie, and then it's just like "flashforward 18 years and Eppie's a gorgeous golden-haired girl!" Like of course she is. But for all that's spent on Silas's life prior to that? No depictions of single-father life? No struggles with raising a little girl on one's hermit/miserly own? And we're just told that Godfrey Cass just like marries his love, just like that? I hate just being told things. Show, don't merely tell! I just feel like there was a lot of potential in the story and with its characters. How did Godfrey convince his wife to marry him? How did she take over the household and get it running well? How did Godfrey live with the guilt of pretending the child wasn't his? I hate just being told stuff after the fact. IDK. I'm used to Dickens and Austen.

Anyway, I'm now reading Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales. I'm of course familiar with and have read most of them, but I like having a complete collection. I bought it at Barnes & Noble last Saturday night. It's not a gorgeous leatherbound book like the Hans Christian Andersen one that I bought at the same time, but the Grimm's was $8 while the other was $20, so. The Grimm's has a lovely wood scene painting as the dustjacket cover, while the HCA one is a gorgeous purple leatherbound one with gold designs. A bit too cutesy to be truly old-fashioned, but it's still nice. The books are uploaded to my LibraryThing (widget in sidebar). Oh, I also bought the fourth season of Ugly Betty on DVD, so now I own the entire show. I will have to watch it one of these days.

Cuentos

Tell me who you are
are you a good witch or a bad witch
neither, you're the other girl in the story
not the love interest (that'd be far too exciting)
you're the girl who sits in dull existence
waiting for the story to be about her
you're the jealous sister, one of the people
in the village or the chambermaid who fetches
the light and perhaps if you are lucky
you'll become the mother (step or otherwise)
of the hero who fulfills the quest

this is something they never told you
maybe you're not the storybook
you're just the bookmark in it

Birthday, silver anniversary

A quarter of a century old and I feel half that, maybe.
It's hard to judge what age I "really" am,
this kaleidoscope of mindsets and feelings,
and I know we are all every age we've ever been,
but I am an age I've never been and will not be
for years. Twenty-five, twenty, sixteen, twelve;
some and yet none of them fit. I'm fit for adolescence
now, not hardly when I was in it. Extended childhood,
extended adolescence, and then what? I won't know.
I never do. Always reaching on ahead, stretching to
fill the gap. I succeed and also don't. Keep trying
anyway; they will be fooled because they want to be.

Barnes & Noble Haul

I love my family and friends. Whenever it's my birthday or Christmas or graduation, they all immediately know to give me Barnes & Noble giftcards. I have a lot thanks to graduating from UCLA, so I went to B&N and bought books (of course).
I got:
-Miracles by C.S. Lewis
-Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon [unfinished] by Jane Austen [in one volume]
-The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
-Abarat by Clive Barker

I'm pleased with these finds but I'm going to have to check a few finished versions of Sanditon out from the library. I think I mentioned that The Mystery of Edwin Drood is my favorite Dickens probably but I'm sad it's unfinished. We'll see how I like Sanditon and The Watsons. I've read Lady Susan before; it is a riot. She's a total Wilhelmina Slater rich femme fatale with the guys twisted around her finger. Love her.  I think I'm going to return Abarat, though, because there are no illustrations. Clive Barker is apparently also a painter, and the copy of Abarat I checked out from the library was hardcover and had his weird, creepy, wondrous paintings to supplement the story. Since I know about them I must have them in the copy of the book I own.
As always, all my books are in my LibraryThing (widget in sidebar).

