Snow Blood and Coal

Winter break: a recap.

2005-01-07T11:30:00.000-05:00

Well. Much has happened this winter break, but really, nothing at all has happened. Strange that way, isn't it?

Anyway, I finished both Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies, and they were a lot of fun. I want to read the Liveship trilogy, too, but I seem to have mostly run out of vacation time. Robin Hobb rocks.

I also read a lot of comics. Alias, as I said, is awesome, and Straczynski's run of Amazing Spider-Man is pretty cool too, although I've only read through 2002 at this point.

There has been a considerable amount of cooking. For the first time since summer, I'm eating most of my meals in. Last semester, my hours (getting out after 7pm every night) pretty much guaranteed that I would eat out every night. Now, though, with a little bit of time and better hours in the upcoming semester, I get to start cooking again, which is very relaxing and enjoyable.

Also, I've made a bunch of bread over break, which has all been good, to varying degrees, and two batches of granola, which have been very good indeed. I love to make granola. It looks so impressive, when in fact it's so very very easy.

Anyway, I just lost all concentration, so I must end this post now. Damn.

Sweet and bready.

2004-12-27T01:28:00.000-05:00

O my gosh. I just made what may be the single best loaf of bread I've ever made. I was concerned and concerned because it didn't look like it was rising enough, but I put it in the oven, I took it out, and it's gorgeous. And it's sweet and it's nutty and it's everything that a wheat bread should be. The only problem that I can identify with it is that the top didn't brown adequately, but that may be a problem with the loaf pan that I used or my oven. Either way, it's no big deal.

New Stuff... quickies.

2004-12-22T09:40:00.000-05:00

Aight. I know that I said I wasn't going to do quickies so much anymore, but I have a lot to update and not much time:

1. Turned in my paper for my Performance Studies and Cultural Studies classes. I haven't gotten it back from either professor, but I did well in both classes, so I suppose that it went over pretty well. I still think that finding Hannah Arendt and Michael Jackson two days before the paper was due turned it from an okay paper into a really good one.

2. Went to Los Angeles and returned. I had a really good time while I was there--got to hang out with old friends, see lots of my parents, go to the beach (although I only got to go once), eat lots of seafood, bad indian food (the worst indian food), and for the most part, have a good time.

3. Got an iPod (Happy Chanukah to me!) and lots of good music to go with it. Discovered that David Byrne of Talking Heads fame is really good on his own too. Rediscovered how much I like Lenny Bruce's comedy, and the music of Blonde Redhead, Sonic Youth, and Pavement. Overall, got interested in music again in a way that I haven't been in a long time.

4. Finished the four published volumes of Alias. Really good. I like Brian Michael Bendis anyway, and I like his writing in standard Marvel Comics, but this was above and beyond. So good, and he treats his characters and the adult content of the books so well, that I couldn't stop raving about them for nearly a week. I ended up giving volume one to a friend, and making my father read part of it, too. He doesn't like comics, but he liked this one.

5. There is no number five.

6. That is all.

Squelch

2004-12-14T11:39:00.000-05:00

Thank you Heuristic Squelch for once again being simultaneously disgusting and hilarious:

Top Eleven Sapphic Star Wars Characters:

# Grand Muff Tarkin
# Jabba the Cunt
# Darth Vagina
# Lando Clitorissian
# Princess Labia
# Vulva Fett
# G-Spot 3-PO
# Chew-box-a
# That damn sand thing
# R2-Queef-U
# The E-Twats

Lots of lists.

2004-12-13T09:50:00.000-05:00

I always say I never do these lists, but here we go:

2004 Restrospective:

1. What did you do in 2004 that you'd never done before?
Write some papers that I think I could publish; write some papers that others have offered to help me publish

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?:
I don't do resolutions. I don't like to make promises.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?:
Nope.

4. Did anyone close to you die?:
My maternal great uncle.

5. What countries did you visit?:
Uhh... none?

6. What would you like to have in 2005 that you lacked in 2004?:
I would like to have some publications... and a masters degree.

7. What date from 2004 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?:
Nothing particularly stands out...

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?:
Got engaged.

9. What was your biggest failure?:
Hmm... I try not to think about the failures.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?:
Nothing serious.

11. What was the best thing you bought?:
Perhaps a Tale-Type index. Although there are a number of books I've bought that might qualify as best.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?:
Mine and Sarah's (see question 8)

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?:
Both Bush and Kerry... and the media covering the election, and Dick Chaney, and Don Rumsfeld... I'm seeing a pattern here...

14. Where did most of your money go?:
School and comic books.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?:
First, see question 8. Second, school (I wrote two papers this year that I found really exciting and engrossing). Third, Joss Whedon writing X-men.

16. What song will always remind you of 2004?:
Can't think of one. Maybe that Maroon 5 Song...

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

* happier or sadder?: about the same.
* thinner or fatter?: about the same.
* richer or poorer?: uhh... maybe poorer.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?:
Socializing, Writing.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?:
uhh.. maybe see question 18.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?:
Alone. Probably reading about theories of writing history.

22. Did you fall in love in 2004?:
All over again.

23. How many one-night stands?:
Countless :-D

24. What was your favorite TV program?:
In 2004? Nothing that I saw was particularly good.
Generally, Buffy, Futurama, Deep Space Nine...

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?:
Nope. I hate all the same people.

26. What was the best book you read?:
Hm. History of Sexuality vol 1, The Signifying Monkey, Farseer Trilogy, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and probably some others that I'm forgetting.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?:
Maybe God Speed You Black Emperor, but I may have gotten into them in 2003

28. What did you want and get?:
I think I got most of what I wanted.

29. What did you want and not get?:
I wanted to be done with coursework, and I didn't get it.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?:
The Incredibles, probably

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?:
I turned 23. I wrote a paper.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?:
Publishing something... finishing coursework...

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2004?:
I don't know what it means. Perhaps "personal fashion unconscious" would be appropriate.

34. What kept you sane?:
Sarah. Comic Books.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?:
Uhh... I don't think that I "fancy" any celebrities.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?:
Gay Marriage.

37. Who did you miss?:
Berkeley friends who I only got to see once or twice. Los Angeles friends who I didn't get to see at all.

38. Who was the best new person you met?:
uhh... most exciting new person I met (although she's not really "new," just new to me) was Ruth Finnegan. Very cool. Very friendly. Seemed genuinely interested in my research.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2004:
Be pushy. If you don't tell people what you need, you won't get it.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
perhaps: "I'll sink with Kalifornia, as it falls into the sea." But for no good reason. Just because it makes me think of 2004.

Whether the Weather will block out the sun...

2004-12-11T08:47:00.000-05:00

So you know how they say that neither rain nor sleet nor dark of night will keep a postman from his appointed rounds?

Not so of MLA indexers.

I had wanted to go into work this morning, make up some hours, but there's no where to park and the walk was so miserable that I turned back. But how can you blame me? It's 35 and freezing rain is coming down. My hands and face went numb. If it was just cold and not raining, I wouldn't mind going, but the rain was actually freezing to my jacket.

Ah well. I figure I'll just do as much as I can on monday and tuesday and then make up the rest of my hours at the beginning of next semester.

ungh...

2004-12-09T21:50:00.000-05:00

Too much writing make brain crusty.

On the bright side, almost finished with my big long paper. I have to do a little bit of editing and write a conclusion tomorrow morning, and then I can turn it in. AND THEN I'M DONE!

BTW - Check out The Pulse. Very cool comic.

A Joke, yet not a joke.

2004-12-06T09:11:00.000-05:00

Q: What do the mellon in my refrigerator and my cat Aleister have in common?

A: They're both getting their balls cut out today.

But seriously, Aleister is getting neutered today. This means that by January, he'll be able to go outside, and all will be well with the universe. Now here's to hoping that he decides he wants to go outside...

Things I've been reading:

2004-12-04T08:24:00.000-05:00

New Avengers #1: Pretty freaking cool. I didn't love the "Disassembled" ending of the old Avengers, but the new one looks like it's starting out with a bang. Good reasons to reform an an Avengers team, interesting potential new members, etc. The writing is good. I like the characterization of Spider-Man. The art is okay. I don't like the way Matt Murdoch is drawn, and we haven't met Wolverine yet, so I hope that he isn't like Brian Michael Bendis' Wolverine in Secret War. One odd thing: Apparently, this is all taking place before Secret War. I didn't expect that.

Ultimates 2 #1: Very cool. Everything that I thought it would be. Again, looks like there's good reason to assemble the team, good writing etc. And it looks like there are going to be a couple of really interesting conflicts that are almost the wrong kind for superheroes to handle. I'm looking forward to the next issue for sure... Plus, I love the way they treat Thor.

Avengers Disassembled: Thor: This is a collection of the last days of Asgaard. I've only read the first issue in it, but I must say, so far I'm not impressed. After Bendis' Avengers Disassembled, despite all problems I had with that, this is just sub-par. Writing's not as good, art's goofy. And I love Thor, so I'm a little bit disappointed.

Spectacular Spider-man: Disassembled: Haven't started this one yet.

Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb: This is a really cool fantasy novel, which will turn into a very cool fantasy series, I think. It's strange in that it's not an epic journey kind of book, and it's told in the first person, but it's very very compelling, and very influenced, it seems, by nineteenth century French popular literature, and by historians like Ferdinand Braudel and the Mentalitee school. Very good. Highly Recommended. Plus I decided to read it after George R R Martin highly recommended it on his web site. So it's not just me saying it's good.

Two Good things and one Bad thing.

2004-11-30T17:06:00.000-05:00

Two Good things:

1. I finished my paper for my Gypsy class yesterday--came in at about 13 pages, so not too far off from the recommended page count, which was 12. I turned it in this afternoon, so now all that's left is to give a 20 minute presentation about it next week in class. I'm thinking PowerPoint.

2. I just wrote the first three pages of an introduction to my Deep Down in the Jungle paper. It's not the best introduction in the world, but it certainly lays out the pertinent issues, and (perhaps more explicitly than I would like) what I intend to discuss in the paper. My goal before thursday, when I have to turn in a rough draft for Cultural Studies, is to have the entire introduction completed, and to be a little farther along--a page perhaps?--in my discussion of discourse. Hopefully I'll be able to get Frame Analysis back from the library in time to get it done.

One Bad thing:

1. The copy of Erving Goffman's Frame Analysis that I had out of the library was an undergraduate library book, which means that I could only have it for six weeks (two weeks with two two week renewals). So I had to turn it in on friday. The woman behind the counter promised me that it would be shelved by monday and I could check it out again. Well. Today (tuesday, not monday) I went into the undergraduate stacks to look for the book, and low and behold, not there. So I checked online: not checked out. So I went and asked at the front desk: "well, we don't have it. It must be on a cart somewhere waiting to be reshelved." Well I looked on the carts. "Then we don't know where it is.

I'm going to check again tomorrow, then see if I can't find a copy elsewhere.

...

2004-11-29T17:17:00.000-05:00

"Hello. Pizza Express. Can you Hold?"

"No. I'm sorry. I'm on a tight schedule here and I'm having a pizza emergency."

Thanks a lot Pizza Express for wasting time when I could otherwise be writing and waiting for my pizza.

See, I can post often.

2004-11-29T08:45:00.000-05:00

Well here I am, posting again. Not much. Just a progress report and a todo list:

So yesterday I got to page ten of my paper. I have between two and three pages left to write, I think. It shouldn't take me too long. I pretty much know what I want to say. I have to talk about "Vana," a legend where a woman returns from the dead to nurse her unborn child, but the unnaturalness of the situation leads to the death of the baby. Then I have to write a conclusion, and I'm not sure what to do about that. I think that I want to talk about the significance of these narratives being a hybrid, but not in the sense of a chimera--more in the sense that they are narratives with international distribution, but localized among the Roma, they have been appropriated for Roma purposes. Hence the quite possibly oikotypical ending of AT882 "Wager on the Wife's chastity," and hence the extent of the content, generally, about marime. Even if not a word changed between... say... hungarian tellings and Roma tellings, the idea of appropriation still fits because the content has been resignified to Roma purposes. There is a reason after all that these are narratives that the Roma chose to tell.

