Hey world,
I'm not dead. It's just that Nat and I brought the Nintendo 64 up into our bedroom. Tetris and Super Mario Cart are the best things evah. So, I'll be busy for a while, um, reading Shakespeare and Joyce. Ya, that's it.
Love,
Emy
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
So true
 |
| From: "The Royal Tenenbaums" |
"When you cheat, you don't win. And when you lose, you don't win."
- one of the kindergardeners I subbed
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Sunday lessons
"Prayer"
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.
- Carol Ann Duffy
I can't stop this urgent feeling that there is a lot of good left in me to do.
I used to find this feeling scary. I'm glad that I have grown to find it exciting and hopeful.
Because there really is so much to do.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Freely Speaking
I was asking for a phone number from my mom. She said she would text it to me. It is kind of an important situation and I needed the number.
Five minutes later I received a text from mom.
Oh, the number, I thought to myself.
No.
A picture of her dog, wearing a floral dress, poised on a quilted bed with lace curtains in the background.
Me: That's not the phone number.
Mom: Ops (she means oops)
Me: Ya, so can you please give me the number now?
Mom: Next time.
Me: Ok, but soon please.
Mom: I love you.
Me: I love you too mom.
Mom: I think my dog is having a baby.
Me: Oh, what an adventure.
Mom: Thats nothing comparing to others advtr. Baby (her dog's name) is sweet girl i mean dog
Anyone else frustrated? I AM. I'm also laughing.
So, after hours of no other contact, I call her and leave a message to please give me the number.
She calls me back later.
Me: Hey, can I have the number now? Or ever?
Mom: You need to grow up and do something. You let the legal system just run your family's life. They just do what they want to and you let them. Why don't you ever do anything to fix this?!
Me: That's why I'm asking you for this number, to do something.
Mom: You know, you have freedom of speech! Do you know what that is?
Me: Yes, I've heard of it.
Mom: We live in America. You need to use your freedom of speech. And you aren't doing anything. You like the legal, huh.
Me: (as confused as you are at this moment) Ok then, tell me, exactly, what is it that you want me to do.
Mom: People in the legal, they think they can do whatever they want to us. They are bad. Use your freedom of speech. Grow up. You need to now these things. Grow up.
Me: Yes, ok. So, tell me specifically what you would like me to do, since I apparently don't do anything. Please, just tell me and I'll do it.
Mom: You aren't ready.
Then she hung up.
Again, so frustrated that I'm laughing.
Hey legal system, I have someone that I would like to take off the "Can use freedom of speech" list. Oh, that doesn't exist? Fine, I'm going to use my American ness rights to make my own list. And it will affect things to no end. Because I'm a grown up. Down with the legal!
And I still don't have that number.
Five minutes later I received a text from mom.
Oh, the number, I thought to myself.
No.
A picture of her dog, wearing a floral dress, poised on a quilted bed with lace curtains in the background.
Me: That's not the phone number.
Mom: Ops (she means oops)
Me: Ya, so can you please give me the number now?
Mom: Next time.
Me: Ok, but soon please.
Mom: I love you.
Me: I love you too mom.
Mom: I think my dog is having a baby.
Me: Oh, what an adventure.
Mom: Thats nothing comparing to others advtr. Baby (her dog's name) is sweet girl i mean dog
Anyone else frustrated? I AM. I'm also laughing.
So, after hours of no other contact, I call her and leave a message to please give me the number.
She calls me back later.
Me: Hey, can I have the number now? Or ever?
Mom: You need to grow up and do something. You let the legal system just run your family's life. They just do what they want to and you let them. Why don't you ever do anything to fix this?!
Me: That's why I'm asking you for this number, to do something.
Mom: You know, you have freedom of speech! Do you know what that is?
Me: Yes, I've heard of it.
Mom: We live in America. You need to use your freedom of speech. And you aren't doing anything. You like the legal, huh.
Me: (as confused as you are at this moment) Ok then, tell me, exactly, what is it that you want me to do.
Mom: People in the legal, they think they can do whatever they want to us. They are bad. Use your freedom of speech. Grow up. You need to now these things. Grow up.
Me: Yes, ok. So, tell me specifically what you would like me to do, since I apparently don't do anything. Please, just tell me and I'll do it.
Mom: You aren't ready.
Then she hung up.
