Emma and Homer

Today, in my Jane Austen lit class, I compared Emma Woodhouse to Homer Simpson. They are both terrible people, but oddly lovable because they are just so earnestly, accidentally terrible.

EMMA: Won't one of you gents marry Harriet? I will throw in a barouche.

I don't think my professor wrote-her-dissertation-on-George-Eliot ladypants appreciated it much.

Dishes

I am completely in love with these dishes from Anthropologie. Paired with these glasses.

This Is Amazing

My computer is so old...

...it runs on coal.

Yankees Game

I went to my very first Yankees game today. When bringing beer back to our seats, I accidentally splashed some down my seersucker jacket. At first I was sad, but really, a seersucker jacket isn't a seersucker jacket until alcohol has spilled on it.

Croquet, anyone?

The New Museum

Dear Yale University,

We regret to inform you that you no longer hold the number one position of "America's Best Douchebag Farms." With the opening of the exhibit, "Younger Than Jesus," it is clear that The New Museum has jumped ahead in both producing and cultivating douchebags.

Although you may argue that, as a larger institution, you may produce more douchebags than the relatively small New Museum, their douchebags are leaps and bounds ahead in the quality of their douchebaggery.

We are sorry to have to take this prized accolade from you, but there is always next year.


Signed,

US News and World Report

Nerf Guns

One of my suitemates brought home a nerf gun she got at work today. She works in finance. I work in a museum. Attention everyone: finance is more creative than museums.

I had a wonderful time pointing at things in the apartment saying, "DOES MARCELLUS WALLACE LOOK LIKE A BITCH?" and "GIVE ME YOUR SANDWICH."

I don't know how much my roommates liked it, though.

QI

When you have lived in Britain for a time, like I have, and then go back to the colonies, you begin to yearn for the dulcet tones of the motherland. Luckily, the BBC has a youtube page.

Rain Rain GTFO

No one told me New York had a monsoon season. I've been tricked.

Foucault's Pendulum

"'But what courses did we put under Oxymoronics? Oh, yes, here we are: Tradition in Revolution, Democratic Oligarchy, Parmenidean Dynamics, Heraclitean Statics, Spartan Sybaritics, Tautological Dialectics, Boolean Eristic.'

I couldn't resist throwing in 'How about a Grammar of Solecisms?'" - p. 75

Umberto Eco, put your dick away. I do not want to see that.

Fifth Ave Festival

Today, Fifth Avenue was closed from 82nd to 100-and-whatever for the Museum Mile festival. All the museums were open late and teh free. My friend and I went to the Met, which I suppose is the obvious choice, but I happen to like my museums big and full of cranky babies.

We went up to the European Paintings wing, where I said allo to my favorite painting:

Jacques Louis-David, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794) and His Wife (Marie-Anne-Pierrette Paulze, 1758–1836), 1788

I imagine the scene went something like this...

ANNE-P: Oh hello husband. Working on that oxygen thing again?

LAVOISIER: I forget. Say, your boobs look nice today. My face would like to form a covalent bond with them.

We wandered around the altarpieces for a while, making the lamest of art history jokes (is that one-point perspective in your background, or are you just happy to see me?). It was only a trial version of the Met; they closed off all the awesome stuff like the Medieval wing. I don't care about the Egypt wing--they were just as dead as they were last year. We went through the Francis Bacon exhibit in about a minute, because it was room after room of "Am I freaking you out now? How about NOW?"

When we got back outside, someone had put buckets of chalk on the street, and all the grown-ups drew all over Fifth Ave. I drew George Washington, because he is an American hero.


After that, we got ice cream from a truck and generally made a nuisance of ourselves on the train back downtown. I am sorry if you did not want to hear my impression of Larry King, taciturn riders of the 6, but I will have my funnies whether you like it or not.

Fireflies on the Water

The problem with the job I'm doing right now is I get too look at pictures of stuff like this and regret that I won't get to experience it in person.

Yayoi Kusama, Fireflies on the Water (2002)

MoCCA Fest Part Deux

Oh, I am sorry if I gave you the impression that the MoCCA fest was just Kate Beaton sitting under a Bodhi tree dispensing wisdom. In fact, it wasn't a tree, but a giant gun house: The Lexington Avenue Armory. It's a pretty cool place, if you like arms...and COMICS.

It was a really fun, but sort of bizarre experience. There were people and things that I only knew online, as not-reality. And then too see those people and books in real life was like, weird. For example, I met Dylan Meconis, whose comic Bite Me! was the first webcomic I EVER READ. I was like, "Dude, this is so weird to see in person after five years." And she was like, "You're telling me."

I had met Jason, another amazing graphic-novelist, earlier that week when I happened to be at the Strand during his book signing. I couldn't go get another one of his books because a.) I had no moneys left and b.) I was wearing the same outfit. He is an artist, I am sure he would have noticed.

