read this! look smart!

there were a flurry of articles last month about how to fake it...no, not like that, ladies. i'm talking about how to appear more well-read and literate than, let's face it, you really are. (pop on over to loni's blog for links to all those articles).

this one was the most unique though - a fun post by bookslut about five specific works that lit snobs might expect you know. the author's suggestion for the best way to fake that you've actually read them? cruise by on one specific scene.

all right. go on, get to it, and don't say i never did anything for you.


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How To Talk Like You've Read Something You Haven't

There are certain books that tend to come up in conversation over and over again. Some of the time I have read it and can hold my own. Other times, however, I’ll either say I’ve read it and then just nod and remain quiet when they try to pry a conversation out of me, or I’ll just admit I have no idea what they’re talking about.

I figured there were two remedies to the end of the conversation that comes with having not read the book. I could either read the books or I could find a way to convincingly bluff my way through the conversation.

I decided to bluff. I do have a reputation as a bookslut to uphold.

All that’s needed for a successful bluff is mentioning a scene from the book. If the book was made into a movie, don’t try to reference a scene that made it to film. Everyone does that. To make it more believable, be vague. If you don’t mention characters’ names, you can then say, “Oh, it was such a long time ago, I’m a bit hazy on the details…” when you are asked your opinion on another specific scene.

Here are some examples of books that tend to come into my conversations and scenes you can use to bluff your way through a conversation. No one will be any wiser.


Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

There is a wealth of material to reference in this book. The scene I tend to mention is early in the book: a character’s apartment is full of cockroaches, but he too afraid to kill them. Instead, he traps them in glasses until his apartment is an obstacle course of upside down glasses with a cockroach in each, lethargically refusing to die.

However, that scene is pretty early on in the book. If you want people to think you read at least a bit more, there’s always the rehab. A man escapes from rehab every night to put cats in bags and set them on fire. That might be harder to work into polite conversation, however.


Ulysses by James Joyce

Masturbation should always be a great cocktail party topic. And if there’s such a thing as a great masturbation scene from literature, I think James Joyce has a fine contender with his Gerty / Leopold Bloom scene.

The scene itself doesn’t consist of much. Gerty sees Bloom on a hill, and being a romantic schoolgirl, she envisions him as a heroic character. Joyce satirizes a great deal of romance novels with Gerty’s inner monologue. The kicker of the scene is that while Gerty is imagining them running away together into the sunset, Bloom is jerking off to her hemline. When she stands to walk away, he notices she walks with a limp. His reaction? “Glad I didn’t know it when she was on show.”


Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

The movie is very faithful to the book until the end, so the ending is what you’ll want to use. It’s best to just get indignant to how they changed the ending, because that’s the complaint I hear the most.

The buildings didn’t explode in the book because Tyler favored a more faulty type of bomb. The narrator shot himself surrounded by Marla and an assortment of the support group members.

Or you could mention that the soap in the book was made from the liposuctioned fat of Marla’s mother.


House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

The scene that creeped me out the most was always hearing the S.O.S. tapping through the strange doorway.

However, if you mention the letters from Truant’s (the narrator of the story) mother in the hospital, you can pretend like you’ve read two books, House of Leaves and The Whalestoe Letters. Truant’s mother was institutionalized and died in the hospital. One theory I’ve seen mentioned a few times is that the entire book is her delusion. Doesn’t hold up well, but can inspire passionate conversations about the book. All you have to do is bring it up, then stand back and nod.


The Invisibles by Grant Morrison

There is some controversy over whether The Matrix ripped off The Invisibles. Even Morrison seems to think it’s true. If this ever comes up, this is what Kenan thinks you should say:

“What a load of bullshit. If Morrison wants to be angry at someone for ripping him off, he should be mad at Osama bin Laden for stealing his idea for decentralized cells of terrorists. Jesus.”

