Today is Melissa's 23rd birthday! She is my sister and she is saucy and funny and great all-around, and I love her this much: --||-- ! I have funny pictures of her which I would post but I have to get to school. It will go on my list of Things To Do Tonight!

I'm done two of my five courses already, and it's a good good thing. The test I had yesterday morning went surprisingly well considering that I never did finish all the reading. Last night I got into work-mode and got a third of my take-home exam for Syntax finished. Woo!

It's strange, but sometimes I get my best work done on the kitchen table when people are over for coffee (or tea or rum or pudding or muffins or ALL OF THE ABOVE). I don't know why that is, sometimes it just works better for me. I've been thinking about this whole Being An Introvert thing, and it really doesn't mean that I don't like having people around. I can't imagine living by myself; I think I would get pretty depressed pretty fast. I think I got that way in the year that I lived with my first roommate (there have been 16!), because she was never home, and when she was, she was often in her room with the door closed. I don't function that way very well. I like one-on-one time, I get really quiet when there's more than 4 people in the conversation, I do my best relaxing in my room by myself, but I really like it that people live in my house and I can sit at the kitchen table and play cards with them if I want to. I need that social interaction. I need people to talk to when I am stressed out and can't handle any more schoolwork that night. I need people to vent to when I'm upset. Things have been good lately in this regard because I have two roommates who are funny and sarcastic and kind and who bake when they're stressed out (woo, unemployment means muffins!) and who really understand things like Birthday Week. We have a house that is welcoming, a kitchen table that often has guests, boys who complain that we make them drink too much but who keep coming back because they love us, girls who come here to play or when they need to borrow random things. We have a landlord who buys us donuts once in a while, and who tells us random Jewish stories. We have a cat who is very very strange but pretty cute. We have a Secret Other Roommate too, but that's a story for another time. We have friends who drop by because they were in the neighbourhood. I live in a neighbourhood! I don't think I can go back to apartment living — this is so much nicer! And spring is here and the sun is coming out more often and I'm wearing my spring jacket now and the markets are so busy and quirky and WOW I LIKE TORONTO.

AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY MELISSA!

Last night, a seminary prof called me a heathen (in a nice way, we were kidding around), and then proceeded to invite me to a prayer breakfast. Whatever my current views on faith, I do know that going somewhere voluntarily for 7:30 AM is clearly blasphemy. Also, when someone tells you fairly soon after meeting you that they used to be Christian (since he inquired), they're probably not going to show up to your prayer breakfast. Just a little tip, from me to you.

Tomorrow morning I have a test, and it is only worth 20%. Really, so far as I can tell, I already have at least a 70% in this class, so if I pass... that's an A in the course. This does not inspire me to study very hard. Sad, but oh so true.

There's a Buddhist temple up the road that offers free yoga and meditation sessions, and I'm going to check them out. Yoga's been recommended a lot, and meditation is often said to be extremely good therapy for people with anxiety disorders — like me! There's something about learning not letting your frantic thoughts control you that seems quite attractive. One of my roommates' friends goes there and says it's good, so I'm going to give it a shot. It's strange, but three years ago, that would have been totally unthinkable. I remember having friends quote Buddhist stuff to me and me feeling uncomfortable with it, in a haughty "that isn't my religion, so it must be deception" sort of way. It's nice to be free to try new things without having to check them against a list of inflexible doctrines first. Buddhism isn't quite atheistic, but I'm kind of flexible on that. The whole "the universe is god" thing doesn't always seem incredibly useful to me (why not keep it simple and stick with "the universe"?), but I'm willing to consider it.

Yeah, it was a stupid admin error. I took some intro courses at another campus and they have slightly different course codes, and so they were like, "Um, you realise you have to take Intro to Linguistics to graduate, right?" and I was all, "Um, you realise I had to have that course to enroll in ANY OF MY OTHER LING CLASSES, right?" I got an A+ in that course, silly admin people.

