Guten Morgen, Writing Self

It has been a couple of years since I last blogged semi-regularly, but my virtual self has found new life thanks in part to the other blog I've been writing about my new adventures in rookie motherhood. That one is mainly directed at updating family and friends on how Baby W is coming along in the world since his birth on January 7, 2011.

I've started using my blogging as a way to plunge back into writing creatively on a regular basis, which in turn will hopefully help jump-start my writing self from her current dead-battery status into full-fledged functionality for the massive writerly undertaking that now lies at my feet: THE DISSERTATION.

As most of you now, I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. At the end of May I successfully passed my prospectus colloquium, during which my advisory committee of professors approve what is basically a 10-page description and plan of my dissertation. After a summer of talking theory and philosophy with my main advisors, taking care of Baby W and attempting to recover enough from newborn-land to establish a routine that blends mommy-time and Ph.D.-time, I'm pleased to announce that *bugles blaring* I've written two paragraphs!

Of course, I'm now apparently procrastinating by writing this post, but it does feel good to preen a little bit. I spend quite a lot of my time breastfeeding these days - time which I occasionally use wisely to look things up on our handy new iPad 2. I recently found this awesome links page on a website called Literature & Latte that is dedicated to digital writing tools, focused mainly on Apple systems. They're the people behind Scrivener, which some of you writer types may be familiar with. For those of you who aren't, it's organization software for writing that is made to help organize all the bits and piece of extensive writing projects and increase focus and productivity. I use a PC, so I won't be able to use a lot of the shiny, pretty writing software out there for Macs. Scrivener is on beta testing for Windows, but I'm frightening by the disclaimers about losing your work. Since I'm not willing to entrust my dissertation to a beta test, for now I'm going to try a similar PC program listed in the links called PageFour.

I am also dying to try one of the programs that is geared toward writing minimalistically, without distractions, on a refreshingly clear screen that avoids menus and sidebars and instead goes full-screen with a white page and plain text. I can't decide between WriteMonkey and Q10, so I think I'll start with the former. Here's their description:

Writemonkey is a Windows zenware* writing application with an extremely stripped down user interface, leaving you alone with your thoughts and your words. It is light, fast and free. With an array of innovative tools under the hood, it helps you write better. Editing is for another day ... 

If anyone has any input on these, let me know! For now we'll see how it goes with WriteMonkey. I'd better go try it before Baby W wakes up from his nap. Oops.. too late.

If "Fallout" Was a French Short Film...

I just watched this fantastic short by Paul Doucet, which is currently right up my post-apocalyptic alley. The use of ephemera, music and a constant geiger counter in the background reminds me aesthetically of the video game Fallout 3, which I absolutely love. If you want to know a bit more about how it was shot, read the original posting on io9. I especially love the opening establishing shot of the record player and poster, as well as the concluding shot. It's not exactly cheerful stuff, of course, but enjoy!

Bunker - English subtitles
by bebealien

Rousseau, Botany and Armchair Academia

Ruminations from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Seventh Walk):

Botany is a study for an idle and lazy solitary person: a point and a magnifying glass are all the apparatus he needs to observe plants. He walks about, wanders freely from one object to another, examines each flower with interest and curiosity, and as soon as he begins to grasp the laws of their structure, he enjoys, in observing them, a painless pleasure as intense as if it had cost him much pain. In this idle occupation there is a charm we feel only in the complete calm of the passions, but which then alone suffices to make life happy and sweet. But as soon as we mingle a motive of interest or vanity with it, either in order to obtain distinction or to write books, as soon as we want to learn only in order to instruct, as soon as we look for flowers only in order to become an author or professor, all this sweet charm vanishes. We no longer see in plants anything but the instruments of our passions. We no longer find any true pleasure in their study. We no longer want to know, but to show that we know. And in the woods, we are only on the world's stage, preoccupied with making ourselves admired. Or else, restricting ourselves to armchair and garden botany at the most, instead of observing vegetation in nature, we concern ourselves only with systems and methods--an eternal matter of dispute which does not lead to an additional plant being known and throws no true light on natural history and the vegetable realm. That is the source of the hatreds and the jealousies that rivalry for fame excites among other learned men. Altering the nature of this love study, they transplant it to the middle of cities and academies where it withers no less than exotic plants in the gardens of connoisseurs.