Rereading Mansfield Park

I think I hate Mrs. Norris more than I hate any other Austen character. Probably even more than idiot Lydia from P&P, because she's young and, while stupid, is indiscriminate with her stupidity and doesn't single anyone out like Mrs. Norris does. Good grief does she ever have it in for her niece. What did the poor girl ever do to her? I hate her so much. She just smashes her down at every opportunity. Why is she so eager to make her low? What good does it do anyone? At least Austen shows an improvement in her writing by giving Mrs. Norris some comeuppance. Sir Bertram overrides her and won't let Maria move back home after the latter runs away and lives in sin with Henry Crawford, ruining her reputation etc., so she and Mrs. Norris are forced to live in another country together. Austen is clear that while Maria is her aunt's darling, Maria doesn't love her back. So there's something, at least. That's not enough of a comeuppance, in my opinion, but at least it's a bit better than what passes for Lydia's (she has to live out the rest of her days with Wickham, who doesn't love her. But her family mainly still keeps in touch with her. Ugh.).
It's also easy to get frustrated with the characters in Mansfield Park, but not as much as I did with S&S. The intro was all like "oh readers hate Fanny because she is so virtuous" but I like her, probably because I am rather like her. However, she is so very retiring and, well, wimpy, and modern culture has taught us to despise people who don't stand up for themselves, plus she's so weak and gets headaches from cutting roses in the garden wtf. Look at her life, though. She's the second oldest of TEN children (those who are anti-birth control haven't read this book, I'll wager. I do want kids but I'd rather die than have more than four) and is sent away to live with relatives who are strangers to her when she is ten years old, and the only one who is nice to her is her cousin Edmund and everyone is super eager to show her how inferior she is and is always ignoring, scolding, or putting her down. So of course she's the way she is. She could easily be worse. She actually shows strength of character in being against the play even though she'd been taught to obey her relatives all her life and her opinion was never taken into account. She also refused Henry Crawford even though her entire family, even Edmund, lectured that she should accept him because she'd never get a better offer. They even brought out the big guns that had kept her in control all her life, gratitude and obedience, but Fanny stuck to what she knew was right. I like her for that. The English professor or whatever who wrote the intro in my B&N copy points out that Mary Crawford is more of an Austen heroine than Fanny is, because Mary is sparkling and witty and flirtily argues with her love interest etc. But she hates religion and doesn't care about propriety and is all about the exciting rather than what is right. So for that she is not a good match for Edmund, even though they love each other.
Edmund is the second nicest character in the book, but I still get frustrated with him. Mary is beautiful and charming, yes, but really his love so blinds him that he cannot see she's totally wrong for him. He's going to be a clergyman, for pete's sake. And then instead of sticking up for Fanny when she turns down Henry Crawford, even though she explains that he's never acted properly and was leading both the Bertram girls on like the dickhead player he is, he lectures her too about how wrong it is of her to reject him. WTF, Edmund. Just because he's your gf's brother doesn't make him perfect. I mean, Edmund knows Fanny best of anyone and he really thinks Henry's a good match for her, with his player ways that don't take propriety into account? Come on. Just seeing her distress should be enough to not pressure her to do something she doesn't want to do. What I really dislike him for is when both Betram girls run away with their paramours (Maria with Henry and Julia with Mr. Yates) and he brings Fanny home from visiting her immediate family, and he's all like "yeah, Fanny, it sucks that your only suitor who was in love with you totally dropped you and ran off scandalously with your married cousin to live in sin and so now you'll never marry him, but think of ME! My gf didn't really do anything wrong except for not being shocked enough at the immorality of her brother and my sister, therefore showing that she's totally wrong for me and for a clergyman's wife!" Yeah, ok. Selfish much? I guess what he's saying that is that it probably hurts Fanny less because she didn't love Henry, but he really loved Mary so it really hurts to see, without any of the prior love-blindness, that she doesn't care about morality and is totally wrong for him. Like, she's only mad that they got caught, not that they did it. Still, though. And I was less disgusted with it this time, but I still hate that Fanny is a second choice. She's loved Edmund half her life, basically, and it's not until after he sees finally that Mary is wrong for him and finishes nursing his broken heart that he sees, "exactly when it's proper and not a week before", that Fanny's great. How convenient, he sees her good qualities in a new light and falls in love with her, mainly because his prior love, whom he really loved, turned out to be a twerp and wrong for him. Where have I heard that before? Poor Fanny. She's just a second choice, like Colonel Brandon. She deserves to be loved first.
This book is really heavy on morality and propriety, which makes it less popular today. It's hard to see what's so immoral about young people putting on a play to amuse themselves. I can see the objections to the play itself, which is about a mistress and illegitimate child, etc., but as to the putting on of the play I don't really get the objections. Oh well. The morality and Fanny's meekness are probably why this book isn't as well loved as P&P or Emma, as well as its slowness and length. The whole "be virtuous/a good girl and you will be rewarded (often with a love of your own)" thing is very common in literature of this period and before, but MP is more modern in its portrayal of this old trope. The book is clear that you will be unpopular if you do the right thing, that you'll be outcast and that those who do or think wrong are much more attractive than you. Society doesn't censure it anymore. It's harder to be good now that the reward is less sure. I like it also for that reason.

