¿que será de aquel colchón, de aquel colchón tan maltratado?
Oh me, oh my, it has been an amazing week so far. Even that old lady above is all a-wonder over how wonderfully things have been going.
(She's all like, "¿¿¿Queeeeeeeeeeeeeé???")
It's partially the weather - it's delicious, amazing, glorious...hot. A get-in-your-skin, nearly-your-bones heat, with a huge, warm sun and cloudless skies, heat reaching the upper 70s when I ran to class this afternoon (ha, what a bad, bad day to have misplaced my deodorant, hahaha...); it is nearly perfect: the nights are still pseudo-chilly. But soon. Soon. We'll have these hot nights yet.
And then I'll be really, really thirsty. And there will be nude sleeping. And nights of insomaniacal sweat. Oh, it'll be amazing.
But some news, oh me, oh my, some news:
1) Wednesday marked the 2050th anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar by his colleagues in the Roman Senate. This would be fascinating enough on its own, but then I heard this on NPR, and I really must insist, beg even, that everyone who reads this livejournal take a moment and listen to what they have to say. Don't read the article. Click the button. Just listen.
And then, I want you all to take a deep breath. Of Napoleon.
2) The Ides of March rang particularly foreboding this year, for quite a number of peers had quite the motive to kill me. I am in a class of some 160-ish students. Guess how many students passed the Audio-Visual Communications exam? 17. Guess who was one of them? Exactly. Exactly. Now, when I wrote "passed", I do mean passed, as in one did not fail. I'm generally a perfectionist, but in the context of this particular class, especially after the veritable slaughter of the rest of the class, if one passes, one counts their lucky stars and give thanks that the whole ordeal is over and that they've survived to see another day. Mind you, the man is a madman, but also a madman who not only holds a doctorate from this university, but has in fact studied at Cambridge and Harvard, and at one point taught at Oxford. So that kind of gives him leeway in his outrageous demands; it is frustrating, in that he is quite intelligent, and in fact an excellent writer - he assigned a few chapters from one of his books, and they were excellent - but he is a shit professor. He refuses to give examples, but it's impossible to follow his class without them because what he teaches is pure philosophy, pure floating, subjective concepts that are basically impossible to grasp in any manner except the loosest, and he instead demands specificity on his exams. What's more, he's utterly pompous, and not in a fun, sarcastic manner, but in more of a "how can you be so stupid as to not understand this concept" manner.
What's curious is that, since immediately everyone stopped asking questions, certain students felt the right to basically "interpret" what he taught, so that they soon grew quite confident that they were understanding everything he said, and that they understood the concepts perfectly - it's basically like this: Man comes in and says that the sky isn't blue, the sea is not made of water, birds are not really birds, clouds are not clouds, etc., and then promptly leaves the class. A couple of students approach him later, but ask crapped out questions, which are basically re-statements of what he has said - "So then, what you're saying...is that the sea is not made of water?" "Yes, exactly." "Oh, cool! I got it." So then, they decide, well, of course, the sea is not made of water. So what is it made of? Milk, they decide. Why not? This man has basically declared that rules don't apply to him, don't exist, so therefore, rationally, those rules shouldn't apply to the students. They grow so sure of this, so positive, that they essentially tell the other students that, indeed, the sea is made of milk. The twist, of course, is that I, and 16 others, clearly were not part of these groups, so we didn't get the whole "sea is made of milk" discourse - but then how the hell did we figure out what the sea was really made of? Even now, I'm not at all sure. I only know that all the kids who were positive that they understood what this guy was teaching, and crowded his desk after class, are precisely the ones who failed and, in contrast, I relied pretty much solely on his books and a very bad pair of second-hand classnotes. In short, I was perplexed (though grading error isn't possible, as it was all essay, and graded by him, by hand.)
And numb. I was convinced that I had failed. And it wasn't like Sociology, where a healthy portion of the class passed. Jesus Christ, out of 160+ students, 17 passed. What does this feel like? It feels like how one feels when one is distractedly walking along and looks up just in time to realize that one has almost walked into moving traffic. It is that feeling of having just narrowly avoided a serious accident, and being grateful for having been, in essence, saved. Reprieved. Free. And that it is all for the best and couldn't possibly be better. Just the fact that I am done with that partial, that I shall never again be tested on anything having to do with praxis, katholou and kathekaston, as well as the theories of active/passive communication, the schools of language thought, and the technical philosophy of information is enough for one to be enormously grateful. And so, indeed, I am.