Make: Television on Steampunk

Maker Profile - Steampunk on MAKE: television from make magazine on Vimeo.

Drawing Doomsday

My temporary roommate pointed out this Max Fleischer short from 1928. Magnificent!
What if our cartoons do turn against us in the end? Nooo! Not the doomsday lever!

Tales from the Gorge, Part 1

It's a lovely day in Ithaca, New York - or as much as I can hear of it from inside my room in one of the large, well-aged houses that perch steadfastly on the hill up to Collegetown. I have to make sure I don't lean back in the computer chair, as the cushioned black back is currently a makeshift drying rack for the damp clothes I wore yesterday, no longer dripping out traces of the sudden afternoon downpour.
The theory-heads pouring out of the lecture hall after yesterday's lecture were, as I was, completely shocked at the very wet turn to a day that had until then been an oven-baked, sun-saturized steambath. In retrospect, though, I should have known that the thick waves of humidity were bubbles in the hot air waiting to erupt into the torrents of rain that threatened us as we looked dismally out at the gray gusts blowing sheets of water across the previously steaming pavement. In the morning the sun beating down gave no indication (I thought) of what was to come, so I foolish decided this was the best day to leave the raincoat in the apartment. In my defense, climbing the hills to the Cornell campus is an ordeal that makes it significantly easier to choose to leave behind anything that could add weight to the trek. The consequences of the morning's choice were staved off by a compassionate colleague who offered to share his umbrella with me down to the library. It turned into an impromptu adventure, as the sudden surges of wind threatened to blow the small umbrella into useless bits of metal. We skirted, unsuccessfully, the ever-growing puddles and streams while holding our bags close, trying to find a way out of the maze of buildings to the quad. We left our dripping footsteps on the plastic-covered wallways of a physics building in construction, finally finding an exit through which we could see the tower that promised the shelter of the library. After making that far, I parted ways with my umbrella-buddy and made the slightly loony decision to walk the rest of the 30-minute way back to the apartment without rain protection. By then my feet were threatening to slip out of the front of my sandals with every step - which is more of a problem when you are heading down a series of semi-steep slopes, as I was. Another serendipitous umbrella-ride took me to the bottom of the first hill, and I continued to the bridge over the gorge. As I expected, the water was rushing madly under the series of grates one must traverse on the pedestrian edges of the bridge. I gleefully took in the series of shivers induced by the combination of sounds provided by the storm - the sustained rush and whoosh of the gorge under my feet, the rolling, shivering rumble of thunder and the splash of the cars on the pavement. It has been years since I have heard thunder and seen flashes of lightning. I have missed the eerie magnificence of Texas storms! I walked past a local pub, hair dripping, and heard the astute observation from a smoker outside: "You're wet!" Yes, I said, and made the turn to the familiar row of houses before trudging up the stairs and hurriedly slinging the less-dripping clothes on the chair, where I now sit.
Turns out it isn't such a nice day in Ithaca, by the standards of sun-lovers. I am pleased, though, to hear small rumbles of thunder and the slight patter and slush that lets me know that the rain is lingering still.

Freedom and the Act of Will

Interesting thoughts on freedom from Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty:

"We often see the weakness of the will brought forward as an argument against freedom. And indeed, although I can will myself to adopt a course of conduct and act the part of a warrior or a seducer, it is not within my power to be a warrior or a seducer with ease and in a way that 'comes naturally'; really to be one, that is. But neither should we seek freedom in the act of will, which is, in its very meaning, something short of an act. We have recourse to an act of will only in order to go against our true decision, and as it were, for the purpose of proving our powerlessness. If we had really and truly made the conduct of the warrior or the seducer our own, then we should be one or the other. Even what are called obstacles to freedom are in reality deployed by it. An unclimbable rock face, a large or small, vertical or slanting rock, are things which have no meaning for anyone who is not intending to surmount them, for a subject whose projects do not carve out such determinate forms from the uniform mass of the in itself and cause an orientated world to arise--a significance in things. There is, then, ultimately nothing that can set limits to freedom, except those limits that freedom itself has set in the form of its various initiatives, so that the subject has simply the external world that he gives himself."

Robotic Invasion!!!

