An Explanation of the Cosmic Landscape

Dante, from the Cathedral in Florence.

I am a conscientious objector to Moby Dick. After reading "Billy Budd" (about 120 pages) and almost dying of the most intense boredom I've ever experienced, I swore off Melville forever, and decided expressly to avoid his big fish tale (about 700 pages). When I was assigned to read Moby Dick in my American Humanities class in college, I didn't. The fact that I still did just fine in the class only reinforced my resolve.

Now Amilynne, in a bout of guilt over being an English major and not having read the beastly book, is about halfway through it. And she has decided that I cannot get out of Purgatory until I follow suit.

Time in Heaven, you see, is spent enjoying the Heavenly Lecture Series--fascinating symposia on the most interesting topics that help the heavenly make sense of being. And Amilynne and I both really, really, really want to go. Amilynne, though, by her own admission, will have to sneak in if she wants any part of it. And that won't be easy, because she would have to shake Johnny Cash, her personal guide through Hell. So if she can't get in, the plan is that I'll sneak in a tape recorder and slip the bootleg copies to her under the Pearly Gates. Amilynne and Johnny Cash can then spend the rest of their time cruising around the River Styx with David Bowie in his boat. Which makes me a little jealous.

Tonight, though, Amilynne threw me out of Heaven and consigned me to an eternity in Purgatory. She has decided that reading Moby Dick is my pennance for something or other, and although I adamently insist that this punishment does not fit my crimes, she says that the day will come when Virgil is begging me to read it so I'll be off his hands and can join Beatrice and Dante in Paradise. Here's the problem: how can I possibly read Moby Dick? I am a conscientious objector! Should I read it, I would be forsworn, guilty of lying, and could no longer enter Heaven anyway!

Amilynne figures that she is being merciful. Reading Moby Dick, she says, beats the alternative: a neverending dinner party with the Shelleys (Percy and Mary) and William "Billy" Blake in the newly-opened Cavern of Hell, just below where Satan sits encased in ice chewing on Judas et. al. It's no use, though--I just can't do it. I just can't read Moby Dick.

So I guess now Amilynne and I are both looking for someone who will slip us bootleg copies of the Heavenly Lecture Series that we can enjoy in our own eternal realms. Because if I have to sit at the top of Mount Purgatory with nothing but Melville for entertainment, I might as well just go down to Hell, stop in for appetizers, and then go find a cozy tree to climb into with the other suicides.

Boy Rocks!; or XP Service Pack 2 Sucks

Boy rocks! Boy is the bomb! Boy saved my computer from the evil grips of XP Service Pack 2! Thanks, Boy! What a great brother you are!

Retraction

Apparently my elation at having my life back was premature. Today in talking with one of the math teachers at my school, I found out that ABC plans to rebroadcast Lost, first episode onward, starting June 1. Hooray! So much for my freedom, but this is much better than waiting for the DVDs.

Whew! I can have my life back!

Well, bring on the boring summer TV. Lost had its season finale tonight, 24 happened two nights ago, and Desperate Housewives is of course over--There's nothing else to watch until fall, and that's a good thing.

The Drawtoy on zefrank.com

So after Revenge of the Sith last night, this is what I found myself drawing on the computer today.

Kind of a Muppet Sith Lord--one whom Yoda could dispatch in one fell swoop. The fun thing about it is that on the original drawing, the blue squares that make up the light saber move--it's very much alive. Unfortunately that doesn't translate here.

I did like the movie so very much. I've finally decided--I want to be a Jedi when I grow up.

Find the drawtoy on www.zefrank.com (or find the direct link by clicking on the title of this post). And may the Force be with you.

Shopping

I can't keep up with inflation. I went out to get gifts for my honor society students who are graduating. I wanted to get something also as a thank-you to the one who has been my student aide this year and who has really been a big help. So in considering what would be a little fun and Italian cultural, I went to look for a pasta roller. Last check, they cost between $18 and $20, even at Williams Sonoma. So off I went to pick one up, except in the last year or two they have jumped from $18-20 to $50. I was in complete shock. I was too shocked to look at the motor next to it and see if its price had also jumped, and they don't sell that online. But let me show you what I'm seeing: it's not only a price jump from $18-20 to $50, it's that now you also have to pay an extra $30 for the spaghetti attachment that used to be included for free. www.williamssonoma.com, search "Imperia"
Now with all due respect, they have apparently re-designed one aspect of the machine, adding a tray that slides down into the main roller. This may make it easier for one person to operate the machine alone, but I don't think it's any reason to effectively quadruple the price.

The crazy thing is that Sur La Table has the machine for $60, but they have brought the price of the motor down from the $80 I paid to $70. www.surlatable.com, search "Atlas" for the machine and "Imperia" for the motor.

The new pricing makes no sense at all. There is no way that the value of a pasta machine has quadrupled in two years. I will blame the rich people who want to claim fresh pasta as their own, in spite of the fact that pasta has its origins in Italy with the poor.

So to everyone who has a pasta machine, treat it like gold, becuase its value is increasing as though it were made of the shiny stuff.

Walking

CONGRATULATIONS AMILYNNE!

Amilynne is graduating from college today. With Distinction and a star by her name in the program. She's brilliant, and she rocks.

Please, Please Pinch Me

I just woke up sobbing from the dumbest dream, a nightmare of epic proportion. NOTHING in this dream was based on fact except that it was about me giving a test to my second year class. Which, in a matter of fact, I actually am doing first thing tomorrow morning. Well, in this dream, it wasn't even the right class--one of the students had been switched out--and I had just distributed the test and sat down when a principal came in to observe. Now this was not a real principal. It was this young blonde thing in her twenties, all cute and critical. And suddenly the kids were rambunctious, talking and trying to get me to give them the answers and pulling out CD players to listen to. And the principal calls me back to tell me all of the things I'm doing wrong--her worry is that the kids take the class to casually, that it's too structured like hanging out, etc. etc. And I tried to defend myself, and she kept telling me what I was doing wrong, and finally I just yelled at her. I called her a nasty name and asked her why on earth she had chosen to come in and do my formal assessment right in the middle of SOLs, since I've been tied up in those for the past month, and no, right now I'm not the best teacher I could be, I can barely breathe I've got so much to do. Well, if I wasn't going to be fired for being a bad teacher, I figured I would be after that. She pulled a ladder up to a switch high up on the wall (that doesn't exist in reality) and played with something, then handed me my copy of the evaluation and left. I started to look at the evaluation. It was all about how cute my outfit was that day, and how if she had crayons she would draw a picture....At this point I woke up sobbing.

Then I came out to the computer and the screensaver was up--the screensaver I loaded to run in Italian--and it was running Spanish and French and German instead--I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone.

Maybe it' s a good thing I don't have much time for sleep these days if dreams like that are what's going to happen.

Orchids

At the National Botanical Conservatory

So last night I had a crazy dream in which orchids were very, very important. I have no idea why. But I was trying to explain an orchid to someone, and a way of getting the beauty of them across completely eluded me.

At the National Botanical Conservatory

Funny how I dream of orchids and not of this crazy cucumber desert plant.