Rereading Sense & Sensibility

Fanny Dashwood is such a bitch ugh. Moving into her late father in law's house right after he dies??? That's so rude and inconsiderate even by today's standards!
John Dashwood is such a snotweasel, too. Selfish idiot. Don't feel guilty for not helping your half-sisters and therefore hope their friends will give them money, YOU do it!
SHUT UP Mrs. Jennings you need to stop
You too, Sir John. And especially you too Miss Steele
Edward srsly what is wrong with you
I mean really, y so awkward
And why on earth did you get engaged to Lucy Steele in the first place (okay, young love makes you an idiot) but then stay engaged to her? So dumb. And then he goes and falls in love with Elinor! Either you break it off with the first chick or you stay away from the second! You're supposed to be a gentleman for pete's sake
And really WTF is up with Lucy Steele? Does she suspect Edward loves Elinor instead of her? What's with all her secrets and conjecture? The basic bitch. So Lifetime movie
Willoughby can die in a fire. I wish he did
Marianne is SUCH. AN. IDIOT. Like, I get that she's sanguine and is all ~*FEELINGS*~ and crap, but what was wrong with her father in not trying to correct that? He didn't die until she was like sixteen; that's plenty of time to address the problem. Or hire a governess who can. Why is Elinor the only non-idiot in the family? Like, Marianne is just so rude and crap, even by today's standards. You don't go with a guy to his aunt's house that he'll inherit when she dies; that's just rude. And she's so rude to people she doesn't like (which is everyone besides W and her immediate family and Edward).
Also what is with people assuming couples are engaged if they talk to each other. Like can't people just like each other? And write letters to each other? Geez
Mrs. Dashwood is such an idiot too. It's mainly her fault her daughter turned out like that.
Okay, Elinor, you are the only one with any sense. PLEASE butt into your sister's love life and boss her around. She's too stupid to manage it on her own. We're lucky Willoughby didn't knock her up, really, with the way she was acting.
I really, really do not get why Elinor and her mom didn't just ask Marianne, so like are you engaged? Oh, you're not? Well, don't act like you are unless you want people thinking you're a total common tart, free milk = not buying the cow etc. BOOM, problem solved.
I mean Edward seems nice and all but he's so insipid and passive I feel he doesn't deserve Elinor
Elinor should have ended up with Colonel Brandon
I haven't reached the ending yet but I really think Jane Austen just made C. Brandon end up with Marianne as like a nice pity consolation prize cuz his life was so sad. I don't buy their supposed love. It's convenient, is all.

War Some of the Time

                                             by Charles Bukowski

when you write a poem it
needn't be intense
it
can be nice and
easy
and you shouldn't necessarily
be
concerned only with things like anger or
love or need;
at any moment the
greatest accomplishment might be to simply
get
up and tap the handle
on that leaking toilet;
I've
done that twice now while typing
this
and now the toilet is
quiet.
to
solve simple problems: that's
the most
satisfying thing, it
gives you a chance and it
gives everything else a chance
too.

we were made to accomplish the easy
things
and made to live through the things
hard.