Again, so frustrated that I'm laughing.
Hey legal system, I have someone that I would like to take off the "Can use freedom of speech" list. Oh, that doesn't exist? Fine, I'm going to use my American ness rights to make my own list. And it will affect things to no end. Because I'm a grown up. Down with the legal!
And I still don't have that number.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Well Hey
My brain tends to work this way, which is why sometimes people will be wondering why I'm laughing to myself. I'm not crazy, it's just that sometimes YOU say things that can be thought of in a crazy way. So, not my fault.
My life right now:
I'm trying to eat healthy. I even learned to cook a spicy coconut chicken. That's right. COOK. And it was awesome.
I'm getting a lot of work, which I am very thankful for.
I'm not sick anymore, yay!
Natty and I are currently watching "Playful Kiss", yes, a korean drama.
That's about it. I'll try to be more exciting this week.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Rolln' with Barthes
Rolln' with (Roland) Barthes, bah ha ha.
Yay, more lit theory paper stuffs from a midterm.
*note:
(S/Z) is from one of his structuralist analysis
(W/T) is "From Work to Text"
(Death) is "Death of the Author"
Barthes, like Derrida, rejects the notion of a single, finite, determinate meaning. Barthes applies this in a specific way to literature (or narrative, text, reading, ect. I really don’t know how to say it when I can no longer call it reading I guess). Basically, he is another rejecter of structuralism, a task that is “ultimately undesirable” (S/Z 3). I am going to start with a rather list-y (boring) explanation of the binary work/text. I know of no other way that would not just turn into a big rambling mess. Here goes.
A Text is “not to be thought of as an object that can be computed”, while a Work is an object (Work to Text 156). A Text is not an object because it is a methological field, a process that is acted out. A text cuts across genres, while a work is classified into a genre. A Work goes from a signifier (itself), to a signified (its “meaning”), which is reductive of language to a single meaning. Texts go from a signifier to another signifier, which disseminates meaning, by “practicing the infinite deferment of the signified”(W/T 158). In a Work, Authors create a works that are then consumed by readers, while a Text creates authors (which is what he comes to call readers in S/Z, even if they are just a “paper I”) who “play”. This concept of “play” is “the reader plays twice over, playing the Text as one plays a game, looking for a practice which re-produces it…also playing the Text in the musical sense of the term…the co author of the score, completing it rather than giving it ‘expression’…it asks of the reader a practical collaboration”(W/T 162-3). The difference is manifested in how the reader takes pleasure (hopefully I get to that later) in the book, one of consumption of a Work, and one of production in a Text.
This leads me to the binary of the readerly/ writerly text. I see this as an extension of our definition of work/text. A readerly text is like a Work, and is what Barthes says we need to be moving away from. Here the focus is on the author and the singular meaning of what that author wrote. The text is written and the reader consumes it. The reader is “left with no more than the poor freedom either to accept or reject the text: reading is nothing more than a referendum”(S/Z 4). With a readerly text, the reader is a person who is supposed to take in the information and opinion that the author has laid out. In this case, the critic’s job is to decipher the meaning of the text. In opposition to the readerly text is what we should be shooting for, the writerly text. Here, the “author” is a scripter, a copyist, through whom cultural codes (I will also get to explaining codes in a bit) flow through to the one reading the text, who is also another site for codes to flow. The writerly text is “not a thing”, but a “perpetual present”, the process in the mind of the reader, it “happens” not “is”. The critic’s job is to disentangle the writerly text, to “appreciate what plural constitutes it”(S/Z 5). Again, play is the goal, not mere consumption. The writerly text is the ideal that we can never actually write. The best we can do is “read” plural texts, or create plural texts through the way we approach it. The plural text is what cuts across the binary of readerly/writerly and is what we should be pursuing.
For Barthes, the reason we should work for plural texts is because looking for a single meaning is pointless because there is no meaning there to find in the first place. We are all in a system of codes. When a person reads, the “ “I” which approaches the text is already itself a plurality of other texts, of codes which are infinite or, more precisely, lost…the meanings I rind are established not by “me” or by others, but by their systematic mark…to read, in fact, is a labor of language”(S/Z 10-11). So, we as people when writing and reading are “paper “I”s where codes are reconfigured. In this sense, we do not read, codes read us. We read and write to reconfigure these codes, and lucky for us we always have something to do because “their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language”(S/Z 6). This idea of “paper I” is basically the idea of why the author is dead, and I guess the reader along with him.
