Truth sits upon the lips of dying men, and falsehood, while I lived, was far from mine.
-- Sohrab, Sohrab and Rustum
Sohrab and Rustum is an epic poem. I can't remember who it's by, but if you can take the extended similes and ornate language, it's a great read. I read it in 10th grade for world literature, and this quote, which I had written down somewhere because I liked it so much, came to my mind since Elaine read Sohrab and Rustum here recently. She, of course, hated it. (There are such profound differences in our respective literary, aesthetical, and musical tastes.)
At any rate, I loved Sohrab in it (I even named one of my own characters after him, but that's a completely different story), and I liked his personality, one of my main reasons being this very quote. I don't like lies, and I don't like liars. I'm not even very good at offering meaningless platitudes in place of lies. However, lest I go on a long philosophical rant, I shall cut it short here.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Monday, March 19, 2012
A Mini-Rant of My Own
I really don't see why anyone thinks the air-conditioning in the university buildings needs to be fixed! Seriously, people. If anything, it needs to be fixed so that it's not quite as cold! Yep, the air has officially been turned on. It will not be turned off until October, when the heat will be turned on and it will be 80 degrees in all the buildings. Until then, we are all trapped in the 60-degree meat lockers they call the campus buildings.
Hey, people in Cal 2, IS IT COLD ENOUGH FOR YOU YET???? You should have ABSOLUTELY no excuse to go opening doors and windows and shedding jackets while whining about how hot it is. Now, if you were to complain about how cold it is and open windows to alleviate the sub-arctic temperatures in the room, that's another thing entirely...
Put it this way, I sat down in the math building this morning and instantly wished I hadn't. I swear, it feels like I'm going to develop frostbite. I ended up leaning forward to keep the cold metal off my back.
Oh, joy... I'm going to the language lab tomorrow. The place is cold enough as it is. It's going to be its genuine meat-locker self tomorrow... oh, joy...
YES! I have joined the band-wagon of people who just can't wait until spring break! I want to be able to sleep in until 7:00 for once! If I sign up for another 8:00 class for fall semester, someone please beat me with the nearest large, heavy, blunt object until I regain use of my senses or fall unconscious, whichever comes first...
On an aside note, The Hunger Games Movie comes out Friday morning, bright and early (well, dark and early) at midnight. Come Friday morning proper, I will then be able to have a good laugh at all the people walking around like zombies due to sleep deprivation. ...On second thoughts, nah... they'll just play hooky.
That reminds me... I should find a way to see if I can put a little count-down thing on my blog to keep track of The Hobbit movie coming out! Now THERE'S a worthy goal. The Hobbit is, after all, going to be 2-hours-odd of pure filmed epicness, and definitely worth staying up late for. If it's a school night, however... meh.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Hey, people in Cal 2, IS IT COLD ENOUGH FOR YOU YET???? You should have ABSOLUTELY no excuse to go opening doors and windows and shedding jackets while whining about how hot it is. Now, if you were to complain about how cold it is and open windows to alleviate the sub-arctic temperatures in the room, that's another thing entirely...
Put it this way, I sat down in the math building this morning and instantly wished I hadn't. I swear, it feels like I'm going to develop frostbite. I ended up leaning forward to keep the cold metal off my back.
Oh, joy... I'm going to the language lab tomorrow. The place is cold enough as it is. It's going to be its genuine meat-locker self tomorrow... oh, joy...
YES! I have joined the band-wagon of people who just can't wait until spring break! I want to be able to sleep in until 7:00 for once! If I sign up for another 8:00 class for fall semester, someone please beat me with the nearest large, heavy, blunt object until I regain use of my senses or fall unconscious, whichever comes first...
On an aside note, The Hunger Games Movie comes out Friday morning, bright and early (well, dark and early) at midnight. Come Friday morning proper, I will then be able to have a good laugh at all the people walking around like zombies due to sleep deprivation. ...On second thoughts, nah... they'll just play hooky.
That reminds me... I should find a way to see if I can put a little count-down thing on my blog to keep track of The Hobbit movie coming out! Now THERE'S a worthy goal. The Hobbit is, after all, going to be 2-hours-odd of pure filmed epicness, and definitely worth staying up late for. If it's a school night, however... meh.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Friday, March 16, 2012
Yes, I Know I Skipped Blogging Yesterday
I know I usually blog on Thursdays, if only to mock people's complaints on the back of the latest issue of the Flor-Ala. However, I didn't find the tweets yesterday to be very interesting. Mostly, everyone seemed to be complaining about the heat and speculating that the AC would be fixed only after spring break. Other than that, there were a few other random comments, one tweet of approval from a soon-to-be freshman, and a couple of comments expressing interest in the upcoming football season (yes, it's half a year away, but who cares? This is SEC country, baby), one of them being tagged #BobbyisBack.