Bad Things:
1. I'm totally swamped. Today I'm writing a paper and an assignment and studying for an exam on Tuesday. After that, I have 3 more papers, a take-home exam, a test, and a major project. Who's going out drinking with me when I'm done?
2. Apparently I'm a Christian sympathizer. That's right, I'm getting slagged on by atheists for being PRO CHRISTIAN. Who woulda thunk it. You people are never happy, are you? Why can't we all just love each other?
3. I think I'm getting a repetitive stress injury from using the trackpad on my laptop. Going to have to watch that.

Good Things:
1. Girls night last night featured cheese fondue AND chocolate fondue. We are awesome. :)
2. jonmc says I'm really fetching. Damn straight!
3. Linda and I are going to go to a class at Romni's on how to spin wool!

Things I Am Decidedly Not Worrying About:
1. This whole "not eligible to graduate" bit of nonsense.
2. All that "what to do with my life" crap.
3. Making this list the same length as the other lists. (note: this is a lie)

Friends Who Are Crashing At My Place Next Month So They Can Try Out For Canadian Idol:
1. Chad

Toronto PhotoBloggers I Felt Silly For Recognizing In The Market Yesterday:
1. Rannie

Photo That Made Me Laugh Most This Week:
1. Doug, who is so my hero:

So, you know that really shitty feeling when you stay up really late and wake up all groggy and you're laying in bed with your laptop and the first thing you read on the internet is that your university has decided that you're not eligible to graduate this year? That "should I cry or vomit" feeling?

Or am I the only one who got that this morning?

There is no fucking way I'm not eligible to graduate. I planned this out, I took the right courses, I checked everything off on the sheets, I don't have outstanding fees, I made sure my transfer credits were accepted and YOU KNOW THAT'S THE PROBLEM because if there's anything universities like to mess up, it's transfer credits! What, your Natural Science requirement that we told you you don't have to do? We forgot to write that down.

I don't actually know that that's the problem yet, but I'm 90% sure, because I can't think of any other possibilities. Supposedly I'm getting a letter in the mail explaining why exactly I'm in the top 5% of students at York and yet won't be getting a diploma. And why not? It's 2 months until convocation, I can spend my time waiting for the postal service (which delivered my February 2nd paycheque YESTERDAY), that's okay! I don't mind! I'm not the kind of person who worries about this sort of thing! My week isn't already incredibly stressful!

Argh!

failure:

sanda rimay "where does she hide the bodies"
sanda rimay is she out of prison yet
sanda rimay "i'd hit it"
sanda rimay the girl i'm stalking
sanda rimay is a zombie
sanda rimay is a horse
sanda rimay is a sweetie
sanda rimay, darkness is spreading
sanda rimay loves pippin
sanda rimay is so gay

success!:

sanda rimay wants me
sanda rimay without pants
sanda rimay, what!
sanda rimay likes boys
sanda rimay is a man
sanda rimay is black
sanda rimay is sweet
sanda rimay, oh the bitterness
sanda rimay WHO ARE YOU
sanda rimay, oh my!
sanda rimay without clothes
Sanda rimay G license
sanda rimay +I think she's hot
sanda rimay I put your library books on hold haha
if only i was sanda rimay
sanda rimay is strangely comfortable with me

This post was a joint exercise in procrastination and the spread of paranoia by Heather Ann and Melissa.

Hey, Wall Street! Don't panic! I mean, I'm only crushing your heads!! Crush you! (Looking at businessmen) What the hell do you guys find to talk about anyway? (In mocking voice) 'Well, I like to put my money into Texaco.' 'Well, I like to put it into Gulf.' 'Well, I put my money in my mattress.' 'Well, I put my money in my wallet.' You're boring me! I'm crushing your head! I'm crushing your head! Hey! I just renamed your firm Merrill Lynch and the Flathead! I crush you. (salutes) Hail to you, wretched bike courier! On streets of shame, choking on car exhaust, just trying to carve out that slice of the American dream with your two-wheeled knife! I pity you. And I crush you!

I won't be shouldn't be posting here very much for the next few weeks. Almost everything is due in the next two weeks: a huge paper, 3 assignment, 2 "tests" (exams in disguise), 2 reaction papers ("squibs"), and a take-home exam. After that, I have one more project for my independent study, and then I'm done my degree. Exciting and scary all at once!