But I rant. Today:

1. Finish my Gypsy paper.

2. Get a significant amount done on the introduction to Deep Down in the Jungle.

3. Don't go to work (I'll go on friday, I guess).

4. Wait for the new bed to be delivered (we bought a new bed. A Platform bed).

5. Maybe read a little bit of Politics and Poetics of Transgression.

5a. More likely, finish the stupid fantasy novel that I'm reading (Don't read Sara Douglass people. Just don't.).

6. Do housework.

7. Maybe go to the comic book store and see if I can't find something worth reading (I wish that I hadn't decided to wait for compilations of Fables before I read them).

8. Retrieve Sarah at the airport (she comes home tonight).

9. This is all for now.

Huzzah!

2004-11-27T10:34:00.000-05:00

So after much struggling and moping and reading of comic books and stupid fantasy novels, I think that I have beaten my writers' block. For those who don't know, I need to write a paper for my Gypsy class for tuesday, and I had written this introduction that I liked a lot, and then the writers' block struck. I got stuck on page three, and for almost a week I could make no progress. So yesterday, I decided to toss the introduction. I went and made an outline, did a wee bit of new research, and here I am now, chugging away in the middle of the fifth page of this paper. My problem now is not how to meet my page limit, but how to keep the paper to my page limit. I've discovered that I have enough to say to write considerably more than what I need to for the project. The problem is that most of it is descriptive of a set of beliefs and practices that is little known, and thus not cuttable. I figure that if my paper is 14 or 15 pages rather than 12, she won't dock me, but for my own good, I should know when to quit.

In other news, I've made a resolution to write in my blog more often. I used to update every day, and then it was every other day, and now I'm lucky if I do it once a week. So expect to see a little bit more in here in the future.

Quick things...

2004-11-21T09:45:00.000-05:00

I don't think that I've talked about HFS yet, so here goes: the Hoosier Folklore Society meeting was a lot of fun. A lot of people gave relatively frivolous papers. I gave my paper, which everybody who had had Dorson as a teacher or colleague really liked. I got some good comments and suggestions for an ending. And then I left early because Sarah was with me and wanted a nap before going to work.

Last week was relatively uneventful.

My parents are here:

We went to Nashville on friday, and they really enjoyed it.

I cooked them dinner last night: Penne with my béchamel-based gorgonzola cream sauce, brazed chicken with more of said cream sauce, salad with vinaigrette dressing. They liked it.

Then we went to Brewster's ice-cream, which they also really liked.

I've also taken them to Nick's, the Irish Lion, The Runcible Spoon, and Uptown Cafe. A good time has been had by all.

Problems: I have two papers due right after thanksgiving, and I'm having a bad case of writers' block. I can't write an introduction to the paper for my performance and cultural studies classes, and I can't write the body of the paper for my Gypsy class. So we'll see how things go.

Good things: I read the first volume of 4 (Marvel Knights Fantastic Four) yesterday, and it was pretty cool. I also read the new Captain America #1, which was really cool (lots of potential) and the first couple of issues of Secret War (I'm not thrilled, but I'll read the rest).

Anyway, must go eat breakfast. Cheers!

Arguments against gay marriage:

2004-11-18T13:49:00.000-05:00

The two best arguments against gay marriage that I've found:

"It's against God and the bible"

And from CNN today (see the whole article here), concerning the ability of homosexuals to marry in Massachusetts:

"I've always argued that from May 17 onward, my heterosexual marriage was no longer unique, no longer a standard for the culture, and that's an affront to me and it grieves me."

This is the kind of rhetoric that really pisses me off. What inherrent right do heterosexual couples have to unique standing? Why is it so important that heteroxexual marriage be a "standard for the culture" (and what does that even mean)? I feel like this is the kind of rhetoric that makes me not want to invest in the institution of marriage, and the kind of rhetoric that cheapens marriage for everybody. Through bitterness and exclusivity, the owner of this quote has in effect done to marriage exactly what she wants to protect it against: made the institution a joke.

Sorry for the rant. This really gets to me.

Things and stuff...

2004-11-09T09:10:00.000-05:00

So friday I'm scheduled to talk for 45 minutes about Richard Dorson, disciplinarity, and folklore in literature. I wonder sometimes how I got myself into this, and then I realized that I asked for the 45 minutes rather than 30, and I cringe. I know that I can fill up the time. A 20 page paper should read in about 40 minutes. The problem is whether everybody will leave or go to sleep while I'm talking. I'm following two of my professors who have slides and ethnographic adventure stories. How can I compare to that?! But we'll see. Things always turn out right in the end, I suppose.

Now all that's left is to rewrite the end of the paper and fix my bibliography...

Hypnotoad...

2004-11-08T08:05:00.000-05:00

Listen to Hypnotoad: "Adam has been posting a great deal of relevant information in his blog recently. It is one of the top blogs on the internet."

rrrrggghhh....

2004-11-03T20:59:00.000-05:00

I don't want to talk about it.

Mwahahahahahaha!

2004-11-01T07:56:00.000-05:00

A very slightly late happy Halloween to all of you out there. This was sort of a mixed bag of a Halloween for me, I think.

Saturday night, we took Chantal and Dustin out for dinner for Chantal's birthday, then decided that we were going to go to an English department costume party. The costumes were fun, as it turned out, but the party, for the most part, was kind of a bust. Part of it was that Sarah and I weren't really feeling very much like mingling with strangers, but part was that the English people didn't seem to be feeling very receptive to being mingled with. On the bright side, thanks to Chantal and her extensive wardrobe of peculiar items, I found a wig and a red cloak-like thing, and along with a set of wolf teeth, I got to go to the party as Aarne-Thompson type 333. When asked what I was supposed to be, I told people that I was Little Red Riding Hood, the folktale, not the character. That was fun.

Then last night, I just sort of chilled. I did a bunch of school and non-school work that needed doing. I finished my Ph.D. application portfolio, finished my review of Ulo Valk's The Black Gentleman (I was very diplomatic), and then went and watched the original House on Haunted Hill and Roger Corman's Little Shop of Horrors. I had never seen the former before, and it was pretty good. Goofy, but good. The latter, I have seen, but not since I was ten, probably. So I didn't remember very much until it actually happened. It was at least as funny as I remember it, though. So that was good. And Sarah finally got to see it, and that was good too.

Anyway, got to run and turn in my Ph.D. portfolio before work.

Posting from work again, what am I to do...

2004-10-27T09:28:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure about this posting from work, thing, but I post so infrequently that and have so little time to do it at home, that it seems my only option. And actually, I don't really mind it. I do require a break once in a while, after all...

Anyway, not much new to say. I've chosen my classes for next semester. I'm taking one on the History of Folkloristics, one on Folklore and Literature, and maybe an independent study if I can think of a topic and work things out, although I don't know if that will actually work out. My plan is to write 50-60 pages worth of my thesis for my classes next semester, so that I won't have a whole lot left for the summer. This means actually getting off my ass and doing that, though, which will be a great effort for me, given my recent track-record about my schoolwork (I've been a little bit neglectful this semester). On the other hand, it also means that I won't have to get off my ass so much next summer, which is good, because I'm notoriously lazy over summers. So we'll see how things turn out.

And now, some haikus, courtesy of the kind people at The Modern Humorist (the titles are anagrams of the author's name):

Two Haiku
by Basho

Has B.O.

Swamp mist, eyes water—
Why is that monk still wearing
Winter robes in June?

Ah, SOB

A yellow snake eats
The robin's lone precious egg—
You motherfucker

quickies.

2004-10-21T11:27:00.000-05:00

It's been quite some time since I've written, but for good reason. So here goes:

AFS was a lot of fun, but a little grueling. My talk was okay. I saw a lot of really good papers. A lot of really bad papers. Dundes pissed everybody off, but we all knew he would.

I got back and took monday off--slept until almost 11:00am, which is the latest I think I've ever slept. And I've been really tired ever since.

Dozed off in Performance class last night, but nobody noticed. Also, nobody noticed that I wasn't participating, because nobody was participating. I think it's just that time of the semester.

Before I left, did I mention that I got a new Wok? It's very cool. It's a traditional wok that requires seasoning, and with my gas stove, it gets freaking hot! Stir Fry here I come (actually, I'd like to learn to cook Szechuan food).

This is all for now.

Done!

2004-10-12T19:20:00.000-05:00

Finished my AFS paper, and it's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. All it took was spending all afternoon rewriting the entire second half of the thing. Not bad for a days work. Now to dine with me!

Quickies.

2004-10-12T07:23:00.000-05:00

I got a new Wok and it's really cool. I've seasoned it up with grape seed oil, and I'm stir-frying my little heart out. Trying versions of things that I've seen on the Iron Chef of all places [insert fake-sounding Japanese laughter].

I'm almost done with my AFS paper. I have to re-write some stuff, then write two and a half more paragraphs, then I'm done. I can do that today, I think.

In fact, I must do that today, because I leave for Salt Lake City tomorrow. And I will return on Sunday, a whole lot less stressed.

My AFS paper is really bad, and feels really phony, and the reason is that rather than it being about the data, the data is only incidental to my theoretical rantings. I'm going to try and fix that a little bit today, but there's really nothing that I can do to make it completely right. I've always written papers as "apply two parts theory to one part data, mix well...". I think that I'm going to try and break out of that.

I've been reading Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality Volume 1. I like it a lot. In fact, it's one of the most compelling academic books, as a piece of literature, that I've ever read. I've read other Foucault that I didn't enjoy so much, but this... this is just an excellent extended essay.

See last two items. I really want to be a better writer. I think that I've got the academic writing thing down cold. Now it's time for me to unlearn it and learn instead to actually write good essays. I want to be one of those people who's compelling enough to be read by the general public, but theoretically savvy enough to be read by academics. I think that's a good goal to think about while I'm writing papers.

That is all for now.

The Vice-Presidential Debate...

2004-10-06T07:39:00.000-05:00

Edwards and Cheney settle things the only honorable way: THUMB WAR!

I don't ordinarily do these...

2004-09-30T16:58:00.000-05:00

although these days, I seem to be doing them more and more. Thanks Jeana for a survey to pass the time. By the way, has anybody ever thought of online serveys as a means of constructing identity to ones self? New Paper idea! Performing Identity with Online Surveys!

