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Man, it already feels like Spring Break. That is awesome. The only thing I really, really need to do right now is figure out registration stuff and write up one assignment and I will be good. a lot of people have said they feel like it's a Friday today, plus like half of the people don't show up for classes and a lot of the teachers have cancelled because they have some convention or something to go to this week. The library is closed, so there's no one but staff hanging out there.
Ceramics is coming along pretty good, my "plate" made it through with only one small crack, easily fixed with glaze, and even if it breaks in the kiln it will be fixable. I kind of wish I could finish the bird bath right now, though. Grr. Anyway, one effect I was going for didn't really work so I think I'll have to play with it a little, and I'm hoping it will turn out good. And then the raku piece won't be fired until after break, so all in all I have a grand total of zero pieces finished for this grading, haha.
Oh, I almost completely forgot about that petal cup... I wonder if it made it through?
Today I think I am just going to roll up in a ball and die. I am crampy despite attempts to up my iron and potassium levels, exhausted and muscle-sore from surfing (I would like to not use my shoulders all day thankyouverymuch), and the back of my legs hurts a lot from the sunburn from Saturday still. Also my face is kind of red and I think I may have burnt my lips? They don't hurt at all but they look kind of swollen and red at the edges, as if I had been licking them and they got chapped. It's weird. Plus I had a headache since last night (a very heavy and squinty one), so I drank some caffiene (which is supposed to aggravate cramps), but hey, I am a little more awake and my headache is gone. Unfortunately they didn't have plain tea so diet coke with lime is okay but lots of empty calories and I'm not really a coke person so boo. (Run-on much?)
Otherwise, I wrote up a list of the books I got from the free section of the library:
--The Madonna in Art, 1897; really neat cover with stamped lilies and gilt, neat illustrations.
--Legends of the Madonna, 1872; the most amazing cover with gilt stamping and gilt edges on the paper, unfortunately falling apart in my hands. =(
--Christ in the Ancient World, 1933; very small and cute, notes on the inside from 1935.
--Representative Short Stories, 1924; stamped cover w/ floral pattern, notes from 1927, illustrated.
--Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, 1923; stamped and printed cover illustration, illustrated, original copyright 1878.
--The Serpent and the Satellite, 1953; interesting book about symbols in religious history.
--Levitation, 1928; stamped gilt cover, sounds like it would be a somewhat historically funny read.
--The Syrian Christ, 1924; stamped gilt cover, orig. copyright 1916
--St. Augustine, 1933
--Journal of Tyerman and Bennet, Vols. 1 & 2, 1832; illustrated publication of original journals from 1821 to 1829 (that's three years difference... wow)
--Gilbert and Sullivan Songbook, not terribly old, my guess 60's-80's? Two-tone ink. Just picked it up for kicks.
--Fairy Tales, Brothers Grimm, 1966
--Magic House of Numbers, 1957; math tricks for learning/teaching/fun
--Digging for History: Archeology discoveries throughout the world, 1945 to 1959, 1960
--Bermudiana, 1936
Oh hells yes. I dunno, I really appreciate being able to hold something and just sort of feel the gaping history or importance of it, especially if it's something small. And I know, these books are probably not worth much to collectors or anything, but I don't care, it's all about the history for me. Being able to hold something in my hands, in the case of the oldest books, that is one hundred and seventy-five years old. And back then it was three-years-old information, so "brand new". Utterly...wow.
Other fun things I've been meaning to post about! Yesterday surfing, we had trouble starting a fire because it was so windy, and out of all of us I was the only scout there and I got to show off my skills (sort of--I just gave some advice because they guys were having too much fun "being guys" and being in charge of the fire/coals/grilling). BUT, I did regret leaving my purse in the car (because of my wallet and phone); my pocket knife was in there, too. Could have shown off my engineering skills... A guy came down the beach asking if anyone had paper or anything to burn with. I was only half paying attention but I did finally listen enough to catch on that he was asking if anyone had a bong or anything, which was hilarious since a lot of the people there actually do smoke fairly regularly, but didn't have anything with them. He decided we would all try to MacGuyver something (esp. involving an aluminum can if he could find one). I think it goes to show...something... that my first thoughts were: "I wish I knew how a bong worked" and "Damn, I left my pocketknife up in the car." So, yeah. Then he came back and asked the four of us sleeping on the beach if "we burned" and I said no, so he had me give him a handshake-sort-of-thing and was all "good for you, good for you". (I dunno, what do you call it when you grab their hand but your hand is facing upward rather than down... like... a bro-handshake or something?) Anyway it was hilarious and I can honestly say that's the first tome I've ever had someone ask me if I did drugs slash wanted to. Hehe. (You think it would have happened previously in Yellow Springs somehow...lol)
I've been seeing more mongoose (mongeese? mongoosen?) on campus. They are hilariously adorable when they run.
I read a sad article the other day that bats are disappearing, and it could relate to bees disappearance; it could be all the cell signals and stuff are messing them up. That makes me soooo sad. I freaking love bats. I am especially sad that it's Little Brown Bats disappearing in New York, and possibly spreading, because that's the main bats you see at Mammoth Cave. POOR BATTIES
Bailey made an interesting point in Pacific Hist today about air raid sirens, but this is kind of anecdotal in relation to what we actually talked about. When you hear an air raid siren, he pointed out, the first thing you think is "it must be the first Monday" or whatever, not "we're having a Tsunami/natural disaster" or "we're getting nuked". My first thought is always: "TORNADO SIREN?", demonstrating, once again, that Xenia is a panicked little town of failure in that regard. (Carroll made me hate all the Xenians paranoid of tornadoes--THEY ARE NOT THAT COMMON, PEOPLE! A thunderstorm does not 100% a tornado make, so please STFU thankyouverymuch. I always want to say, "stop crying, it's just some FREAKING RAIN". Argh. I really can't express my frustration with Xenians in this regard.)
So, I'm learning that technical classes are uninteresting because they are boring. I really enjoy reading articles in science magazines and stuff because they actually relate the science to application to make it interesting. Case in point? Ceramics today. We were talking about all the chemicals that go into ceramics and glazes and firing (silica, alumina, feldspar, copper, iron, magnesium, calcium [a lot of which are oxides]) and he was trying to explain how iron, which is common in most stoneware, can have so many colors. It's all different ratios, but for example, copper red-green will give you green if you use it alone, but if you base white under it, the reaction will give you red; if you need an explanation: Statue of Liberty is copper, was red, is now green. Yes? Moving on. He was trying to express how iron is so varied, because you can have reds, yellows, and browns. The example he used is blood, and that it is red, but will turn brown, and if you repeatedly wash out a stain will leave yellow behind. We also discussed how it is blue when unoxidized, and he didn't have an example, but we told him about how blood is blue if it is not carrying oxygen (aka has already passed to your lungs and is carrying out CO2, which I think I learned in like third grade... yay "health class" rather than "science class"). And the coolest thing? Why shrimp, lobsters, mussels, and other related things have blue blood: their blood uses copper to oxidize rather than iron. HOW COOL IS THAT. (It also made me wonder if this accounts for pink flamingos' color, since they get it from eating shrimps, and whether the same sort of thing applies to "scarlet" ibises [versus regular old white ibises].) See? This kind of thing makes me go yaaaaay chemistry! whereas last semester it was definitely I cannot fucking wait to be done with this class.
