these days
02.21.04 @ 12:53 a.m.
A little Oscar Wilde:
In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.
Also:
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Both from the Importance of Being Earnest. I rather imagine as the kind of quote Liz would use in a design. It's a good quote.
Since I'm going crazy with the blockquote tags, an email that made me laugh today (in reply an email I'd written about thinking the Hollies sounded an awful lot like Buddy Holly and then thinking, dur, they named themselves after him):
One time I thought to myself, "I wonder whatever happened to Nancy Spungen."
I just about fell over laughing. This either marks me as a rock geek, or a movie geek, or a bit of both.
I think it's been a couple of days since I wrote anything. On Thursday, class was nothing special, though we did have an interesting lecture on Roman sexuality. There are two grammatical genders in Latin and ancient Rome. But they aren't, as one would think, male and female. They're the "man" (vir) and the "non-man". There are also six sexual verbs, divided into penetrative and receptive and, ah, vaginal, anal, and oral. The penatrative are masculine verbs. Receptive is a dishonorable place to be. The non-man group included slaves, boys, women, and effeminate men. There's a specific word for that but I can't be bothered to go get my notes. We read a bunch of Catullus' poems, which are a mix of love poems and sexually violent notes to his friends and acquaintances. There's one, possibly #16, which basically says "You read my poems about thousands of kisses and dared to call me effeminate, you fucking sodomites. Yeah, I'll show you who's effeminate," and then he threatens to anally and orally rape the two men referred to in the poem. His manliness is not threatened by the idea of sexual acts with men but is in fact established by being on the penatrative side of the acts.
I shudder to think what my Google results will be after this.
I've talked to Jodi a little bit. She's in Australia now and funnily enough, I've been communicating with her more now than I was before. Or at least, I talked to her last night on AIM a couple of times and got a couple of emails expressing frustration that AIM was shutting down on her every five minutes. Which is probably more than the total amount I communicated with her when she was living in Colorado. I'm a bad best friend. (Nah, I don't really think that. More like "Hey, friends grow apart.")
Today wasn't too bad. I think I did marginally okay on my weekly Economics quiz, considering I don't study and hardly ever pay attention in class, and I think I might have also done decently well on my Italian test. Then again, the last esame in Italian seemed really easy and almost everyone did badly on it. So I can't trust my own judgement anymore.
This afternoon into evening was productive in that I read about a hundred pages of Sometimes a Great Notion but pretty achingly lonely. I was the only one home and spent a lot of time with my computer hooked into the stereo and being a glorified juke box. There's a ten hour MP3 playlist in my iTunes called "Radio Ellen" which has pretty much every song I like that I've uploaded into my computer. Anyway. I guess there's no pleasing me. I get frustrated when everyone is home but I feel all sad and poignant when I'm all alone. Possibly just in the evenings and the book I'm reading is really doing me no favors. It's making me all nostalgic for forests even though I can see them on the slopes of the hills and the butte from our big front windows.
Also, somewhere in the middle of reading I decided I ought to do some dishes to be responsible and do my fair share of the housework. I got three bowls washed before a glass cracked apart in my hands and sliced the hell out of my thumb. No more dishes for me!
I wore my Robotania shirt today, too. It's a bit odd to look at myself in the mirror with it on because there's a big backwards R on it, which is the right way around in the mirror and just gives me a feeling of something out of place. I was telling Stephanie this in Italian and Giovanni (Joe) seemed like he was listening again. I don't know if I'm pleased or creeped out, but I lean toward unease.
I hate Carson Daily, but I love Dave Chappelle. So I am watching TV far too late at night.
[title song by Nico - I rather like her voice.]
Previously
fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05
