Currently Reading Lords and Ladies By Terry Pratchett see related

Ayfo ha-prachim qulam sheh ahavnu?

Ayfo ha-prachim qulam?  Lama halkhu?

Ayfo ha-prachim qulam?  Bakhurot lakhu otam.

Matai hem yilmedu?  Matai hem yilmedu?

Ayfo bakhurot qulam sheh ahavnu?

Ayfo bakhurot qulam?  Lama halkhu?

Ayfo bakhurot qulam?  Bakhurim lakhu otam.

Matai hem yilmedu?  Matai hem yilmedu?

Ayfo bakhurim qulam sheh ahavnu?

Ayfo bakhurim qulam?  Lama halkhu?

Ayfo bakhurim qulam?  Ha-Tseva lakakh otam.

Matai hem yilmedu?  Matai hem yilmedu?

That's all I know of "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" in Hebrew.  ("Were are all the flowers that we've loved?  Where are all the flowers?  Why did they go?  Where are all the flowers?  Young girls took them.  When will they learn?  When will they learn?" etc. etc.)  I can't remember the word for "graveyard," so I can only get as far as the army taking the young men.  I think I got some of the "lakakh"'s wrong, too.  This is just kind of remembered from my Mom singing it, and my past-tense conjugation is not fantastic.

Still, close enough.

Anywayyy... I'm still working on my creative writing workshop, and it's going slowly cuz, as is always the case, all I want to write is stuff other than the assignment.  I get the feeling it's the same for everyone in the class.  We're all holding back.  We're all scared of putting ourselves on the line.  That is NOT GOOD for writers and I'm just going to have to get over it... but maybe not today.

Meanwhile, Mia has initiated me into the ways of Revolutionary Girl Utena.  Woot.

WEASEL QUOTE OF THE DAY:  This is taken completely out of context from a website about public education in Arkansas.  Reason being I'm too lazy to find out what the actual context is.  "Just as the devil can quote scripture, so, too, can every weasel quote reform-- or write an editorial position masquerading as a news article." -Susan Ohanian.  

Currently Reading Pere Goriot (Signet Classics (Paperback)) By Honore De Balzac, Henry Reed, Peter Brooks, Honore De Balzac see related

I just figured out who our dear President reminds me of:  Gaston, from Beauty and the Beast.  That's right, he makes me think of a Disney movie.  Weird, I know, but true.

Why?  There's something in Gaston's confident swagger that suggests a "Mission Accomplished" approach to life.  Something about the way he eats five dozen eggs every morning to help him get large.  Something about how he's surrounded by flattering hangers-on with all the brain capacity of your average sea urchin ("there's just one guy in town who's got aaaaall of it doooooowwn, and his name's G-A-S... T... G-A-S-T-E... G-A-S-T-O...").  There's that line in that particular song's reprise, the one that goes "no onnne plots like Gaston, takes cheap shots like Gaston, tries to persecute harmless crackpots like Gaston" which would work even better without the word "crackpots" in it, but gets the general gist otherwise.

Most of all, though, there's that Kill the Beast song at the very end of the movie.  The one that starts "We're not safe until he's dead, he'll come stalking us at night, for to sacrifice our children to his monstrous apetite, he'll wreak havoc on our village if we let him wander free, so it's time to take some action, boys, it's time to follow me..." that he sings right before he takes a pitchfork and torch mob to go and kill the Beast who, okay, did some sexually suspect stuff with Belle at the beginning of the movie, but certainly wasn't intending to come after the village in any way, shape or form.

I actually always liked that scene.  For a Disney movie, it's pretty intelligent.  It shows how perfectly nice, normal people, the same people who are dancing around in the happy little "Bonjour, bonjour!" song at the beginning of the movie, can go all strange and violent when they're scared.  It also shows how these scared people latch onto the first guy they can find with a Disney-strong chin and a certain swing-into-the-saddle-and-wave-a-torch je ne sais quoi and make him their leader.

By the way, I'm not comparing the Beast specifically to Saddam Hussein.  The Beast, in the end, turned out to be a fairly decent guy, albeit with a certain Sabine Women approach to dating, while Saddam Hussein really was, in the end, a psychotic genocidal dictator who probably went Mwahahaha a lot in his spare time.  Making the Beast scarier, though, doesn't turn Gaston into a lovable, hugable guy.