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find the article here if you'd like. how about that liposuctioned fat, eh?

veronica's gotta grow - article/blog post

my favorite tv show:

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Going Away To College: Or, Why We Should All Cut Riley Finn Some Slack
by Dan Carlson

In case it's escaped the notice of even the dullest reader out there, I've got a pretty special place in the black rock I call my heart for "Veronica Mars." Now cruising gamely along in its third season, despite low ratings and a network dumb enough to pair it with "Gilmore Girls" (a show about absolutely, positively nothing at all), "Veronica Mars" is still one of the best shows on TV. But after two full years of exploring high school life, Veronica up and graduated, and is now attending Hearst College. Her matriculation mirrors not just the show's transfer from the defunct UPN to the new CW, but also the fact that the show itself is at a crossroads, namely, the elimination of its premise — high-school private eye — and a gradual change in its mission statement.



This is bound to be a polarizing time for the show's hardcore fans, and it's reminiscent of the similar struggle faced by what some have called the show's ancestor, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Granted, I think that comparing any two shows beyond a certain point is unwise, and most people are just linking "Buffy" and "Veronica Mars" out of a well-meaning laziness: Both shows were centered around a strong, flawed, complex female character in high school; both shows placed a premium on witty dialogue and interpersonal relationships; both shows are on low-rated pseudo-networks; etc. But the shows do have their similarites [sic], primarily their ability to explore the hell of growing up through the archetypal lens of high school, the one experience that unites us all in common misery. After its third season, "Buffy" went through the same growing pains now working their way through "Veronica Mars," as Buffy went off to college and the show struggled to find its larger purpose even as its core dynamic was forever altered. More than just having key characters removed and assigned to a spin-off, the "Buffy" universe had to deal with its very own existential crisis: What happens when the teenage superhero starts to grow up?

The show dealt with the inevitable problems the only way it knew how: By pushing through them. The first episode of the fourth season features another pack of vampires led by one of the lamest ringleaders the show ever came up with, but the villain of the week did one thing right: She broke Buffy's umbrella, a symbol of the good work she'd done in high school. It was a crushing, visceral way for the show to proclaim that the times were changing in a big way.

The fourth season, though certainly not a favorite of some fans, nevertheless turned out some great episodes — the experimental "Hush," the crossover "Pangs," the enjoyable one-off "Superstar," the excellent "Fear, Itself" — and, much more importantly, broadened its worldview. College is a world of gray tones next to the starkly defined areas of high school, and Buffy interacted with a greater variety of people with more darkly human (as opposed to demonic) traits, including Parker, who slept with Buffy and never called her again. He wasn't supernaturally evil, just a tool. It was in important step for the show, and one that paved the way for more complex relationships in the characters' collective futures. The fourth season was radically different from the first three because it had to be.

That's the problem, and possible solution, facing "Veronica Mars." The show's first two seasons delved into the dark sides of class warfare between the haves and have-nots of the small town of Neptune, smartly recognizing that cash is the biggest dividing line between the lunch tables in the cafeteria. But university life is rarely that stratified, and the only people who cling to such dated notions of how to define themselves are the jerks who seem to think college is basically Grade 13. "Veronica Mars" is going to have to figure out how to let go of the rich-poor struggle that so often defines the stories.

Veronica used to be a high-school snoop, and but she's going to have to transform into a bigger, more nuanced character to get the show over the tough bumps coming out of two solid years of stories. The show should set about trying to define Veronica in grander terms, like what kind of person does she want to be, in order to work. The central group of characters has been altered — Duncan's gone, Beaver's dead — and the remaining ones aren't what they used to be, none more than Weevil, who's gone from ruthless gang leader to the equivalent of wacky sitcom neighbor in only a few months (seriously, making Weevil the janitor at Hearst was a low blow, especially after offering up the tantaloizing [sic] possibility that he might work with Keith). But "Veronica Mars" can and will succeed if it pushes the characters to grow, and if it becomes comfortable with somewhat redefining itself. You don't go back; you go on to the next place, whatever that is.

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find the article here, at slowly going bald.

what will you capture?

You'll learn that even the one person who wasn't supposed to ever let you down, probably will.

You'll have your heart broken and you'll break others' hearts.

You'll blame a new love for things an old love did.

You'll fight with your best friend, you'll cry because time is flying by, and you'll eventually lose someone you love.

So take too many pictures, laugh too much, forgive freely, and love like you've never been hurt, because every second you spend angry or upset is a second of happiness you can never get back.