Now, I really don't understand how the hashtag thing works. Apparently, it is indicated by an octothorpe, as I do believe the little pound symbols (#) are officially called. Apparently, it also indicates the subject of the tweet or something like that. Obviously, I am not on Twitter and do not understand how it works. I also do not understand how Facebook works. I really don't want to understand how either works, though, come to think of it.
THANK YOU TO THE FLOR-ALA PEOPLE ONCE AGAIN! Not only did we have a word search, a crossword, and a sudoku in the last issue, we also had a cryptoquote (which I tried my hand at, then gave up when I saw it would require serious effort), and whatever the other thing was called. Woohoo! Maybe it was just due to being a larger issue of the Flor-Ala (and it was rather annoying that the results of the SGA election weren't even put in there... maybe it was due to when the paper was published, but still), but the extra stuff was nice. Speaking of which, I did the cryptoquote in today's paper after the crossword got too infuriating. It was something by a Virginia Burden, and went along the lines of, "Cooperation is the conviction that nobody gets there unless everybody gets there." The secret to those things lies in looking for the most common letters and for patterns in the words in order to decode them.
Ah, it's a good thing when your bus drivers recognize you on sight. I say, "Good morning," to them every day when I get on, and I always tell them, "Thank you," whenever I get off. If I'm getting off at the Darby parking lot, I will also wish them a good day. It's just simple manners, I think, but perhaps it pays off... Hey, if the driver recognizes you coming across Harrison Plaza (and you're not in the mood to run like a lunatic through a swarm of people to try to catch the shuttle) and then loops back around the little turnabout-thing in order to pick you up... Yeah. Thank goodness for the nice bus drivers.
Maybe I should start learning their names... Perhaps they should wear little pins with their names on them like clerks do in Wal-Mart and places like that. That way, I wouldn't have to call them stuff like, "the veteran guy," and, "the nice black lady," and "the smiley old guy," in my head all the time. LOL, seriously, I call them that. I've noticed an interesting trend too- whenever I get on the smiley old guy's shuttle in the morning, I will almost always get on his shuttle going back to Darby as well. Weird, but that's how it works.
Chemistry was amusing today, too. Oh, Dr. Gren, we love you so much... We will all remember Le Chatelier's Principle for the rest of our lives due to the crowded elevator analogy and will also remember the noble gas law for the rest of our lives due to PIV NERT. (PV = nRT.) As for me, I will probably end up for the rest of my life quoting something you said the first day of the semester, because I feel like that a lot, too: "I always feel like I'm forgetting something, so I never know if I've ever actually forgotten something or not."
I'm guessing it's a week until the Hunger Games movie comes out. Oh, joy. I saw a girl reading one of the books before class one day. As for me, before chemistry I was proudly reading my copy of The Silmarillion. I am the only person I know who has ever attempted to read The Silmarillion and actually got past the first page. (The first page is rather intimidating...)
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Now, I really don't understand how the hashtag thing works. Apparently, it is indicated by an octothorpe, as I do believe the little pound symbols (#) are officially called. Apparently, it also indicates the subject of the tweet or something like that. Obviously, I am not on Twitter and do not understand how it works. I also do not understand how Facebook works. I really don't want to understand how either works, though, come to think of it.
THANK YOU TO THE FLOR-ALA PEOPLE ONCE AGAIN! Not only did we have a word search, a crossword, and a sudoku in the last issue, we also had a cryptoquote (which I tried my hand at, then gave up when I saw it would require serious effort), and whatever the other thing was called. Woohoo! Maybe it was just due to being a larger issue of the Flor-Ala (and it was rather annoying that the results of the SGA election weren't even put in there... maybe it was due to when the paper was published, but still), but the extra stuff was nice. Speaking of which, I did the cryptoquote in today's paper after the crossword got too infuriating. It was something by a Virginia Burden, and went along the lines of, "Cooperation is the conviction that nobody gets there unless everybody gets there." The secret to those things lies in looking for the most common letters and for patterns in the words in order to decode them.