A. and I were chatting this evening about how it's interesting when people dismiss a lot of sci-fi, such as that dealing with A.I. stuff, as completely "fantastic" or "far-fetched," or extremely futuristic. A huge amount of sci-fi from previous time periods has since become reality, and a lot of other technology like robotics is very advanced and growing exponentially during our time. Then, of course, is everything that has already been done but not released to the public. Technology has been growing at unbelievable rates in the last century or so...who knows how far it will go even in the next 20-30 years or so. In the spirit of our conversation I went looking at videos of robots on YouTube, just for fun.

First, a scary one. Swarms of tiny robots that can assemble themselves into bigger robots and do things like "self-heal." Famous last words spoken by the scientist-- "There is no risk." NOOO!!! Robots take over the world!!!



Next, Japanese female androids...always a classic.



Some dancing robots...



And finally, just for fun, PUPPY VS. ROBOT SUPERFIGHT!!!!

Culinary Exploits

My friend B. and I collaborated the other day on a delicious recipe for a salmon salad from a new book she's been trying out. We made some adjustments to fit ingredients we had on hand and came up with a delightful dish that will now unravel right before your eyes! As a warning, I'm fairly sure I left out a few details, so if you try to make it you'll have to fill in the blanks.

Small potatoes sprinkled with olive oil and herbes de provence, then oven-roasted.

Salmon sprinkled with salt and pepper, then covered with seasoning made of shallots, dill, parsley, lemon zest and olive oil, then baked in the oven at what 250 (I originally wrote 425 degrees, but that's wrong) for 25 minutes.

Some soft-boiled eggs--one of my favorite ingredients!

Dijon vinaigrette made with olive oil, red wine vinegar, dijon mustard, lemon and some fresh basil from my herb garden.

French beans replaced beets in the original recipe as a complement to the potatoes.

The aftermath...

Add some greens, drizzle on the dressing, and tada!



Bon appetit!

Alpacas and Tragicomics

Please try to suppress your shock at my appearance so soon after my last post. And while you do that, try to appreciate it as a trust token of sorts, a gesture expressing my deepest intentions to follow through on my stated plans--divulged to you, my few but much-valued blog readers.

First, some happenings from the last couple of weeks:

I have started to write poetry again. I'm keeping it top secret for now because I find the prospect a little unnerving. We shall see where it goes.

Also, we are thinking about adopting a rescued middle-aged beagle. News on future developments may be appearing soon. Before we take on responsibility for the welfare of a living thing, I welcome your advice, admonitions, encouragement, etc.

Meanwhile, some enjoyable moments have come from a couple of visits to Stanford during which I got to socialize and have some great conversations at leisure. When I arrive on campus I now have to navigate around quite a construction extravaganza. Stanford appears to be rushing to finish every possible beautification project before school starts in September. I honestly find it hard to believe, flattery aside, how the campus can be aesthetically improved. We shall see! A benefit of the chaos was the tightly-compartmentalized walkways, which made for more frequent encounters with the hundreds of visitors walking around. It was somehow heartwarming, in a really cheesy way, to see all the various groups of high school students doing their thing and overhearing bits of their animated conversations as they walked by. My little game is to "Guess the Major" from a variety of completely stereotypical first impressions. It's fun.

As for conversations, one particularly entertaining interaction happened while I was having lunch at the Treehouse restaurant with my friend H. We were pulled into conversation with a man in a Hawaiian shirt sharing our picnic table. We had gradually been edging closer to him as we tried to avoid a very persistent bee drawn to our Baja Fish Tostada salads. The stranger turned out to be VERY talkative. It was worth the hijacking of our conversation, though. He jumped in when H. and I were talking about Asturias, the Popol Vuh and ancient cultures such as the Mayans. Apparently this guy had spent a lot of time at archeological sites in Central and South America and knew quite a bit about these civilizations. He also went around the coast of those areas on a sailboat with his family, making pit stops at the sites of several sites of ruins. He mentioned he taught at Stanford, so we asked what department. I fully expected archaeology, history, sociology, anthropology or something of that nature, but he said he was affiliated with engineering, and did something with physics. He then proceeded to get us up to date on the happenings on his alpacas, which he keeps on a ranch or something he has in the area. Crazy! An alpaca-raising physicist who in his spare time sails to the sites of ancient civilizations. I love it.