The Poet Visits the Museum of Fine Arts

For a long time
     I was not even
        in this world, yet
           every summer

every rose
     opened in perfect sweetness
        and lived
           in gracious repose,

in its own exotic fragrance,
     in its huge willingness to give
        something, from its small self,
           to the entirety of the world.

I think of them, thousands upon thousands,
     in many lands,
        whenever summer came to them,
           rising

out of the patience of patience,
     to leaf and bud and look up
        into the blue sky
           or, with thanks,

into the rain
     that would feed
        their thirsty roots
           latched into the earth—

sandy or hard, Vermont or Arabia,
     what did it matter,
        the answer was simply to rise
           in joyfulness, all their days.

Have I found any better teaching?
     Not ever, not yet.
        Last week I saw my first Botticelli
           and almost fainted,

and if I could I would paint like that
     but am shelved somewhere below, with a few songs
        about roses: teachers, also, of the ways
           toward thanks, and praise.

 ~Mary Oliver

We went to the Uffizi museum today and I saw Botticelli paintings in person. It was lovely. I've been saving this poem for that.

Sono in Italia (I am in Italy)

I'm too lazy/busy to blog regularly about what I'm doing, but I'll occasionally post stuff under the tag "adventures in Italy."

Bookend Songs

Rihanna's "Where Have You Been" (2012) and "We Found Love" (2011)

• I've been everywhere, man, looking for you, babe / Searching for you, babe
  

• We found love in a hopeless place
  

 

Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time" (1998) and "Stronger" (2000)

To Waiting

You spend so much of your time
expecting to become
someone else
always someone
who will be different
someone to whom a moment
whatever moment it may be
at last has come
and who has been
met and transformed
into no longer being you
and so has forgotten you

meanwhile in your life
you hardly notice
the world around you
lights changing
sirens dying along the buildings
your eyes intent
on a sight you do not see yet
not yet there
as long as you
are only yourself

with whom as you
recall you were
never happy
to be left alone for long

                      —W.S. Merlin

Black Mask

I rediscovered a favorite blog, Inside a Black Apple. I love her art and the general atmosphere of her online presence: comforting, old-fashioned, fairytale-like and just a little bit mysterious. Anyway, I was looking at the prints on her Etsy shop (there are so many that I want) when I came across this one:

It seems I had that print subconsciously in mind when I took the following picture a few months ago.

I actually made the mask in grade school, years before I was a serious peruser of the Internet. I think it was meant to be a black cat mask (like the print above), but it makes me think of the Bat superheroes. Batgirl was a librarian, so I took and like this picture. It was my profile picture for a while.

Rainbow Meal

Red tomato
Orange sweet potato fries
Yellow mac & cheese
Green peas
Purple shirt
and I am blue.

The Batman of Songs

I'm a sucker for freebies, and free song downloads from iTunes are no exception. I usually download the ones I like every week (I think the free songs change every Monday). Last week I downloaded a single called "Come Back Down" by Greg Laswell featuring Sara Bareilles. It's a great pop song, catchy and rather anthemic, but it's kind of jarring when you listen to the words. The official music video handily features the lyrics, so go ahead and watch it:


The song's message can basically be summed up as, "Sack UP, ho! Get your act together! Look at your life; look at your choices." It's interesting that this song is so blunt; most pop songs feature watered down optimism and meaningless positive platitudes. I rather value this song's honesty.
So why do I call this the Batman of songs? It's awesome and popular with audiences, but it's kind of a downer when you think about it. Also, this is not the song people want, but the song they deserve.

