today i read an absurd thing,
which I wanted to share with you. In reading the BBC News website, I came across a profile of (the recently deposed) King Gyanendra of Nepal. It described his takeover of the country after the death of his brother (a largely figurehead monarch) in a palace massacre. It talked about how he dismissed the elected government of Nepal, declared a state of emergency, and consolidated his power, then was removed from his position by a Maoist insurgency (now referred to as “newly installed Maoist-led government”). The article ends, and I quote, “His hobbies include reading and writing poetry.”
Not something I would expect to read in a profile of a recently-deposed absolute monarch.
But hey, if I ever become an absolute monarch, I definitely want to be remembered for liking to read and write poetry.
In other news, Memorial Day weekend proved to be the best vacation I could imagine. Greg and I made the 27-hour trek home and back (actually more like 30-hour trek, due to accidents and consequently congested roadways) and I have subsequently started house-sitting. The cat who lives in the house which I sit is the most adorable, friendly, cat you could imagine. So I think it will be a fun time.
In alternate news, I think I’m abandoning my summer novel-writing endeavor before it even gets properly started. I realized I would much rather try to design a website for myself.
Can you tell I’m not used to having free time, time in which to do anything I want?
Also, I learned that “daikin” in Japanese means “white turnip that nobody really wants to eat.” So the Daikin Fest which I attended in my home town this past weekend? It’s named after a white turnip that nobody really wants to eat.
Filed under general, absurdity | Comment (0)and here i thought we would never get snow
We got snow, ice, sleet, and terrible weather a few days ago. But driving along at night and seeing the light reflecting off the sheets of ice which are the neighbors’ yards. . . beautiful! This would be terrible skiing snow, according to my mother. Its original powdery inches were spectacularly fun to walk through, though! You know, before all those other icy things happened.
I’ve got to say, let’s breathe a sigh of relief that Valentine’s Day is over for another year. Sure, I’m not single, but that doesn’t mean I have to love Valentine’s Day. I think it’s pretty much the worst idea ever, even if you do have a significant other. Thankfully, my boyfriend agrees, so we took part in the funnest “boycott Valentine’s Day” party EVER.
And the party consisted of this: my friends and Greg and I ate candy and chips and watched Reign of Fire. Because hey, what subverts Valentine’s Day better than Matthew McConaughey in a non-romantic role (although, as always, shirtless for an absurd portion of the movie) and Christian Bale (aka Batman) fighting CGI dragons in one of the most poorly-written movies of all time?
The snarky comments made it worth it. Seriously, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 has nothin’ on us. Pretty much I love how witty my friends are and how enthusiastically they bring the weight of their wit to bear against any and all movies we watch communally.
Now why hasn’t that gone into any advertising for Messiah College? It could be our subtitle. Messiah College: The Home of Witty and Sarcastic Friendship .
Hey, I would enroll. =)
Filed under general, absurdity, humor | Comment (1)i do not joke with you. pennsylvanians are crazy.
Pennsylvanians are CRAZY. CRAZY HARDCORE.
This is a tale of Pennsylvanian Christmas Hardcore-ness.
Preface:
I spent Saturday night at Greg’s house, with his family, because he invited me to the Howe Family Christmas on Sunday (his mom’s side). On the way to Greg’s house at about 9 p.m., it was sleeting and dark and freezing and unhappy — the edges of his windshield were forming little ice patches as we drove. The salt trucks were out makin’ the highways safe(r). People were driving stupidly. I was hoping Greg’s new car would not suffer damage in such bad driving conditions.
Act I:
Now, Mrs. Snader has massive amounts of siblings — 7 I think — so mere preparation for this event was way hardcore. Mrs. Snader cooked and carved 40 lbs of turkey the day before, and her sister cooked and carved 35 more. In case you can’t add, that’s SEVENTY-FIVE POUNDS of turkey.
I mean, holy crap, right?
I wake up Sunday morning to the usual Snader household apocalypse (I guess with 5 kids the definition of “inside voice” changes). All six of us kids shower, breakfast, dress, caffeine, bundle up and venture outside. . . ready to go.
Act II:
The weather was not ready to let us go, however. We walk outside to a driveway sheathed in almost a quarter-inch of ice. Every individual blade of grass is iced over, and just shatters underfoot. Halos of ice surround every twig, branch, and tree trunk. The cars? Oh, the cars. Also sheathed in a solid quarter-inch of ice. We used the one ice scraper to chip at the ice around each door of the two cars; half an hour later we’ve broken in and are ready to pile in and leave. (the whole time we were trying to break the ice to get into the cars, Greg’s youngest brother is hip-checking the side of the car to try and shatter the ice.)
