Another Marxian Ode

Perfect Day Response

2009-12-29T09:04:00.000-08:00

In October I wrote a response to a question posted by one of my uncles about what the perfect day would be. Since he hadn't heard from me for a few years, I condensed much detail into two paragraphs:

I had lots of near-perfect days during undergrad (i.e. up until a year ago), when I was living in Lubbock. Like yours, this involved intense physical activity. Every day, I woke up at four to ride my bike around campus (Texas Tech) until the gym opened at five; I'd do the elliptical, lift weights, and read German, Latin, or Greek on a recumbent bike. Then I'd rip off my sweaty clothes and do twenty laps in the open-air pool, as the sun rose. Then I'd shower (no water bill- essential for the poor college kid) and go to class or work (work nixes the "perfect" of any day); sometimes, I would stop by the deli on campus, where I used to be a manager, for a complimentary burrito breakfast (free food- essential for the poor college kid). At any time I didn't have work or class, I would bike to the locally-owned coffee shop, where everyone knew me and I could always talk to the owner if I didn't feel like getting any work done. In the evening, if I felt bloated from having eaten out with friends, I would swim again, and I almost always rode the bike around campus for another hour again.

A delightful consequence of such an active lifestyle, for a female, is that it can shut down the menstrual cycle for months; ergo, living life was utter bliss. Since moving to Lexington for grad school, I cannot be nearly as active: the dread menstrual cycle has returned, and with it, all woe and gloom.

Too much information?

Noted lack of involvement with children in this scenario, but that's mostly due to the fact that, unlike, oh, my own parents, I do not think it is best to raise children when one is an extremely distant person emotionally, and not financially stable besides.

Too long a message? Anyhow, I am glad you had a wonderful day, and wish you and the munchkins many more.

xoxo, The Lauree Child.

At the moment, I am considering seriously selling everything I own and moving to a warmer, drier clime, if I am not accepted into another school this fall. Living someplace where it rains four or five days per week, where I have no car, is sehr unbueno.

Gott ist ein Popstar

2009-10-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

I spent the past three days working on another project, entirely disregarding review of the material below. Over the next couple of days, I have tasked myself to pump out some thoughts on these topics. Schade, daß ich im Augenblick keine Gedanken darüber habe.

HIS 613/CLA 695, Fall 2009
Study Guide for Midterm Exam
Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Below you will find 8 essay topics based on chapters 1-13 and the new introduction of Peter Brown, The Body and Society, chapter 3 of Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy, and the primary sources we have studied thus far. For the exam you will write on 3 of these topics; a limited choice will be given. I’ve also given a “bonus question” for extra credit.

1. A) In the new introduction to his book, Brown speaks about his task as a historian as one of “defamiliarizing” the past. What does this mean in regard to the subject matter of this book? B) Discuss an example from material covered thus far in class that has caused “defamiliarization” for you? C) What social theorists have most influenced Brown’s book, according to his own account? Give an example from some primary source material that illustrates this theoretical approach.

2. A) According to Brown, ch. 1 (“Body and City”), what were some of the social meanings attributed to the body and sexuality in Greco-Roman society? B) What were some common medical understandings of the body and sex in Greco-Roman antiquity? C) What does Brown mean by the term “benevolent dualism”? Please illustrate this concept with some material from the Coniugalia praecepta (Advice to the Bride and Groom) by Plutarch.

3. A) What were some of the main point made by the Apostle Paul regarding sex, marriage and celibacy in 1 Corinthians 7? B) How did Paul’s view compare with what we know of Jesus’ teaching or that of other Palestinian Jews (note that on p. 44 Brown says that Paul did not have much in common with Palestinian Judaism). C) What shifts are evident in the later New Testament documents that are usually considered Pseudo-Pauline (e.g., Ephesians 5, 1 Timothy, and Colossians)?

4. A) In ch. 3 Brown discusses the relation between prophecy and sexual continence in some Christian writings of the second and third centuries. What sort of examples does he give? B) Where do the writings of Tertullian stand on the question of prophecy and continence? C) Describe the development of Tertullian’s thought on marriage and remarriage, based on the three writings we discussed in class. What use does Tertullian make of Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 7?

5. A) In the second and third centuries a powerful current of thought arises in Christianity that is often called “Encratism,” evident in the writings of Tatian and the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. What are the main themes of Encratite theology (see Brown, ch. 4 and Hunter, ch. 3). B) How did Tatian’s vision of sex and the human person differ from that of other “radicals,” such as Marcion? C) Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis 3, was largely an attempt to refute Marcion and the Encratites. What are some of the arguments used by Clement? What earlier traditions does Clement’s thought most resemble?

6. In the third century Origen and Methodius were two significant Eastern Christian writers who were both strongly influenced by Platonic philosophy. A) Sketch the main features of Origen’s theological system and show its impact on his thinking about the body and sexuality. B) Do the same for Methodius. C) What are the main differences between the thought of Origen and Methodius on these topics?

7. A) The opening word of Cyprian’s treatise De habitu virginum (both in the Latin original and in our English translation) is disciplina or “discipline.” What does Brown say about this idea that sheds light on the purpose of De habitu virginum? B) What does Cyprian’s book tell us about the new place of consecrated virgins in the third-century Church and about the bishop’s role in directing them? (Brown’s ch. 7 may be helpful here.) C) Do you think Cyprian’s views are “misogynistic”? Why or why not?

8. A) According to Brown, ch. 11, what was the aim of ascetic practices among the monks in the Egyptian desert tradition? B) What do you think Brown means when he says (p. 230) that sexuality in the monastic tradition became “an ideogram of the unopened heart”? C) Using Cassian, Conference 12 (“On Chastity”), discuss how Cassian’s teaching could be seen as an illustration of Brown’s idea of the sexual desire as an “ideogram” of the heart.

BONUS QUESTION (optional)

Using one of the 3 articles I distributed on Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Macrina, explain what insights the author contributed to your reading of Gregory’s book.

I Have Been Tasked To Translate Forty Pages (One Chapter) From A Book...

2009-10-20T17:39:00.000-07:00

...von Deutsch to English. With the exception of Biblical quotes and citations from other persons, translating this text has been straightforward relatively. The following is an example of the book's author quoting someone else (Petrus Damiani, an apparently inflammatory fellow):

Und nicht ohne Schadenfreude fährt er fort: "Ich habe mich neulich mit einigen Bischöfen unterhalten. Dabei wollte ich ihren heiligen Oberschenkeln einen Riegel vorschieben. Ich versuchte, den Genitalien der Priester sozusagen Keuschheitsschnallen anzupassen." Da nicht wenige Priester erst nach der Weihe geheiratet haben, belehrte sie der Mönch, ihre Ehen seien ungültig und ihre Ehefrauen deshalb nichts als Konkubinen oder Huren.

I want to render "belehrte sie der Mönch" as "the monk schooled them", but "taught", "instructed", "informed", or "advised" are the more appropriately sedate options.

A Lauree Tale

2009-08-20T19:37:00.000-07:00

I have considered compiling all my anecdotes onto business cards, which I can wordlessly hand out as I meet people, or keep as party favors. And if I have already told someone a particular story, I can avoid wasting my breath or wearing down the other person's time and patience with something that they diligently memorized the first time upon hearing it, because it naturally was hilarious the first time around.

Sample One:

Once, when I was dressed up as Cha!Cha! the tree frog (working at Rainforest Cafe during high school), I socked a junior high kid and screamed, "I'm gonna fucking call security!" at him as he and his hoodlum friends ran away after having spun me around as I stood greeting guests at the front of the store (I couldn't chase after them, for my feet were too big, even though I only had three toes), thus forcing me to break the rules that giant, bipedalling animal characters do not assault people, nor do they speak- ever.

Lauree Bats 32% With The BBC

2009-08-12T18:26:00.000-07:00

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Instructions: Copy this into your NOTE...S. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. Tag other book nerds...

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien -
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte –
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling -
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - X
6 The Bible-
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte -
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman -
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens-X

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott -
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy- X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller -X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare-
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk -
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger-
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -

21 Gone With The Wind -
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald -X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy -
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams –
26 The Scarlett Letter- Nathaniel Hawthorne- X
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -X
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck -X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll-
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame-

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy -
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens-
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis -
34 Emma-Jane Austen-
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini -
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden- X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne – X

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - X
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving-
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery- X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan-

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel-
52 Dune - Frank Herbert-
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons-
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen-
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley -X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon-
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -X

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck – X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov-
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas-
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding-
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie -
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville -

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens- X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker-
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -
75 Ulysses - James Joyce-
76 The Inferno – Dante-
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray-
80 Possession - AS Byatt –

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens –X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker- X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert -
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom –
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton-

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery -
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams-
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas-
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare- X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl- X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo-

Purgings, Part II

2009-08-10T05:46:00.000-07:00

Caesar: The Civil War
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Tales From Ovid
The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass
Old Christmas
The Catcher in the Rye
It
The Erotic Poems
The Iliad
Pieces of My Mind
Byron's Poetry
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
Flappers and Philosophers
The History of Sexuality
Selected Poems
Collected Poems
Over to You
Breakfast at Tiffany's
The Stranger
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O. J. Simpson Got Away With Murder
Naked Lunch
Selected Poems
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders
The Stand
The Castle in the Attic
Candide
The History of the Peloponnesian War
The Complete Plays of Sophocles
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
The Oresteian Trilogy
Four Plays by Aristophanes
The Consolation of Philosophy

Hollywood Cannot Be Found In Any One Place

2009-08-02T07:11:00.000-07:00

This morning I thought I needed to sell my books, not so much because I thought I needed to sell my books as because selling books is what other people do when they need to clear space or make emergency cash appear. The former at the moment presents less urgency than the latter, though in perusing my shelves for titles I could abandon I forgot entirely any original purpose, as I got lost flipping through the things I had read some years ago and, in certain cases, had not opened since.

I pulled out What's The Matter With Kansas?, which I read freshman year of college after the author appeared on The Daily Show, when the show was relatively mild and Jon Stewart was slightly less jaded with life. Most of what the author wrote in 2004 applied to politics five years before and applies five years after, a snippet following a quote of one of Ann Coulter's windblast comments being illustrative:

Coulter instantiates this thesis about the rich not by opening a copy of Fortune or Cigar Aficionado but by turning to what's on TV. See, there's all sorts of filth, put there by liberals. We know the liberal elite hate the common people because of what we see on the TV, what we read in highbrow modern fiction, all of which can be laid at the doorstep of liberalism. On the other hand, we know that the GOP is the true party of the workers, since the hard-guy Republican Tom DeLay is "more likely to have a beer with a trucker" than the wealthy senator Barbara Boxer of California. We know it because the two social possibilities of American life are mimicking the liberal "beautiful people" of Hollywood or embracing "the working-class hillbillies who go to NASCAR races," that favorite litmus test of the populist right.

Apparently, there is no bad economic turn a conservative cannot do unto his buddy in the working class, as long as cultural solidarity has been cemented over a beer.

(Frank, Thomas. What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, Metropolitan Books, New York, 2004. pgs. 117-118)

Why should I sell that? "Frank" is parked between "Foucault" and "Freud", who are succeeded by "Gaiman", "Gibbon", and "Gide". I decided to part with one of two copies of Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, but then:

It is Sunday; ergo, the bookstore is closed. Schade.

My Life According to Eisbrecher

2009-07-31T12:53:00.000-07:00

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to 15 people and include me. You can't use the artist I used. Try not to repeat a song title. Re-post as "my life according to ( artist name )".

I love how my results make it obvious that when I'm alone at night, I cut myself and weep.

Pick your Artist:
Eisbrecher

Are you a Male or a Female:
Schwartze Witwe

Describe Yourself:
Taub-Stumm-Blind

How do you feel:
Kein Mitleid

Describe where you currently live:
1000 Flammen

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
Zu sterben

Your Favorite form of Transportation:
Freisturz

Your Best Friend:
Mein Blut

What's the weather like:
Eiskalt Erwischt

If your life were a TV show, what would it be called:
Willkommen im Nichts

Your last relationship:
Das Ende

Your fear:
Angst?

Thought of the Day:
Verdammt sind

My soul's present condition:
Mein Herz Steht Still

My motto:
Vergissmeinnicht

Three Strikes

2009-07-23T18:42:00.000-07:00

You've been tagged. You are supposed to write a note with the 4's of YOU. I changed the number from 3, so that you can waste exponentially more time of your life completing this than you would have originally. At the end, choose 20 people to be tagged. You have to tag me. If I tagged you, it's because I want to divert you from anything more important you might be doing instead.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 4's of Me, tag 20 people - in the right hand corner of the app - then click publish.)

Four names I go by:
1. Lauree Frances, or just Frances
2. Kadackis (pet name from father)
3. Lauree-Poo (pet name from maternal grandfather)
4. Loquatious (pet name from paternal grandfather)

Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. baker
2. Latin instructor
3. knife seller
4. fitting room attendant

Four Dream Jobs:
1. the writer for a graphic comic series, written in Germisch, which combines Friedrich Nietzsche and Winnie-the-Pooh into one character, Nietzsche-Pu, der ist so ein Bär, der kein Verstand hat
2. the surly operator of a scary carnival ride that periodically breaks down
3. baker-Latin instructor-knife seller-fitting room attendant
4. the editor of "Good Housekeeping"

Four Places I Have lived:
1. Katy, Texas
2. St. Louis, Missouri
3. Lubbock, Texas
4. Lexington, Kentucky

Four Favorite Drinks:
1. unsweetened iced tea
2. chocolate milk
3. orange lemonade
4. mocha-flavoured frappuccino with many squirts of orange syrup

Four TV shows that I (used to) watch:
1. This Old House
2. Are You Being Served?
3. Married... With Children
4. Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego?

Four places I have been:
1. The Alamo
2. The house where Abe Lincoln died
3. The Gateway Arch
4. Ft. Walton (Sugar) Beach, Florida

Four people who text me regularly (actually, no one does, because most people know I would kill them):
1. Luci
2. George
3. Kevin
4. Bianca

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. barbequed pulled-pork on anything or by itself
2. mushroom-and-cheese omelettes
3. veal with marinara sauce
4. tuna salad over spinach leaves

Four friends I think will respond:
1. Cheri Grissom
2. Lindsay Sullivan
3. Michael Merrill
4. Sharada Price

Four things I am looking forward to:
1. landing on the cover of the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated
2. revenge
3. taking down the killer squirrels
4. donating my brain for purposes of scientific research

Four Wishes (selfish):
1. that I were independently wealthy
2. that I were independently healthy
3. that I were blissfully unaware of how people violate English rules of the subjunctive
4. that I were not stranded in some random city where I have no friends or connections, after having come there for school and subsequently been dumped from department funding after a few months, which forced me to quit the program

Four Wishes (unselfish):
1. that any kindnesses I could show were worth half as much as those which have been done for me
2. that people would realize altruism does not exist
3. that all cancers and pandemics carried on the winds were eradicated
4. that my little brother, Eddie, find Blackie, the Beanie Baby bear he carried everywhere as a child and has now lost

Four beautiful things:
1. the rosy hue of the light of the setting sun as it passes through the smog surrounding Houston's skyline
2. illuminated manuscripts
3. clear water rippling over rocks in a river bed
4. my ankles

Four favourite flowers:
1. the skunk in Disney's "Bambi"
2. the butter cup of which Gene Wilder takes a bite in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"
3. poppies
4. day lilies

Four things I'd like to own that I never have:
1. the rights to the songs Paul McCartney gave Michael Jackson
2. an ostrich farm
3. a hearse
4. my body, which gets dragged into all kinds of things entirely against my will

Four things I do to procrastinate:
1. curl fetal position on my bed with Kermit the Frog clutched to my chest
2. stare into the mirror as I get ready to go somewhere, zoned out with scripting scenes in which I respond soundly and satisfactorily to all the people, situations, and events which have hurt me or been otherwise disastrous
3. read books or articles about topics entirely unrelated to the subjects I should be learning for school or career purposes
4. scrub things

Twenty-One People Meme

2009-04-26T14:39:00.000-07:00

Go through your wall posts and list the last 21 people to post on your wall or comment on your status. Do not list any repeats; simply go to the next name in the list. Then answer the 42 questions pertaining to the 21 names. When you're finished, tag all 21 people on the list, so the cycle can continue. If you've been tagged, copy and paste this information into a new note and follow the directions above.

Note from Lauree: I ignored the above directions, and changed most of the questions.

1 Kristen Raines
2 Bhavin Shah
3 Will Crawford
4 Nick Zammito
5 Anne Gepford
6 Josh Skrobarczyk
7 Sarah Magri
8 A. J. Montes
9 Alicia Freitag
10 Elizabeth Barnes
11 Jen Abraham
12 Rachel Myers
13 Tomas Berdoza
14 Andee Allen
15 Ryan Gallagher
16 Brian Griffey
17 Chris Russell
18 Gilbert Jones
19 Keilah Thompson
20 Kristin Slavin
21 Monet Harkin

1. How did you meet 1? I cannot remember the very first time we met; I saw her around often sophomore year of college, because she was a CA in one of the dorms.

2. What Disney princess would 14 be? Aurora, because I imagine their singing voices are similar.

3. What would your life be like if you had never met 20? I would have thought all architecture students are zombies.

4. Would 8 smoke a joint? ...probably.

5. Would 3 and 13 make a good couple? They might; they both like doing activities out of doors.

6. Describe 9. She is the older sister of a girl I met in college German classes; she is fun to converse with.

7. Could 16 hold on if shot from a cannon? Probably not; he'd be too trashed.

8. Do you think 6 is attractive? I haven't seen him in the flesh since high school, but he was good-looking then.

9. What was the last occasion you had to speak with 19? Facebook-chatting several months ago.

10. Would you go skinny dipping with 15? Only if it were in a public place.

11. Where does 10 live? Currently, Vienna, but her hometown is Lubbock, Texas.

12. What is the best thing about 21? That she and I got along immediately, without seeming to have much in common.

13. What would you like to tell 18 right now? That I am intensely jealous but also glad that he has been in Europe doing research.

14. Where did you meet 7? The Creative Writing Club in high school.

15. What aquatic creature is 15? A dolphin!

16. What's the best memory you have of 13? Shooting the shit about non-academic things during lunch freshman and sophomore year at college.

17. When's the next time you're going to see 12? I have no idea; perhaps if she gets married, or if I join the circus and travel to California.

19. What was your first impression of 4? That he was a stinky-puss grouchy face.

20. What would happen in a fight between 13 and your best friend? My best friend would go down at the first hit.

21. Is 16 more like Donald Duck or Daffy Duck? Donald.

22. When was the last time you saw 14? The Katy High School Speech and Debate end-of-year banquet at Bennigan's in May 2003.

23. What, if given the opportunity, would you steal from 21's house? A pair of her shoes.

24. When is the next time you'll see 10? Hopefully this summer, if I round up the funds to visit Lubbock.

25. Are you really close to 1? No, but we're still really friendly.

26. How would you and 20 take over the world? Handheld firearms.

27. Have you ever been to 17's house? Nope.

28. Is 5 more like Lucy or Ricky? She'd probably be the Ricky in a relationship.

29. Describe the relationship between 14 and 19. They both have naturally pretty faces, without having to wear make-up to go out.

30. What's your friendship like with 5? We both like to talk, especially about the long wait for school to end.

31. Does 18 know a foreign language? He speaks at least two and probably reads more.

32. How do you know 21? We both took a required business communications course a year and-a-half ago.

33. Does 2 wear boxers or briefs? Though I have never been in a position to confirm, I suspect he wears boxers.

34. Have you ever wanted to sock 4 in the neck? It's softer than his head.

35. Could 11 date your sister? Probably not; I discern a clash or two.

36. Have you traveled anywhere with 12? No long distances, although she did pick me up to take me to my apartment once on a rainy afternoon.

37. If you gave 3 $100, what would they do with it? Put it toward rent, or maybe a bike accessory.

38. What's your best memory of 2? Being calm while everyone else at work partook in work-related drama.

39. What is the one thing you most want 8 to know? That I was impressed by his story about holding out in one room for days with no sleep.

40. What was the last thing you did with 16? Chatted with him at a friend's party.

41. When did you meet 20? We worked together in 2006 at Texas Tech.

42. What do you wish for 6? All the best with his documentary.

Die Verschwörung

2009-01-30T13:07:00.000-08:00

Only a person without a soul would pass this crap along. Naturally, I've tagged as many people as possible. Think of this, o dear "friends", more as being "stabbed".

What does your music library say about you?
--------------------------
1. Put Your iTunes on Shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write down the name of the song no matter how silly it sounds!
4. Put any comments in brackets after the song name.
5. Tag at least 10 friends
--------------------------

What do your friends think of you?
Zeichen der Venus
[Probably not so much.]

If someone says, “Is this okay?” You say?
Etwas Geld
[I am a mooch.]

How would you describe yourself?
The Small House of Uncle Thomas
[I am emancipated.]

What do you like in a guy/girl?
Shadowboxer

How do you feel today?
Breathtaker

What is your life’s purpose?
Sentimental Journey

What is your motto?
I've Got You Under My Skin

What do you think about very often?
Die durch die Hölle gehen
[Das Leben ist mir die Hölle.]

What is 2 + 2?
Liebe Mich Leben

What do you think of your best friend?
The Letter

What do you think of the person you like?
It's Only A Paper Moon

What is your life story?
Bock Bier Polka

What do you want to be when you grow up?
Vdol' pa ulitse (A Snowstorm Blows)

What do you think of when you see the person you like?
We're Off To See The Wizard (Duo)

What will you dance to at your wedding?
Wie Tief

What will they play at your funeral?
Let The Planets Burn

What is your hobby/interest?
Fikk Dich Mit Fire

What is your biggest fear?
Stress Pill

What is your biggest secret?
War

What do you think of your friends?
Im Inneren Der Stadt

What will you post this as?
Die Verschwörung

This is representative of the music I work out to: German metal and Ella Fitzgerald, with other stuff sprinkled in. If you had my metabolism, you'd be moody all the time, too.

Ten Traumatizations

2009-01-26T20:06:00.000-08:00

Since my goals are worthless, I decided to put a twist on this tagging-of-one's-friends trend: I am only tagging people I have ostensibly Facebook befriended, but whom I actually despise. I hold my friends close, but my enemies closer. And rather than life goals or fun facts, I am posting a much-abridged list of the things that account for the more bizarre aspects of my personality development. If you've been tagged (think of it more as "jabbed"), you have to come up with your own list of sorrows, traumatizations, and unhappy memories.

1. When I was five or six, I wrote on some bureaucratic form or other, under "Race:", that I was "apricot" (this being the only crayon in the box that appoximated any part of my flesh). The teacher told me that was wrong, and that I am "white".

2. At some point in elementary school, I was told that the British spelling of any English word is incorrect. So I make it a point to write "flavour", "colour", and "storey" in all formal compositions.

3. I cannot rollerblade, because when we were little, my mother wouldn't let my siblings or me own rollerblades. We could have fallen and cracked our skulls open. The same reason accounts for why I have never attempted to skateboard, shoot a gun, climb trees, scuba dive, or have sex. I'd fall and crack my skull open.

4. One morning in junior high, I refused to attend church anymore. My dad threatened to beat me if I didn't go, so I locked myself in the master bathroom until it was safe to emerge. Now, whenever someone suggests taking me to a religious function, my heart rate increases, and I feel the need to urinate.

5. I never used to talk to people, because I could not come up with anything to discuss that wasn't vain. Now I simply proffer the most shallow of matters at the beginning of all conversations, to be rid of that anxiety. Sometimes the problem arises therefrom, of people trying to fill my vacuous mind with their bullshit. No matter. It all leaks out my ears eventually.

6. I spend so much time discussing all the things I would like to do that I wind up doing nothing but complaining about not getting to do all of the things I seem not to have time to do.

7. I did not ride off merrily down the street the very first time someone (my grandma) tried teaching me how to ride a bicycle (my older sister and a couple of cousins were there taunting me), so I quit trying, not teaching myself until I was about ten. Since my parents didn't let me cross the street until I was fifteen, I rarely rode a bike until college. Even after the regular use of a bicycle for about three years, I still feel nervous riding them (and I imagine everyone laughs inwardly if not outwardly at me as I pedal by, because I must look goofy).

8. When I was six or seven and she eight or nine, my older sister announced to everyone in her class at lunch or at the playground one afternoon that I was a bedwetter. Someday I am going to kill her.

9. I took clarinet in band in sixth grade, using the one my mom had used from elementary school onward. After she died (when I was thirteen), I kept the clarinet, even though I stopped playing. Every time I look at the dusty green case, which I always shove in some corner of the room I occupy, I think about all the things I could have been, but am not and never will be.

10. I did not cry when Bambi's mother died.

Pawning The Guitar

2009-01-05T10:43:00.000-08:00

Last night I felt like a pile of sludge, so after working out briefly this morning I spent a couple of hours cleaning like a mad housewife. It seems counter-intuitive that scrubbing stray hairs from behind a toilet should make me feel better about life; they could gather together into a massive brown tumbleweed, for all I really care. I only dislike the idea of having to push aside a hair forest every time I make water.

Pars prima of my errand-running for the afternoon consists in purging myself of a few books that I do not particularly need. The list:

Elie Wiesel- Night
Harper Lee- To Kill A Mockingbird
Lord Byron- Byron's Poetry
Barbara Ehrenreich- Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Thomas Keneally- A River Town
Elizabeth Winthrop- The Castle in the Attic
Jerry Spinelli- Maniac Magee
F. Scott Fitzgerald- Flappers and Philosophers
Robert Cormier- Tenderness
Thomas Hardy- Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Anzia Yezierska- Bread Givers
Thomas Keneally- Schindler's List

Most of these I read in high school and have clung to for little reason, other than especially liking them. But let some other kid read them fo' cheaps. I had two copies of Tess, which is probably unnecessary.

My housemate has mentioned I may have his old bike, which needs tire replacements; if this does not prove costly, I will wheel it down to the shop (pars secunda).

A Wife Is For One Who Is Too Scared To Sleep Alone At Night

2008-12-17T03:21:00.000-08:00

I graded the final exams yesterday, input grades, and posted them. Two people failed (although by the University scale, they made D grades). Both students missed too many classes to catch up fully; the male buckled down toward the end and made good grades, but the female continued to miss class. Grade distribution was as expected: mostly As, a couple of Bs, and a couple of Cs.

The last five final exam questions were fill-in-the-blank about mythology. Last question: Actaeon came upon Artemis _________________ in a spring. One person wrote, "fornicating" and another wrote, "making love".

"The virgin goddess!" I exclaimed in the TA office. I was then gently reminded about sexual relations among females, which turned into a hunt for the lexicography of τριβησ. Nevertheless, I counted the above answers incorrect, considering neither student would have made an argumentum e silentio if called upon to defend.

saepe ambulabam cum luna erat clara

2008-12-02T03:55:00.000-08:00

Since in the past two weeks, when we were supposed to have been meeting consistently thrice per week, we had only met once, and this week I will have to cancel at least two sessions, yesterday I sent the young man whom I am supposed to be tutoring classical Greek a regretful e-mail permanently suspending our arrangements. He hardly needs my guidance; when I asked him to explain the dative of respect, for instance, he articulated the concept better than I could have. He just needs self-motivation and discipline to develop a more consistent study routine, which is, of course, ultimately something I cannot do for him.

On that note, I have become friendly with Latin grammars lately, since I never look anything up and have relied almost solely on trying to understand things from context. Now I think I know how to use a gerund. fortasse.

Lesen Sie Mal

2008-11-28T03:46:00.000-08:00

Unless memory fails, there exists not a single family photograph of my parents embracing each other with any degree of positive emotion. I could be incorrect; maybe one of my aunts has photographs about which I am unaware, but from what I recollect out of our photo albums, for any photograph involving both parents, they are standing apart (huge family gathering) or side-by-side, but not acknowledging each other. Pictures of myself with any of my four siblings also convey distant attitudes. We might be touching, and there might be smiles, but someone is getting pinched.

I was viewing various Thanksgiving Day 2008 photographs friends have already posted, and for all of them, I sensed something odd. Hugging, I finally realized, my friend's parents are hugging. This is what people who like each other a lot do. A thirty-minute voyeuristic search for happiness ensued. I shook my laptop upside-down in the air a few times, thinking love would fall out of it, but, as usual, the only feeling the computer emits for me to seize upon is frustration.

Less Than A Month Until I Am Rid Of My Little Effer

2008-11-22T16:47:00.000-08:00

Although the annual, official celebration of toilets occurred earlier this week, now seems the best time to reflect on how drastically different life would be had I never sat upon or viewed one, for after what I ate for dinner this evening, tomorrow will be a day spent intimately with that which receives the feasts of my bowels.

The non-existence of such receptacles as toilets would necessarily have precluded the existence of my neurotic fear that an over-sized spider will crawl out of one, bite a chunk out of my ass, and bring about an agonizing and premature, though somewhat comic, death. I saw Arachnephobia when I was six or seven, and never since have I failed to check under, over, around, down, into, and through for spiders or other potential death-causing beasts.

Were the world bereft of toilets, I would not be as well-versed in English poetry, for the toilet has been where I tend to read such material: poetry differs in density, as does a cheeseburger or a blueberry that has passed through my digestive system. With a poetry anthology, therefore, one may consume it in one sitting, or interrupt it and return later without completely severing the flow of thoughts required for reading the entire text. Prose literature-reading on the toilet hardly ever works.

To discuss this further would be to digress farther from the task of gathering research material for a paper I am supposed to have been writing all semester.

I Woke Up This Morning, And My Penis Was Missing

2008-11-02T13:29:00.000-08:00

Ich habe diesem morgen aufgewacht, um zu finden, daß ich eine geschlagene Stunde mehr haben. Ich soll meine Uhr stellen.

Jetzt kann ich weiter den Iliad lesen, die Werke Juvenals weiter bilden und ins Papier beschreiben, einen Netflix-Film ansehen, den Penthesilea Kleists weiter lesen... aber vielleicht werde ich nichts machen.

de latineque graece studiosa sum, sed non satis. linguae declinationum sunt difficiles. meh.

With the unwritten paper concerning the hundreds of manuscripts of Juvenal floating around, for which I have conducted not nearly enough fruitful research, looming over me in an almost physical sense, I took about three hours of this afternoon (mentally discounting one of them) to work out and swim at the student recreation center. The past two days I haven't moved much, reading and taking notes on points of Latin grammar for which my knowledge and comprehension are wanting. Swimming about fifteen (I did not count them) Olympic laps improves the posture.

Beforehand I listened to The Wizard of Oz soundtrack on an elliptical machine, then read the next two acts in Kleist's Penthesilea on a recumbent bike. I had forgotten how well such a combination helps me focus; after having exercised this way for three years, my body usually doesn't become too worn out, especially since I no longer work at a forty-hour week job that requires I stand on my feet six or eight hours straight. Granted, thinking rationally still comes with difficulty, but now it at least comes occasionally. Freshman and sophomore year I almost never dreamt.

Uh-Oh Spaghettio

2008-10-31T20:19:00.000-07:00

I do not celebrate Halloween, but I bought a couple of bags of candy in the unlikely event some little monsters might darken my door. Being sent away empty-handed, these hoodlums might have returned loaded with flaming pies to hurl on my porch. The night has passed without incident, and with only two high-school girls (in UK sweaters: "We dressed as college students") stopping by the entire evening. This leaves a bowl full of Snickers and Hershey's minis to be consumed. Am morgen I'll dump it on the neighbor's lawn, for those little munchkins to devour.

I do not like children.

It Could All Go Up In Flames

2008-10-25T17:22:00.000-07:00

The space-heater in my bedroom must not be situated within three feet of anything, particularly, anything inflammable. Upon survey of my room, one discerns first the futon mattress on the floor. Next one may note the disassembled, wooden futon frame stacked to one side below the windows looking out onto nothing but the ivy that covers the side of the house. To the right, behind the space heater, stands a near-ceiling-high wooden bookshelf, containing at least two hundred books. On the floor, to one side, binders, documents, and more books (mostly dictionaries and writing supplements) rest neatly, if undecorously. On the mattress are piled six stacks of books and notebooks relating to my graduate classes and the section of beginning Latin I teach. If I shift heavily in sleep, these will bury me. If the space heater sets them alight, they will bury me in flames.

I spent the day reading about medieval archaeology and prosopography. At midday I broke off on a walk to the student recreation center, to read the first act of Kleist's Penthesileia on a recumbent bike, and then to swim about twenty laps. All this conducted in blissful solitude.

I do not like anyone.

Give Me Back My Stapler

2008-10-17T19:28:00.000-07:00

I know not what my sister's boyfriend's buttons signify. Ich weiß nur, daß meine Mitstudenten und der Professor gepflegt diesen Knopfen tragen. I brought them to class this afternoon, because a few weeks ago Professor Rabel noticed them on my hat and inquired as to their significance. I interpolate something with respect to Angst or Schadenfreude, aber wer weiß? I am content merely with wearing them; I provided them to my Greek professor and classmates in the hope that perhaps the true meaning of these buttons would one day illuminate them.

A Huge Financial Rescue Plan

2008-09-29T03:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, avoiding any real work, I prepared wraps and salads to bring campusward for lunch this week. Unless something is fixed beforehand, I spend money on over-priced campus food. No bueno.

This morning I weighed in at 144, drained overnight by all the caffeinated diuretics imbibed this weekend to keep me awake as I read the first of a most boring commentary for the manuscripts class. The online reading failed to impress also.

Sleeptime.

To Watch The Stork Squirm

2008-09-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

In elementary school music classes, the material taught her students by Mrs. Marsha Usher fell broadly into two categories: the art of reading, listening to, interpreting, and performing music; and the art of listening to and interpreting stories and anecdotes Mrs. Usher related when stimulated by something or other, or when she felt she needed to fill twenty minutes with something other than a twenty-seven-person chorus making twenty-seven distinctly off-key renditions of "Let It Snow".

Specifically called to mind this evening, as I sat at home reading excerpts written by a play critic: Mrs. Usher once related the tale of her hamburger traumatization. She grew up on a farm, or at least in a house with some extended property, and could on that account raise a calf. 'Twould seem she went away one summer for a week or two- or perhaps a month or two- and returned home to be told her pet calf had run away. The evening of her return, Mrs. Usher's father (who presumably at that time never addressed his daughter as "Mrs. Usher") barbecued burgers, an event in itself not likely considered extraordinary to little Marsha not-yet-Usher. But this evening dinner held a curiosity: her brother, perhaps called "Bobby" or "Greg", kept giggling at her as he scarfed down his meal. When realization dawned on the victim of this cruel prank, she burst into tears, and has not eaten a burger since.

I love cheeseburgers.

Nimm Mich Mit

2008-09-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

In an early episode of "The Twilight Zone", Mr. Death pretends to be a wounded police officer, forcing an old woman living secluded in a condemned house to take pity and let him in her door, thereby sealing her doom. Mr. Death, a handsome young man, applies a technique of speaking softly and smiling reassuringly to convince the old woman "death is only the beginning".
Without hesitation, I would have accepted such an offer. However, Robert Redford played a mid-twenties Mr. Death. As he appears currently, I would immediately recognize Mr. Redford as Mr. Death in not-so-subtle disguise. Accordingly, I would punch him in his teeth and flee (his lawyers).

Deflowerment

2008-09-23T07:05:00.000-07:00

I went to the main campus library last night after having spent appoximately eleven minutes on an elliptical machine at the student recreation center, which took an enormous amount of time to find, situated as it is amid numerous other buildings. I left shortly before nine in the evening, still struck aghast by the result of my inquiry into renting a locker: "There's a waiting-list at least a year long." The blue-eyed pale-face (I have yet to grow accustomed to living in an area where I am darker than most of the other inhabitants) at the towel desk registered the expression of incredulity on my face with due professional sympathy, but I perceived my reaction startled him a little nevertheless. I proceeded downstairs to inspect the locker room, which is indeed smaller than the one adjoining my junior high gym. This scratches plans for daily showers there before school.

One must check out some book to complete the activation process for one's library card; I chose three books by Alexander Woolcott, a figure about whom I have known but never read in detail. This morning I read his words about A. E. Housman, describing the time when Housman was a marginal professor taking a set of his poetry to a publisher. Housman declined the offer by the publisher to accept royalties:

Professor Housman had written some poems because he could not help himself, and an extremely painful experience he had found it. He would no more think of selling these things which had been wrung from his troubled heart than he would have cut off his hand and sent it to market.

The thought immediately sprung to my head, illustrative of Housman's nobility and my lack thereof: I would with little forethought cut off my hand and sell it, if I thought it would fetch anything. Nevermind writing anything worthy of publication.

Yesterday I began a sympathy diet with a high school friend, who currently resides in New York. I am not fat, to be sure, but I am just as certainly not slender, either; if only to find clothes that fit, among other reasons, I need to drop weight. Weigh-in: 145.

Look Into My Eyes

2008-09-10T16:10:00.000-07:00

I dress well on the days (Mondays through Thursdays) when I teach. This afternoon I appeared, as usual, "casually sophisticated" in all but one detail- a button on the chest of my blouse came undone as I distributed a quiz, so that anyone who cared to could clearly observe meine großen Brüsten. Wunderbar. I turned around to face the blackboard while the chickadees were bent over their quizzes to pack my chest back in.

Yesterday, the students read and translated a story from the book. The passage ended with one main character, Horatia, calling to another, Quintus, to wait for her. The passage ends: "Horatia runs to him. They go forth to school together." I made some comment about crazy love in the ancient world, upon which a girl in the class said,

'But aren't Quintus and Horatia brother and sister?'

...whoops. Well, times and customs sure have changed, haven't they?

Other than minor, daily disasters, the teaching has been going well. As a group, the chickadees are a good little bunch. Since the book exercises and readings lack verve, I incorporate real Latin poetry every week for pronunciation practice and to introduce the students to the range of literature available. Thus far, if not enthusiastic, no one seems opposed to this.

Hummus In My Tummus

2008-09-04T15:58:00.000-07:00

This morning I arose and walked to The Tower (the eighteen-story campus office building; the tenth floor houses the Classics Department) ashiver with indecision: to study the manuscript tradition of Das Nibelungenlied or Saturae Iuvenalis? The topic abstract being due at three, I conferred with a few people and settled with Saturae Iuvenalis, after its potential use as a subject for my exit examinations in two years was pointed out. Hundreds of copies exist, of which about seventy occur prior to the twelfth century. Over the next week I shall research more thoroughly where codexes exist and narrow down which would be best to examine.

My Greek professor schlepped everyone in the class into signing up for slots at an all-day campus marathon of reading The Iliad in English on the fifteenth of this month. I dibsed nine o'clock a.m., to begin the madness with what will likely be a terrible interpretation of the first part of Book I. I do not mind doing this so much as other people will mind hearing it.

Every morning the cell phone alarm rouses me from bed between five and six (depending on how long I lie there, waiting for Andreas to grind coffee). I find something or other to read and fix eggs or eat a bowl of cereal flakes as Andreas prepares himself for exit. I then shower, gather my books into a blue University of Kentucky Graduate School satchel and a recycled rice bag, and trot to The Tower through a neighborhood with houses dating from at least the twenties. It is splendid to have a routine again.

Razorblade Rash

2008-09-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

AMy older sister's kid finally hatched. The doctor(s) had to slice Ashlea open the evening of August 26th to haul out an eight-pound, eight-ounce baby boy, whom the delighted parents have named "Cohen Keith Mims". Aunt Lauree will be delighted to call him "Porky" for the rest of his life. If the bebe had to be cut out of the womb, imagine what it might take to persuade him to cut out of the house before he's thirty.
I rather wish now I had taken up a friend's offer to (re)learn me the art of crocheting before I left Lubbock a few weeks ago. Then I could send the little porker a pig-coloured, handmade onesie. Doubtless Babies 'R' Us does not carry booties resembling pig feet; but the wide world of worthless retail surely holds some other creative, pig-themed items with which Porky may be gifted. Little does he know now what a lifetime of embarassment and humiliation awaits.

I began reading this morning a short, recently-published sources text introducing German erotic tales of the medieval period (Mären) that I stole from the library at Texas Tech University (since I forgot I had it and forgot to return it). It includes information about manuscripts, where available, and since I must find something to study over the course of the semester for the manuscript cultures course I am taking, it seemed worth pulling off the shelf for perusal. Some sources have been lost to fire catastrophes, but a couple seem promising, provided I can access the documents. An extensive study of Middle High German would be fun.

My housemate, Andrew (oder "Andreas" auf Latein), recommended unto me the play The Invention of Love, based around A. E. Housman and Oscar Wilde. It contains hilarious passages concerning philology and textual criticism, to make for an entertaining and thought-provoking Labour Day Weekend read.

Ach, meine Augen

2008-08-21T17:22:00.000-07:00

"Der Tod"

Ach, es ist so dunkel in des Todes Kammer,
Tönt so traurig, wenn er sich bewegt
Und nun aufhebt seinen schweren Hammer
Und die Stunde schlägt.

-Matthias Claudius, 1798

Ich liebe deutschen Literatur und Gedichten, weil die Deutschen alles "schlagen". Lustig.

Jetzt wohn' ich in Kentucky. Die Üni ist schön und die Leute sind hilfsbereit. Ich soll noch immer Latein sprechen, aber ich kann nicht oft die Wörter, daß ich säge, finden. Schade. Ich antworte jedermann auf Deutsch.

Mein Englisch wird noch immer schlecter. Der Mann, der lateinischen Lehreren/innen führt, hat mir gefragt, ob ich den Gedichten schreibe. Er schaut mich eines Buch der Gedichte von Elizabeth Barrett Browning lesend an. Doch ich habe nichts geschriebt, von Kindheit oder Hochschule an. Ich habe seitdem zu wenig Zeit. So ich sage.

Bald fang ich Kürse an. Ich werde Der Iliad von Homer auf Griechisch lesen. Die nächste Kurs ist lateinische Komposition. Auch matrikulierte ich in einer Kurs über den antiken Handschriften. Viel Spaß.

Nomen mihi "Laurea" est. Insulsa est. Melius "pusulosam" adopinor esse, quoniam facile conpleor puris.

fenestra, fenestrae, f.- window

defenestration- to have someone or something thrown out a window

The Aged Ones

2008-08-05T17:17:00.000-07:00

A friend lent me an absorbing novel that, engrossed in it though I was, did not entirely deviate my attention from the two old Texas ladies who shuffled into the coffee shop this afternoon; one clutched a giftcard and acted as translator for the other, who I suppose cannot speedily conduct customer service-provider interactions any longer. They haltingly discussed everything on the menu as if making some grievous, ineradicable commitment that could possibly lead to their deaths if not properly played. The non-communicative one settled for a mango smoothie, which I genuinely hope went down well. I kept shifting my feet and pulling my hands in and out of my pockets as I stood there nervously behind them. They were inhaling my youth through their nostrils, and it made me twitchy.

Life is meaningless, I am an empty being, and I will commit seppuku if I ever become old.

Shouldn't You Be Working?

2008-08-02T17:35:00.000-07:00

,Dexter tossed two crisp dollars on my table so that I could have a frozen coffee drink as I read. Then our mutual acquaintance friend, Rob, provoked by some inner whim, donated half his club sandwich. Having over-sized breasts and blue eyes does come in handy sometimes. Things get handed me, and I don't even have to sleep with anyone. Life is glorious.

Sometime either late this week or next Monday at latest, I will take a two-day Greyhound ride to Lexington. Long road trips I normally enjoy, conditioned by family vacations being driven from Katy to St. Louis. At least on the bus, my older sister won't be there to slap me for accidentally brushing her with my shoulder (although there is a possibility my neighbor might stab me multiple times and chop off my head). My body will be in Kentucky, but most of my goods will remain in Lubbock until I can afford to ship them, which will not occur for another month.

I am living with an older man (a high school Latin teacher) in the extra bedroom of his house. Campus lies two streets away, and a Kroger lies two streets away in the opposite direction. A short bus ride away lies a coffee shop with free wireless internet access. Alles, daß ich brauche.

The Boat Bobbed, Listed, Righted Itself...

2008-07-19T20:22:00.000-07:00

In March I took antibiotics that put a hold on my plasma donations. I only became eligible to donate again in late June. The plasma donation center ran tests that showed my blood is still abnormal. I cannot donate, again, for two months. This translates to a monthly loss of two hundred dollars' income. Ach.

I nodded at the phlebotomist and somberly left the office, but recently wondered whether I ought not call the center to find out what "abnormal" means. Do I have AIDS? Are there vicious, alien lifeforms using my platelets as surfboards?

I finished reading an edition, published in 1978, of selections from Byron's poetry corpus. Most lines, with the exception of Don Juan and a few stanzas here and there, induced sleep. The editor's notes hardly illuminated anything. Many of the notes written for the numerous classical references over-simplified or led to popular (but not wholly accurate) interpretation. The copy hurt meine Augen.

Byron wrote best when he dared be bold.

Refuse To Reuse

2008-07-04T19:05:00.000-07:00

Write the names of the last twenty people who have written on your Facebook wall, and answer the questions below. Then, tag each of them, to be obnoxious.

1. Justin Yost

2. Maria Pia Guerbet

3. Amanda Lee Morris

4. Jon David McCurdy

5. Jeremy Leffingwell

6. Jessica Bartek

7. Tim Knight

8. Steve Ryan

9. Kailey Keith

10. Elizabeth Barnes

11. Megan Parker

12. Stephen Bermudez

13. Luke Edward Stuckey

14. Daren Loney

15. Edward Keith

16. Brad Schuck

17. Bianca Mercado

18. Emily Diane Koch

19. Martha Hoskins

20. Cheri Grissom

*How did you meet 7?
He was the teaching assistant for the ancient sports and public spectacles class I took freshman year.

*What would you do if you had never met 18?
I would not have known how heavily in love a twelve year-old girl could fall with Dave Grohl.

*What would you do if you dated 15?
I would be in an incestuous relationship!

*Have you ever seen 17 cry?
Nope.

*Would 4 and 16 make a good couple?
Yes. They're both handsome, resourceful, and outdoors-y.

*Do you like 19?
Natürlich. Sie ist schön und talentiert.

*Do you think 13 is attractive?
Yep. Luke Edward Stuckey has always been a ladies' man.

*When was the last time you talked to 9?
A couple of days ago on Facebook; maybe a couple of years voice-to-ear.

*Would you ever date 2?
Probably not.

*Where does 20 live?
Lubbock, Texas- the buttcrack of America.

*What is the best thing about 4?
His extensive knowledge about chemical weapons.

*What would you like to tell 10 right now?
That I am in love with her. The two of us should elope to Austria.

*What is the best thing about 20?
We can speak linguistics lingo together.

*Have you ever kissed 18?
No, but I would gladly make a trip to California for the sole purpose of doing so.

*What's the best memory you have of 5?
Making fun of people at high school prom.

*When's the next time you’re going to see 12?
In my dreams.

*Is 3 pretty?
Yes. Everybody be givin' Amanda eyes.

*What was your first impression of 15?
I first saw Eddie as an infant in his crib, when I was seven. I recall that he was very red, and I reached in to pet him because he looked soft and delicate.

*How did you meet 2?
We still haven't met in person... but we'll meet in less than a month, at grad school.

*Is 12 your best friend?
Nope, but he's pretty high up on The Toleration Scale.

*Have you seen 6 in the last month?
Nope. It's been five years.

*When was the last time you saw 16?
Probably at Project Graduation at the end of high school.

*Have you been to 9's house?
Kailey doesn't own the house, but yes, I've been. I was only too happy to leave.

*When is the next time you'll see 10?
Probably sometime this weekend.

*Are you really close to 6?
Nope, but it's okay. We haven't seen each other for a long time, but we can still talk with no problem.

*Have you been to the movies with 11?
Nope.

*Would you give 13 a hug?
I reserve hugging for special people, and Luke is one of the few to make the list.

*When have you lied to 17?
Never. I merely exaggerate or embellish.

*Do you know a secret about 8?
No; if I knew, then it wouldn't be a secret.

*Describe the relationship between 12 and 19.
There is none that I know of. I think they both like pets.

*What's your friendship like with 7?
Remote at present, but we saw each other weekly a couple of years ago.

*Have you ever danced with 14?
No, for that would be an odd, freaky dance.

*How long have you known 13?
Since freshman year of high school, taking a Latin class together. Nine years. Crap, are we old.

*Does 11 have a boyfriend/girlfriend?
I believe she is presently single.

*Have you ever wanted to punch 17 in the face?
Yes, but I refrained.

*Has 20 met your mother?
Nope. My mother died before I met Cheri.

*How did you meet 10?
A couple of years ago, she and her boyfriend came over to chat with someone I was sitting with at a coffee shop. I remember she talked about what she was doing at the moment in holocaust studies.

*Have you traveled anywhere with 8?
Only so far as the couch in the foreign languages building. It's the only place I've travelled.

*If you gave 4 $100, what would they spend it on?
Soy milk, a twenty-pack of Pepsi, and buffalo wild wings.

*What is your best memory of 1?
All the times he buys me dinner.

Chocolate Cookie + Peanut Butter

2008-07-04T14:26:00.000-07:00

GIn high school Latin, to recall the properties of verbs I had to recognize, I used the mnemomic device "please never tickle my vulva" for person, number, tense, mood, voice. In the classroom I'll be teaching next semester, I guess I'll have to devise something else for the little chickadees. Curses to this over-fertile imagination of mine.

Today I did what I have done nearly every day for the past month and-a-half: I woke up, ate a semi-balanced breakfast, read for perhaps twenty minutes, and then spent several hours on the computer looking at photographs people post on Facebook from their travels to Europe. Apparently, everyone but I have gone to Deutschland or Spain for the summer. I stressed this spring over grad school applications instead of foreign travel plans. People who have been asking, I tell, 'Oh... maybe next summer.' Right now I cannot afford to move out of the monstrous state I live in.

But I will get to Kentucky for grad school next month, if it means checking myself and two bags onto a Greyhound and leaving everything else in a dumpster. I didn't bother applying to Tech, because I would rather move somewhere else and work for a year than stay in Lubbock. I'm miserable everywhere I go, for that is the nature of a Lauree, but my misery has stagnated. It's time to progress to a higher level of discontent.

Megakurzes Kleid

2008-06-18T20:03:00.000-07:00

I lost my boxcutter. Er heißt Rodrigo. He probably slipped out of my pocket on campus somewhere.

When regular people lose something dear to them, they experience feelings. A Lauree does not have feelings, but rather an ever-fluctuating pool of misery. Rodrigo has left a vacuum in that pool that cannot possibly be filled.

May Rodrigo slice the hand of the next person to pick him up. I'll miss his love-bite.

On A Snowy Evening

2008-06-07T17:10:00.000-07:00

I tore a few un-read poetry anthologies from my shelf this past week, to break the monotony as I review Latin and Greek during every other waking hour. Inevitably, this endeavour has entirely severed the course I set for Latin and Greek readings. Oh, well. Carthago delenda est.

From Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker:

TO MYRTILLA, ON EASTER DAY

Myrtilla's tripping down the street,
In Easter finery.
The Easter blooms are not more sweet
And radiant-hued than she.
The rarest woodland violets were
Less fragrant than her frills,
The sunny-tinted hair of her
Would shame the daffodils.
Ah, many a heart-beat halts and skips,
And sighs pursue her way,
As down the street Myrtilla trips,
This joyous Easter Day.

Myrtilla's tripping gaily by,
In Easter garb arrayed.
Ah, would the lads as deeply sigh,
For any other maid?
The lads, they come from far and near,
When down the street she starts;
Oh, lightly step, Myrtilla dear,
Your path is strewn with hearts.
The maids are held in envy's grips,
For they are left, forlorn,
As down the street Mytrilla trips,
This glorious Easter morn.

Ah, well may echo, sweet as love,
Her laugh's delicious lilt,
For sure she knows the power of
Her Easter bonnet's tilt;
A master wrought, with tender care,
Each dainty frill and flounce;
The fragrance of her, cool and rare,
Costs thirty-five per ounce.
Parisian rouge defines her lips,
And pearls her throat bedeck-
As down the street Myrtilla trips,
I hope she breaks her neck!

THOUGHTS

Yes, my love, I think about you
In the morning's roseate flush;
Heavy hang the clouds, without you,
Sullen seems the dawning's blush.
In the slender, graceful grasses,
Silver-tipped with sparkling dew,
In the woodland's shadowy masses
All that I can see is you.

When the noon-day sun is burning,
Hot the scented air, and clear,
Then to you my thoughts are turning,
And I would that you were here.
Then I dream that, happy vagrants,
We are wandering hand in hand
Through the lanes of light and fragrance
Into Summer's fairyland.

When the weary sun is sinking,
And the blossoms close, in rest,
Then of you, my love, I'm thinking,
As I watch the brilliant west.
When the little stars show faintly
In the Maxfield Parrish sky,
When the moon gleams, cold and saintly,
Then to you my fancies fly.

When the frightened owls are calling,
And the sombre midnight reigns,
Thick and fast the shades come crawling,
Like the thought of fevered brains,
When life trembles at the brink of
Death's unfathomable deep,
You're the last thing that I think of-
Goodness knows, I need some sleep.

Is There Anything Further, Father?

2008-06-05T17:34:00.001-07:00

A passage from The Elements of Style:

Flammable. An oddity, chiefly useful in saving lives. The common word meaning "combustible" is inflammable. But some people are thrown off by the in- and think inflammable means "not combustible." For this reason, trucks carrying gasoline or explosives are now marked FLAMMABLE. Unless you are operating such a truck and hence are concerned with the safety of children and illiterates, use inflammable.

My underwear is inflammable...heh-heh.

And This Is The Way Of The World

2008-06-04T18:20:00.000-07:00

I wore a University of Missouri sweatshirt to work this evening, in direct violation of the "Thou shalt not wear anything demonstrating love for or affiliation with another university" rule; but the thermostat at the office registers sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit at the moment. My other sweatshirts lie buried beneath rancid, sweat-soaked gym clothes in the laundry baskets in my closet. Damned either way.

Before graduation in August, I need only complete one course: contemporary mathematics. On the first day of class, we drew truth tables. Days two and three were devoted to scientific notation. This week has been spent on unit conversions. The instructor, a young Turkish lady here for graduate study, looks back at us from the chalkboard every two minutes to say, "Everybody learned this in, I don't know, third grade, right? It is clear?" It obviously pains her as much to teach this nonsense as it does us to relearn it. She stretches the time as best she can, but releases us consistently at least twenty minutes early.

If I ever get suckered into having kids, I will drown them before I let them attend public school in America.

If I Could Talk With The Animals...

2008-05-22T20:29:00.000-07:00

Instead of organizing my dorm room this evening, I read back to an old blog post from mid-May 2005:

Having no stereo, I did discover that silence is a dangerous sound, for I am then left, alone, with my own thoughts. My thoughts tend to worry other people.

Last night as I unpacked some clothes, I almost threw out an old, black bra, but not being one to waste things needlessly, I bethought, How may I transform this bra into something more useful? Then it dawned on me- a headband! It suits the purpose of holding my hair out of the scathing Lubbock wind exceptionally, without making my head too warm. The straps flap around behind my ears in a most charming manner. Tomorrow I will make an excuse to wear it out.

I am a genius.

I still have that bra, for whatever reason. I bought it when I was nineteen, accompanying my aunt, Laura, on an excursion to Marshalls. I followed behind her with my hands in my pockets and that bra on my head through half the department store before she turned around and claimed not to know me. In high school, I used to walk behind my dad at the grocery store balancing a jumbo box of tampons on my head.

One can only be young once, but one can always be immature.

Someone I work with now and who I had a German class with last semester saw me this afternoon and commented on how different I look without my crocheted hat. If I wear the bra on my head to training tomorrow, perhaps no one will recognize me. Then I can leave. I all but have to sit on my hands at these training sessions to keep from clawing into my face through to the back of my skull as I feel every wasted moment there, that I could be wasting somewhere else, gimp-legging away.

But the Residence Life staff do have generous, if misguided, natures, part of my reasoning for returning to the conference assistant position every summer. For instance, last night the student staff members were treated out to the buffet at Mr. Gatti's. After gorging ourselves on pizza and cheesesticks, we were encouraged to ride the bumper cars- a swell idea. I declined the invitation. When I make a public spectacle of myself, I do not want to smell like puke afterward.

Successfully Evasive of Cockroach Attack

2008-05-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

Showering at the Rec Sunday morning, I spied a roach the size of my palm climbing along the wall... toward my towel. I pulled the towel back from the wall and observed Gregor creep around the wall and out of sight, presumably to return to his nest to tell all his friends he saw me naked. I made a mental note that Gregor should be destroyed if we would again encounter each other, but not in seriousness; a roach that size would easily hold me in a headlock. As I stepped out, I looked around to determine Gregor's whereabouts, to dissuade him of any notion he might have that, because I spared his life the first time we met, we were then friends, and he might, hiding in my backpack, accompany me back to the Lauree Lair.

Gregor had, in fact, crept underneath the overhang of the door opening out of the shower, presumably to leap onto my head as I exited. This I managed to avoid, as I saw him first. I dressed quickly, since I had forgotten to bring Rodrigo, my boxcutter.

I meant to begin this with my thoughts on Romans 7, but no one would find them worth reading.

Oooohhh... kitties!

Crazy French

2008-05-05T18:19:00.000-07:00

The following are themes I am to be able to discuss for the final exam in Northern Myths and Legends am morgen:

Childhood oppression complex
Neglect, abuse and abandonment
Sexual Jealousy
Oedipus and Electra complex
Family Romance fantasy
Work, Diligence and Obedience
Female Virtues – desirability
Male Virtues – luck and wealth
Stupidity and Laziness
(Step)mothers and Stepsisters
Children’s Literature
Walt Disney
Snow White, 1937.
Adaptations of Fairy Tales

Ich liebe Germanistik.

Got Your Higher Sneakers On

2008-04-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

Last night what began as an early-evening nap to revitalize myself for study became a fifteen-hour sleeping/tossing-over-in-bed fest. I took a break for about an hour to lie on the floor with my feet propped up on the recliner and the DVD player set on my tummy, to watch a few episodes of "The Twilight Zone" as I tried to drain the liquid out of my lower legs. As far as quarter-life crises go, other people probably have worse.

Birthday goodies received, 2008, #23:

from John: a hug
from Gilbert: an orange
from Michael: die Nachtricht, daß das Dasein eine Bedeutung hat
from James: an apple pie (which I forgot to take home)
from Curtis: a burger at work
from Tammy: a Fanta and chocolate fudge Poptarts
from Jenni: a book written by Kermit the Frog with lessons on life
from April: a screaming squirrel and an Oscar the Grouch journal
from George: a mood ring

Other birthday presents received included cards, dirty looks, and more food. Next year, I hope everyone sends toilet paper, for that is an expense I must make again presently; I have run clean out. For whatever reason, I resent paying for the privelege of wiping my ass. I used baby wipes at one point this year, but that luxury costs quite a bit more.

It Took Me Years To Write

2008-04-20T17:01:00.000-07:00

The nebulous directors of the universe in the university system above apparently imposed more stringent regulations on the Classics Department (and certainly most others) with regard to demonstrating the undergraduate "successful completion rate", whatever that means. This translates to the requirement that, among other things, in my senior portfolio I must compose a paragraph for each upper-level Classics culture course about one thing that "intrigued" me. Pissant that I am, I can think of little else to comment, other than:

I came to class most of the time. I took notes and tried not to nod off during lecture, since despite finding the material interesting, I was too tired from working the night before to listen too attentively. I bubbled in mostly correct answers on the exams. I turned in final papers with few to no grammatical or technical mistakes. I received an "A". What intrigues me most about this class, Dear Sir or Madam, is that anyone could possibly fail it. An additional question arises: why should the University have me submit an assessment for a course it has no intention of ever restructuring?

You Can Call Me A Fickle Thing

2008-04-16T21:12:00.000-07:00

Am morgen früh studiere ich Griechisch bei Professor Christiansen zum letzten Mal. This evening I am finishing the final chapters of the grammar book he let me borrow and preparing about thirty or forty more lines of Plato's Apology. Ich verstehe jetzt how to recognize distinct elements of nouns and adjectives, in particular, which before was not too clear a process. And the independent study has renewed my enthusiasm for and continued interest in learning the language thoroughly.

For the summer I hope to structure a rigourous Latin-Greek-German-eat-sleep-work-school-read routine. It will hurt.

Will I Be Handsome...

2008-04-15T16:37:00.000-07:00

The University of Kentucky offered an admissions package to their Classical Languages MA program that I decided to accept. The University of Maryland, from whom I have not heard a definite response with respect to financial aid, was my top choice, but the department probably cannot provide funding, if by this point they have not notified me of a TA appointment decision. So Lexington it is, in most likelihood. No place on Earth could make me more miserable than I have been in Lubbock, so while not particularly enthused about moving to the Midwest, I could also not be happier. I will be satisfied to live anyplace where the dirt stays on the ground, where it in fact belongs.

The program is strong in reception studies for Neo-Latin, which I would want to study in general, but specifically in Deutschland between 1450-1850ish. The Graduate Director encouraged that I travel for study nach Deutschland, but even in lieu of that, the department annually funds summer travel in Italy or Greece for at least one grad student. Wunderbar.

We Are Never Out Of It

2008-04-09T14:20:00.000-07:00

This morning the rain beat thunderously loud on the pool roof, which, relievedly, drowned out the pop music station enough that I could kickboard along to my own imagination for once. The noise made me consider whether a nuke might have dropped; this then led to what I might do after nuclear fallout. Ere I paddled along, I glanced over at the other swimmers and wondered, if we were the only people on the planet to survive, which of us would be eaten first. I figured the tall bald guy would be first to get roasted, then perhaps the Asian.

I emerged from the pool and showered in disappointment that the bomb hasn't dropped yet.

Too tired after a three-hour workout to do anything else, afterward I read Doctor Faustus for German class for about three hours, sat through class (watching scenes from a production of The Ring Cycle and trying to pick out the German), then napped. Now I am at the coffee shop, pretending I am doing something dreadfully important. I might return to the Lair to cuddle with Kermie, for whom I never have to pretend anything.

Our "Two Posts A Day" Lauree

2008-04-07T22:40:00.000-07:00

Since the day I was born, I have never cared much about my birthday. I will feel just as dejected about existing as I did the day previous and do not anticipate a change in that course. But I have been inspired by a blog post from 24. April 2005:

Of course, Kimmy and I are not capable of destroying a race (there must be more- this "Michael" is probably their leader) of aliens by ourselves, so we enlisted the aid of our coworkers, Fisayo and JPat, as well as our manager, Serg (who doubted our possibilities for success). However, none of us could facilitate a plausible course for destroying the aliens, and we therefore sought information from persons coming in to buy food, if they appeared knowledgeable about the subject of eradicating alien life forms.

Though many people who come into Sam's at 12:30 a.m. for munchies seem alien-wise, apparently none of them know how best to kill the aliens in our midst. Several people I asked did not understand the gravity of the situation, which I found rather sad, for they will probably be the ones who are eaten first.

At some point around one a.m. the line at my register extended back about six or seven people, who were all apparently friends, chatting with each other about the party they just returned from (less enebriated, though, then other people I encountered last night). The first guy, wearing a bright blue shirt that read, Horn if you're a honky, looked at me blankly when he handed me his candy bar and I asked, "Do you know how to kill the aliens?" I said it loudly to be heard over the Offspring, and everyone in line stopped in mid-sentence to look at me. Pleased to have full attention, I explained the situation, but no one offered answers. They each exited, laughing, oblivious to their impending deaths.

Close to closing time, a boy came in for cookies and two twelve-packs of Dr. Peppers. Dejectedly, I asked for the hundredth time: "Do you know how to stop the aliens?" He could offer no suggestions, either, to which I simply shook my head and uttered, "Shit." He felt sorry for me, though, and wished me luck.

It is for all humanity that he should feel pity, for we are doomed.

This year, I want to go alien-hunting by day, between Greek and German classes; after sunset, I will look for ghosts. All my friends are chicken shits, though, so I will probably have to resign myself to conducting these investigations with the aid of Kermie and Funshine.

With All Due Respect, Sir

2008-04-07T22:31:00.000-07:00

Moving to the other side of the middle of nowhere will not make me feel better.

Make Me A Sandwich, Woman

2008-04-06T19:16:00.000-07:00

Working through the evenings Friday and Saturday led me to reflect people in America should stay at home and cook their own dinners, because I weary of serving it to them. Last night a well-attired man, perhaps fifty-two-or-three-ish, stood at the counter after he had received his order for no other purpose than to harass me and the person on grill (who happens to be the manager, though not in uniform designating him as such when he works in the back), because his food came out after that of a larger group of people, who had allowed him to cut in line so that he and his attractive wife could receive their meal the faster, as they were "in a hurry". Not so time-behaggled were they, though, that "Bartholomew" (the name on the ticket, the etymology for which must consist of two base elements, those for "ass" and "hole") could not resist a return to the pick-up counter to request swiss cheese on his burger in a "you incompetent serving-wench" tone [Bartholomew's ticket contained no reference whatsoever to swiss cheese, nor had he ordered a burger that comes con queso] and then to demand an explanation as to the reason for our over-efficiency in getting a larger order out before his. As I fixed the other tickets and struggled to keep a neutral-but-pleasantly-helpful expression on my face, I considered asking whether a blow job might be the thing to appease him, since my usual sincere apology and a free chocolate chip or white chocolate macadamia nut cookie apparently would not serve to assuage this customer's ire. As he continued berating the guy on grill, I walked away for more cookies, in anticipation of the event that the new cashier might continue to misring orders.

I hope Bartholomew has a girlfriend he sees on the sly, who will give him syphilis. His wife seemed gracious enough.

Baktierielle Infektion der Haut

2008-04-02T15:38:00.000-07:00

This afternoon a nice lady with a thick Texas accent filled an antibiotics prescription I am to take for a couple of bacterial infections. Basic description:

Akne inversa (engl. Hydradenitis suppurativa)
Schmerzhafte lokale Entzündung der Talgdrüsen und Haarfollikel bevorzugt der Körperfalten (Achseln, Leistenregion) mit Zerstörung der Drüsenausführungsgänge. Die Erkrankung beginnt mit schmerzhaften rötlich-blauen Knötchen, die wie beginnende Furunkel aussehen, und teilweise unter der Haut verschmelzen, Fistelgänge ausbilden und später ein teilweise übel riechendes Sekret absondern. Die Infektion mit Bakterien ist nicht die Ursache der Erkrankung, spielt aber für die Schwere des Verlaufs eine entscheidende Rolle. Als Erreger sind anfänglich Staphylococcus aureus, später auch andere Erreger (Proteus, Pseudomonas etc.) beteiligt. Die Heilung wird begleitet von starker Narbenbildung, die teilweise überschießend verläuft und dadurch die Bewegungsfreiheit einschränken kann.

Diese Infektionskrankheit hat eine sehr geringe Selbstheilungstendenz. Konservative Behandlungsmaßnahmen bringen keinen dauerhaften Erfolg. Auch chirurgische Eingriffe mit Totalentfernung betroffener Hautabschnitte und Ersatz durch Hauttransplantation haben nur in etwa der Hälfte der Fälle Erfolg.

Durch die Immunisierung mit autogenen Vaccine, gegebenenfalls in Kombination mit chirurgischer Korrektur störender Narbenbildung oder Exzision von Fistelarealen, kann die entzündliche Reaktion deutlich vermindert werden. Bei Erregerwechsel ist eine neue Impfserie erforderlich. Voraussetzung ist eine sorgfältige bakteriologische Diagnostik, die alle beteiligten pathogenen Erreger erfassen sollte.

source

Over the past two years these inflammations have occurred on the bottom of my right foot, under my armpits, and at my hip. The doctor I visited Monday mentioned they also often appear behind the knees and in the groin area.

Guess where mine are this time. The Internet community ought to be grateful I am disinclined to post pictures. Other than practicing proper hygiene and perhaps losing a little weight, preventitive treatment consists of nothing. Natürlich.

A few months ago, I read an issue of Cosmo in which some slut wrote an urgent letter to the Cosmo Doctor containing an enquiry as to whether omitting underwear as an article of clothing worn underneath her skirt for the period of one day of working and night-clubbing would be unsanitary. When one lift's one's head out of Plato or Cicero to peruse this sort of literature, it becomes ever the more entertaining than it is for regular people (or "normies", as a friend of mine calls them).

Etwas Gekauft

2008-03-30T16:21:00.000-07:00

Since elementary school, I thought I never wanted to do anything but write- and read- and write. In fifth grade, when we had an assignment to write to our favourite authors, I sent what must have been a rather lengthy letter to Stephen King. His secretary, Janice Eugley, sent something back to the effect that unfortunately Mr. King cannot answer individual letters and write novels at the same time; she did answer my questions and provided the additional information that Stephen is a Red Sox fan and assists coaching his son's baseball team. Ms. Eugley also kindly included an essay on writing Stephen King had authored a few years prior. I've read them since then countless times and am still as embittered about not receiving a personal letter from Mr. King as I was when I was ten. Of all the children on the planet sending him fan letters, he should have stopped that production wheel for me alone.

Since coming to college, I have written little of value.

Bob Dylan Is Not A Crazy Old Man

2008-03-27T14:43:00.000-07:00

In an advising session with Dr. Lavigne this afternoon, he mentioned, after I decide which graduate school to attend, he would take me aside for a "send-off". I worry this means he's going to break a liquor bottle across my side. I would almost rather have a sex talk with my dad. Normally, the "send-off" occurs between Dr. Larmour and the graduate students who are leaving the University for a PhD program somewhere. Being yet an undergrad, I get Avril, but I might put in a request that Dr. Larmour be present.

The shifts I work at Fuddruckers only last between three and six hours, nights, which makes this the cakewalk job I had hoped it would be. A tire blowing out on my tank, however, complicates transportation from (I catch the bus to) Fuddruckers to The Lair, which is about four miles away. The walk takes forever, but I still arrive at The Lair with time enough to work for a little bit before bedtime.

Fond, But Not In Love

2008-03-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

I began work at Fuddruckers. With a few exceptions, I am older than everyone else, including the manager who drove me home last night (for my tank is still kaputt). I intend to bus tables for the next several months to pay off a credit card or two.

For the next two weeks, I am going to sit by my mailbox, awaiting financial aid decisions from three of the Classics programs that have accepted me. I have my books (ever so many books), and the weather has begun to warm.

I realize, of course, that my plans may be thrown awry from the small fact that I have not attended so many algebra classes this semester... but it should be offered again via correspondence over the summer. The end still is near.

For all the reading I do, one would think I could connect written and spoken sentences at least through punctuation, if not actual logic, but it seems my inability to sit still for more than three minutes at a time at a desk or before a computer inhibits lengthy transitional expression (present sentence perhaps excluded). Fore in my mind at the moment is the anticipation of my outing to the grocery store this evening for milk and oranges. I might forget about the oranges when I get there.

Ich Weiß Nur, Daß Ich Nichts Weiß

2008-03-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

The right rear tire on the tank in which I drive when errand-running blew out after I interviewed for a position at Fuddruckers this afternoon. I rode on the rims for quite a distance before pulling into a Shell. I called for a tow, but cancelled the dispatch upon realization that I am broke. Oh, well. Over the next day I shall scrape up some cash.

I fixed a glorious peanut butter pickle sandwich für Abendessen. Jetzt lese ich vier Bücher; jedes hat umgefähr dreisig übrigen Seiten. Ach. Ich kann nichts beenden.

We All Want To Change The World

2008-03-09T19:50:00.000-07:00

Whilst out and about the Lubbock megaflopilis this afternoon, I encountered the perfect dress to wear for Adrian and Brian's wedding in May. The clerk at the store will reserve the dress until such time that I return with profits from having stood long enough at the corner of Quaker and 82nd Street. I entered sans makeup and con neko hat, which I suppose accounts for why the sales associate looked at me like I was black as I pawed through $70.00+ skirts and blouses. Nevertheless, she did try to sell me on some off-white shoes, but my over-wide feet rejected them.

The photograph developing machine at CVS this evening proved itself recalcitrant, which translated to me spending an inordinate amount of time wandering the aisles as I awaited the successful processment of pictures dating back to last May. Jetzt muß ich Latein studieren.

Your Payment Is Currently Past Due

2008-03-03T18:40:00.000-08:00

Riding a bicycle through forty mile-an-hour winds is an exercise in futility similar to that of running through deep water. En route to the Student Union from the Rec Center this morning, the snow shearing into my face and body erst I slowly crossed Flint whipped the crocheted hat everyone covets from my head and up the street. I leapt off the $350 Jamis bike, not looking to see whither it flew, and ran into oncoming traffic after this grey-and-white rag of a hat, weil ohne das Hut ich gar nichts bin. Hat safely recovered, I strode in front of a bus that missed hitting me by five seconds back to the bike, abandoned in front of a sidewalk tree. After I put the cat-hat on again, I became The Fonz.

The Fonz then brunched at the campus Starbucks with Mr. B. Shane Morgan, also known as Doogie Howser.

We May Not Awaken You

2008-03-02T19:55:00.000-08:00

In lieu of preparing for exams and catching up on sundry coursework assignments, I spent the past three days sleeping, working out, and reading Benjamin. I also applied for a few jobs.

Now my tummy hurts. I may return to the Lair (from the coffee shop) earlier than I had intended, for the purpose of conducting a drug-induced sleeping expedition. Last night's sleeping expedition did not fare well- the wind howled against the building without relent; Kermie and I cuddled the tighter, but never settled into the comfort of full slumber.

Nevertheless, despite feeling extremely alert this morning, I managed to avoid reading Plato's Apology. I ate breakfast and somehow felt accomplished enough.

Lubbock winds tarnish everything, to include the shoes, encrusted with wind-blown dirt, that I threw out this afternoon on account of their over-worn condition. Ow. Sleep.

Light The Tires

2008-02-27T16:48:00.000-08:00

I began Brave New World two days ago, read a couple of chapters at three this morning before I worked out, and stayed in the foreign languages building through the afternoon to finish. Ich hab' es sehr gern, aber die letzten Kapiteln haben mich enttäuscht. Huxley himself, from the introduction to the 1946 edition I own, expressed dissatisfaction with the conclusion he wrote as well, and proposed a third option of a search for sanity between the choices originally offered the Savage. I might have preferred the (or "a") different ending, for I read with the expectation that the Savage would progress beyond the stage of self-punishment, loathing, and denial. I am pleased that he mutilated Lenina; a modern story would somehow have allowed him to "have" her, which would of course refute the rest of the novel.

Ich habe Civilum Bellum [K]aesars auf Lateinisch begonnen. Ich liebe Kaesar, weil er einen dousche ist. Er liebt auch sich selbst. Hee.

In The You-Know-Where

2008-02-25T17:43:00.000-08:00

My older sister's boyfriend sent some self-printed stickers with his artwork on it, plus a couple of pins, after he received a Spiderman Valentine from me in the mail last week. Jemand liebt mich.

I finally began Brave New World last night, and spent about two hours this afternoon soaking my eyes in English, for once. I tell people all the time that my English is really only so much better than my German, but Mr. Huxley's British presents no problems. Der Grair Bär came by for a peek at my latest selection in literature, snickered, and commented about parallels with the Bush administration. Admittedly, the iPod Nano I own has always made me feel a little dirty, and this afternoon I took my walk without it and consequently felt liberated from the ropes of the man.

But I will require the Nano again tomorrow morning, erst I workout. Fats Domino, Hole, and Rammstein provide precisely the euphoria I need to get through the day without taking my ever-trusty boxcutter to my forearms in one of the moments it dawns that I lead an empty, monotonous, unproductive life. I put off finding a job for the past two months, because inserting myself back into the machine will be bound to make me depressed and miserable again.

Just Keep Swimming

2008-02-23T20:13:00.000-08:00

I awoke this morning from last night's plasma-donating lethargy with the noble intention of completing most of my schoolwork in the morning, working out and swimming like a crazy work-out-and-swimming fiend starting at noon, and then spending all evening buried in books at the coffee shop. An unbalanced Poptart breakfast induced sleep. Upon waking again, I caught up on dishes and a little bit of reading until I finally decided to get dressed for working out.

I worked out, swam, and finished a book at the pool before showering and returning to the Lair. I was going to go to Target and then find someone who would dine out with me, but went instead to United Supermarket for Marketstreet pizza, which is delicious. However, upon returning to the Lair, I discovered the hard way that the dietary supplements I am taking should not be combined with two heavy slices of pizza and twenty ounces of Cherry Coke.

I have spent over half an hour on the toilet this evening. I consequently feel unclean, and have decided not to make any public appearances for at least the next twelve hours. I am going to read through the next portion of Njal's Saga, the latest assignment for a German class. I love the plot- every scene ends in a bloodbath. After what I've been bathed in all night, gratuitious murder is a welcome diversion.

And Then He Became A Hippie For A While

2008-02-21T17:06:00.000-08:00

This afternoon I had an interview with a Farmer's Insurance agent who needs a telemarketer to set home appointments for him. It went extremely well, since he admitted that out of over thirty applicants, he would like to hire me and one other girl. But he can only hire one of us immediately. Since I am graduating and will only be in Lubbock through the summer, I am disadvantaged slightly. The other good prospect and I will come in again for separate interviews Monday, and then he will make his decision that afternoon.

If he decides to hire me, I would still need a second, weekend job. I decided to cancel my car and health insurance policies, since I cannot afford them, even with full-time employment, on top of rent and immense credit debt. Being a grown-up is poo.

I did get accepted to a couple of Classics MA programs. Now I await financial aid decisions.

And now I read.

Working Is For Chumps

2008-01-27T10:54:00.000-08:00

I do not want to find a new job. It will make me tired. It will make me cranky. I will not be able to think.

A few weeks ago, I overheard a pair of professors discussing what it was like to work and attend school as undergrads. One claimed everyone should work during college.

Lauree disagrees. If Lauree did not have to go out and serve food or refold the same shirt ninety times during a shift or answer phone calls or clean up after other people, Lauree would be able to think clearly, make well-informed decisions, study her lessons and actually learn them, read for recreational purposes, sleep, make mayhem, etc.

I nearly leapt out of my chair to cut this moron's face off with my boxcutter.

And Then Came The Women

2008-01-24T15:23:00.000-08:00

Perhaps I ought to abandon the usual Full Throttle con pizza/Full Throttle con sausage burrito combos which constitute the greater portion of my diet on school days. Lately they make my stomach scream. I spent the latter half of yesterday and will spend this evening at The Lauree Lair, curled in bed fetal-position to read for a Norse mythology class and for the Julius Caesar study, making frequent trips to the toilet.

I avoided the job search this week. I know anything I land will drain and depress me. Let Bank of America close my checking account. They've raped me with hundreds of dollars in fees over the past several years, anyway. For any overdraft charge, I have to work an entire day to break even again. Pssh.

Slimey Found His Way Back To The Trashcan

2008-01-19T05:21:00.000-08:00

Donating plasma last night, the doctors stuck me thrice. Adrian missed my vein the first time. He eventually set the needle in, and I underwent the first draining cycle. But when the tubes began returning blood to my body, pressure began to build up and would have collapsed my vein, if I hadn't called Adrian over. Someone else (Toby) moved the needle to the vein in my left arm that did not bleed well the time before last (with bruises still observable above and below the puncture). The machine took one withdrawal, but the return hurt and I waved my right arm frantically for someone to rescue me.

Toby, Adrian, and a third person came over; they then summoned the floor supervisor, who, after pressing the vein a bit, gently explained he would move the needle to a second vein in my left arm that seemed suitable. That one drained fine, and I received five extra dollars for having been stuck thrice.

Adrian felt terrible, and walked by several times muttering that twenty-five dollars was not compensation enough for the pain he had put me through. He even tried pressing some of his own money into my hand, but I wouldn't let him. When I was his supervisor at the deli, he just had to make wraps and serve people chicken strips. Sticking a needle in someone's arm cannot always be as simple as they make it look. The floor supervisor seemed braced for me to scream from the pain or get reproachful, but I felt no need for theatrics. I wasn't being ignored, and no one had done anything incompetent.

I hobbled home and took a sleep.

Ich Bin Gestorben

2008-01-11T14:09:00.000-08:00

Donating plasma last night took twice the amount of time it normally does, for the tubes draining blood out of my left arm apparently clotted several times during the course of the withdrawal. One of the four phlebomotomists who handled my vein pulled the needle back-and-forth and rolled the vein around in an attempt to increase the flow. The movements bruised me. Later she switched the needle to my other arm.

The last person to touch me (a nice young man named Adrian, who used to be one of my employees over a year ago when I worked on campus) exclaimed, "Who stuck you? She did a sloppy job!" Fantastisch, hab' ich gedacht. As Adrian held up the tubes to allow the blood to flow back into me, he asked if the process was hurting. When I replied in the negative, he said in a tone of surprise, "Really? Are you sure?" Now no longer certain and slighly discomfited, I informed him I would begin screaming at the slightest hint of pain.

Since I had no official Latin or Greek courses available, I enrolled for Dr. Holland's seminar on the Augustan age and an independent study of Caesar's Civil War. He approached me the day before yesterday with the news that we could read select passages of Caesar auf Latein, so that I may continue some structured Latin readings. Ausgezeichnet. Ich liebe Dr. Holland. The seminar and the Caesar will be entertaining.

This weekend I hope to complete essays for grad school applications, to mail them all off Monday and Tuesday. This evening I am devoting to the completion of homework assignments. Viel Spaß.

First Day Of School Report: Spring 2008

2008-01-09T14:22:00.000-08:00

Dr. Holland offers two Classics independent research courses this semester: one on the Augustan Age, the other on Caesar and the Civil Wars. Originally not intending to take either, I decided to enroll for them after discovering I would not be taking Latin or Greek translation classes formally. Dr. Lavigne spent the past couple of days figuring how to find anyone with time to read Latin with me, and sent a very late e-mail this morning to the effect that he had failed. However, Dr. Holland caught me this afternoon and mentioned we could read certain important passages in the original Latin as we read Caesar.

I do love deviant old men. At one point during our discussion, Dr. Holland giggled: "Of course, I can't change the syllabus; the administration is more vigilant than they used to be..." Dr. Christiansen has offered his services as a guide o' Greek (Lucian and possibly Herodotus) pro bono. We will meet tomorrow morning at his sehr humongous office in the Philosophy building (he is Department Chair). I am a little anxious about the impression I will make, since I have not looked at Greek much over the break. But things should progress well enough after the first session or two.

MWF: Classes are at eleven and one. I have algebra in the morning with a pretty Turkish grad student. She admitted her English is not the greatest, but she seemed patient. She gave a review lecture on important properties after reading off the syllabus. I did well enough in algebra in high school and anticipate few problems, provided I attend class and do the homework assignments on occasion. At one Der Grair Bär teaches a class in English covering Northern myths and legends. I took an English fiction class sophomore year that used Freudian and Jungian theories of analysis. Dr. Grair encouraged interpreting the stories beyond those archetypal concepts, for which I am grateful. We needn't be exclusive.

TR: Tomorrow morning I begin at nine reading Greek with Dr. Christiansen for an hour. Afterward I am free until a twelve-thirty German grammar class, followed by a meeting with Dr. Holland concerning the course of our independent research.

Friday after classes I hope to purchase a replacement bike. I have three hundred dollars in-store credit, plus some additional funds from the tuition refund I received this afternoon. The money allows me to finalize grad school applications, pay rent, get the bike, and pay off other delinquent bills. Glorious.

Fallin' In A Great Big Way For You

2008-01-08T02:10:00.000-08:00

I baked off a palate of Tollhouse oatmeal raisin cookies this weekend. Three of those dough squares somehow never made it so far as the cookie pan. The survivors lived only long enough for an agonizing bake in three hundred twenty-five degrees of heat. The cookies spent a few cooling minutes on the rack before either consumption or placement in a Tupperware container.

Store-bought cookie dough: inferior to cookie dough made from scratch. Nothing in life has ever been as good as it was when I was a kid, except Chef Boyardee canned ravioli... always bueno.

I am supposed to be working on something: I should be reading, or finding a decent place to work (I walked out of Schlotzky's a week ago). In lieu of that, I have filled out the following form:

1) Who are three of your favorite teachers ever?
Mr. Boudny (sixth grade social studies), Mr. Richards (eleventh grade algebra), and, of course, Der Grair Bär (college German)

2) What is your favorite picture ever taken of you?
The photograph of me on my third birthday, covered in chocolate cake and nevertheless managing to look extremely disappointed with life.

3) What are your guilty pleasures?
Toying with people's minds. Shoplifting. Animal sacrifice.

4) What was your first job and did you like it?
At fourteen I worked at the store where I took piano lessons. I usually enjoyed selling rental instruments and helping schedule music classes.

5) What do you consider to be your best physical feature and why?
My ears are the best part of me. Minus the piercings, they are flawless. Most other people have ugly ears.

6) What are 3 of your pet peeves?
I become irate with people who waste my time in any context. I dislike walking through or standing in the midst of cigarette smoke. And people who think I exist to be their eye candy can stuff it.

7) What's the story behind one of your scars?
One morning around one my iPod Nano and I went for a walk around the Texas Tech campus dorms. I looked down at the nano face to change a song, and suddenly found myself sprawled flat on the pavement, having tripped over a step. I gashed my right knee through my jeans, consequently staining the pants and earning a humongous scar.

8) If a movie were to be made about your life, what would it be called?
Freud Case Basket Case

9) What is your favorite TV show of all time and why?
Married... With Children, because the comedy was trashy (until the final few seasons, anyhow).

10) If you could travel back to any point in time, what era and place would you choose?
1929: The edge of a balcony right after the crash.

11) What song defines your life right now?
"Crazy", Patsy Cline version

12) Have you ever had a near-death experience?
A spider bite nearly killed me last summer.

13) What is something you do daily?
Breathe. I'd like to quit.

14) If you were a crayon, what color would you be and why?
I would be an ocean shade of blue, because I am always drowning in something.

15) What movie/TV show/cartoon character are you most like and why?
I would be Charlie Brown- anything an adult has ever said to me sounds like "wah wah wah".

16) Who shares your birthday?
William Shakespeare. He also died on my birthday. That is what I have to look forward to.

17) What names are you considering for your kids?
Boys: Theodore and Thurston
Girls: Dandelion and Patricia

18) Where are you right now?
At the Lauree Lair, awaiting the ax-wielding murderer.

19) If you could have one super power what would it be and why?
The ability to manage time wisely, because then I might get one thing done.

20) What's the first thing you notice about the opposite sex?
The penis.

21) Who is your favorite celebrity train wreck?
Keith Richards. His face is the main reason I do not do drugs.

22) What's your most recent exciting purchase?
The money order for my application to the University of Florida.

23) What was your favorite movie and/or book as a child?
Movie: Ferris Beuler's Day Off
Book: A Little Princess

24) When was your first kiss and who was it with?
Seventh grade: a boy named Jason

25) Who are your favorite actors?
Morgan Freeman, Tommy Lee Jones, Robin Williams, Christopher Walken;
I hate women

26) What was the last thing you ate?
Two oatmeal raisin cookies and a mug of mocha-flavoured milk

27) As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
An interior designer

28) What is your greatest weakness?
Not being as blunt about myself as I am about other people.

29) Describe your life in three words.
Never-ending, agonizing DAYMARE

30) Do you have any tattoos, what are they, and when did you get them?
No tattoos.

31) Describe the perfect pizza.
Imo's Pizza (St. Louis, Missouri): a flat, cardboard-thin pizza- sausage with tomato slices

32) What is one thing scientists should invent?
Something that destroys feelings of guilt.

33) What should you be you be doing instead of this?
Sending grad school information to the people who are supposed to be writing my recommendation letters.

34) What is one stereotype people could assign to you that's actually true?
I am "white" (to people who actually believe in race) and therefore I cannot work. I'd like to write that on my job applications.

35) If you were required to change your first name, what would you change it to?
Oliver

36) What are your current obsessions?
Listening to German reggae. Drinking the Fuze banana colada drink. Avoiding bill payments.

37) What are three things you ALWAYS have with you?
Emotional baggage, a boxcutter, and my shiny Seiko watch.

38) Do you believe in soulmates?
Nope. Moot question, since I don't believe in souls.

39) What's the closest object to you that's orange?
The cover of a spiral Staples notepad.

40) What is your definition of love?
Knocking a boy down, sitting on him, rubbing dirt in his hair, and then running away.

Er Liebt Mich, Und Warum Nicht?

2008-01-07T18:37:00.000-08:00

Mein Großvater hat mir fünfzig Dollars geschickt. Ich liebe Großvati.

Staring at the computer for the past few hours wore out my eyeballs. The activities scheduled for the next several hours require that I continue to use my eyeballs, a situation most undesirable, for if I sleep (the best solution) I will not wake up again until tomorrow morning: time lost, never to be recovered.

The Attention Span Of Daffy Duck

2008-01-04T16:06:00.000-08:00

I began this evening's coffee shop Internet session with all good intent to finish applications for a couple of grad schools. For some reason, the University of Florida Classics and German websites will not load. In lieu of completing that task, then, I discovered a video of George Harrison performing at the Concert For Bangladesh. I've also been listening to German gangsta-rap artists. If I cannot be productive, at least I can be entertained.

I suppose I will leave off in a moment to write a couple of purpose statements. My one purpose in life is to avoid becoming entirely like my mother. I suspect a 1,000-word essay on that topic might not get me into grad school, so I have to come up with something else. Scheisse.

I posted the following to my blog a year ago:

Neither April nor I know how to apply make up (specifically, eye make up), so yesterday we went to Macy's (the Clinique counter) to have a nice girl from the Ukraine do our faces over. The foundation she used covered my redness and acne blemishes, but she unfortunately had none in stock, so I'll have to journey to Dillard's upon my return to Lubbock next week.

We also pawed through sale-priced underwear at Victoria's Secret, each walking out with perfume-scented bags containing five pairs. Mine are rainbow-coloured. Upon arrival at the Koury residence, April's father took glamour shots of us with our made-up faces and new underwear on our heads.

Yesterday we also went to the Harris County public library and were thoroughly disappointed. I had wanted to copy Latin and Greek elegiac texts, but none were to be found, so I must wait until I return to school. Neither of us could concentrate, so we left after a very short time to wander around the dollar store, which we also found to be disappointing, as is so much of life.

Bedtime.

One Night I Visit A Slaughterhouse Somewhere In The High Plains

2008-01-02T10:27:00.000-08:00

In order to enroll in the basic algebra course- the final core requirement for graduation- I must pay fifty dollars to take the Accuplacer exam. Ich bin sehr ausgepisst. Ich habe kein Geld. Plus, I took pre-algebra at an accredited community college three years ago, so I should be qualified to take college algebra now. Plugging numbers into equations is monkey business.

The professor for the German grammar class sent an e-mail to the effect that we must seek the text on Amazon. Normalerweise ist es kein Problem, but I am overdrawn on all my credit accounts at the moment, which makes obtaining a copy tricky... the refund on my student loans probably won't come through until after mid-month. Up until that point, things will be very ugly.

The above concerns me much less than graduate school applications. I have not applied anywhere, partly because I am extremely upset with the Classics department at the moment, but mostly because I lack funds to do so, after trying to make rent (due tomorrow). I already missed the funding deadline for the University of Georgia, and for the German department at Penn. Most deadlines fall February first.

If my refund comes in before February, all will be well, presuming I have all the other materials ready. It would then only be a matter of sending in checks. This afternoon, after meeting with Dr. Christiansen about setting up times to study Greek, I will drop by the financial aid office to settle the date.

Being poor is fun.

Nur Du Und Ich

2007-12-27T10:20:00.000-08:00

I found the latest in a long list of books I want to read soon. I wore out my eyes reading the review on the computer screen, but perhaps if I take a nap later this afternoon, I will have been motivated enough to write a thousand-word purpose statement. When April and her loverboy arrive from Austin tomorrow, they will be tasked to help me expand and revise the midterm paper I wrote for the Roman satire class last spring.

As anticipated, I have gained weight and avoided completing any projects this holiday season. I had Christmas dinner with a friend, Marilyn, after we watched her grandkids open presents. Marilyn and I had exchanged gifts two weeks earlier, but she surprised me with a colourful coffee mug she found at a gift store. It holds chocolate milk nicely.

I missed seeing my siblings again this year, for I have no money for rent, let alone travel. They post pictures of themselves on their MySpace pages, so at least I have an idea of what they look like.

My older sister, Ashlea, sent me an iTunes giftcard. I gave her four bars of soap with the letter "A" (for "assbitch", not "Ashlea", as one might presume) carved out of them.

For Michael Aaron, a copy of Voltaire's Candide.

Kailey Marie got Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, which I read in high school.

Eddie Bob, the fifteen year-old baby of the family, received a set of Mexican train dominoes.

Now I must run errands.

Wer Hat Meinen Cookie Geraubt?

2007-12-22T17:14:00.000-08:00

Ich liebe die deutsche[n] Schlagersänger/-innen. I began using the German version of last.fm recently. German reggae is entertaining. I've also heard a decent version of "El condor pasa" auf Deutsch.

In other news, the sanitizing solution at work combined with dry, wintry Lubbock weather has cracked the skin on every knuckle of both hands. The sanitizer makes my hands burn at every washing. But at least I haven't gotten my annual winter cold yet.

Jetzt muß ich fliegen.

Cleanse And Flush

2007-12-10T19:49:00.000-08:00

I look forward to the break from university study, which begins sometime after I turn my grammatical analysis of a portion of The Bacchae in to Avril Wednesday afternoon. I made ambitious plans to shut myself off from the world for the rest of the month to finish reading several books I started, complete most of my grad school applications, and review Latin, Greek, and German grammar. Most, if not all, of any projects set will, of course, remain undone, written colourfully on the humongous dry-erase board of my conscious mind. But I will consider completing many tasks, which almost feels like actually doing them.

At the moment I toggle between dicking around on the Internet and writing a ten-page term paper for the Latin elegy class. It might be said that I am dicking around on the paper, which purports to concern itself with the role of the elegiac mistress, utilizing examples from Propertius and Goethe. I am less interested in elaborating my nebulously-formed thoughts about any aspect of elegy than in beginning to read the entirety of a book about Propertius' placement in the circle of Augustan elegists that I checked out from the library a few days ago for the purpose of citing something (anything) from it in the above-referenced paper. I checked out another book auf Deutsch, titled simply Properz, that I might (codespeak for "assuredly will not") skim over the break. The first page I flipped to quoted a few lines of Latin, with subsequent reference to Goethe's Römische Elegien.

I also have a short German essay to revise and expand tomorrow afternoon before taking that final exam, for which I have prepared little. The Latin essay has consumed most of my time. I am also anxious about Avril's grammatical analysis- he expects something thorough, which I simply cannot do between all the other things I need to make time for and have not made time for. The independent Greek study this semester has not gone as well as it should have, since I haven't been able to make time to review the text or the side topics Dr. Lavigne points out. We didn't even translate half the play. Finishing the text will be another goal that I will fail to achieve.

Bedtime.

The Man In The Mack Says, "You've Got To Go Back"

2007-11-29T19:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, the coffee I had stuffed into my backpack burst forth upon The Great Scott, my mega-groß Greek-English lexicon. The lip of the cover on my mug never closed all the way. Oh, well- perhaps the faded scent of mocha will overpower the more reeky smell of my hand sweat.

Ich kann mich nicht konzentrieren, weil ich um fünf Uhr gewacht habe.

Fist Holding Tight To The String Of Your Kite

2007-11-19T21:41:00.000-08:00

I wish I were a jewel thief. The man who taught my dad and his siblings how to swim turned out to be a famous jewel thief, nicknamed "Murf the Surf". My father swims and surfs quite well, but I would rather Jack Murphy had versed my father in the more lucrative art of robbery, because that might have translated to a substantially greater amount and quality of Christmas presents for me thirty years later.

The past few Christmases I spent with la familia, The Father informed me and my four siblings that Santa had allotted us each ungefähr one hundred fifty dollars, which, after tax, corresponds to the cost of a fascinating toy I saw in the WAL*MART supplement to this past Saturday's Lubbock Avalanche Journal, which I flipped through in the back of house at work between taking and making sandwich orders for people who were too lazy to remain at home to lunch with their families, but instead got dressed and drove to Schlotzky's Deli on 19th Street in Lubbock, Texas for the purpose of waiting around for a sandwich prepared by moi.

I beckoned Maria, a Hispanic lady old enough to be my mother, whose English consists almost exclusively of restaurant lingo, to stand for a moment beside me at the meat slicer for a view of what I had decided I wanted for Feliz Navidad. I tapped the price listed beside the photograph of the robot panda, at which Maria exhaled, "Pssh". Though I cannot speak Spanish, my receptive understanding of it has steadily improved over the years I have worked several mindless foodservice jobs: "Pssh" en espanol signifies many things, but in this instance translates roughly to: "What sort of over-indulgent parents would spend one hundred fifty dollars on one useless and very possibly evil toy for their pampered little brat?"

The sort of parents I wish I had, that's who!

Wer Ist Am Tor?

2007-11-13T10:00:00.000-08:00

Ich hab' die Bakchen gefunden... eben lustiger auf Deutsch! Die Übersetzung von Griechisch zu Deutsch muß leichter sein, weil die Wörter beiden Sprächen einfacher sind. Ich habe gelesen, was ich früher auf Griechisch gelesen habe. Sehr lustig.

Ich habe eine Projeckt, die Zeilen einhundertachtundsiebzig bis einhundertneunzig zu analysieren. Zuerst spricht Kadmos, der Früher der König des Theberlands war:

Mein Bester! deine Stimme hab ich wohl erkannt,
Des weisen Mannes weisen Ruf, im Hause drin
Und komme fertig mit dem heiligen Festgerät.
Mir ziemt's, den Gott, der meiner Tochter Sohn ist, schön
Und hoch zu ehren, wie's in meinen Kräften steht.
Wo muß ich nun hintanzen, wohin wandeln? wo
Die greisen Locken schwingen? Führe du mich an,
Der Greis den Greis, du, weiser Mann, Teiresias!
Ich werde, nimmer müde, Tag und Nächte lang
Den Boden schlagen mit dem Stab: mein Alter mag
Ich gern vergessen! -

Nun spricht Teiresias, der Mittler:

Das ist meine Meinung auch!
Ich bin verjüngt und aufgelegt zum Reigentanz.

Ich liebe die Deutschen.

Ich habe die Zeilen gelesen, als ich am Dr. Christiansen erwarten habe. Er ist der Professor, der am nächsten Semester mir Griechisch unterrichten wird. Er hat kein Raum, eine andere Kurs zu schaffen, aber er hat gesagt, daß wir treffen können, wenn wir wollen. Wir fangen mit Lucian an. Ausgezeichnet.

Ein Ärmes Kind Bin Ich

2007-11-02T16:48:00.000-07:00

About a week and-a-half ago on a library trip I found Syntax der deutschen Sprache, which I finally have time to peruse as I compose a paper analyzing some aspect of Kleider machen Leute this evening. Ich habe die Handlung einfacher zu verstehen gefunden, als die andere Geschichte, daß ich vorher gelesen habe. Heute fang ich Immensee von Theodor Storm zu lesen an; ich glaube, daß Immensee besser wird. Die zwei Kinder am Anfang der Novelle sind lustig.

Ich liebe Netflix. Ich bin immer im Stress, weil ich zu viel zu tun habe. Es gibt nur eine Lauree. Ein kleine Lauree. Watching a movie before bed makes me have dreams; if I spend all of one day or all of one week going to school, going to work, and sleeping in between, I usually do not dream, or dream very little, or dream nothing memorable. The unstimulating, unproductive cycle stunts my imagination and creativity.

Last night I watched Quills, which I liked well enough, though I found certain points contentious. The ending in particular, mostly for being a little too appropriate and predictable, left me unsatisfied. And though the film is set in Europe, I sensed more American sensibilities toward the subject matter.

Jetzt muß ich Deutsch lesen.

Ganz allein

2007-10-29T21:22:00.000-07:00

Tonight I ought to go to bed before midnight, for tomorrow I must finish preparing for Latin and Greek. Reading Propertius has required much less new vocabulary, and I have not yet found that he does anything too sneaky with grammar. Of course, I read only four or five of his poems this semester, but he wrote at least four books. Surely there exist more difficult ones.

Kleider machen Leute does not kill off its protagonists- the first piece of German literature I have read thus far that does not end in violent death. Most of the German text proceeds in a straightforward manner, although another student in class this morning pointed out that the sections where a particular character becomes particularly introspective become particularly difficult for the English-speaking reader. Within the next three or four days, I must sometime write a four-page paper auf Deutsch.

Now it is snuggle time with Kermie.

The Empire Strikes Back

2007-10-26T20:51:00.000-07:00

I ought to read more.
I ought to re-learn how to play the clarinet.
I ought to find a keyboard somewhere.
I ought to deface The Trojan Purse.
I ought to floss before bed.
I ought to discover the cure for leukemia.
I ought to smash the teeth of the bastard who stole my bike last July.
I ought to get a glasses/contacts prescription.
I ought to study German language syntax.

Don't Look With Eagle's Eyes

2007-10-11T19:18:00.000-07:00

I have concluded that Propertius is my favourite Latin elegist, because his mistress, Cynthia, shrieks at him and scratches her face for attention- like a cutter. When I read Goethe's Roman Elegies last semester, I found his love-interest disappointingly accomodating, for the most part. One poem begins with his response to her complaints that the neighbors gossip about their affair, heaping reprobation upon her (but probably not Goethe). In a setting whereinwhich the two are in bed, apparently having just finished doing The Nasty, Goethe's effort at consolation is to roll over and assure his lover that he doesn't think she's cheap, anyway.

During my analysis of these lines, I looked up at den Grair Bär and said, "If anyone ever said that to me, I'd punch him in the neck." The sort of poetry that might inspire would probably never get published, but I would feel vindicated nonetheless.

Yesterday I spent the entire afternoon and early evening sifting through Classics graduate program websites, during which process I consumed two (2) Full Throttles (for consumer information, call 1-800-438-2653) and one (1) Chick-Fil-A sandwich (with pickles, for they are gross without pickles, and also with Chick-Fil-A's brand of fat-free honey mustard dressing, for dry chicken sandwiches schmecken mir nicht gut). Consequently, at bedtime I could not sleep and nearly ralphed up my lunch (I used to work with someone named "Raphael", who often went by "Ralph"; I explained early in our relationship that I could not call anyone "Ralph", because for me that connotes puke).

Unfortunately, though wide awake, I could not concentrate on the eighty-plus lines of Greek poetry I had been assigned. I remained alert until about three in the morning, completing house chores, sifting through old coursework for writing samples and grammar charts, updating the music library on my computer, and making periodic trips to the bathroom for the purpose of emptying a bladder full (in descending order of ingredient with most to least content) of carbonated water, taurine, citric acid, natural and artificial flavors, sodium citrate, sodium benzoate, ginseng extract, caffeine, acacia, acesulfame potassium, sucralose, carnitine fumarate, sodium saccharin, glyserol ester of wood rosin (mmm), niacinimide, yellow 5, pyridoxine hydrochloride, guarana extract, and cyanocobalamin. In all that time I completed not a single line.

I woke up at seven-thirty, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to work on Greek, which I did with utmost diligence until class at eleven.

This evening I have had one (1) java chip frappuccino (for I dislike coffee), one over-priced slice of raspberry-lemon coffee cake, one bag of cheddar-flavoured Combos (the official cheese-filled snack of Nascar), and one Full Throttle Unleaded (appropriately bottled in a silver-coloured can: Coca-Cola is a no-nonsense company). Provided my stomach does not reject the above brew, I should accomplish my goal for this evening of reading through the rhetorical features at the back of the Greek grammar, in preparation for an analysis of about ten lines that I am to prepare for class next Thursday.

End.

An E-mail To My Best Friend's Mother

2007-10-01T21:43:00.000-07:00

Hello, Kenny,

April informed me that you thought I was dead. My watch stopped two weeks ago, so I was dead for a couple of weeks. I finally found time this weekend past to revive myself with a Seiko watch, purchased at JCPenney's. It has a lovely, dark face (just like me!), with Roman numerals.

I hope that you are well, living la vida loca without April or me to terrorize you. Grandmother-, mother-, and wife-hood probably keep you busy, or at the very least, entertained. At the age I am now, my mother was incubating Ashlea. Yuck! I do enough horrible things to my body, without letting some monstrous demon-spawn tear it up.

Update (novella-length):

1. I would hate to be a mother, but I wouldn't mind being an aunt, and was elated to learn in February that Ashlea was expecting. Unfortunately, the baby had some chromosomal defect and died in utero. From what I can determine, Ashlea handled the situation well. She'll take time to recover, but still wants to have children, when she and Matt are better-situated. My other siblings seem to be getting along well enough, considering that they are the stepchildren of the family. At least Terri's a better mother, in most things, than my dad is a father. Michael loves his guitar, Kailey loves her piano, and Eddie Bob loves his trombone. It's so cute. I miss getting to be around, as they mature. Ashlea, Michael, and I grew up together, and considering all the pinching we did, nobody popped.

2. At the moment, I live in a backhouse behind the street that borders campus. I live in the upper loft, with a kitchen, bathroom, living, and sleeping areas. Below me, some girl just moved into the efficiency. She took my spot the other night, so I had to maneuver around a telephone pole to get in out of the alley. The next morning, the little princess left a note on my windshield: "Next time, would you please be so kind as to not park six inches from my car. Thanks." Pssh. My back end was close to her vehicle, but it was more approximately a foot-and-a half away: she had plenty of room to get into her car and to get out of the drive, whereas I had to do some crazy turning and squeezing to get around her car, the telephone pole, and a tree. I was completely caught off-guard by the fact that there was some strange vehicle parked in my spot; she should be grateful I didn't slam into her. Naturally, when I returned from work this evening, I parked very close to her precious vehicle. This only happens to be incidental, though- there isn't quite room for the both of us. She will have to be destroyed.

3. Schoolage: I took the GRE, scoring well on the verbal, flunking the analytical, and awaiting the results of the writing. I've been looking at grad schools, especially along the east coast. The University of Pennsylvania, at the moment, is my top choice. I also liked the programs at the University of Florida and the University of Michigan. Austin has a fine enough program, prestige-wise, but it seems rather too large and a bit impersonal. Of course, those and other factors could actually be stimulating, forcing me to change my approach and suchlike. We shall see. The graduate director here encouraged me to contact program directors with my CV, areas of interest, and a reading list from all of my language courses. Already having a significant amount of German experience will be what especially distinguishes me from other candidates. One of my German professors will be offering a seminar this summer on conducting graduate research in German, which is exactly what I need. I will save up my nickels and dimes to take it, in case I don't get grants.

4. Beginning last Friday, I am an employee-in-training at Schlotzky's: "Funny Name, Serious Sandwich", which, like the dark face of my watch, describes me perfectly. I closed tonight with two young-ish (but still older than me) men, whom I genuinely like, or can at least work well with. They engaged in a lovely switch-a-roo with Domino's, with the result that I drove home with free orders of buffalo wings and cinnastix. Schweet.

5. I am currently at the library. I bought a Gateway laptop from someone who works on campus in the IT department at the end of May. However, it doesn't connect to the Internet at my house. I called out the Suddenlink guy, who didn't seem to know what he was doing. I also called out an IT guy from the campus department, and then I called the guy who sold me the computer. Last night, I made a trip to Best Buy, warranty in hand. The computer customer service guy received a wireless connection and a hook-up connection fine, verifying that my computer cannot be the problem. So tomorrow I am going to call Suddenlink and cry.

6. A terrible thunderstorm shook my backhouse a few nights ago and almost made me cry, but I cuddled the plush Kermie Muppet Baby April gave me and felt much more secure.

The end.

-The Lauree Child

Warum Bin Ich Immer Gefickt?

2007-09-24T18:41:00.000-07:00

I have not studied particularly hard for the GRE I am to take tomorrow. I should prove more than competent on the verbal sections, but I might display an amazing lack of skill with regard to the math section, for I cannot count without my fingers. Granted, my fingers will be with me, presumably, when I take the exam, but I've only got eight (excluding three thumbs).

In prior instances of the above type (whereinwhich I have had a maddening lack of preparation), I have found it best just to crawl under the bedcovers earlier than usual. Cramming will only make me more anxious; I would rather be able to reason my way through things.

My apathy toward life this week makes me a little apprehensive. I am taking the GRE, writing two papers (one in German, which I do not speak, and another in English, which I do not speak particularly well, being a Texan; I must furthermore overcome the complication of the paper's subject: Latin-language elegy), taking a Latin exam, and beginning a new, sure-to-be-unexciting job. My lack of concern or motivation is a little frightening.

I've concluded that I very much need to leave Lubbock.

Funny Name, Serious Sandwich

2007-09-18T22:04:00.000-07:00

After I take the GRE on the twenty-fifth of this month, I shall begin the course of my employment with the Scholtzky's across the street from campus. The manager decided to hire me because I shook his hand and stated my name when I introduced myself to him. Apparently, applicants tend to prove deficient in such basic communicative detail.

Immediately after completing the GRE, I must begin applying to graduate schools. As of yet, I have not developed a particularly systematic approach. I think that at most places, I would just apply for the MA program. At first, I thought I might need to pursue a year of post-baccalaureate study, but most people to whom I have mentioned this idea assure me I have no reason not to apply directly to MA and PhD programs.

I shouldn't waste my time with Harvard (not that I might want to), but I need to overcome the notion that I am not a competitive applicant. By the time I graduate in May, I will have had four years of Latin, three of Greek, and four of German, all of which looks fabulous on paper. To substantiate my levels of language preparation, I have writing samples I could develop further from all three languages, plus two more from the cultural/archaeological courses I took with Dr. Reed.

I do not foresee problems with professorial recommendations: everyone I've ever had has expressed some positive opinion of my work, and every one of them, by varying degrees, is reputable in his or her field. All of them, whether they might have any personal reservations, have never been anything but helpful and encouraging.

But now I must cut short the aligning of my thoughts, for I am to arise early tomorrow morning to await the arrival of the gentleman who will show me how to access the Internet from The Lauree Lair.

A Partridge In A Pear Tree

2007-09-14T18:41:00.000-07:00

The E. T. A. Hoffman novella we are reading in German class mentioned a partridge dish. Someone asked what a partridge was, to which I responded, "Ein Partridge ist ja ein kleiner Junge, der rote Haare hat..." Der Grair Bär expressed surprise that I would know "The Partridge Family", but cable television makes anything possible. I haven't seen the show in years, and I only watched it during the summers as a kid, when I went to visit my grandparents. They had cable. We did not. I then binged on the cable network shows.

I am reading The Bacchae (auf Griechisch) independently with Avril. It counts as a three-hour class, but we only meet for an hour once a week; consequently, we progress through a smaller volume of lines than I am used to. While I would like to be tested on less material, I would nevertheless like to complete the entire play by the end of the semester. Oh, the agony...

My level in Greek lies below my Latin and German, especially in my recognition of case uses and participles. I made flashcards many moons ago, but they seem to have wandered off. I do expect to improve tremendously this semester, in spite of my many shortcomings in translating. Dr. Lavigne explains everything (sometimes a little too) thoroughly, and he forces me to work problems out for myself. That is what I need.

He can be snide, though. The session before last, I didn't recognize a certain verb and couldn't derive it from context or piecing together its components.

"You can't wear black anymore," says Lavigne.
"Why?" says Lauree.
"κτανειν means 'to kill'."

Yesterday he laughed because I translated another verb as "engendered" rather than something more like "gave birth to". I only did that to differentiate it from the other verbs related to giving birth I had seen previously. Using yet another English word signals that the Greek uses a different word. My translation was not incorrect, precisely, just odd.

Why is everybody always picking on me?

First Week Of School Report

2007-09-02T15:10:00.000-07:00

I do not need a job, so much as I need money. Acquiring money without a job would be much better than wasting my time providing "quality customer service" somewhere in order to earn enough to eat and pay bills.

A skill for which I am lacking: The ability to steal and ransom diamonds or the daughters of Presidents. Either would provide wealth and some sort of adventure.

Now I must venture into a textbook about communication practices in the wacky world of business.

The Interrupted Life

2007-08-16T11:45:00.000-07:00

Productivity levels this summer have been negative. Without routine, I am pulled in too many different directions and am almost incapable of making rational, efficient choices. Consequently, I spend too much time waiting for something to happen or putting off tasks, rather than acting immediately to accomplish as much as possible. Even with a consistent schedule, organization becomes problematic, but this summer the usual problems have been significantly exacerbated.

I wish I had no mind, because dwelling on matters only complicates them. I over-analyze the process of getting into my pants every morning. That alone is one of the various reasons I give for not wanting to have children or get married- I can barely dress myself.

Yesterday I made an especial trip to the dollar general store for two water bottles. I emerged carrying four bags of dollar store delights, including a Cookie Monster cinch bag, which is absolutely necessary to further my existence. I ought to never leave the house, really, because just these sorts of excursions make me broke.

Lauree + spending on credit = doubleplusungood.

A Vindication On The Rights Of Laurees

2007-08-10T16:30:00.000-07:00

I finished reading a library book about Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus. I did not read Oedipus at Colonus; I just read a commentary. When one has a thorogh commentary, why bother sludging through the actual play? I shall be resourceful, to make use of the extensive bibliography, which contains many general works about the tragic genre.

I mananged to kill the battery on my car. I had sat down in it to adjust the mirrors, find the blinker, headlights, etc., then left it in the alley behind my backhouse. Apparently, I neglected to turn the headlights off, for when I went to start it two days ago, nothing happened. I need this vehicle to transport goods from the dorm to my new place of residence, but a dead vehicle does me no good. No one I know has the cables or know-how required to revive it.

Oh, well.

Research Keys To The American Renaissance

2007-08-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

The day before yesterday I picked up a library book with the fetching title: Poetry as performance: Homer and beyond, but after reading through two repetitive chapters that convey no information in particular, I have decided to hurl this disappointing contribution to the mound of useless classical scholarship down the returned items chute. The Cambridge University Press should be ashamed.

Tomorrow or the next day I will thus be free to begin reading The Bacchae in translation. My reading schedule depends on the factors of whether I begin moving my worldly goods into the new Lauree Lair this weekend or afterward and of whether I satisfactorily complete my research for a paper about Texas immigration policy. I have begun with reading about border control policy during the Clinton administration, but I need to follow up on the statistics gathered, legislation enacted, policies amended/added, etc. since 2001.

One article I have read quoted an INS report as stating that a decrease in apprehensions indicates the efficacy of increased border control. Ingenious. The author of the article then proceeded, rightly, to elaborate that most scholars consider such numbers dubious and inaccurate as a reflection of the effectiveness of the border policy implemented during the Clinton and W. administrations.

I should quit researching and go to bed.

A Man Is A Two-Face

2007-08-01T19:40:00.000-07:00

Having read every chapter covered, in its entirety, and neglecting to so much as glance at the lecture slides my professor provided on his website, I scored a ninety-seven on the first American public policy exam I took a couple of weeks ago. For the exam I took today, I studied the slides exclusively and ignored the book. I felt confident about most of the answers- surely I made a "B" or better. The questions were mostly intuitive.

This evening I walked a friend of mine from the coffee shop to the campus library (I wanted to be there to protect him, in the event of attack by a serial murderer-rapist). At one point in our conversation, he turned to me and said,

'Lauree, if I could take on just one percent of your misery, I would have a life-time supply.'

This is veritable. He fabricates all of his angst, but mine comes from legitimate foundations. I trace everything that goes awry to having stemmed from something my father did.

Exemplum: About two weeks ago, I wiped out on my bike, bruising most of the right side of my body. The emergency room bill incurred afterward comes to slightly under four thousand dollars. The bruises to my hip and a rib or two still prevent me from walking or breathing properly. If I do not heal very soon, my doctor has threatened to put me on physical therapy.

This is all my father's fault.

Logic: When he was eight, my father taught himself how to ride a unicycle. He kept (and presumably still has) that unicycle, and used to take it out to ride on occasion, as one of his impressive, though mostly useless, miscellaneous talents. In high school, my sister's boyfriend captured the spectacle on home video. He also kept and rode sporadically a yellow racer-bike from college. My senior year of high school, we went to Academy and picked out a bike (as a birthday expenditure) for me to ride around during college, since I was probably not going to afford a car anytime soon. A week later, he went back to Academy and purchased the man-version of my bike for himself.