LA Times Festival of Books 2012

Just got back from it. I had a great time! I got a free mini mocha McFrappe (McDonald's answer to the Frappuccino or however you spell that), a chocolate brownie Clif bar and fruit gummy thing, a sample of avocado-pineapple smoothie (consistency is like applesauce but it tastes like calmer, less acidic pineapple),  a pretty little copy of the Quran, some bookmarks, a purple tote bag, a plastic visor with the USC Keck Medical Center logo, and an I READ button. I wrote what I'm reading on the big canvas poster the LA Times has where you can do that (that's where I got the button), and my nerdy heart was warmed when I saw others had written DFTBA and I BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES! :') The only thing I'm sad about is that John Green was only there on Saturday, yesterday, so I wasn't able to see/hear/meet him. I bought a bigger button with the LATFOB logo (this year's has a dinosaur) and saw Julie Andrews (!) from a ways away and heard her read from her children's book. I also went to a panel at the YA stage and heard The Fug Girls and a couple other YA authors read from their books and talk about the writing process. Then I bought Spoiled and had it signed by the Fug Girls themselves! I was so psyched to meet them; I've been reading their blog for years and feel like I know them. They were very nice and just as bubbly as I'd imagined them. Now I have to head back to school, but I'm glad I got a chance to go!

Belief

"I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen—I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." ~Samantha Black Crow, American Gods by Neil Gaiman

At one point I thought I wanted these things. Now it is certain that I won't get them, and I see that it's for the best. Really, the more I think about it the more I see I don't want them; they're not for me. Yet I am still sad about them.

Let me tell you about my day

My morning:
-filled out and turned in cap & gown pics order form, paid for them
-printed out and had site supervisor sign agreement to intern form
-interned

My class, Information Literacy Instruction, is in Powell Library, which is probably one of the most gorgeous libraries I've ever been in. It's fantastic. I wish all my classes were held there. However, its layout is stupidly designed and so there is no straightforward way to get to the third floor. I have to go up the stairs to the second floor, turn down a few corridors and then take the elevator to the third floor, then go down a couple more corridors before reaching the classroom (one of those technology ones; everyone has a laptop). Anyway, this class seems pretty interesting. However, I (along with the rest of the class) had to create a Second Life account. Your 3D avatar interacts in a computer-generated 3D world... IDK, it's just so 2000s. So high school. I didn't do anything like that in high school, but it feels apt to say it's so high school. The teacher's going to host class on SL at some point, which is why. She loves it. :| :| :| I have no idea what I'm doing on there (how does one chat? I can barely move around) and don't really feel like downloading the SL Viewer software. Sigh. Really the only thing I like about it is that my avatar's a lavender and blue VW Bug.
I also had to get a Twitter account, which I am feeling much less blergh-y about. If I ever get around to using it in an normal manner I may link to it. I've toyed with the idea before but I probably wouldn't have gotten one without an outside reason. We're supposed to tweet questions or something.

The intermediate salsa class begins at 8 pm Tuesdays, so I catch the evening van after "only" 10 minutes of waiting and after finally getting dropped off hightail it to the Wooden Center in order to only be a few minutes late... and another class is using the ballroom. Run into classmates from last quarter's class (they are in this quarter's class too) and they look up the recreational schedule. Yes, the class starts next week! Lovely. I walk back home and finish my ramen.

Bookshelf update and other things no one cares about

So I rearranged my books so they're ordered a bit better. I'm still not entirely satisfied with the way they are but my dad stashed some of my books elsewhere so I'll reorganize when I find them.
The top two shelves (fairy tales/myths/Arthurian and CSL) are the same, but the third shelf is now animals (anthropomorphic and otherwise), fantasy, and Old-Fashioned Books (this will be rearranged because I'm thinking of moving my Discworld books down there to make room for the other Gaiman books); the fourth shelf has poetry, Austen and mysteries; and the fifth has Dickens and girl/Old-Fashioned Books and other/modern.

Over three days into my spring break and I still haven't caught up with or even watched any of my TV shows. And I was just on Tumblr so I got kind of spoiled on some of them, especially Community. I need to go see The Hunger Games too, and I want to go see it with my best friend and my brother and his girlfriend (who is the one who introduced that series to us) and my dad and I doubt it will happen because it's too many schedules to coordinate. It's been just appointments and cleaning for me this week ever since I came home. Sigh.