Barthes claims we are wrong to attribute creation of a text to the author, and that doing so ultimately pushes us towards trying to find a single meaning and limits our ability to “play”. If we give the author power, our reading turns into an act of trying to find the author, which we equate to the “meaning” and we believe we have deciphered the text. But, “once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile”(Death 147). This frees the critic from pointless work, as there is no meaning, and then he has to disentangle the codes, or play.
I think that the claim that to give a text an author imposes a limit is not all correct. We always come at reading with some sort of way or process, and thinking about the author can be one of “those ways”. True, we can come up with many ways to disentangle a text without the author, but we can come up with many ways with the author as well. I see it as one of the expanding ways to look at a text. Not necessarily the only one, but a valid way to approach it. I find it a bit ridiculous, and limiting, for Barthes to say that “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author”(Death 148). This last sentence has always sounded funny (ie overly dramatic) to me because a few lines before he says that the reader is “simply that someone who holds together in a singe field all the traces by which the written text is constituted”(Death 148). He tries to “champion” the reader over the author, right after explaining that both writer and reader, equally, are simply places where codes flow. Killing off the author, to me, is ignoring one of the pluralities of the text.
And, now my thing with the “codes”. Say I totally accept his idea that we are all just made of codes in the first place. I still do not fully buy that hierarchy that he implies that we are mere sites and codes use us. That is just a weird flow of logic. Even with codes, we use them. A code is something constructed to be used, a tool of communication, a means to express what you want to express. Something constructed has a constructor. Even if it is all a “system” that we are in, it can be us using the system instead of the system working through us. Maybe Barthes just should have used different words and he meant something else, maybe (probably) my opinion on this is just as equally an assumption, a leap of logic, or whatever, as his assertions. Either way, I just don’t find it quite all thought out correctly.
Yay, more lit theory paper stuffs from a midterm.
*note:
(S/Z) is from one of his structuralist analysis
(W/T) is "From Work to Text"
(Death) is "Death of the Author"
Barthes, like Derrida, rejects the notion of a single, finite, determinate meaning. Barthes applies this in a specific way to literature (or narrative, text, reading, ect. I really don’t know how to say it when I can no longer call it reading I guess). Basically, he is another rejecter of structuralism, a task that is “ultimately undesirable” (S/Z 3). I am going to start with a rather list-y (boring) explanation of the binary work/text. I know of no other way that would not just turn into a big rambling mess. Here goes.
A Text is “not to be thought of as an object that can be computed”, while a Work is an object (Work to Text 156). A Text is not an object because it is a methological field, a process that is acted out. A text cuts across genres, while a work is classified into a genre. A Work goes from a signifier (itself), to a signified (its “meaning”), which is reductive of language to a single meaning. Texts go from a signifier to another signifier, which disseminates meaning, by “practicing the infinite deferment of the signified”(W/T 158). In a Work, Authors create a works that are then consumed by readers, while a Text creates authors (which is what he comes to call readers in S/Z, even if they are just a “paper I”) who “play”. This concept of “play” is “the reader plays twice over, playing the Text as one plays a game, looking for a practice which re-produces it…also playing the Text in the musical sense of the term…the co author of the score, completing it rather than giving it ‘expression’…it asks of the reader a practical collaboration”(W/T 162-3). The difference is manifested in how the reader takes pleasure (hopefully I get to that later) in the book, one of consumption of a Work, and one of production in a Text.
This leads me to the binary of the readerly/ writerly text. I see this as an extension of our definition of work/text. A readerly text is like a Work, and is what Barthes says we need to be moving away from. Here the focus is on the author and the singular meaning of what that author wrote. The text is written and the reader consumes it. The reader is “left with no more than the poor freedom either to accept or reject the text: reading is nothing more than a referendum”(S/Z 4). With a readerly text, the reader is a person who is supposed to take in the information and opinion that the author has laid out. In this case, the critic’s job is to decipher the meaning of the text. In opposition to the readerly text is what we should be shooting for, the writerly text. Here, the “author” is a scripter, a copyist, through whom cultural codes (I will also get to explaining codes in a bit) flow through to the one reading the text, who is also another site for codes to flow. The writerly text is “not a thing”, but a “perpetual present”, the process in the mind of the reader, it “happens” not “is”. The critic’s job is to disentangle the writerly text, to “appreciate what plural constitutes it”(S/Z 5). Again, play is the goal, not mere consumption. The writerly text is the ideal that we can never actually write. The best we can do is “read” plural texts, or create plural texts through the way we approach it. The plural text is what cuts across the binary of readerly/writerly and is what we should be pursuing.