Then three people remember things in the house they’d forgotten to get/do, so we wait a while longer.
Then Greg, Charlene, and I pile into his new car and leave to get gas — the driveway was so slippery we don’t want to follow close together. We drive with one tire in the grass. It is way hardcore. Greg cannot see out of either of his side mirrors because hey — they’re still covered in a quarter inch of ice.
Act III:
We get a phone call at the gas station — after we’ve broken into the gas tank — the windshield wipers on Chris’ car are broken. So we go back, pick up the other three kids at the bottom of the driveway so we don’t have to try an drive up the steep icy slope, break into the trunk without an ice scraper to deposit all our belongings, then cram six people into Greg’s car.
Then we drive an hour. Loudly. And with much poking, arguing, yelling, teasing, smushing-one-another-around-curves, more sleet, and lots of rain. And lots of reminding ourselves why the heck we were leaving the house on a day like today, when the weather is utterly terrible. Seventy-five pounds of turkey. Just remember, we have to go eat 75 pounds of turkey.
Finally we arrive at the Howe reunion. We eat almost all of the turkey.
Filed under general, absurdity, humor, travels, winter, snow, Christmas, food | Comment (0)the wacky wednesday worries
“Elena!” I burst into my dorm room and accost my roommate without even saying hello. “Can you give me some advice?”
Elena looks up from where she had been peacefully drinking coffee and looking out the window at the snow-covered world. “Uh. . . sure.”
“Is it stupid to go to town in this much snow?” The heavy flakes hadn’t stopped falling all morning. I’m a southerner (at least by adoption), and I admit once again that I thoroughly lack knowledge about how to order my life in the winter. What does a snow advisory mean? What snow is too much snow? How early do the trucks get out there and salt the roads? What do I do if I hit ice? How much farther than normal should I follow behind a car if there’s a single snowflake in the air? Should I be carrying a shovel in my car? Or emergency flares or something?
“Well. . . I don’t think you’ll die or anything,” Elena said, clearly laughing at my panic. Seriously, though, if those large snowflakes had been falling on Hartselle, Alabama, everything would be closed down. If there’s even a forecast of snow, people buy the grocery store out of milk and bread.
You may laugh, too, but my anxiety level about driving in the snow is acute. Especially since my car developed a coolant leak (out the main intake valve — whatever that means) last week and the “Service Engine Soon” light has been on for a month. Oh, my ‘97 Chevy Lumina. Reliable, sort of, in that it so far it has not yet developed problems when I’m in the midst of the 13.5 hour drive home.
I’m not alone in my car troubles (and I hope not alone in my panic over snowy roads — although that sounds like I am wishing panic on my friends and I am certainly not!). Many of my college compatriots are driving used and/or elderly cars. Most of us also look forward to the day when we have real jobs and can afford a car with a little less personality and a little more reliability.
A car with personality does mean, however, that we can come up with amazing names for our cars. My lovely delapidated Lumina is named Gustav. For some reason, Gustav sounds like a name that ought to be green, like my car, and frog-like (which my car is not, at least, not yet. I’m not ruling out the idea that it may someday transmutate while I’m en route to the grocery store into something green and undriveable, remarkably like a frog). I asked around the office and it turns out that car names can be horrifically original. “The Red Death Wagon” is one Matt remembers from his college days. Apparently it saw 100 mph on a regular basis. “Edna” is another delightful moniker for a mechanical monstrosity. Oh, and my favorite? Dan Custer’s sisters named their car “Shabookie Bessie.”
I think my car got off lightly. Even if I do berate it when it breaks.
Filed under general, absurdity, humor, winter, snow, incompetent southerners, oddly named cars | Comments (2)“black bird singing in the dead of night, take these sunken eyes and learn to see.”
I’ll be candid. Normally I hate the Department of Visual Arts’ New York City field trip (last time, in sophomore year, I had the flu). I don’t really like cities, much less New York City, where it is a challenge to navigate the crowded side walks and the smell is so extremely distinctive. And I don’t really like getting up at 6 a.m. and getting back at midnight (it’s a marathon of a day). But this year, I count the sunken eyes and tired feet worth it.
I am a lot closer to the senior class of art majors than I was to the sophomore class of art majors. So hanging out with them was a lot of fun. Even if we did walk way more than can possibly be healthy. = )
Also, I am not as attached to or intimidated by tradition as I once was. I used to sit in museums and think, “I can never be an artist. Look at all this stuff. Look how good it is.” Or I would think to myself, “I can never be an artist. I don’t think this is art at all. How can I be an artist if I reject the tradition of art?” This time, when we visited the Museum of Modern Art, I thought, “Hey, this is great. Look at all this stuff. It’s beautiful! I’m gonna make something beautiful some day.” And when we visited the galleries in Chelsea, I thought, “No wonder these people are making such disturbing art. They live in New York City. I’m going to make art, but I’m going to make art that is true to my own little slice of life regardless of what is gallery-worthy or not.”