Thrift Store Book Haul/Bookshelf Blues

Ah, spring break! How sweet it is to not have to worry about homework for a little under two weeks. Well, except that I should work on my portfolio. And I returned to my old room to find that my dad had rearranged it all and left me with 12 boxes of stuff to go through that are cluttering up my room. But oh well. One of the first things I did when I got home was to go to the neighborhood thrift store with my dad. He found a large mirror with a wooden frame he was able to varnish and hang over my mom's dresser for $5, and I bought books! I wanted to look at the clothes too but I never seem to make it there. This time I bought:
-The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (I have this one already, obviously, but I'm collecting the Cliff Nielsen covers)
-Heroes and Villains: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling, The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame, and "Custard the Dragon" by Ogden Nash (this mini anthology was made for use in the classroom to teach elementary kids literature)
-The Golden Key by George Macdonald with illustrations by Maurice Sendak (lovely, lovely story. Maurice Sendak's style isn't a very good match for George Macdonald's stories, but I'm fond of him because he's one of the illustrators of my childhood. George Macdonald was basically C.S. Lewis's C.S. Lewis, if that makes any sense, and you see his influence in CSL's books)
-Ex-Libris by Ross King (a mystery set in 1600s England where a bookseller/antiquarian must find a lost manuscript. This sounds so up my alley; I can't wait to read it)
-Silas Marner by George Eliot
-Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende (a Chilean woman makes her way to Gold Rush California. I've been meaning to read Allende; there are so few Latina writers, especially Latina fantasy writers. This book is historical fiction though)
-Life of Pi by Yann Martel
As always, these are up on my LibraryThing (widget in sidebar).

I've also had to rearrange my books because when my dad moved the bookshelves, he put back the books but mixed mine with my sister's. It's interesting because he mostly left them in the same order, but in an entirely different place. So my C.S. Lewis shelf is down pat, as is for the most part my fairy tales/myths/Arthurian lit/primary fantasy shelf, but I'm not so sure about the bottom three shelves. I'd like to keep all my fantasy books together, especially because I have a lot of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett and Diana Wynne Jones and they are/were all pals, but since I'm out of room I have a second fantasy block on the fourth shelf. Right now after CSL I have poetry, then Possession forming the poetry-literature bridge to my Austen books, and since those are all B&N Classics I keep The Scarlet Pimpernel with them and that leads me to mysteries (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Sherlock Holmes and Rivals/Further Rivals of, The Woman in White) then my Dickens (starting with The Mystery of Edwin Drood to bridge with the mysteries, then going backwards in time), then I have my second fantasy set because they don't quite fit in elsewhere, plus DWJ's Dogsbody bridges nicely with my animals books. Then from animal books I go into Old-Fashioned type Books and books about girls. Then after that it's just what fits (mostly modern). I'm actually thinking of switching my poetry/lit shelf and the fantasy/animals shelf so that it's after CSL; that makes more sense. And my dad stuffed other books of mine elsewhere, so I'm probly going to come across them and wail in despair. I've actually started putting some of my books (either religious or less-loved) in my sister's bookshelf; she has way fewer books than me. I do NOT need fewer books; I need more shelf space. And more time to read.

There's this contest I'm sort of toying with the idea of entering. Students are supposed to submit a bibliography of 50 or fewer books they've collected. I have exactly 50 CSL books if you count the extra Narnia books and ignore the George Macdonald writing anthology edited by CSL. I'm afraid I'd look like a fanatic turning that in, though. But I could also possibly win money. IDK.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

This movie won an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. It is now one of my all-time favorite movies. Utterly lovely and wonderful. (I didn't get the pun in the main character's name until just now.)

My Monday Morning Commute

Two Hispanic middle-aged ladies sat across from me on the train this morning, quietly chattering to each other in Spanish the whole time. Towards the end of the trip, a crotchety white man told them it was the quiet car, a term I translated for them. They asked me if I was going to school, which school, and what I was studying. They were nice and I thought, "Wow, it's a lot like talking to my grandma." Then one of them said, "If a boy tries to kidnap you, fight him, scream!" and I was like "Holy cow it is exactly like talking to my grandma."

