Mary Versus the Trumpeting Legions of Apathy

So I'm thinking about Christmas traditions, both the ones I do with my fam right now and what I'd like to do when I have my own family. Here are three things I like: 1. St. Nicholas' Day Gift Re-Discovery. I like celebrating St. Nicholas' Day; in my family, we usually get some nuts and candy in our shoes and a Christmas book to enjoy for the season. But I think that the day BEFORE St. Nicholas Day would be a good opportunity to appreciate all the cool presents we got last year. Here's how I think we would celebrate it: go through the closets and cupboards and see all the neat things you've already received. Then, play with them. We found my sister's old harmonica, my mom's guitar, and some old puzzles and had a great time with them, so why not have a whole day to enjoy all the old gifts? And if you show St. Nick how much you like the stuff he gave you in years past, he'd probably give you better stuff this year! 2. Kiva. If you're on a 12-month p...

Me -> 1. UT Austin 2. Penn State 3. Arizona State 4. Carnegie Mellon 5. Maryland 6. UI at Chicago

Yesterday I was released from my calling as Relief Society President and my roommate was was sustained. People keep asking me if I'm relieved or jubilant or sad or whatever. I guess it's the whatever. I know my secretary did a little dance in her seat when she was released from her calling (but I'm sure she learned a lot from it, right?), and I've heard of people having a hard time getting released, but I don't really feel that strongly. Don't get me wrong: I loved many things about being RS President. I loved getting the burning inspiration of "Jane" over and over until I send Jane a note. I loved being able to look people in the eye in interviews as they recounted the miracles of their lives. I loved being able to ask, "What can I do to make your life easier?" knowing that I had the resources of that whole organization at my disposal, and the support of the Elders Quorum and Bishopric to boot. I loved being able to help sisters. And I think...

Step 1: Hop and say "Eeeeee!" in Matt-Meese-esque form. Step 2: Breath in and out through my clenched teeth, like a woman in labor, in-and-out. Step 3: Hunker into coat/hat/scarf muttering, "it's so cold, it's so cold, it's so cold." Step 4: Begin to enjoy the cheek-pinching weather and wonder how I went 8 months without something like this.

What does a discipline generally agree on? Almost every field has some knowledge that almost all of the members of the community, no matter their differences, find fundamental. Liberal economist Alan Blinder wrote this great book where he talked about the several principles (growth from free trade, damage from rent controls) that almost every economist, liberal or conservative, tend to agree on. The National Center for Science Education has compiled a list of scientists named "Steve " who believe in evolution (the idea being that people named Steve are a minority of the total population). Essentially every Renaissance scholar believes that Shakespeare really did write Shakespeare, even calling the controversy a " non-issue. " So what are the great points of expert aggregation for composition studies? I don't know. No one's done much reproduced, incontrovertible research. But what do we, as practitioners and occasional researchers, generally agree on? I'...

So sports don't come naturally to me. Not playing, not watching, not understanding their crazy rules. Partially this is just my family culture, although I did have a sister and a brother who played soccer in high school. I just would never be Sporty Spice is all. I've been trying to make myself more literate, like those Great Works requirements for the Honors Program: watch X number of games, play in X number of sports. I even subscribe to ESPN the Magazine, which, I'm willing to defend, contains some of the best writing in journalism. Here, by, is a brief psychological association of my experience with sport. Tennis I only learned to play tennis this summer. My awesome roommate Danger taught me. We'd practice together, play a little, and sometimes we'd play with her brother, and sometimes he'd bring his roommate. I'm not great at racket sports: I run fast for the ball, but never stretch my arms out. My dad played tennis in high school--there are pictures, ...