Something I have been thinking about a lot lately is just what this journal is for me, and what kind of person I am blahdeblahdeblah. Besides trying to keep up with myself on a daily basis, I really like to keep track of things I remember in my life I may not have written about before, I guess for my own personal history. One because I don't want to forget them (esp. when I'm older, because I am very afraid of things like memory loss that comes with old age) and two in case I ever die famous or something, I would love to have so much little shit and arbitrary details for poeple to sort through and analyze. Muahahaha. Anyway, I just like keeping track of things I remember in case I never have the trigger to remember them again, and the one thing I've been thinking about lately is the frame of mind you have when you're younger and how it changes as you get older; I am bitter and sort of resentful that St. Brigid had a not-very-good science teacher (I would say program, but it was probably all Mrs. Wise) for 6-8th grade, that I didn't learn much of anything in English about grammar (95% of my grammar understanding before high school came from experience learning; that is, I learned how to talk and how to write by reading and listening and such, not from grammar lessons. I went into high school only understanding subject/verb/adverb/adjective sort of things, and that was because that was as far as we got in diagramming--modifiers and conjunctions and such. Carroll changed my English skillz TO THE MAX), and that gradeschool math is too repetitive. I know I was a bit ahead of the curve on all that (woo tied for #1 in the class, took advanced math aka algebra in 8th grade), BUT, I am still angry about all that, especially since we didn't really have much of an art program either. And, um, gym almost always sucked. (Thank you Miss No-Action and Miss Un-Able [Miss Acton and Miss Able... so much irony...]) ANYWAY, learning algebra and trig and calculus and chemistry like I had today and everything makes me wonder why isn't there a more comprehensiveway of teaching? I'm not going into teaching so I haven't studied how kids' minds work, but there has to be something missing in the system, in my mind. I don't know if it's that I'm a spatial thinker, and I don't think most people are, or that I taught/learned separately how to be a spatial thinker; and if the latter is the case, I want to know if there's something to be done about it in regards to education. I was always a kind of self-taught person, in the idea that I read lots of DIY and craft books and did a lot of crafts and reasoned a lot of projects out in my mind before or instead of just sitting down to do them; because of this I see a how-to and can either say "I can do that" or "I need some more information before I try that" and I don't understand how people say "I don't know what to do! I don't get it! I'm a failure!" which is different than saying "here's my problem, the solution has to be right about here, but since I have no experience can I get some advice". Um (breath), here's an example. (Hopefully I haven't previously mentioned this.) In ceramics, after Ozaki taught us how things worked (it shrunk, you can't have trapped air, etc. etc. etc.) and I got a feel for the consistency and tensile strength of the clay, I haven't had any problems working with it. Nothing falls over or breaks because I can see that it's supported, and things are clearly connected so they won't fall apart, and I really don't get why some people (*coughcoughthebowllady*) insist on making things that clearly can't support themselves, or aren't joined. They just sort of try things without... I dunno... thinking about it? Like they have no regard for the material they're working with and treat it the same as they would just about any other? Enh, that's the best example I can come up with. And I'd love to know how it relates to me being a fairly observant person; if that's how I taught myself (why yes I did read too many detective books when I was little), or if it's just who I am because of how my brain developed when I was born. And just recently I realized that all those systems for "learning a language" don't teach it to you like they do in schools, that is teaching conjugation and sentence structure and idioms, whereas these "learn a language!" things are really just teaching you to memorize phrases. To me, that is totally unenjoyable. Rote memorization does not really engage my learning, whereas teaching me verbs or vocab and touching on etymology is inifintely more interesting, useful, and applicable.
So, er, does that make any sense? Before I dive into the next aspect of age and frame of mind that I've been thinking about.
So the next idea is just... what you expect. When I think back to when I was younger and think about things that used to be everyday things that no longer apply. When did I start waking myself up instead of having my parents wake me up? And then they would dress us and tie our shoes and walk us out to the bus stop... when did I "learn" to dress myself, and tie ym own shoes? (Which, another thing about spatial thinkers: I can't imagine learning to physically dress yourself is as difficult as some people make it out to be, but that could just be the context of the story I got it from.) And, you know, like Christmas--was there any point when I actually was in fear of getting coal? When you're a kid your frame of reference is much shorter and you only care in about the month prior, and of course adults are using it as a lesson for you to be a "good kid," but with such a small time frame, do you really apply it throughout the whole year? I can't really say I did, at all, or that I think anyone else did. And I wonder when the point was that I just sort of understood that your parents get you things because they love you, not because you were inherently "good"; I mean, as far as I can recall I've always "known" it but the thought never struck me until today.
On thoughts striking you: some of it has to be that you take certain thoughts for granted, and don't teach others about them. It could be because you just developed that understanding without learning it explicitly (like my thought about Christmas, today), but what if you just never understood it in the first place? For example, when I was little, my dad would joke around at dinner calling my sister and I "commies" if we refused to eat/try something. I think it's because history in gradeschool sucked (boring, focused mostly on older stuff, current events used to be WAAAAAAY over my head, certain periods focusing on Ohio history only), but I really knew fuck-nothing about the Cold War. I'm pretty sure I never heard of it until maybe seventh grade, when you reached more modern history, and even that was "the cold war was an arms race between Russia and the US" and that was that. Still rote memorization stuff, nothing to tie it all together to give you understanding. (I'm just starting to really appreciate how history is all interrelated, and sorting out one era from another.) I mean, the questions were so broad you essentially know nothing. Anyway, so, I think because I am a very literately-based person (spelling comes very easily to me, I'm guessing in part to learning random French/German/Polish/Spanish when I was younger that taught me some subtleties of foreign etymology in English), when I learn a new word my mind automatically sort of stores it as a spelling and sound, and in this case I guessed it was spelled "come" and just meant someone who was picky, because I didn't have any context for it. So one day... in high school, maybe even? we're learning about the Cold War and the term Communists comes up for the first time, and I dunno, we watched movies or I'd seen something on PBS or whatever relating to it fairly recently, and all of a sudden it hits me like a fucking ton of bricks: HOLY SHIT, DAD WAS CALLING ME A "COMMIE." Cue mental embarassment. Geez.
A few other examples of word-storage in my brain... I'd never specifically paid attention to (never really heard/used) the word "epitome" before junior year, and if Mr. Hemmert had asked me that day in class, I would have definitely gotten it wrong. Even though the year previously I'd had to learn it for Word Clues, an etymology class, and specifically remembered it because I was purposefully misattributing it as "epi" and "tome" for a story I was working on. Or the word "albeit"? I write it all the time, and in my mind, for some reason, it reads as "all-bite" (phonetically speaking). And I always kind of have this moment of "fuck, I'm doing it wrong again" when I hear someone say "al-be-it".
I really love the human mind, and it never ceases to fascinate me when people have stupid moments. It boggles the mind, truly.
Yes, that was rather long winded, but it's a lot of thoughts flying through my brain, and pretty consistently, too.