Well, here goes:

Really Long Survey (over 200)
Created by starsbleed2nite and taken 38031 times on bzoink!
What is your name?	Adam
Are you named after anyone?	No
What's your screename?	wadam, wakko, etc.
Would you name a child of yours after you?	no
If you were born a member of the opposite sex what would your name be?	Don't know... Ashley?
If you could switch names with a friend who would it be?	wouldn't
Are there any mispronounciations/typos that ppl do w/ your name constantly?	my name has been mis-spelled Dan before
Would you drop your last name if you became famous?	nope
Basics
Your gender:	male
Straight/Gay/Bi:	straight
Single?	taken, ladies.
If not, do you want to be?	nope
Birthdate:	4-17-81
Your age:	23
Age you act:	Sometimes 6, sometimes like an old man
Age you wish you were:	23
Your height:	6'1"
Eye color:	Hazel
Happy with it?	yup
Hair color:	brown
Happy with it?	moderately
Lefty/righty/ambidextrous:	lefty
Your living arrangement:	w/ GF
Your family:	lots
Have any pets?	two cats (Lucien and Alesdair)
Whats your job?	Graduate Student / Lacky for the Modern Language Association
Piercings?	none
Tattoos?	none
Obsessions?	folklore, comic books, dungeons and dragons, technology (the list goes on)
Addictions?	TV
Do you speak another language?	nope, but I read some (German, Italian, Latin, a little bit of Hebrew)
Have a favorite quote?	"God made my body. If it is defective, the defect lies with the manufacturor and not the product. Do not remove this tag under penalty of law" (Lenny Bruce)
Do you have a webpage?	http://wadam.blogspot.com
Deep Thoughts About Life and You in it
Do you live in the moment?	nope
Do you consider yourself tolerant of others?	moderately
Do you have any secrets?	a few
Do you hate yourself?	nope
Do you like your handwriting?	yes (although the degree to which it looks like my father's scares me)
Do you have any bad habits?	yup.
What is the compliment you get from most people?	"You like bibliography, don't you?"
If a movie was made about your life, what would it be called?	Death and Dying in Higher Education
What's your biggest fear?	blindness
Can you sing?	nope
Do you ever pretend to be someone else just to look cool?	nope
Are you a loner?	yup
What are your #1 priorities in life?	folklore, Sarah (GF), world domination?
If you were another person, would you be friends with you?	nope
Are you a daredevil?	nope
Is there anything you fear or hate about yourself?	probably
Are you passive or agressive?	yes.
Do you have a journal?	Online, not paper, and never very detailed.
What is your greatest strength and weakness?	beer (the cause of, and solution to all life's strife)
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?	I would improve my social skills
Do you think you are emotionally strong?	yup
Is there anything you regret doing/not doing in life?	yup.
Do you think life has been good so far?	yup.
What is the most important lesson you've learned from life?	answer questions tersely (brevity is the soul of wit, you know)
What do you like the most about your body?	its corporeal presence.
And least?	the necessity for corporeal presence.
Do you think you are good looking?	yes and no.
Are you confident?	no.
What is the fictional character you are most like?	uhh... Pandarus? Philip J. Fry? JORELL, MASTER OF SCHEDULING!!
Are you perceived wrongly?	sometimes
Do You...
Smoke?	no
Do drugs?	sometimes
Read the newspaper?	sometimes
Pray?	no
Go to church?	no
Talk to strangers who IM you?	sometimes
Sleep with stuffed animals?	no
Take walks in the rain?	sometimes
Talk to people even though you hate them?	no
Drive?	yes. quite a bit, actually.
Like to drive fast?	sometimes
Would or Have You Ever?
Liked your voice?	sometimes
Hurt yourself?	yes.
Been out of the country?	yes.
Eaten something that made other people sick?	yes. many things.
Been in love?	yes.
Done drugs?	yes.
Gone skinny dipping?	yes.
Had a medical emergency?	yes.
Had surgery?	oral surgery (wink wink)
Ran away from home?	nope
Played strip poker?	I was once present at a game, does that count?
Gotten beaten up?	nope
Beaten someone up?	yes.
Been picked on?	yes.
Been on stage?	nope
Slept outdoors?	yes.
Thought about suicide?	nope
Pulled an all nighter?	yes.
If yes, what is your record?	32 hours
Gone one day without food?	yes.
Talked on the phone all night?	yes.
Slept together with the opposite sex w/o actually having sex?	yes.
Slept all day?	nope
Killed someone?	nope
Made out with a stranger?	nope.
Had sex with a stranger?	nope
Thought you're going crazy?	yes.
Kissed the same sex?	nope.
Done anything sexual with the same sex?	nope.
Been betrayed?	yes.
Had a dream that came true?	yes (this questionairre. It was a long, boring dream)
Broken the law?	yes.
Met a famous person?	yes.
Have you ever killed an animal by accident?	yes.
On purpose?	yes.
Told a secret you swore you wouldn't tell?	yes.
Stolen anything?	yes.
Been on radio/tv?	yes (don't tell anybody, okay?).
Been in a mosh-pit?	yes.
Had a nervous breakdown?	not clinical.
Bungee jumped?	nope.
Had a dream that kept coming back?	yes.
Beliefs
Belive in life on other planets?	yes.
Miracles?	maybe.
Astrology?	no.
Magic?	maybe.
God?	maybe.
Satan?	YES!
Santa?	YES, OH YES!
Ghosts?	maybe.
Luck?	not in the sense you mean it.
Love at first sight?	yes.
Yin and yang (that good cant exist w/o bad)?	yes.
Witches?	I have some close friends who are witches. It would be remiss of me to disbelieve them, wouldn't it?
Easter bunny?	no.
Believe its possible to remain faithful forever?	yes, but no promises.
Believe theres a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow?	believe there's a pot of something at the end of the rainbow.
Do you wish on stars?	occasionally
Deep Theological Questions
Do you believe in the traditional view of Heaven and Hell?	I believe that the traditional view exists.
Do you think God has a gender?	inasmuch as God is our creation and we cannot think outside of gender binaries.
Do you believe in organized religion?	I believe that organized religion exists.
Where do you think we go when we die?	Into the Pacific Ocean, if we're lucky.
Friends
Do you have any gay/lesbian friends?	yes.
Who is your best friend?	uhh... Max? Sarah? Sofiya? Uhh...
Who's the one person that knows most about you?	see above.
What's the best advice that anyone has ever given to you?	when in doubt, answer "see above"
Your favourite inside joke?	I AM JORELL, MASTER OF SCHEDULING!
Thing you're picked on most about?	my fashionable sense of punctuality?
Who's your longest known friend?	Max.
Newest?	uhh.. lots of new or new-ish friends...
Shyest?	??
Funniest?	??
Sweetest?	??
Closest?	??
Weirdest?	??
Smartest?	Too many smart friends.
Ditziest?	??
Friends you miss being close to the most?	Max, Sofiya, everybody in Berkeley.
Last person you talked to online?	I don't talk online, unless you count yelling at the computer.
Who do you talk to most online?	Ben.
Who are you on the phone with most?	Family.
Who do you trust most?	Sarah?
Who listens to your problems?	Sarah (although listens may be the wrong word)
Who do you fight most with?	Sarah.
Who's the nicest?	Sarah.
Who's the most outgoing?	??
Who's the best singer?	Hana
Who's on your shit-list?	you.
Have you ever thought of having sex with a friend?	yes.
Who's your second family?	is "second family" like "third world"? Should we be PC and call it "developing family"?
Do you always feel understood?	no.
Who's the loudest friend?	I'm my own loudest friend, for I AM JORELL...! And second would be Max.
Do you trust others easily?	no.
Who's house were you last at?	mine?
Name one person who's arms you feel safe in:	Sarah.
Do your friends know you?	perhaps. I can't speak for them.
Friend that lives farthest away:	So many live so far away. But perhaps Ben in Davis, CA. That's a whole different world.
Love and All That
Do you consider love a mistake?	Nope.
What do you find romantic?	things... and stuff.
Turn-on?	brains, a nice neck.
Turn-off?	back hair, girls who wear belly shirts who probably shouldn't.
First kiss?	??
If someone u had no interest in had interest in dating u how would u feel?	like singing?
Do you prefer knowing someone before dating them or going	knowing first.
Have u ever wished it was more socially acceptable 4 a girl 2 ask a guy out	the only way I've ever gotten dates is when girls have asked.
Have you ever been romantically attracted to someone physically unattractiv	yes.
Do you think the opposite sex finds you good looking?	probably only very moderately.
What is best about the opposite sex?	... Dave Foley would say menstruation, and in a sense, he would be right.
What is the worst thing about the opposite sex?	... Dave Foley would say that menstruation is the bes thing about the oposite sex, and in a sense, he would be wrong.
What's the last present someone gave you?	nobody ever gave me nothin'... but seriously, I don't remember.
Are you in love?	yes.
Do you consider your significant other hot?	to me.
Who Was the Last Person...
That haunted you?	you.
You wanted to kill?	YOU.
That you laughed at?	there was this girl who fell down the stairs on campus this one time.
That laughed at you?	there was this girl who fell down the stairs on campus this one time.
That turned you on?	uhh... ?
You went shopping with?	Sarah?
That broke your heart?	don't remember.
To disappoint you?	don't remember.
To ask you out?	Sarah, I suppose.
To make you cry?	Sarah, I think.
To brighten up your day?	Sarah.
That you thought about?	Sarah (just now, as I was writing the previous answers)
You saw a movie with?	Sarah.
You talked to on the phone?	Sarah (or maybe Jeana).
You talked to through IM/ICQ?	don't remember.
You saw?	I sawed? Ouch!
You lost?	From the Bunching 100 question parody test: Why, did you lose one?
Right This Moment...
Are you going out?	I am out.
Will it be with your significant other?	Not with her.
Or some random person?	Nope.
What are you wearing right now?	I'm wearing my keyboard (there's a lot of these questions, you know).
Body part you're touching right now:	Reflexivity would suggest that I am currently touching every part of me right now.
What are you worried about right now?	School, Life, you.
What book are you reading?	I'm not reading, you insensitive clod!
What's on your mousepad?	no mousepad.
Use 5 words to describe how you're feeling:	entertained, bothered, tired, hurried, harassed.
Are you bored?	nope.
Are you tired?	yes.
Are you talking to anyone online?	nope.
Are you talking to anyone on the phone?	nope.
Are you lonely or content?	yes.
Are you listening to music?	nope.
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Go go HFS!

2004-09-30T15:43:00.000-05:00

So I just submitted a 100 word abstract for the Hoosier Folklore Society conference. And it's for a paper that I've actually already written (yay!). I have 40-50 minutes, so I'm going to give the paper that I wrote about Dorson and the "Identification of Folklore in American Literature" article. Abstract, crappy as it may be, is included here:

On Reading “The Identification of Folklore In American Literature.”
By Adam Zolkover (Indiana University)

Neither the scholarly debate surrounding Richard Dorson’s 1957 article, “The Identification of Folklore in American Literature,” nor the limited extant scholarship on Dorson and his career, addresses the methodology proposed in this article as part of a larger project encompassing Dorson’s career. In this paper, I wish to do just that: Using evidence internal to the article and from his collected writings, I intend to demonstrate the degree to which his proposed methodology for the identification of folklore in literary works was integral to his project of defining American Folklore both as a discipline, and as a subject matter.

A Funny thing...

2004-09-29T07:00:00.000-05:00

A funny thing happened to me yesterday. I lost track of what day it was, worked until 1 p.m., had lunch, and only just after two did I realize that my Gypsy class had been going on already for an hour. So I ran in late, unprepared, and was immediately asked a barrage of questions about the text. Luckily, I could pass with the excuse that I was a little bit frazzled and trying to figure out where we were (having missed an hour and all). It really sucked.

Looking up.

2004-09-26T10:01:00.000-05:00

So things are definitely looking up. I have an outline for my Deep Down in the Jungle paper now, and by the end of the day, I should have a working bibliography, and perhaps an introduction. The problem is that my outline is primarily for the 20-30 page paper that I'm writing for my classes, and cutting it down to 10 pages to give at AFS will be something of a problem. I'm not too concerned, however. Now that I'm actually getting ideas down and getting reading done, I'm pretty well convinced that things are going to turn out well. Very well, in fact, considering how excited I'm getting about this paper. I have at least 30 items in mind for the bibliography, and enough material to write A LOT, I think. Go me.

In other news, I think that I have a pretty good model for a MA thesis. Verbal Art as Performance by Richard Bauman (yes, my professor assigns his own essays) is a little bit short for a thesis at 51 pages with notes, but it's laid out in a very coherent, logical fashion that would work well as a thesis. And for my thesis, all the better because of the subject matter. I think that it'll take a bit of thought to get things right, but things shouldn't be too hard on that account.

2004-09-25T11:54:00.000-05:00

The cats are crazy. CRAZY!

I don't want to do work.

I have about 400 pages worth of reading to do for my Deep Down in the Jungle paper, preferably in the next couple of days.

I have so much reading for my actual classes.

On the bright side, I'm writing the same paper (an expansion of the Deep Down in the Jungle paper) for both my performance class and my cultural studies class.

But have I mentioned that I don't want to do work?

Oh yeah, and I feel like complaining.