Ah, it's a good thing when your bus drivers recognize you on sight. I say, "Good morning," to them every day when I get on, and I always tell them, "Thank you," whenever I get off. If I'm getting off at the Darby parking lot, I will also wish them a good day. It's just simple manners, I think, but perhaps it pays off... Hey, if the driver recognizes you coming across Harrison Plaza (and you're not in the mood to run like a lunatic through a swarm of people to try to catch the shuttle) and then loops back around the little turnabout-thing in order to pick you up... Yeah. Thank goodness for the nice bus drivers.
Maybe I should start learning their names... Perhaps they should wear little pins with their names on them like clerks do in Wal-Mart and places like that. That way, I wouldn't have to call them stuff like, "the veteran guy," and, "the nice black lady," and "the smiley old guy," in my head all the time. LOL, seriously, I call them that. I've noticed an interesting trend too- whenever I get on the smiley old guy's shuttle in the morning, I will almost always get on his shuttle going back to Darby as well. Weird, but that's how it works.
Chemistry was amusing today, too. Oh, Dr. Gren, we love you so much... We will all remember Le Chatelier's Principle for the rest of our lives due to the crowded elevator analogy and will also remember the noble gas law for the rest of our lives due to PIV NERT. (PV = nRT.) As for me, I will probably end up for the rest of my life quoting something you said the first day of the semester, because I feel like that a lot, too: "I always feel like I'm forgetting something, so I never know if I've ever actually forgotten something or not."
I'm guessing it's a week until the Hunger Games movie comes out. Oh, joy. I saw a girl reading one of the books before class one day. As for me, before chemistry I was proudly reading my copy of The Silmarillion. I am the only person I know who has ever attempted to read The Silmarillion and actually got past the first page. (The first page is rather intimidating...)
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
If you have a garden and (a) library, you have all you need.
-- Cicero
This was a cryptoquote in the Times Daily from last week. I do them occasionally. I was about to give up on this one when I noted that the author only had one name, so it had to be someone from a long time ago, and that the pattern of the name was something like this: TYTKSN. I thought, "Okay, what are the odds," decided that it was 'Cicero' and went with it. Well, whaddaya know. It was.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
-- Cicero
This was a cryptoquote in the Times Daily from last week. I do them occasionally. I was about to give up on this one when I noted that the author only had one name, so it had to be someone from a long time ago, and that the pattern of the name was something like this: TYTKSN. I thought, "Okay, what are the odds," decided that it was 'Cicero' and went with it. Well, whaddaya know. It was.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Now That I Have a Copy of the Flor-Ala...
Bwahaha. You didn't think I would let a whole week go by without snagging a copy of the Flor-Ala and commenting on it? You were wrong! Here I am, with said copy.
THANK YOU to all the Flor-Ala people for putting the crossword back in, as WELL as a word-search! You people are awesome. Thank you. I guess I should thank you for putting in a sudoku puzzle as well, but I really don't do sudoku. My mom and my dad and my sister do, however, so I will probably just turn over it to them when I get home. I did the crossword and the word-search however. Elaine will do word-searches, but I generally don't do them as I consider them too easy, really. Crosswords and the odd cryptoquote are more of my speed. Yes, the cryptoquote. I am such a nerd. But I (and the lovely search bar & thesaurus) completed the crossword today with only one hitch: okay, what is 'end for ball or bass'? I have 'o_n'. If anybody knows what that is, I'd like to know. I did think of 'own' but 'atwz' for 'the gamut' seems odd. Word 2010 insists there is no word remotely resembling 'at_z' in its dictionary. So, I could have 'site' for 'location' wrong, but, really, what other word would fit there?
You know what would be really cool...? A LATIN crossword. Oh, man, that would be so totally awesome.
WHY do all the people whose tweets get in the Flor-Ala tweet only complaints? Someone mentioned that Wesleyan Hall smells like a 50-year-old sewer. Now, I have next to no sense of smell myself, but even I don't freak out over it. Okay, so it smells old. And a bit like old people's soap (that's the only way I can describe it). But not really like a sewer... Bibb Graves, by the way, always has that warm, humid, mildew-y smell to me. And while I'm on the subject of Bibb Graves, what is with that new sculpture-thing in the vestibule/atrium/double door area/whatever you want to call it? It didn't even have a plaque stating who had donated it or what it was entitled... and you know these pieces of modern art (*coughs sarcastically*) always have some sort of innovative title.
Someone else seems to have agreed with me about the sidewalks proclaiming, "Go Greek!" at least...
I don't know if I'm even going to vote in the SGA elections. I don't know a thing about any of the candidates except for Robert Thompson, and that only because he's in my German class. Though last semester Ralph Akonalu (PLEASE tell me I haven't horribly misspelled this) was in my Calculus class. I was totally ignorant of it until I opened a Flor-Ala one week, saw a picture of him, and went, "Hey... he's in calculus..."
