Mary Versus the Trumpeting Legions of Apathy

Last night I went to "This American Life" broadcast event at the movie theater. It was neat at the beginning: "So this is what NPR looks like," you think. All those buttons and sound effects and clipped interviews and smooth jazz tracks. But then the novelty wears off and you realize, "why on earth did I pay $20 to watch someone read a personal essay aloud?" The highlight of the night was a clip from Dr. Horrible and that just made me think: Man, I wish I was just watching Dr. Horrible on an enormous screen. The line-up was stereotypical NPR, too: guy who doubts marriage, girl in therapy who hates her mom, gay guy who considers returning to Catholicism. Or in other words: promoting tour, promoting book, promoting book. In fact, Ira Glass took a five minute clip to promote tv show "This American Life." It was like a commercial fest for the Obama-t-shirt crowd. The audience couldn't help giggling when Kashi cereals was announced as a sponsor. ...

1. Dogs aren't people. 2. Rock stars aren't philosophers. 3. Wine is still booze. 4. Fashion isn't credential. 5. A world exists outside Manhattan.

Part of me is sad the last thing I do in the library is misuse the high speed internet connection to watch the Final Fantasy 7 movie. Most of me, though, is awesomed. Totally awesomed

Do you ever have that sinking feeling that you're out of your league? Well, after having cheerfully read an Agatha Christie novel with many cheerful, hearty and adventurous heroines, I thought I'd do a little work and read one of my professor's teaching philosophy statements to model my own on. Nuts. He refers to several theories and buzzwords that I HAVE NO IDEA what they mean (sorry for the caps, but at this hour, it makes more sense than italics). That only serves to remind me that I haven't started the paper for my June workshop that I'm supposed to submit by May 1st, which, I might remind you, is in less than 2 weeks. And what in Santa's present-range am I supposed to write about women's religious rhetoric in america in the 19th century? And that reminds me how I ought to be preparing something for CCCC's next year... YARGH! The Agatha-Christie-heroine thing to do, of course, would be to be calm, collected, finding simple, yet clever, solutions to...

Well. I certainly haven't written the paper for my workshop in June. And I haven't rewritten all of my lesson plans from the year. There's also very little chance of my having completed my 15 minute presentation on my Victorian rhetoric paper. But I did watch three episodes of My Name is Earl, which is really a darn sweet show. Also, I wrote a three-page story about a dream I had a few weeks back. As I can't figure out how to embed vast amounts of text in a post, here's a teaser couple of paragraphs: Gretta Kronquist lay on her new orange-and-pink spotted bedspread, her head covered by a pillow. She might have been trying to smother herself to escape this dark, heartless world, but she might have just been trying to dampen the sound of fists pounding on her bedroom door. She removed the pillow momentarily just to shout, “I’m not going!” Then she stuffed the pillow down again and turned towards the wall. “Honey, we won’t make you.” There was a pause. “I’m coming in, ...

This librarithon is rapidly becoming a read-a-thon. I just finished my second book of the day, a little piece called Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians. I've always neglected this book because of its mind-bogglingly bad cover design. Ugh. /shudder/ Anyway, it was really great. In fact, it's the sort of book that should have been written by Linsey Duncan, that kind of funny and random and smart. Here's my review of it from my List of Everything I've Read this Year: You have to feel good about a book that never spells pterodactyl the same way twice. And a book where the narrator admits to lying to you. Often. And one that makes a fake ending for those who skip to the end. A fine youth offering in the tradition of Terry Pratchet meets Lemon Snicket. A lot of qualifications in it. The sort of book, really, that ought to have been written by Linsey Duncan. Mmm, what now? I might actually get some work done, although, honestly, there's time enough for that in days to com...

And by "lunch," I mean of course, half a vanilla powerbar. Ugh. Anyway, I have graded all the papers I needed for 311--which means I'm set for grading 311. Also, I read Freakonomics. Two things from this, one proud and one shameful. The first is, of course, how cool am I for being able to read a book in one sitting (well, two, because I got kicked out of the study room in which I was reading and then sat in the bookshelves to finish it)? The second is, how on earth have I gone this long without reading what is arguably the most popular book on economic thought ever? I know, it was on my shame list, much as Crime and Punishment was before last year. I don't know who it was who told me about the list of books of shame. I think it was an English teacher, someone kind of quirky--Rutter? or Hickman?--but he said that everyone has a list of books that he or she is ashamed of not having read. I think the example was "To Kill a Mockingbird." Newsweek even had this s...

The morning of a librarithon/studyfest is a series of lasts. Last time you look at your sleeping roommate. Last non-Powerbar meal. Last breath of fresh air. When I did this in winter, it was cold and I was grateful for the anonymity of headphones standing in the wind and snow in front of the library doors. This time, I paced from entrance to entrance, and the waiting crowd was chatty, groups of twos and threes. There were birds were twitting their early mornings out and the daffodils, though snow-beaten, were fragrant. It reminds me of how much I used to like waking up early for high school or early morning janitorial. The way my mind works in the early morning: quiet (hell is other people at breakfast, as the saying goes), plodding, thoughtful. What first period classes did I have? AP European history. Food Fads. What else? Strangely, I can only remember my second period classes--physiology, sign language, art history. Maybe my mind doesn't work so wonderfully in the morning as I ...

Dear Billy Joel, I did it. I started the fire. Apologies, Mary Hedengren

I'm organizing the bookshelves, which is a terrible thing. Not terrible, but philosophical, more like awesome or awful. I suspect this effect is more pronounced with a smaller private library than under the efficient tyranny of the Dewey decimal system, which at least makes the trains run on time. Because I have too many books to clump them on one shelf and too few to make divisions absolute, I'm in a half thought-out literary limbo. One is haunted by such questions as: do I make a humor section? If I do, does that mean that humorous short stories are filed there, or with Poe and Mansfield and Salinger? Tolstoy's War and Peace and Anna Karenina belong in Fiction, but doesn't Resurrection really belong in Religion? I walk back and forth among three bookcases. Relatively straightforward sections are no less troubling. Yes, they're both non-fiction, but does The Rules really deserve a place next to The Prince ? (Although in retrospect, they're more similar than...

And here is my rant about how important it is never, never to use guilt as a motivating force to get people to come to a Church meeting or activity. Don't joke about their going to hell, don't drag them out of the apartments, don't create false pretenses for activities. We must be leaders, not herders. There are 3 main reasons for not guilting people: it's not Christian, it doesn't work, and it hurts our own spirituality. First, remembering that talk "O Be Wise" that we read in preparation to Elder Ballard's arrival, it's not the most Christian method. As Elder B put it: "I hope it goes without saying that guilt is not a proper motivational technique for leaders and teachers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We must always motivate through love and sincere appreciation, not by creating guilt.'" Secondly, it doesn't work. Many people who feel guilted into participating in an occasional Church activity may find that their hearts are i...