Some bpNichol I've been reading over and over lately:

real pleasure
              saint reat
the poem can't provide

so many times the flesh aches with loneliness

& this marble this phony architecture you hide behind
well

     saint reat i want to talk to you

     you won't come back at me out of the poem

     if i say "hunger"
will they call it a figure of speech

it's such a long night to lie awake in

& the flesh does ache

& the night is lonely to belong in

(bpNichol, The Martyrology Book 1, Scenes from the Lives of the Saints)

This summer, I want to read The Martyrology along with some literary criticism of it. It's beautiful and complex and I know I'm missing a lot of what he's alluding to.

Writing of The Martyrology in What History Teaches, Stephen Scobie comments on the way in which Nichol creates saints' names out of common nouns. "Storm" becomes "St. Orm" and "stale" becomes "St. Ale" (with his wife "St. Alemate") (111). He points out that not all of the names were derived so easily. "St. Reat," for example, "is not connected with 'street.' His name emerged in the course of Scraptures: Fourth Sequence as part of a progression that went from 'a tree' to 'a treat' to 'as treat' to 'has treat' to 'HA!!!!!!! St. Reat.' Even more than others, St. Reat was discovered lurking in the corners of language" (111). Scobie is obliquely approaching a very important point about poetry as discovery. Very often the most important thing writers discover is not meaning (i.e. theme or statement of truth), but some unexpected knowledge about their medium. Hackers work to find out what is in a computer -- what its make-up is and what it can do. Poets do the same thing with language; by writing, they discover unexpected things about it -- about what it can and cannot do. As Nichol puts it, "how I personally can make it stronger or find out where the blocks are, if you like; what the things are that prevent it functioning the way it could."11 By discovering new things about the workings of language, the poet is "always out, on the frontier going out a bit further" (138).

(Of Poets and Hackers: Notes on Canadian Post-Modern Poets)

Three more weeks of school. I can make it. I can. Three more. Breathe.

Cat's got a new haircut, woo woo! (previous haircut)


Today I finally finished a Syntax assignment, which I have now completed THREE times, and now it is handed in and I can't make any more adjustments to it! Fourth year Syntax is both interesting and infuriating because we're exploring issues on the cutting edge of a fairly new field. The questions on our assignments are ones that don't really have answers yet. We just have to come up with a plausible solution and point out ways that our answers aren't quite right. It's cool, because we get to hear about what syntacticians are yelling at each other about at conferences (I wish I was exaggerating), but frustrating because the theory as it stands right now doesn't quite work for every piece of data. We (well, let's be honest, THEY) still have a lot of work to do.

I've had kind of a rough day, one of those "oh crap, I'm not going to start crying on the subway, am I?" kind of days, and I think I'm just going to chalk it up to PMS and start over tomorrow. My roommates are in similar states of resignation, so we have decided that tonight is Movie Night and, furthermore, that There Will Be No Talk Of Work Tonight. Which is just what I need. :)

Funniest question in my Language and Mind class today: "So, like, why is Chomsky such an ass? Like, to everyone?" Ha!

Today's [daily dose of imagery] is a 2 minute walk from my house. Yay for Chinatown/Kensington Market! The photo faces south down Spadina Avenue. It's on the corner of Spadina and Baldwin Street, which takes you to Kensington Market if you go right, and to some fabulous restaurants (Thai, Chinese, Japanese, French, Italian, Vegetarian, Mexican, etc., all in one block) if you go left (by the LCBO). On the right is edo, which spells its name as 'ido' in its menus, a pretty good Japanese noodle house. The tall yellow sign with red lettering that says TP at the top is the Tap Phong Trading Company, where you can buy anything from chop sticks to huge restaurant-size woks to bamboo screens to blenders to tupperware to sushi sets. They have everything but old phones. I checked. (My bizarre need for an rotary dial phone was satisfied at Active Surplus, hurrah!)

Hey Bob? You have pie? Me like pie. Pie is good!

