Leopard Bikini Bound

Bettie Page died? What?
I didn't even know she was still alive. I also didn't know that she had become a born-again Christian and that she worked for Billy Graham's ministry. Anyhow, I know it's a completely unoriginal sentiment, but I think Bettie Page is hell of cool and iconic. Not a lot of people have that kind of staying power as a sex symbol.

I feel sort of like I felt when James Doohan died; not too sad because I thought he was already dead, too, but bummed because I feel like I missed something.

Poor, poor Mr. Quick

I have basically ceased to accomplish anything in these past few days. The semester is not quite over, but I'm sure acting like it is. My Duke application is due next Monday and I have yet to finish that, and I have a paper to write, 6 bassoon reeds to finish, a group project to finish and a history final to take. Yuck.

I was recently reunited with an old acquaintance who consumed a lot of my time this weekend (not in a bad way...it was a weekend of my two favorite deadly sins: sloth and lust) but now I really need to make up for it. However, I seem to be incapable of doing anything useful these days. Alas.

Erlebnisse

Happy birthday, Dad!

Happy deathday, John Lennon!

P.S.

I've tried to avoid titling posts here with German words and phrases because I don't like it when people try to alienate other people with their tenuous grasp of foreign languages. For the record, my German isn't that good, and I was just not creative enough to think of another title. This one more or less means "memorable experiences."

inspiration

I was getting really nervous about my thesis topic because I wasn't actually sure if I liked it or not. When I was doing some reading for it last night, however, I got really interested again! Good.

I have submitted my first two grad school applications. And I apparently made a mistake on one of them! However, I'm hoping that since that took the time to contact me and correct me, there are hopefully looking at me with some interest. Maybe not.

Also, I quit one of my jobs yesterday. At the bookstore. I just couldn't deal with the monotony anymore, and they keep making all sorts of really absurd rules. Most recently, we are not allowed to hug anyone or to tell anyone 'I love you.' I think the only thing I'm really going to miss, other than the money, is one of my coworkers. I don't know if I want her or if I want to be her. I will just need to go watch/listen to her spin more often.

yo-ho-ho

Does anyone else think it's terribly cool that pirates are making world headlines? I've never really been on the pirate-obsessed bandwagon, but I just think this is neat. I'm also not really a violence enthusiast, but these pirates don't really seem out to kill people, they just want to make a few [million] bucks. Also, I basically live in a cave so international crises tend to not have a large impact on my life, so I have the luxury of simply observing things like Somalian pirates and economic disasters without much fear. I think the reason I like this pirate situation is that it proves that no one is in control because people exist who refuse to be controlled. I can respect that, on some level, even if I don't necessarily think that piracy is the way to go.

Half of my grad school applications are due Monday and I am not prepared to submit them. I am extremely stressed out. Also, next week I have 32 pages of papers due. As soon as this semester ends I think I'll go on a pretty serious bender. It'll be great.

Home means Nevada

Happy Halloween/Nevada Day!

Nevada Day is the greatest holiday in the world because it means we get the day off of school (and work, depending where you work) but we still get mail. And it's an extra day for Halloween shenanigans and, in my case, eating breakfast with near strangers at Super Burrito after sleeping at a strange house with four cats in it and then getting stranded downtown at about 1 pm in your Halloween costume and having to call your roommate for a ride. On top of bars open 24/7, the abundance of strip clubs and porno theatres and the ability to buy hard liquor and play slot machines in the grocery store, it is one of the best things about Nevada.

money money money money

A few weeks ago I had to submit a grant proposal to fund my thesis. I aimed pretty low, honestly, because I didn't really expect to get any money from it. I didn't work very hard on it and I didn't ask for much money. Anyway, I just received an email saying that they are going to fund me in the full amount I requested. Which means I'm going to probably buy about $300 or more in music in the coming weeks. It's going to be great.

Also. German slang is one of the most hilarious things I can think of:
cocaine = Nuttendiesel = hooker fuel.

Lavender Menace

Quickly:

Grant proposals are horrible. I don't look forward to a future in which I have to write a lot of them.

My GRE percentiles came in: my verbal score is in the 96^th percentile and my writing score is in the 97^th percentile. My math score was not quite so great, but I don't suppose that matters a lot.

Today is my birthday. YESSSS

(Hopefully I will have something more cerebral to say someday soon.)

Oh. I can now get a class M endorsement on my driver's license. Finally, I can legally ride my motorcycle.

phantom stripper

I've been thinking a lot about language lately, probably because I spend such a huge amount of time doing German homework, and also because one of my history professors brought something to my attention: dictionaries don't instruct us on how to use language, they catalogue and describe how we use language from other preexisting examples. This began to bother me a lot when I was studying for the GRE because they ask you to identify a lot of little nuances associated with certain words, but that implies that words have concrete and permanent definitions, and I don't think that's true.

Additionally, I was talking with one of my coworkers about grammar and which grammatical errors people use all the time bother us the most. In thinking about it later, though, how do languages evolve other than through the changing grammar and word use patterns of their users? So I say maybe we should be a little less resistant to change, especially if change lets us express ourselves more clearly.

Also: the GRE is over, but I'm not really sure how to interpret my scores. Anyway, that's one small step toward completing my grad school applications, and that's a bit of a relief.

On a personal note: assuming the person I'm dating is dating multiple people (which I assume is true) is it a promotion or a demotion to have been moved from Saturday to Friday this week? I don't know.

Lesson learned

I thought I was supposed to take the GRE on Saturday, but it turns out my registration didn't go through, so I had to reschedule for next Thursday. At least that means I have a few extra days in which not to study.

Today is the first meeting of my honors thesis class, which I suppose basically means milling around with some assholes and trying to convince the honors program director to let me go to faculty recitals instead of lectures.

Something I've been thinking about a little:

Was there any kind of music being produced in colonial Latin America? I mean, of course there must have been, but I would like to know what it was like and how it related to the contemporary classical music being produced in Europe and how it evolved and presumably diverged from European music.

Poor little Bessie may soon starve and die

Who is the audience for a version of "Somewhere Out There" sung by a little blind girl named Courtney on her album "Perfect in His Eyes"? Also, what meaning does a particular audience lend to a song like this?
Louis thinks maybe evangelical suburban soccer moms, but I think maybe widows (also evangelical) with lots of angel figurines and commemorative plates. Or, I suppose, another audience would be people such as me and Louis who appreciate these things in an ironic way or an academic way. What we both found surprising was that many members of the grad seminar liked it from the standpoint that she has a really lovely voice for little girl, and, being as many of them are music educators returning to school for their masters degrees, they wish their students could sing like that.
It also reminded me of a recording of the temperance movement era song "Father's a Drunkard and Mother is Dead" by Mrs. E.A. Parkhurst (or something similar) that I first heard at the beginning of last summer.

rokenroleg

It's my favorite Russian's birthday today.

rock and roll music

Pop music is weird because it's about itself. How many rock songs are about how great rock music is? Or about being in a band, or playing the guitar or whatever. I wonder if this phenomenon is specific to pop music. I'm sure that there are exceptions, but genres like musical theatre or opera don't seem to like to call attention to the fact that they are singing (with exceptions like that fabulous episode of Buffy which is a great example of postmodernism's willingness to point out its medium), nor do "serious" art songs. To my knowledge, anyway.