For Barthes, the reason we should work for plural texts is because looking for a single meaning is pointless because there is no meaning there to find in the first place. We are all in a system of codes. When a person reads, the “ “I” which approaches the text is already itself a plurality of other texts, of codes which are infinite or, more precisely, lost…the meanings I rind are established not by “me” or by others, but by their systematic mark…to read, in fact, is a labor of language”(S/Z 10-11). So, we as people when writing and reading are “paper “I”s where codes are reconfigured. In this sense, we do not read, codes read us. We read and write to reconfigure these codes, and lucky for us we always have something to do because “their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language”(S/Z 6). This idea of “paper I” is basically the idea of why the author is dead, and I guess the reader along with him.
Barthes claims we are wrong to attribute creation of a text to the author, and that doing so ultimately pushes us towards trying to find a single meaning and limits our ability to “play”. If we give the author power, our reading turns into an act of trying to find the author, which we equate to the “meaning” and we believe we have deciphered the text. But, “once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile”(Death 147). This frees the critic from pointless work, as there is no meaning, and then he has to disentangle the codes, or play.
I think that the claim that to give a text an author imposes a limit is not all correct. We always come at reading with some sort of way or process, and thinking about the author can be one of “those ways”. True, we can come up with many ways to disentangle a text without the author, but we can come up with many ways with the author as well. I see it as one of the expanding ways to look at a text. Not necessarily the only one, but a valid way to approach it. I find it a bit ridiculous, and limiting, for Barthes to say that “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author”(Death 148). This last sentence has always sounded funny (ie overly dramatic) to me because a few lines before he says that the reader is “simply that someone who holds together in a singe field all the traces by which the written text is constituted”(Death 148). He tries to “champion” the reader over the author, right after explaining that both writer and reader, equally, are simply places where codes flow. Killing off the author, to me, is ignoring one of the pluralities of the text.
And, now my thing with the “codes”. Say I totally accept his idea that we are all just made of codes in the first place. I still do not fully buy that hierarchy that he implies that we are mere sites and codes use us. That is just a weird flow of logic. Even with codes, we use them. A code is something constructed to be used, a tool of communication, a means to express what you want to express. Something constructed has a constructor. Even if it is all a “system” that we are in, it can be us using the system instead of the system working through us. Maybe Barthes just should have used different words and he meant something else, maybe (probably) my opinion on this is just as equally an assumption, a leap of logic, or whatever, as his assertions. Either way, I just don’t find it quite all thought out correctly.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
I ain't no wise man
"When I Was One-and-Twenty"
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free."
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue."
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.
-- A E Housman
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free."
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue."
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.
-- A E Housman
This is me with the diploma that was sent to me in the mail a couple weeks ago. Inside is what we are told is a representation of what I have learned up to now. If I could take out my heart and show what I have really learned, it would be much more impressive. I am now going to go write a horrid pop song using that last sentence as the chorus lyrics. Peace.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Hey self, I'm wishing you well.
I'm sick this weekend.
I've got chills and my voice sounds like a walrus.
So just laugh at this as much as I did.
I've got chills and my voice sounds like a walrus.
So just laugh at this as much as I did.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
My heart is high
"Morning"
I went out on an April morning
All alone, for my heart was high,
I was a child of the shining meadow,
I was a sister of the sky.
There in the windy flood of morning
Longing lifted its weight from me,
Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering,
Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.
-- Sara Teasdale
I had a very good day at the temple doing baptisms.
My Heavenly Father loves me.
I love the gospel.
I am very thankful.
That's really all for tonight.
I went out on an April morning
All alone, for my heart was high,
I was a child of the shining meadow,
I was a sister of the sky.
There in the windy flood of morning
Longing lifted its weight from me,
Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering,
Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.
-- Sara Teasdale
 |
| San Diego Temple Taken by Erin, some time ago. |
I had a very good day at the temple doing baptisms.
