This Might Be The Golden Assumption - rabyt traylz 2:1

What Follows: discarded snippets of a paper I've been working on all afternoon, some observatorial fodder (bracketed with asterisks), and pirated photos. LTRLY.



Why there aren't meta - car manuals: "To illustrate this, I liken it to the hypothetical counterpart in the English speaking world of the time: the sailors who brought the English to the “New World” more than likely had at least a small number of navigational documents and papers to aide them in their journey Westward. These papers illustrate the importance of “Navigation” as a thing, a tool or a practice, that aids life as a sailor. The Navigation, then, is seen to be important in part because of the documents concerning it. However, there are presumably no documents on the importance of having the documents themselves. If this were so, the realm of navigational literature would occupy a higher sphere of importance than if it weren’t."

*A girl at the "Express Scanning Station" is indicating her frustration at something (presumably technological) with arm movements too difficult to portray. She has a tattoo on her wrist that's also too difficult to see.*

"We can therefore - by searching out the teleological purpose of the story - rest easy in knowing that a good old-fashioned cross examination can be made that validates the “truth” of the story and brings us one step closer to history without turning our back on our Western empiricism."

*A library employee put out a sign that says "In need of a laptop?" because so many work stations are full. He had an odd smile on his face.*



"Why shouldn’t his narrative contain devices to achieve the goals for which he is employed? However, in our evaluation of text, as well as these specific texts, we mustn’t forget that our professed first aim is to look into the text’s nature and find its purpose. And while the aforementioned premises support a certain promotional purpose for the text ala’ Columbus’s “Letter,” it should be noted that these are historical, extra-textual sources. For propriety’s sake, I will offer up a couple of textual examples that also shore this up."

*I walked by an office in Wescoe and saw lamplight, designer glasses, rows of bookson steal shelves, an ornate scarf, people in sweaters sitting in swivel chairs, and I thought about my future.*

Please Don't Litterati

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
Instructions:

1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE (as opposed to merely love)
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.
5) Insert photos from your favorite movie versions where you like (I added this one).

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X+ DUH
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X+
6 The Bible X+ DOUBLE DUH
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X+
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X+
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy *
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller *
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare *
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X+
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald*
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens*
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky X+
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X+
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding *
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert *
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X+
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov X+ no I’m not a pervert
63 The Secret History - Donna Tart
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X+ no I’m not Goth
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce X+
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X+
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X+
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X+
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams *
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X+
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X+
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

OMG that's like, almost 30 books! I'm so super smart. Yesssssssss!

An Almost Complete Lack of Tense Agreements Due to Children Crawling All Over Me And Making Me Tense (With A Random Graph)

I spent class periods today half in and half out of the conversation for a number of reasons: 1) I didn't get a chance to read the assignments, and feel bad about Bee Essing, 1.b) didn't want to scramble and read at least a small portion directly before or during class as I haven't the capacity for any more anxiety, 2) I had two separate other things to think about which I did, quite successfully, though I've got to say that they were't entirely independent of the class: they were stories and ideas loosely connected with the subject material we were covering, namely: Aristotle and Benjamin Franklin. The End.

Throwing Rocks at the Think Tank

Some great new ideas being considered by the ad hoc committee for great ideas, as instructed by the fledgling 4th party political party I have yet to name:

1. A shadow citizenry, to give the shadow government someone to govern.

2. A Panhandlenic Society. Originally a geographically based society, conceived during deliberations on the reunion of various East/West named states as a part of our party platform, now comprised of Panhandlers, and whose meetings will occur at the same time as the Panhellenic Society, outside on the sidewalk, so that members can ask for money as Panhellenites come and go. More on this later.

3. A public relations firm for terrorists, to offset the bad job the C.I.A. is doing. The goal will be to give the citizenry, both shadow and actual, a constant visage on which to displace discontent (or place discontent, or displace content, etc.). Its strategy will involve a highly complex and leaderless network of blogs, the cornerstone of which will be the forthcoming new and improved Osama Bin Laden blog entitled Osama been Bloggin'. Again, more on this later.

5th Level Grecian Philosopher beats your Mountain Gnome Card

I've found a new spot to sit and read on campus. I won't tell you where it is, but I will tell you that it has got large windows that let in plenty of light, and is relatively quiet. I almost wish I would have started going there before the snowy season was over so I could sit in one of the windows and watch it.

We've recently blasted through sections of Plato's Republic in my Western Civilization class; I sat in one of the big windows reading it this morning. I am intrigued by it, for a number of reasons: 1) I'm fascinated at what seems to be the Grecian idea of "good" prior to Socratic/Platonic thought, 2) I'm surprised at all of the little instances where Plato's nuanced observations about human nature (via the character of Socrates) resonate with a sort of timely timelessness - you know: how it seems as though the characters are remarking about folks today, in the modern world. And 3) it seems as though Socrates and all of his nerdy smart-friends sitting around dreaming up an ideal city are the archetypical forum of D&D types, sitting around arguing about the lineage of 12th level Elfin clerics and such. Somehow. Also somehow I'm excited about reading Aristotle next.