On the subject of my quest to get healthier, I report that since I have so far lost about 4.5 pounds in about 3 1/2 weeks. It's something, so I'm happy about that, but I'm behind the schedule I set myself. It's kind of frustrating to be going so slow, but people keep telling me it's better this way and I'm doing great. I don't know, though. I do feel better physically, and seem to be toning up a tiny bit, but I wish I could see some more definite numerical results. That is probably silly, but it's true. I got some new running shoes in the mail--so I'll be taking on that frightening project sometime soon. Look for continuing status reports.

Now, the promised book update for the month:

Books Bought:

• A really cool paperback of O Pioneers! by Willa Cather. The edition was put out by Houghton Mifflin in a "Sentinel" series.
• An interesting hardcover of The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde. Think it's from a series called "Cameo Classics." circa 1940. The cover is an ominous charcoal black with a cream-colored cameo of Gutenberg in relief in the center. It is illustrated in black and white.
  
• The Book of Lost Tales by J.R.R. Tolkien, from the History of Middle Earth series published posthumously by his son Christopher.
• Small 1910 hardcover of Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy. Beautiful gray-blue with gold design, with illustrations.
  

Books Borrowed:

• Enchantment by Orson Scott Card
  
• Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, translated by Dennis Tedlock
• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Books Read:

• Enchantment by Orson Scott Card

This book was a huge surprise. Not that I don't admire the writing talents of OSC, but this is so very different from stuff like Ender's Game. I think I was just taken aback by the depth of what I thought would be a more or less straightforward fairy-tale-goes-modern routine. Far from it. It was incredibly insightful about some topics that are notoriously difficult to get your head around, much less your pen (or typing fingers). One of those was Judaism in 20th c. Europe. The other was the experience of immigration. I have no personal experience with the former, but do with the latter. I honestly stopped in my reading tracks and went back at several passages to admire a bit that particularly struck me. One of them occurs when the protagonist, who emigrated from Russia to the U.S. with his parents as a child, returns there as a graduate student:

"Only when he was belted into his seat and the plane pulled back from the gate did it occur to him why he felt so free. Coming to America, all the burden of his parents' hopes and dreams had been put onto his shoulders. Now he was heading back to Russia, where he had not had such burdens, or at least had not been aware of them. Russia might have been a place of repression for most people, but for him, as a child, it was a place of freedom, as America had never been.
Before we are citizens, he thought, we are children, and it is as children that we come to understand freedom and authority, liberty and duty. I have done my duty. I have bowed to authority. Mostly. And now, like Russia, I can set aside those burdens for a little while and see what happens."

In another section the protagonist reflects on those burdens and their root in the responsibility that comes with knowing that your parents went through some amazing amount of personal hardship and sacrifice to give you a chance to reach higher goals with a comparatively much greater amount of ease. The burden of measuring up and making it valid, to picture them saying to each other, "well, it was all worth it because of this." And the fear of failing in this massive responsibility. OSC did a startlingly good job of expressing this--in my opinion. Like my friend B., who lent me the book, I also shamelessly enjoyed the references to literary academics, such as his dissertation dealing in part with the work on Russian folktales by Viktor Propp. I also loved the explanations of connections between Russian folktale tradition and tales that developed in other cultures. For example, he mentions Baba Yaga and her moving house that walks on chicken legs. I almost shouted with glee (seriously). It's Howl's Moving Castle! I don't think it's a stretch to say that Hayao Miyasaki is very aware of some of these folktale traditions, and seeing the cultural jump is exciting to me. Glee! Highly recommend this book.