Bailey mentioned there's a movie or something coming out about... Queen Liliuokalani? that people are getting upset about because the title is "The Barbarian Princess". The creators are saying, hey, we know it's one of her nicknames, and we like her, hence the movie showing in her in good light, but the critics are saying, yes, but it's an ironic nickname to point out that though she was Hawaiian she wasn't barbaric. Which, to be fair, I think they have a point; there are a lot of idiots/ignorants in the world (hey, I used to be one of them, no thanks to you St. Brigid), but at the same time, there has to be something said for the use of irony and poeticism and things in art. (Otherwise, what's left? Surprisingly, this is coming out of the mouth of such a literalist. I hate analyzing stories for symbolism and all that shit it's "supposed" to mean; I'll draw my own conclusions. And yes, I used to be a rather literal reader. [Thanks again, St. Brigid!]) Plus, I now have such a ridiculously sarcastic/cynical tone (thanks to Mr. Soucek and Laura, interestingly enogh), that since a blog is my preferred manner of keeping track of everything, it's going to be difficult in the future to tell my tone. (Hence why I am an advocate of emoticons on the internet--we have no face or voice, so it's like a little face to express a little hint of the intended emotion. And then the only problem is something else I like to think about--learned context. I sometimes think that certain word patterns have certain effects on what I'm reading/writing because of the context I learned them in or the way I heard them, and I doubt these apply for other people. Which makes communication all the more difficult, now, doesn't it?)
In History of Furniture the other day, Walter (oh, Takeda... he's such a grumpy old character, like a sort of rude version of Mr. Hemmert who likes to talk a bit more) decided he would teach us the most necessary French phrase: "Talk to my arse, I have a headache." Which because I didn't take French I didn't quite catch all the words, spellings, but as far as I got down was "Parle a mon cule, ma tete (which has an accent grave on the first "e", right?) --somethingImissed--". Haha. If one of you Francophiles would kindly correct me, I am always up for linguistics...
Honestly I'm sort of jealous of my cousin. He's doing an yearlong exchange program in Argentina, so we found out he not only gets to be fluent in Argentinian Spanish, but he's learning French, too. And here I am in Hawaii, deprived of being allowed to learn Hawaiian, when classes here are such a joke I could have soooo easily caught up... *tears* (Note to self, you need to email/chat with the professor to see if there are courses online or something!)
By the way, are any of you out there lingust...i...philes? (Linguists? Er... how do you say "lover of languages"?) I have been thinking I should start trying to write a paragraph a day in Spanish to practice (ack, I am so out of it! Haven't studied for over a year) and throwing in other stuff every once in a while, maybe Polish or Hawaiian or whatever. And does anyone know if there are places online where you can learn a language and actually learn it, not memorize phrases? Danke...
See? I picked up lots of little turns of phrase in other languages from my parents. Like "c'est la gruyiere" from my dad, who speaks Franglais with my uncle [they both took French at Carroll], and so I know lots of butchered French like that. But I mean, I throw "bitte" and "danke" around all the time, which I picked up from my mom, and there's always "gesundheit" and "nastrovia" [sp?] and "garagekey!" [butchered intentionally by my family, but then I do not know the real spelling, either] and many many other things. Plus lots of little linguistic jokes from high school, like the elephant poem the French kids have to learn Freshman year. So probably the most French I can put together is not terribly impressive: "L'elefante se douche, douche, douche, l'elefante se mouche, mouche, mouche" and I don't even know the spelling, that's my best gues. (And "merde!" [thank you Franzie]) Although it was fun to learn about trompe l'oeil (pretend that o/e is mushed together, I'm lazy yanno?) in history of furniture when it was the name of the CD by Malajube (French Canadian band so I can only guess at like 40% of their lyrics... Oh! "Autobus!" That must mean bus! nurr nurr) that I got for Christmas.
Um, yeah. I am soooo just rambling. I need to grab dinner before the cafe (pretend there's an accent, I always spell it with one, just like I write facade with that curly under the c, I just don't know the keystrokes) so I'm posting this and I'll be back to edit it in like... um... a half an hour.
bee ar bee, el oh el
(By the by, when I'm reading things like that I hear "brb" and "lol" phonetically by letter, but "rofl" is phonetically by word and "wtf" and "omg" come out as the phrases "whatthefuck" and "oh my god", respectively. Anyone else want to throw in their two cents on literary quirks?)
[EDIT] kk, back
Oh, something else from surfing the other day, we were talking about aloe on burns and Lance pronounced it as if it were a Hawaiian word, "alo-eh". Which makes me wonder, what's the origin of it? I always assumed it was a Native American word (I guess because in like third grade we learned about it with respect to the Adobe [omg is that the right tribe? my brain's not functioning]), but it does have the right vowels to be Hawaiian, so I could understand if it was misattribution in this case. (Afterall, Cook didn't get here until 177...2.)
Okay...Miriam-Webster says it's Greek. Nevermind all that, then.
So, my writing style is very weird, to me at least. It's both a log of what I've been doing, but what I've been thinking, too, and then I write it sort of stream-of-consciousness as if I'm having a conversation with an anonymous audience, and I sort of meta-write it at the same time, making comments about how I was writing and thinking and whatever.
...I had something else to add to that, but I forget. I'll have to come back to it.
Okay, kind of a warning, here! I had a very morbid thought yesterday, so I am going to present to you that tought and my kind-of analysis of it all. I was sitting there thinking about all the different types of meat you're supposed to eat and why, because I've been trying to eat more red meat for iron because I think I'm iron deficient (or rather, my body is used to getting higher levels so it's sort of scurvy-like/vitamin-C withdrawal) when I'm away from home (I think I mentioned this the other day). So, you're supposed to eat red meat for iron, and I've heard to build up muscle. But it's got a lot of fat, so you're supposed to eat chicken and lean meats (white meats? [WEASEL: THE OTHER YELLOW MEAT] (don't ask... family joke)), but supposedly fish is good, too, because it's lean and you get omega-3's (omega-6's? omega-something-fatty-acids, anyhow), but then with tuna and canned stuff there's that whole mercury threat (which I have to wonder how recent of a development that is, because I had tuna sandwiches almost every schoolday from first to fourth grade), so obviously it's a whole cycle of what do you eat, and why--but thinking on all that analysis, somehow, the thought popped into my head, I wonder if anyone's ever looked at the nutritional value of people?
No, I'm not a cannibal, nor do I plan on becoming one. I don't think it had anything to do with the fact that earlier this semester Bailey mentioned that Hawaiians had ritual cannibalism after death, and only certain parts, because that was like over a month ago. I have no idea where this thought came from, it was just so out of left field. (Where does that phrase come from? I mean because in baseball you're not really having anything come from left field, are you...? If anything you'd chuck it to the first baseman who's in left field [albeit infield]) And, the interesting thing is, thoughts like this in my mind are not really morbid. I'm not doing them to be gross or because I have some hidden dark personality, they crop up as obviously (in my mind, because if there's one thing I know it's the tone of my own thoughts) scientific queries. I purely want to know from a curious, scientific perspective.
And then my brain went, "hey, what? You're not a cannibal, and you're not really that morbid," and things got weird from there. My train of thought involved wondering what God would say about cannibalism for survival in a worst-case-scenario, which led to a "blood of Christ joke" which then made me wonder about the nutritonal value of blood.
Um... yeah. Regardless of whether I really am morbid, I don't think I'm creepy morbid, and the fact stands that my brain is sometimes blindingly analytical. ("A bong? Damnit, I don't know how they work. If only I'd actually read that instructable on how to make a bong with a pop can" and you think I'm kidding) (And yes, sometimes this is to my oblivious detriment--can we say Senior year homecoming dance? I'm a moron. "Hey Diane, do you want to go out for dinner?" "What, like, before the dance? I thought that was assumed." "Well, yes, but...um..." My brain: Diane, you are such an idiot *smack*)
Aaaaand I lost my train of thought talking about stupidmoments.
