Wit & Whim

Today we--yes, the royal we--are playing hot lava. Anywhere that the sun is not shining is the hot lava, and must be avoided at all costs. The only exceptions are class periods, and getting my coffee cup refilled. I find the sunshine most conducive to thought, including thoughts which should have occurred to me some time ago. Today, in particularly, it was just something regarding my research, which I really grasped for the first time. I had previously realized that Austrian national identity was poorly defined prior to the end of WWII and the Austrian Victim narrative. I had failed to reconcile, however, the real import of this. Austria is almost completely a post-WWII concept. The Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburg dynasty was a broad collection of regions, united under a central bureaucratic mechanism. Within that Empire, regions  ethno-cultural likeness were organized into provinces; there was no Austria, as such, but Tirol, South Tirol, Salzburg, and Vienna, amongst num...

To controvert a meme: Summer is Coming. That is quite fortunate, because I am simply a tad bit tired. There is only so much heavy academic literature one can read before it is time to cut it with a healthy dose of talking animals. Although, I have come to believe that it is not the literature itself which is so stuffy, but rather, that it is the knowledge of coming graded work which renders the otherwise pleasurable suffocating. A prime example of this would be the work I am doing for my senior seminar. I find the topic fascinating, and I still get the familiar chills down my spine each time I discover something particularly weighty, but as the semester drags on, I come to view it more as plain drudgery, not because the topic has lost merit over the course of my studies, nor because my expanded knowledge on the topic makes each new discovery any less triumphant, but merely because I realize that the time will be coming when this is no longer just for me, and when I will have to yield...

I will keep this brief. I have my feelings on tipping. If one does not have money, one should not got out. If one feels that there is indeed money to justify going out, then I see no reason why one should budget on the tip. If one can not include a generous tip and remain within means, why go out in the first place. I admit, a quasi-theological idea has worked it's way into my tipping, and I cannot bring myself to regret it. When I tip, I hope that my generosity borders on the level where it would appear to be prodigality. Even as we receive grace beyond what is expected, much less deserved, so also, one should tip one's waiters and waitresses, giving gladly, just for the sheer joy of giving, and in the hope of bringing some pleasure to others. There are places I can cut, but tips will never be one of them.

Since having heard about the upcoming radio Drama of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, and since having learned that the Shewoof does not esteem it so highly as she ought, I have been considering what it is about that book which spoke to me so. At a basic level, it is escapist. It is an adventure story set outside the realms of everyday life. The world is fantastic, and magic satisfies in a way that no crime drama or spy/military thriller ever will. But it is not a world so vague and separate as Middle Earth; it coexists with the world of the known, and therefore, taps into the realm of daydreams in a way high-fantasy never can. In Neverwhere, the remarkable lurks just beneath the surface, out of sight of the ordinary, but waiting to bubble up through the cracks. The story has the magic of a rainy day in a foreign city; total anonymity and the simultaneous thrill and fear of leaving everything behind and striking out into the unknown. For the protagonist, everything is new and frighten...

Alright, it is still difficult for me to decide, after a while, what exactly I think of the face-rug. It has its ups and downs. The response, despite a few nay-sayers, has been overwhelmingly positive. You must understand, I was not prepared to like it initially, mostly because my sister had some withering comments to level at my previous attempts to grow facial hair. It has never turned out well in the past, and I was prepared, generally, for it to look abysmal. What I am saying, in basic, is that I was not nuts about it, and I am still not totally convinced, but having been told many--no, really--many times that it looks really good, I have wandered into the unknown. What I am saying, ya'll, is that: if I start looking like trapper john, or a large animal, or a NASCAR fan, for the love of all that is good and holy, tell me. I am operating under the effects of peer opinion and am not entirely within my mind.

When I was younger I had alter egos. My brothers and I envisaged other planets in a far off world, where these characters lived. That world was an analogy for our own and we created it, not out of whole cloth, but using the materials supplied by the world around us. So also, those alter egos were not wholly outside of us, but aspects of our personalities. The alter egos in particular were interesting, because, though they were prone to exaggeration, everything that they said was merely a caricature of something we  actually thought. Speaking as an alter ego--we could tell by voice change, slight or extreme, depending on the character--we could put an often humorous twist on whatever we were thinking. We would say something ridiculous, but beneath it, we could immediately find the kernel of truth that the other had spoken. And, have I been using the past tense? I beg your pardon. Our alter egos are not nearly dead yet, nor do I expect they ever will be. In the first part, I ha...

My SAT essay score was a 6. I got two threes, which signifies that I have a mediocre grasp of the English language at best, and could use some work stringing together my arguments. Now, my style might get a little florid; I take no small delight in playing with my words, but I have never--from any other source--had it suggested to me that my writing was mediocre. Is it a difference between my writing in the comfort of the home and writing in a high pressure test environment? I answer: I have never received less than an A on any essay based exam. It is seldom that I even get points deducted, let alone receive something equivalent with a C. A C is well into seppuku territory. Why do I bother to revisit this point? Because Dogmeat got a similar essay score on his SAT. The time given to the grading of each essay is around 2 minutes, which means that much of your score is based on assumptions and first impressions. The greatest guarantors of a good score are pretty script and a few we...