All Dressed Up With Nowhere to Go

Or at least that's how I feel. I'm all packed for Dragon*con now, save for getting some small miscellaneous items and errands taken care of. I'll be going to class, and I will be doing some work. (I'm not that obsessive... yet.) But otherwise... I'm essentially taken care of work-wise up until next Wednesday. Which wasn't easy... I read during my free time at work, read before I went to sleep at night... I read a lot. And wrote a good portion too. It's both sad and joyous to go through two pages of writing about a short story only to realize, in all the ensuing explication without any clear answer, that the main character is a Virgin Mary figure. Joyous because it's the very breakthrough that makes the reading response worth it. Sad because I have to rewrite the entire thing so that it more specifically heads in that direction, rather than vaguely meandering there.

Aristotle cracks me up. We're reading his Poetics, which is an exploration of tragedy and epic forms. There are some places where he's so plain, so didactic that it really helps, where he states the obvious and the obvious is precisely what you need. But there are other places where he has become somewhat dated.

"A beginning is that which itself does not follow necessarily from anything else, but some second thing naturally exists or occurs after it. Conversely, an end is that which does itself naturally follow from something else, either necessarily or in general, but there is nothing else after it. A middle is that which itself comes after something else, and some other thing comes after it."

"Suffering is an action that involves destruction or pain."

At least he defines his terms, I suppose.

My Birthday

It's never too early to think about it.

After a comment a professor made in class, I looked at all of my syllabi. I have two midterms on the 8th of October. One on the day after. What this culminates in is a busy birthday without even the cathartic suggestion of a full release of stress, as I'll still be studying for Tuesday. Ah well. I'm sure I'll find ways to have fun through it.

Thursday I had my second line-up of classes. I wasn't feeling terribly well that day (I'm feeling 95% better now), so I went through a lot of both classes with a good deal of impatience.

Renaissance Tragedies:

My honors seminar! The one class with people I already know (save the one where I have had the professor previously). Nick (cardboard club) and Richard (all over the place) are the main culprits, and there's also a couple of others (Kate and Allison) whom I know from previous classes but don't often talk to.

The professor is a bundle of energy. She was definitely the happiest person to be there, not that we were unhappy, as a whole.

First was the introduction, and we had to give, among other things, our tentative thesis topic. Uhhh...

One thing that both Leslie and I have noticed this semester is that professors have been going over the syllabi more. Whether that means glossing over it as opposed to just handing it out, or giving a more thorough rendition depends on the professor. In her case, it meant reading over the entirety of the text and explaining what everything meant. From the overview, and on through everything else. I admire her thoroughness, her excruciating detail. She is a very particular person about such things, and that will prove useful. I simply, due partially to my impatience, found the medium she chose to exercise it on lacking.

But the reading list seems engaging, and I actually like this translation of Aristotle (we're starting off with the Poetics), so... I hope the class grows on me. It should.

Women in American History:

I somehow expected my professor to be a modification of all the other professors I've had that have done Women's Studies or feminism, some variation on old and wise. While she has certainly earned her wisdom, she does not yet have the grey hair, which surprisingly cast considerable shock initially. Must... learn... not to cast too many preconceptions.

She seems like she'll be good. She had to restrain herself from cursing a few times (damn is off-limits, but smart-ass isn't, for an example of general limits). She also had the most interesting way of managing our introductions to each other. First, she made us draw a circle and write around it things that we identify with... rather, aspects of our identity. So, having done that (and not having gotten nearly done, as I realized later), she made us use that as a reference point... in talking about ourselves and then having others ask questions about us. One person liked Star Wars, a few people came from the same city and commented on that. Lots of cat loving and hating was going on.

Then it's my turn. "Hi, my name is James _____, I'm a senior in English. I hope to become a professor, but I know the job market isn't *terribly* good for that, so you could say I'm an optimist."
"The two aren't mutually exclusive," the professor observes.
"Yeah... I like my family and bowling and *insert a few other random things*... and I can't really think of other things at the moment."
"So, what field of English do you want to study?" A girl on the other side of the room says.
"Ah... I'm interested in medieval studies." Some murmurs go around the room.
"What's your highest bowling score?" someone else says, leaning forward a little.
"280," I say without thinking about it. There the murmuring really starts! I don't really know how such things happen (are they all simultaneously muttering, "What? 280?" or looking at each other or shuffling in their seats or...?), but there's a definite stirring only matched by a couple of other people.
"Wow, so you do bowl," the professor admits. Then the spotlight goes to someone else and I sit down, drained and relieved.