I probably shouldn't bring this up, but I'm not real sure what to do about the REAL elections today, either. Yeesh. Obviously, this is the first time I'll be able to vote. But I'm not in the mood to go on a rant, so I'm not going to say anything.
I know! I'll talk about more pleasant things. Totally ignoring the fact that that Hunger Games movie is coming out (which, despite being told repeatedly that it is the most wonderful thing since sliced bread, I have no intentions of watching or reading), it's not quite two weeks until spring break! There's that to look forward to. And on May 1st, The Serpent's Shadow by Rick Riordan comes out! And in the fall, The Mark of Athena (also by him) comes out! AND ON DECEMBER 14th THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY COMES OUT!!!!!!!
Okay... I usually don't go overboard with the exclamation marks as I consider exclamation-mark-abuse to be a hallmark of middle-schoolers, but I'll make an exception in the case of The Hobbit. Anything by Tolkien is Five-Stars Awesome automatically, so even if it's not The Lord of the Rings I will still go nuts over it. Have you seen the trailer? "Far over the misty mountains cold, to dungeons deep and caverns old... The pines were roaring on the height, the winds were moaning in the night. The fire rose red, the flames spread. The trees like torches blazed with light..."
That shows how pathetic I am. I have memorized the song from the trailer. I also know the names of almost all the leading actors (and there's about 15 of them, including Gandalf). Is that a bad thing? This is, of course, after knowing all the DWARVES' names by heart: "Bilbo, allow me to introduce Fili, Kili, Oin, Gloin, Balin, Dwalin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dori, Nori, Ori, and the leader of our company, Thorin Oakenshield."
No, I'm not at all embarrassed of my Tolkien obsession. Can you tell?
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
THANK YOU to all the Flor-Ala people for putting the crossword back in, as WELL as a word-search! You people are awesome. Thank you. I guess I should thank you for putting in a sudoku puzzle as well, but I really don't do sudoku. My mom and my dad and my sister do, however, so I will probably just turn over it to them when I get home. I did the crossword and the word-search however. Elaine will do word-searches, but I generally don't do them as I consider them too easy, really. Crosswords and the odd cryptoquote are more of my speed. Yes, the cryptoquote. I am such a nerd. But I (and the lovely search bar & thesaurus) completed the crossword today with only one hitch: okay, what is 'end for ball or bass'? I have 'o_n'. If anybody knows what that is, I'd like to know. I did think of 'own' but 'atwz' for 'the gamut' seems odd. Word 2010 insists there is no word remotely resembling 'at_z' in its dictionary. So, I could have 'site' for 'location' wrong, but, really, what other word would fit there?
You know what would be really cool...? A LATIN crossword. Oh, man, that would be so totally awesome.
WHY do all the people whose tweets get in the Flor-Ala tweet only complaints? Someone mentioned that Wesleyan Hall smells like a 50-year-old sewer. Now, I have next to no sense of smell myself, but even I don't freak out over it. Okay, so it smells old. And a bit like old people's soap (that's the only way I can describe it). But not really like a sewer... Bibb Graves, by the way, always has that warm, humid, mildew-y smell to me. And while I'm on the subject of Bibb Graves, what is with that new sculpture-thing in the vestibule/atrium/double door area/whatever you want to call it? It didn't even have a plaque stating who had donated it or what it was entitled... and you know these pieces of modern art (*coughs sarcastically*) always have some sort of innovative title.
Someone else seems to have agreed with me about the sidewalks proclaiming, "Go Greek!" at least...
I don't know if I'm even going to vote in the SGA elections. I don't know a thing about any of the candidates except for Robert Thompson, and that only because he's in my German class. Though last semester Ralph Akonalu (PLEASE tell me I haven't horribly misspelled this) was in my Calculus class. I was totally ignorant of it until I opened a Flor-Ala one week, saw a picture of him, and went, "Hey... he's in calculus..."
I probably shouldn't bring this up, but I'm not real sure what to do about the REAL elections today, either. Yeesh. Obviously, this is the first time I'll be able to vote. But I'm not in the mood to go on a rant, so I'm not going to say anything.
I know! I'll talk about more pleasant things. Totally ignoring the fact that that Hunger Games movie is coming out (which, despite being told repeatedly that it is the most wonderful thing since sliced bread, I have no intentions of watching or reading), it's not quite two weeks until spring break! There's that to look forward to. And on May 1st, The Serpent's Shadow by Rick Riordan comes out! And in the fall, The Mark of Athena (also by him) comes out! AND ON DECEMBER 14th THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY COMES OUT!!!!!!!