• O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

I love love LOVE Willa Cather. This novel went farther to solidify my affection for her descriptive prose. I could say a lot, but I'll stick to my favorite aspect of Cather's artistry, which is her passionate depiction of landscape. I know other people have most likely said this thousands of times, but it can't hurt once more. It's really like she has a love-affair with it--her words run over its curves, its exultations, its harmonies, its fierceness, its savagery, its surprises with so much intimacy. If there's anything wrong with that it's that everything else to me is dwarfed in comparison. The characters, the plot--I just get completely lost in the images of certain combinations of the natural environment and how she captures them with so much vitality. This is probably due in part to my own passion for the landscape of Texas. It is so hard to describe to people the things I miss, the things I love; to argue for the beauty of places so many find "ugly" or "boring." There are some Texan poets I love to talk about this, who understand the strings that get pulled in my brain when I think about driving across half the state on Scenic Highway 281, when I float slowly through the mossy, glimmering light of the Guadalupe River while the sun bakes into my skin and the water shocks my limbs with cold, when I drive into an endless horizon on I-35 with nothing in sight in any direction but fields, sky, clouds, and a highway that I know goes on for hours and hours, when the sun sets in a hundred shades of orange and the night falls with such darkness that all I see is headlights and the glow around randomly scattered dots of life. I found this quote somewhere online, and I haven't really verified its attribution to John Steinbeck, but I'm going to go out on a limb and include it anyway, because it states what I struggle to describe much more eloquently:

"I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study and the passionate possession of all Texans."
-John Steinbeck

Clearly, I highly recommend O Pioneers!

• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Another pleasant surprise, lent to me with high recommendations by my friend L., who is also a fan of graphic novels, manga, anime, and such. I'll keep it brief and say that Bechdel gracefully masters what i consider to be an immense task: telling a difficult and painfully personal autobiographical tale without bitterness. In this graphic novel she is delightfully humorous without being tiresome with irony, frank without being abrasively cynical, and emotionally engaged without being resentful or petty. Most of all, I could feel her love toward her parents almost tangibly in the pages, in the care she took to tell this story in just the right way despite the tragedy or difficulty of the situations she describes. That aside, I was really impressed with the versatility of her drawing. She incorporates a lot of different things in her panels, such as diary entries, handwritten notes, photographs, newspaper clippings, etc., all done in realistic drawings. Superb! Highly recommended (you can see I have been on a roll).

• Hombrez de Maiz by Miguel Angel Asturias

I am going to completely bow out of this one because I am doing a paper on it, so I feel exhausted regarding its descriptions. Suffice it to say that this is an absolutely landmark work in Latin American and Western literature in general, and very innovative for its time. He incorporates mythology, dream sequences and figurative languages almost seamlessly throughout the narrative and uses the structure of the novel itself to help tell a huge story through a microcosm of society. Unfortunately, the sheer mastery of these non-traditional elements makes it somewhat hard to read. It took me ages to finish it, even though I really enjoyed it. That said, it's not often I actually feel triumphant on finishing a book, like I've accomplished something monumental--and that is how I felt when I read the Epilogue. I may have even thrown up my hands in victory. I came, I read, and I conquered!
Highly recommend it, but mainly to tenacious readers who can accept being led without the usual drives and comforts of narratives. Also recommend reading it along with the Popol Vuh, in the translation mentioned above, which I am starting today.

• Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Absolutely fabulous! Morally stunning. Socially earthshaking. How much more hyperbole can I employ to sing the praises of Watchmen? Not enough. It's probably the most acclaimed graphic novel ever--and one of the only ones to win awards usually reserved for strictly narrative novels and other prose. Although I feel there is something somehow wrong about having to justify the merits of a graphic novel by arguing that it can stand up among novels, I will concede for the sake of the uninitiated graphic-narrative-deprived and note the two awards people usually cite: winning the Hugo Award and getting on the list of Time Magazine's 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to the Present, or something to that effect. Alan Moore stories are always good for a lively chat about politics or woes of humanity--something I am usually up for. Anyway, this book is pretty astounding. I prefer to leave it there for the sake of not giving it away, as there is a mystery involved. I won't lie, it's violent and fairly disturbing (mature readers--whatever that actually means) as well as morally disarming. But if you can handle it, I don't only recommend it, I command you to read it. MUAHAHA.

That's all I can think of for now. Let out your collective sigh of relief and feel free to continue with whatever you were doing before I so rudely and verbosely interrupted. Until next time!

P.S. I nearly forgot. If you are somewhat curious about/interested in/passionately love graphic narratives, i.e. graphic novels, comics, manga, etc., go to this website and join the fun: https://www.stanford.edu/dept/complit/cgi-bin/?q=node/262
Cheers!