Aight.

2004-09-19T11:22:00.000-05:00

Here's some quick ones:

I'm sick. Yuck. I feel like shit and all I want to do is sleep and play video games. Which brings us to our second point:

I have so much reading to do. I need to finish re-reading Althusser on Ideological State Apparatuses for tuesday, then a bunch of performance stuff for wednesday, not to mention that I'm presenting on the reading for my Gypsy class on tuesday and I don't even have the reading for that (I need to go to the library tomorrow whether I'm well enough to go to work or not). Oh yeah. And let's not forget the AFS stuff that I haven't started doing yet.

I saw Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow yesterday. It was very cool. I really didn't like it in the beginning, but it grew on me as it went on. It was very smart and made reference to a lot of the more obscure classics of sci-fi cinema (not to mention the obvious ones). It's spotty in places, but gets my recommendation overall.

As I hinted before, if I'm not feeling better, I'm not going to work tomorrow. I can make it up on friday. That'd be okay if it meant not being sick at work for 4 hours.

Yet another Lotus has passed me by, and I didn't get to see any of the acts. I really don't like that you have to buy day-long passes to the Lotus festival. Really, I only wanted to see one or two bands that were going to be here (Darrol Anger and Mike Marshall, for instance), but instead of being able to just pay to go see them, I'd have to pay for the whole day. Suck.

And I think that's all my updating for now. Off to pick Sarah up then eat bagels for lunch! Yay! More Bagels!

Hm.

2004-09-16T16:31:00.000-05:00

Been a while since I've posted. From now on, I'll try to be better about that, but being out of the house for so long, so much of the week, things are really hectic and not conducive to a daily blog... We'll see what happens. I'd really like to keep up with this better, but... we'll see.

Anyway, so the question on everybody's mind is: What has Adam done this week?

Well, last weekend, there were a bunch of parties. Friday, I and a bunch of folklore people went to the Irish Lion for dinner and drinking, which turned out to be a pretty good idea, considering that they're not that expensive for dinner if you only eat the pub-grub, and the drinks are significantly cheaper than at Nicks English Hut, which is where the Folklore Department usually holds its happy hour. I guess the lesson here, then, is down with the English! Éireann go Brách!

Then saturday night was Jeana and Sarah L.'s pirate party, which was really cool. A lot of good drinking and raucousness--and singing of chanties!--there. And then sunday night, Peggy (another folklorist) had a party at her house in the country, which is so spacious outside that it's almost ranch-like. That was a lot of fun, and I got to see Henry (Glassie) and Pravina (Shukla), whom I haven't seen in a while. All good times.

In other news, I also made Lox this week, which turns out to have been a bad idea. They came out really well. REALLY well. But there is a lot of them, and only me to eat them... and I have no bagels. This was just poorly planned.

Well... reading and class and work, so I'm off.

Aight.

2004-09-09T13:22:00.000-05:00

It only took two attempts and a whole lot of run-around, but I managed to book a room for AFS at the low advertised price of $115 per night. So between four people, that comes to $28.75 per night, which is only just a little bit over $100 per person for the entire conference. Pretty good deal, I'll say.

Quick things.

2004-09-09T07:22:00.000-05:00

Our little kitty is so cute. It turns out he's a boy, and his name is Alestair, and it turns out that he's incredibly friendly, although really playful in that slightly bothersome kitten-like way. He also makes Sarah have panic attacks about asthma, so we'll see how long he sticks around. I'm sure that if he really makes Sarah that unable to breath, we would have a plethora of friends willing to give him a good home.

Work is good. Although I still can't input the books I've indexed into the computer because the one (ONE!) guy at the MLA headquarters who takes care of such things is on a two-week vacation. So I have a hundred or so items sitting on my desk waiting to be copied into the computer, and I'm a bit bothered that it'll end up taking forever just because some guy in NY is on vacation and the MLA is too cheap to get a temp.

And school is good. I'm making some little progress on my AFS / Performance class paper. I'm also doing a lot of reading by the founders of Cultural Studies (although not E.P. Thompson. I'd rather read E.P. Thompson.) and significant reading on the Roma and what exactly it means to be Romanes.

Finally, there's a whole lot of socializing going on. More, I think, than I've ever done before in my life. It's kind of nice, but it's also kind of a bother, being that 4 days a week, I have to get up before seven to get to work on time. We'll see how this plays out...

Wow.

2004-09-04T09:09:00.000-05:00

Been a long time since I've written. Sorry about that. The first week of school has been exceedingly time-consuming. Not bad, but definitely time-consuming. I'm working monday-thursday morning for three or four hours indexing books for the folklore volume of the MLA bibliography, which is a very cool job, but much harder work than I thought it would be. Fortunately, it's very flexible, and they don't mind when I need to take a five minute break every 45 minutes (because my eyes get buggy indexing article after article). Then my classes are also pretty cool. I'm taking "Roma History through Music and Art," which is kind of a strange class in which we're reading pretty much everything ever written on Eastern European Roma (Gypsies for the non-politically correct). Then I'm taking "Introduction to Cultural Studies," which is interesting and for which the reading is good, but in which the professor is kind of crazy. We don't exactly have seminar-style discussions about the readings in that class. Instead, she goes through and asks us questions and makes comments about what the author is trying to do; and when we do discuss, it's very strange because English grad students apparently have a very different idea of things like "art" than do folklorists. Finally, I'm taking "Performance," which seems really cool. I'm not a huge fan of Performance theory as the central idea of my research, but I figure if I'm going to take one class on the subject, this should be it (Performance with Bauman is like taking Semiotics with Umberto Eco, or something). The reading is good, and I'm going to write my AFS paper as my paper for the class (and hopefully as my paper for my cultural studies class too), which is really nice.

But classes aren't all that's going on. I went to a lovely late-night party last night out about half-way toward Nashville, IN, where I mingled with a bunch of cool folklorists and non-folklorists, and even six cows of various colors and designs. And then today, we're getting the new kitten. She's done with quarantine, so we're going to pick her up and take her right to the vet, where we'll traumatize her some more. Her name, by the way, is going to be Anna. So we'll have Lucien and Anna at last. Haha! I would have also accepted the name Akathla (like the world-eating demon from the end of season two of Buffy), but Sarah thought that it wasn't girly enough. Hmph. But Anna is better anyway.

The Kitty Conclusion...

2004-08-29T10:12:00.000-05:00

So I went back to the doctor and she looked at me for all of five minutes before she told me that I was healing up fine, and that I wouldn't have to come back for Rabies shots unless it turns out that the cat has the disease, which is a next-to-zero possibility. Then she sent me off, charging me fifteen dollars for her precious time. Delicate Genius...

In other news:

I bought 120 issues of the Journal of American Folklore (From 1958-1998, although not quite complete) for $125 the other day. This is a great find, but I need a new book shelf to fit them all.

I made dinner for a couple of friends the other night and it turned out really well. I made gnocchi with a mushroom cream sauce (one of the best cream sauces I've ever made), and meatballs with a tomato sauce that turned out surprisingly well considering that it's been almost a year since I last did it.

Finally, I went to a beginning of the year party for the folklore department the other night. Very cool. Met lots of new students, all of whom seem very interesting. Also got to catch up with some people I haven't seen all summer. It was lots of fun.

Today, I'm going to lounge around and pretend that school doesn't start tomorrow, and then I'm going to go see Hero with a bunch of people.

so...

2004-08-25T16:53:00.000-05:00

I went to the doctor today, and she seemed to think that my cat problems were much more serious than I did. She examined me and took x-rays to make sure that there were no claws or bones in the wounds, then had a nurse wash the wounds and give me a tetanus shot, while she called animal control. She said that chances of rabies were almost nil, but that they had to capture and quarantine the cat just to make sure. She also put me on antibiotics for a slight infection in one of my fingers (horse tablets, actually, that contain a bit of an antibiotic to which I'm allergic. They're the most effective, it seems). Then, she sent me home and told me to return friday afternoon for a follow-up, or alternately, if things get worse in the mean time. I really hope that this is the end of things. Rabies shots would really suck.

Pathetic.

2004-08-24T23:02:00.000-05:00

I was beaten up by a kitten today.

There's this kitten that's been hanging out in our yard. We've been feeding it, and today, I spent some time playing with it and feeding it by hand. I had it eating out of my hand and rubbing up against me when I tried to pick it up (my plan had been to get it into our enclosed porch because the world at large is simply not safe for an eight-week old kitten). It clawed and bit and yowled and before it was done, I had some seriously nasty cuts and a bruise on my knuckle of unclear origin. Overall, an unsuccessful experiment and not one that I wish to repeat. So we're going to keep feeding the kitten and take it slow, and maybe it'll warm up to us a little. I'm encouraged by the fact that it came back even after all of the unpleasantness. perhaps we have a pet in waiting after all...

In other news, I made really good barbecue-sauce-glazed baked chicken tonight. I also made a broccoli salad that was very nice, and some fresh salsa, slightly spicier than the last batch. It's been a mixed day. A long day, and I think I'm ready to sleep.

Quick things.

2004-08-23T08:47:00.000-05:00

1. So I saw Garden State the other night. Very cool. I went in not expecting a whole lot, and it turned out to be a very good first movie, and the kind of movie that's nice and refreshing after a particularly bad summer blockbuster season. And looking forward toward the next three or four months, this should be the first in a line of relatively good movies. God am I glad that the summer season is over.

2. I think I'm getting sick. My appetite is weird and I'm feeling like I'm about to develop a soar throat (dry and scratchy and the like). Yuk.

3. Slowly but surely, we're getting close to having finished this unpacking. There's still some boxes, but Sarah is starting to deal with hers, which means that I'll soon be able to deal with the rest of what's in the living room and the office. Any idea where to put my file cabinet people?

4. School's starting. I have mixed feelings. I need to write a book review and an AFS paper. I just really really don't want to.

5. What do people think about the idea of getting an MLS as well as a Ph.D.? It's only one more year and it may turn out to be useful.

6. I need to start getting serious about thesis writing.

7. The students have returned to Bloomington, and that's kind of depressing. Really depressing, in fact. Parking sucks, and all the places that were loud and obnoxious last year are loud and obnoxious once again. Suck.

8. I need to email some people about Henry's class.

9. We've been going outside with the cat. Before long, he'll be going outside on his own, which will be good for all of us, I think.

10. There is no 'Quick thing' number ten!

Aight.

2004-08-19T23:11:00.000-05:00

Salsa turned out very well, except totally not spicy. The Jalapeño I used must not have been very strong, because it's barely even a presence. But alas. Maybe tomorrow I'll add a Habañero to the mix. That should spice things up.

More food.

2004-08-19T15:06:00.000-05:00

Alright. Today so far:

Fresh salsa with both red and yellow tomatoes.

Home made Sangria, slightly fortified with rum.

And how did they turn out, you might ask? Unknown so far. The salsa should be ready to taste tonight and even better tomorrow, while the Sangria won't be ready until tomorrow afternoon, but probably won't be best until the next day. I think that they'll probably both be pretty good. If they are, I may post recipes. We'll see...

mmm... Salsa!

More dork stuff...

2004-08-19T07:17:00.000-05:00

While I was in Philadelphia, one of the things that I did was read the comic book Marvels, painted by artist Alex Ross. I remember reading a couple of issues of this in the mid '90s and really liking it, but reading the whole thing compiled into one book, it truly exceeded my expectations. It turns out to be one of the better comics that I've ever read, and certainly one of the best that deals with the Marvel pantheon of super heroes. More than most comic books, it really highlights the interesting issues with super heroes in American culture, and then explores them in an interesting way. It very self-consciously looks at the reasons why super heroes are important in 20th and 21st century America--loss of faith in ordinary institutions of government, etc.--and then notes that super heroes replace those institutions with more effective ones, but at what cost? From there, it explores the ethical problem of super heroes, wherein they are very effective as replacements for failing institutions, as national symbols, as almost new gods in which to believe, but they are also ethically very questionable. The book points out that while they battle super-villains, people always get hurt. No matter how altruistic a super hero is, his or her powers always come at a cost to the population at large, and that cost is always, in some respect, being marginalized as a mere pawn in a world where super heroes are kings and queens.

