Sometimes I update a little, sometimes I update a lot.
Yesterday's book, The Prospect Before Her, rocked fairly hard. On the one hand, that's a bad thing, since a judgement like that guarantees I wasn't reading with a grad student's fiercely critical mindset. But it is nice to read a 500-page book that I wouldn't unread later, given the chance. It's a book about European women 1500-1800, and managed not to absolutely infuriate me; I am not normally rabidly feminist, but certain people back in the day should have just shut up if they had nothing nice to say, understand? So anyway this book focused more on what the women said and did, and slightly less on the terrifically aggravating things said about them. Well done, author (her name is OLWEN. Rock on).
The necessary context for this update, by the way, is that I'm listening to my sparkling new DVD of Ирония Судьбы (The Irony of Fate, aka the comic book). So periodically I have to tab over to watch a particularly important moment or musical number (that'd be Mikhail), or just to relive the glory days of holing up in my dorm in Indiana and trying to figure out what the fuck they were saying. Nothing but love, comrades. Man I hate and worship this glorious goddamn movie. And I forgot to bring back a copy of the comic, AND I couldn't find my Photoshop CD. Someday.
On the grand theme of typos MSN perpetrates strictly to attack my soul ("More Useful Everyday"!?), I'd like to give a shout-out to the headline about Iraq that suggested that something (probably the occupation) was "crumbling at the seams". What has seams (fabric) but also crumbles (masonry)? If you strike at a metaphor you must kill it, bitches. Clean kills only; they'll be no mangling on my watch. If you're looking for the moral of this paragraph, it's this: the hyper-editor Hyde to my grammatically-inclined Jekyll is brought out by excessive consumption of sugar. If you gave me candy for Christmas, let it be on your head.
Today I got the packages I sent myself, including clothes and the aforementioned DVD (two, counting The Poseidon Adventure) and candy. Also my previous telephone, complete with answering machine. Exciting! And when I handed in my package slip (four items), they came back with five. Yes, as suspected, Hoyt's gift was sitting down there all along, but somehow I never heard. I have slandered Canada without cause. My bad. While I'm being unrelated, I checked the local weather this morning, and weather.com was predicting a seven-degree high for Friday. It's up to 14 now, though.
A final note: I called my mom Thursday or so to ask for the name and address of the woman whose loom I 'inherited', so I could send her a thank-you note. I then turned my phone off, for class. When I turned it back on (Friday?), I had a message. Aha! you think: my mom called with the address. No. My mom left the message, "Hey, it's your mom returning your call" and NO ADDRESS. Friday night she called again, but couldn't provide an address because she was IN THE CAR ON THE WAY TO CHATTANOOGA. I'm willing to completely ignore the possibilities to IM or e-mail said address to me, which after all would have required extra effort, but why call only to say nothing, or that she didn't have the address? Mystery!
While en route to the grocery store (still lots of snow about) I got targeted by a random street person asking for money. I made my usual response, "I'm on my way to the grocery store, and if you want to come, I'm happy to get you something to eat" - I have had this offer turned down six feet from the door - and lo and behold this guy took me up on it. In the vein of no good deed going unpunished, Albert of course felt the need to repay me with his life story, as starring the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (also a five-year stay in a federal prison and at some points three shots to the back with a .38). He's a slow walker, is Albert, and the air he saves thereby powers his speechifying. Best line: "I tried alcohol, and I tried education, and I tried fast women." (He's now looking for a good God-fearing woman, if anyone's interested.) But $10 in sandwich materials and orange juice won't break the bank, and all things considered it's a small investment in my soul, should I turn out to have one. Fans of Russian lit will notice that angels will be dragging me to heaven by means of a loaf of wheat bread or possibly some bananas. Anyway I got a hug and then went on to buy my own groceries. That process took, I don't know, 20-30 minutes counting the check-out, and yet I ran into/lapped Albert within THREE BLOCKS of the grocery store, and failed to avoid being thanked some more. Grrr.
Tomorrow I go to the library in search of the next batch of China books, at least one of which should be there. But the library doesn't open until noon, so perhaps I will first manage to read some articles? [I love this movie! Ahh, Zhenia, my love... how drunk can a person be? I think every Russian actor ever should audition with Zhenia's monologue in this scene. And then punch Ippolit, because he is such an ass.]
And finally, I took a quiz in one of your friend's friend's LJs, purporting to analyze my level of nerdiness. BUT. Those of you familiar with my geek/nerd hypothesis should appreciate that it was actually testing geekiness, and therefore you must take my score of 57% (!?) with a massive grain of NaCl. We all know I'm better than that, surely.