Getting Fit, Being Lazy

I have been wracking my brains (not really, of course... it being summer break) for something interesting to write about under the pressure of inevitably falling short of the fantastic adventures some of my friends are currently blogging about (see side bar). For now I will be frank with you--my summer is not in any way exciting, and you will have to put up (or not, actually) with my somewhat more tedious adventures and somewhat less tedious plans for more exciting times in the future.

I will try to continue my sporadic bursts of information on what I am currently up to in life and complement it with a new experiment. Before I tell you about it here are my "happenings."

I've decided it's finally time to stop feeling bad about myself and seriously lose the weight I need to to feel more healthy and/or attractive. At least for my clothes to fit again. As well as to give in to my husband's insistence that I have a long and healthy life here on Planet Earth. So, after being spurred on by a Hawaiian friend of ours who has a killer bod after losing weight, I signed up for 3 months of WeightWatchers. Yeah, *sigh* and all that. I caved in. But so far in two weeks I have lost about 3 pounds and have less desire to stuff my face all day, so so far so good. Counting points on an online tracking tool they have fulfills my endless desire for lists and technology, as well as micromanaging, so it's useful for staying on track and not giving up. More concrete, you know? My husband contributed two more important health-aids. The first is the Wii Fit, which has been sold out since it went on the market, but is now sitting primly in our living room. It's an awesome game that revolves around something kind of like those platforms they use in Step Aerobics. It's got sensors in it that measure your weight distribution, movements, etc. The program itself measures your BMI through several criteria, weighs you, and tests your balance and agility, then gives you a chart of your progress and adjusts your "Wii Age," reminiscent of Brain Age for the Nintendo DS. The workouts are divided into categories: Yoga, Strength, Aerobic and Balance. There are multiple exercises in each, and you unlock more exercises and intensities as you score higher and do them more frequently. The exercises are clever and incorporate some fun games. Again, so far so good. My favorite is the boxing game--done somewhat realistically with the nunchuk. He also bought himself a Garmin GPS runner training device, which tracks how far you run, your pace, etc, and keeps track of it on your computer. Our tentative goal is to train for a 10k in October (we'll see about that) and to be fit enough to climb Half Dome at Yosemite (which we just visited with my parents over 4th of July weekend) sometime in September. Finally, we started taking multivitamins.

Now for my experiment (bear with me, I know this is a long post--but I've been building up). Some of you may know that I once started up a book review column on WOAI.com. The great part of it was that since I started it, and had a kick-ass web director overseeing it as well (shout-out to CyberBob), I got to write about pretty much anything I wanted. Eventually I even got to interview people on camera. What I miss most, though, as I become increasingly immersed in the world of literary academics, is just sharing my actual non-premeditated, non-scholarly thoughts on books that aren't just something I "should" read or "must" read. When I started writing reviews I was inspired by one of my favorite contemporary writers, Nick Hornby. I LOVE the way he writes book reviews. Hornby writes a column for The Believer, a great mag put out by McSweeny's. Some of these have been collected in a little book called The Polysyllabic Spree.

This column I simultaneously drool over and revere is simply called, to my utter now-doctorally-oriented delight, "Stuff I've Been Reading." Basically what Hornby does is start with a list (YES!!): "Books Bought" followed by "Books Read." As an avid participant in a family of obsessive book buyers, it's not hard to see why I would find this comforting and cathartic. I buy used books like other people buy Starbucks coffee. Our house threatens to become flooded with books from floor to ceiling, piled up in every corner and surface, like in the house of the famous writer in this movie I saw recently called "Winter Passing." The scary thing is, nothing would please me more. Anyway, after the list Hornby writes his article about a couple of the books he's read. Frank, no-holds barred, blissfully straight-forward and unpretentious (for the most part--although I have no evidence to the contrary at the moment).

So, I have decided to shamelessly copy Nick Hornby's method as a source of inspiration for some blogging, with some adjustments. I will list books when I buy them, some information about the book itself (edition, interesting aspects of the cover, year, place acquired, intriguing dedication notes to other people, etc.), my hopes for it, and so forth. Then I will list books I have started reading (you might see the influence of goodreads here). Finally I will list books I have actually read to completion, with a short comment on what I really think about it. Believe it or not, I anticipate this will be challenging/frightening for me, like standing on a precipice and hoping the next step will be hang gliding exhilaration rather than sure and certain death on some depressing non-academic rocky beach below. Okay, now that I've panicked to the point of hyperbole I feel much better about this. Onward!