Anyway, great book. Totally recommend it. I'm really excited that they're doing another one.

By the way...

2004-08-18T17:16:00.000-05:00

And by the way, I'm back from Philadelphia, had a good time, lots of fun.

Outraged!

2004-08-18T17:07:00.000-05:00

I am outraged! Has anybody seen The Calorie Commando on Food Network?! Boo! Hiss! How can the host of this show take good recipes and gut them just to make them lower fat and lower calorie? He breaded pork chops and baked them, made disgusting baked okra, and ruined mud pie beyond description. If you're so concerned about calories and fat, why make pork chops and mud pie to begin with?! Tofu people! Tofu! So here's the deal--

High Fat meal:

Pork Chops
Fried Okra
Mississippi Mud Pie

Low Fat meal:

Baked Tofu
Steamed Mixed Vegetables
Basmati Rice
Lemon Sorbet with Sour Oranges and Grappa

One meal is as good as the other (perhaps the second is a bit better), but if you're so concerned about the fat, don't ruin the first, just make the second! Come on people!

A sad sad day.

2004-08-13T10:42:00.000-05:00

Julia Child died last night in her sleep at age 91.

The full article is here.

I think that in her honor, we should all go out and cook something French tonight.

Yay!

2004-08-13T08:50:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday Ben!

Aright yo.

2004-08-13T07:40:00.000-05:00

Aright peeps! I'm off to Philadelphia for a couple of days to do some visiting. I'm pretty excited about it. People I haven't seen in a while, and on their home turf. Plus, it looks like while I'm there, I won't be totally useless. I'll have at least a little bit of time to do some reading and the like. I really should get into the book I have to review for Cultural Analysis, and this seems like a good time to start. Of course, I could start reading Magician: Apprentice by Raymond Feist--a book that a friend from the folklore dept. forced me to borrow. Do you ever wonder if your friends really want you to succeed? But yeah. 10 hours of driving ahead, so I'd better run my errands and do what I need to do before I go.

I want one.

2004-08-12T10:51:00.000-05:00

I want one of these for my car:

You understand.

More cooking things...

2004-08-10T08:32:00.000-05:00

So, first of all, I bought this paring knife yesterday, to compliment the very expensive chef's knife that I bought the day before:

It's a J. A. Henckels International Classic series four inch paring knife. Fully forged, but made in Spain instead of Germany, and slightly less sharp out of the box, and thus significantly less expensive. It's entirely workable, however, and as far as I can tell, of nearly the same quality (*nearly*) as my new Wüsthof chef's knife, so I'm pleased with it.

In other news, we had some guests over last night, so I thought I'd go all out with the cooking thing. I think that having a kitchen of my own again is really getting to me. So I made cold blanched broccoli with salsa verde, pasta with a goat's milk béchamel-based gorgonzola cream sauce--relatively light considering the fact that it's a cream sauce--and soy ice-cream with macadamia nuts, dried strawberries, and fresh mint for dessert. And everything turned out quite well, I think, considering that I haven't really cooked in forever. I must say that I am quite pleased.

And now I find myself a salsa verde advocate. It's not very often that I make it, but now more than ever--during the hot hot Bloomington summer--it seems refreshing and appropriate. And so I shall share my recipe (remember, all measurements are approximate):

1/2 Cup Olive Oil
1 Cup fresh parsley
1/3 Cup chopped green onions
4 Cloves of garlic
4 Fresh mint leaves
3 Sprigs of fresh thyme
A few fresh rosemary leaves if you want them (Optional. Lends a very strong flavor that may be overpowering.)
The juice of half a lemon (I actually use a little bit less than all the juice, partly because I like to eat the leftover.)

Throw all of this in the food processor, add salt and fresh ground pepper to taste, puree the motherfucker, chill, and serve with anything from toast to... well... cold blanched broccoli.

If you want, for interesting flavors, you can also add some capers or some greek olives. The greek olives would be good especially if you were serving the salsa verde with grilled fresh fish...

Bagock!

2004-08-08T17:20:00.000-05:00

So my chicken stock is turning out surprisingly well. It's based on a recipe for an italian brown chicken stock that I found online. I changed it here and there, especially in the realm of the bits of chicken to be used. I didn't have any old carcasses, so instead I got myself some hearts, gizzards, and thighs, and went to town. The only work I can really think to describe it now is creamy. Not quite creamy, but almost creamy--soft and delicate--in taste. It'll make great risotto one of these days, or perhaps soup, although it's still a little but hot for soup. Anyway, I'm sure I'll figure out something to do with it. It needs another hour to cook, maybe, and then it's done, so wish me luck the rest of the way (with my luck these days, the whole thing is likely to spill on the floor).

High priced impulse buys...

2004-08-08T15:45:00.000-05:00

I just bought this knife:

It's a Wüsthof Grand Prix series eight inch chef's knife that I found on sale (a good deal) at my local cooking supply shop. I really wanted to pass it up because really, it was too expensive, but it was also too good a deal. So I left, then came back and bought it. At least I didn't get the 3.5 inch paring knife to go with it...

But now I must gush. It's a really nice knife, and what a nice knife! It's sharper than any knife I've ever used before, fully forged, and balanced incredibly. I've just been coarsely chopping vegetables and chicken gizzards for stock, but wow. I didn't realize quite how much effort it took to do these things with my old (slightly rusted) knife.

And now to justify it to myself further: I figure it's about time for some new knives, so why not knives that I'll never have to replace?

Satellite TV rocks.

2004-08-05T22:29:00.000-05:00

I think that I will never get any work done ever again. I think that I won't even be able to waste time as I once did. I will wile away my life sitting in front of the TV, eating Ramen and drooling down my chin.

Satellite TV rocks.

I'm so funny!

2004-08-04T11:43:00.000-05:00

So on my way home from school today, I saw a truck that belonged to the Confidential Document Destruction Service, and this immediately sprang to mind:

CONFIDENTIAL DOCUMENT DECONSTRUCTION SERVICE: For only $99.99, not only are we able to subvert both the language and the meaning of your confidential documents, but through our own patented process, we are able to safely and secretly demonstrate the manner in which your documents subvert themselves.

I have DSL...

2004-08-04T06:49:00.000-05:00

and it's glorious!

Good Morning!

2004-08-02T07:15:00.000-05:00

I'm posting here from our new house. We are officially moved, although we are in fact still moving--getting stuff out of the old place to bring over here. So understandably, the past few days have been hectic. Sarah has helped me get stuff over here every morning, then while she's been at work, I've been arranging furniture and unpacking box after box. It's a little bit harrowing and I'm a little bit sore from all the heavy lifting, but it's actually kind of fun--not nearly so miserable as packing itself was.

So here's the deal with the house for those who don't know: A friend of mind from folklore owns it. It was built in 1909 and is not quite an historic landmark, but has an historic plaque and things like that. It's spacious with relatively high ceilings, two front rooms, a fine-sized bedroom, and a big kitchen. The kitchen, in fact, is lovely now with the kitchen cart that I added for more counter-space. One of the front rooms--the one meant to be a dining room, I think, we're using as an office, while the other is our living room (and might end up with a dining table in it too. Oh yeah, and it didn't have indoor plumbing until the '60s, so the bathroom has been squished in by any means necessary, which means that you have to walk through it to get to my closet, and then from my closet is this tiny little door (about 2 feet wide) that leads into the living room. That's weird, but I guess that anybody in the living room so determined to go to the bathroom that they make it through the tiny door won't be too upset about having to traipse through my closet to get there.

And that's about all that's going on, I guess. Today we'll hopefully get lots and lots more unpacked (Sarah is off work today), and by wednesday or thursday, I'd like to be mostly moved in.

Oh yeah, my new address is:
1015 West Howe St.
Bloomington, IN 47403

This is really disturbing...

2004-07-28T23:55:00.000-05:00

But I thought I'd post it anyway because I really don't like any of you.

I submit for your viewing pleasure...

Vagina Dentata!

Warning: this is really not for the faint of heart.

Hey!

2004-07-27T08:40:00.000-05:00

From the twisted mind of Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg:

"The Vagina Dentata as dance."

Everybody should check out Slumbering Lunfish, Lore's blog.

A few new things.

2004-07-27T08:26:00.000-05:00

In no particular order:

Yesterday morning, ordered telephone, DSL, gas, and electric for the new house. Electric and telephone should already be installed as we speak. Later on, when we actually have a telephone, I'll post it here and send out some emails. On the other hand, I didn't get to have water / sewage switched over to our names. Sarah is going to do that today while I'm doing MythBusters.

Which brings me to number two. Today, I'm participating in a program at the public library here called MythBusters. It's based on the show, but it'll be more intelligent, I think. Two people involved (me and one other), are giving a brief talk about what urban legends are (including why they're not MYTHS, and then breaking into groups and talking about specific legends. Then the program is going to end with us passing out pop rocks and soda. It should be lots of fun.

We have curtains for the new house. And today we're going to go shopping for an island to increase the kitchen counter space and maybe also some lawn furniture. The kitchen is really poorly thought out. There is a lot of counter space, but none next to the stove. This must be remedied.

As my post yesterday may have indicated, I started reading parts of Laura Gonzenbach's collection in German. And it's not that difficult. The hardest thing about it is that since it's a really old book, it's done in gothic script. But then, once you get used to that, it's not hard to follow at all. And as for vocabulary, there have only been a few things I've needed to look up. I'm excited. I'm doing pretty well.

Still need to read what I need to read for thursday, though. Although that may be postponed until friday.

Concerning 510B

2004-07-26T14:34:00.000-05:00

So I was reading through "Betta Pilusa", Laura Gonzenbach's version of AT510B, and it occurred to me:

A smart protagonist would probably switch tactics after her father found the second dress, and perhaps fire her advisor as well.

That is all for now.

A few more things:

2004-07-19T17:34:00.001-05:00

I know that I've been really brief for a long time, but another quick update post:

I'm through the second collected volume of Grant Morrison's run of New X-Men. Very very cool. I've only read one volume of The Invisibles, but about on par with that, which says a lot. He does good work, he does.

I'm about done with the sixth book of Wheel of Time, and after this, I'm definitely stopping. I'm liking them more than I thought, and what's more, they're really addictive, but I do have to get something done this summer, and if not reading mind-numbing fantasy will help, then I will stop reading mind-numbing fantasy. Perhaps next summer I'll read the rest of the series (or up to where he's stopped, at least).

As for German, I did really well on my last test, and expect to do really well on the next one. Thursday, my small group is meeting to discuss the first three or four pages of a neat-looking article about tattooing, so I should start translating; and tomorrow, I need to go to the library and get together a small bibliography for the paper I need to write for that class. Two fairy tales, I think, and one short article about them. Perhaps Jeana could recommend a nice short article in german for me concerning either 510B or Rapunzel. If I can find the collection here in the library, I'm going to work on versions from Laura Gonzenbach in the german. That should be entertaining.

Finally, for the first time ever, today, I read an opinion piece in the Indiana Daily Student. Sad sad sad. Not only were the ideas expressed not very intelligent (a.k.a. "defining the moment that life starts as other than an ideological issue"), but it was not even well written. I couldn't even bring myself to be angry at it, just sad. I think that this is the last time I'll ever read an opinion in IDS.

Not too much

2004-07-16T20:54:00.000-05:00

Haven't posted in a while because not too much has been going on, but for those interested, here it is, relatively neat and encapsulated:

I took a german test today and I think that I did well, but not great. There was one paragraph that I remember having read before, but I couldn't really make heads or tales out of it. It was just one part of one question, though, so whatever.