Two things that made me happy today

-I'm sitting at the bus stop when two guys pass me. "...Streets ahead!" says one. "Streets ahead?" repeats the other. "March 15!" the first replies. If you're a Community fan, you got that. I've never seen other Community fans in real life or at least heard them talk about the show.
-When I'm about to cross the street while walking home, a car stops at the sign in front of me, my favorite song by Gotye blasting from its speakers. With the biggest grin on my face, I step off the curb to cross the street, singing the ending line, "Now you're just somebody that I used to know..."

Two bonus random/embarrassing things:
-It was cold when I was walking home, so I pulled on the hood of my magenta hoodie. I pass a guy who laughs at me: "You look just like Little Red Riding Hood!"
-When I get to the apartment door, my key card doesn't work. Seeing the lights on, I ring the doorbell so my roommate could open the door for me. A girl I don't know opens the door. That's when I realize I'm at the wrong apartment complex. It looked exactly the same as my apartment, surroundings and all.

Stopping by Blogs on a Lonely Evening

Whose blogs these are I think I know.
We've never met in real life, though;
No one will know I'm stopping here
To watch my dash fill up with posts.

You probably would think me weird
To stop doing my homework here
Between my midterms and finals
The darkest evening of the year.

My conscience gives my mind a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the hum
Of laptop fan and me, awake.

The Web is lovely, dark and deep.
But I have my grades to upkeep,
And months to go before I sleep,
And months to go before I sleep.

Apologies to Robert Frost.

Male Bias

men and women, boys
and girls, and husbands and wives
we always come last

If you want something to undermine your school life/grades: try Tumblr
If you want something to destroy your emotions: try BBC's Sherlock

El Año Viejo

The traditional songs about a new year beginning seem melancholy and seem to focus on friends (Auld Lange Syne, My Dear Acquaintance [A Happy New Year]). The only Spanish song I know of on the same subject seems happier and counting-my-blessings-y (it's a scientific term), but that may be because the rhythm is so danceable. (this version is the best I can find on YouTube. Viva Celia Cruz.)

Good things that happened in 2011:

• I survived my first year and the first quarter of my second year of grad school
• I started a great job
• I got my driver's license
• I read some great great books and saw some good movies
• I hung out with my friends
• I bought a new laptop
• And a Nook 
• I did some library volunteering in the summer
• My brother and I bought our parents a new desktop computer
• My parents sold our minivan
• My little brother started college
• My mom started a new job she likes
• My sister studied abroad in France and Argentina (she's there now)
• and just got engaged
• My best friend's little girl was born, as was my cousin's second child. Babies are the best
• Said bestie^ graduated from nursing school and passed her boards and is now an RN
• I started this blog
• I got involved with Change.org and learned that if a lot of people click-sign petitions, stuff actually happens. It's a start.
• Other stuff I can't remember (these items are just in the order I thought of them)

Bad things that happened in 2011:

• My paternal grandmother died.  This has been the hardest thing to come out of this year.
• We just learned that my step-great-grandmother passed away too. She was my grandmother's stepmother.
• Natural disasters all over the world of varying intensities and horribleness such as tsunamis, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes and wildfires
• Steve Jobs and Elizabeth Taylor died
• Political crap, such as awful and/or sexist laws and the way OccupyWhatever protestors were treated. You will never convince me that it is okay to pepper-spray an 80-something year old woman in the face.
• The State of Georgia killed Troy Davis
• My maternal grandmother has had some worrisome medical stuff happen. She fainted twice a few weeks ago.

I was a bit worried I'd have more stuff in the Bad section than the Good, but I'm glad that's not the case. I think 2011 was somewhat better than 2010, but it still was rather difficult in parts. Here's to hoping 2012 is great.

Number of books read in 2011: approximately 139