I'm by no means in the clear; I still have to pass the second partial in May, but if I do, it means that I won't have to stick around until the latest parts of June to take the actual final exam. And that, m'lords, is very great news. There's much more to this, of course, but I'll write about it when I know more for sure, upon the release of the 5th partial, for Linguistics, for which the grades are still pending.
3) I've spent the past three nights painting awesome things, and this makes me enormously happy. The only catch is that, when I go to bed at 7 a.m., I rationally arise no earlier than 1 p.m., and my mind insists on spending the first ten minutes of the new day in utter confusion as to why I have slept in so late. Then it figures things out, or gets excited over how sunny it is outside, and all is well again. We've no school on Monday, either; I plan on devoting that entire day to painting as well, joy of joys.
4) Swayed by one song, I've started to listen to Belle and Sebastian, and I actually like the newer stuff. Alexis will have my head for this, even if I still loathe most of their older stuff. What compensates: the fact that I've also had a veritable Rockapella renaissance? Remember Rockapella? I know you do. (And what's more, I feel Tharisson is going to feel a particular need to tell us, at length, about it.) (Because he's in an acapella group.) (But I could be wrong. Not about the group, but about him telling us about it.) But Rockapella? And Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? Exactly. Exactly. I know you're all now recalling, with glazed eyes, the joy of catching that show on PBS, if only for that singing quintet. Why, it was almost as cool as the day when it was your turn to play Oregon Trail in class. (One of the few places in which dying of dysentery didn't imply all the usual blood and feces, only the need to set out again from Independence, Missouri.) But, yes, hurrah Rockapella, hurrah {new} Belle and Sebastian.
5) Caroline is coming for a visit this weekend, and she will be my second guest. There will be much ridiculous dancing and talking. Caroline is a Bourbon, of the Orléans branch, and a direct descendant of Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, the last king of France. I find all of this terrifically amusing, in a passive sort of way. Regardless of royal blood, however, she's great and quite indulgent with my adoration of Napoleon, despite the fact that his family took over after her family twice; I haven't seen her since the summer in Pamplona, and so it will be a fine visit to receive, with much tomfoolery, and the revival of Paris en Llamas, which = yum. Meanwhile, Maria is off to London (one of her clients is performing at Royal Albert Hall, so she's handling the press conferences and whatnot), but far more interestingly, she's having a dinner-date with her big-soulmate-former-lover. This isn't actually interesting in the grand scheme of LiveJournal, but since I'm going to have to hear about it and have her deconstruct it a million times over the next few months, I obliged to dump some of that on all of you as well, in a vague misery-loves-company, "if I have to put up with this then everyone has to as well" sort of deal.
6) You should all see Zelig, because it is really, really funny, and even moreso if you know a bit about the twenties and thirties and pop culture and general history (Marion Davies, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker, Joseph Göbbels, etc.), which pretty much all of you do. But, ja, it's great, and oh my, it features both Susan Sontag and Bruno Bettelheim as themselves, and that is fantastic and brilliant. Also, for a production from 1983, without the aid of digital editing, it's remarkably well done, and only in one scene can you really, clearly tell that they're using blue-screen. And, you know, because if all of that weren't enough, it's Woody, and everybody loves a neurotic Jew.
7) I am excited about seeing the new Almodovar, Volver, next week, for free, with part of the cast. My school is fucking awesome.
8) They've opened a Spanish version of Kinko's exactly on street over. That's fucking awesome as well. I'm not kidding, even remotely; I've yet to have seen anything similar, and I imagine if there are any others, they are deep in the business district. Having a 24-hour store with writing / shipping materials, computers, internet, copiers and faxes on the next block is every procrastinative-and-problems-with-technology-prone-studying-abroad-college-student's dream. It probably doesn't seem like that big a deal to many of you, but Madeleine definitely knows what I'm talking about - if your computer breaks, you're basically screwed, as on-campus technology here is tied up with so much bureaucracy that even printing something is an adventure in itself. Have that there, in case of emergencies, is an awesome and most-appreciated safety net.
9) Today I have both received and written postcards. This makes me happy. I would like some more mail, though. Please. And the zip code, to clarify, is 28020, not 28080, as once misstated.
10) Oh yay, I've discovered how to do LJ-cuts once more!
11) _____ enjoys the sound of small car accidents, and particularly the crashing-thump noise of a fairly-harmless rear-ending. He also enjoys old newsreels.