Oh, hey, writing style, back to that whole meta-writing thing. It's kind of funny to see UD's administration get so worked up over the term "ghetto" because it was a vocab word for me in seventh grade, when we read several different books about the Holocaust, and I knew/know/always have known it to mean "a place where people sharing a certain value are living." So in that case, the Jewish or the Poles or the gays or whatever (did they have gay ghettos?), and in this case it's just a bunch of students. We are NOT trying to imply that we're gangsta or anything, even though I DO know that ghetto as an adjective now holds that connotation. (By the way, I will always hold that in physical quality, CJ is ridiculously more ghetto than Carroll. Also, I learned the definition of the adjective of ghetto when discussing Carroll's percussion equipment, namely, my vibraphone. Thank you C-ville, it's a piece of shite [but still my baby!] that we ghetto-rigged with duct tape and a desk eraser.) Um... I lost my train of thought about meta-writing again.
(Speaking of the Holocaust, Bailey explained why that one guy claims it didn't happen. Because he claims that "Holocaust" implies that only many Jews died, which Hitler killed more than just Jews, so therefore it didn't happen because of a technicality of a term he's kind of wrong about anyway. I think this guy is missing the point.)
OH. Anyway, so if there's one good thing to be said about St. Brigid's it's that we read a lot of good literature. And I remember learning very early on that some writers took to writing accents phonetically, or writing stylistically or whatever you want to call it. Anyway, that never bothered me, which I think is why bad spelling makes me flip my shit. (tangent: when you see/hear the phrase "flip one's shit" what do picture? I kind of get the same image as "flip one's lid" which is a guy with the top of his head flipping up like it had a hinge. Don't ask me where it came from, I couldn't tell you in a million years.) But anyway, if you see something I wrote misspelled, you can assume one of three things: One, I don't actually know how to spell it, so I'm guessing in relation to phonetics and anything I can guess about etymology (like if you asked me to spell something and I thought it might be French, I'm more likely to toss an "e" on the end in certain cases). Two, I was typing to quickly or I didn't go back to read what I misspelled (this happens when I hand-write quickly, too--almost very time I write "with the" it comes out as "withe"). Three, I'm doing it for the sake of accents or phrasing or phonetics to give it the same tone I hear it in in my head.
So yes, metadiscussion of my blogging habits that really has not much to do with anything.
Another thing, I really enjoy writing, which is why I like to write a lot. It's not only relaxing but therapeutic if I'm sort of working through problems (if I can explain them rationally to someone else then that usually means I've successfully worked through it for myself), plus, I dunno, I've kind of always wanted to write. I would love to write a book/novel but I really have nothing to write about. My problem is that when I get ideas, they are either objects, or they relate objects I already have. This sort of thinking is cool from an engineering or treasure-hunters's sort of perspective in that I'm always inventing weird mysterious objects, but it's not really conducive to plotlines. And since I like to write for entertainment and not like statements on politics or religion or anything, I'm not up for ridiculous metaphors, either, unless they come after the fact, and then only as discussion and not "intended" in the writing. (Which is a big problem I have with studying books--if the writer never said it him or herself, how do we know these analyses of their metaphors are so correct? Grr.)
Um, anyway, this sort of style is good for cooperative writing, though. If I have people like Kondwani or Weebl or Katy setting up interesting situations with interesting characters, I can provide plot devices and tie together loose ends and plot holes like nobody's business. ;D
In that regard, I miss Da Chicken. =/ And the Notebook, too...
OH, haha, another thought that came a little after my thoughts on cannibalism last night, because I had been thinking about meat and dairy and fruit servings--the food pyramid. Did they really have to change it? I don't understand why it didn't make sense to people, it made sense to me. The pieces on the bottom are bigger because they represent a bigger proportion of a type of food you should eat in one day.
Lately I've found I don't really meet the recommended amounts, because I eat less in general (except fats/sugars... shame shame I blame my mother), which is good because I'm a smaller person but also makes me wonder. I do try to keep the same sort of ratios though.
Sooo, St. Patrick's day! I completely forgot about it. I didn't realize it until I walked into my second class at ten and the girl asked why so few people were wearing green, and then I didn't even realize until lunch that I had green on my shorts (there's a leaf printed on one hip). You'd think with having gone to such an Irish Catholic gradeschool where St. Patrick's day as so huge (I feel like I have Irish Catholic roots... just because I went to an Irish Catholic gradeschool) that it would be one of those holidays I don't really forget at all, but nope, I guess you'd be wrong. I was rather surprised, myself.
I was sitting on the beach yesterday passing the time (too windy-chilly to sleep, couldn't warm up in the sun because I'm burnt) and like writer's inspiration, a thought just kind of struck out of the blue with no processing whatsoever that led there, and that was that if the comic I want to post were just based on whatever I think up, which it is, that if it ever reflected my real life, the bong guy would make a funny addition. And that "Life, illus." would be a cool name. (I wish I had the Douglas Adams quote on hand that discusses how to write, a question he got all the time, he said. It's basically him saying that all good ideas come out of the blue and you can't force them, which is true, and which is why so far I am a terrible writer, I think because I have a sort of renaissance-man personality with not enough studies in one area to get focused inspiration.)
Oh, another writing stylistic thing I picked up, like phoneticism, that I think I wrote about a little while back; combining words together to change their tone and pace and meaning, like "samaneric" in Lord of the Flies.
Also, I think you should all read the book Pouliuli. It's the book I had to read for Pacific history and it's really interesting, in my opinion. I think I'm drawn to the self-psychological focus in the writing style. It's very literal in symbolism and such, plus I think it relates to my state of mind lately. (Lately as in the last few years, or at least certain events in that time frame.)
Oh oh oh, one last thing on that whole "growing up" and "getting older" and "how your mind works" thing. I want to write it all down because you kind of experience things several times when you are younger, and the nth time around might be your last so I like to write those things down. But anyway the nth time around, your mind has developed so you see things in a new light and you learn about them, obviously (and hopefully), getting wiser with age. But what I mean is, here's an example: you go through being a baby once. You are a toddler, a gradeschooler, a teenager, a college-kid, and then you reach an adult. And even if you don't have kids of your own, you experience all those ages again (perhaps through other kids, or even just friends) and you see things from a new perspective. But you never really go through "getting old" (in the old age sense) more than once; you don't really see other people get old old because you're probably dead. I dunno, it just makes me wonder if there's some perspective we don't have right now, and I just think that's interesting. Plus, there are a lot of aspects of it that make it interesting in a different way, too. When you're younger you spend a lot of time wanting to be older, and if it's not looking older (like makeup or something for girls, or dying to be old enough for dances or some shit like that) then maybe acting older (so for me, when I was younger I was determined to be mature). But then when you get around to that age for an nth time, you realize, where did "that age" go? I was trying to be older so what was it that was so simplistic back then? The other day Kevin went surfing, too, and he pointed out that when you're little you can spend a whole day playing with a rock with a smiley face your parents gave you, and it made me wonder where that sort of imagination came from. I know I used to have it but I look at things like that and it makes me wonder what it was and where I put it. Hm. =/
65 days, woo! Dwell on my dork moment: I got books from/relating to 1936, 1935, 1937, 1957... and if that's not enough, 1832... (I guess I'm just missing 1912, lol?) I guess that sort of repeats yesterday but so damn coooool.
Ah, I think that's enough for now.