Okay... I usually don't go overboard with the exclamation marks as I consider exclamation-mark-abuse to be a hallmark of middle-schoolers, but I'll make an exception in the case of The Hobbit. Anything by Tolkien is Five-Stars Awesome automatically, so even if it's not The Lord of the Rings I will still go nuts over it. Have you seen the trailer? "Far over the misty mountains cold, to dungeons deep and caverns old... The pines were roaring on the height, the winds were moaning in the night. The fire rose red, the flames spread. The trees like torches blazed with light..."
That shows how pathetic I am. I have memorized the song from the trailer. I also know the names of almost all the leading actors (and there's about 15 of them, including Gandalf). Is that a bad thing? This is, of course, after knowing all the DWARVES' names by heart: "Bilbo, allow me to introduce Fili, Kili, Oin, Gloin, Balin, Dwalin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dori, Nori, Ori, and the leader of our company, Thorin Oakenshield."
No, I'm not at all embarrassed of my Tolkien obsession. Can you tell?
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Friday, March 9, 2012
It's Not Thursday And Yet I'm Blogging
Yeah, can you believe it. What is the world coming to (again)?
Anyway, today is a good day for me (so far) but that can be disrupted at any moment by the usual catastrophic circumstances- lightning, hail, tornadoes, earthquakes, and random solar storms, as the papers are ominously predicting... I'm not sure how much the solar storm will affect us technologically-detached peoples. My family doesn't even really have a GPS, unless the little devices on cell phones count (and my phone does not have that, in the first place). I REALLY don't want to be dependent on GPS to get anywhere, as I have heard one too many horror stories about being given wrong directions and also seeing cartoons of 'Close To Home' where it has the car plunging off a cliff with the label, "GPS recalculating..." or the one where the car is in an alley and the driver finds a sign on the wall, "Ha-ha! You are 230 miles from Dulles Airport! Signed, the MapQuest pranksters."
Speaking of direction pranksters, go to Google Maps. Click 'Get Directions'. Click 'Walking Directions'. Enter 'The Shire' in the first box and 'Mordor' in the second. Notice the warning message.
Go ahead. I'll wait while you go do that.
Did you do that? LOL. Good for you!
And NOBODY wants to guess about what the fifth dimension is? (Not that that many people even READ this blog in the first place, of course, unless it's those random people from Latvia that have apparently stumbled across this blog- don't know how, but it appears on my stats...)
Oh, all right, all right. The fifth dimension is eternity. It encompasses time, is transcendant to it, and yet is immanent in it. The reason we men can think outside time's box, so to speak, is because there is a little bit of eternity in our hearts. Our hearts are made for Thee, o Lord, and they are restless until they rest in Thee...
You'll probably be seeing a lot more philosophical quotes (by Peter Kreeft, more likely than not) from me in the near future as I work my way through my philosophy book. I could have finished it ages ago, but this is one book I have actually settled down to savor slowly. It's the kind that needs some thought, ya ken? Haha, the real reason is acutally more because I keep forgetting to bring it to school, as the only time I ever think of reading it is while I am sitting in the math building (usually freezing my butt off, as it is nice and warm in there until the other kids arrive, insist that they are roasting, and open windows and doors. I'll have you know I sit RIGHT BY THE DOOR and the 40-degree cold air whooshing in on my ankles isn't fun. Do you want to trade seats?) or while waiting on a shuttle.
Chemistry was amusing today. Suffice it to say that it usually is, and that the fact that I was able to follow what Dr. Gren was doing when he was trying to re-create his equations via natural logarithmic manipulation made me feel so much better about the world. At least the dude next to me wasn't snoring this time. I'm fairly sure he's been asleep before. He just kind of sits there most of the time... which is kind of sad when you realize I sit in the front row. Sleeping students are probably NOT an encouraging sign to a professor, but, then again, they've probably seen everything by now. Apparently, pajamas are perfectly acceptable school attire. Not sure why, but apparently that is so...
Oh, and I'm fairly sure one or more of the girls that sits behind me has a crush on Dr. Gren. Pardon me while I go crawl away under a desk if either one of said parties finds out I have blogged about this... I would like to state, however, that I most certainly do not share their infatuation.