My Heavenly Father loves me.
I love the gospel.
I am very thankful.
That's really all for tonight.
Monday, February 7, 2011
I choose the girl behind door number 5!
My dearest friend Nat entered me in a contest for a photography company. Please know that this was so not my idea at all. Funny enough, it is being held on Facebook. Natty made me sound way cooler than I am, which is just more reason to love her. Here it is.
Here are the finalists for our FotoFly Bachelor. We had almost thirty people be submitted and we've narrowed it down to five. Over the next two days, you may vote for the one that you believe is the best match for Daniel. You vote by 'liking' a picture. The one with the most votes will win a night out with our bachelor. FotoFly is sponsoring an amazing, one-of-a-kind night out. Again, we are wanting only our current fans to vote on this one. Choose wisely - there may be children and grandchildren at stake here! :)
As a recent English Lit. graduate and a California native, Emy spends her free time reading all the books she can get her hands on, writing, studying vocabulary for the GRE exam, playing tennis (when there isn't snow on the ground), going to the beach (when she isn't in a landlocked state), going to concerts, and knitting. Her wardrobe consists of all different styles, but she loves cardigans and plaid. On a normal day she's wearing breton strips, a cardi, jeans and some oxfords. When she's getting fancy, she rocks a pencil skirt, colored tights and heels like nobody's business. She always looks cool, collected and well-dressed for any occasion. AND - she looks great in hats...which is pretty sweet. She is looking for someone who will go to Del Taco with her at 2AM because she can't go to sleep hungry, stay up all night telling muffin jokes (she knows quite a few), and it wouldn't hurt if he was an awesome kisser, in fact...it's kind of a requirement. Emy is an amazing person and deserves someone who is creative and quirky, but intelligent. She's as witty as the day is long and always up for adventure. She's well-read, well-spoken and well-dressed. You can't get much better than that
Here are the finalists for our FotoFly Bachelor. We had almost thirty people be submitted and we've narrowed it down to five. Over the next two days, you may vote for the one that you believe is the best match for Daniel. You vote by 'liking' a picture. The one with the most votes will win a night out with our bachelor. FotoFly is sponsoring an amazing, one-of-a-kind night out. Again, we are wanting only our current fans to vote on this one. Choose wisely - there may be children and grandchildren at stake here! :)
As a recent English Lit. graduate and a California native, Emy spends her free time reading all the books she can get her hands on, writing, studying vocabulary for the GRE exam, playing tennis (when there isn't snow on the ground), going to the beach (when she isn't in a landlocked state), going to concerts, and knitting. Her wardrobe consists of all different styles, but she loves cardigans and plaid. On a normal day she's wearing breton strips, a cardi, jeans and some oxfords. When she's getting fancy, she rocks a pencil skirt, colored tights and heels like nobody's business. She always looks cool, collected and well-dressed for any occasion. AND - she looks great in hats...which is pretty sweet. She is looking for someone who will go to Del Taco with her at 2AM because she can't go to sleep hungry, stay up all night telling muffin jokes (she knows quite a few), and it wouldn't hurt if he was an awesome kisser, in fact...it's kind of a requirement. Emy is an amazing person and deserves someone who is creative and quirky, but intelligent. She's as witty as the day is long and always up for adventure. She's well-read, well-spoken and well-dressed. You can't get much better than that
Friday, January 28, 2011
Temping
Update:
So, I like, substitute teach now.
This was my first week.
Wed: Kindergarden. Kill me. Totally hated it. Both stressful and annoying.
Thursday: Sixth grade. Super awesome. Loved all of it. The best thing ever. And I totes miss pre-algebra. And I totes just love teaching.
But really, never will I ever teach kindergarden. I'm still pretty sure I like kids, but man did Wednesday make me question that.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
I should just wear a sign
Today at church I was asked by three different people about my racially ambiguous "ethnic-ness".
The "I'm going to guess till you tell me" approach:
Dude: You look like you have some polynesian in you.
Me: Oh, hello. No.
Dude: Latin?
Me: Nope.
Dude: ...
Me: The usual explanation
Dude: That's so neat. You are very pretty.
Me: Thanks, my name's Emy.
Dude: I'm so-and-so.
I really don't know how these conversations ever start before regular introductions.