[EDIT2] Just kidding, wanted to throw this out there, too. I think the island on the banner of this blog is an east-facing view of Chinaman's hat. If not, it's really fucking close to being it.
Ceramics is coming along pretty good, my "plate" made it through with only one small crack, easily fixed with glaze, and even if it breaks in the kiln it will be fixable. I kind of wish I could finish the bird bath right now, though. Grr. Anyway, one effect I was going for didn't really work so I think I'll have to play with it a little, and I'm hoping it will turn out good. And then the raku piece won't be fired until after break, so all in all I have a grand total of zero pieces finished for this grading, haha.
Oh, I almost completely forgot about that petal cup... I wonder if it made it through?
Today I think I am just going to roll up in a ball and die. I am crampy despite attempts to up my iron and potassium levels, exhausted and muscle-sore from surfing (I would like to not use my shoulders all day thankyouverymuch), and the back of my legs hurts a lot from the sunburn from Saturday still. Also my face is kind of red and I think I may have burnt my lips? They don't hurt at all but they look kind of swollen and red at the edges, as if I had been licking them and they got chapped. It's weird. Plus I had a headache since last night (a very heavy and squinty one), so I drank some caffiene (which is supposed to aggravate cramps), but hey, I am a little more awake and my headache is gone. Unfortunately they didn't have plain tea so diet coke with lime is okay but lots of empty calories and I'm not really a coke person so boo. (Run-on much?)
Otherwise, I wrote up a list of the books I got from the free section of the library:
--The Madonna in Art, 1897; really neat cover with stamped lilies and gilt, neat illustrations.
--Legends of the Madonna, 1872; the most amazing cover with gilt stamping and gilt edges on the paper, unfortunately falling apart in my hands. =(
--Christ in the Ancient World, 1933; very small and cute, notes on the inside from 1935.
--Representative Short Stories, 1924; stamped cover w/ floral pattern, notes from 1927, illustrated.
--Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, 1923; stamped and printed cover illustration, illustrated, original copyright 1878.
--The Serpent and the Satellite, 1953; interesting book about symbols in religious history.
--Levitation, 1928; stamped gilt cover, sounds like it would be a somewhat historically funny read.
--The Syrian Christ, 1924; stamped gilt cover, orig. copyright 1916
--St. Augustine, 1933
--Journal of Tyerman and Bennet, Vols. 1 & 2, 1832; illustrated publication of original journals from 1821 to 1829 (that's three years difference... wow)
--Gilbert and Sullivan Songbook, not terribly old, my guess 60's-80's? Two-tone ink. Just picked it up for kicks.
--Fairy Tales, Brothers Grimm, 1966
--Magic House of Numbers, 1957; math tricks for learning/teaching/fun
--Digging for History: Archeology discoveries throughout the world, 1945 to 1959, 1960
--Bermudiana, 1936
Oh hells yes. I dunno, I really appreciate being able to hold something and just sort of feel the gaping history or importance of it, especially if it's something small. And I know, these books are probably not worth much to collectors or anything, but I don't care, it's all about the history for me. Being able to hold something in my hands, in the case of the oldest books, that is one hundred and seventy-five years old. And back then it was three-years-old information, so "brand new". Utterly...wow.
Other fun things I've been meaning to post about! Yesterday surfing, we had trouble starting a fire because it was so windy, and out of all of us I was the only scout there and I got to show off my skills (sort of--I just gave some advice because they guys were having too much fun "being guys" and being in charge of the fire/coals/grilling). BUT, I did regret leaving my purse in the car (because of my wallet and phone); my pocket knife was in there, too. Could have shown off my engineering skills... A guy came down the beach asking if anyone had paper or anything to burn with. I was only half paying attention but I did finally listen enough to catch on that he was asking if anyone had a bong or anything, which was hilarious since a lot of the people there actually do smoke fairly regularly, but didn't have anything with them. He decided we would all try to MacGuyver something (esp. involving an aluminum can if he could find one). I think it goes to show...something... that my first thoughts were: "I wish I knew how a bong worked" and "Damn, I left my pocketknife up in the car." So, yeah. Then he came back and asked the four of us sleeping on the beach if "we burned" and I said no, so he had me give him a handshake-sort-of-thing and was all "good for you, good for you". (I dunno, what do you call it when you grab their hand but your hand is facing upward rather than down... like... a bro-handshake or something?) Anyway it was hilarious and I can honestly say that's the first tome I've ever had someone ask me if I did drugs slash wanted to. Hehe. (You think it would have happened previously in Yellow Springs somehow...lol)
I've been seeing more mongoose (mongeese? mongoosen?) on campus. They are hilariously adorable when they run.
I read a sad article the other day that bats are disappearing, and it could relate to bees disappearance; it could be all the cell signals and stuff are messing them up. That makes me soooo sad. I freaking love bats. I am especially sad that it's Little Brown Bats disappearing in New York, and possibly spreading, because that's the main bats you see at Mammoth Cave. POOR BATTIES
Bailey made an interesting point in Pacific Hist today about air raid sirens, but this is kind of anecdotal in relation to what we actually talked about. When you hear an air raid siren, he pointed out, the first thing you think is "it must be the first Monday" or whatever, not "we're having a Tsunami/natural disaster" or "we're getting nuked". My first thought is always: "TORNADO SIREN?", demonstrating, once again, that Xenia is a panicked little town of failure in that regard. (Carroll made me hate all the Xenians paranoid of tornadoes--THEY ARE NOT THAT COMMON, PEOPLE! A thunderstorm does not 100% a tornado make, so please STFU thankyouverymuch. I always want to say, "stop crying, it's just some FREAKING RAIN". Argh. I really can't express my frustration with Xenians in this regard.)
So, I'm learning that technical classes are uninteresting because they are boring. I really enjoy reading articles in science magazines and stuff because they actually relate the science to application to make it interesting. Case in point? Ceramics today. We were talking about all the chemicals that go into ceramics and glazes and firing (silica, alumina, feldspar, copper, iron, magnesium, calcium [a lot of which are oxides]) and he was trying to explain how iron, which is common in most stoneware, can have so many colors. It's all different ratios, but for example, copper red-green will give you green if you use it alone, but if you base white under it, the reaction will give you red; if you need an explanation: Statue of Liberty is copper, was red, is now green. Yes? Moving on. He was trying to express how iron is so varied, because you can have reds, yellows, and browns. The example he used is blood, and that it is red, but will turn brown, and if you repeatedly wash out a stain will leave yellow behind. We also discussed how it is blue when unoxidized, and he didn't have an example, but we told him about how blood is blue if it is not carrying oxygen (aka has already passed to your lungs and is carrying out CO2, which I think I learned in like third grade... yay "health class" rather than "science class"). And the coolest thing? Why shrimp, lobsters, mussels, and other related things have blue blood: their blood uses copper to oxidize rather than iron. HOW COOL IS THAT. (It also made me wonder if this accounts for pink flamingos' color, since they get it from eating shrimps, and whether the same sort of thing applies to "scarlet" ibises [versus regular old white ibises].) See? This kind of thing makes me go yaaaaay chemistry! whereas last semester it was definitely I cannot fucking wait to be done with this class.