Some of you may know that my father had hip replacement surgery a couple of weeks ago: well he went to the doctor and they say he's doing great and can start walking without a cane and going out and doing whatever he wants, more or less. Needless to say, he's ecstatic.

I got a call from my future landlord, the other day, and she said that her previous tenants are entirely moved out now, and that the place is more or less ready for us. We're going to walk through it next week so that she can see if we want her to do anything to it before we move in, but other than that, the path is clear. I think that if she could, she'd have us move in as soon as possible. And who knows, maybe it will be possible for us to do that (I can hope, right?).

Oh yeah. I went to pay my rent on the sublet today, and was told by the management company that the apartment had to be vacated by the 10th of august, not the 15th. Well the person from whom we're subletting isn't coming back until the 14th, so this presents a problem. So I came home and looked at the original lease (which he left for us), and lo and behold, it says August 15th. I called the management company and informed them, and basically just got an affirmative grunt and a half admission that they're trying to push us out early so that they can remodel the apartment. "Well we thought you might be going early," they told me. "We do want to remodel the apartment as soon as possible." Assholes. Even if we were moving out tomorrow and the person from whom were subletting did not have his stuff here too, I would tell them where to shove it and hold onto this lease until the last possible moment. Just thought we'd be moving out early my ass.

No! No no no no no!

2004-07-12T08:22:00.000-05:00

From CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. officials have discussed the idea of postponing Election Day in the event of a terrorist attack on or about that day, a Homeland Security Department spokesman said Sunday.

...

Newsweek said the discussions about whether the November 2 election could be postponed started with a recent letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge from DeForest Soaries Jr., chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

...

Soaries, who was appointed by President Bush, is a former New Jersey secretary of state and senior pastor of the 7,000-member First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset. Newsweek reported that Soaries expressed concern that no federal agency had the authority to postpone an election and asked Ridge to ask Congress to give his commission such power.

Ridge warned Thursday that al Qaeda terrorists were planning a large-scale attack on the United States "in an effort to disrupt the democratic process." Ridge said he had no specific or credible information about threats to the political conventions.

Get the full story here.

This. This is a scary thought. This is like Weimar all over again. Scary scary scary.

Wow.

2004-07-09T08:44:00.000-05:00

It's been quite some time since I last posted. I've not been busy exactly, but sort of. I've had more german homework than ever previously, translating fiction and the like, but I haven't really been diligently doing it. It's more like I've been busy procrastinating, and thinking about things that are not what I need to be doing quite at the present time. I've been thinking, for instance about a thesis, and how theses are structured, and how exactly to go about writing one. I think that I've decided that before I start really outlining for an actual draft, I need to go and get a book on thesis writing in general. Finding an instruction manual or something of the like right now (you write this, then this, then this. It should be this long and structured like so) would really get me moving, I think.

I've also been kind of social recently, hanging out with people almost every day. Not that you people aren't people, but somehow it's more exciting to hang out with flesh and blood people than write for internet ghosts.

Plus, I've had the summer lazies and haven't really felt like writing anything.

Oh yeah.

2004-07-04T08:13:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah! Also, the preliminary program for the American Folklore Society Meeting came out today. I'm chairing a panel on "Folklore and Race." Sure, my paper is about Deep Down in the Jungle, but it's not really about race. It's about narrative style, and how style links up with structure, and how it may or may not be associated with the characteristics of a teller's personality. Race...

Hmm...

2004-07-04T08:10:00.000-05:00

Not much to say except that I guess I've given up. I went out yesterday and bought the fourth Wheel of Time book. I really loath them, but they are really addictive. I don't get it, but I have the strange feeling that I'll end up reading them all. Damn my need for pulp!

On the bright side, I got the second issue of Astonishing X-Men yesterday, and it was very good. The problem with monthly comics, though, is that they're so darned short. I want to know what happens next, but it's just cliff-hanger after cliff-hanger. Oh well. I guess I can wait.

Two and a half new things...

2004-07-02T07:43:00.000-05:00

1. I went and saw Spider-Man 2 on wednesday night, and it was really good. I mean really. There were parts of it that were sappy or goofy, but never in such a way that it detracted from the movie, and mostly in such a way that it added to the comic-book feel of it. It was also really funny. Much more so than the first one. Michael Chabon seems to have done his thing and the script is clever and witty and generally pleasant, and Sam Raimi seems to have done his thing and made all of the characters completely miserable throughout--definitely good and definitely fitting for spider-man.

2. I finished my german take-home test and I'm turning it in today. Actually, I'm going to school and sitting down to check it over, then turning it in, but no matter, it's leaving my hands for the instructor's. And I think I did okay on it. Not great, but not terrible either. There is one part that I may be screwing up, but overall, I think that I will pass, probably with a B+ or an A-.

2.5. Isn't it weird when all your friends start getting married... nearly all at once?

2.75. I lied. There is more than two and a half things. Last night I bought a bunch of tiny sized Mead composition books to carry around. I figure that I need a venue to take notes on thesis ideas and such while I'm out and about. I'm going to start carrying one wherever I go. It seems like a good plan...

Things.

2004-06-30T07:11:00.000-05:00

So I saw Ferenheit 9/11 yesterday, and thought that it was very good. I thought that it was a little bit tacky in parts (in that very Michael Moore way), but overall, very well done and far far better than Bowling for Columbine. In fact, unlike with the earlier movie, a bunch of the criticism that I've read of this one just doesn't stand up when you see what Moore is trying to do. One critic on Fox News said that if Moore thinks that the international political situation has anything to do with the Bush family's personal relationships, then he doesn't understand the way that nations interact. Watching Moore's look at the relationship between the Bushes and the Saudi families, however, it's clear that whether or not the relationships played a role in international politics, they definitely played a role in domestic policy in response to international conditions--that the perception of that connection in some fashion guided the hand of the administration. One other thing I liked: this movie had far less of Moore himself than other ones. He does the voice over and appears here and there, but the bulk of the movie is not him doing things. That, I think, gives him some credibility.

In other news, my computer seems to be working perfectly. It's nice to have it back.

Good news, people!

2004-06-28T10:05:00.000-05:00

I'm back from Los Angeles to a pleasant surprise: I have a computer again.

So the wedding was really good (and mercifully short), then the reception was a lot of fun and the people very nice. The Dodger game the night before, unfortunately, was neither good nor mercifully short, but an unrelenting ass whooping. That really sucked. My flight to L.A. was pleasant and I managed to read half of Chimera by John Barth, which is really good. And my flight back was less pleasant, but I managed to sleep most of the way and not barf, both of which were small mercies. Have you every wanted to walk out on a flight in mid air? They started playing Win A Date With Tad Hamilton, and it was all I could do not to want to scream and make a dash for the parachutes. And I didn't even have head phones on. Imagine it with sound *shudder*.

Then I got my computer back this morning and it seems in ship shape, for which I am thankful, but I've really only had it for about an hour, so we'll see how it stands up to the course of the day. Yes, we'll see.

Anyway, I miss L.A., but while I was in L.A., I missed bloomington just a bit. That's scary. I am more determined than ever to end up back in california, I think, but living in indiana for a couple of years won't be so bad.

Welly welly welly...

2004-06-24T07:41:00.000-05:00

The time has come, my things are packed, I'm totally ready to get out of here, and all that's standing in my way this morning is a long long hour of class. But I'm going to go to class, then dash for my car, drive up to Indy, park, and still have time enough to check in and eat lunch before my airplane leaves. I hope. If I don't get to eat lunch at the airport, I don't know when the chance will come around again. This is something I should have thought of while I was planning, but I never plan meals quite the way I should. Oh well. The point is that for something between 2 and 4 glorious days, it will be goodbye Bloomington and hello sunny-but-not-quite-so-hot southern california!

In other news, I went out and bought some new books yesterday. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, Chimera by John Barth, and You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers. Can you guess which two of these are related to my folklore in literature project? I thought you could. But I'm really excited to read all three--especially Barth and Eggers, but really all three. I figure that I'll finish the Carter book on the way there, and we'll see what I feel like reading on my way home. Such is the way of things.

Things and stuff and some other things...

2004-06-22T09:36:00.000-05:00

So I spent yesterday afternoon catching up with friends with whom I hadn't spoken in a long long time. That was really nice. I decided something: It's really good to have friends who don't live in your city.

I also got a notice from the AFS people yesterday that they had accepted my paper for the conference in Salt Lake City in October. That was pretty excited too. Not that I was worried about having my paper accepted, but it's nice to get those kinds of emails from them once in a while, considering that the standard email is something to the effect of "your membership is expiring. pay us more." So I suppose that I'm going to have to write this very tepid paper that I proposed sometime over the summer. Good thing that part of it is written as part of a paper that I turned in my first semester here. Otherwise, I don't think that I'd ever work up the determination to write it.

Then there is Los Angeles. I'm going back to California the day after tomorrow. I don't have a lot of time to stay, but I'm excited about any time I get. I arrive thursday night, I go to a Dodger game friday, I go to Chantal and Dustin's wedding in Santa Barbara saturday (I need directions to the place, I suppose), and then I leave to return to Bloomington on Sunday morning at 8 a.m. It's a sucky time to have to come back, but I need to get my german stuff done before class on Monday...

I guess that's everything new. Well, off to class.

I don't usually do this...

2004-06-19T23:18:00.000-05:00

I don't usually do "getting to know you" type things on my blog, but I found this list of categories on Strange_Victory's livejournal and thought that I'd pass it on. So I'm going to do it, and then I'd like anybody passing through to do it too. I have this comment system after all, so I figure that I ought to make use of it. So here goes:

Favoite Books:
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer - Philip K. Dick
Radio Free Albemuth - Philip K. Dick
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men - James Agee and Walker Evans
Another Roadside Attraction - Tom Robins
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
Mythologies - Roland Barthes
The Murder of Charles the Good - Galbert of Bruges
Confessions - Augustine of Hippo
Day of the Locust - Nathaniel West

Favorite Movies:
American History X
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Third Man
The Big Lebowski
Barton Fink
Resevoir Dogs
Insomnia (not the American remake)

Favorite Musical Artists:
The String Cheese Incident
The Grateful Dead
X
Great Big Sea!
Talking Heads
Modest Mouse
Värttinä
Mediaeval Baebes

Favorite Foods:
Timpano
Anything with white truffles (or white truffle oil)
oven-brazed chicken
Ahi Tuna Sashimi
Unagi
Anything from Cafe de la Paz in Berkeley
Anything from Chef Jia's in San Franciso
Anything (and I mean anything) from Los Fuentes in Los Angeles

Favorite Sounds:
Breaking waves
Wind through sailboat rigging
My own voice
terrified children (just kidding)

Favorite Holiday: Passover
Favorite Season: Winter
Favorite Bird: Not much on birds, but maybe the cardinal
Favorite TV Shows: Buffy, Futurama, Simpsons, The Critic, The State, Fawlty Towers, Black Adder, Flying Circus (ahh! Too many. Maybe I should have stuck to current TV)

New Stuff...

2004-06-18T09:51:00.000-05:00

At 4 in the morning, bloomington is a very surreal place. Taking Sarah to meet the airport shuttle, in our parking lot we spotted a very large, very muscular man (looked kind of like Rocky from Rocky Horror) in his underpants watching as his tiny toy-sized dog shat on the lawn. Then we went to Waffle House so that Sarah could get a bagel, and what did we find, but two people with mullets who were clearly... mentally challenged... throwing hush-puppies at one another. Bloomington, at 4 in the morning, is a very surreal place.

In other news, the mac guys here in bloomington haven't been able to reproduce the error, so I came in and spent fifteen minutes this morning trying myself. Still nothing. When I got it back from Apple, it took me all of two minutes to reproduce the thing, and now, good luck. The optimist in me says that maybe it fixed itself, but more likely, it's a loose connection, and so the error is just intermittant. Oh well.

Aight...