~ a words submission to the faith category of an electronic anthropology collection... ^_~ an e-time capsule.

it's like a place i remember being once

fellow collegemate and blogger jaggd has some interesting thoughts on happiness.

meanwhile, a more academic and new-york-centric look at the same topic. it's v. long but well worth a skim.

as for me, i'm not where i want to be right now, but working on it. or toughing it out at least. or surviving. aren't they all just words for each other, anyway??

there's no business...

i want everything.

i want to be the center of attention, the center of the universe, the universal answer, the answer to no question.

that's a lie. i want to be a black hole. i want nothing to come near me out of fear of what i may do, what i may take, how i may ruin.

i want to be understood, but i don't want to put in the effort.

i want to be insulated from everything that hurts. twice over. i want to be strong enough that pain never breaches my outer walls, that it never pierces my armor and stabs through the skin. i want to have no achillles' heel, no soft spot, no sweet spot. i want to be all sweet spot.

i feel like i deserve to be punished. like my whole life is a righting of wrongs. unsuccessfully so. i want to be successful. but i want the world to measure success with the same barometer i'm using, not the impossible, daunting scale it has now where my efforts don't even register.

i want to be loved, but i don't want to put in the effort. i've already put in the effort. i want it to be given to me instead of being taken from me. but i don't want anyone to know.

i want nothing.

quadruple bypass blogging

fellow blogger jaggd wrote a really interesting post recently about his motivation for blogging...or, as the post explains, perhaps his recent lack thereof.

ever since i moved to blogspot from pitas, i've been trying to keep my posts minimally about my personal life; i enjoy putting up interesting articles and recommendations so people can see what i am interested in, but i've been trying not to get too detailed. my biggest exception, as i think is natural, is when i am upset; this is the time when i feel most alone, and thus need to "vent" the most.

ironically, this is the time when words are most difficult for me to form. how do you talk about yourself and your issues without sounding really, painfully, self-involved? tricky.

what's more, it is during these periods that i feel zero motivation to write. part of it is that, like my friend, i think that no one is going to read it anyway. no one cares. that is a powerful toxin to creative expression, i think.

another part of it is that lack of motivation comes part and parcel with feeling blue; it's a defining characteristic, in fact.

the other thing that happens is that i write, and then i hate what i produce. i strive to be funny, insightful, interesting...then i end up positive i sound ridiculous, like i am trying too hard. it's an interesting beast. [blogger's note: another fellow blogger and old friend sakusha also has some very eloquent words about inspiration and writing. click the link & search the page for post title "broken silence" and "disjointed ramble."]

anyway, i had a blog post planned tonight to touch a bit on the topic of hospitals. my grandfather is going in for a quadruple bypass tomorrow. the post might have reflected on my decision tonight that i really do not like hospitals (tonight being only my third hospital experience i can remember), also fattened up a bit with facts that i gathered about the procedure from web md (which, if you have never visited, is an awesome site - UNLESS YOU ARE SICK), and, as can only be expected, perhaps a couple thoughts on death as well.

but you know what? it just seemed too personal.

so i got to thinking about blogging. i used to (and still do) blog about personal things, and as you can probably already tell, i certainly have no problem not shutting up! about philosophical/psychological things. so what's the issue? i'm not sure.

somewhere between planning my post tonight and typing it up, the elusive feeling i was trying to capture somehow . . . changed. and you know, maybe that is the point of blogging? to just capture those really thin slivers of perspective in that one teensy, particular moment, before all the other emotions/fears/things you are trying to express take center stage for their moment.

manipulating wiki?? politians, have some dignity! - article

seriously? politics leaves such a bad taste in my mouth.

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Campaign manager resigns amid Wikipedia flap
Biography altered to include candidate's son's DUI arrest

From Peter Hamby
CNN
Wednesday, April 26, 2006; Posted: 9:10 p.m. EDT (01:10 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Georgia gubernatorial candidate accepted the resignation of her campaign manager Wednesday after he was accused of changing the online Wikipedia biography of an opponent in the upcoming Democratic primary.

