Mary Versus the Trumpeting Legions of Apathy

Strangely enough, I always thinks of these things on a day of rest. Thankfully. 1. Send half a dozen knitted quilt squares to Warm Up America. 2. Write a publishable and thrilling seminar paper about service-learning and written instruction and pragmatic approach to both. 3. Write a publishable and thrilling seminar paper about Ales Debeljak's use of Burkian identification to write for both an American and Slovenian audience and merge the priorities of both through his book The City and the Child. 4. Study Latin. 5. Buy some sort of Latin-studying aid--maybe Rossetta. 6. Read more of the epistles if I want to finish them by Christmas. 7. Study BSC--heck, maybe, again, Rossetta. 8. Buy the last of my sister's Christmas presents--which is an entirely genius with a capital G package, but I can't mention what it is specifically because, while it's unlikely, she might read my blog. 9. Write a publishable and thrilling personal essay for the David O. McKay contest that manage...

The Holiday. A real scriptwriter's script, witty and risky (don't worry--it does work out in the end as all good romantic comedies do) and very demanding on the two leading ladies, who spend a lot of time on screen alone. Far better than its previews led me to believe.

Okay, so I am not ashamed of the fact that I went to the opening night showing of Twilight. Mostly because I went to Divine Comedy, we took up a row and giggled during the entire movie. (It is not a comedy.) Classic moments from the movie: A constant flow of references to Google (product placement, ho!) Most awkward term of endearment: "Hold tight, spider monkey." It's one thing to read about Edward watching her sleep; it's a whole nother level of creepy to watch him do it. Bella sputters in coherently for 20 seconds straight, easy: "Wha--? I...Edward...no...Forks...I...no...it...but...you...Google...I won't--...but... you...no..." etc, etc. "Here's your veggie plate, Stephanie." Yes, Stephanie Myers is in the restaurant in the movie! Is she seeking to emulate the runaway success of M. Night Shyamalan? The random "apple catching" pose that reproduces the cover of the book. What are they going to do with the other books? "Loo...

"The problem is, I feel there's so little you can teach, really, and I didn't want to be discouraging to [the students]. Because the truth of the matter is, ou either have it or you don't. If you don't have it, you can study all your life and it won't mean anything. You won't become a better filmmaker for it. And if you do have it, then you will quickly learn to use the few tools you need. Most of what you need, as a director, is psychological help, anyhow. Balance, discipline, things like that. [...] Many talents artists are destroyed by their neuroses, their doubts, and their angst, or they let too many exterior things distract them. That's where the danger lies, and these are the elements that a writer or filmmaker should try to master first. "[The students asked him how he came up with the ideas in Annie Hall] and all I could asnwer to them was "Well, it was my instinct to do it this way." And that, I think, is the most important less...

... at least irritation in the apartment is a big frustration in life. (I don't know how that compares, exactly, to failure in the home.) This has not been the best week of my life in a lot of aspects (by which I mean I haven't riden any rollercoasters lately, eaten fresh margarita pizza, or wandered around a large European city's downtown.) but nothing really got to me until my roommates started being irritated. Everyone's been irritated lately, actually. Me, I blame a combination of midterms, regular roommateness, the lousy weather and the whole false community/real community thing that my freshman RA explained to me. Let me expound on the last one (because the others are easy to find): she said that it's easy to be nice to people for a little bit, for the honeymoon period, if you will--you can just be civil to each other for a short amount of time. Eventually, though, it wears off and you get more and more frustrated with the little things that bug us. Then it co...

Okay, so this was an exciting election. In some counties in Florida and California, voter turnout was as high as 80-85% of registered voters. When you consider how many people may be double-registered, this is a dizzying amount. Overall voter turn-out for this election may or may not be higher than any since the sixties, but even then, highest voter turn-out in fifty years is nothing to sneeze at. Right? When the voter-turnout was higher, the 1960 and 1964 elections, the U.S. was experiencing extreme turmoil--a generational gap was redefining conservative and liberal politics, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were entering a new phase of the Cold War, the Vietnam War was starting, the Civil Rights and Women's Rights movements were forming. Voting mattered. In fact, if you look at the instances of high voter turnout, it's not always a positive sign. Countries like Kosovo and Argentina have high voter turnout; countries were everything could go wrong. In fact, there's an economic eq...

What's going to be on the front cover of the magazines now? What will become of SNL post-Palin? Can we, actually?

Don't even bother reading this post. I have nothing particularly interesting to write. Maybe this: School is coming dizzying to a close. Since I'm in the grad program, this means that my semester papers, on which everything in my classes is based are shortly to be due and I not writen a lick of either of them. I have an idea of what I want to do with one, but the other is a murky beast. This is especially a problem because I have this goal to write TWO fantastic papers for each class. Ugh. I'm far more overwhelmed by what I should be doing than what I have to do. The key, I think, to feeling better about this is just to plug in and get stuff done. I've had a very antsy Sabbath, which is usually a sign that I haven't been working hard enough on the "six days thou shalt labor"--I had three nights of staying up past 2:00am, so that could be part of it and the sugar-orgy that is Halloween. So if I give up Monday-afternoon movie (hard to do, hard to do) and ins...