It was fascinating to see what NYCAMS students thought was gallery-worthy, too. The NYCAMS studios, which we visited over lunch, were beautiful. Hard-wood floors, big windows, the artwork the students are working through for their studio class hanging everywhere. Their one art class is basically whatever they want, culminating in a show at the end of the semester. The studios are seven floors up, so it is not nearly so claustrophobic as being on the street, and the kitchen area seems tranquil and focused (of course, I always do my best thinking in the kitchen anyway). NYCAMS students also get to work at an art-related internship, whether it’s working for a gallery, a design firm, or working apprentice-like for a painter. And that would be a phenomenal opportunity. Maybe it would be difficult to live in the city for me, but if I had some extra time at Messiah, I’d consider applying.
New York City is full of trends and absurdity, in art as well as in general. Some of the Messiah students who were studying at NYCAMS this semester showed us around and took us to their favorite cupcake cafe. “Cupcakes are so chic right now,” said Elena-my-roommmate. Yes, in New York City, even cupcakes can be chic. People wear the strangest hats and dresses over skinny jeans and high-heeled boots.
I engaged most with the city when we stopped for the cupcakes. I’m not that into cupcakes, no matter how chic they are, so I settled for a welcome dose of caffeinated goodness (i.e. coffee). Our group overwhelmed the seating available inside the cafe, so several of us retired to benches outside, and I ended up on a bench by myself. Not long after I sat down, an old woman in a plaid coat and a black scarf came out of the cafe and sat down beside me.
She started talking about how she is a pianist and walked in Chelsea at night once when it was dangerous (because there’s still such a homeless problem). She asked me where I was from and talked about the pace of life in the city and visiting her son and how it seemed boring to her but maybe it was peaceful for him. She talked about how hard it is to be an artist and that maybe I should consider another line of work or else choose to make mass art. She asked me why people make mass art? Well who knows the answer to that one?
I excused myself after ten minutes or so and went back inside the cafe to ask what time we had to meet the busses to go back to little ol’ Grantham, Pa. That conversation, however odd, made me realize that living in New York City could be valuable to a writer because there are so many strange characters to study and a particular rhythm of conversation that could be used to create an engaging narrative. But I think that I would miss slowly considered speech.
Living in a city could also be valuable in forcing one to develop a sense of architectural space, but I would definitely miss seeing green things and the leaves changing, actual silence and seeing the star-deep fields at night.
Filed under general, absurdity, the real world, travels, strange old women on benches | Comment (0)“the glove compartment is inaccurately named, and everybody knows it”
I may be among the few, but I love rainy days. The gray sky and encroaching fog highlights the contrasting transmutation of leaves from green to gold, crimson, and burning orange. The tree trunks stand dark and austere and still as leaves bend and twitch to rain drops’ dictation.
Also, it is simply entertaining to see students scurrying from building to building, mostly unprepared. Because who stops to look out the window as we’re stumbling from bed to class way too early for good mental health?
“Don’t forget about delight,” says Bruce Cockburn in one of my favorite songs. OK, Bruce. No problem. Not on a day like today when ideal conditions for napping, reading, and hot chocolate exist.
My roommates are pretty much amazing (I think this will be a frequent refrain of my life). Katie was up in the studio all night this week because she had a graphic design project due. So Elena took her a real Italian cappucino to help keep her awake. Pretty much they are very thoughtful people. Living with them is a little more complicated now that we are not in Italy, but it’s good, and I’m glad for whatever time I get to spend with them outside of class craziness.
Like last night. Art majors working on Halloween costumes are the best thing EVER (I say this, of course, without bias). Every year, the Art League (an organization for promoting crazy fun and community for anyone involved in art classes and led by an intrepid and mysterious figure known only as Captain Art Major) holds a Halloween party, usually at Daniel Finch’s house. This year I rue the fact that I will not be able to attend, because the costumes I see are colorful, brilliant, and hysterical. Trust me, photographs will follow. But only once the unveiling has taken place.
Happy Friday. Let its absurdity, its rain, and its delight usher you with a rush into the weekend.
Quotes of the day: “I don’t think he really thought that Jesus loved E-town,”
“D as in dog. . . arf arf!”
– my world views professor