Class Part I!

So today was that wonderful day where people, many young, some older, walk into a class and sit in desks to shuffle about for a few minutes, making various attempts at conversation or dignified silence until a figure walks in front of the class, hands out sheets of paper, and talks for a while.

Yes, it was the first day of class. I had two classes going for me, both in the early afternoon.

Women Writers in Britain

Or, more accurately termed, Medieval and Renaissance Women Writers.

Like all classes I've taken with the word "Women" in them, this one was rather lopsided gender-wise, which is a shame in this case because what I've read of the different authors is broadly engaging material.

I've had the professor before, and she remembered me (after a spring and a summer!). She is both unflinchingly nice and demanding. (We're definitely going to be reading loads, as her syllabus declares.) It was a brief introduction, which was good. Apparently a lot of the focus (after Marie de France, our first few weeks of reading) will be on mystical revelation and Catholic theology, which will be difficult for me. But I'm willing to give it a shot.

Modern American Literature

This man has facial hair to be reckoned with.

No, no, he seems fairly good. Actually, I did an overachieving moment and printed off the syllabus from online before class, and did the readings. Like with the other professor, the syllabus tells a far harsher story than the professor does. He wants to have "true dialogue," that is, we expressing our ideas without any preconception on his part of what he wants in reply. I hope that works out.

Now, two more classes. One I have already read the syllabus for, and it scares me. Nonetheless, we'll see how it suits.

So this is what they think of Apaches

I ran across this a couple of days ago. Now, this song is one of those that has been done so many times that it's familiar from somewhere, whether it's from a commercial or whether it's the music that plays when the Braves hit a home run.

The original by the Shadows is good. Solid. You can find it on Youtube as well.

The Danish Tommy Seebach-made disco version, on the other hand, has a quality that has been described as kitsch, but that's not quite it. I can't help watching it... it is maddeningly fun to watch, because of its sheer cheesiness. It's dance music, it's beyond silly, overwrought, and yet the spirit of the song is contagious.

I think Scott should play the piano like this man does the keyboard. One foot always jamming it out.

Hammurabi!

Mischief managed!

It's been an action-packed morning, and now it's settled down. Woke up at 6, got to the DMV at 7, waited the obligatory hour, got my driver's license renewed, got a haircut, returned the library books, picked up the prescription for my face, and made it back in time for Cookie to eagerly beat her tail on the couch before she realized I wasn't wearing a bacon suit. (There's an idea for Halloween! Go as a giant strip of bacon... and tape a gnawing plush dog to the side. Or the top.)

Last night, I was doing the very occasional guilty pleasure of looking at the comments on the letters to the editor for the local newspaper. There's always a brief temptation to comment, but I know that most debates on an internet forum are venting, and especially with the tone of those people... I don't feel like being labeled a socialist for believing something that has nothing to do with socialism whatsoever.

But even though they didn't listen, they did say a few interesting things, which got me to thinking about punishment.

What is punishment for? We think a person broke the law. The law is enforced. They go in front of a judge, have their fair trial, and are either released or punished, depending on innocence or guilt. So we punish the guilty.

And of course punishment need not be only by the government. Society does it too. We disapprove of your actions. Your actions are bad. You are guilty of a bad thing. You are punished by our ostracizing you, by our thinking disapproving thoughts about you as we glower and refuse to accept you as one of us, our priveleged group of decent people.

That is the what. Why do that? An eye for an eye? Vengeance and retribution, another way of saying, "I've been wronged, and by doing this act, I'll feel right again?" What about punishment makes you feel right? "They're getting what they deserve." Do we deserve better? "Have we committed murder?" In those cases, point.

Why do they deserve it? "Because they've done wrong, and wrong acts should not be rewarded or let alone (and thus encouraged by silence), but rather deterred." Ah, deterred! And what better way to do that than to punish?

So we seek to deter crime. A punishment should both be a demonstration to the innocent that one should not commit this act and a prescription that would discourage an offender of repeating the offense.

On both fronts, there are problems with this model. For most crimes, no one could afford to do them if enforcement were absolute, even ones like speeding. (I'd hate to have to pay that much EVERY time the needle went over the line.) Just because you dabble on the other side of the law doesn't mean you will be punished for it, and in cases of particularly immoral crimes (like murder and theft), this is regrettable.