The "up front and direct", and only starting up the conversation in the first place to satisfy curiosity:
Gal: Hi I'm so-and-so.
Me: Hello, I'm Emerald.
Gal: So, what ethnicity are you?
Me: The usual explanation
Gal: Wow, cool.
Me: Yup.
She didn't have anything more to say, so I left for class. I think she wanted me to ask about her ethnicity too, seeing how she was also ethnic in some way. But I really didn't care to stand there and talk about that. It really gets boring so fast.
The "round about, in the middle of a conversation already, not wanting to seem to interested but really is":
Guy: So Emy, where are you from?
Me: Southern California.
Guy: Oh ya? What part?...ya I've heard of there....do you know the -family last name-.... ya it's a nice place
Me: Ya, I loved it.
Guy: So, where is your family from?
Me: My parents both grew up in Washington.
Guy: Oh ok, but like, where are they originally from?
Me: Oh, you mean like, what ethnicity?
Guy: Well, ya.
Me: usual explanation.
Guy: Oh, that's neat, blah blah blah...
Yes, I usually know from the start what they are trying to ask me, but really, where's the fun in letting them off easy.
Anyway, that's what happened today, and most days I meet new people. I really don't mind at all, and I'm really used to it. It's just funny how some people go about it.
But here is the best one.
A couple years ago I was waiting for my food at the Cougar Eat/cafeteria at school. There was a guy standing next to me, also waiting.
Guy: Hey there.
Me: Hi
Guy: I like your colors.
Me: Oh my clothes? Thanks.
Guy: Oh, um, well, uh, ya, that too.
WTF
The "I'm going to guess till you tell me" approach:
Dude: You look like you have some polynesian in you.
Me: Oh, hello. No.
Dude: Latin?
Me: Nope.
Dude: ...
Me: The usual explanation
Dude: That's so neat. You are very pretty.
Me: Thanks, my name's Emy.
Dude: I'm so-and-so.
I really don't know how these conversations ever start before regular introductions.
The "up front and direct", and only starting up the conversation in the first place to satisfy curiosity:
Gal: Hi I'm so-and-so.
Me: Hello, I'm Emerald.
Gal: So, what ethnicity are you?
Me: The usual explanation
Gal: Wow, cool.
Me: Yup.
She didn't have anything more to say, so I left for class. I think she wanted me to ask about her ethnicity too, seeing how she was also ethnic in some way. But I really didn't care to stand there and talk about that. It really gets boring so fast.
The "round about, in the middle of a conversation already, not wanting to seem to interested but really is":
Guy: So Emy, where are you from?
Me: Southern California.
Guy: Oh ya? What part?...ya I've heard of there....do you know the -family last name-.... ya it's a nice place
Me: Ya, I loved it.
Guy: So, where is your family from?
Me: My parents both grew up in Washington.
Guy: Oh ok, but like, where are they originally from?
Me: Oh, you mean like, what ethnicity?
Guy: Well, ya.
Me: usual explanation.
Guy: Oh, that's neat, blah blah blah...
Yes, I usually know from the start what they are trying to ask me, but really, where's the fun in letting them off easy.
Anyway, that's what happened today, and most days I meet new people. I really don't mind at all, and I'm really used to it. It's just funny how some people go about it.
But here is the best one.
A couple years ago I was waiting for my food at the Cougar Eat/cafeteria at school. There was a guy standing next to me, also waiting.
Guy: Hey there.
Me: Hi
Guy: I like your colors.
Me: Oh my clothes? Thanks.
Guy: Oh, um, well, uh, ya, that too.
WTF
Saturday, January 22, 2011
On Pantaloons. Or, I read grammar books at night.
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| A guy in a tux at Oceanside Beach. I still worry if I was sneaky enough when I took this picture. |
Pants, Trousers
Pants is a colloquial shortening of the old-fashioned word pantaloons, which is now used only in a humorous sense. The current and proper word for the lower part of a man's apparel is trousers. Pants, like movies, is a very popular word in current speech. It is modified to panties in speaking of a particular item of feminine lingerie.
From page 93 of How To Write and Speak Effective English
By Edward Frank Allen
Published in 1938
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Brainstorm! (We are eating pepper and chips!)
"Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them! And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?"
