Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Stupid Boys and their Stupid Stupidity

If just one more of those furry bastards says this to me

Heo, I wish I could find a woman just like you: smart, funny, great to hang around with, except (list whatever physical changes said furry person thinks would make me hotter, or a better accessory.)

I shall not be responsible for my actions.



That is all.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Burgerification Continues Apace

I have evidence.

1) My kitten has health insurance. I didn't have health insurance until I was twenty. I didn't have good health insurance until last year.

2) I take Latin and advanced German classes for giggles. This knowledge will not help me financially. Even if I manage to pass the near-fluency German test, um, I think the Germans have all the Anglo-Saxonists they need. They certainly have all the English teachers they need.

3) As of this afternoon, I have been to a therapist. A therapist who advised me to: practice mindful breathing, keep a 'feelings journal,' and read Eckhart Tolle. I just paid a guy $150 to listen to me explain my childhood and give me advice I could have gotten at home watching a single Oprah show. And apparently, I have to be Buddhist.

4) I actually said, without irony, just the other day: "I wish I had time to get a facial."

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Monday, April 13, 2009

2009: The Summer of the Word Nerd, and related topics

A local institute of higher learning has an embarrassment of riches offered in the way of language courses this summer. This is convenient, because I have an urgent desire to apply myself to the acquisition of more language skills. It is double convenient that the school in question does not have the deliberately gatekeeping schedule that so many schools pretend happens by accident.*
So, though the intensive Latin course starts early enough to get the students fresh from a short family break after final papers, they are late enough at night to make it possible for people to come home from work, throw a sandwich at their children, and spend the remainder of the night at Latin class. Hooray!

I really need the structure of a class for a language, I find. I have all the resources for Latin, but I keep having to start over because it's very easy to put the "my hobby" thing down when the teacher stuff needs doing. And the teacher stuff always needs doing. I hope that with an instructor holding my feet to the fire, I'll prioritize the Latin a little higher up on the scale.

One thing. Teacherling at work heard "summer of the word nerd" and wanted in. He's a smart kid. So smart I almost forget he's barely in big boy pants sometimes. He's also extremely competitive in the "I will twist this issue every possible way until you tell me I win" way that young men often are. I don't tend to tell people they win if they are arguing disingenuously, because I am like that. When I was his age, I would have probably told him he was right to shut him up, but I am currently old and mean. Hilarity is almost guaranteed to ensue.

Local church has a Latin Mass which it has had forever, which makes the rector a heretic. Latin practice for me, a chance to live a memory for Mama. Good stuff all around. Except, I have read the rector's website and, um, he's the suckiest heretic that ever was heretical. I mean, generally I enjoy all things transgressive, but this dude totally ruins it. His heresy is of the "We demand that the authority beats us more often and more vigorously" kind that might make for an interesting weekend if you're into that sort of thing**, but is just awful in a person setting himself up as a sort of authority. So, I'm not sure I want to understand his Masses, because ew.

I am also annoyed with myself and a few of my peers. I'm exhausted by all the effort involved in examining my privileges only to turn around and find some more. I'm really tired of people who think it's OK to say patently un-OK things to me because I'll take the time to explain why they aren't OK instead of ripping their heads off. Am I doing anyone a favor by not ripping heads off? Do I even have the right to ask that question considering all the boneheaded things I do on a regular basis? I'm tired of the nagging assertion that everything I say today will horrify me six months from now, and that the best I can hope for is that I am not being terribly naive all the time. Why is being just a reasonably self-aware and occasionally kind person such a project?

"What? You have to work a day job? Well, I'm sorry, but we just can't offer a graduate class in anything interesting to someone who is unable or unwilling to devote their whole selves to our course. I mean, if your life demands that you support yourself and others rather than depending on others to support you so that you can take a ridiculously underpaid, and extended "internship" at our institution, thereby allowing us to refrain from hiring people just like you hope one day to be, or at least allowing us to refuse to offer them work at a living wage, causing you to know fully goddamn well that you will be accruing massive debt and suffering opportunity cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a life of almost guaranteed penury, making this not only the most selfish thing you could choose in that matricide-by-failure way, but also the most foolish thing you could possibly choose in the bag-lady by severely limited earning potential plus no kids kind of way, then how can you possibly study hard enough to learn well enough that you can one day write a paper about the damaging effects of classism?" ***

**I am so not into that sort of thing.

***Yeah, I know. There's always plenty of irony to go around.

Friday, April 03, 2009

In which the blogger forgives the Dutch for speaking a language she should be able to understand, but can't. And all that obnoxious tallness.

Observe a marketing stunt that requires a people truly in touch with their inner nerds to work.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Happy Spring!





I managed to get out among the cherry blossoms for an hour or two today. Yay! I guess all of us who experience a winter get a little goofy in the spring. I tell myself that is so because otherwise I'm just a slightly modernized version of my corniest relatives. And that can't be. Because I'm not corny. I'm weird, which is way better than corny.

Anyway, a bit early ...

Sumer is icumen in.
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wde nu.
Sing cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lowthe after clave cu,
Bulloc sterteth, bucke verteth
Murie sing cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu,
Well singes thu cucco
Ne swik thu naver nu!

Sing cuccu nu, Sing cuccu!
Sing cuccu, sing cuccu nu!

And sunshine and flowers and hooray!

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Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Slainte!




Hope you are enjoying a fine celebration.*








*Unless you're British, then confusticate and bebother you! (Only for today, though. Regularly scheduled Anglophilia will resume tomorrow.)

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Saturday, March 14, 2009

Meet the Kitty!








This is Finn, as a new kitty in my new apartment, just after Christmas. We thought he was a female kitty then, and gave "her" a very studious woman's name to go with "her" love of books, papers, and pens, and also to satisfy my pretentions to intellectualism. There have since been decidedly unfeminine developments that occasioned an emergency name change.

I, however, remain a pompous ass. Kitty is now named after two Finns; the Germanic Finn of Fragment fame, and the Celtic Finn of general Badass of Antiquity fame.


Since reaching adolescence, Finn has taken to curling up in the shamrock pot,


and protesting all human activities that do not produce food.

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