Something I have been thinking about a lot lately is just what this journal is for me, and what kind of person I am blahdeblahdeblah. Besides trying to keep up with myself on a daily basis, I really like to keep track of things I remember in my life I may not have written about before, I guess for my own personal history. One because I don't want to forget them (esp. when I'm older, because I am very afraid of things like memory loss that comes with old age) and two in case I ever die famous or something, I would love to have so much little shit and arbitrary details for poeple to sort through and analyze. Muahahaha. Anyway, I just like keeping track of things I remember in case I never have the trigger to remember them again, and the one thing I've been thinking about lately is the frame of mind you have when you're younger and how it changes as you get older; I am bitter and sort of resentful that St. Brigid had a not-very-good science teacher (I would say program, but it was probably all Mrs. Wise) for 6-8th grade, that I didn't learn much of anything in English about grammar (95% of my grammar understanding before high school came from experience learning; that is, I learned how to talk and how to write by reading and listening and such, not from grammar lessons. I went into high school only understanding subject/verb/adverb/adjective sort of things, and that was because that was as far as we got in diagramming--modifiers and conjunctions and such. Carroll changed my English skillz TO THE MAX), and that gradeschool math is too repetitive. I know I was a bit ahead of the curve on all that (woo tied for #1 in the class, took advanced math aka algebra in 8th grade), BUT, I am still angry about all that, especially since we didn't really have much of an art program either. And, um, gym almost always sucked. (Thank you Miss No-Action and Miss Un-Able [Miss Acton and Miss Able... so much irony...]) ANYWAY, learning algebra and trig and calculus and chemistry like I had today and everything makes me wonder why isn't there a more comprehensiveway of teaching? I'm not going into teaching so I haven't studied how kids' minds work, but there has to be something missing in the system, in my mind. I don't know if it's that I'm a spatial thinker, and I don't think most people are, or that I taught/learned separately how to be a spatial thinker; and if the latter is the case, I want to know if there's something to be done about it in regards to education. I was always a kind of self-taught person, in the idea that I read lots of DIY and craft books and did a lot of crafts and reasoned a lot of projects out in my mind before or instead of just sitting down to do them; because of this I see a how-to and can either say "I can do that" or "I need some more information before I try that" and I don't understand how people say "I don't know what to do! I don't get it! I'm a failure!" which is different than saying "here's my problem, the solution has to be right about here, but since I have no experience can I get some advice". Um (breath), here's an example. (Hopefully I haven't previously mentioned this.) In ceramics, after Ozaki taught us how things worked (it shrunk, you can't have trapped air, etc. etc. etc.) and I got a feel for the consistency and tensile strength of the clay, I haven't had any problems working with it. Nothing falls over or breaks because I can see that it's supported, and things are clearly connected so they won't fall apart, and I really don't get why some people (*coughcoughthebowllady*) insist on making things that clearly can't support themselves, or aren't joined. They just sort of try things without... I dunno... thinking about it? Like they have no regard for the material they're working with and treat it the same as they would just about any other? Enh, that's the best example I can come up with. And I'd love to know how it relates to me being a fairly observant person; if that's how I taught myself (why yes I did read too many detective books when I was little), or if it's just who I am because of how my brain developed when I was born. And just recently I realized that all those systems for "learning a language" don't teach it to you like they do in schools, that is teaching conjugation and sentence structure and idioms, whereas these "learn a language!" things are really just teaching you to memorize phrases. To me, that is totally unenjoyable. Rote memorization does not really engage my learning, whereas teaching me verbs or vocab and touching on etymology is inifintely more interesting, useful, and applicable.
So, er, does that make any sense? Before I dive into the next aspect of age and frame of mind that I've been thinking about.
So the next idea is just... what you expect. When I think back to when I was younger and think about things that used to be everyday things that no longer apply. When did I start waking myself up instead of having my parents wake me up? And then they would dress us and tie our shoes and walk us out to the bus stop... when did I "learn" to dress myself, and tie ym own shoes? (Which, another thing about spatial thinkers: I can't imagine learning to physically dress yourself is as difficult as some people make it out to be, but that could just be the context of the story I got it from.) And, you know, like Christmas--was there any point when I actually was in fear of getting coal? When you're a kid your frame of reference is much shorter and you only care in about the month prior, and of course adults are using it as a lesson for you to be a "good kid," but with such a small time frame, do you really apply it throughout the whole year? I can't really say I did, at all, or that I think anyone else did. And I wonder when the point was that I just sort of understood that your parents get you things because they love you, not because you were inherently "good"; I mean, as far as I can recall I've always "known" it but the thought never struck me until today.
On thoughts striking you: some of it has to be that you take certain thoughts for granted, and don't teach others about them. It could be because you just developed that understanding without learning it explicitly (like my thought about Christmas, today), but what if you just never understood it in the first place? For example, when I was little, my dad would joke around at dinner calling my sister and I "commies" if we refused to eat/try something. I think it's because history in gradeschool sucked (boring, focused mostly on older stuff, current events used to be WAAAAAAY over my head, certain periods focusing on Ohio history only), but I really knew fuck-nothing about the Cold War. I'm pretty sure I never heard of it until maybe seventh grade, when you reached more modern history, and even that was "the cold war was an arms race between Russia and the US" and that was that. Still rote memorization stuff, nothing to tie it all together to give you understanding. (I'm just starting to really appreciate how history is all interrelated, and sorting out one era from another.) I mean, the questions were so broad you essentially know nothing. Anyway, so, I think because I am a very literately-based person (spelling comes very easily to me, I'm guessing in part to learning random French/German/Polish/Spanish when I was younger that taught me some subtleties of foreign etymology in English), when I learn a new word my mind automatically sort of stores it as a spelling and sound, and in this case I guessed it was spelled "come" and just meant someone who was picky, because I didn't have any context for it. So one day... in high school, maybe even? we're learning about the Cold War and the term Communists comes up for the first time, and I dunno, we watched movies or I'd seen something on PBS or whatever relating to it fairly recently, and all of a sudden it hits me like a fucking ton of bricks: HOLY SHIT, DAD WAS CALLING ME A "COMMIE." Cue mental embarassment. Geez.
A few other examples of word-storage in my brain... I'd never specifically paid attention to (never really heard/used) the word "epitome" before junior year, and if Mr. Hemmert had asked me that day in class, I would have definitely gotten it wrong. Even though the year previously I'd had to learn it for Word Clues, an etymology class, and specifically remembered it because I was purposefully misattributing it as "epi" and "tome" for a story I was working on. Or the word "albeit"? I write it all the time, and in my mind, for some reason, it reads as "all-bite" (phonetically speaking). And I always kind of have this moment of "fuck, I'm doing it wrong again" when I hear someone say "al-be-it".
I really love the human mind, and it never ceases to fascinate me when people have stupid moments. It boggles the mind, truly.
Yes, that was rather long winded, but it's a lot of thoughts flying through my brain, and pretty consistently, too.
Bailey mentioned there's a movie or something coming out about... Queen Liliuokalani? that people are getting upset about because the title is "The Barbarian Princess". The creators are saying, hey, we know it's one of her nicknames, and we like her, hence the movie showing in her in good light, but the critics are saying, yes, but it's an ironic nickname to point out that though she was Hawaiian she wasn't barbaric. Which, to be fair, I think they have a point; there are a lot of idiots/ignorants in the world (hey, I used to be one of them, no thanks to you St. Brigid), but at the same time, there has to be something said for the use of irony and poeticism and things in art. (Otherwise, what's left? Surprisingly, this is coming out of the mouth of such a literalist. I hate analyzing stories for symbolism and all that shit it's "supposed" to mean; I'll draw my own conclusions. And yes, I used to be a rather literal reader. [Thanks again, St. Brigid!]) Plus, I now have such a ridiculously sarcastic/cynical tone (thanks to Mr. Soucek and Laura, interestingly enogh), that since a blog is my preferred manner of keeping track of everything, it's going to be difficult in the future to tell my tone. (Hence why I am an advocate of emoticons on the internet--we have no face or voice, so it's like a little face to express a little hint of the intended emotion. And then the only problem is something else I like to think about--learned context. I sometimes think that certain word patterns have certain effects on what I'm reading/writing because of the context I learned them in or the way I heard them, and I doubt these apply for other people. Which makes communication all the more difficult, now, doesn't it?)