And it's not just the war in Iraq, either.  I'm talking about the President's whole approach to life.  Anything that's weird, or outside, or he just doesn't like: get me a torch and let's go KILL IT!!  Muslims.  Liberals.  Gay people.  Why??  Cuz it's the ENEMY, that's why.  BE AFRAID!!!  BEEE VERY AFRAID!!! They're coming to eat your kids!  Boogey boogey boogey.

And that just fucking pisses me off.  Why?  Because I'm not a pastelly animated character that goes around singing "Bonjour!  Bonjour!" every bright sunny morning to my friends and neighbors, and anyone who treats me like one has got another think coming.

This election was really depressing.

Currently Reading Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress : A Novel By DAI SIJIE see related

It's probably safe to talk now, right?  RIGHT?  It's gotta be.  :: looks around furtively:.  If anyone sees the specter of my mother floating around in cyberspace, hit this big red button and alarms will sound, okay?

It doesn't really matter, because I don't think anything too offensive is going to show up in this blog, but you never know.

I should be doing homework and I'm not.  I'm blogging instead.  Anyone who is surprised by that, raise your hand.  I didn't think so.

It's so great to be home.  I've been messing around with my room, just because I can.  Things on my bulletin board as of this morning:

1. My signed picture of Dubya (or rather, my Dad's signed picture of Dubya that I kind of stole, what with him being four years dead and all).

2. Two poems from Asimov's Sci-Fi Magazine, one called "When Aliens Ask of Breakfast" and one called "On Princesses."  Also the two poems that Mrs. Shepherd gave out at the end of last year, "Wild Geese" and "Love After Love." 

3. Javawocky flyer.

4. "Bangladesh" placard from senior year Model UN convention, decorated with accent marks, umlauts, and a kind of sprawling fractal.  Also the nametag from that same convention.

5. Letter from Oberlin's English department.

6. Thai panpipes on a little green ribbon.

7. Bit of paper cut in interesting and lovely shapes from MF at my graduation party.

8. Two quotes on big pieces of paper ("History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it. -Winston Churchill" and "My mother told me, 'if you are a soldier, you will be a general, if you are a priest, you will be Pope.'  Instead, I was an artist, and became Picasso. -Pablo Picasso")

9. Certificates indicating that people have bought trees in Israel in honor of my graduation.

10.  Multiple greeting cards, including four nice fairy ones set up in a square. 

11. A four-inch glittery hamsa (a Kabbalistic good-luck sign shaped like an upside-down hand).

12. A big red "luck ball" that somebody brought me back from China.

13. Two copies of my favorite picture from my graduation party, which I've fooled with in Photoshop and turned, respectively, into an excerpt from a dictionary and a poster for a retro band.

14. Various notes, maps, charts and little sketches relating to stories I'm writing.  Also a few that might develop into ideas later on (like the little corner of an envelope that just says "acropolis = necropolis" ).

15.Little blurb from the author of The Lovely Bones about what it means to be a writer (I got it, sadly, from a highly perfumed teen magazine, and no, I'm not saying which one).

16. A postcard from Elvis, addressed to me in suspiciously familiar handwriting...

17. A flyer from the art museum's Manet exhibit last year, and a list of other places being a member there gets me into.

18. The little paper dragon that fell out of the invitation to the Younger Colbert's bar mitzvah. 

19. The copy of "Jabberwocky" that I wrote out in its entirety during a Javawocky caffeine-fueled rage last year (since we never seemed to have a copy).  It is, I believe, on the back of two church flyers.

20. A few more odds and ends...

Oh, and I've got "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" from 9th-grade World Cultures on my wall.

Okay.... I think that's about enough stalling.  I'd better go do homework now.

If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you...

                                                             Peace and Love,

                                                                     -The Management

WEASEL QUOTE OF THE DAY:  [Editor's note: This is, in its entirety, Aesop's fable "The Weasel and the Mice"] 

A WEASEL, inactive from age and infirmities, was not able to
catch mice as he once did.  He therefore rolled himself in flour
and lay down in a dark corner.  A Mouse, supposing him to be
food, leaped upon him, and was instantly caught and squeezed to
death.  Another perished in a similar manner, and then a third,
and still others after them.  A very old Mouse, who had escaped
many a trap and snare, observed from a safe distance the trick of
his crafty foe and said, "Ah! you that lie there, may you prosper
just in the same proportion as you are what you pretend to be!" -Aesop

[Editor's note: I think that means, "may you not prosper."  Right?  Right?]