creative scrabble

back by popular demand, here is the glorious and creative scrabble game that was played by my sister, my cousin and myself one time while at our grandparents' house. making real words is hard and boring, while making up words with whatever scrabble letters you have and then assigning them definitions is infinitely preferable. the initials after each definition indicate which of us made up the word (emily, kierstyn, agatha)...although it really was a group effort all around.

dievib: (n.) a type of dip used for vegetables. (e)

loinvix: (n.) situation on the highway when you’re trying to get into the right lane to exit and another car is in front of you and another car is to the right of you and basically you are stuck and uncomfortable. note: this is an analogy for a wedgie in the wrong place. (a)

reboadad: 1. (v.) to boadad again; re-snickering. 2. (v.) to re-caulk a large object. (k)

physmfid: (n.) as in “physmfid packets”, used like alka-selter. (e)

smaruf: (n.) the offspring of two inbreeding smurfs. (a)

gloedft: (n.) a small swedish woodland creature, resembling a gnome. note: the gloedft refuses to bring presents to nasty children. (k)

crypuj: (n.) the crusty build-up residue on jars of food. (e)

bisanzal: (n.) a person with a tendency to cross-dress as fairy-tale figures. (a)

jaergty: (p.n.) first name of the abominable snowman from the claymation rudolph video. (k)

ottink (p.n.) the australian professor who became the founding father of sea-monkeys. (e)

werain: (p.n.) the real first name of jim morrison. (a)

toedag: (n.) stuff between your toes that comes from another country. (k)

euphlow: 1. (n.) something medical. 2. (p.n.) a prescription feminine geriatric product. (e)

rivant: 1. (n.) an exotic dance involving bag pants that can easily become a raincoat with a few easy snaps. 2. (n.) a deragatory term. (a)

ercioe: (n.) something italian that only italians understand. (k)

cuenog: (n.) (silent “g”) a tribe in the himalayas that gathers the cuenog plant that grows in the amazon. (e)

iquasent : (adj.) to be accepting of one’s own flawed gene pool. (a)

otexe: (n.) an exotic form of botox. (k)


it was so exciting the day we actually got to use the word "reboadad" in context.

i only seem innocent...

oops!

i accidentally dialled 911 today...again.

it's not my fault! you have to dial 9-1-and then the number to get out of the office. i didn't push "1" twice, it just went twice by accident. i didn't mean to.

truth in all things

the story of beauty and the beast is my favorite fairy tale. i love it for many reasons, because you can analyze it so deeply, and as we are well aware, i love to analyze.

but mostly i love it because it's one of the few fairy tales where the hero and heroine have to mutually grow in self awareness before they can come to understand each other. and the only way they do come to understand each other is by compassion–thus marking the true transformative power of love.

see, i don't think fairy tales are silly, because they portray elementary truths of human nature–so how is that make-believe?

pensivity

do you ever have a day that just doesn't answer to your wishes in any sense? it was sunny, and warm. well, much warmer than it has been. i should have been so much more cheerful today, but i wasn't, for several reasons.

of course, i can't complain extensively; i'm extremely fortunate in so many ways...but i confess that today i'm also a little bit scared.

smile

silly, but this makes me smile.

click where it says "watch this movie." if that wasn't already obvious.

app reading is totally fun!

i have so turned over a new leaf in this whole application reading thing. i get to wear my pjs to work, and i am so pumped to read lots of apps from my travel regions, eat chinese food, do yoga and possible dance exercise videos on lunch break and in the evenings, and generally forge ahead in new and exciting ways in the office of admissions.

i will wear walmart trackpants (which are actually very cute if you ever get a chance to see me in them), my fuzzy purple aloe-infused slipper socks, and will forgo makeup unless i'll be encountering someone i might want to impress (unlikely in this town*).

i will make dynamic comments about this generation, the current atmosphere of the college, and what our future looks like (i say positive!).

i will bring in lots of amazing teas and snacks, and contribute homey touches to the office, like making swedish meatballs and scones.

i am ready. at least, that's what i tell myself....


