a++ would smuggle into space again

So it was that the student arose in the night with a great foreboding on her, and went into the kitchen, and saw there the trails of the ants.

Then it was that she wept, and swore, and would take no comfort but in oaths, in "Fuck you" and "fuck your little ant faces" and "I will fucking destroy you" and "oh fuck not the pantry," and all her railing did not wake her suitemate. When she calmed, she went to the cabinet in pursuit of the Cinnamon, in order to make trails that ants might not cross. But the cinnamon was not to be found. Then recollected she that they had spent it all the night before in making barriers in her suitemate's room. She called out for the ant poison, and searched the closet for it both high and low, but that too was in vain, for the ant poison was in the suitemate's room as well, because her suitemate had forgotten that ants are as men, and proliferate unseemly.

The student rose and went to the pantry, and searched her arcane knowledge of herbs, and made many passes, and produced the nutmeg. But her heart misgave her. For though one sniff of nutmeg is a delight, many sniffs of nutmeg can kill small animals, and give great headaches to the great ones besides. And so at first she was sparing, and made fair lines, and the ants could not cross them, and she watched this in delight. But when it came time to ward her room her sense deserted her, and she uncapped the spice jar and poured out half an inch of nutmeg in a pile across the door. Even were this sugar the ants could not climb it, so high and mountainous it was, and she went to bed with a feeling of satisfaction.

She awoke with a great headache, as though the dwarves of Moria had been hammering on her head, but on the other hand, she could not smell the freshly cut grass from out her window, which had woken her every morning with its pungent misery, and so she was like, this is basically a win.

You know, I know that I used to be an innocent, charming young girl; fluttery white skirts, singing with birds, loving life's little pleasures. I just don't remember it. It's been a long slow nervous breakdown into my current state of curmudgeonly distaste for everything, but I didn't really realize how bad it had gotten until yesterday I was complaining to myself, "It's bad enough to be woken with the smell of freshly-cut grass, but do I actually have to touch all these cookies fresh out of the oven?!"

It's mostly thesis. I'm responding to everything with a beautiful irrationality. I woke up this morning laughing at myself for the fact that I seem to be literally writing all the imagination out of me, because the dream I'd just had consisted of a conversation about contexts in which it is insulting to be asked "Are you Jewish?" Hilariously boring! It took me a good ten more minutes to remember that that conversation had taken place in space in the aftermath of the first battle of the wars against the space whales, which I had sat out due to my secret Magical Girl heritage as the princess of, I am not kidding, Yale, interfering with the space drugs we were supposed to take to make us fight.

I just emailed in a paper that I hate more than any other paper I've turned in. This is not because it's rhetoric-heavy and done in a rush -- I have done papers under worse conditions, and for reasons less solid than "grief combined with actual responsibilities" -- but because the book I'm writing on is historically bankrupt. It's by Richard Pipes, and it's called The Degaev Affair. It's extremely well-written, it makes an interesting point about the origins of terrorism, and every fucking word of it is source hash.

( ONE HOUR OF SLEEP RAGE )

I'm twenty one now! I was twenty-one on November 29th, actually, but I have kind of fallen off the face of my life. It isn't that I'm being particularly antisocial, it's just that I look up and realize that my unfulfilled obligations have become this massive rolling Indiana Jones boulder. I know from past experience that the only way to defeat the boulder is to just start doing things, but somehow it's so much easier to listen to radio plays of Carmilla and fantasize about getting into La Maupin's pants.

Anyway, being twenty-one is pretty okay I think. People sent me some lovely birthday wishes and I went and saw the LA production of Equivocation with a few friends. It wasn't as good as the Ashland one -- they went for modern costumes, which, uh, no, and also Sharpe wasn't John Tufts and Armin wasn't Gregory Linington who are two of my True Loves of Ashland, and Cecil was just bad. But! Shakespeare was Joe Spano, and he was pretty good, and Judith was McGee's Sister Troian Bellisario, and she was pretty good, and my favorite character in the play, Henry Garnet, the Jesuit love of my life not counting robots, was played by the Mayor from Buffy, and he was amazing. Just fantastic. It's hard to do Garnet badly, I guess, but, well, he went so well from the fatherly tension of Garnet and Shakespeare in the cell to the cough 'brotherly' tension of Richard Burbage and Shakespeare having a fight! So wonderful.

