Dinosaurs

Does anyone else find it amazing that dinosaur fossils are being uncovered to this day, that new dinosaur species are being discovered and outrageously named and studied, to this day? How can anyone believe in the Creation theory while knowing that these eons-old, gargantuan, sci-fi-ish creatures actually existed? Or is there a way to make the existence of dinosaurs compatible with Creationism? On "Friends", Ross is given a lot of crap for being a nerdy, boring paleontologist, but I think it would be a really cool job.

Obama and a dash of Dubya

Here's a brief, interesting article on Obama. I don't agree or disagree just yet, but I think it's time for me to stop making a god/savior-figure out of the poor guy and actually open up my mind to his faults as well as his strengths.

"You know, I, when I speak, like right now, for example, I'm speaking to the American people, of course, and I want them to know that I know how tough it is."
-- George W. Bush

Both are from Slate, which I never read until now, thanks to the influence of Eric and Jess. Maybe I'll vote for it next year.

Jack Kerouac On Madness

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

Reading Lolita Made Me Crazy

Does a book have to be serious in order for it to be taken seriously? I'm almost through with "Reading Lolita in Tehran", which I heard was an amazing memoir- and it is, but it is so ultra heavy and serious that now, all I want to do is curl up under my covers with a good comic book. I miss laughing with my books. It's ironic because part of the purpose of "Reading Lolita" is to convey the author's love of literature; it's about her desire to impart this love upon the reader. Instead, her book created in me this intense, semi-irrational aversion to the very thing she wanted me to love.

I'm reminded suddenly of the story I heard in psych class of a perfectly healthy man who pretended to be crazy in order to escape prison. When he was released and sent home to the care of his wife, the prison received a letter from his wife later thanking the guards for taking such good care of her crazy husband; that he was now safely in the care of a mental house. Turns out, after weeks/months of pretending to be crazy, he really did go insane.

In the same way, Nafisi took me, a perfectly healthy individual who loved to read novels, and through her desire to cure me (read: impart her love of literature on me), instead instilled in me a fear of "good literature". It's no surprise that I am often found these days sitting in the back of the car reading "Mutts" and laughing hysterically, or even sitting at a Barnes reading Godel Escher and Bach, which although it is no light read (literally), at least does not engage my emotions too much with depressing stories about the drudgery of living in an oppressed land.

Speaking of light reads, this morning I opened up a window to the Times, and started gasping and nearly hyperventilating (ok, exaggeration, but whatever).

"What?! What is it Angie?!, what's wrong?" asked Sarah and umma (mom).

"Guess what? The title of the 7th Harry Potter- it's been announced! EEE!!"

"OHMYGODWHATISIT?" cried Sarah.

"Gee, I thought it was something important," grumbled umma.

So exciting. Harry Potter gets serious too, but unlike "Reading Lolita", it's also funny and contains magic, fantasy, imagination, and thus bears little semblance to reality (although one can definitely draw some parallels if one really has the hankering to do so). In short, my kind of book.

Time & Space

Time:

Pun with non-native English speakers: Yesterday, my family and I decided to update the family portrait that's been hanging on our walls for the past 11 years. We had more than 2 hours to kill before our appointment (because we're not the kind of family that makes appointments before going into the studio...and also, the updating of the family portrait was kind of a spur-of-the-moment idea), and so my cool dad decided that it was indecent for girls that graduated from Penn to go around without watches (yeah, now you see where I inherited my amazingly rational brain). We spent such a long while browsing the Sears watches that I wondered if we'd missed our appointment, but Cool Dad assured me, "don't worry, we have plenty of time."

"Ho, ho, get it? We have lots of time?" I said, gesturing to the gazillion watches that surrounded us at the mo', and winking a couple times in case they didn't get it. Well, maybe I didn't wink enough times, because Cool Dad, after releasing a couple plosive 'ha's', said, "but you do know that shi-geh ('watch') is different from shi-gan ('time'), right?

I knew I should have winked a 3rd time. See, in the Theory of Joke-Telling, the winking, among other functions, serves to sway the audience from their inherent tendency to be so literal-minded, allowing individual words to cluster into groups of words that are similar enough to be deemed identical (we say the words are isomorphic) within the particular joke-world.

Thus, my winking should have dispelled the notion, for the moment, that "watch" and "time" were two distinct words. Unfortunately, I forgot the often-ignored corollary, that when the audience consists of either non-native English speakers or members of the Chung family- double whammy- than the jokester ought to consider throwing in a couple extra winks for good measure.

Space:

I discovered the true relative position of the sun to the Earth way back in the first grade- which in itself was kind of an embarrassing moment. See, we were doing a poetry unit, and Mrs. Bornander had each of us stand up in front of the whole class and read our poem aloud. I guess in my lame first-grade poem, I was describing the various objects found on planet Earth, like sky, grass, flowers (and rainbows and butterflies yay), and when I reached the part about the stars, moon, and sun, my classmates started snickering for some reason unbeknownst to First Grade Me. I stood there clutching the piece of paper with my poem written on it in one hand, and staring up at Mrs. B. as she tried to explain very nicely that the sun actually lived outside of the Earth. How traumatizing. No wonder I hate class presentations. I think that is the first time I ever considered that anything existed outside of our humble planet, past the blue sky.

When Two Jobs Meet

Here is a sentence I had to annotate for my linguistics job:

"The Penn bookstore charged John $100 for a mechanical pencil."

Heh. I love real-life examples.

WPSM

I now carry around a screwdriver in my purse, so that the West Philly Screwdriver Mugger (WPSM) and I can have a proper duel for my wallet. I imagine the scene to play out like this:

WPSM: Gimme your wallet (wields an intimidating-looking screwdriver in his hand)!

Me: Wh-wha? Oh hey, you must be the Screwdriver Mugger! Hold on, lemme just look in my purse here...(I rummage through my purse much like the way Mary Poppins rummages through her carpetbag, muttering to myself)...Ah ha! I've got my own screwdriver, what now Screwdriver Man?!

WPSM: Gimme your wallet, or I'll poke your eyes out!

Me: Oh-ho-ho-kay, fine, just take it. And keep the screwdriver, too. (By now, I'm too chicken to call him a "filthy animal" like in Home Alone.)

Damn! Instead of making the world safer, I've managed to arm the Screwdriver Mugger with a second weapon! Woman!

Good thing this isn't real.

Most people just laugh and say "Silly Angie" when I tell them about this new habit, but when I mentioned it to the Penn Shuttle driver last night/this morning, he said, "Instead of a screwdriver, you should carry around a screw. You know, he's probably just a harmless, guy who wants to unscrew a screw, and here everyone is thinking he wants to attack them." What can I do but laugh, because that's just the funniest goddamn response I've gotten yet. And so I laughed, saying, "Oh, wow, yeah, he probably just wants a screw!" And then I stopped laughing because that's not so funny. Eep! I hate violence.

Rhyme Time

Inspired by Vinod's cousin, who fell asleep in the tub yesterday, followed by a discussion of disgusting bathtubs, I present a poem of neither rhythm nor rhyme, but plenty of alliteration:

Orange gunk gathers
Cracks 'n' crinkles caulk
Along yellow, aged edges
Where sprawling limbs lie
The slumbering sot

(A drunken snore here would be appropriate, but not entirely necessary)