*note: not that i don't love gburg.

des rêves bizarres

how's this for an option: buy a mas, or traditional provençal country home, and live the rest of my days sipping wine and eating pain au chocolat, pâté au lapin, and the finest selection of cheeses, so pungent and delicious that i will momentarily put my food down to put my head in my hands and sob with happiness.

and here's my possible home, although i'm also flexible to living in a chateau or villa:

the light at the end of the tunnel (no not that light!)

hooray for antibiotics! i know, i should have gone to the doctor in the first place; but i don't generally believe in doctors, as they generally just tell you you're sick, which you probably figured out on your own, sans professional medicine. but he did give me lovely drugs that are making me feel oh so happy again, as if there is once more a point to living.

and now i'm off to nap some more, and think of nothing but james dean and other men of that brooding and sexy description.

what a pleasant surprise!

i know this is kind of funny, but i've just discovered how incredibly sexy james dean is. why didn't anyone tell me?

behold:
he's all brooding and sultry. goodness.

a call to spring

even though i am parked at home today, sick with some ague and reading applications, i can't help but feel slightly excited by the prospect of it being a rich 54 degrees fahrenheit, since it means that, however many cold days there are after today, spring must be coming soon. and yes! that was a glimpse of sun, just then, out the window.

such a day, in which the world hints a return to being lovely and colorful again, makes me think of all good poetry. here is baudelaire's l'invitation au voyage, translated of course, since if you don't speak french, it's a bit cruel to reprint a whole poem in the language:

think, would it not be
sweet to live with me
all alone, my child, my love? —
sleep together, share
all things, in that fair
country you remind me of?
charming in the dawn
there, the half-withdrawn
drenched, mysterious sun appears
in the curdled skies,
treacherous as your eyes
shining from behind their tears.

there, restraint and order bless
luxury and voluptuousness.

we should have a room
never out of bloom:
tables polished by the palm
of the vanished hours
should reflect rare flowers
in that amber-scented calm;
ceilings richly wrought,
mirrors deep as thought,
walls with eastern splendor hung,
all should speak apart
to the homesick heart
in its own dear native tongue.

there, restraint and order bless
luxury and voluptuousness.

see, their voyage past,
to their moorings fast,
on the still canals asleep,
these big ships; to bring
you some trifling thing
they have braved the furious deep.
— now the sun goes down,
tinting dyke and town,
field, canal, all things in sight,
hyacinth and gold;
all that we behold
slumbers in its ruddy light.

there, restraint and order bless
luxury and voluptuousness.

i've posted this before in my old blog, but i'm not certain that anyone reads it anymore, so forgive me and humor me if you' ve seen it before. at any rate, it's a beautiful piece, and must leave you the better for having read it again.

deep thoughts

if i were a man, i would:
–pee standing up
–not ask for directions
–wear this amazing hat, wonderfully entitled the golden pheasant tyrolean

and that would be my life.

i am glad to be a woman, however.

incredibly beautiful libraries

if you could, would you spend your days entirely in a library? how about in one of these?

oh, it makes my head spin! i do love libraries...

you always hope the answer will be yes indeed

my sister babysits four year-old triplets who say the most hilarious things. tonight, she tells me that one of them announced to her an important bit of news:
'today i learned something new. i learned that when you pop the question, you always hope the answer will be 'yes.'

emily started laughing hysterically and said, 'do you know what the question is?' he replied: 'no!! what is it?'

anyway, little kids are funny.

caught between henry tilney and fitzwilliam darcy

ok, seriously, i know that i pretty much can't stop writing about jane austen, but this is just so fun!
pick your favorite austen man!

just say yes to persuasive essays!

i almost miss writing persuasive essays...no, i do miss writing persuasive essays, even on modern fiction....even on don delillo–but certainly not on tom wolfe. or samuel richardson. blech.

i'm really itching though for someone to ask me how transformations in the conception of public and private spaces are reflected in the tone and setting of Pamela, or why austen's refusal to limit her heroines to the role of 'threatened virgin' catalyzed modern romanticized love in marriage–because oh it did!

but no one has asked me, and even if they did, i suppose i don't have the time now to reflect. oh well, there's nothing like doing something else to make you appreciate what you desperately longed to be finished with...aka, a paper. though really, i never longed to be finished with college. maybe some days i did. but mostly i felt that it flew by far too fast, and those moments of intellectual exhilaration, when you really come to a point in a discussion at which you feel the most incredible discovery and the sensation is nothing less than adventurous, were too short.