Secretary of State Cathy Cox's opponent, Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor, said Cox campaign manager Morton Brilliant altered an online encyclopedia entry to include a reference to Taylor's son being arrested for DUI after an accident that killed his passenger.

Wikipedia may be edited by anyone.

"We have reviewed the situation carefully and everything I have seen in this short period of time indicates that the posting originated from my campaign office," Cox said. "I am genuinely sorry for any anguish this incident has caused the Taylor family."

The resignation came after Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales confirmed that the addition to the biography came from an IP address affiliated with the Cox campaign.

Taylor spokesman Rick Dent said earlier Wednesday that the Cox campaign was "exploiting a tragedy for political reasons." He also asked for an apology from Cox and for Brilliant to be fired.

Cox said she made it clear to her staff that the incident with Taylor's son was off limits during the campaign.

"Today, I have once again made it clear to my staff that personal attacks, especially on the family members of candidates, are completely off limits and not at all in keeping with my desire to change the mean and bitter tone of politics," Cox said.

The original addition to Taylor's Wikipedia biography read: "Taylor's son Fletcher recently was involved in an alcohol-related car accident. The passenger in his car, whom Fletcher identified as his best friend, was killed. Currently, Fletcher is in an alcohol treatment facility awaiting trial."

By Wednesday night, it had been edited to read, "Taylor's son, Fletcher, was charged with driving under the influence (DUI) after crashing his car on August 18, 2005, in Charleston, South Carolina, killing his passenger."

The biography also included a reference to Brilliant resigning.

Taylor and Cox are to square off in the Georgia Democratic primary July 18. The winner will challenge Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue.

This is not the first time a Wikipedia entry has caused a flap. Because anyone may edit an entry, the site has become a popular tool among politicians wishing to slam a rival or laud themselves.

According to The Associated Press, the problem is so widespread that Wikipedia has tightened its submission guidelines and set up alerts so that its operators know when Capitol Hill staffers edit online profiles.

One of the most well-known instances of an error on the site involved John Seigenthaler Sr., whose Wikipedia biography said that he was linked to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. The man who posted the false information later said he was playing a joke, but only after the information had been on the site for 132 days and had been picked up by other Web sites.

Seigenthaler, a retired journalist and Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant in the early 1960s, wrote a November column in USA Today calling Wikipedia a "flawed and irresponsible research tool."

"When I was a child, my mother lectured me on the evils of 'gossip,' " Seigenthaler wrote in the column. "She held a feather pillow and said, 'If I tear this open, the feathers will fly to the four winds, and I could never get them back in the pillow. That's how it is when you spread mean things about people.' For me, that pillow is a metaphor for Wikipedia."

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kindly borrowed from a codejoy post. go check out his site & his flickr photos, they are lovely!

neurotic

overthinking has made me nauseous...

sometimes i wish things could be easy.
easier. easier for me.

i'm my own worst enemy...i want it to come naturally.

no, i want it to appear to come naturally. i don't want people to suspect.

and as a result, when i'm at my breaking point, i have no one to go to. since in the end i'm just a damn girl.

theatre pretentiousness - post from a sister blog

doing theatre in a very restrictive department at williams meant that i heard the gist of the below sentiment quite often. unfortunately, it was often accompanied by a bit of anger, which always finds a way to mar good argument.

jess's testimony below, i think, strikes a great balance between the expression of her thought and her reaction to that thought...i don't agree with her on all points, but a great majority of them are dead-on, and i think she's hit the exact right pitch with her tone. it's a very good post.

visit her site here, and a link to her direct post here.

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I am rebelling.

I am, first and foremost, rebelling against the idea that theatre cannot succeed simply by being enjoyable. When I say enjoyable, I don't mean catered to the lowest common denominator, but I do mean accessible, I mean funny, I mean uplifting, I mean (dare I say it) entertaining.

I think, if theatre can make you smile, can make you laugh, can make you realize for a moment a good feeling or a better feeling than the one you walked in with, that can be considered a success.

I think, too, that if theatre can bring you to some other moment of emotion--if it can stir you to anger, if it can bring you to tears, if it can give you some peace or clarity, that is successful theatre.