Slavoj Žižek, the grumpy Slovene Hegelian is possibly serious. Possibly not. In any case, I suspect that The Guardian got these questions from one of those "fill in your answer and send to 10 people" email. When were you happiest? A few times when I looked forward to a happy moment or remembered it - never when it was happening. What is your greatest fear? To awaken after death - that's why I want to be burned immediately. What is your earliest memory? My mother naked. Disgusting. Which living person do you most admire, and why? Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the twice-deposed president of Haiti. He is a model of what can be done for the people even in a desperate situation. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Indifference to the plights of others. Aside from a property, what's the most expensive thing you've bought? The new German edition of the collected works of Hegel. What is your most treasured possession? See the pr...

Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please let me in.

I'm not quite certain how it happened, but the young man who takes count of people in the rooms of the JFSB hates me with a fiery passion that I have never encountered, even with people who have more than a 40-second encounter with me. I thought I was being cute and flirty and funny when I invited him to stay in our class when he stuck his head in. Then he slammed the door. After class, I ran into him randomly and tried to apologize and he walked away. I think I have made a powerful enemy.

So I was sitting at home, feeling lazy, when I decided that if I really wanted to take a long, leisurely bath, then I was going to need some trashy (in quality, not in content) fashion magazine. The neighbors being fresh out, I walked down to the local 7/11 and picked up my InStyle for $3.99 and while I was there, why not, got 5 bucks cashback. I walk out, holding my umbrella in one hand, trying to put my money in my wallet with the other, and clutching my magazine under my arm, when I see this woman pushing a baby carriage, a man besides her holding on to the stroller with one hand, his other hand loosely holding one of those red-and-white canes. You know, the kind blind people use? The woman, passing me, says, "Excuse me, can you help us?" With my wallet now in my back pocket, but still navigating my umbrella and magazine, I lean over. It's drizzling and I might as well share my umbrella a little. "Yes?" I ask, expecting her to ask where something is located....

They're learning...they're learning ...they're learning !! (lightning, thunder, a wolf howls in the distance)

English is both rest - home and nursery of the liberal arts. Whether a liberal art is fading from the gene ral education ( public speaking, applied civics , ethics and philosophy) , or nascent (visual rhetoric, podcasting, webdesign ) , there is space for it at CCCC’s, in experimental First-Year Composition classes, in writing prompts. Sometimes we justify this broad interpretation of our discipline by adding the word “literacy” to the end of the field: studying music and the spoken word becomes “aural literacy” while a study of art and design is “visual literacy.” While this practice may stretch the literal (no pun intended) interpretation of “literacy,” it becomes the link that gives us the right to dabble in the specializations rightfully belonging to experts of both ebbing and flooding disciplines. Despite our forays into oration and technology, we still base ourselv es in the discipline of writing. Cindy Selfe rightly identifies in her chapter of Writing Ne...

This caught my fancy. I miss economics...

Typically, I have a huge Halloween party planned by now, with handmade invites aand a plan for everything from my costume to which corny horror movie to watch to what shape of gummy anatomy to serve. This year...less so. So, if I were to organize my Halloween party in, say, less than two weeks, what kind of suggestions would you have for me? My place or my parents'? Food? Costumes? How do I get invites out aside from just Facebook and email? Oh, what a conundrum.

On the one hand, high heels make girls' legs look good. On the other hand, high heels hurt. Sigh...

Today I avoided thinking about Boy for five hours straight. Hurrah! I don't know how you romantic types happen to get anything done at all. Thank heavens I'm a late bloomer, or I never would have made it into graduate school.

Sometimes you say something stupid in class. Sometimes you say something stupid that makes you bring a cake next time.

For some reason (probably because of my incessant discussion of my nasty toenail), my roommates have decided to pull a prank on me. This incident caused me to reflect on what the appeal is to me of a really good prank. It occurs to me that pranks are just like gifts, except for the fact that they are irritating. Spencer's signaling theory says that sometimes the worth of something isn't intrinsic (like getting a rhinestone-encrusted blender), it's more what that thing signifies (that the person knew you always wanted a rhinestone-encrusted blender). Just as this works for gifts, I think this theory can be applied to pranks. I'm flattered that my roommates knew me well enough to wallpaper my room with pictures of conservative pundits. I'm thrilled that they knew I hate touching cotton balls. I'm still finding puffs in my sheets or in the toes of my shoes or in my pencil jar, but I remain thrilled. It's the little irritations that really mean so much in a rela...

