May hath cometh

Ack, the blog is again embarrassingly dusty. I feel I start the majority of my posts with similar statements, but that's the way it is. The truth is, I've been extremely busy all year and haven't had much time to blog. It's a sad thing, and I figured I'd spruce it up a touch.

I am currently in the homestretch of the school year. AP tests are here, and I feel oddly less stressed about passing them than I have all year. Not to say I'm not frazzled, but I can finally see the light at the end. This is probably due to my exhaustion. Of course I'll be disappointed if I don't pass, but I no longer feel it's a matter of tenacious life and unspeakable death.

Although school consumes a considerable portion of my life (not to mention how it infringes on my sleep), good things do happen. For instance, I recently saw went to a David Sedaris reading with my friend! I'm extremely excited for his new book to come out, and it was a great reading. It's marvelous that he visits the area so often, especially considering he lives all the way in France. Another highlight in my life right now is my English homework, which I am currently doing in addition to blogging. We're studying contemporary rhetoric, and tonight's assignment is on pop culture. That class is always interesting, and I love it to pieces. People who read this blog most likely know what I'm talking about.

Speaking of my massive fanbase of blog followers, Blogger is really isolated. It's actually pretty funny. All these people rush out and create these blogs, ooh ahh, and then that's about it. I may look into Tumblr, which a friend recommended. I do like Blogger, but it would be nice if, you know, the blogs around here were more active. It shall be an issue to be examined at a later date.

Well, that concludes this little post for the moment. I hope all is well with all of you, wherever you are.

Logophilia

Language is so incredibly fascinating. It wasn't until recently that I've become conscious of my deep love for linguistics, although I think it's always been there. Now, I just have a word for it. There are words for almost everything; I wish more of them were incorporated into everyday use. I have a day-by-day calendar with a new word each day and I love it to pieces. On the back of each sheet, there's an note on the word's etymology. Even if all the new words I learn don't always stick, I still love being exposed to them. Whenever I learn a new word, it almost always shows up later that day. It's divine.

Colloquial language and slang are especially interesting, especially when it's from different eras. Jazz slang is one of my favorites. Although it continues to baffle me, Cockney rhyming slang is wonderfully interesting. I think it'd be so fun to master it. British slang is great, too. In fact, I'm fond of almost all foreign slang. The only problem is that when I try to sneak it into regular conversation, no one knows what I'm saying, and neither do I, really. I've just now discovered the word argot, and I find I'm partial to it. Words to desribe words have a special place in my word-worshipping soul.

When I was younger, I loved the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. In the case you're not familiar with them, the Redwall books are epic tales of fantasy and adventure, and the characters are various animals (mostly native to Britain). Aside from being excellent books, each species of animal has it's own dialect. It makes it awfully fun to read, and it gives all the animals such personality. The moles talk in a different way from the hedgehogs, or the sparrows, or the hares, or the rats, etc. This aspect of the books turned my brother off from the series, but I still dig it.

It's amazing how so many different styles can come from one language. The same words exist, available to all, but the diction can vary so drastically from writer to writer. Language in general is a marvel, in the way that we can express ourselves through letters and words and sentences. Equally miraculous is the way others can look at these strings of symbols and make sense of it all. Once or twice I came across a study showing that as long as the first and last letter are in place, most people are still able to read words written in such a way. For emxalpe, msot ploepe hvae no pboerlm rdanieg tihs... the huamn mnid is phaonmneal in tihs way, at lsaet in my oipnoin. Understandable not not, nonsense words can be fun. Made up languages are even better, like the sort used by twins (I don't know if this even exists outside books, but it's still neat to think about). Lately, I've been interested in Nadsat, the teenage argot Anthony Burgess thought up for A Clockwork Orange. Mom, if you by some chance happen to be reading this, please take note that it's the slang that interests me, not the rape and ultraviolence. Anyways, I've never read more than a handful of pages of the book, nor seen it's film adaptation, but I still think it's pretty cool to invent a language like that. Burgess was a linguist, so I've read, and a translator, too. Oooh, apparently he's written a couple books on the subject. I shall have to check it out. Speculative fiction can twist language is radical ways.