And, quite frankly, if that end is achieved despite a straightforward structure, simple dialogue, unoriginal ideas, predictable music, basic sets, shoddy costumes, ineffective blocking, odd direction, or mere lack of pretension--I don't care.

I'm taking a stand. I got into theatre because nothing gave me more pleasure in elementary school than to stand on the stage of my coffee table and sing--gasp--The Sound of Music. And quite honestly, I don't know if I've gotten that much pure joy from theatre since then. I've had fun, I've learned a lot, and I think that that's great. But I find the notion of theatre as Art And Only Art to be...bizarre. Experimenting with forms and ideas and theories is immensely interesting on an intellectual level and often results in some really amazing, thought-provoking, emotion-eliciting, beautiful work. But to judge everything else in the realm of theatre against whatever idea of "Good" is in vogue at the moment is to discard so much of value.

I'll let you in on a little secret, one that could get me kicked out of all Theatredom. I still adore Sound of Music. I still cherish Annie. I think that Evita--the Madonna version, 'cause Patti LuPone scares the crap out of me--is fantastic. I think Les Mis is great and I sing On My Own all the time. And I will say this and I will say it loud and clear. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ANY OF THAT.

For years, I've been taught by jeers, jests, comments, and criticisms of the other theatre folk to whom I have been exposed that things like Andrew Lloyd Weber and Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals are, essentially, worthless. That's snobbish, that's pretentious, and that's untrue. They are simple, they are straightforward, some of them due to time period, etc, are sexist/racist. That last is unfortunate, but generally society does not dismiss Lear because Goneril and Regan are crappy women, or Othello because people look down on his race. Producing plays from other times is not typically seen as an endorsement of the values of those times. But really, when it comes down to it, it's the simplicity, the predictability, and the familiarity of shows like that that are most criticized. Beckett it ain't, but Sound of Music is, legitimately, good theatre when performed with joy.

I never want to be someone who scoffs when they mention musical theatre, or sneers at the name "Neil Simon." If you don't care for something, that's a matter of personal opinion, and not something that should be dictated by anyone else's ideas of what constitutes Art or Theatre or Good or whatever. I appreciate very much being in an academic environment where I'm exposed to so many ideas and theories about what can be good, and where people try things and do obscure theatre and not just what is familiar and safe. At the same time, I think a lot of people here (faculty and students alike) tend to categorically reject pieces that are more popular simply because of their popularity. It's that attitude, and not individual preference, that bothers me.

I'm fairly certain that anyone working or studying in the field got into it because at some point they just did it because it was fun. That's what this comes down to for me--I'm not against hard work, challenging, frustrating creative processes, strange, obscure plays or choices, or straying from the beaten path. I am against the view so very neatly encapsulated for us (however facetiously) by none other than William Finn, that "If you're having a good time, you're not doing theatre." He was half-joking, and had been put on the spot when he walked into our workshop the other day, but some part of him meant it. My burning question: Why the hell not?

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." PLAYERS. Theatre is something, at its most basic, that must be done out of joy, out of love, out of passion. I'm absolutely not putting forward the notion that every show must be one big tap number or a screaming laugh riot, but even when working on the sharpest, darkest tragedy, in order for it to be worth anything, it has to be somehow about the joy of creating and the intense, overwhelming need to communicate on a level other than the analytical, intellectual one that so many of us tend toward. It's possible for every level--design, tech, directing, performing--to be technically perfect, and for a play to fail because it does not inspire something in its audience. I've seen children of ten imbue performances with an intensity and passion that make a half-hour day camp musical genuinely riveting and hilarious, and I've seen adult actors on gorgeous sets in famous venues give performances that move me to look at my watch almost more often than I look at the stage.

This is theatre. If it's not, on some level, "a good time", then WHY would any of us be here? Theatre can have important messages, absolutely, but most kids don't get into theatre for political reasons. We got here because it was fun, it was intense, it was a real challenge artistically and intellectually but also emotionally...it's not brain surgery. It's not feeding the homeless. It's not saving the rainforest and it's not keeping the peace. It can occasionally try to work towards things like that...I think that's great, actually. But if that was all it was, people would just become brain surgeons or work for non-profits or whatever. It's something bigger. Theatre has the power to affect people personally by connecting with something deep and internal. If it lacks that, it's sunk. If it lacks that, it's a bunch of grown-ups playing dress-up and spending lots of money to create gigantic visual art installments that, in and of themselves, lack their final layer.