And now, the "Next on..." moment of delayed gratification. This post has gone on long enough (much too long, actually), so I will post separately with the first attempt at my book experiment. Until next time!

Just in Case...

...you decide not to click on the very prominent RSS of FreakAngels, the currently-evolving webcomic so generously shared with me by a comic-savvy friend, here is the excerpt of an interlude by the writer of the comic, Warren Ellis, that got me interested. Always interesting to see how others describe the creative process:

How It Works

I still get asked with appalling regularity “where my ideas come from.”

Here’s the deal. I flood my poor ageing head with information. Any information. Lots of it. And I let it all slosh around in the back of my brain, in the part normal people use for remembering bills, thinking about sex and making appointments to wash the dishes.

Eventually, you get a critical mass of information. Datum 1 plugs into Datum 2 which connects to Datum 3 and Data 4 and 5 stick to it and you’ve got a chain reaction. A bunch of stuff knits together and lights up and you’ve got what’s called “an idea”.

And for that brief moment where it’s all flaring and welding together, you are Holy. You can’t be touched. Something impossible and brilliant has happened and suddenly you understand what it would be like if Einstein’s brain was placed into the body of a young tyrannosaur, stuffed full of amphetamines and suffused with Sex Radiation.

That is what has happened to me tonight. I am beaming Sex Rays across the world and my brain is all lit up with Holy Fire. If I felt like it, I could shag a million nuns and destroy their faith in Christ.

From my chair.

See, this is the good bit about writing. It’s what keeps you going. It’s the wild rush of “shit, did I think of that?” with all kinds of weird chemicals shunting around your brain and ideas and images and moments and storyforms all opening up snapsnapsnap in your mind, a mass of new and unrealised possibilities.

It’s ten past two in the morning, and I’m completely wired, caught up in the new thing, shivering and laughing and glowing in the dark. Just as well it’s the middle of the night. No-one would be safe from me right now. I could read their minds and take over their heartbeats with a glare.

Faster than the speed of anyone.

That’s how it works.

Now that's ecstatic writing. Cheers!

Maksim Mrvica

My latest source of inspiration:

Dear Emma, how I loathe thee...

From Madame Bovary:

"It is better not to touch our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands."

My Joycean Adventure

I'm really enjoying James Joyce's Ulysses right now... so I'll share some favorite parts as I go along. Here are the first few:

"Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack, hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too."

"I am another now and yet the same. A servant too. A server of a servant."

"No-one here to hear. Tonight deftly amid wild drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind. What then? A jester at the court of his master, indulged and disesteemed, winning a clement master's praise. Why had they chosen all that part? Not wholly for the smooth caress. For them too history was a tale like any other too often heard, their land a pawnshop."

The science of Galactica

Here's an interesting MSNBC article on the scientific probabilities of some of the sci-fi elements of Battlestar Galactica, such as the odds that our first contact with extraterrestrials would be with "Robot Aliens," robot-human relationships, and other issues:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23955772/

Admiral Adama at Stanford!!

I was perusing the constant stream of event email in my school email box when I ran across this:

15th Annual Cesar E. Chavez Commemoration
Edward James Olmos, Keynote Speaker



Thursday, April 17
7:00 p.m. | Kresge Auditorium
Join us for the year's flagship event as we welcome our esteemed keynote speaker renowned actor, director, and Hollywood activist Edward James Olmos. Also featured: Winners of the Art and Essay Contest, a Stanford student speaker, and the Stanford Spoken Word Collective.

"From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength" - César Chávez
__________________

In case you were blissfully unaware of the best show on T.V., Edward James Olmos currently plays Admiral Bill Adama on Battlestar Galactica. He is really amazing on the show, one of the character's key features being an exceptional ability to give motivational speeches to the fleet. Anyway, I have to admit the Cesar Chavez event announcement was a bit jarring for me as I completely displaced the show and cast from the planet we call home, therefore, without realizing it, completely displaced the actors from their ethnic backgrounds. Seriously, I've never even thought about it. So my first reaction was... "Oh yeah! EJ Olmos is Mexican! I totally forgot!" I won't go into it too much here, but I think that says a lot for the show as a science fiction story and their success at creating a new society of humans. It's also nice, I must admit, to be allowed to forget (completely) our standard ethno/racial characteristics once in a while--on a show where everyone is just human, trying to survive. Some pseudo-racial issues are addressed on BG, but they are taken into different categories, just as a group of people from a specific planet or city (who are actors of many different ethnicities, incidentally).

