What DO they teach them in these schools?

I went home last week for my brother's high school graduation, where he was told three days before that he had to be the valedictorian. I spent three days talking him out of saying (in response to the Dean of Faculty's comment that "once this senior class gets out of the way, the school can get back to higher and better things") "now that we've graduated, the school can get back to higher and better things" and managed to tone him down to just quoting Dan Simmons, Jimmy-Eat-World, Bright Eye, and a legion of other rock stars in a last paragraph of "this world is full of things that kill / but by now you probably should have known".

For those of you who didn't know, I went to a high school called (that's right, folks) Cair Paravel Latin School (the funny thing is, no one laughed at that until I came to TAC; TACers universally think it's dumb and secular people universally think it's cool; this has always surprised and weirded me out) and we were (of course) the Lions, with the Stone Table Theater, our mascot being the rampant red lion on the silver background of Narnian lore.

End of backstory: for this graduation, one of the wealthier families in my brother's class decided to let their caterer get a bit artsy for the huge dinner at the race car track (replete with fireworks) that they planned on hosting, so they allowed their caterer to buy a monstronormous block of cheddar cheese and carve Aslan into it.

Yes, actually, they carved Aslan into it. A rampant red lion, dyed red, reaching for a cross on a huge block of cheddar cheese, dyed blue. (This is the part where CS Lewis flips over in his grave.)

Aaaaand Everyone thought it was so nifty that they then proceeded to drag it around to every single grad party until, alas, it was too slimy to actually make an appearance at the graduation itself, where I could have been so lucky as to see it.

Woe is me, for I did not see the Aslan-cheese.

Laugh 1 followed closely by Laugh 2

Thanks to John B. through Overlyconcious

Wow there are lots of people here

Today, Mr. Collins screwed a doorbell underneath Barbara's desk, and then stripped the heads of all of the bolts so that she cannot get it off again. This is the summation of a week-long exchange of ripping out floorboards and ceiling tiles to hide it in various people's offices, and caused the death of several sheets of sheet rock, one paper opener, and almost everyone's jobs (thanks to Mr. DeLuca's sense of humor). This confirms my suspicion that I was not cut out for 9-5 work, and lessens the chance that I am a natural slave. (Not that I actually know what a "natural slave" is, but I am taught to say it snobbishly by my elders at the college.)

In addition, I thought I would just like to tell you that today is John Almeida's last day (no really it is) (no really, I think he's actually leaving) (or at least we're having a party for his departure and everyone in the office took photos of themselves with the phone cords wrapped around their necks, hanging themselves in woe) and that June 31st is Father Michael's, as I suspect very few of you have heard that.

In addition addition, you'll probably actually be hearing from me (!) (?) (@#%*(!) a fair amount over the summer, as I Get the Internet Watch the Phones whenever Alexandra wants to go smoke. Fortunately-unfortunately for you all, she's pretty much a chain smoker.

Ambivalent/Indifferent

I believe there was some debate about this.

"If you feel pulled in two directions about some issue, you’re ambivalent about it; but if you have no particular feelings about it, you’re indifferent."

Common Errors in English

Ooo...2

A guide to common errors in English

Thanks to Andrew Simone over at Epiphatic Exaustion, who also finds many nifty things.

And if you haven't been reading Long or Short Capital (at right), who would have thought investing could be so interesting?

Massachusetts Wildlife (301st Post)

And please give this a read.

Ooo...

Latin Classics

One of the most delightful things about summer: grilled sweet corn on the cob (the first of the season), served glistening with butter and well seasoned with salt and pepper.

Also, one of the best things about the internet: being able to find an mp3 of Raindrops, a sweetly cheerful unreleased Regina Spektor demo.

Here's another really good article about Bonds and steroids, presenting the side that we'd all like to hear but rarely do: Bonds isn't all that bad. It's also a telling look into baseball, why we love it so.

Paris est pourri

as a waiter told Kerouac. Say that en francais. C'est belle.