Happy Pi Day, everyone! Yep, today is 3/14, the day to celebrate 3.14! Let's hear it for math geeks. :)

From Wikipedia: This day is celebrated in a variety of ways. Groups of people, such as maths or science based clubs, might gather to consider the role that the number π has played in their lives and to imagine the world without π. During such an event, pi celebrants may devise alternative values for π, eat pie, play piñata, drink piña Colada, eat pineapple) or watch Pi. The shape of the pie is sometimes square, due to the pronunciation of the equation for the surface area bounded by a circle = πr², i.e. "pie are squared."

It's also Albert Einstein's 127th birthday today. He treated his wife like shit, but you know... Relativity was pretty cool.

It is bothering me that I can't find any scripts online of the Trailer Park Boys. If I could find some by next week, I could do a linguistic assignment on the Trailer Park Boys. How awesome would that be?! But alas, it seems that the transcript sites don't care about our Canadian heroes. I'm going to have to use something stupid, like the Gilmore Girls or something. What kind of crap is that? I want linguistic data with swearing!

Yeah, he looks cute, doesn't he? Don't believe it for a second. He was Mr. Feistypants all night. :)

"We've joined the Presbyterian church because they don't really believe much of anything." (Speaker's name omitted to protect the humourous.)

Have you been worried about the zombie invasion? AskMe can help you prepare:

Zombiefilter: How long would it take before a zombie's muscles were no longer functional?

In my ongoing preparations for the inevitable zombie takeover, it has occured to me that, while zombies seem to have somehow arrested their state of decay, their bodies no longer repair injuries. Knowing that every time we use a muscle it tears the muscle slightly, how long would it take before a zombie's legs were functionally useless? And, further, how much longer would it be before they could no longer drag themselves by their arms and can be eliminated with a simple coup de gras to the head?

HEAR YE, HEAR YE, ASK METAFILTER KNOWS MORE THAN GOOGLE.

Have you read To Kill a Mockingbird? That's nice, but have you read How To Kill a Mockingbird? This book report will enlighten you. It features ninjas, rocket launchers, and bears ON FIRE.

Yesterday, Sam and I found the Secret Swing. We are real live Torontonians now!

So last night I was dutifully working on the presentation I had to do this morning, and the doorbell rang. It was a boy, saying, "Come to a poetry reading." I said, "I can't! I have all this work to do! Wait... who's reading?" and he said, "John Terpstra." (Johannes, even!) And I said, "A Terpstra! He's DUTCH!" And I remembered being on residence with Terpstras who were everything you expect in Dutch boys — blue eyes and blond hair with the widow's peak and wicked grin and so much teasing, boys who would replace black jujubes with extra-salted dropjes for the pure joy of seeing the unexpecting friend spit in horror — and I went and it was good and I stayed up far past my bedtime, but I got everything done and good times were had.

The reading was at Hart House, which is one of the more beautiful buildings I've been in on the University of Toronto campus. Apparently it used to house a Christian Reformed Church. Now, it isn't every day that I hear people talk about the CRC. A good quarter of my high school was CRC/Dutch (these are often synonymous). Most of my father's side of the family is strong CRC. And I listened to this Frisian man read poetry and lyrical prose about terminal illness and unexpected pregnancies and God, to what was essentially a small circle of friends, and I felt tempted.

I felt tempted to come back, tempted to ask my old questions again. I felt homesick for the old identity, the familiarity. And at the same time, it wasn't quite familiar. This group of Christians seems to be more easy, more graceful, than the CRC crowd I'm used to. This poet was able to use Mary's unexpected pregnancy to make his teenage daughter's pregnancy into a holy thing, rather than condemning it and holding it over her head. I'm not sure that my old community would have used the Christ story in that way.

These days, the Christians I meet don't talk about biblical inerrancy or evangelism or entire sanctification or any of those big issues that we debated about so much. They talk about AIDS education, about avoiding imperialistic impulses, about acceptance and welcome for gay people into the community. Their story seems to have a different purpose.