In History of Furniture the other day, Walter (oh, Takeda... he's such a grumpy old character, like a sort of rude version of Mr. Hemmert who likes to talk a bit more) decided he would teach us the most necessary French phrase: "Talk to my arse, I have a headache." Which because I didn't take French I didn't quite catch all the words, spellings, but as far as I got down was "Parle a mon cule, ma tete (which has an accent grave on the first "e", right?) --somethingImissed--". Haha. If one of you Francophiles would kindly correct me, I am always up for linguistics...
Honestly I'm sort of jealous of my cousin. He's doing an yearlong exchange program in Argentina, so we found out he not only gets to be fluent in Argentinian Spanish, but he's learning French, too. And here I am in Hawaii, deprived of being allowed to learn Hawaiian, when classes here are such a joke I could have soooo easily caught up... *tears* (Note to self, you need to email/chat with the professor to see if there are courses online or something!)
By the way, are any of you out there lingust...i...philes? (Linguists? Er... how do you say "lover of languages"?) I have been thinking I should start trying to write a paragraph a day in Spanish to practice (ack, I am so out of it! Haven't studied for over a year) and throwing in other stuff every once in a while, maybe Polish or Hawaiian or whatever. And does anyone know if there are places online where you can learn a language and actually learn it, not memorize phrases? Danke...
See? I picked up lots of little turns of phrase in other languages from my parents. Like "c'est la gruyiere" from my dad, who speaks Franglais with my uncle [they both took French at Carroll], and so I know lots of butchered French like that. But I mean, I throw "bitte" and "danke" around all the time, which I picked up from my mom, and there's always "gesundheit" and "nastrovia" [sp?] and "garagekey!" [butchered intentionally by my family, but then I do not know the real spelling, either] and many many other things. Plus lots of little linguistic jokes from high school, like the elephant poem the French kids have to learn Freshman year. So probably the most French I can put together is not terribly impressive: "L'elefante se douche, douche, douche, l'elefante se mouche, mouche, mouche" and I don't even know the spelling, that's my best gues. (And "merde!" [thank you Franzie]) Although it was fun to learn about trompe l'oeil (pretend that o/e is mushed together, I'm lazy yanno?) in history of furniture when it was the name of the CD by Malajube (French Canadian band so I can only guess at like 40% of their lyrics... Oh! "Autobus!" That must mean bus! nurr nurr) that I got for Christmas.
Um, yeah. I am soooo just rambling. I need to grab dinner before the cafe (pretend there's an accent, I always spell it with one, just like I write facade with that curly under the c, I just don't know the keystrokes) so I'm posting this and I'll be back to edit it in like... um... a half an hour.
bee ar bee, el oh el
(By the by, when I'm reading things like that I hear "brb" and "lol" phonetically by letter, but "rofl" is phonetically by word and "wtf" and "omg" come out as the phrases "whatthefuck" and "oh my god", respectively. Anyone else want to throw in their two cents on literary quirks?)
[EDIT] kk, back
Oh, something else from surfing the other day, we were talking about aloe on burns and Lance pronounced it as if it were a Hawaiian word, "alo-eh". Which makes me wonder, what's the origin of it? I always assumed it was a Native American word (I guess because in like third grade we learned about it with respect to the Adobe [omg is that the right tribe? my brain's not functioning]), but it does have the right vowels to be Hawaiian, so I could understand if it was misattribution in this case. (Afterall, Cook didn't get here until 177...2.)
Okay...Miriam-Webster says it's Greek. Nevermind all that, then.
So, my writing style is very weird, to me at least. It's both a log of what I've been doing, but what I've been thinking, too, and then I write it sort of stream-of-consciousness as if I'm having a conversation with an anonymous audience, and I sort of meta-write it at the same time, making comments about how I was writing and thinking and whatever.
...I had something else to add to that, but I forget. I'll have to come back to it.
Okay, kind of a warning, here! I had a very morbid thought yesterday, so I am going to present to you that tought and my kind-of analysis of it all. I was sitting there thinking about all the different types of meat you're supposed to eat and why, because I've been trying to eat more red meat for iron because I think I'm iron deficient (or rather, my body is used to getting higher levels so it's sort of scurvy-like/vitamin-C withdrawal) when I'm away from home (I think I mentioned this the other day). So, you're supposed to eat red meat for iron, and I've heard to build up muscle. But it's got a lot of fat, so you're supposed to eat chicken and lean meats (white meats? [WEASEL: THE OTHER YELLOW MEAT] (don't ask... family joke)), but supposedly fish is good, too, because it's lean and you get omega-3's (omega-6's? omega-something-fatty-acids, anyhow), but then with tuna and canned stuff there's that whole mercury threat (which I have to wonder how recent of a development that is, because I had tuna sandwiches almost every schoolday from first to fourth grade), so obviously it's a whole cycle of what do you eat, and why--but thinking on all that analysis, somehow, the thought popped into my head, I wonder if anyone's ever looked at the nutritional value of people?
No, I'm not a cannibal, nor do I plan on becoming one. I don't think it had anything to do with the fact that earlier this semester Bailey mentioned that Hawaiians had ritual cannibalism after death, and only certain parts, because that was like over a month ago. I have no idea where this thought came from, it was just so out of left field. (Where does that phrase come from? I mean because in baseball you're not really having anything come from left field, are you...? If anything you'd chuck it to the first baseman who's in left field [albeit infield]) And, the interesting thing is, thoughts like this in my mind are not really morbid. I'm not doing them to be gross or because I have some hidden dark personality, they crop up as obviously (in my mind, because if there's one thing I know it's the tone of my own thoughts) scientific queries. I purely want to know from a curious, scientific perspective.
And then my brain went, "hey, what? You're not a cannibal, and you're not really that morbid," and things got weird from there. My train of thought involved wondering what God would say about cannibalism for survival in a worst-case-scenario, which led to a "blood of Christ joke" which then made me wonder about the nutritonal value of blood.
Um... yeah. Regardless of whether I really am morbid, I don't think I'm creepy morbid, and the fact stands that my brain is sometimes blindingly analytical. ("A bong? Damnit, I don't know how they work. If only I'd actually read that instructable on how to make a bong with a pop can" and you think I'm kidding) (And yes, sometimes this is to my oblivious detriment--can we say Senior year homecoming dance? I'm a moron. "Hey Diane, do you want to go out for dinner?" "What, like, before the dance? I thought that was assumed." "Well, yes, but...um..." My brain: Diane, you are such an idiot *smack*)
Aaaaand I lost my train of thought talking about stupidmoments.