The toenail has got to go, I'm afraid. I dropped a full bucket of water on it in the summer, on the way to water some plants and while it hurt like the devil, I couldn't foresee that it would turn so black that I had to put several layers of nail polish over it or that, finally, it would start to die and come off from the left edge. This is, of course, disgusting. What could be a worse topic on conversation than the moribund nail of one's foot? And yet. I'm fascinated by this process, inspecting my toe nightly, thinking of it flapping slightly when I swim, choosing my footwear judiciously . I'm like my own science project. I haven't had a piece of me defect of its own will since I lost my twelve-year-old molars. And what's more, not only is the dead drying out and yellowing and flaking (in that last description, I'm certain I lost any readers I might have had, so can comfortably write for myself), but my old nail is also being pushed up by the regenerat...

It occurs to me that at this late stage I haven't lent my voice to the already cacophonous choruses debating the literary merits of Ms. Meyer's work. I realize that by making any sort of statement, I risk alienating good friends with strong opinions, but weighing that hazard against that of letting my friend continue in strong opinions unchecked, I have decided to go forth as originally planned. I don't think Stephanie Meyer is a bad writer. Now this isn't to say that I think her prose merits inclusion in the next Norton's anthology or that a world of Twilight would usher in the literary revolution we've been waiting for, but I've had enough of people calling her a talentless hack. Sure, maybe some lines of teenage angst strike the reader as perhaps overly melodramatic, or crudely hewn, but that doesn't make her talentless. In fact, if she's talentless, then may God bless me with the talentlessness to make the New York Times Bestseller Lists for seem...

Poems for Shark Week Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water... —from "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman In honor of Shark Week , the Discovery Channel's annual weeklong series of television programs devoted to sharks, Poets.org has compiled 35 Poems about Sharks , and examined how the animals have been represented in classic and contemporary poetry. Described by poets as "death-scenting," with "lipless jaws" and "eyes that stare at nothing, like the dead," sharks have long served as a cultural symbol of mortality and looming danger. Despite the fact that sharks kill fewer than 20 people a year, their reputation as the ocean's most allusive and deadly predator continues to inspire fear and fascination in audiences throughout the world. Included are poems by Carl Sandburg, Robert Graves, Martín Espada, Denise Levertov, Joel Brouwer, Walt Whitman, Tomasz Rózycki, Herman Melville, Alan Dugan, James Dicke...

Last night I saw the war movie Hurt Locker at the Towne Centre in Provo, and if you live in Provo and you weren't in the theater with me, you probably missed your chance--independent movies with no big names, this is probably a one-weekend-only deal. Too bad. This movie, as far as I can tell, realistically depicts not just the fear and moral indecisiveness of war, but something also of the tedium and boy-stupidity (as illustrated when the company gets sloshed on whiskey and compete to see who can punch whom in the stomach the hardest). There were a couple of instances where I think the soldiers probably would have shot first and give warnings later--when a taxi breaks the perimeter of a IED scene at 50 mph, you can probably assume that he's not just a bad driver--but other than that, this film was remarkably true to life. I think. Because, you know, I haven't been to war. Not this war, not any war. I'm not particularly signing up at my local recruiter's either, bec...

I finally got a book back that I had lent out. I'm thrilled to have it back, in part because it's signed by the author, in part because, frankly, it's an interesting book. It's called White Man's Burden and its author, William Easterly, probably is getting used to receiving death threats from Peace Corp types. His premise is this: our good intentions to save the poor are often the exact same colonial impulses that messed up these countries in the first place. In fact, instead of doing good, throwing gobs of money at countries probably hurts them far more than it helps them. He divides his book into two sub-topics: Aid and Military Intervention. Both methods do equally miserably. The top-down approach of what he calls "Planners" create these utopian ideals of changing poor, oppressed countries into beacons of democracy and prosperity. In reality, these sudden, major overhauls, be they military or humanitarian, seldom work and often create corruption, famine...