It did raise the question in my mind of how to do Cecil right. Cecil is the main villain (if you haven't seen the play you may know him as the son of the guy from this Kate Beaton comic) and he has a severe limp. I was under the impression that this was historical, although I'm not as sure about this now, but let's assume that it is historical and not just a douche move by Bill Cain. It means that you have a political operator, sometimes sympathetic but usually just conniving, with a major physical deformity of the kind usually used for some pretty ablist symbolism. Is there any way to play Cecil as a character with a limp who is also "twisted" instead of Cecil as a character with a limp who is therefore twisted? Should you cut the limp entirely? (Presumably the Richard III resonances wouldn't work quite so well, but his hump was imaginary, too.) Considering his role as a Cheney analogue, does he have to be sick in some fashion to draw the parallel to Cheney's heart disease, or is it superfluous? How would you direct it?

One of the things I hate most about Human Being & Citizen class is this trimester's teacher's incredible gift for analogies that display the idiocy of what Kant is saying--

TEACHER: Kant says that the intelligible world and the sensible world both apply at the same time, but one is more true. For example, we perceive that we are standing still, but we are traveling around the earth [eta: sun, wtf self] at an incredible speed.
EMMA: ... theory of relativity...

--or what the teacher is saying--

TEACHER: So what gives the Declaration of Independence its legitimacy? If Joseph walked into this room and declared "I am a woman", would that make him a woman? No, of course not.
EMMA: Trans women -- gender identity -- *asphyxiates*

--and it all drives me up the wall. I know so many of my posts lately have been pissy, for which I do sincerely and whole-heartedly apologize, but some days I feel like being in class is being asked one long endless stream of "have you stopped beating your wife?" style questions. Like, if I say that it's possible that the sensible world is as important as the intelligible world, I'm already accepting Kant's lolariously ridiculous dichotomy. The world doesn't divide neatly into empirical and rational but I spent like twenty minutes today trying to defend the possibility of living an empirical life, sounding progressively crazier as I went.

GIRL ACROSS THE ROOM: Yes, but I don't understand how you can work off of experience and not off of reason. That would deprive us of our sense of self!
EMMA: Yes, but the self is a lie constructed by our brains.
GIRL ACROSS THE ROOM: I'm sorry, what?
EMMA: It's all a lie! A conspiracy of neurons! And our society has no legitimacy and free will is a fraud! You're being lied to! You're being --

Which is when the men in dark shades came to take me away for reprocessing into a rational being, obviously, so the rest of this post is classified.

At schiarire's request...

Reasons To Be Happy

1. Caramel lattes. If you have had one, you know what I am talking about. It's one of those chemical inducements to joy that for some reason isn't illegal. I also feel this way about pumpkin spice.

2. The seventh circle of hell in the Inferno. This is the one with the violence -- the first subcircle is boring, but then you get the wood of the suicides, which is just heartrendingly beautiful, and the violent against God and art and nature, which includes of course the sodomites who gave into their urges (Every time I type that word I want to type it 'somdomite.') and Dante admits his complicity in this sin, and basically anyone who tells you about the Cult of Friendship in the Middle Ages is lying to you. This isn't subtextual. It's also vivid and gorgeous -- Brunetto, his old teacher, is the main speaker and at the end although he is doomed to run around in fire for all eternity he runs off into the sunset 'like a runner competing for the white flag on Venice's green, and he seemed to me among the winners, not among the losers.' I love Dante, even though, as Ji has pointed out, he is a tool.

3. Cake. The band, not the pastry, although the pastry is also very good. Frank Sinatra is perhaps my favorite although Short Skirt, Long Jacket is an obvious second, and their cover of Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps is third. Bass vocalist + interesting non-traditional arrangements + horn sections = the key to Emma's pants heart.

4. Radio Yerevan jokes. A caller asked the Radio Yerevan, "Is there a difference between capitalism and communism?" The Armenian Radio is proud to answer this question. The answer is, "In principle, yes. In capitalism, man exploits man. In communism, it's the reverse."