Going 'Round the Email Mill

“There is not so much difference between the ideologies of capitalism and communism, you know. The difference is simple. Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, and Communism is the reverse.”
–John Gardner, in his book The Man from Barbarossa

thanks to Mr. Juggles

If you're interested in digging a little deeper into T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, I thought this essay by Professor R.V. Young (he gave a lecture on Milton last semester) provided some insightful commentary. I'm not sure I agree entirely with everything he says, but it's definitely worth reading. You can read the essay in HTML or pdf format.

I headed to mass this Sunday with a fair amount trepidation. Because I'm spoiled from going to mass at school where people are (by and large) quiet, orderly and reverent, I don't particularly look forward to going to mass at home. Sunday mass at my parish is this close to being a social hour, despite the best efforts of the the priests. All was going smoothly until we got to the homily and the priest, recently ordained and very earnest, decided to launch into an explication of the many errors of the Da Vinci Code. I'm so sick of the furor surrounding that unspeakably moronic book (and its equally moronic author) that my blood pressure just about hit the roof at the very words "Da Vinci Code". To add insult to injury, I thought, this homily will probably be some dumbed-down invective about how of course good Catholics believe Jesus was God: QED, Dan Brown! As the people behind me muttered about how they just loved the Da Vinci Code, the priest surprised me by giving a very thoughtful (though not entirely calm) homily about Arianism and the Council of Nicea. He ended by saying that we had an obligation to know the history of our own religion and, thus armed, would be able to scoff at pathetic attempts at passing off Arianism as something new and exciting. What a pleasant surprise. (Not so pleasant: the fact that grumbling behind me persisted, but that's pretty much par for the course during mass at home. Things get really interesting when there are homilies about contraception and homosexuality.)

Patton

From the movie:

"Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. Men, all this stuff you’ve heard about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ball player, the toughest boxer. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.

Now, an Army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that stuff about individuality for the Saturday Evening Post don’t know anything more about real battle than they do about fornicating.

We have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit and the best men in the world. You know, by God I actually pity those poor bastards we’re going up against. By God, I do. We’re not just going to shoot the bastards, we’re going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We’re going to murder those lousy Hun bastards by the bushel.

Now, some of you boys, I know, are wondering whether or not you'll chicken out under fire. Don't worry about it. I can assure you that you will all do your duty. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them. Spill their blood. Shoot them in the belly. When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend's face, you'll know what to do.

Now there’s another thing I want you to remember. I don’t want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position. We’re not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy. We're going to hold onto him by the nose and we're going to kick him in the ass. We're going to kick the hell out of him all the time and we're gonna go through him like crap through a goose.

There’s one thing that you men will be able to say when you get back home. And you may thank God for it. Thirty years from now when you’re sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what did you do in the great World War II, you won’t have to say, "Well, I shoveled shit in Louisiana."

Alright now, you sons-of-bitches, you know how I feel. Oh, and I will be
proud to lead you wonderful guys into battle – anytime, anywhere.

That’s all."

The Real Speech (scroll down)

I've just found on my bookshelf--I can always count on it--what promises to be a phenomenal book.

"Avant-garde has for us a positive ring, storm troops a frightening connotation. This book suggests that there may be a sibling relationship between these two terms that extends beyond their military origins. Introspection, primitivism, abstraction and myth making in the arts, and introspection, primitivism, abstraction, and myth making in politics, may be related manifestations. Nazi kitsch may bear a blood relationship to the highbrow religion of art proclaimed by many moderns."

Rites of Spring by Modris Eksteins, professor of history, University of Toronto

There must be something else underlying the absurd debate over illegal immigrants.

Philosophy, Mystery, and Aristotle

fascinating

here and here

All this "debunking the Da Vinci" has mostly been annoying and somewhat pathetic. Here's the first appropriate commentary I've come across.

Some excerpts:

"The Da Vinci Code" would not be the subject of this column had it not sold 60.5 million copies, according to its publisher Doubleday. Of course this does not make it the best-selling book of all time. That title, as irony would have it, goes to the Bible, half of which one of Dan Brown's characters dismisses as "false."