I also ran into my favorite people in the world, Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr of Idiots' Books. They make beautiful and hysterical books, and also taught a collaborative bookmaking workshop at Williams. (My partner and I wrote/illustrated a new tell-all on the life of that great American tart, Emily Dickinson.) They have me a copy of The Baby is Disappointing, which is even funnier if you've met their baby.

I also think it is important for you to know that, out of the eight hundred million people at a comic book festival, I was the only one wearing madras shorts. PREPPY NERDS UNITE.

MoCCA Fest

ATTENTION NERDS: I HAVE MET KATE BEATON AND DRANKETH FROM HER FOUNT OF FUNNY.

The Bronx is Up and the Battery's Down

Back in the NYC for another unpaid museum internship. I just can't get enough of not being paid stuff!

Behind on Posts

By like, a lot.

Remedy this, I shall.

Star Trek again

We are the sort of family that is too nice. When it comes to movies, it's "Oh, if you've already seen it, we don't have to see it again. (holds back tears)"

So I lied about seeing Star Trek to my dad just so I could see it a second time. Judge me not.

Geology

Studying for my Geoscience final tomorrow. On one of our field trips, looking at rock outcrops by the highway, my professor said, "You guys have no idea how many boring stuff you have to look at to find outcrops like these!"

I can't imagine what a geologist could find boring. It would probably kill me.

LED Throwies from Instructables

This place is just fun.

LED Throwies - More DIY How To Projects

Snob Spotter's Guide

I just saw this on the website, Paris Hotel Boutique, which is a vintage shop in the San Francisco Bay Area. I've never read the book, but I can tell you the first entry:

"Pays $120 for a book entitled The Snob Spotter's Guide from a vintage shop called the Paris Hotel Boutique located in the San Francisco Bay Area."

Brideshead

Two things you need to know about Evelyn Waugh's book, Brideshead Revisited.

One: In England, Evelyn can be a boy name.

Two: "Brideshead" is both the name of a place and the name of a person.

Conclusion: There is some serious untapped, pornographic potential at work here, and it needs to be...tapped.

Internships

So, the other day at three, I got a phone call from an unknown number. It went-a something like this:

BRRRRRING.

ME: Hello?

BIDDY: Hello, may I speak to Elizabeth?

ME: Speaking.

BIDDY: Hi, I'm calling from [place of internship] to remind you to bring your lunch on June 1st for orientation.

ME: ...Um, OK.

BIDDY: Great. Do you have any other questions for me?

ME: I don't think so.

BIDDY: OK, great. Bye!

ME: Le wha?

Thanks for notifying me two weeks in advance.

Sherlock Holmes

DO ME ON IT.

Star Trek

In theory, reading week is the time of year when you build a fort out of all the books you were supposed to read during the semester, and slowly dig yourself out. In practice, you leave those books where they belong--in the library--and follow any whim that takes you away from college.

For example, I just got back from the Cinema 7. Ladies and gentlemen, Star Trek might be the greatest movie ever. I went with three of my similarly non-Star-Trek-watching friends, and it was amazing. It was one of those times when everyone in the movie theater gets really into the experience, and by the end we're all cheering for the Enterprise like crazy grandmas yelling at the TV.

Also: Zachary Quinto is unreasonably hot as Spock. It makes no sense that Spock should be this hot.

Mashups

I love mashups. I also might be a tool, but that is essentially irrelevant to our discussion. How could you say no to Kayne West AND Beethoven's Fifth?

In my opinion, DJ Earworm makes the best mashups, though of course Girl Talk is also up there. The MTV Mashups are what got me into mashups in the first place, along with Numb/Encore and the illustrious Grey Album. Maybe this is dating me, but Bittersweet Dirt off Your Shoulder is my freshman year. Mashuptown occasionally has some gems, but mostly...not so much, but it did give me How Six Songs Collide, which is noice. None of this is news to people who actually know anything about music (i.e. not me), but they are still awesome. Time cannot stop the MASHUP.

Shanghai Knights

Say what you will about it, there will always be a special spot in my heart for Shanghai Knights.

Swine Flu

This epidemic makes absolutely no sense. The hardest-hit states include New York, Illinois, California, Texas, and...Oregon? Bwuh? I didn't know people actually lived there; I assumed everyone got dysentery before they had a chance to circle the wagons.

Swine Flu Trail: Coming soon to a state near you (jk you are already sick).

Best Paper Ever

This might seem surprising, but art historians are huge snobs. They are a stodgy bunch, set in their ways and generally uppity about it. Academic art--that is, 19th c. art from the big art academies in France and England--is the pariah of the art history world.

Scene: Paris, many years ago.

BEAUX-ARTS: Good art has to have at least one naked butt in it.

MONET: Well, me and my douchey friends are going to paint outside.

And everyone loved them. Eventually.

I'm working on a huge research paper on representations of the harem in art, a favorite subject of the academics like Jean-Leon Gerome here. I've spent the last three weeks looking at pictures of naked ladies and only naked ladies.

Livin' the art history dream, baby.