I think I elaborate too much; these blog entries are beasts. Ah well, that's what blogs are for, I suppose.

J. C. Leyendecker

I am incredibly calm at the moment. In actuality, I'm probably just in need of much, much sleep. All the same I feel serene, especially after reading another story out of The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury). It's a very thought-provoking book; I'm glad I had some time to read it today. I think my cat is going deaf. She never seems to notice me until I'm right there next to her and I have to call her name loudly multiple times for her to hear me. I think I'm going to work on incorporating more visual communication techniques when I'm with her.

The other day whilst strolling the internet, as I so often do, I came across this illustration:

Isn't it beautiful? The young man who's standing second from the left especially caught my eye. He's positively glowing, at least to me. I found out later that his name is Charles Beach and the artist's name is J. C. Leyendecker. It's a 1907 illustration for Arrow Collar, an ad campaign for shirts with detachable collars. Apparently Leyendecker did a whole collection featuring Arrow Collar men. While I was researching all this, I learned a little about Leyendecker's life and work. I love learning about people. Lots of times I get sidetracked reading biographical articles when I ought to be doing homework. There's so much to know about so many people!

Anyway, the more I look at Leyendecker's illustrations, the more fond I grow of him as an artist. I truly admire artists who create beautiful things. To be so talented and to be able to share that talent with the world is such a miraculous thing. Human beings can be a lot of awful and ugly things, but sometimes they can be beautiful. The human figure, when skillfully portrayed, is absolutely stunning.

These are a couple more of examples of Leyendecker's work.

Back to school

Hey, I haven't blogged in a while. I figure it's best to keep it fresh with small relatively insignificant updates as opposed to waiting eons between something actually blog-worthy. Maybe it's just me.

In two words, school started. I won't go into a detailed account. I will, however, blog about my AP English teacher. She is completely amazing and I love her class. Plus, she has a poster with Oscar Wilde on it and it inspires me greatly. AP classes are good because they tend to attract the more serious and dedicated members of the student body. All the same, AP homework (combined with regular homework) devours all my time like chips or grapes or popcorn. But enough about school and the like. Actually, I will mention Obama's address to students today. I saw it (not live) in English class this afternoon. I haven't fully formed my opinion on it yet, but I think its message of trying to get more kids to really try in school is very good. There's so much apathy in schools (or at least, my school) and this was a good nudge. I get to analyze it for homework, and that should be interesting. My mom really dug it. My teacher mentioned something about the free education in this country and it got me thinking. It really is amazing, especially compared to a lot of countries. I wish more people appreciated learning and being able to go to school. I know I'm guilty of moaning about homework, but I really am very lucky. Kids should think more.

Thus concludes my little update. The weather-makers are still deciding what to do, I think. I also found Joel Stein's Twitter today. I've been looking for it since I made an account and I was fairly excited. I'm looking forward to taking a nice shower and possibly finding time to read a little if I can finish all my homework at a reasonable hour. A big if, but I can always try.

Set your heart at rest

I had a fantastic weekend ^_^

On Saturday, I went to a lovely movie theater and saw Ponyo, Hayao Miyazaki's newest film. Ponyo is about a goldfish princess who longs to become human and befriends a human boy who lives on a cliff by the sea. Like all his films, it was beautiful, enchanting, pure, and imaginative. Hayao Miyazaki is definitely one of my biggest heroes in life. His films have always had and will always continue to have a profound effect on me.

On Sunday, I went for the first time to Shakespeare Santa Cruz. It was fantastic! I've always wanted to go, and this year I was familiar with one of the plays (A Midsummer Night's Dream). The stage was in a beautiful redwood grove. Although Puck was my favorite character (in the written play and at SSC) all the actors and actresses were phenomenal. It was a truly magical performance and I hope to attend SSC in future years.

To top it all off, there was delicious vegetarian food the whole weekend. Veggie pizza, veggie sandwich, sweet potato fries, veggie lasagna, salad, bread, carrot cake... of course, I didn't eat all that at once. I spaced it out over two days. In short: living in an area with an abundance of vegetarian restaurants fills my heart and stomach with love.