Similarly: "What is chaos?"
"We do not comment on national economics."

5. Pi Day.

6. No Country For Old Men. Or, Javier Bardem Kills Everyone. I have no idea how he makes his voice do that but I suspect it's by not ... technically being human. They do a riff in it on 'You don't have to do this,' which is my number one least favorite sentence to hear in a movie where somebody is holding a gun, because it absolutely means the person who just said it will get shot. It's worth noting that you should not watch this movie alone -- after a term full of incredibly violent Oscar winners, this is the only one that made girls in my dorm scream and jump about a foot every time anything happened. I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

7. Dara Ó Briain. If you can remember how to spell that name, he's got a whole comedy show up on YouTube that is lovely and made me nearly piss myself in public.

8. My Arabic book. Sentences that I can now say: "The bad spy offered the bad man a cup of coffee, but the good spy didn't like their relations and cut them off with a machine gun."

This morning I woke up at around nine, feeling very proud of myself, and went down at ten-thirty to do laundry (after making myself coffee. This new ability: less exciting when you can't find the equal and have to stir in Ghiradelli's chocolate instead.)

Now for those of you who know me, you will know that doing laundry, for me, is a valuable lifetime event that I don't want to spoil by doing too often or too thoroughly. It's basically like a bad cold; it happens to everyone several times a month, it's annoying, there's nothing to be done for it except suffer through it, you can use it to avoid doing your homework but it's almost not worth your time, and you don't get to complain about it more than once a day (which is something I consider paralyzingly unfair). Nonetheless, I went down with my laundry basket in hand, full of my injured virtue and with my roommate's stolen laundry detergent, and successfully put in three loads of laundry. Voluntarily. Without actually having to wear a skirt outside in 14-degree weather. I call this all a victory for the forces of science!

Yesterday, by the way, improved vastly after those first five minutes spent screaming at the cold uncaring skies; schiarire sent me a care package full of music and Illegal Television and More Illegal Music. Thus far I have only savored her letter and listened possibly too many times to her mix. We will see if my heart survives the exposure to the rest of her kindness, or to the package demonic9yearold suggests may be coming in the future.

Procrastinating: it may mean that I haven't gone to sleep tonight/this morning, but it also means that I've found this website while googling King James Bible quotes for my paper. It is clearly insane, but on the other hand, it approves of Henry II and disapproves of the Lionheart, so how crazy can it be?

I just picked up a Pepsi to get me through the last three hours till noon. I've been drinking a lot of Nantucket Nectars and Snapples lately, so I flipped over the cap instinctively to find the trivia. "PLEASE TRY AGAIN." If my mind was working right now, that would be a metaphor.

eta: and this Iliad/Genesis/one line of Plato paper is done. Sort of. Any edits I can get between now and noon Central Time would be amazing, and that is the only reason I am putting this crap up. ( here )

I keep noticing the way that, at the beginning of Shanty for the Arethusa, Colin plays "Happy Birthday" on the creaky ropes. I can't recall if I've pointed this out on LJ before, but every time I notice, it traumatises me more. Also, our arrangement of Drive My Car has a section that sounds like the Sound of Music. The More You Know!

Humanities class has not, so far, blown my mind. It might in the near future, but I doubt it, seeing as a good, healthy grasp on nihilism prevents future growth. My mental life has been rather full of the futility of existence!! lately. Also severed arms, but that's a whole different story.

Arabic, on the other hand, has taught me to say all these amazing things relating to spy novels. Basically, I can translate John Le Carre, but I can't say "My name is Emma." Good class!

Arranging Waster for a cappella: crazy? Good idea? Not instrumental enough?

Thank you -- all of you -- for your very kind best wishes and offers of shotgun in the getaway car. Those of you who suggested they were ducking for cover, I will aim for you next time I am driving in your state.

I saw Sweeney Todd on Tuesday (along with .02 seconds of olivia_circe) and Mamma Mia! last night. I also, you know, lived through Rosh Hashana. However, all my thoughts on yaoi these multifarious topics will have to wait until later, because I'm getting on a plane to Chicago this morning. So. Uh.

I love you all! and am declaring:

hiatus

until I am better settled in.

Wish me luck.