Making Banana Pancakes...

I get song lyrics stuck in my head all the time, but this one was different. This one was like a secret voice telling me what to do. And since it was about food, I listened.

Having stolen my housemate's MP3's (lots of happy rainy day reading music) and listened to Jack Johnson's "Banana Pancakes," I wandered around for two days singing "making banana pancakes" (just that one line) over and over again.

Then I actually made the cursed pancakes, just to stop myself from humming the tune. And the weird thing was, it actually worked. And the pancakes were pretty good too.

In other news:
1. Me and the phrase "bed rest" are not the best of friends. In fact, we are bitter, bitter enemies. I shun this 'bed rest', and its kinsmen 'cough medicine' and 'extra sleep', at all times and in all ways.
2. In totally unrelated news, I'm sick again.
3. I have realized that the relative importance of any particular literary theorist is directly related to how incomprhensible they are.
4. I tried to post something much more interesting about an online politics test I took which identified me as a socialist (surprise!), but my HTML skills were too nonexistent for me to post the link without it exploding my entire blog. Sorry.

Poor Little Rich Girl

I have a problem -- my summer is booking up fast.

I know that sounds absurd, but I realized yesterday that I'm graduating in June, my brother's getting married in Belize in July, and I was thinking about spending some time travelling and working in England over the summer.

Problem.

How do I make all those things fit together, plus making enough money to, y'know, live? Of course, I wasn't really worried about going to my graduation, but then my Dad told me that my English gran wants to come see me graduate. And that's not the sort of thing (and this isn't the sort of Gran) that you can say no to.

Hmm.

TV = Evil

Television is a bad bad thing. No, I don't mean the actual shows (I'll still watch Lost and the West Wing and such), but the idiot box itself. I spent yesternight avoiding work by watching some CTV show which pretends that Canadians can be cool and scienc-ey and solve problems that the CIA can't (Ha!) and by watching a Football Game and by watching other things which I'm too embarrassed to relate (yes, there are things I watch that are more embarassing than football).

And what did I get for my night of doing nothing? Tiredness (I had to stay up late to do my readings) and a terrible sense of lethargy and apathy. In other words, general psychological unhappiness.

So tonight I vowed to watch no tv. I've spent my time instead reading comics, doing a little homework, and taking a bath. And I feel infinitely better.

Now, it could be that I have less work tonight. It could be that I ate something which helped my metabolism. There could be any number of reasons that have nothing to do with tv. But I choose to believe that reading and talking to my housemates is infinitely better for my soul than watching mindless tv.

Give that man the Pulitzer!

This was found in "The Book of Sainte Foy's Miracles," written by Bernard of Anger (really) in the middle ages sometime. Here, he describes the death of an evildoer who had gotten the smackdown from Sainte Foy:

"So the wretch, tortured with wretched torture, scarcely extended his wretched life, wretchedly, for more than two days."

Squinches, Cardinal Bimbo, and My Hair Shirt

It's been a bit of an odd morning:

1. In the middle of my art history lecture on Byzantine and Carolingian architecture (think Constantine to Charlemagne), which was filled with just as many big words as you'd think it would be, I found out what the little pictures around the edges of a dome in a church are called. Squinches. I kid you not. That may not be how you spell it, but I swear my very well-published professor talked for about ten minutes on the propogandistic imporatance of a word that sounds like the noise wet Wellingtons make in the rain.
2. We're about to start studying The Courtier in renaissance literature, which means that my very old, cute, and exceedingly distinguished professor (he edited the Norton, for goodness sakes!) spent a while talking to us about how to understand "Cardinal Bimbo's discourse on love". When he gave out the handout, it turned out to actually be Cardinal Bembo, but still. I was distracted and giggly the whole rest of the class.
3. Of course, my distraction was not helped by the fact that I went to pull what I thought was a loose string from my sweater during class, only to find it was a two-inch long, curly, wiry, white hair. I stared at it dumbfoundedly for a few minutes before finally realizing that the hair must have come from Charlie, the adorable little dog owned by my friend Sarah (who used to own this sweater). Still, it was disconcerting to know that hair from a dog could have hidden more than a year in my sweater. It makes me wonder what else is hiding in my sweaters...

I also wonder what bizarre words and strange discoveries the afternoon will bring.

heehee -- squinches.

Serenity.

I really, really liked Serenity. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that it was the scariest movie I've seen in a long time and that my muscles actually hurt this morning from me tensing them so much and that I didn't sleep most of last night because I was afraid that reavers were going to get me.

It was gory, it was dark, it was needlessly violent. All of these are the reasons why, when Biku says she hates this movie, I can totally understand where she's coming from.

But, I can also understand where Orson Scott Card (in his ravingly positive review - http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2005-09-30-extra.shtml) is coming from.

I liked this movie. Why? 'Cause it said something real, gorramit. It was a hard messy movie where the evil people aren't just stormtroopers with atrocious aim. It talked about real people (broken, screwed up, prideful people) and what happens when they get thrown into terrible situations. Who turns in on other people, who tries to work for a better world, who hunkers down in a foxhole. It's about the consequences of love and loyalty.

And I liked it. I plan to see it again once I've recovered from seeing it the first time. That may be a while, though.

(N.B. I admire the fact that despite having lots of people who'd seen it before me, no one breathed a word of spoilers to me. Thank you. Feel free to email me and rant about the movie now. This one's gonna need some serious discussin'.)

Coming Soon...

The CBC and the CMG have reached a deal! Wheee! I am giddy with the anticipation of the return of arts reports, Tom Allen, and actual Canadian news that doesn't suck/contain guys named Leslie.

Of course, it's very convenient that the two parties managed to work out a deal two days before hockey started up again...for the first time ever, I'm grateful to hockey. This might even make up for the fact that the end of the NHL lockout ended CBC's "Movie Night in Canada".