Oh, hey, writing style, back to that whole meta-writing thing. It's kind of funny to see UD's administration get so worked up over the term "ghetto" because it was a vocab word for me in seventh grade, when we read several different books about the Holocaust, and I knew/know/always have known it to mean "a place where people sharing a certain value are living." So in that case, the Jewish or the Poles or the gays or whatever (did they have gay ghettos?), and in this case it's just a bunch of students. We are NOT trying to imply that we're gangsta or anything, even though I DO know that ghetto as an adjective now holds that connotation. (By the way, I will always hold that in physical quality, CJ is ridiculously more ghetto than Carroll. Also, I learned the definition of the adjective of ghetto when discussing Carroll's percussion equipment, namely, my vibraphone. Thank you C-ville, it's a piece of shite [but still my baby!] that we ghetto-rigged with duct tape and a desk eraser.) Um... I lost my train of thought about meta-writing again.
(Speaking of the Holocaust, Bailey explained why that one guy claims it didn't happen. Because he claims that "Holocaust" implies that only many Jews died, which Hitler killed more than just Jews, so therefore it didn't happen because of a technicality of a term he's kind of wrong about anyway. I think this guy is missing the point.)
OH. Anyway, so if there's one good thing to be said about St. Brigid's it's that we read a lot of good literature. And I remember learning very early on that some writers took to writing accents phonetically, or writing stylistically or whatever you want to call it. Anyway, that never bothered me, which I think is why bad spelling makes me flip my shit. (tangent: when you see/hear the phrase "flip one's shit" what do picture? I kind of get the same image as "flip one's lid" which is a guy with the top of his head flipping up like it had a hinge. Don't ask me where it came from, I couldn't tell you in a million years.) But anyway, if you see something I wrote misspelled, you can assume one of three things: One, I don't actually know how to spell it, so I'm guessing in relation to phonetics and anything I can guess about etymology (like if you asked me to spell something and I thought it might be French, I'm more likely to toss an "e" on the end in certain cases). Two, I was typing to quickly or I didn't go back to read what I misspelled (this happens when I hand-write quickly, too--almost very time I write "with the" it comes out as "withe"). Three, I'm doing it for the sake of accents or phrasing or phonetics to give it the same tone I hear it in in my head.
So yes, metadiscussion of my blogging habits that really has not much to do with anything.
Another thing, I really enjoy writing, which is why I like to write a lot. It's not only relaxing but therapeutic if I'm sort of working through problems (if I can explain them rationally to someone else then that usually means I've successfully worked through it for myself), plus, I dunno, I've kind of always wanted to write. I would love to write a book/novel but I really have nothing to write about. My problem is that when I get ideas, they are either objects, or they relate objects I already have. This sort of thinking is cool from an engineering or treasure-hunters's sort of perspective in that I'm always inventing weird mysterious objects, but it's not really conducive to plotlines. And since I like to write for entertainment and not like statements on politics or religion or anything, I'm not up for ridiculous metaphors, either, unless they come after the fact, and then only as discussion and not "intended" in the writing. (Which is a big problem I have with studying books--if the writer never said it him or herself, how do we know these analyses of their metaphors are so correct? Grr.)
Um, anyway, this sort of style is good for cooperative writing, though. If I have people like Kondwani or Weebl or Katy setting up interesting situations with interesting characters, I can provide plot devices and tie together loose ends and plot holes like nobody's business. ;D
In that regard, I miss Da Chicken. =/ And the Notebook, too...
OH, haha, another thought that came a little after my thoughts on cannibalism last night, because I had been thinking about meat and dairy and fruit servings--the food pyramid. Did they really have to change it? I don't understand why it didn't make sense to people, it made sense to me. The pieces on the bottom are bigger because they represent a bigger proportion of a type of food you should eat in one day.
Lately I've found I don't really meet the recommended amounts, because I eat less in general (except fats/sugars... shame shame I blame my mother), which is good because I'm a smaller person but also makes me wonder. I do try to keep the same sort of ratios though.
Sooo, St. Patrick's day! I completely forgot about it. I didn't realize it until I walked into my second class at ten and the girl asked why so few people were wearing green, and then I didn't even realize until lunch that I had green on my shorts (there's a leaf printed on one hip). You'd think with having gone to such an Irish Catholic gradeschool where St. Patrick's day as so huge (I feel like I have Irish Catholic roots... just because I went to an Irish Catholic gradeschool) that it would be one of those holidays I don't really forget at all, but nope, I guess you'd be wrong. I was rather surprised, myself.
I was sitting on the beach yesterday passing the time (too windy-chilly to sleep, couldn't warm up in the sun because I'm burnt) and like writer's inspiration, a thought just kind of struck out of the blue with no processing whatsoever that led there, and that was that if the comic I want to post were just based on whatever I think up, which it is, that if it ever reflected my real life, the bong guy would make a funny addition. And that "Life, illus." would be a cool name. (I wish I had the Douglas Adams quote on hand that discusses how to write, a question he got all the time, he said. It's basically him saying that all good ideas come out of the blue and you can't force them, which is true, and which is why so far I am a terrible writer, I think because I have a sort of renaissance-man personality with not enough studies in one area to get focused inspiration.)
Oh, another writing stylistic thing I picked up, like phoneticism, that I think I wrote about a little while back; combining words together to change their tone and pace and meaning, like "samaneric" in Lord of the Flies.
Also, I think you should all read the book Pouliuli. It's the book I had to read for Pacific history and it's really interesting, in my opinion. I think I'm drawn to the self-psychological focus in the writing style. It's very literal in symbolism and such, plus I think it relates to my state of mind lately. (Lately as in the last few years, or at least certain events in that time frame.)
Oh oh oh, one last thing on that whole "growing up" and "getting older" and "how your mind works" thing. I want to write it all down because you kind of experience things several times when you are younger, and the nth time around might be your last so I like to write those things down. But anyway the nth time around, your mind has developed so you see things in a new light and you learn about them, obviously (and hopefully), getting wiser with age. But what I mean is, here's an example: you go through being a baby once. You are a toddler, a gradeschooler, a teenager, a college-kid, and then you reach an adult. And even if you don't have kids of your own, you experience all those ages again (perhaps through other kids, or even just friends) and you see things from a new perspective. But you never really go through "getting old" (in the old age sense) more than once; you don't really see other people get old old because you're probably dead. I dunno, it just makes me wonder if there's some perspective we don't have right now, and I just think that's interesting. Plus, there are a lot of aspects of it that make it interesting in a different way, too. When you're younger you spend a lot of time wanting to be older, and if it's not looking older (like makeup or something for girls, or dying to be old enough for dances or some shit like that) then maybe acting older (so for me, when I was younger I was determined to be mature). But then when you get around to that age for an nth time, you realize, where did "that age" go? I was trying to be older so what was it that was so simplistic back then? The other day Kevin went surfing, too, and he pointed out that when you're little you can spend a whole day playing with a rock with a smiley face your parents gave you, and it made me wonder where that sort of imagination came from. I know I used to have it but I look at things like that and it makes me wonder what it was and where I put it. Hm. =/
65 days, woo! Dwell on my dork moment: I got books from/relating to 1936, 1935, 1937, 1957... and if that's not enough, 1832... (I guess I'm just missing 1912, lol?) I guess that sort of repeats yesterday but so damn coooool.
Ah, I think that's enough for now.
[EDIT2] Just kidding, wanted to throw this out there, too. I think the island on the banner of this blog is an east-facing view of Chinaman's hat. If not, it's really fucking close to being it.
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Date: 2008-03-18 05:31 pm (UTC)From: