Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself

At the beginning of the semester my Novel/Film prof asked us to write down which of the books listed on our syllabus we had read. I wrote Frankenstein, Christmas Carol, Sense and Sensibility and Mrs. Dalloway with a question mark. I now know that the question mark was completely justified. I have never read Mrs. Dalloway (by virginia woolf, bonus points to her for having a cool last name, with two O's). I definitely would have remembered it. I haven't read any of her other novels, just a few essays (mark on the wall comes to mind...so strange...). The Prof gave a little disclaimer at the end of class yesterday saying that it's important to stick it out through the first 20 pages. He kids not. I am a few pages in and have barely managed to discover that this Clarissa Dalloway character has been walking down the street, met one friend and had a lot of confusing memories/flashbacks. This book will take me forever to read.

Speaking of books NOT taking forever to read, Far from the Madding Crowd is highly recommended. I started it on thursday (after spontaneously buying it at the university bookstore, to pad my 1.50 purchase of cds and cases), and finished it monday night. I'm actually pretty proud of that accomplishment, I hardly even skimmed, and I've read it before! While we're on the subject of books, last night I loaned my copy of North and South (NOT the blasted civil war patrick swayze crap http://imdb.com/title/tt0088583/ ) to a classmate. I've been touting Elizabeth Gaskell for weeks, as part of our Jane Austen discussions, and last week I got into a lengthy discussion of Pride and Prejudice vs. North and South during our break, so of course said classmate must read said excellent novel. Ahhh, I have done a good deed.

Speaking of things I have not been doing for the last hour and half...I came to school early for the express purpose of printing and mounting my tea project from last semester for Creative Smackdown thursday night. I got as far as purchasing the board at the bookstore (no extraneous books this time) before I started worrying about printing it: the crappy paper in the printers (don't get me started on the stupid printers and lab techs...as if it would KILL them to let us put in paper that is NOT transparent) the difficulty of selecting one package or doing all three....should I crease the board or cut it? paper cover or no? So I decided to hold off printing/mounting until tomorrow during class when I can ask Lorelle and other classmates their opinions.

In consequence of not doing the aforementioned actual work, I have been browsing NBC's website searching for when the newest episode of SVU will play (Olivia returns!!). Fortunately I do not have to decide between the Tigers and Benson and Stabler tonight: rerun. I have now only to decide whether to go over to the Browns to eat ice cream with Christy or to the Guys to crash their Watch party. Decisions. Basically it boils down to several choices: Ice Cream or Beer? Girl with cute baby or guys with cold house? channel surfing or baseball? There is of course the other option: that of staying home, doing some homework and going to bed at 10. Party animal or old lady?

So much for high minded posts. Kudos to me though for mentioning Jane Austen and Beer in the same post, albeit not in the same paragraph.

I bet she can sit down excellently...

I have very few new things to report from my life. On Saturday I went to a local ballpark to watch the Tigers, for 10 bucks I could get brats, burgers, dogs, chips, cookies and pop. I ate two brats, a cheeseburger, a bag of chips, two pops and some Australian Beer (fosters, I've always wanted to drink that stuff, cuz they have funny ads, "Fosters! Australian for Beeah!")

I shall rely on the comedian Mitch Hedberg for the rest of my post. I love Wikipedia. I have edited the language.

"I got a lamp in my hotel room and it has a 3-way lightbulb in it. If you don't know a lightbulb is a 3-way lightbulb, it messes with your head, because you go to turn it off and it just gets brighter. Like "Dang it, lightbulb, that's the exact opposite of what I wanted you to do." And then you turn it again and it gets brighter once more. "I will break you."

"I was at the grocery store buying eight apples, and the clerk asked me if I would like a bag and I said, "No, man, I juggle! But I can only juggle eight. If I'm ever here buying nine apples, bag 'em up!"

"I was walking by a dry cleaner at 3 AM and there was a sign that said, "Sorry, we're closed." You don't have to be sorry. It's 3 AM and you're a dry cleaner. It would be ridiculous for me to expect you to be open. I'm not gonna come by at 10 and say, "Hey, I was here at 3 AM and you guys were closed. Someone owes me an apology. This shirt would be half done!""

"I like an escalator because an escalator can never break. It can only become stairs. You would never see an "Escalator temporarily out-of-order" sign. Just "Escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience. We apologize for the fact that you can still get up there.""

"I'd like to take a toothpick and throw it into a forest and say, 'You're home.'"

"I don't own a cell phone or a pager. I just hang around everyone I know, all the time. If someone needs to get a hold of me, they just say, "Mitch," and I say, "What?" and turn my head slightly."

"My belt holds my pants up, but the belt loops hold my belt up. I don't really know what's happening down there. Who is the real hero?"

"And then at the end of the letter I like to write, "P.S. — This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.""

"This one guy said, "Look at that girl. She's got a nice butt." I said, "Yeah, I bet she can sit down excellently!""


Hope you enjoyed. There are so many more, but I feel that I'm slightly overdoing it as it is. here's the site, check it out for yourself, but there is some profanity...

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mitch_Hedberg

Yesterday's Word: Obstreperous

I receive Dictionary.com's word of the day emails, mainly so that I can look at the word and feel smarter for already knowing what it means. Like yesterday. The definition employed by dictionary.com is "noisily and stubbornly defiant; also, boisterous." Of course I knew this, but my definition was more specifically focussed (two S's? I'll look it up, ah apparently I've spelled it the "especially British" way) on certain individual people, or should I say children.

On another note, last weekend I was informed that I should post about more high-minded things. I'm assuming this means no pee, a topic which I've already abandoned due to public outcry. This challenge has actually been the root cause of my lack of post this week. I would sit down at the computer, fully prepared to write a pithy post, when suddenly I would be attacked by Doubt as to its high-mindedness. Many a post were cut down upon this conclusion. Here of course, I insert a modified Star Wars quote: "Many posts died to bring us this information." This quote has put me in mind of a very probably high-minded topic for this post. Ahem...I begin:

Last Thursday I attended a lecture given by a leading "social theorist," Douglas Rushkoff, who is especially involved in thwarting the Evil Advertising Empire. You may perhaps be curious about the relationship to Star Wars and this Thinker, or you may already be familiar with my lack of connection between thoughts. Either way, I am prepared to offer you that connection at this point in time. Rushkoff began his talk by giving a short plot summary for Return of the Jedi (He got a few things confused, but I forgave him). I doodled and wondered where he would take this. It was actually kind of brilliant. He compared us as consumers to Ewoks....after Luke and Han are captured by the ewoks, Threepio tells the Ewoks everything about the Rebellion and the evil Empire and Luke and Han's part in it, complete with sound effects from R2. Rushkoff's theory was that this display/performance was basically what got the Ewoks to enter the fight. He also said that if Darth Vader had shown up before Threepio et al, and done some fancy storytelling about the Happy Empire who are just trying to make the galaxy a better place and those pesky Rebels who are trying to ruin everything...then the Ewoks would have fought for the Empire! I find a flaw with this argument only in the fact that Darth Vader and the racist Empire would never have considered the Ewoks to be of any use to them. But that wasn't the point of Rushkoff's analogy, basically we're wowed by advertising and persuaded into certain behavior. Personally I like to think I have a little more autonomy than that, but hey, I didn't do a documentary for PBS, so what do I know? All in all though, he was an enjoyable speaker with some interesting ideas.

I think I must cut short my high-mindedness and head home for some high-breakfastness. Yes, it's 12:11; yes, I have the day off for work; yes, I slept until 11:30. I came to the library to check my email and to post this very post. I hope you have enjoyed.

"Piracy is our only option"

Due to the response to my previous pee posts I will herein refrain from any more discussion regarding that topic (unless there happens some extreme event which I feel must be communicated to my readers for whatever reason).

On another note, our field trip finally happened, on Monday. We went to an orchard in Caledonia, about a 20 minute bus ride away. There were only a few kids who were unchaperoned, and we paired them off with their friends, with the idea that I would not be chasing children around a pumpkin patch. Well. Ha. Some of those parents might as well not have come for all the attention they paid their offspring. Yeah, that's your kid climbing into the goat pen, gonna stop him? eh? Oh ok, no that's cool I'll pry him from the fence.

And another note: It snowed big time out here. Well, by "big time" I mean an inch. But still OC-FREAKING-TOBER the TWELFTH!!!! In its defense, snow does look very lovely on the fall-colored trees. There's no snow left on the ground now really, but it's windy as a pickle out there. I'm not looking forward to hiking across campus to talk about sex in my soc class. Sigh. Isn't there anyone else out there who thinks that sex should be between a married man and woman? (married to EACH OTHER by the way...) Sigh.

Oh yeah, speaking of the title of this post: We're watching/reading Sense and Sensibility for my novel/film class. Love it love it. I've tried to be quiet during the film, but a few comments escaped me, much to the amusement of my classmates, one of whom queried "Is this a slumber party?" Oh well, we can't expect everyone to appreciate the finer points of romantic dialogue and intrigue can we? Speaking of romantic dialogue and Bollywood, I rented the Indian version of S&S entitled "I have found it." Thoroughly enjoyable, even with the bizarre musical numbers...more on that later.

And now I begin my intrepid quest set to Howard Shore's "Return of the King" soundtrack. It makes me feel as though I'm doing something much more daring than walking to my class...

While I was peeing

I thought of something else I should have said in my post previous. Of course I forgot it the second I got off the pot.

I'm now piddling away another class. Although I finallly logged out of facebook and am planning to log out of both email and blog and actually try to DESIGN SOMETHING DANGIT.

Mom says I need a new Post

I should have posted yesterday when I spent 2.5 hours of "class" reading blogs, facebooking, IMDBing and generally piddling.

However this will have to be a short post for two reasons (maybe three)
1. I have to pee very very badly (seriously)
2. I have to find out what lauren wants since I've missed 3 of her calls since 4.
3ish. Class "starts" in 15 minutes.

The third reason is an ish because hey, it's lorelle and so far classes have been more cancelled than attended.

Today I tried not to think about how nice it would have been if this morning's weather had been yesterday's. Sigh. Not a cloud in the sky, lovely brisk fall breeze, yellow treez...so sad.

While I was not thinking about the weather I was herding three year olds through a very very long three hours. Mrs. C is on a conference today and tomorrow...so I'm the main teacher. Scary eh? Basically now I know two things: I will never be a parent of Quincetuplets (15 kids?) and I will never be a teacher. Ick.

Pee-wise: No pee on the floor or me, but there was definitely 10 minutes during free choice when EVERYONE suddenly had to go. it was all I could do to keep them from sharing the potty. "It's nice that you want to share Lindsay, but let's share toys not toilets."