2004-06-15T17:28:00.000-05:00

Alright. I haven't updated in a couple of days because my computer came back from Apple monday morning, and I promptly took it to the local apple repair place to see if they could do better. I opened the package that DHL left me to find a note saying that they could not reproduce the problem with my computer, and thus did not repair it. Well needless to say, I was livid. First I turned the computer on and found the problem still persistent, and then I called apple and lectured the technical support people about how their continued ineptitude has caused me to lose a half a summer's worth of work. I explained the problem again among skeptical hems and haws, and what they told me was that I could either send it back AGAIN(!) or I could take it to the local authorized repair center to see if they could do better. I like the guys over at the local place, and so I chose that option. Well I brought it in monday morning, and I'm supposed to wait until tomorrow, then call them for an update. Basically what they say is that they'll probably be able to reproduce the problem, but then they'll have to send it to Apple. At least, they say, they can lend my story some credibility. So they'll probably end up sending it out sometime soon, and I should (hopefully) get it back before I leave for L.A. If the problem isn't solved, however, ths time I'm going to demand that they replace the computer. I bought this thing for a lot of money, and bought a $300+ extended warrenty with it, and so the least they can do is replace it if they can't fix it.

This really sucks.

Wheel of Time, turn turn turn...

2004-06-13T08:23:00.000-05:00

So the deal with The Eye of the World is that there is little characterization, especially of side characters, no matter how important they are. He concentrates on the inner life of his main character at length, and he's kind of a neat character, but it's unclear what he sees in any of the other characters, as they are all entirely flat. And what's more, when the side-characters do do unexpected things, I don't really believe them because there is no precedent in their past actions, and no indication that they even have the potential to do unexpected things in them. This is why, after three hundred some-odd pages, when Jordan starts to change perspectives a little bit, it's so jarring and almost unreadable. It's really hard to view the world from the perspective of a character who is really not much of a character.

That said, I am enjoying The Eye of the World, and I'll probably end up reading one or two more books from the series. I don't see it as compelling enough to warrent a 10-12 book series, but I can see reading two or three of them...

One of these days, I'm going to stop criticizing fantasy books, I think, and write my own the correct way. On the other hand, I feel like thats already been done. Song of Fire and Ice, anyone?

Nerdy Fantasy Book Things...

2004-06-11T08:13:00.000-05:00

So yesterday, I did a lot of things in the Nerdy Fantasy Book department. First, I found out that A Feast for Crows, the new George R. R. Martin book is coming out on June 24. June 24! This is the coolest thing in the world. It means that I can read it on the airplane on the way to Los Angeles. Something to read besides german will be really nice. I can't wait.

In the mean time, however, to tide me over (I've had a craving for a fantasy novel), I went against the advice of certain people whom I respect and bought the first book of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time--The Eye of The World. It's not bad. I'm only about 40 pages into it, but up until this point, I can say that it hasn't been great, but it hasn't been bad. I had kind of wanted to pick up some of R.A. Salvatore's Forgotten Realms books instead, but that would have been just too nerdy. D&D? Come on.

Of course, I'm secretly trying to get a D&D group together to play in a campaign that I've been doing on and off for a while. It'd be a lot of fun and very exciting. The problem is that all the gamers that I know here are also folklore grad students, so there's a question of how much time we will have. No worries, though! We'll make time!

Alright.

2004-06-10T09:20:00.000-05:00

So my computer came back to me on monday, and just as quickly, it's gone again. It had this problem where it would randomly turn itself off while I was moving it from place to place. After spending a day and a half trying to convince apple that yes, it was a problem, and yes, it was a hardware issue (that has only arisin since the last repair), they finally agreed to take it back and fix it again. I sent it in yesterday, they got it this morning, and hopefully it will return (actually fixed this time) by monday or tuesday. I know that sounds a bit overly optimistic, but if it's just a loose connection like they thought, that should be a quick turn-over, right? Right?!

In other news, the cat is really funny. When he gets upset and I chase him, he leaves a giant fur-ball behind when he starts to run. Kind of like a cartoon animal loosing all its feathers.

The morning blues...

2004-06-08T07:22:00.000-05:00

I was just reading Jeana's livejournal, and I'm reminded how sad it is that I never get to go anywhere. With the exception of last summer, every summer since I entered college has been occupied with school, and while I sometimes feel like enough is enough, I also feel like summer is the optimal time to do certain things--take certain classes like languages--that I would never have the time or the dedication to do during the school-year. And so I've come to this decision: next summer, if I can possibly get out of it, I am not going to take a language. I am going to desperately try to get the funding together to go to a conference and give a paper in Estonia (International Society for Folk Narrative Research), and then maybe spend a week or so afterwards traveling in Finland and Scandinavia. Really, what I'd like to do is make a longer trip out of it and take a train into Germany--maybe go to Berlin and one or two other cities--but that doesn't seem so likely. I think that a week is much more possible than two or three. But the point is, that I'd like to get out of Bloomington for a while. Hey, and who knows! Maybe I can figure out how to get a summer FLAS grant to go learn a language in another country. That might be cool... we'll see.

But anyway, I ramble, and I'm really not unhappy here, just feeling the need to travel. Next on the agenda is german vocabulary, class, and then with my brand new laptop fixed laptop, who knows?! The possibilities are endless.

Good news, people!

2004-06-07T19:54:00.000-05:00

I got my computer back today. After driving halfway into the middle of nowhere to find the DHL office, I managed to retrieve the thing, and, much to my delight, I found that they didn't wipe the hard drive or corrupt my data or anything like that. So I've been running some tests and things like that, and momentarily, I'm going to set up a new external hard drive that I got and transfer all of my music over there. 160 GB. The perfect size for doing regular backups. Nice.

In other news, I ate at "Mickey-D's" for the first time in recent memory, and know what I got for it? The McRuns.

More quick thoughts...

2004-05-31T15:51:00.000-05:00

Dialup sucks (especially my parents' AOL)

I want my computer back, damnit!

Northern exposure is pretty funny. Sarah bought the first season on DVD and we've been watching. Not something I'd have bought, but it's not a bad distraction.

BUFFY SEASON SIX!!!

After a lapse...

2004-05-29T07:03:00.000-05:00

After a lapse in posting, here's a brief one (there's really not that much to say):

Computer: Apple still has it and they seem to be dragging their feet doing the repair. If they sent it out today, it probably wouldn't get back to me until tuesday or wednesday. Suck.

Cat: After seeming a bit depressed for a couple of days after we put a collar and tags on him, he's back to his old self. Yesterday, he was a little monster, and he awakened me today by standing outside the bedroom door, scratching, and yowling as loud as I've ever heard hm (when he wasn't in pain).

Moving: The packing is going along, but more slowly than I'd like. We're probably finally moving into Matt's apartment today, then coming back to finish boxing things for the movers. The problem is that there's still so much to box, and they're coming on tuesday. Come to think of it, I may need to miss class in order to be here when they come... Suck.

German: Still easy. But I'm less confident now than I have been in the past. I got an A- on the first test, which isn't bad. I'd like to do better on the next one, though. That means lots of vocabulary review, and that I'd better start this weekend. I figure that the best thing for me to do is to copy the vocab out longhand. That should help me remember.

Reading: I'm a bit more than halfway through the second volume of The Essential Spider-Man. I'd like to read through all five. That should get me up to where I started reading when I was little. I really hope that they release more of these things. I'd like them to go up at least through the Venom saga...

aight.

2004-05-25T12:50:00.000-05:00

So my computer is all packed in the box apple sent me and ready to go as soon as the DHL people get here. This is actually kind of exciting... Yesterday, the Macexperience people managed to get my data off the hard drive without too much expense, then this morning I bought a giant hard drive to do backups in the future, then this afternoon the computer is going back to apple, and it should be back by next monday, I surmise...

update...

2004-05-24T11:52:00.000-05:00

Alright. So computer update. This morning, I called Apple and told them that my logic board had failed. They made me describe the symptoms and run a bunch of tests to be sure (come on!) and then told me that they would ship me a box overnight, and that I should ship it back to them, and that it would be ready in a week. I asked them if they backed up / restored hard disks when they did this, and they told me that no, they just erased them (it occurs to me that my copy of OS X is packed to go into storage. I'll have to remedy that...). They suggested that I take the computer to an authorized mac specialist and pay to have it backed up (I can't do it myself because it keeps freezing). So I took it to the local (read: only one in bloomington) mac specialist, and they have it now, trying to back everything up onto DVD for me. They'll probably charge me $100, plus I might buy an external hard drive on which to keep better backups in the future. This has really sucked, but it looks like it's going to work out, and I guess that there's a valuable lesson in here somewhere, although I don't know where. I wonder what I'm going to do without a computer for a week?

By the way, I'm writing from a public terminal in the IU memorial union... a place where I'm probably going to be spending a lot of time.

Scary scary scary...

2004-05-23T23:32:00.000-05:00

I just had a really scary experience. I came back to my computer after it had been on all day, and thinking that the monitor had shut itself off, pushed the mouse around to try and wake it up. When the monitor wouldn't come back on, I restarted my computer, which I thought would help. Well, the computer booted without any video. So when it had booted, I attached my external monitor--thought, well, certainly if my main monitor doesn't work, at least the external video port will. Wrong. So I restarted again, this time resetting the PRAM, thinking that it might have to do with the monitor spanning hack that I had installed (to let me have two monitors displaying different things). Well, still nothing. So I turned off the computer, unplugged everything, removed the battery (and took down the serial # while I was at it), re-installed the battery, and booted up. This time, everything is fine. Except that I've read in a number of places that video problems such as these are a sign of a faulty motherboard. Tomorrow I'm going to call apple care (can you believe that they're not 24 hours?!) and tell them what happened, see what they have to say, and see if I can't get the motherboard replaced. They're supposed to do that for free (as per a recall they've instituted), so it shouldn't be a problem, except that it comes at the moment that I'm up to my ears in German and moving. Kind of sucks.

Oh yeah. By the way, for those of you who don't know, I have an 800MHz iBook that's a year and a half old. It would REALLY suck if they couldn't / wouldn't repair it.

Pfft...

2004-05-23T11:15:00.000-05:00

So yesterday, I went to watch the wrestling Olympic trials. It was kind of cool. I can sort of see the appeal of wrestling as a sport. What was really nice, though, was that I got to hang out with Hana for the afternoon. The two of us, along with her coach and his brother, watched the morning sessions, then we went out to a long lunch and walked around downtown Indy for a while. It was a lot of fun. Really good to see her and to meet these people about whom she always talks. It was also nice to see her in her element. I don't think that I could get so excited about wrestling, but it's kind of inspiring to know that somebody does. So yeah. It was fun.

Anyway, today, I'm going to get dressed then go out and buy about 30 dollars worth of comic books, then I may go get my hairs cut, then I'm going to come home and do german all afternoon. The test on friday was pretty easy, but I feel like I'm a couple of chapters behind on the reading, so I should probably get cracking. The thing is that I kind of feel like I've done all the grammar that we're doing before. The only thing we've covered that I haven't had is the genitive case, and that's really easy... so I don't know. I kind of feel like it's difficult to get too stressed over this german thing... Moving, on the other hand, now there's something to get stressed over.

Shrek the Second and other things...

2004-05-22T08:32:00.000-05:00

So last night, I went to see Shrek II, which was pretty good, but a lot less subtle in its parody than the first one, and a lot more mean-spirited. A lot more mean-spirited. Every turn in this movie was something else making fun of Disney. From beginning to end, almost every scene referred to something that Disney had animated, from The Little Mermaid to Beauty and the Beast, and even, in a roundabout way, to The Sword in the Stone. Sleeping Beauty was poked at in there, as was Snow White, and a bunch of others. It was interesting, however, there was other parody in there besides that of Disney "fairy tales." There were some references to the Brothers Grimm themselves, as well as to a couple of their stories and a couple of Perrault stories that have never made it into the movies. So the Shrek people have effectively lumped contemporary children's literature together with 17th, 18th, and 19th century Fairy Tale Collections (which, in fact, modified and changed the stories so that they could be used as children's literature among the middle class) in a reasonably clever way. I say reasonably, because I don't think that it was as clever as the first one. On the other hand, there are a lot of interesting things in there for a postmodernist type to look at (think Textermination) and a lot of interesting things for a folklorist.

