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?