Perhaps, given a few more years, I'll be like the late great phonologist Peter Ladefoged, self-professed member of Atheists for Jesus. ;)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SANDA, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, OKAY!

Flickr Leech shows you the most interesting photos on flickr every day in thumbnail format. No more clicking through pages! Some of the photos on there are so good, and some are so funny. Flickr has been reminding me that the world is beautiful. Also: I found a picture of my current house on there. How strange is that?


The common internet wisdom seems to be this: If you wish to be friends with your ex, you must first cease contact for x months, where x = (length of relationship)/2.

That's the optimistic half of the internet. The other half's common wisdom is that it is impossible to be friends with an ex, especially someone you were half-way serious about.

Now, I like the internet. Without the internet, I would not have received a crocheted penis in the mail last week. There's something to be said for that! And while we all love to believe that everyone is different, especially us, and that just because everyone else finds certain things difficult that doesn't mean that we will, I think I'm going to listen to received wisdom this time. I'm going to bide my time.


Hey, do we bide anything other than time? "Bide" sounds like such an old word. It's funny when words drop out of the language almost completely, only hanging on in certain expressions. I suppose you can say that something doesn't bide well. Can you say that something does bide well? Seems a bit awkward, no?

People, do a test for me. Does your browser complain if you try to go to "curiouslittlemonkey.com" instead of "www.curiouslittlemonkey.com"? Both of them work for me, but I've heard rumours otherwise. If it's breaking, what browser/operating system are you using?

The cat, she touches me voluntarily and meows for pets almost constantly. When I wake up, she wanders up to the top of the bed and sniffs my nose and then sits beside me, purring. The roommates are still wishing me a happy birthday week and making me laugh. The perogies are good with fried onions, sour cream, and salsa.

This week, I've been thinking about Verb Second languages, CP domains, orthographic representations, acoustic buffer impairments, and, courtesy of my Nicholson Baker reading on the way to school this morning, film projection mechanisms. The Maltese Cross is a beautiful piece of machinery. It pleases me.

Tomorrow I have a class on quotative 'like'. That's when you say "And I was like, 'no way!'" instead of "And I said/went/whispered/was all, 'no way!'" It's new, and linguists are quite interested in it. Fortunately, I've already done a major project on it this year, so I don't think there'll be much new information in tomorrow's class.

Oh, and Sanda? She turns 25 tomorrow.

From my birthday party last night:


It was kind of a strange party... some people showed up at 4:30 and left by 7:00, others didn't arrive until 9:30. So, you could have been at my party and not even seen half of the other people who were there at some point during the night. All in all we had way too much sugar (meringues! coffee icing! filipino not-quite-butter-tart things!), but that's not a problem. :) Stuart brought me an impromptu present that consisted of:

- about 10 army men
- one tall white candle
- one tea-light
- one stick of gum (not a pack! a stick!)
- three hair elastics (green, yellow, blue)
- a hemp necklace

Oh, and it was wrapped in Christmas wrapping. It made me laugh a lot, and then Gail made it into an elaborate mixed-media sculpture, with most items stacked in the goblet that Sam had given me, with army men holding up the candle in the goblet, and the rest of the battalion standing at the base, guarding the treasure (gum!).

We ended the night with a game of Donut (a strangely-named but entertaining card game that is reminiscent of poker), and I beat everyone quite soundly. People have been coming over and playing cards with us a lot lately, it's quite nice.

It's the beer that's addicted to me! Oh no! No, stop!

This shirt would look good on my body. You know it. I know it.

This morning I got up and there were a ton of balloons hanging from above the stairs. My roommates are funny. :) They understand birthday week in all its greatness. All week, Agnes has been randomly yelling to me from other rooms in an authoritative voice, "HEATHER ANN! IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY WEEK!" Sam brought me birthday week Mardi Gras beads the other night. They are green and they made me laugh.

I'm 25 today. Tomorrow, I will still be 25, but there will be cake. :) What a year. In some ways, it was great. In others, I'm really glad it's over.