Anyway, too late to say long story short, but in case you hadn't noticed I am really stoked about going to see EJ Olmos tomorrow. So say we all!

(Oh geez, I hope I don't yell that at the end of his speech)

Taxes...*shudder*

I finished my taxes! Hurrah!

So, I had a bad experience with H&R Block this year as far as their in-office consultation is concerned, and ended up doing the free TurboTax e-file thing. I was overwhelmed, seriously, by how much more info I felt I got and how much more thorough the questions were than the agent I went to previously. Just for reference, H&R Block tried to charge me more for the preparation than the meager amount I'm getting back. And refused to tell me how much it would be until the process was done. Also refused to verbally acknowledge that it didn't make any sense to go through with it. Good thing you're allowed to refuse their filing and not pay. I usually don't feel the need to advertise for businesses, but I was very impressed and relieved by Intuit's TurboTax this year and think they deserve the kudos. It's worth trying there first, before someone tried to charge you some ridiculous amount for something you can easily (and more thoroughly/confidently) do yourself.

Just sayin'.

Ninja Warrior!!!

Well, after spending the last hour ONCE AGAIN trying to log in to my blog (shows how much I post....), I feel compelled, despite my frustrated exhaustion and resentful feelings toward the internet in general, to post in this secure little blog that was quite alike a moated fortress just minutes ago.

I had some juicy morsels saved up from books I've been reading lately, but instead, in rebellion against academia, I will post a couple of clips from the latest obsession in my household. Seriously, these Japanese shows, Ninja Warrior and Unbeatable Bansuke, along with Battlestar Galactica, keep my faith in television entertainment. Maybe that's sad, but man do I love it. Not sure how much these random clips I found on YouTube exemplify it, but one of my favorite things about these shows are the off-the-wall, melodramatic subtitle translations of the commentary.

This first shows a shot at the next-to-last course by one of the most frequent, and most popular competitors on the men's side:



This one shows, I believe, the first woman to make it through the entire series of courses in Women of Ninja Warrior. I saw it in the G4 American version with subtitles... but I'm amused by this British (I think?) commentator.



Here is one of the obstacles on Unbeatable Bansuke, the stilt walk (there's also a handwalk, a crazy bike obstacle course, and many other random obstacle courses that are very nearly impossible to beat). I couldn't find video of this awesome old guy who actually beat the stilt course, but I did find one of this kid doing it:



Yep, this is how I choose to waste time. Among other things.

Staving Off Bilingualism

...in the sense that:

1. I am putting off writing an essay on why sometimes bilingualism causes more conflict than polyglotism
2. The essay is a composition I am writing for my Catalan language course, in which I continue my quest to speak as many languages as can fit into my brain, which I am starting to feel is filling to the point of utter confusion. I grow more and more astonished at the mental capacity of people who can speak, say, seven or nine languages.

So, I will procrastinate by writing this blog in English. First of all, I will throw you a bone and keep (somewhat) good on my promise to begin each post with a list of random things I did today.

Today in my everyday I:

1. Felt sick and tired (actually) and therefore stayed in in the morning.
2. After the sick-and-tiredness wore off, did some cleaning/ironing stuff. Not because I'm a wife. Just because it needed to be done.
3. Read about poetry.
4. Went to my evening class.
5. Talked to someone about marriage, religious ceremonies and related issues/complications.
6. Walked on a treadmill.
7. Ate chips.
8. Procrastinated on Facebook.
9. Continually checked email.
Bet you were expecting a number 10, weren't you?

Now, in the spirit of bilingualism, and by request, here is one translation of the essay "Borges y Yo" (see previous blog) by Jorge Luis Borges.

"Borges and I"

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things.

Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.

I do not know which of us has written this page.

Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings, New York: New Directions, 1964, pp. 246-47.