Speaking of folklore stuff, in other news, I got my German-language copy of Kinder- und Hausmmärchen yesterday. I looked through it a bit and discovered that it is a bit difficult in that it's in slightly archaic language, but it shouldn't be too difficult to read as something to keep up my German after the class is over. I really like the language, I've decided, and I don't want to lose it. This seems like a good way not to.

Kitty pictures!

2004-05-19T14:04:00.000-05:00

Hey, I got kitty pictures working. They're not the best and they're kind of old, but they're not bad either. Maybe later I'll post some better pics. Anyway, here goes:

A thought.

2004-05-18T09:04:00.000-05:00

I had a thought, this morning, about how I was going to keep up with my german next year while I'm not taking the language. And so I went online, looked at a couple of versions, and finally ordered a paperback edition of the complete Kinder- und Hausmärchen in German. I figure that it's something that will be slightly difficult because the language is old-fashioned, but also slightly easy because--by the seventh edition at least--the text was explicitly geared toward children. So it should come in a few days, I'll have a look at it, and we'll see how well I do.

Then, second semester of next year, I kind of think that I'd like to take another German class. The question is which...

Welly welly well...

2004-05-17T15:42:00.000-05:00

So there's thunder and lightning and lots of rain, so I'm glad that I came home from the Library before I had intended. Otherwise, I'd be stuck over there right now, and that would suck.

In other news, there's still German to be de-germanified, but instead of doing that, I think that I'll go read some Spider-man...

books books books

2004-05-17T07:46:00.000-05:00

Not happy about going to school this morning. Two-day weekends suck. On the bright side, I'm going to have a chance to bring back some of the books that I have checked out of the library over the past couple of semesters. Get rid of a bunch of stuff about iron, some stuff about contemporary legend, and (finally) Deep the Water, Shallow the Shore. Then (perhaps tomorrow), I think that I'll bring back the books that I stole from the folklore building. It seems the right thing to do...

Troy!

2004-05-16T09:49:00.000-05:00

Alright. So I went to see Troy last night. Ugh! Sarah liked it better than she thought she would. I thought that it was the worst piece of crap that I've seen since The Alamo. If you took the people at the Alamo, dressed them up in bronze, set it a couple thousand years in the past, you'd have this movie. It was just that bad.

That said, there were certain things that I liked about it. I liked the casting of the Trojans, for instance. Peter O'Toole made a good Priam, and surprisingly, I liked both Eric Bana and Orlando Bloom as Hector and Paris. I also thought that Sean Bean was good as Odysseus, but really, you can only be so good when you're turned into the worst kind of Lacky.

As for bad casting, Brendan Gleeson and whoever played Agamemnon were both awful for the roles (and what the film-makers did with those characters was a travesty). Brad Pitt may have been the worst possible candidate for Achilles, and whoever played Patroclus sucked sucked sucked. And what was with making them cousins (sorry for the slight spoiler)?! I suppose that the film-makers had to explain to a contemporary audience how one man could care so much about another without them being lovers or something... it might have been better if they had just been lovers. Certainly would have been more believable...

More bad: The structure of the movie was horrendous. I can understand not starting and ending where the Illiad started and ended, but the first half hour of the movie was entirely pointless, and the last 20 minutes was stupid. Instead of beginning with Achilles (who is the main character), it begins with Agamemnon demonstrating his power-hungriness and the degree to which he hates Achilles. With that in mind, I have no clue why Achilles would fight for him. They complain about one another the entire movie, and yet... there it is.

Had it been my movie and I didn't want to stick to the Illiad (which I wouldn't), I would have brought in other sources and chosen a handful of characters to follow. I would have started with Achilles in a dress trying to escape the war, and ended with Priam begging for Hector's body back. I would have followed Achilles, Agamemnon, Diomedes, Hector, Aeneas (maybe), and Troilus. I would have had A LOT less battle and A LOT more character exploration. And I would have, although not portraying the gods, at least portrayed the men as though they believed in them. But alas. Not my movie, and thus it sucked.

hmph...

2004-05-13T17:51:00.000-05:00

Wow. Been a while since I've posted anything. Despite that, I'll still be brief. This week has gone by pretty uneventfully. I started my German class, which is really very easy and gives me a lot of time to pursue other less productive interests. I've been working out my translations in 20-40 minutes for the most part, reading the chapters in 20-40 minutes, and spending about a half hour looking at vocabulary every morning. I expect that things will become more difficult and it will be awful because I'll be out of the habit of studying, but I figure that we'll address that when we come to it. In the mean while, I'm reading Boxoffice Poison, which is excellent, playing a lot of video baseball, listening to Dodger games, and working a little bit on revising my AFS paper from last year. I figure that I'll monkey around for a while longer (like, say, until I move), then really get back to work. And speaking of, I really need to pack. I think that I'll start in ernest this weekend.

Aight.

2004-05-10T14:48:00.000-05:00

Alright. Well, Saturday night I saw Van Helsing. It was far far better than I expected in one respect, but in another, it was among the worst movies of the year. I mean to say that if the makers took this thing seriously, it's really really sad, but if it was intended as a comedy, as I understood it, it wasn't very bad at all. I am a bit confused because it was marketed as a supernatural action thriller. It should really have been marketed as something like Army of Darkness. "If you liked Army of Darkness..." et cetera. Admittedly, though, the action is cool, and when one kind of creature dies, it makes a satisfying popping sound, which was almost worth the price of admission. Overall, I'd say rent it. It's not worth theater prices.

Then yesterday, I did nothing except a little bit of reading, and today, thus far, the same. Although today I went down to the folklore department and got my papers for Henry and Pravina's classes back. Did well on both of them. We'll see what comes of that when I get my grades on the thirteenth.

Finally, German starts tomorrow. I'm pretty excited. It should be fun. Although I'm just getting used to having some leisure time, so it'll be sad when I have to work. But I suppose that I do really enjoy schoolwork, so no problem...

Footnotes or endnotes.

2004-05-08T14:22:00.000-05:00

Everybody (all three or four of you who read my blog)! Go to Jeana's livejournal and voice your preference: footnotes or endnotes in academic papers. I say endnotes even though I prefer footnotes, and I wonder what other people think...

Plus, I think that it would be funny to flood her journal with strangers.

Of course.

2004-05-07T19:53:00.000-05:00

Of course things don't always go like we expect. I did do some reading today, but not much. I ended up spending most of the day playing video games, and now I'm listening to the Dodgers beat the Pirates. Wilson Alvarez was just pulled after the seventh inning, having pitched a one hitter...

It's strange, not having school, I feel really pretty useless. If I didn't have to pick Sarah up from work, I'd probably go to sleep early tonight.

Done.

2004-05-07T09:02:00.000-05:00

I finished my paper and turned it in yesterday afternoon, and now I don't know what to do with myself. I went with Sarah to see Mean Girls afterward, and that was entertaining for a short while, but it's odd the degree to which I feel productive. So I sat around miserable for a while last night trying to think of a project, and then I read Blankets, watched Conan, and went to bed.

Mean Girls: Better than I thought it would be. Lindsay Lohan is hot, and that's almost reason enough to see the movie, but beyond that, it was fun and much more clever than I expected. All of the stereotypes are so over the top that that's fun too... I don't know. It's not the best movie I've ever seen, but definitely entertaining... My one problem was that they keep saying that she "grew up in Africa" and I keep asking where. And then when they show footage of Africa, it's always savanna footage but she always talks about the jungle. Which is it?

Blankets: I actually started it a while ago and just read the second half of it last night. Good good graphic novel. I didn't really like it at first, but it gets very very complicated, especially in it's relationship to Christian theology. Faith and Memory, it seems to suggest, are closely connected problems in the human experience, and the book is about both of those things. Definitely worth the read.

Today: Today, I think that I'm going to sit around and play some video games, then read the Ibrahim Muhawi articles that Jeana sent me, an article by Archer Taylor from the forties about what folklore is, and maybe Sticks and Stones by Jack Zipes, which has been sitting on my shelf for ages but I've never gotten to. I don't know why, but I'm feeling really inclined to read today... Maybe it's that school's over and I can read what I want. Isn't it kind of disturbing that I can read what I want now, and it's folklore books?

Joke.

2004-05-06T09:14:00.000-05:00

What is red and has two legs?

.
.
.
.
.

Half a dog.

The light.

2004-05-05T15:38:00.000-05:00

I can see the end. The end is in sight. Three or four more paragraphs, and then I have a complete draft! Huzzah!

today.

2004-05-04T23:55:00.000-05:00

So today wasn't hugely productive, but it wasn't a loss either. I think that I have 15 pretty good pages now, and a pretty good outline for the rest of it, which should come to just over five more pages. So I'll meet my 20 pages, I'll have a bibliography of about 30 items, I'll have some pretty good and interesting endnotes, and I'll have something done to turn in. It's not the best thing I've ever written, I think, but it's certainly not the worst. And considering that 20 page papers are not something that I have a whole lot of experience with (I've more written conference length papers of 10-15 pages) I think it's not coming out poorly. I do think that it's more rough than my professor would have liked, but that's fixable down the line. So I'll finish tomorrow, have thursday morning to edit, and turn it in in the afternoon.

Still going...

2004-05-04T20:05:00.000-05:00

Alright. 15 pages and still counting. I've stopped for now to listen to the Dodger game, but I figure that I'll write at least one more page tonight before I go to sleep. In fact, I not only figure it, I must. That way, tomorrow I can finish this section, write a conclusion, and have all of thursday to edit. That seems like a pretty good plan. Cutting it a bit close, but still, not too bad.

Apparently, it's joke night.

2004-05-03T23:27:00.000-05:00

A little old lady answered a knock on the door one day, only to be
confronted by a well-dressed young man carrying a vacuum cleaner

"Good morning," said the young man.

"If I could take a couple of minutes of your time, I would like to
demonstrate the very latest in high-powered vacuum cleaners.

"Go away!" said the old lady. "I haven't got any money!" and she proceeded
to close the door. Quick as a flash, the young man wedged his foot in the
door and pushed it wide open.

"Don't be too hasty!" he said. "Not until you have at least seen my
demonstration. " And with that, he emptied a bucket of horse manure onto her
hallway carpet.

"If this vacuum cleaner does not remove all traces of this horse manure from
your carpet, Madam, I will personally eat the remainder."

The old lady stepped back and said, "Well I hope you've got a damn good
appetite, because they cut off my electricity this morning.

Read the comment on my previous post.

2004-05-03T23:17:00.000-05:00

Peter Peter pumpkin eater,
Had a wife and couldn't keep her,
Put her in a pumpkin shell,
And there he kept her very well!

And now the joke (from fullofjokes.com):

Cinderella wants to go to the ball, but her wicked stepmother won't let her. As Cinderella sits crying in the garden, her fairy godmother appears, and promises to provide Cinderella with everything she needs to go to the ball, but only on two conditions. 'First, you must wear a diaphragm.' Cinderella agrees. 'What's the second condition?''You must be home by 2 a.m. Any later, and your diaphragm will turn into a pumpkin.' Cinderella agrees to be home by 2 a.m. The appointed hour comes and goes, and Cinderella doesn't show up. Finally, at 5 a.m., Cinderella shows up, looking love-struck and **very** satisfied. 'Where have you been?' demands the fairy godmother. 'Your diaphragm was supposed to turn into a pumpkin three hours ago!!!'

'I met a prince, Fairy Godmother. He took care of everything.'

'I know of no prince with that kind of power! Tell me his name!'

'I can't remember, exactly ...Peter Peter, something or other....'