i guess we'll see how nostalgically i describe class time once i'm in a phd program :).

which of all my important nothings shall i tell you first?

i watched the new pride and prejudice with keira knightly last night at my friend's house, despite the fact that i complain incessantly about it. i did enjoy it, sort of... it is a vaguely romantic film, but in many ways hardly the novel.

for one thing, in this newer version, lizzy and darcy fight in a much faster exchange with much more heightened emotions. they talk more rapidly and listen less. it's difficult to convey this without damaging the delicacy of austen’s narration because the episode is full of heightened emotion–but in austen’s text it is guarded and constrained by the dialogue, and it's only through the narration that we get to hear how lizzy and darcy each digest the other’s biting remarks.

secondly, the mr. darcy of joe wright’s (i.e., the newer version) directing seems more like a boy who never really grew up and who has poor social skills, than the proud, haughty darcy of andrew davies’ production (the 'colin firth version'). darcy in wright’s film constantly regards lizzy, i.e. that is his intensity, but with a look that makes it seem almost as if he were more in pain than in love.

he's also a much more romantic character: handsome and brooding, he seems to be constantly yearning for something, perhaps a more volumizing shampoo, and never achieves it. he makes me think of a lost puppy, whimpering throughout the film, so that in the first shot of him, even though he is silent and upright, every female in the audience is supposed to immediately empathize with him and swoon. i can't see this darcy fighting off wickham from his sister, but I can see him writing the love sonnets that “starve love entirely away.” i am too cruel. he is, after all, pretty attractive.

finally, the newer film played out the romantic and sexual tension between darcy and elizabeth pretty well, but it also demeaned the original conception of love in austen's text. austen does not give fond love scenes as henry fielding does, for example, but the actions of her hero and heroine clearly draw them together not only as lovers, but as companions and partners, qualities that are critical to sustainable love. austen narrates, “had elizabeth been able to encounter his eyes, she might have seen how well the expression of heartfelt delight diffused over his face became him; but though she could not look, she could listen…” (265 modern library classics edition).

likewise, when lizzy complains that darcy “might have talked more” than he did during the dinner after their private engagement, he replies, “a man who had felt less, might” (276). lizzy cannot look directly at mr. darcy at first, just as he cannot at first speak to her extensively of his feelings; they are both so overcome by the intensity of what they feel that, initially, they cannot directly face it.

at any rate, i know i sound like an elitist, and maybe i am, but there is so much more to pride and prejudice than the movie really allows us to see, and i wouldn't want people to watch it and believe that they have known all there is to know about austen.

wine makes me sooooo sleeeeepy

le yawn.

what will i dream of tonight?

what will you dream of tonight?

for when you really miss new england

i don't know what it is...when i lived there, i didn't appreciate the rich colors and rolling hills, but somehow, being in pennsylvania–which is lovely in many ways but nevertheless seriously flat–i really miss connecticut. and new york. the berkshires. my mountain. the taconic parkway (more towards albany than the city, of course). and yes, the merrit parkway too, but not the hutchinson, because somehow once you're over the border people try to kill you.

but if you long for new england the beautiful, at least you can enjoy it on youtube with saint saën's 3rd symphony.

the unloved root

my sister to me on aim:
"actually, i really wanted to love leeks."

où est la piscine?

parlez-vous français?
parlez-vous français?

foux de fa fa

once you've heard it, you'll be singing long into the night.

no, wait...

...on second thought, there is one other thing that could possibly ever top the 50 worst cars of all time, and that is...


.....plaid stallions

my dream cars

if this doesn't make you shudder openly with horrified spectator-pleasure, i don't know what will:
the george jetson car!

reminds me of our old vacuum cleaner
also reminds me of that robot from mystery science theatre 3000.

a george jetson car! ha.

to begin with...

...if you really do underestimate the importance of a decent familiarity with literature, i cite the following example.

essentially, you have to be completely out of your mind to market children's furniture using the iconic symbol of pedophilia.

i wish i had a less morbid example for you, but you see just how important it is.