Well, since my main reason for switching to blogger has now thoroughly turned out to be a bust (Picasa does not make posting photos easier, but possibly harder) I'm switching back to wordpress, at least for my everday fruity purposes. This might actually become a reading blog, as per the original stated intentions.
Anyway, it's pretty straightforward: just elletrice.wordpress.com, effective as soon as I've done some homework.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Pasta!
We made Pasta tonight!
It's a good idea!
The ravioli was a group effort, but Andy took all the credit.
Pasta maker, rolling pin, pasta!
This is where it got delicious. The rest is history.Saturday, April 5, 2008
Bathroom Balloons
How I spent the weekend before exams, when I should have been studying:
Artwork by me, Molly, and Chuck.
Friday, April 4, 2008
When does death come?
I am writing in black. black like my heart, after a certain incident after class to-day, involving me over-hearing a conversation. I'm not going to say what the class was, or who the student was (ok, I don't know her name anyway), or more importantly what that student's major was, because it is wrong to judge people by their majors, and it is also one of my major hobbies.
We had just watched some video of a lecture by Joseph Campbell (if you don't know him, I'm not even going to say look him up, I'm going to say, don't worry about it, because he is pervasive enough that you will; you won't have to try). The lecture was given in the eighties, when he was not only very well-known and respected, but his scholarship had progressed almost as far as it would do; he died soon afterwards.
As we left the class, one of the girls, walking behind me, remarked to another, "When he started to talk--well, first of all, he was old, which turned me off right away." He was old. And, of course, in the realm of scholarship, being old is a bad thing, because it means that you've had more time to learn and study and reflect, gaining both scholarly knowledge and life experience. You have less to learn from old people. It would have been much better if we had watched a video of a twenty-something documentary film maker explaining his take on the universality and particularity of themes stemming from the subconscious as manifested in world mythology, because his fresh perspective would have been worth much more than Joseph Campbell's 50+ years of scholarship.
Some people do not deserve a college education.
We had just watched some video of a lecture by Joseph Campbell (if you don't know him, I'm not even going to say look him up, I'm going to say, don't worry about it, because he is pervasive enough that you will; you won't have to try). The lecture was given in the eighties, when he was not only very well-known and respected, but his scholarship had progressed almost as far as it would do; he died soon afterwards.
As we left the class, one of the girls, walking behind me, remarked to another, "When he started to talk--well, first of all, he was old, which turned me off right away." He was old. And, of course, in the realm of scholarship, being old is a bad thing, because it means that you've had more time to learn and study and reflect, gaining both scholarly knowledge and life experience. You have less to learn from old people. It would have been much better if we had watched a video of a twenty-something documentary film maker explaining his take on the universality and particularity of themes stemming from the subconscious as manifested in world mythology, because his fresh perspective would have been worth much more than Joseph Campbell's 50+ years of scholarship.
Some people do not deserve a college education.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
design
It's just a feeling I've been having recently. An aversion to design, or rather, to the over-designedness of everything. Especially these magazines that suggest (through word or picture) that you arrange your books by color! Imagine trying to find a book that way. I arrange my books by language, and then by national literature and genre, excluding reference books, which I group all together and then by language. And undoubtedly there are many systems that would work quite well, but unless we are speaking of someone who would remember the color of every book they own--a very rare character, I should say--it is simply unimaginable that one could really get along arranging all one's books according to color.
So, a comment on the blog. The reason why I haven't made my own layouts for years is a separate question, and one I will probably not address on this blog. But my motive for the recent switch to this more minimalist layout is related to the above complaint. The fact that I'm a giant fruitcake notwithstanding, this layout reminds me of the old, text-based pseudo, always with white backgrounds, and invisible tables broken up by occasional dashed lines. Though I'm using design-esque language right now, I hope you can discern that what I'm describing is not design, it's a mess. And it's beautiful. As when I buy dresses and things because I think they're ugly. It's satisfying.
But there is something about design, the reason we're being sucked into it, one and all. (Well, not all. Certainly not my boyfriend.) And I don't mind conformity; it safeguards against certain dangers, and it's never absolute: no need to worry about that. And I don't mind foolishness, nor arbitrariness, nor even a little bit of uselessness. But futility is a different matter. I vote for stopping short of that, before we turn into pompoms. That is all.
So, a comment on the blog. The reason why I haven't made my own layouts for years is a separate question, and one I will probably not address on this blog. But my motive for the recent switch to this more minimalist layout is related to the above complaint. The fact that I'm a giant fruitcake notwithstanding, this layout reminds me of the old, text-based pseudo, always with white backgrounds, and invisible tables broken up by occasional dashed lines. Though I'm using design-esque language right now, I hope you can discern that what I'm describing is not design, it's a mess. And it's beautiful. As when I buy dresses and things because I think they're ugly. It's satisfying.
But there is something about design, the reason we're being sucked into it, one and all. (Well, not all. Certainly not my boyfriend.) And I don't mind conformity; it safeguards against certain dangers, and it's never absolute: no need to worry about that. And I don't mind foolishness, nor arbitrariness, nor even a little bit of uselessness. But futility is a different matter. I vote for stopping short of that, before we turn into pompoms. That is all.
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