*****

Here's my theory of "The Da Vinci Code." Dan Brown was sitting one night at the monthly meeting of his local secret society, listening to a lecture on the 65th gospel, and he got to thinking: "I wonder if there's any limit to what people are willing to believe these days about a conspiracy theory. Let's say I wrote a book that said Jesus was married. To Mary Magdalene. Who was pregnant at the Crucifixion. And she is the Holy Grail. Jesus wanted her to run the church as a global sex society called Heiros Gamos, but Peter elbowed her out of the job. Her daughter was the beginning of the Merovingian dynasty of France. Jesus' family is still alive. There were 80 gospels, not four. Leonardo DiCaprio, I mean da Vinci, knew all this. The 'Mona Lisa' is Leonardo's painting of himself in drag. Da Vinci's secret was kept alive by future members of 'the brotherhood,' including Isaac Newton, Claude Debussy and Victor Hugo. The Catholic Church is covering all this up."

Then Dan Brown said softly, "Would anyone buy into a plot so preposterous and fantastic?" Then he started writing.

Top Ten Hip-Hop Albums

1. Arular, M.I.A.
2. Purple Haze, Camron
3. The Chronic 2001, Dr. Dre
4. Reasonable Doubt, Jay-Z
5. The Blueprint, Jay-Z
6. The College Dropout, Kanye West
7. Things Fall Apart, The Roots
8. Licensed to Ill, Beastie Boys
9. Like Water for Chocolate, Common
10. All Eyez on Me, 2Pac

Disclaimer: I couldn't resist making my own top ten hip-hop albums list, but I simply couldn't put it in order. (It took me long enough to get my top ten down, it would've taken forever to actually order it.) So, don't read anything into who's listed where.

Is anyone going to the Monday, June 5th Radiohead show? My stupid friends got tickets to the Sunday show.

The Da Vinci Code

If you have animosity towards this film, there's an email going around suggesting that y'all go to the movies this weekend, but not to the Da Vinci. Fight 'em on their own terms or something like that.

If you don't have animosity towards it, then you can either go to it, stay home, or go to another movie. Why not?

10 Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries

Make of this what you will.

Link

Pioneering colour photography

Radiohead

Arpeggi Video

"The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden." G.K. Chesterton

I just had a grand idea. We'll see if it materializes.

Finals = Less posting. (I wrote a massive essay on Anselm and his ontological argument.)

Pain isn't a sensation.

I'm going to Radiohead.

Kepler ahead.

Life is beautiful.

Yes.

Barring death, I will be going to see Radiohead on June 6, 2006 at The Bank of America Pavilion in Boston, MA.

Three Links

All Triangles are Isosceles and other Mathematical Truths (pdf)

The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny! (video) (thanks to NGM)

Euclid in Verse (thanks to Ryan)

I Couldn't Resist (see #4)

Rock
10. Evil Empire, Rage Against the Machine
9. Rubber Soul, The Beatles
8. Castaways and Cutouts, The Decemberists
7. Amnesiac, Radiohead
6. Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
5. Come on Feel the Illinoise!, Sufjan Stevens
4. OK Compter, Radiohead
3. Veedon Fleece, Van Morrison
2. Kid-A, Radiohead
1. Hail to the Thief, Radiohead

Hip Hop
10. Wu Tang Forever, Wu Tang Clan
9. Original Pirate Material, The Streets
8. The Black Album, Jay-Z
7. Deltron 3030, Del The Funky Homosapien Yo (aka Deltron Zero)
6. The Blueprint, Jay-Z
5. The Chronic 2001, Dr. Dre
4. The College Dropout, Kanye West
3. The Mouse & The Mask, DangerDoom
2. The Grey Album, Jay-Z, DJ Dangermouse
1. Personal Journals, Sage Francis

Jazz
10. Porgy & Bess, Miles Davis
9. After Hours, Sarah Vaughan
8. Birth of the Cool, Miles Davis
7. Getz/Gilberto, Stan Getz, Joao Gilberto
6. Time Out, Dave Brubeck
5. Mingus Ah Um, Charles Mingus
4. Kind of Blue, Miles Davis
3. Money Jungle, Ellington, Roach, & Mingus
2. Clifford Brown + Max Roach, Brown & Roach
1. Sketches of Spain, Miles Davis

Although, these are ever-changing lists.