I'm sick and tired... of being sick! And also: tired! Today I am taking the day off because my throat is so sore that it hurts to yawn, and my ears are all full of pressure and rarely pop and when they do, it hurts. I'm eating chicken noodle soup, and hey Mom! I even took some echinacea! See what a good daughter I am? I've drank a lot of water, and hot tea, and gargled with salt water, and eaten wasabi peas (not a traditional remedy, but hey).

Still reading archives of Waiter Rant, particularly because he off-handedly remarks "When I was in seminary..." and "Dietrich Bonhoeffer said..." and yet doesn't believe that God answers prayer. His posts about Katrina were very interesting. He strikes a good balance between ranting about horrible customers and pointing out the speck in his own eye. There's some really good stuff in there.

Gudo Nishijima is a Buddhist monk from Tokyo with a blog about Buddhism. His English is not perfect, but certainly good enough, and his most recent post is about how Buddhism is not intrinsically atheistic. I'm finding Buddhist-type thought to be quite interesting lately.

Still trying to decide how much I want to work this summer. Shall I work one or two days a week, in a tedious job with an hour's commute, which would pay for my flight out west for Jan's wedding, or do I actually take the summer off? Hard to decide. There's another job that I might get, and if I do, I'll probably just take that job and forego the one I currently have, but it'll be a while before I know... I'm really looking forward to this summer though. It'll be warm, I'm going to read and learn to draw and learn to meditate, and probably join a photography club. I'm going to bike around and find more random sculptures around the city. I'm going to crochet vulvas and try to sell them, and think about where I want to work next year.

It's a little strange having no idea what I'll be doing or where I'll be living in September.

Tomorrow I will be 25! And probably still sick! And I have so much homework to do! But it will be my BIRTHDAY and that will make things better.

I work in this building at York:

That's pretty typical of York's architecture. You want concrete? We've got it. Good view from the balcony by my office though. I'll get some shots of that soon.

My best friend, Janice:

I will be her maid of honour in August. :)

According to Sanda, I'm it. So, here we go.

4 Jobs I've had:
1. Manager of a Christian books/music/gift store; 2. Communication assistant (editor, radio ad writer, press releases, etc); 3. Hotel housekeeper/janitor; 4. Website designer/maintainer (or, if Diane has her way, the webmistress)

4 Movies I could watch over and over and over and over (and well you get the point):
1. Snatch; 2. Kissing Jessica Stein; 3. Playing By Heart; 4. Ferris Bueller's Day Off

4 Books I could read over and over and over ...
1. Holy the Firm (Annie Dillard); 2. Franny & Zooey (J.D. Salinger); 3. White Noise (Don Delillo); 4. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)

Places I have Lived:
Mallorytown, Brockville, Kitchener, Toronto. All in Ontario, Canada.

Top 4 Places I have been on vacation:
1. Nova Scotia (everywhere, family in the Annapolis Valley); 2. BC (Prince George/Vancouver); 3. Quebec (Tremblant area); 4. Indiana.

4 Websites I visit daily:
1. Ask Metafilter; 2. Questionable Content; 3. Darn Tootin'; 4. A scad of RSS feeds, mostly blogs. I visit when you update!

4 Favourite Foods:
1. Vietnamese vermicilli; 2. Indian anything with lamb; 3. Don's Fish & Chips; 4. My mom's pumpkin doughnuts

4 Favourite Beers:
1. Steam Whistle; 2. Keith's; 3. Hemp Ale (C'est What); 4. Port wine is not a beer but must be mentioned.

4 Favourite Non-Alcoholic Drinks:
1. Coconut milk; 2. Apple cider; 3. Orange juice; 4. Chai tea

4 Favourite Musicians:
you mean, like... now? I've gotta pick 4? Ugh.
1. Carla Bruni; 2. Cake; 3. Damien Rice; 4. Ben Folds

Four Favourite Places You'd Rather Be:
1. Bed; 2. On a lawn with long-ish grass, in the summer, on a blanket, reading a book, under a tree; 3. Where my family is, when they're being silly and making me giggle; 4. You have five year olds? They're laughing until they can't breathe? I want to be there.