Okay... how did I get onto that topic? Yikes. I scare myself sometimes. I'm not really sure WHERE in the world I am going with this blog post, so, yep, that's a good sign I need to end it.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Anyway, today is a good day for me (so far) but that can be disrupted at any moment by the usual catastrophic circumstances- lightning, hail, tornadoes, earthquakes, and random solar storms, as the papers are ominously predicting... I'm not sure how much the solar storm will affect us technologically-detached peoples. My family doesn't even really have a GPS, unless the little devices on cell phones count (and my phone does not have that, in the first place). I REALLY don't want to be dependent on GPS to get anywhere, as I have heard one too many horror stories about being given wrong directions and also seeing cartoons of 'Close To Home' where it has the car plunging off a cliff with the label, "GPS recalculating..." or the one where the car is in an alley and the driver finds a sign on the wall, "Ha-ha! You are 230 miles from Dulles Airport! Signed, the MapQuest pranksters."
Speaking of direction pranksters, go to Google Maps. Click 'Get Directions'. Click 'Walking Directions'. Enter 'The Shire' in the first box and 'Mordor' in the second. Notice the warning message.
Go ahead. I'll wait while you go do that.
Did you do that? LOL. Good for you!
And NOBODY wants to guess about what the fifth dimension is? (Not that that many people even READ this blog in the first place, of course, unless it's those random people from Latvia that have apparently stumbled across this blog- don't know how, but it appears on my stats...)
Oh, all right, all right. The fifth dimension is eternity. It encompasses time, is transcendant to it, and yet is immanent in it. The reason we men can think outside time's box, so to speak, is because there is a little bit of eternity in our hearts. Our hearts are made for Thee, o Lord, and they are restless until they rest in Thee...
You'll probably be seeing a lot more philosophical quotes (by Peter Kreeft, more likely than not) from me in the near future as I work my way through my philosophy book. I could have finished it ages ago, but this is one book I have actually settled down to savor slowly. It's the kind that needs some thought, ya ken? Haha, the real reason is acutally more because I keep forgetting to bring it to school, as the only time I ever think of reading it is while I am sitting in the math building (usually freezing my butt off, as it is nice and warm in there until the other kids arrive, insist that they are roasting, and open windows and doors. I'll have you know I sit RIGHT BY THE DOOR and the 40-degree cold air whooshing in on my ankles isn't fun. Do you want to trade seats?) or while waiting on a shuttle.
Chemistry was amusing today. Suffice it to say that it usually is, and that the fact that I was able to follow what Dr. Gren was doing when he was trying to re-create his equations via natural logarithmic manipulation made me feel so much better about the world. At least the dude next to me wasn't snoring this time. I'm fairly sure he's been asleep before. He just kind of sits there most of the time... which is kind of sad when you realize I sit in the front row. Sleeping students are probably NOT an encouraging sign to a professor, but, then again, they've probably seen everything by now. Apparently, pajamas are perfectly acceptable school attire. Not sure why, but apparently that is so...
Oh, and I'm fairly sure one or more of the girls that sits behind me has a crush on Dr. Gren. Pardon me while I go crawl away under a desk if either one of said parties finds out I have blogged about this... I would like to state, however, that I most certainly do not share their infatuation.
Okay... how did I get onto that topic? Yikes. I scare myself sometimes. I'm not really sure WHERE in the world I am going with this blog post, so, yep, that's a good sign I need to end it.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Thursday, March 8, 2012
To every man upon the earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods?
- No, I'm not sure where this one comes from.
And no one has any guess what the fifth dimension is? Come on, no one will guess?
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods?
- No, I'm not sure where this one comes from.
And no one has any guess what the fifth dimension is? Come on, no one will guess?
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Not My Ususal Thursday Rant
Today I will not be embarking on a delightful critique of the complaints on the back of the Flor-Ala due to the fact that I did not pick up a copy of the Flor-Ala. Yes, I know, what is the world coming to. No doubt, Dr. Brewton enjoyed his morning of quiet without me plinking on the piano in Lafayette.
For my part, I would have been able to sleep in for once this morning due to the happy cancellation for the day of one class, but NOOOOOO. Elaine, my sister, who is always one of the first in the family to know anything (in stark contrast to me, always the last in the family to know anything), did not know that I only had one class today and so at 7:00 she banged on my door. It went like this:
"Elyse?"
*annoyed* "...Yeah?"
"Are you awake?"
"Obviously."
I had to explain to her that I didn't have to leave by 7:15 as usual. She was a bit defensive. "I didn't know!" etc. Sheesh... the ONE time I forget to set my alarm and still manage to leave on time, and she never lets me forget it... the same thing with Peter... never lets me forget the one time I was late to piano lessons.