Since then, I have always had a bike. The one I brought from home ran away, presumably, though I found out (too late) that I had left it on campus, whence it was very likely impounded. Several months later, a friend kindly gave me his bike, which I had grown accustomed to having as a main source of transportation over this past year. Without it I felt impotent, and over-compensated by investing in a fancier, more efficient bicycle, with some half-baked notion of slowly training over the coming academic year to enter in marathons... or something. At present, that bike is parked, gleaming and undamaged, next to my dorm, mocking me as I hobble by on my way to class every morning. I haven't decided yet, whether I am to trade it in for a more user-friendly (or at least, "Lauree-friendly") model.

None of this would have happened, if at the age of eight my father hadn't been fascinated enough by a unicycle to teach himself how to ride it. His determination assured my misery.

You're Uninvited

2007-07-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

I scheduled an appointment this afternoon to renew the prescription on my pain medication. My hip feels only marginally better than it did the day after my bike wreck a week-and-a-half ago, and my ribs ache more than they did before- I must have aggravated them somehow. Sitting up out of bed and changing into and out of clothes hurts. Bending over to double-tie my shoes hurts. Walking around, sitting down, rising from a sitting position, putting weight on my right leg, pivoting... hurt. Poor Lauree.

My doctor recommended I report the accident, since it occurred on campus and the University might be held liable. I called the number last week, but the office moved or changed the number. I shall try again tomorrow. Because I have not healed, I might have to start physical therapy, on no insurance. That would be very ugly indeed.

I hope someone ran over the asshole who stole my bike and got me into this pickle in the first place. I hope he gets syphilis.

I Can Dance If I Want

2007-07-18T16:28:00.000-07:00

I am dropping money left and right. It also comes from below. I consider all these expenditures a huge, beginning-of-the-school year binge. Granted, school begins a month from now, but I prefer to get a head start on everything.

Motor vehicle A 1989 Dodge Aries, donated by a couple who are moving to Florida. Minor repairs add to the cost, but the total cost is entirely mitigated by the relief from stress this purchase gives me. I place Adrian Hargrove high on my Tolerance Scale, but her driving will get me killed one day. I need to be my own chauffeur.

Laptop Every college student needs a laptop. I have felt entirely inadequate without one. There are vital programs (iTunes, Greek texts) I cannot download at the library. Plus, everyone at the coffee shop has one, even most of the old people. I can't let them win. Nevermind that they don't know we're in competition. I would have spent this afternoon teaching myself to set it up, but I need to wait until after I finish reading for an American government exam tomorrow. It has been pointed out to me that I might accomplish this last task the quicker for avoiding the computer, but I've never been productive a day in my life, and I certainly have no intent to begin now.

More books I'll never read
1. Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar, edited by James B. Greenough: A recommend for Latinists.
2. The Clown, a novel by Heinrich Böll. I read a couple of his short stories auf Deutsch in German class a year ago. Sehr gut.
3. Greek Grammar, edited by Herbert Weir Smyth. Dr. Lavigne would be cross with me if I were to appear for class without this text clutched possessively to my chest.
4. The Plague, by Albert Camus. I just read The Stranger and have fallen in love.
5. The Fall, by Albert Camus. It has to be good: how can it not, when the author has a last name with the final letter unpronounced?
6. The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays, a collection of works by Albert Camus. Some time ago (perhaps a year or more), a friend of mine read a paper incorporating analysis of the title essay with another text. I forgot the other text, but I adore the Sisyphus myth.
7. The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. I could never consider myself any sort of German scholar without having read this.
8. A History of Greek Literature: From Homer to the Hellenistic Period, by
Albrecht Dihle. This was on the must-read list for a graduate program I was researching a few days ago. I need to familiarize myself with this sort of thing over the next few years, anyhow. Again, a head start.
9. The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, edited by P. E. Easterling. I suspect the university library has a copy or two of this, but I would use it enough that I would prefer to have my own copy.

Musik
1. Oasis - "Familiar to Millions: Live At Wembley" with Dick Carruthers (the DVD). Over winter break, April introduced me to live Oasis, to which a man or two seems to have contributed his voice, as opposed to the nasal-toned images I have retained from my junior high-hood Oasis.
2. "Dangerous and Moving" by t.A.T.u. One of the TAs introduced me to this on a German Club excursion over a year ago. Two attractive Russian lesbians singing together... how could anyone deny the appeal?
3. "200 Km/H in the Wrong Lane" by t.A.T.u. I felt I needed a double-dose of this stuff. I own relatively few albums by female artists, anyway.
4. "Jagged Little Pill" by Alanis Morissette. I listened to this album everywhere and all the time when it came out. I was in the fifth grade. Between then and now, I haven't kept up with her music much, but thanks to the Last.fm application for my Facebook account, I have been reintroduced and consequently/fatally seduced.
5. "XO" by Elliott Smith. This album contains the first of his songs I ever heard (way back in junior high, again).
6. "Our Constant Concern" by Mates of State. The only band I have seen in Lubbock. Kimmy took me out to see them freshman year, and I actually had a decent time, in spite of my usual refusal ever to have a good time. But then, that's probably just Kimmy- she's a doll.
7. "Hittin the Hi Spots" by Joe Brown. I first heard him on the tribute album made in memory of George Harrison. He apparently played in Hamburg as the Beatles were starting out.
8. "21 #1 Hits: The Ultimate Collection" by Buck Owens. After listening to a few of the songs, I decided I had to have this. His version of "Johnny B. Goode" exceeds expectations.
9. "Modern Life Is Rubbish" by Blur. This group is another throwback to junior high: they had one hit I remembered, after which I have sought out and come to like other things.
10. "Blur" by... Blur. A shocker.
11. "The Wildest Organ in Town!/Club Meeting", apparently a combination of two hit albums by Billy Preston. He is as well an artist of whom I hadn't heard, until I listened to the George Harrison tribute. He covers several famous songs. What I heard, I liked. So I need this.
12. "Alanis Unplugged", a second necessary item featuring Alanis Morissette. I like the whininess.

Starbucks I have no excuse for spending $3.85 + tax on a frappuccino.

May Cause Sleepiness

2007-07-17T16:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to a bike shop and had myself fitted for a street bike. Es war sehr teuer. Then I took a public policy exam, which went fairly well, considering that I had not studied nearly as much as I could or should have. I walked my bike to the shop afterward, because I had discovered upon riding it that the seat sat too high. On the way back to campus, I ran into Amanda and Steve, who informed me a new high school in Raleigh has offered him a Latin teaching position. Steve will make these kids happy to be alive.

Afterward, I met with someone who works in the basement of the mass communications building about purchasing his laptop. It is lightweight, doesn't heat up too much, and will fit neatly into my backpack. Ausgezeichnet. He promised to set it up for me today and this evening, and will call later today or tomorrow so that I may fetch it. I am thrilled.

But, I am incredibly sore and sleepy. Last night I took the new bike out around campus, to get used to it, and managed to wipe out. The bike absorbs very little shock, and when I went over a dip in the road, it veered sharply left and began to tip. I suppose I over-compensated and subsequently crashed to the ground, with the entire right side of my body hitting the pavement.

Against all sensibility, I had worn heavy black pants on a searing-hot day, which spared my leg any nasty road burn. However, my temple smacked against the concrete, bled, and swelled a little. The road scraped plenty of skin from my elbow, which also began to swell immediately. The fall bruised a couple of the unconnected ribs behind my breast. That still hurts, even after the narcotic pain medications I have been prescribed.

The worst pain comes from my thigh and hip. Without pain medication, I cannot walk. Last night I lay in the street, moaning, for about thirty seconds, then spent an additional ninety or thereabouts trying to get up. I hobbled to the dorm, walking the bike. A young man driving by in a minivan paused to talk to me, for as he approached, he thought I was some kid walking a bike he had had stolen earlier. I explained the situation in which I had found myself, and he offered advice on where and how to acquire insurance.

As he drove off, I chastised myself for not having asked for a ride. When I finally came to my room, I was almost too tired to dress the wounds. But the pain in my leg and hip made getting into bed a torturous process. Around one-thirty I woke up, needing to urinate, but almost could not get out of bed. But I then remembered I still had a few pain pills from last month, which worked well enough to get me through the morning.

To condense and conclude this narrative, I checked into the emergency room for a CAT scan and a little prodding. My brains are not leaking, so I was released with one prescription for painkillers and another for inflammation.

The painkillers make me sleepy. It is bedtime.

The Wildest Organ In Town

2007-07-14T13:35:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I shall endeavour to a) acquire a new bike for cheap and b) study for a political science exam Monday. I also need to complete readings and take an on-line exam for the other political science course in which I am enrolled. I hope to make these two easy GPA-boosters, since I received several Bs sophomore year that dragged me down to about a 3.7.

I love NetFlix. A couple of days ago I watched The Producers with a friend. Broderick was boring and predictable for the most part, but Nathan Lane always makes me giggle. Roger Bart had hilarious scenes as well. Tomorrow morning (during an office shift) I have scheduled Nosferatu. Ausgezeichnet.

I Will Cut Them

2007-07-13T19:22:00.000-07:00

Some conscience-less son-of-a-dousche stole my bike from the rack outside the coffee shop last night or ridiculously early this morning. I am upset, for I had finally grown accustomed and comfortable with riding it around my usual lurks. I spent much of this morning scanning the bike racks on campus, but my little black-and-red Mongoose with its mangled seat (chewed upon by a teething black lab puppy) surfaced nowhere.

I chose not to sit through my noon class, for I had forgotten to read the on-line article assignment and, moreover, simply felt too exhausted from having arisen early, on little sleep, to sit through a lecture. I checked e-mails at the library, then returned to my dorm room for an hour-long respite from full wakefulness. Afterward I felt less tired but increasingly depressed and broody, besides being somewhat anxious about an appointment I had scheduled to meet with Dr. Lavigne at four, to notify him I cannot/do not want to serve as Classical Society President.

At the end of the spring semester, he essentially twisted me by the arm to accept leadership of a club that has no real reason for existence, other than perhaps to secure funding for guest lecturers. Undergraduates rarely, if ever, attend meetings, I find the events boring, and I feel too disconnected from everyone who does participate to genuinely enjoy myself. The whole situation only makes me more depressed, and after three years of going nowhere I am entirely jaded and unmotivated. I understand that the club, and the classics program in general, needs to expand, but I can do nothing for it, and at this point I need to focus on getting into a decent graduate program.

After breaking up with Dr. Lavigne, I still felt miserable and weary of life, so I called one of the Latin teachers and invited myself to dinner with her. Thankfully, she was as bored as I, and suggested we eat Vietnamese. This lightened my mood tremendously, and I reciprocated with the suggestion that we eat frozen custard. The custard probably weighed more than the noodles and pork in my dish, but it made me feel much better, although in the back of my mind I am still disturbed about the disappearance of my bike.

I would like to wake up one day and not feel completely miserable, for once. Considering that I have all my limbs, I hardly have anything to complain about. My greatest concern is that I will die by velociraptor attack, because it could only happen to me.

They're everywhere.

A Contradiction In Terms

2007-07-10T21:53:00.000-07:00

After classes ended at two this afternoon, I (mostly) finished reading an old Penguin Classics edition of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. I ordered it a long time ago from an independent seller somewhere, who did not bother to inform me the last forty pages were never printed- instead, a duplicate copy of the four appendices, a guide to the classical Greek monetary system, the bibliography, a selection of further readings, and more books one might purchase from the Penguin Classics series consumes the space where pages 560-599 rightly ought to be. How the Peloponnesian War ended remains ever a mystery.

I enrolled in the two introductory political science courses and dutifully attended the first day of class, with my usual apprehension toward core curricula that I have already demonstrated proficiency in, having graduated from public high school. But both professors are engaging enough and reasonable insofar as concerns expectations. After the first class I stayed in the room (for my next class was initially located therein) and conversed with the professor about post-bacc study, how to make academic connections, demographics and the political climate of Lubbock versus Houston, etc. I had been one of the people answering questions and making comments during class, so he was curious about my interests. The next professor listed off names alphabetically from the first half of his roll sheet, to notify the lot of us that we were to go downstairs as part of another section that hadn't quite achieved the enrollment quota. The move at first upset me a little, until I discovered the required books for this section are cheaper. This professor posts lecture slides online and uses a text that reduces topics and definitions to their most basic forms. I am pleased, for I certainly have no desire to be challenged.

Between classes and between studying and work, I read through most of the introduction for the Penguin Classics edition of Ovid's erotic poetry. I had begun them in high school, but I seem to have reshelved the book without finishing, for I discovered a bookmark in the middle of it some months ago. The Ars Amatoria are entertaining, as I recall from the snippets I've read here and there.

I put Benjamin aside, but hope to finish him this evening, after I read the first chapter from one of my government texts. After Benjamin, I intend to tear through a play by Camus.

I love books and I hate people, although either smell odd sometimes.

Experience Recalled Through Scent

2007-07-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning, as I hitched my bike at the student recreation center, I inhaled several deep whiffs of animal (presumably dog, possibly wild rabbit) shit mingled with bedewed grass. The smell recalled my time at a summer day camp between fifth and sixth grade: specifically, of an instance when a boy named Levi stepped in some deer crap one wet morning and released precisely this noxious odour. He traisped around for some while, carrying the scent with him, before one of the counselors noticed and chastised him, as though he had stepped in the stuff for the express purpose of disturbing the stillness of the morning via gaseous fumes of excrement. I was of the opinion that the unfortunate Levi had merely failed to perceive the pile of shit into which he stepped.

It's hardly worth cataloguing all the shit I stumble into. Oi weh.

Mommy, Daddy Slammed My Face In The Door

2007-07-06T15:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I consumed a goodly chunk of Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, a recommendation for which I am grateful, as it does not hurt my head. The first essay concerns reflections on book collecting and, as I read it last night, it relieved me of the anxiety I sometimes suffer due to the fact that I have a voluminous library collection that consists mostly of books I have not flipped through since their purchase. The list (and what follows is by no means comprehensive) is a little ridiculous: Thus Spake Zarathustra, The Travels of Marco Polo, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, Angela's Ashes, Dolores Claiborne, The Peloponnesian War, Wuthering Heights, The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, The Bonesetter's Daughter, Archaeology of Knowledge, Ulysses, Jude the Obscure, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson, Candide, The Foundation Trilogy, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity, Queen of the Damned, The Greek War of Independence: The Struggle for Freedom from the Ottoman Oppression and the Birth of the Modern Greek Nation, Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker, The Web and the Rock, The Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient Greece, Player Piano, The Making of Modern Japan, Groucho Marx: A Photographic Journey... I'll read them someday, when I get around to it.

The Moon Sometime Also Look Like A "C"

2007-07-02T14:59:00.000-07:00

...but you no can eat that!

The green gel pen I used to take notes from an article I read this afternoon thrice ejaculated on my inner arm below the wrist. The contrast between the three splotches and the tone of my flesh moves me to seize the pen and colour my entire forearm green, if only to live with a green arm for a few hours. The thought of so much ink wasted, however, restrains the urge.

I wish I could write well. Perhaps if I drop out of school and quit my job, I shall have time to read everything I want to read and to write about everything that occurs to me as it occurs to me. As the situation now stands, I forget most of any ingenious, planet-altering notion before I've even thought it.

Usually, when I find any time to think, I realize I am sitting around, twiddling my thumbs, wondering how I am going to die and whether that might have any profound impact on the life of an ant or my friends or old people who play bingo. Last month I avoided death by spider attack, but nothing can convince me I might successfully navigate through the rest of my life without being attacked by an arachnid again. The little beasts lurk everywhere. They probably come out at night from between the books on my shelves, to leer with eight beady eyes at me as I slumber.

I would be just the sort of person to die from spider attack.

A Hole In The Ground

2007-06-29T23:46:00.000-07:00

Last summer I read many books. This summer I have finished none. I began Thucydides' History of the Peleponnesian War and The Search For The Perfect Language by Umberto Eco both several months ago. At the beginning of the summer I pulled the Penguin Classics version of Ovid's Ars Amatoria and James Joyce's Dubliners from the shelf, in anticipation of reading them after I had finished Thucydides. Both currently repose upon my Cat in the Hat pillow, untouched.

Lauree cannot concentrate.

And Everyone's Very Friendly

2007-06-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

Last night Kiepke and I looked at graduate schools. We laughed at their websites. Nevertheless, many of those schools frighten me, for I have not a stellar command of Greek or Latin. I might be better prepared than some people, but I am anal enough that I must be the best. Many schools diagnose and negotiate the issue, but there are still a couple of programs I might prefer but could not hope to get into. Oh, well.