If you, like me, have the default Russian keyboard layout installed and never can find the character you need, here's a handy little cheat-sheet:
йцукенгшщзхъ
фывапролджэ
ячсмитьбд
The necessary context for this update, by the way, is that I'm listening to my sparkling new DVD of Ирония Судьбы (The Irony of Fate, aka the comic book). So periodically I have to tab over to watch a particularly important moment or musical number (that'd be Mikhail), or just to relive the glory days of holing up in my dorm in Indiana and trying to figure out what the fuck they were saying. Nothing but love, comrades. Man I hate and worship this glorious goddamn movie. And I forgot to bring back a copy of the comic, AND I couldn't find my Photoshop CD. Someday.
On the grand theme of typos MSN perpetrates strictly to attack my soul ("More Useful Everyday"!?), I'd like to give a shout-out to the headline about Iraq that suggested that something (probably the occupation) was "crumbling at the seams". What has seams (fabric) but also crumbles (masonry)? If you strike at a metaphor you must kill it, bitches. Clean kills only; they'll be no mangling on my watch. If you're looking for the moral of this paragraph, it's this: the hyper-editor Hyde to my grammatically-inclined Jekyll is brought out by excessive consumption of sugar. If you gave me candy for Christmas, let it be on your head.
Today I got the packages I sent myself, including clothes and the aforementioned DVD (two, counting The Poseidon Adventure) and candy. Also my previous telephone, complete with answering machine. Exciting! And when I handed in my package slip (four items), they came back with five. Yes, as suspected, Hoyt's gift was sitting down there all along, but somehow I never heard. I have slandered Canada without cause. My bad. While I'm being unrelated, I checked the local weather this morning, and weather.com was predicting a seven-degree high for Friday. It's up to 14 now, though.
A final note: I called my mom Thursday or so to ask for the name and address of the woman whose loom I 'inherited', so I could send her a thank-you note. I then turned my phone off, for class. When I turned it back on (Friday?), I had a message. Aha! you think: my mom called with the address. No. My mom left the message, "Hey, it's your mom returning your call" and NO ADDRESS. Friday night she called again, but couldn't provide an address because she was IN THE CAR ON THE WAY TO CHATTANOOGA. I'm willing to completely ignore the possibilities to IM or e-mail said address to me, which after all would have required extra effort, but why call only to say nothing, or that she didn't have the address? Mystery!
While en route to the grocery store (still lots of snow about) I got targeted by a random street person asking for money. I made my usual response, "I'm on my way to the grocery store, and if you want to come, I'm happy to get you something to eat" - I have had this offer turned down six feet from the door - and lo and behold this guy took me up on it. In the vein of no good deed going unpunished, Albert of course felt the need to repay me with his life story, as starring the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (also a five-year stay in a federal prison and at some points three shots to the back with a .38). He's a slow walker, is Albert, and the air he saves thereby powers his speechifying. Best line: "I tried alcohol, and I tried education, and I tried fast women." (He's now looking for a good God-fearing woman, if anyone's interested.) But $10 in sandwich materials and orange juice won't break the bank, and all things considered it's a small investment in my soul, should I turn out to have one. Fans of Russian lit will notice that angels will be dragging me to heaven by means of a loaf of wheat bread or possibly some bananas. Anyway I got a hug and then went on to buy my own groceries. That process took, I don't know, 20-30 minutes counting the check-out, and yet I ran into/lapped Albert within THREE BLOCKS of the grocery store, and failed to avoid being thanked some more. Grrr.
Tomorrow I go to the library in search of the next batch of China books, at least one of which should be there. But the library doesn't open until noon, so perhaps I will first manage to read some articles? [I love this movie! Ahh, Zhenia, my love... how drunk can a person be? I think every Russian actor ever should audition with Zhenia's monologue in this scene. And then punch Ippolit, because he is such an ass.]
And finally, I took a quiz in one of your friend's friend's LJs, purporting to analyze my level of nerdiness. BUT. Those of you familiar with my geek/nerd hypothesis should appreciate that it was actually testing geekiness, and therefore you must take my score of 57% (!?) with a massive grain of NaCl. We all know I'm better than that, surely.
If you, like me, have the default Russian keyboard layout installed and never can find the character you need, here's a handy little cheat-sheet:
йцукенгшщзхъ
фывапролджэ
ячсмитьбд