All that said, I had a beautiful weekend. I hope you did, too. Now, I have a lot of work to do in preparation for the coming school year and I am going to start that as soon as I post this and brush my teeth. Still, when daydreaming of faeries and underwater cities it surely can't be that bad...

Ye gods!

As of right now, I'm a little more than half-way through Queen of the Damned. For those who don't know, it's the third book in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles series. So far I'm liking it more than I thought I would, but I'm not too sure how I feel about Akasha and her whisking Lestat away from all the other characters. I suppose I'll have to keep reading to find out...

You know, I really dig Anne Rice's views on human sexuality. I really do, odd as this sounds. I was watching an interview with her and one of the questions was why she had so many gay characters. She replied by saying she just sees the world that way and that in her mind the ideal being could love both men and women. She then elaborates about how attraction and love with her characters are fluid, transcending gender, age, status, etc. In short, it ended up sounding to me like she favors extreme pansexuality. I personally think this is really great, because I feel the same way and it's neat to find a like-minded soul, especially a prolific author. She writes it really well, too, in a way that doesn't dwell on the characters' sexuality but rather incorporates it as a natural part of them. I like it.

Anyways, enough about that. One of my favorite parts of Queen of the Damned so far is the excerpt from Claudia's diary. It reminded me how much I liked Claudia and how absolutely priceless she, Louis, and Lestat are together in their little vampire family. Someday, I would like to reread Interview with the Vampire. I think it'd be interesting to read it with a greater knowledge of Lestat, Armand, and Théâtre des Vampires. Perhaps I would like it more than when I initially read it.

It's rather late and I'm very tired. I stayed up watching a meteor shower last night, and today I finished my summer assignment dealing with Oedipus. I am incredibly excited by this. Tomorrow, I plan to sleep late, exercise, start another summer assignment, and read more of this mentioned book. I sort of left off at an Akasha bloodbath scene, so we'll see how that works out. Say, I'm not sure if the correct title is Queen of the Damned or The Queen of the Damned. I can't properly tell because my version has the movie promo cover. Ick. I hate movie promo covers. Well, it was that or a beastly hardcover, so I decided to go with a scantily clad Aaliyah and a half-naked Stuart Townsend in a compact paperback form. Oh, the things I do for purse-sized books....

I bid thee goodnight.

Another Country

I usually watch movies at night, when it's good and dark like a theater, but sometimes it's nice to watch movies in the afternoon. Today was such a day, the movie being Another County, a 1984 film adaptation of Julian Mitchell's play by the same title. The movie centers around Guy Bennett (Rupert Everett), a student in snobby and rigid 1930s-ish English public school. He and his friend Tommy Judd (Colin Firth) are rather outcasts, Bennett for not being discreet about his being gay and Judd for being a devout Marxist. Bennett aspires to be a "God"-- a member of the school's elite. I don't want to give it all away, but that's the premise.

I thought it was an excellent film. Like many people say, it has beautiful photography. Unlike some people say, I only struggled with the English accents a couple of times. I liked Bennett and Judd's characters a lot, and I though Rupert Everett and Colon Firth gave superb performances portraying them. I've seen them together before in The Importance of Being Earnest, which was also happens to be a very good film, which also happens to be a very good play, which happens to be an Oscar Wilde play, which increases its win points substantially. I also "visually sniped" (as my brother would say) Cary Elwes (i.e. "Westley? Westley, is that you?" Princess Bride fan, much). Elwes played James Harcourt, the object of Guy's affections. All the actors were so young! I always think its neat to see actors when they're young, because you can see how they've changed and how they're the same.

While it's not exactly a feel-good movie, I thought it was really interesting to see the hypocrisy and cruelty-- not to mention prime snobbery-- of (most) English public schools at that time. It was an awfully oppressive school. Near the end, Judd gives one of the Gods a good speech about how the boys oppressed by the system grow up to be the fathers that maintain it [cite Wikipedia on that last bit]. That was one of my favorite parts, along with Guy and James having a rare peaceful moment in one of the school boats and all of Judd's clever Marxist ranting. Come to think of it, the whole movie was my favorite part. I think it's a film definitely worth watch, so if you find yourself at a loss next time you're searching for a flick, keep Another Country in mind.