Yesterday, I had a wonderful day: I finished my novel (hurray!), at least a first draft. My sister told me that she thought I was pretty. I hosted a writing party that was surprisingly delightsome. I met up with some old friends and had good chats. TODAY, can you believe it: I beat my personal best 5k time. It's an unofficial 26.07, but even unofficial, that's two minutes off my last time. I got to go to the temple. My reimbursement check finally cleared and I have a little money! (Until I pay first and last months' rent. Boo.) I feel a little bad, though, when I know people who are having lousy weeks. I'm just living a dream

From Mark's and my hike the other day

I just read the neatest article in the New Yorker where Elizabeth Kolbert reviews several new books with new theories about why we, as a nation, have gotten to be such porkers. Kolbert points out that while there had been a gradual weight gain of the average american since the 1960s, the biggest jump took place since the 1980s. In the 1994 Journal of the AMA, Flegal et. al found that whereas 25.4% of Americans had been overweight in the 70s, by the early nineties that percentage was now 33%. Whoa, Nelly! Among some of the familiar explanations (evolutionary "fat genes," dangerous urban centers), it seems like the 80s took their toll in a number of ways: 1. In Eric Finkelstein's "The Fattening of America," the eighties marked a time of cheap fats and sugars. Economically speaking, the real price (adjusting for things like inflation) of fats and oils decreased by 16% between 1983 and 2005. Soda pop alone got 20% cheaper. Since food expenses are income normal (mean...

AAAAAAAAA!

It seems pretty obvious to me that music helps me work out. I'm super-tired, I want to die with foot-pounding tedium, I'm planning on walking the next block and then..."Get up, get up, put the body in motion!" and, shoulders shimmying, I'm good for another 5:52. I feel like music helps me get farther, faster, better. But is that what the studies support? In the Journal of Exercise Physiology, Larry Birnbaum reported that when he made three groups of subjects (fast music, slow music, and no music) run at 5.5 mph for fifteen minutes, the fast music group showed a marked difference: their oxygen consumption (VO2s), cardiac output, number of breaths and other indicators were much higher than those in in slow and no music groups. That means that fast music actual may make you /less/ efficient than slow or no music. On one hand, being less efficient is bad, because then your body can't handle longer or harder workouts, but on the other hand, being less efficient is ...

I don't know what it is, but this trip to DC, I can't stop myself from going to every invertebrate zoo and exhibit--they're loose like a jellyfish! Don't these look like evil geniuses? Or genuses? This is a cuttlefish. It has such good eyesight that it can see you as well as you see it. I went to the butterfly house at the Smithsonian, where they feed butterflies rotten fruit. You do not want to mess their fruit; the butterflies will kill you. I saw some other things (art, monuments, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fireworks) but the invertebrates win this trip! Hurrah for invertebrates! Let's celebrate by not stepping on them today... too often.

Mormon women's history moment of the day. I'll photoshop myself in later.

One of the social inventions of the last twenty years has been the quarter-life crisis. As education before career takes longer, living with parents becomes more common, and our society continues to prolong adolescence, those of us heading up on twenty-five start to realize...what the heck have I even done with my life? There are some people my age with careers. Some people with families. Some people have careers and families. I have...a series of interesting experiences. I have only semi-direction in my life. So now I'm trying to figure out how formal I want to make this crisis. Right now, I'm kind of even thinking about throwing a quarter-life crisis party in August (everyone wears businesswear and we watch My Dinner with Andre?). Right now, though, I'm still taking suggestions. One suggestion comes from watching How I Met Your Mother with Jen B. By which I mean The Murtaugh List. Those of you unfamiliar with the episode/Lethal Weapon movies may not be aware of the catch...