RIBALDRY

I am sad that there were no more Tales of Ribaldry, but to be fair this may have had a limited audience.

Wuthering Heights: Worst Book Ever?

Yes.

My Major

I'm an art history major, which is like an English major, but with street cred. For those of you who don't know anything about art history, I've taken the liberty of copying the introductory paragraph from the Wikipedia entry on "Art History."

"This farticle is about the academic discipline of fart history. For an overview of the history of fart worldwide, see History of fart.

Fart history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of fart in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format and look. This includes the "major" farts of painting, sculpture, and architecture as well as the "minor" farts of ceramics, furniture, and other decorative objects. The historical backbone of the discipline is a celebratory chronology of beautiful creations funded by upper class men in western Europe. Such a "canon" remains prominent, as indicated by the selection of objects present in fart history textbooks. Nonetheless, since the mid-20th century there has been an effort to re-define the discipline to be more inclusive of non-Western fart, fart made by women, and vernacular creativity.

As a term, Fart history (also history of fart) encompasses several methods of studying the visual farts; in common usage referring to works of fart and architecture. Aspects of the discipline overlap. As the fart historian Ernst Gombrich once observed, "the field of fart history [is] much like Caesar's Gaul, divided in three farts inhabited by three different, though not necessarily hostile tribes: (i) the connoisseurs, (ii) the critics, and (iii) the academic fart historians".

As a discipline, fart history is distinguished from fart criticism, which is concerned with establishing a relative fartistic value upon individual works with respect to others of comparable style, or sanctioning an entire style or movement; and fart theory or "philosophy of fart", which is concerned with the fundamental nature of fart. One branch of this area of study is aesthetics, which includes investigating the enigma of the sublime and determining the essence of beauty. Technically, fart history is not these things, because the fart historian uses historical method to answer the questions: How did the fartist come to create the work?, Who were the patrons?, Who were his or her teachers?, Who was the audience?, Who were his or her disciples?, What historical forces shaped the fartist's oeuvre, and How did he or she and the creation, in turn, affect the course of fartistic, political, and social events?

This is not to say that fart history is only a biographical endeavor. In fact, fart historians often root their studies in the close scrutiny of individual objects. They thus attempt to answer in historically specific ways, questions such as: What are key features of this style?, What meaning did this object convey?, How does it function visually?, Did the fartist meet their goals well?, What symbols are involved?, and Does it function discursively? "

Murder on the Dance Floor

Why can't I download this on iTunes?

New Classes

Trying to figure out what I want to take next semester. One possibility is a class called "Jane Austen and George Eliot," which I'm assuming is short for "Jane Austen and George Eliot Fight Club."

Update: Wuthering Heights

So, I'm about halfway through this tale of gloom, despair and unpleasant people when Catherine...kicks the bucket? Why is there still book left?

Quite frankly, I'm having trouble feeling bad for Catherine or Heathcliff, or any of them for that matter. It's like, "You are all horrible people. Why are you surprised when bad things happen to you?" The maid is pretty baller, though.

CATHERINE: I'm not a horrible person, am I Nelly?

NELLY: You most certainly are, your worship.

Penguin Great Ideas

As any self-respecting book person will say, I love Penguin's Great Ideas series. Look at them! Each cover is its own unique perfection. What's most appealing to me is that every cover has a completely different design aesthetic from the other. The style usually reflects the period/author, but reinterpreted with modern design sense. A prime example is Travels in the Land of Kubilai Khan by Marco Polo.

I really have no excuse for not reading these already (except the specter of Emily Bronte hovering over my head). I am also extremely irreverent, and would probably make fun of Thoreau in the margins. Not paying taxes: passive resistance, or philosophical douchebaggery? You decide.

Bristol Victoria Park

I spent the fall in Bath, England studying abroad. First Great Western and their fabulous trains took me all over the southern half of England, any town I could visit in a day. The closest city to Bath is Bristol, a scant 15 minutes away by train. This is a picture I took in October in Victoria Park. The Victorians built lots of parks so they could have a place to show off their parasols.

England has the most wonderfully idiosyncratic architecture, which is one of the main things that drew me there in the first place. The buildings are old, and their posture just isn't what it used to be, so they sag and slouch in the most charming ways. Most of the houses in Stratford shouldn't even be standing up.

Bristol also has sick vintage shops, including a hilarious American Vintage store with a lot of smelly army stuff.

Wuthering Heights

There comes a time in every liberal arts student's life when they realize, "Balls. I have to read Wuthering Heights to be counted as a fully functioning college grad, don't I?" Apparently that time is this weekend. I bought this copy of Wuthering Farts last summer, and it's been sitting in my room inducing guilt. I didn't mind at first, because it is a very attractive purple color, but at last push came to shove and it's now getting beat up in my tote bag. Serves you right, Bronte.

Wonder Wheel

Picture I took of the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island last summer.

new blog

Livejournal down all day. Cannot cope, off to Blogspot.