Today we wrote our analytical essays in English. I wasn't very worried about it to begin with, but once I started writing I realized, "Hey! This is what I did all the time in high school with Shakespeare!" So after that it proceeded rather well. Yes, I did have to write analyses of Shakespeare's plays in high school and they were great fun. That was due to the fact that I proceeded to bash Shakespeare and his characters in every way possible- in every logical way possible, I suppose. Even Audrey agrees that Romeo and Juliet is an incredibly stupid play. Put it this way: I only liked one character per play, pretty much. You can tell what kind of person I am by the characters I liked. Feel free to go look them up: Kent from King Lear, Ariel from The Tempest (and he is a guy, despite later directors and Disney), that one dude who does the 'all the world's a stage' spiel from As You Like It, and pretty much no one from Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet. (Though I am fond of the, "I am a grave man," line.)
In A Midsummer Night's Dream (by the way, is it midsummer's night or midsummer night's? I never can remember), I don't know why, but I was rather fond of Oberon. Just because Oberon is an awesome name. It comes from Alberich, which is a Germanic name meaning pretty much 'elf king', and which was Frenchified into Oberon, which, nevertheless, is still an awesome name. Titania isn't a bad name, either. Puck... well, he had a few good lines. Nevertheless, the whole play is stupid with a capital S, T, U, P, I, D. Words cannot begin to plumb the fathomless depths of its stupidity. I mean, it goes like this: "The elf king and queen are fighting over some mortal kid they want to adopt. Meanwhile, some Greek dude wants his daughter to marry some guy or he will kill her or force her to be an ancient Greek nun, but she runs off with some other dude. Meanwhile, her BFF tells the rejected suitor, whom she herself has a crush on, and they run into the forest after the other two. Oberon and Puck attempt to help the situation with a magical love potion-y flower but only cause more chaos. Meanwhile, some random craftsmen practice for a play and one of them gets a donkey head. In the end everything gets straightened out but the mortals don't even remember it. Oh, and Oberon gets the mortal kid. The end."
Yep, pretty much.
Romeo and Juliet is even worse. Romeo is depressed because the girl he had a crush on didn't like him and joined a convent rather than marry him. His friend Mercutio suggests gate-crashing Capulet's party to cheer him up. They gate-crash the party, Romeo meets Juliet (and doesn't even know who she is at first), is instantly infatuated, and marries her the next afternoon. The next thing he does is kill her cousin for killing his friend, gets exiled to Padua, and has the nerve to complain that his life is in shambles and that he wishes he were dead after the duke/leader person/whoever showed him mercy in not condemning him to dead. The friar tells Romeo pretty much, "Get a hold of yourself, man!" So off to Padua he goes. Meanwhile, Juliet is depressed so her parents decide to cheer her up by marrying her off to the duke dude's brother, Paris. (A dude named Paris. Seriously. But after all Paris was a guy in Greek mythology, even if a very stupid, wimpy guy. I liked Hector, but I hate Paris! And GUESS who played him in Troy? Yup. To add to the insanity, Boromir/Sean Bean was Odysseus. LOL.) Anyway, Juliet runs off to the friar who gives her a potion that will make her seem dead to get out of the wedding. I don't know how Juliet gets away without being embalmed, but whatever, they put her in the family mausoleum. Romeo meanwhile hears of it, buys poison (illegally, I do believe), runs back to Verona, kills Paris who was throwing flowers at Juliet's grave (seriously...), drinks the poison and dies. Juliet wakes up and finds his dead body. The friar offers to take her to a convent, but she stabs herself with Romeo's dagger and dies. The families arrive in the cemetary with the news that Romeo's mother has died. The dads are like, "Okay, let's be friends." The End.
Yup... And this is considered a classic. It has come to my attention that what are commonly held as classics are not usually as good as you are always told they are. While I'm thinking of it, never bother reading The Red Badge of Courage unless you like being confused, and being confused by psychology at that. And The Virginian is pathetic. It has far too many climaxes and drags on. I was halfway through it and thinking, "Man, is this thing ever going to end?" I could go on and on...
I'm not real sure how I got on this topic. That's probably a good sign I should get off it.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
For my part, I would have been able to sleep in for once this morning due to the happy cancellation for the day of one class, but NOOOOOO. Elaine, my sister, who is always one of the first in the family to know anything (in stark contrast to me, always the last in the family to know anything), did not know that I only had one class today and so at 7:00 she banged on my door. It went like this:
"Elyse?"
