Sarah's Bloglet - Monday 11 August 2003

Moved. New apartment is awesome. AWESOME! _
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10:57:13 AM, Monday 11 August 2003

Most people cuss for emphasis, but this guy just cusses when he's trying to think of what to say next. _
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06:53:25 PM, Friday 8 August 2003

Wow. Realplayer lists "yodel" and "shoegazer" as genres. _
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05:52:31 PM, Friday 8 August 2003

and as I smile I catch myself _
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05:15:17 PM, Friday 8 August 2003

I'm really amazed by the way "Brown Eyed Girl" makes memory seem pleasant. ('Cause it's usually not, see.) _
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06:40:14 PM, Thursday 7 August 2003

On my lunch break I went to the drugstore, ostensibly to pick up band-aids. (I also picked up chocolates, gum and the new Vogue. And a hooker.) I meant to go to the library but I was totally incapable of thought for a while, so mostly I wandered around looking at lipgloss. On my way back to work I stopped by the Civic Center flea market and looked at a bunch of crap I didn't really want. I didn't feel anything at all, I just thought about buying crap I don't need. Trance of consumption. _
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05:53:56 PM, Thursday 7 August 2003

Mirabai's entry in which she wondered about how Christians approach homosexuality made me start thinking about my own approach to faith.
Only in the past few years have I come close to having real faith. I prayed with some regularity for over a year before admitting to myself that I believed in God. This faith is almost exclusively founded on subjective experience. The experience was (and is) fundamentally unsayable and I think that I interpret it in Christian terms because I come from a Christian culture. (This is not to say that Christianity is without content for me, just that I think I could find content correlating to my experience in a number of other religions.)

Maybe faith isn't the right thing to call what I have. I can't assert unequivocally that God exists -- I have to acknowledge that I may have been fooling myself all this time.

I was afraid to move towards faith for a very very long time. I'm pretty sure that I was partly motivated by a desire to cling to my cherished liberal ideals. I felt, and still feel, very strongly that homosexual acts have the same moral status as heterosexual ones and that birth control is wonderful. (At times I've been half-convinced that sex should be reserved for marriage (and, as a corollary, that the church -- whatever that is -- should perform same-sex marriages, but I'd believe that anyway) but have never followed this through because I love vice more than virtue. It's an opinion I'd be willing to change, but I could not, now, change the others in good conscience.)

So now I have a faith which is certainly not biblical since I won't take scripture's word against my own. I suppose my faith is founded in my conscience and in prayer. I'm really not sure how to take scripture, and worry that putting the basis of my faith essentially outside it is arrogant, insincere and altogether wrong. Of course, without the impetus of subjective experience I wouldn't have any interest in scripture. And since Quakers are the only Christians I find myself wholeheartedly agreeing with on spiritual matters, the scriptural thing may not be terribly important.

I don't know how much this matters. Well, not to anyone who isn't me. But if you have anything to say on this topic, please do.

The conversation about this in Mirabai's blog also reminded me why I admire Derek so very much. _
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03:55:35 PM, Thursday 7 August 2003

NYT article on the new edition of the Chicago Manual of Style: "We used to take style questions over the phone," said [the editor]. "I always thought we should make it a 900 number." Showing how that might go, she lowered her voice seductively: "You want to use a hyphen there? Ooooo, that's very naughty!" _
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11:39:37 AM, Thursday 7 August 2003

You know those sites that play fill-in-the-blanks with your google search terms? One of those just yielded the following gem: "Search Ebay for Sophocles collectibles!"

I want the Oedipus Rex lunchbox. _
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05:44:34 PM, Wednesday 6 August 2003

Oh yeah, I went to that group last night. The discussion was on Oedipus Tyrannos and was fairly good, I'd say. It touched on a lot of the same crap we talked about in Freshman seminar but didn't really dwell on it for long. Plus, no crazy Serbs or South Carolingians with whom to grapple.
There may be a problem with lack of focus, but the group assigns a scribe to take notes on the conversation. Last night the scribe jumped in as the conversation wandered and returned us to some of the original questions, which was helpful. They all have faintly official nicknames for one another (samples: "Barcelona," "Rex" and "Big Boy"). Also there is beer.
There are a few people in the group who seem to read Greek but translation isn't on the agenda. This is fine, since I've been meaning to study Latin for-fucking-ever. I'll have to set aside a night for it. Does anyone have an opinion as to whether I should try to get a Wheelock's group together via Craigslist? Alternatively, does anyone know a bunch of lonely classicists who live in the area? _
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04:38:49 PM, Wednesday 6 August 2003

The thing that gets me about ramen-in-a-cup is the presence of tiny dehydrated shrimp. They are so strange. I kind of expect them to go all sea-monkeys and start dancing around when I put the water in, but that won't work because they're dead. _
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02:57:21 PM, Wednesday 6 August 2003

Hot dizzamn. _
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02:54:30 PM, Wednesday 6 August 2003

Now I have to go buy every Mountain Goats album ever. Shit. _
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02:06:19 PM, Wednesday 6 August 2003

catasterism. _
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01:57:25 PM, Wednesday 6 August 2003

See I was all geared up to write something bitter and pessimistic about eros but then my boyfriend called me at work and I started squeaking with glee and forgot what I was going to say. _
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01:45:29 PM, Wednesday 6 August 2003

