Saturday?

Today being Saturday, I of course spent almost 14 hours at school.

14 hours. That's a damn long time. However, it was a useful 14 hours of Saturday at school! I:

1. attended the second half of the ECHO conference (does anonymizing the blog mean I should change the name of the conference? Okay, I'll call it REVERB.)

2. read most of the useful bits of the two books I needed to read for my paper due Monday.

3. wrote four pages of said paper.

4. ate unbelievable quantities of delicious cheese.

5. cursed myself for a fool for eating all that cheese and not washing my face this morning. This is a surefire recipe for a giant face pimple. Which is on the way and already starting to pain me. Stupid post-puberty persistence of pimples.

6. came up with some more ideas for my paper due Wednesday.

7. got a ride home with Z2 and the cute boy from the REVERB conference.

8. saw the last half hour of The Birdcage, one of the best films in existence.

Sadly, I will be back at school for at least four hours tomorrow. Because the score I need for my Monday paper is non-circulating. Both copies. Because otherwise people would keep checking out this 17th century sacred Jewish song collection all the fucking time. Really. It's so popular. Luckily, the library is only open 1-4 on Sundays, so I can't possibly work with the score any longer than that. I'm glad there's no way my paper can possibly take longer than that.


To alleviate the bitterness of that last paragraph, here's a fun story I read while researching for my paper (paraphrased):

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess who went for a walk among the common folk. Some lazy jerk sitting around on his ass called out, "I'd tap that!" The princess replied, "Over my dead body," and walked out of the story forever. The jerk, being a jerk, interpreted that as "I'll meet you in the graveyard for sexy sexy sex." He went to the graveyard and jerked off for a week or so, waiting for her. For no apparent reason, this caused him to become a holy man, and people came to his cemetery for the rest of his life to get his blessing.

Isn't Kabbalah bizarre? This is a fourteenth century rabbi's story, retold by a seventeenth century rabbi, then by a twenty-first century scholar, then by me. I think my version is the best.

Irritations

There is a fly in my apartment. It is loud and large and getting in the way of everything.

I cannot smash the fly because I have a very fragile cake in the oven, and smashing the fly would probably make my cake fall.

My cake will probably fall anyway because my oven is made entirely out of crappiness. This means I had to rotate the cake halfway through--NOT a good idea for a delicate cake--and I can't leave it in after shutting off the oven, the way I usually do, since the oven won't cool fast enough and the cake will burn.

I am supposed to be writing my final paper for Divine Love, but instead I am blagging. Because I really really really don't want to write this paper. I care very little about medieval and Renaissance Jewish mysticism. Why am I writing about it, you ask? Because I didn't want to put the time into this class that thinking of another topic would involve. Now my laziness is coming back to bite me in the interest-in-my-topic.

And the stupid fly is still buzzing around my living room. Grrrrr.

(On the positive side, I will soon have a cake. If it falls, I can't serve it at the conference and I'll have to eat it all myself!)

In Memoriam

Last Friday, unbeknownst to me, witnessed the passing of U. Utah Phillips. His official obituary is here, for those who are interested in learning more about this remarkable man. For me, the Golden Voice of the Great Southwest was the truest kind of musician; he made his living making music, but he worked awful hard at other things, and his music worked for those other things too. Check out his We Have Fed You All A Thousand Years if you want to get a good idea of who he was and what he did.

Those of you who grew up in Protestant churches (or sang in them for money, like some Jews I know) may be familiar with the Old Hundredth, the tune that goes with the Doxology prayer. According to Utah, most of what he said in all of his performances could be summed up in this version of the hymn (authorship unknown):

Praise Boss when morning work bells chime.
Praise Him for bits of overtime.
Praise Him whose wars we love to fight.
Praise Him, fat leech and parasite.

Amen.

WTF, internet?

In the course of researching for a paper, I needed to think of as many synonyms for "woman" as possible. I figured the intertubes would help me with this, so I googled woman and synonyms.

Several of the resultant websites included the following list, in various permutations:

cleaning lady, charwoman, womanhood, cleaning woman, woman, adult female, fair sex, char

Now, I am as willing as the next feminist to believe that there is sexism lurking behind every tree, but even I had no idea that the internet thinks all women are cleaning ladies. I was hoping for words like "girl" or "female" or "lady," but ones I hadn't thought of yet.

Since the internet has failed me, I must ask real people for help. I am compiling a list of show tunes written by men that claim to define womanhood. So far my list includes a ton of obscurities and the following flawless gems of representation:

I Enjoy Being a Girl (from Flower Drum Song)

Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend (from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)

How Lovely to be a Woman (from Bye Bye Birdie)

These three may end up being all I need for my paper, but if anyone has any additions, I am happy to take suggestions. Any thoughts, mysterious blog readers?

Unrelated

Five minutes later, I remember to plug this movie that I saw last night. Go see it! Marisa Tomei, the Cusacks, Hillary Duff (was actually great!), Ben Kingsley, Dan Akroyd, and excellent, excellent satire. Everything that was over the top was so explicitly acknowledged as over the top that it came across as realistic. Too realistic, in some instances. I cannot handle human-on-human violence, and there was a fair amount of it. But necessary, for the most part.

If this movie comes near you, please see it. I did not enjoy it uncritically, and I have many things I'd like to discuss with you if you see it, but I don't want to be spoiler guy.

However, I will tell you that the guide voice in the talking car/plane/various trucks is Montel Williams. Almost as cool as the real life Eddie Izzard guide voice one can install.

Dis-ease

Today I accomplished nothing useful. I intended to read for class and to start my final papers, but instead I sat on my ass, napped, drank tea, and ate soup.

In my defense, these are perfectly normal activities when one is sick. I believe one is. I spent the day alternating between dizzy spells, with headaches attendant, and periods during which I told myself I was just making it up and needed to get back to work.

Regardless of how justified my unproductivity may be, the upshot is still this: Two days of my four day weekend are gone with no work to show for it. This is a problem. I was at a point where I thought the remaining work was a perfectly manageable amount, as long as I didn't fritter my time away.

And today, I frittered. The remaining work is still quite manageable, I know, but each passing hour of non-work makes me feel guilty and stressed. And my throat hurts.

Whine!!

While the above would be a decent ending to the post, I must mention the fact that my last week has been full of guests. I had important times with all of them, even if not every moment was the height of pleasure. At least two long-awaited discussions took place. Results may vary. Side effects apparently include headaches, dizziness, sore throat, achy joints, incoherent sentence structure, and matzo balls.

Only one of those was a good thing.

In conclusion, I am still feeling petulant and sulky about my health and lack of productivity. But the reheated toddy I forgot to drink last night is helping with that.

Friends

Fabulous weekend became, in an instant, fantastically shitty Monday. It must be my time of the month. Both Z1 and Z2 told me this week that I look like a lesbian.

Moloko is my Friar today. I know she doesn't read this, but I wanted to announce it anyway. Thank you!