Mary Versus the Trumpeting Legions of Apathy

First off, (I mean after the usual Sunday stuff, like translating for Natalia, a Russian sister in the family ward Relief Society), I was asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting. Don't get me wrong--not a problem. I love public speaking. This time, though, in addition to just mulling and then writing and outline and then winging it from the pulpit, I decided to try something new and actually write the talk down. Once, when I was a sophomore, someone asked me for a copy of my talk and I was obliged to admit that it was notes on a napkin. Not that I'm cocky enough to expect my 10 minute talk to go into circulation, but I wondered if I might experiment with the Spirit and seek the right words at my kitchen table in front of a computer, instead of the chapel in front of the congregation. Granted, this took a lot more time, hemming and reading aloud, trying to figure out the correct diction, but the plus side was, when, after the first speaker rambled just a little, the second spe...

1. Stay home. 2. Sleep a lot. 3. Drink tons of fluids. (what else can you drink? morphasolids?) I favor hot herbal tea, crystal light, a couple of those truly nasty Airborne things. 4. Get better. (5. Play four hours of Plants vs. Zombies.)

I remember Erasmus as an European-history-question answer, but I had never really read his stuff until this last week. And now I have another dead man crush. As you might suspect, In Praise of Folly praises folly. (Well, aside from a side-jot to satirize religious hypocrites.) But folly's become a bit of a bosom-pal of mine recently, now that I'm letting myself be foolish in important ways. Erasmus I ain't, but here's my own addendum to the praise of folly. 1-Folly makes me audacious. It's folly that keeps me from "keeping my fool mouth shut" when meeting influential people. It's folly that made me track Walter Benn Michaels to where he was eating lunch and folly made my little first-year-graduate-student self challenge his economic assumptions. Folly made me submit to journals way above me, conferences I don't belong in, contests I can't win, and positions I'm not qualified for. And though there's been plenty of falling on my face, ...

This morning I laid out my sweater and jeans for school (I don't teach Tuesdays) and went for a run in the wonderful early spring weather. "This," I thought is going to be a good day. I went home, showered and dressed, and found out a shooter with an AK-47 has fired 10 rounds and then killed himself on the 6th floor of our library. There's plenty lucky about this: lucky no one else got killed, or even injured; lucky the police responded so quickly and thoroughly, checking all the buildings for a possible second suspect; lucky the administration used text, email, and loudspeakers to keep people inside and safe. Still, it's a strange, haunting experience to have this happen at my school. I had joked with the IT guy about the doors that automatically lock and how it wasn't much security for a school shooting. At BYU one of our PA's taught us how to organize a room in lockdown, but more as a novetly than a skill we'd actually use. And I had wondered, pragm...

Okay, complete honest time: I have had a hard time adjusting to life here. I complain about the commute, the lack of creativity of bar culture, the bizarre gated-community city planning, the bait-and-switch of my coursework, the lackluster curriculum of the class I'm teaching, the dirth of good-looking and smart guys in my ward/institute class, everything. But you know what? I never have an easy freshman year. Part of it is that I'm bad at adjusting to new places. Scratch that. I'm bad at adjusting to different life expectations. Growing up, for example. I wish I was cool and independent and vivacious, but I'm just really not. Each step is like pulling out a loosening tooth. My most recent freshman year, when I first went to BYU, was far harder than it should have been. After all, my family was just down the road (and in their offices on campus) and I had plenty of friends both at college and PHS and I was raised around academia, around that very university. Still, I wa...

So far I haven't seen him eat, but I've changed the paper 3 times--each time I see a poop. He hasn't uttered a peep, but he also hasn't been aggressive when I stick my hand in.

As a natural response to having watched the excellent French Cyrano de Burgerac movie, I've decided to get a bird. Back up. When I imagined myself in Austin, a new town, alone, friendless, newly indepenent, I always consoled myself with the fantasy of owning a gaudy parakeet named Bertie Wooster. I even emailed my future roommates to tell them of my intention. But then I arrived here and I had to buy a car, and my mom said, "focus on making human friends instead," and my sister said, "don't birds always stink?" and my roommate didn't say anything, but frowned a little (she had a French horn teacher who had a parrot that would always squawk if a student played the wrong note--she is unduly prejudiced.). In short, I got scared out of it. But then I was watching this brave, gallant sort and I thought, "really? really, I'm scared about maybe I'll have to change some newspaper and find a pet sitter and maybe, just maybe, I'll have to give awa...