-Wilde, in Dorian Gray
Today I finished reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
Here are the things I have been thinking about in relation to this book. I am currently working on expanding on each of these, I promise. But, for now, I guess this is more of a brainstorm. Live wid it.
1) Beauty vs Goodness. Why is it that we have come to see them as the same thing? I've actually been thinking about this issue for a while, as Natty very well knows.
2) Lord Henry is one of the best examples of Satan I have ever read. I've got so many reasons, one obvious one being that he is excellent with flattery. And is an ass.
3) Sophisms are especially annoying when you clearly see the fallacy of their grounding assumptions. They are extremely dangerous when you don't.
4) I find this to be a very moral book. It makes me both loath and fear sin itself. It is funny to me that anyone sees otherwise, but many are led to follow Lord Henry's words as Dorian does because they really are quite clever.
5) I have the same problem with the people who follow Dorian's example that I do with the people who identify and follow Holden Caulfield in Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. I really do believe that these people totally missed the boat in their reading of these characters. I don't care if that last sentence was closed minded of me- Everything is up for interpretation. But it's what I feel. You can't know what the author meant. It doesn't only mean one thing. Yours is just one opinion. Some scholars say otherwise. Blah blah blah. Watevs, if you look up to these characters as a model for how to act or see the world, you have issues, or are way dumb. These people are probably also the type to never understand sarcasm, or worse they think they do but don't. In my opinion.
My brainstormy list is getting a bit ranty so I'll stop for now. And I'm sure all these points are better worded in any workbook given to high school teachers on this novel anyway.
-Wilde, in Dorian Gray
Today I finished reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
Here are the things I have been thinking about in relation to this book. I am currently working on expanding on each of these, I promise. But, for now, I guess this is more of a brainstorm. Live wid it.
1) Beauty vs Goodness. Why is it that we have come to see them as the same thing? I've actually been thinking about this issue for a while, as Natty very well knows.
2) Lord Henry is one of the best examples of Satan I have ever read. I've got so many reasons, one obvious one being that he is excellent with flattery. And is an ass.
3) Sophisms are especially annoying when you clearly see the fallacy of their grounding assumptions. They are extremely dangerous when you don't.
4) I find this to be a very moral book. It makes me both loath and fear sin itself. It is funny to me that anyone sees otherwise, but many are led to follow Lord Henry's words as Dorian does because they really are quite clever.
5) I have the same problem with the people who follow Dorian's example that I do with the people who identify and follow Holden Caulfield in Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. I really do believe that these people totally missed the boat in their reading of these characters. I don't care if that last sentence was closed minded of me- Everything is up for interpretation. But it's what I feel. You can't know what the author meant. It doesn't only mean one thing. Yours is just one opinion. Some scholars say otherwise. Blah blah blah. Watevs, if you look up to these characters as a model for how to act or see the world, you have issues, or are way dumb. These people are probably also the type to never understand sarcasm, or worse they think they do but don't. In my opinion.
My brainstormy list is getting a bit ranty so I'll stop for now. And I'm sure all these points are better worded in any workbook given to high school teachers on this novel anyway.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Yo self, get a life
Just so ya know:
Right Away Great Captain's new album "The Eventually Home" is fantastic.
I finally listened to it. It's weird that it took me so long considering how much I listened to, and love, their first album. Mr. Hull, you wonderful man you.
In personal news:
I picked up my graded senior paper from my Prof today. I am both grateful and encouraged by the feedback. Now it's rewriting time.
I also watched a whole ton of Bones,
which leads me to say that I totes love this man:
Like I've said, I'm working on getting a life.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Rock your socks, both literary and musical
Happy January all.
Happy new Decemberists album.
It is lovely. And I love them.
Books I just bought:
Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros
Paradise Lost by John Milton
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Let my reading party begin!
Monday, January 3, 2011
Saturday, January 1, 2011
It's a Partaaay
We gon' light it up
Like it's dynamite
I rang in 2011 with my great friends Andrea, Durban, and Dan.