*annoyed* "...Yeah?"
"Are you awake?"
"Obviously."
I had to explain to her that I didn't have to leave by 7:15 as usual. She was a bit defensive. "I didn't know!" etc. Sheesh... the ONE time I forget to set my alarm and still manage to leave on time, and she never lets me forget it... the same thing with Peter... never lets me forget the one time I was late to piano lessons.
Today we wrote our analytical essays in English. I wasn't very worried about it to begin with, but once I started writing I realized, "Hey! This is what I did all the time in high school with Shakespeare!" So after that it proceeded rather well. Yes, I did have to write analyses of Shakespeare's plays in high school and they were great fun. That was due to the fact that I proceeded to bash Shakespeare and his characters in every way possible- in every logical way possible, I suppose. Even Audrey agrees that Romeo and Juliet is an incredibly stupid play. Put it this way: I only liked one character per play, pretty much. You can tell what kind of person I am by the characters I liked. Feel free to go look them up: Kent from King Lear, Ariel from The Tempest (and he is a guy, despite later directors and Disney), that one dude who does the 'all the world's a stage' spiel from As You Like It, and pretty much no one from Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet. (Though I am fond of the, "I am a grave man," line.)
In A Midsummer Night's Dream (by the way, is it midsummer's night or midsummer night's? I never can remember), I don't know why, but I was rather fond of Oberon. Just because Oberon is an awesome name. It comes from Alberich, which is a Germanic name meaning pretty much 'elf king', and which was Frenchified into Oberon, which, nevertheless, is still an awesome name. Titania isn't a bad name, either. Puck... well, he had a few good lines. Nevertheless, the whole play is stupid with a capital S, T, U, P, I, D. Words cannot begin to plumb the fathomless depths of its stupidity. I mean, it goes like this: "The elf king and queen are fighting over some mortal kid they want to adopt. Meanwhile, some Greek dude wants his daughter to marry some guy or he will kill her or force her to be an ancient Greek nun, but she runs off with some other dude. Meanwhile, her BFF tells the rejected suitor, whom she herself has a crush on, and they run into the forest after the other two. Oberon and Puck attempt to help the situation with a magical love potion-y flower but only cause more chaos. Meanwhile, some random craftsmen practice for a play and one of them gets a donkey head. In the end everything gets straightened out but the mortals don't even remember it. Oh, and Oberon gets the mortal kid. The end."
Yep, pretty much.
Romeo and Juliet is even worse. Romeo is depressed because the girl he had a crush on didn't like him and joined a convent rather than marry him. His friend Mercutio suggests gate-crashing Capulet's party to cheer him up. They gate-crash the party, Romeo meets Juliet (and doesn't even know who she is at first), is instantly infatuated, and marries her the next afternoon. The next thing he does is kill her cousin for killing his friend, gets exiled to Padua, and has the nerve to complain that his life is in shambles and that he wishes he were dead after the duke/leader person/whoever showed him mercy in not condemning him to dead. The friar tells Romeo pretty much, "Get a hold of yourself, man!" So off to Padua he goes. Meanwhile, Juliet is depressed so her parents decide to cheer her up by marrying her off to the duke dude's brother, Paris. (A dude named Paris. Seriously. But after all Paris was a guy in Greek mythology, even if a very stupid, wimpy guy. I liked Hector, but I hate Paris! And GUESS who played him in Troy? Yup. To add to the insanity, Boromir/Sean Bean was Odysseus. LOL.) Anyway, Juliet runs off to the friar who gives her a potion that will make her seem dead to get out of the wedding. I don't know how Juliet gets away without being embalmed, but whatever, they put her in the family mausoleum. Romeo meanwhile hears of it, buys poison (illegally, I do believe), runs back to Verona, kills Paris who was throwing flowers at Juliet's grave (seriously...), drinks the poison and dies. Juliet wakes up and finds his dead body. The friar offers to take her to a convent, but she stabs herself with Romeo's dagger and dies. The families arrive in the cemetary with the news that Romeo's mother has died. The dads are like, "Okay, let's be friends." The End.
Yup... And this is considered a classic. It has come to my attention that what are commonly held as classics are not usually as good as you are always told they are. While I'm thinking of it, never bother reading The Red Badge of Courage unless you like being confused, and being confused by psychology at that. And The Virginian is pathetic. It has far too many climaxes and drags on. I was halfway through it and thinking, "Man, is this thing ever going to end?" I could go on and on...
I'm not real sure how I got on this topic. That's probably a good sign I should get off it.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
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