Second, we are human beings, whether we've committed a crime or not. Ideally, this means that we are kept in a diverse civil order by more than threat. If a person becomes comfortable with a gun constantly to their head and nothing else holding them back, they can do anything. Punishment is one way to deter and discourage, but it shouldn't be the only one employed. We should teach morals and ethics, and in teaching be careful not to coerce by brainwashing, for a coerced mind is simply the same person with the gun inside their head. For those that are already being punished, they should have some recourse to counseling, if they seem to require it. They didn't start out as criminals. One person last night said that we shouldn't spend so much time trying to understand why criminals act out, but I disagree. If we can learn why, we can better help them potentially reform themselves, and if it's a problem that can be addressed by society, then efforts may be made in that direction as well.

Punishment alone just doesn't cut it. It works for some, perhaps, but not for others. If preventing crimes from occuring again were our only goal, and human life weren't important, we could just kill every offender. But we are blessed with better sense than that, and hopefully we're bursting with so much sense that we can see that talking down isn't enough, that we must also encourage the good.


While I was writing this, I realized another thing that was influencing my thoughts on this. It's at an anti-legalized abortion rally, and they were being asked what the woman's punishment would be, and whether it would be the same as murder (as they claim in rhetoric). They gave intriguing answers, often not having really thought about the part of making abortion illegal where the people who still do it have to have something happen to them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk6t_tdOkwo

(Needless to say, I am pro-choice, in that I believe the woman is best able of deciding for herself what pregnancy means for her, when life begins, and whether she should have a baby, and she should have the option of a safe place should she decide it is necessary.)

Rain!

I... I felt rain! They were sprinkles, and not apparitions of my imagination, unless Cookie was suddenly tired of being walked and hurried inside for another reason. (Plausible, if she's a psychic dog!)

But yes! Hopefully the clouds will continue to darken. I bet it's because that little kid that keeps praying for sunshine days has gone to school, and of course she doesn't have the time to pray there!

But school lets out in an hour! The clouds must be swift, for that bus ride is a long one, and they'll certainly have the time to pray an anti-rainy-day enchantment.

Hot

Leslie has observed that it's anywhere from 5 to 10 degrees cooler in Knoxville than it is here.

Maybe it's Clarksville's way of saying goodbye.

Knickknack.

I had a highly interesting dream this morning in between the time the phone semi-woke me up and I actually got up. The only thing that I can remember for sure is seeing on the news where there was a scandal because the honorary opening pitch was thrown by a naked man. In front of Mary McDonnell (she's the president on Battlestar Galactica) and some other important people.

Let's hope psychoanalysts never catch up to me.

You Are 94% Feminist

You are a total feminist. This doesn't mean you're a man hater (in fact, you may be a man). You just think that men and women should be treated equally. It's a simple idea but somehow complicated for the world to put into action.

Are You a Feminist?

You Are Impressionism

You think the world is quite beautiful, especially if you look at it in new and interesting ways. You tend to focus on color and movement in art. For you, seeing the big picture is much more important than recording every little detail. You can find inspiration anywhere... especially from nature.

What Art Movement Are You?

This last one is interesting, because I've taken the test twice before. It's been a few years. And since last time, I haven't move any left or right (or at least not much), but I've moved a lot down. They have an interesting chart of the current Presidential contenders somewhere on their site (http://www.politicalcompass.org/ is the site, and http://www.politicalcompass.org/usprimaries2007 is what I'm talking about), and it's interesting that our spectrum is so... compacted. Of course, the diagram doesn't tell everything about positions and otherwise, but it does explain why I like Kucinich.

A Couple of Books

Many times, the older selections in the UT library are hilarious in their archaic nature, reading predictions about global oil shortages from the 50s and the global economic forecast. (It was pretty gloom-and-doom then too, at least for the author.)

However, there's a treasure trove of things to laugh at and puzzle over in Mamaw's basement. The rows of books that mostly go unlooked in favor of the games drew my eye this evening. Two books caught my eye.

So You Think God Doesn't Exist. Written by someone who thanked Billy Graham in the acknowledgements, this was a skinny book that tried to assert God's existence. I generally take issue with the methods of "proof" that he used, ones that I've occasionally guiltily used in literature papers and haven't gotten away with.