The last 4 books I read:
1. The News Interview; 2. Cat's Cradle; 3. a billion linguistics articles; 4. For The Time Being (Annie Dillard)

The last 4 movies I watched:
Haven't really watched movies lately... perhaps Dirty Dancing, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Scent of a Woman.

What's on my desk:
Speakers, mail, yarn, stapler, mix of corn nuts and peanuts and raisins, pens, CDs I still have to mail to my Dad, computer stuff, camera, glass of water.

I'm not tagging anybody because all my friends who would do this have already been tagged.

Tonight I went to the Astronomical Observatory at York with Frances, Gail, and Meesum. It's open to the public on Wednesday nights throughout the year, and run by our former boss, one Mr. Paul A. Delaney (one of TVO's Top 10 Profs). We saw Galaxy M81, Galaxy M82, some open clusters of stars, and Saturn and a couple of its moons.

With M81 and M82, Paul says things like, "See that blurry line? That's about 200 billion stars." And we say, "Sure it is, Paul." Ha! I believe him, but that thought is also way too big for my brain. 200 billion anything is crazy, let alone 200 billion stars. Tonight he climbed up on the side of the observatory to unhook some stuff, precariously holding onto the side with only a railing beneath him, which he had stepped off of to cries of "Paul! What are you DOING?!" and "We're telling Suzanne!" Suzanne is, of course, the Assistant to the Master, and since Paul used to be the Master of the college I work at at York, she was his keeper for 11 years. She would have been horrified and I'm going to delight in telling her all about it tomorrow, since Paul refused to bribe me for my silence with beer.

Star, Star - The Frames (limited time only!)

Star, star, teach me how to shine, shine
Teach me so I know what's going on in your mind
'Cause I don't understand these people
Who say the hill's too steep
Well, they talk and talk forever
But they just never climb

Falling down into situations
Bringing out the best in you
You're flat on your back again
And star, you're ever word I'm heeding
Can you help me to see
I'm lost in the marsh

Star, star, teach me how to shine, shine
Teach me so I know what's going on in your mind
'Cause I don't understand these people
Who say we're all asleep
They'll toss and turn forever
But no rest will they find...

I'm reading some cool stuff right now in a discourse analysis book about narratives. They're saying that secular morality is constantly being built through the stories we tell and how they're received and reflected in the stories of other people.

"Personal narratives generally concern life incidents in which a protagonist has violated social expectations. Recounting the violation and taking a moral stance towards it provide a discursive forum for human beings to clarify, reinforce, or revise what they believe and value. In this sense, a personal narrative is akin to prayer in that both imbue experience with moral direction . . . [we] suggest that personal narrative provides a secular, interactive means of building a moral philosophy of how one ought to live." Elinor Ochs & Lisa Capps, Living Narrative, p.46

It also includes this quotation:

"It struck him that when one is overburdened and dreams of simplifying one's life . . . the law one longs for is nothing other than that of narrative order, the simple order that enables one to say: 'First this happened and then that happened . . .' Lucky the man who can say 'when,' 'before,' and 'after'! Terrible things may have happened to him, he may have writhed in pain, but as soon as he can tell what happened in chronological order he feels as contented as if the sun were warming his belly." (Robert Musil, Man Without Qualities)

Want to know why this resonates with me? Ask my father about my uncle's suicide. He'll give you a narrative, one that helps him sort it out. Ask me about leaving Christianity. Do I understand it? Nope, but I've got a story, and it helps for some bizarre reason. First this, then that. If we've got a story, we've got a level of understanding, a level of control. We've inserted the event into a discourse, one that ascribes blame and victimhood, virtue and vice.

There's a whole chapter in this book about narratives intersected in prayer. You can bet I'll be blogging about that.

Okay, time for bed. I'm getting sick (blasted roommates!), and I have way too much to do this month.

DEAR SANDA, WE WILL HAVE AN UNBIRTHDAY PARTY IN THE SUMMER WHEN IT IS WARM AND SUNNY AND WE DON'T HAVE PAPERS AND EXAMS TO WORRY ABOUT. OKAY, BYE!