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| Drinking fun stuff while overdressed at Iggy's. |
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| So much sugar. |
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| Being purple and posh. |
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| You know we are the prettiest you will evah see. |
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| Overexposed and dancing anyway, Dan is concerned. |
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| We happen to be the coolest. |
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| Super awkward hand. |
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| We gon' light it up, like it's dynamite |
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| Dan and me being creepsters. |
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| I'm in the club so I'm gonna do |
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| More of us being besties and lookn fine. |
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| Andrea always makes the party. |
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| Get out the way, me and my crew came here to do. |
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| Durban leading the pack. |
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| So much dancing. |
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| Blurry and awesome. |
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| Best shot of the night. You wish you could party like us. |
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| Attempt at party recovery. |
So this is the New Year
I always have absurdly long lists for New Years. It's ok, I promise.
Get a job
GRE prep
Publish a critical essay in an academic journal
Publish a short story, any-freakin-where
Temple once a week
Gym five times a week
Do laundry before it becomes an emergency
Don't miss a day scripture reading
A book a week, at least, from my list (which I'll post soon I'm sure)
Save enough money to visit my family
Visit Erin, Steven, and baby Ivy Rae
Catch up on Gossip Girl, mhmm
Practice piano three times a week
Play more tennis
Successfully knit gloves and hats
Take better control of my dating life
Don't forget to take vitamins
Fix sleep patterns: be more like a person, less like a bat with a hangover
Be more active in my ward, yes socially
Stop saying, so often: totes, frills, whatevs, and bad curse words
Organize all my old school stuff
Get into Grad school
As I'm looking back at my list, I already know which ones are going to fall by the wayside. Whatevs.
This past year consisted of
A Winter semester that failed epically academically.
A Spring of hiking, reading, forts, long talks, and more laughing and fun than ever that built friendships that I am grateful for.
A Summer in Hawaii with my family, getting the best gift I've ever known: becoming friends with my siblings.
A Fall semester overloaded with library time, literary theory, and boys.
Outwardly, my only achievement of the entire year has been graduating. On paper, it seems like I could have done a lot more with a year of my life.
This last year has been one of a lot of internal change, more than I've ever had really. Most people on the outside will look on my year and find it to be fairly average. It certainly was not. I have never been more proud of myself than now with the changes I made within myself than this year. A lot that I did in the first half of the year seems so far away because I feel like such a different person from then. One of the biggest steps I took was to go to counseling, and I am very very grateful for that. It was a BFD for me, truly.
I let go of a lot of pain I have been carrying for many, too many, years.
I moved on from relationships that hurt me terribly.
I forgave more than I knew I could.
I learned how to be more open to the people that I love and who love me.
I am stronger through knowing that I don't need to fix everything.
I love more, and better.
Get a job
GRE prep
Publish a critical essay in an academic journal
Publish a short story, any-freakin-where
Temple once a week
Gym five times a week
Do laundry before it becomes an emergency
Don't miss a day scripture reading
A book a week, at least, from my list (which I'll post soon I'm sure)
Save enough money to visit my family
Visit Erin, Steven, and baby Ivy Rae
Catch up on Gossip Girl, mhmm
Practice piano three times a week
Play more tennis
Successfully knit gloves and hats
Take better control of my dating life
Don't forget to take vitamins
Fix sleep patterns: be more like a person, less like a bat with a hangover
Be more active in my ward, yes socially
Stop saying, so often: totes, frills, whatevs, and bad curse words
Organize all my old school stuff
Get into Grad school
As I'm looking back at my list, I already know which ones are going to fall by the wayside. Whatevs.
This past year consisted of
A Winter semester that failed epically academically.
A Spring of hiking, reading, forts, long talks, and more laughing and fun than ever that built friendships that I am grateful for.
A Summer in Hawaii with my family, getting the best gift I've ever known: becoming friends with my siblings.
A Fall semester overloaded with library time, literary theory, and boys.
Outwardly, my only achievement of the entire year has been graduating. On paper, it seems like I could have done a lot more with a year of my life.
This last year has been one of a lot of internal change, more than I've ever had really. Most people on the outside will look on my year and find it to be fairly average. It certainly was not. I have never been more proud of myself than now with the changes I made within myself than this year. A lot that I did in the first half of the year seems so far away because I feel like such a different person from then. One of the biggest steps I took was to go to counseling, and I am very very grateful for that. It was a BFD for me, truly.
I let go of a lot of pain I have been carrying for many, too many, years.
I moved on from relationships that hurt me terribly.
I forgave more than I knew I could.
I learned how to be more open to the people that I love and who love me.
I am stronger through knowing that I don't need to fix everything.
I love more, and better.
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