Chronicle article:
Vandals slathered glue over the windows of at least eight Starbucks shops in San Francisco early Tuesday in what authorities called a coordinated effort to fool people into thinking the stores had closed ...
In each case, the vandals smeared enough glue on the windows to make it difficult to see inside, Tully said. They also draped the windows with "closed" or "for lease" signs bearing bogus phone numbers. The vandals posted fraudulent flyers reading "message from Starbucks Corporation" and bearing the name of the company's senior vice president of corporate responsibility.
"The global economy requires a relentless substitution of quantity over quality and shareholder value over human values," it read. "At our current market level, Starbucks cannot in good conscience guarantee all of our beans meet both our rigorous quality standards as well as our commitment to social responsibility. We are moving over and making room for local coffee bars."
_
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01:12:53 PM, Wednesday 6 August 2003

A 3-hour program on Sparta, airing tonight on KQED. I can't wait to see them reenact Thermopylae! _
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11:19:36 AM, Wednesday 6 August 2003

I can't decide whether it's cuter for a dude to be riding a skateboard or talking about math. (Of course, talking about fonts is cuter than either of those.) _
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01:28:10 PM, Tuesday 5 August 2003

Dude, if I could find a pixie willing to make me coffee every morning I would so totally give it oatmeal and sugar and darn its wee socks. _
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11:26:59 AM, Tuesday 5 August 2003

I just saw some dude wearing a t-shirt which read, "I have nothing to declare but my genius." _
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11:24:19 AM, Tuesday 5 August 2003

I grew my very own moustache! _
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08:10:13 PM, Monday 4 August 2003

Walking around on my lunch break: I saw an old man in a tore up white baseball cap which read "CASH". Also an older lady with a blonde bouffant in a skintight, head-to-toe zebra stripe/op-art pattern outfit. And heels. It was great. _
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07:29:04 PM, Monday 4 August 2003

The taqueria has been fucking up my order again. Is it a new employee or just that I've gone back to ordering in English? _
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03:54:49 PM, Monday 4 August 2003

Damian's trying to get me to dig Diesel Sweeties, so he sent me this link. Even its Sleater reference was weak.
Can anyone show me a really, really good Diesel Sweeties strip? Like, your all-time favorite? 'Cause right now I agree with toothpastefordinner on the t-shirt factory thing. _
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11:17:21 AM, Monday 4 August 2003

(Have I been listening to that album all day? Jesus.) _
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05:02:06 AM, Sunday 3 August 2003

I think I just heard Stephen Malkmus sing the phrase, "Get it on." _
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05:01:35 AM, Sunday 3 August 2003

"You Are a Light" from the last Pavement album is so weird and beautiful. _
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12:00:02 AM, Sunday 3 August 2003

I probably shouldn't think this way, but I find that hitting stuff solves a lot of problems. _
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02:29:14 PM, Friday 1 August 2003

There's this song by the Dandy Warhols called "Bohemian Like You" and it sounds like a cheat sheet for "Gimme Shelter." _
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01:22:34 PM, Friday 1 August 2003

This morning on BART I saw a man who looked like the secret love-child of SJC tutor Mr. Grenke and Ari Fliescher. But then on the street I saw this dude listening to his headphones with a huge grin on his face, so I felt better. _
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11:39:17 AM, Friday 1 August 2003

Singing horses. _
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11:37:20 AM, Friday 1 August 2003

Now I heart Howard Dean as much as the next red-blooded member of my demographic, but this is hilarious: "...today [Dean] has become such a threat to the frontrunner, and evidently, at least a few others, that they have taken every opportunity to twist his words, and distort his centrist record -- in what has so obviously, to anyone who is watching, become a desperate attempt to stop him before he can't be stopped.
They are trying to stop the Perfect Storm." _
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02:22:02 AM, Friday 1 August 2003

It seems like every time I walk into the supermarket they're playing "Tiny Dancer". _
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03:56:56 PM, Thursday 31 July 2003

Hello, white liberal guilt. Aren't you a fine motivation? _
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08:27:54 PM, Wednesday 30 July 2003

Kate called me up when I was writing that and told me about the new Greek lit translation/discussion group that she and Tom have joined. They're reading tragedies now in preparation for translating the Poetics and are planning to do the Metaphysics after that.
I swear, I just about wet myself with joy. _
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06:33:47 PM, Wednesday 30 July 2003

At the vehement request of both Julia and Anne, here is The Pancreatic Tale:

Once upon a time (junior year) I dated a total loser. We weren't together very long, but the breakup was so messy that I told him to call me no more. Naturally, he rang me up about three months later, on the night of the very first seminar of my senior year.
Remembering all the times I'd kicked him out of bed the morning after an ill-advised reunion, I resisted the urge to hang up and instead asked how he'd been.
"Pretty bad," he said. "I've been pretty sick. But I'm feeling better now."
I asked him what was wrong. He went to the doctor, he said, complaining of a general malaise. It turned out that he had acute pancreatitis. The cause? "[pregnant pause] I -- I drank too much."
Apparently his rum&coke-for-dinner habit had caused him mental as well as physical illness. His uptight, bitchy demeanor was the result of a temporary depression brought on by a, uh, depressant. And the paunch he'd developed while we were dating? Not the result of his refusal to exercise or consume anything with more nutritional content than the aforementioned beverage, but rather the external view of his massively engorged pancreas.
"I'm on antidepressants now," he went on. "And I haven't felt this great since I was twenty-one." (Did I mention that he was ten years older than me? Bad life decision, my friends. Bad life decisions.)
I began to have a very bad feeling about the conversation. "Gosh, I hate to make assumptions," I said. "But, you know, if you were thinking about getting back together, I have to tell you that I only want to be friends. And -- hey! look at the time! I have to go to class! Thanks for calling!"

Well, that's the pancreas story. As a sidenote, I found out just last week that he spent the following spring banging an emotionally unstable eighteen year-old and nearly lost his job as a result. And that now he's having an affair with a married woman.
So very glad my taste has improved. _
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06:21:11 PM, Wednesday 30 July 2003

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