Just because the planet is in a good rotation, orbit, with a sun the right temperature and so on doesn't mean that these circumstances exist because God made it so for us here, and nowhere else. Such conceit!

By the causation that we can perceive, we are born from our environment and adapt to it to such a degree that we can, through technology, create temporary zones of independence from it, with walls and A/C. The environment may or may not have been made for us, but by the mechanics we can comprehend, such a question is unanswerable definitively. Though the pre-existence of the environment (or the material precursors) could be God (or gods), it could be any number of things we cannot conceive of. We assume the universe is ordered on our rating of intelligence and the power to affect events when we conceive of all-powerful beings. While we show some proficiency with the material facts of the universe, speaking with any sureness on the nonmaterial, enough to offer only one possible solution without acknowledging any others, is a way of going about things that would instantly scream confirmation bias. Which is fine, but it should be acknowledged with the humility of a Milton or a Donne, who were wise enough to believe even as they confronted the doubt that cannot be disproved, only filled with faith. Any scientific argument for belief tries to fill the faith with a doubt-ridden draught. At some point, faith, with only vague origin, must supply the excess.

Of course, they were concilliatory about evolution and creationism. They acknowledged the difference in the questions they asked (what v. why), and even wished that creationists wouldn't attack evolution. That wins points from me.

The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette. This is a trip. A 27 year old trip, by last revision. I will give a few quotes.

About when dating first occurs to boys: "The first sign, of course, is cleanliness. He will suddenly begin bathing without reminders... (other things)... Of course, none of these things may happen - but if they do, you are lucky parents." Needless to say, Scott hasn't entered this stage yet.

A little later, it discussed the etiquette of taking someone out. If any reference were made to a boy paying, it was assumed that they would, with a girl bringing along 'mad money' just in case he is short a bit. But can girls pay? "Even if the parents are not along, if a girl invites a boy to the theater or a sports event she should pay not only for the tickets but also for the bus or taxi, the soda and hot dogs consumed, and any other expenses." It seems... condescending. A guy will know to pay for these things, but a girl has to be reminded of the little details. Of course there were reasons for it; women paying for a date happened more recently, so there were still questions about the guy's role in such an affair. "She may wish to give her date a sum of money from which he can pay for things as they go along, if he would be embarrassed to have her pay directly." (My emphasis.) Pride does silly things.

A little later, it had a whole section on acceptable drug use, which included tobacco, alcohol, aspirin, and something else (as long as they're not all at once). Then came this title: "Marijuana and Hashish: Marginally Socially Acceptable." They were illegal but popular, so the author approached this tender issue with resigned reproach.

One last thing was in the treatment of women in the workplace, another relatively recent phenomenon. One title was "The Use of Ms." After discussing it briefly the author explains its advantage. "One does not have to research whether the woman one is addressing is married or not." Which is convenient, because many times, this kind of information isn't relevant in a workplace.

Of course, this gesture to the women's movement was followed by conservatism in letter writing. "Correspondence really should have a Mr., Mrs., or Ms. in front of names." Finally they allow for a semi-intimate letter to a friend to have a 'Dear Lucille Ball,' but only lovers and bosom buddies are allowed the coveted 'Dear Lucy.'

And now to go on a digression.

Ms.

I was confused by this title as a child. Teachers would always introduce themselves, and some would use this and some would use Mrs.. And some others would use Miss. Even after I learned that Mrs. means married, I was still confused. Why Miss and Ms.? It turns out that one is not just the shortened version of the other, and the history is delightful.

Ms. used to be a shortening of "Mistress," which is the married woman, back in the 1700s. (Several plays I read this semester had to put an asterix next to some titles in the Cast of Characters to indicate that the person was indeed married. Restoration comedy is particularly concerned with marriage.)

And then it got taken up in the sixties as an alternative to Mrs. and Miss, mutually exclusive because a person cannot be at once married and not married. This Ms. would become the complement of Mr., which is also irreverent to such distinctions. This was a better alternative than mistress anyhow, which now has connotations of debauchery.

I try to use whatever anyone is comfortable with, but I normally default to Ms. if no one shows a clear preference. And of course this is more operative in written language; Ms. and Miss have no real difference when spoken, unless one is said breathlessly and the other one like a parseltongue. (Missssssssssssssssssssssssss.)