So, going forward, that's how I'll judge theatre. If it genuinely affects me, then it's successful for me. If it's theatre I'm making, I damn well better find a way to connect with it and with the audience, or I'm really not interested. Theatre for its own or, worse, for pretension's sake, is really not worth anything to me, and I no longer intend to let anyone tell me what's good theatre or to participate in any way that I can't find any passion for. I know that's not the way to make a living at it, and that's ok with me. I've realized that, as much as I love performing, I want my life's work to be bigger than that and to match more closely with all of this that's been percolating in my brain for the last few weeks. I want to keep doing theatre with kids--as a camp counselor, as a classroom teacher, or in an outside theatre group that I someday aspire to start. In my ideal world, this would be a program in a city that would allow kids of all ages to play on the stage, free of charge, simply for love of it. I really think that theatre with kids is one of the most amazing things I've ever witnessed. For the last six summers I worked at a plain, ordinary YMCA day camp, helping to run the drama program. We got 25 kids every Monday, and by Friday, without fail, those kids would put on a show (almost always a musical) that was leagues beyond what could possibly have been expected of them. Their desire to express the fun they were having and share it with the other campers, the staff, their parents--while perhaps not consciously expressed in their minds--absolutely shone through every second of their shows. And THAT is why I got into this business, and for me, THAT is where the whole value of it still lies.

car. ears. eggs. - article

ladies and gentlemen. don't say i never gave you anything interesting.


Man pulls car with ears while standing on eggs

A Chinese man pulled a car with his ears while walking on eggs without breaking them.

Zhang Xingquan, 38, pulled the car for about 20 metres in Dehui, Jinli province.

His performance drew a big crowd of astonished onlookers.

Zhang said he began to learn the stunt when he was just eight years old.

He can also pick up a 25kg bicycle with his mouth while standing on eggs.

recommendations 1 - a sleuth, a spread, and a scent

drumroll, please! stolen pretty much directly from mcsweeney's, i am introducing my list of recommendations! the first list is: a sleuth, a spread, and a scent!

"veronica mars"
smart, funny, perceptive - describes both the heroine & upn's new teen detective drama. kristen bell is perfect as veronica; at first i kept being distracted by how similar she was to allison mack's chloe on "smallville," but i honestly got over that really quick cause the story in the pilot is so good! as for lilly, generally, playing the dead girl isn't a great showcase for your acting ability, but amanda seyfried brings so much life to the flashback scenes it's hard to imagine the role going to anyone else. plus, the boys (wallace, logan, duncan, weevil) really grew on me; i wasn't a fan of any of them at first, but the season takes you through so much character growth. and like "the oc," the adult characters are every bit as well developed and interesting. be careful if you're a newbie: start with the pilot, and know that no, of course it's not entirely realistic, but few tv shows are--where "vm" succeeds is, like "buffy," the point is that you can relate to how the characters interact with each other and grow. hooray for season 2's renewal!

chocolate peanut butter
no, i don't mean nutella. i mean Jiffy: Smooth Sensations - Chocolate Peanut Butter. it's not that weird jar with stripes of peanut butter & stripes of something else--it's perfect, blended, delicious peanut butter that you can put in sandwhiches, on apples, crackers, celery...oranges (aaah good times w/olga)...or just eat by the spoonful (parents generally do not approve of this method). it's good. orgasm good. try.

vanilla
i understand this is pretty broad, but i've decided that it's my blog, and i'll do what i want, thankyouverymuch. vanilla scented oil not only makes me enjoy being me, but also probably had a lot to do with boyfriend retention at one point in my life. similarly, vanilla candles are a big recommendation. i freely admit that i overdo it on the vanilla extract when a recipe calls for it. and vanilla ice cream kicks chocolate's ass. (for some reason, i'm not that big on vanilla bean or french vanilla ice creams. they're just fine, but inferior somehow. opinions on this are welcome.)

ice creams? ices cream? :) hey, opnions on everything mentioned are welcome!