Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book (ca 1005)

You might have heard of the Pillow Book. It originally began as a memoir written out on the pages of old, empty notebooks and was written in the Heian period of Japan (794 - 1185). The Heian period is noted for being the first time in recorded history that Japan closed its ports and decided to have a little high-culture revolution. Chinese was spoken in court, but what was more important was to be a quintessential "renaissance man" -- a warrior-poet who appreciated the beauty of natural surroundings. Sei Shonagon wrote one of the only books to come out of the salon of Empress Teishi, while a rivaling salon produced an incredible number of works of lesser quality. Her writing is elegant, insightful, and expounds on natural beauty.

It's also incredibly hilarious.

Shonagon was pretty much the first blogger. In an excerpt printed in our Japanese Lit textbook (Traditional Japanse Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600, Haruo Shirane), Shonagon writes of a cat who lived in the palace, of families who push their sons into priesthood in order to obtain Buddhist blessings, and short poems of haunting beauty, even in translation.

She also writes lists. Among others, "Adorable things," "Hateful things," "Depressing things," and "Rare things" are written with an unusual ("unfeminine," at least) frankness. Elegant are wisteria blossoms, or plum blossoms covered in snow. With a display of frankness rare for a Heian period woman, she says, when "One is in a hurry to leave, but one's visitor keeps chattering away. If it is someone of no importance, one can get rid of him by saying, 'You must tell me all about it next time'; but should it be the sort of visitor whose presence commands one's best behavior, the situation is hateful indeed." She writes of a lover sneaking into one's house and how she "feels like killing the beast" when a dog starts barking, alerting the entire neighborhood.

Her honesty is refreshing and the things she writes about can still be identified with, to this day. I definitely recommend reading some of Pillow Book, especially if you can find an annotated translation explaining some of the lost cultural references.

So, ah... When summer break hit, I wasn't hanging out every day all day with Lem, and the quotes just dried up. However, I do have some from fall semester that I've been saving and just never got around to posting. Most of them are from professors.

"Whose ding-dong is that?"

"Hey, Mister Grabby Hands, wait your turn!"

"And then the sopranos -- I mean the Tenors and the Basses -- I mean the Altos -- go like, 'dooo doodoooo do doooooodoo do do doooo'... or something like that. You must forgive, English is not my first -- first language."

Ok, please don't kill me

I laughed at the sheer inappropriateness of this one.

We're watching Ace of Cakes again and there was a disabled hockey league that has sled-style skates that you sit in in pike position (a gymnastics term -- you sit with your legs straight out in front of you). I commented on how I wouldn't be able to play it because I've never in my life been capable of sitting that way. I don't know why I can't, but I've never been able to.

Then my roommate said, "I bet it's easier if you're paraplegic."

Ace of Cakes and friends of mine

Some guy on Ace of Cakes: I came in to make cakes and I'm up to my armpits in wieners.

Tim: Hey, he's been waiting for years to say that.

Steve: America's most popular threesome is two dudes and an Xbox.

Unfortunately, that's really all I've got. Something about going straight from work to home and not really doing anything all day other than cleaning out horse stalls doesn't amuse me as much as my long-lost roommate Emily. So updates will be few and far between, probably.

Excessive detail and you: a fish's last thoughts

Do you ever get caught on an image and end up going into excessive detail? I do. All the time. One of my roommates keeps getting weirded out by it, because let me tell you -- it really is almost all the time.

I'm watching some tv show in which the host has to fish up catfish in a narrow canoe, and how several people who do this to survive have died catfishing (we'll pretend it's a word).

It got me thinking -- what are a fish's last moments like? Here's what I decided:

So you're swimming along, maybe with your lady friend, thinking your fishy thoughts (whatever those are), when something that looks absolutely delicious and mouth-wateringly tantalizing suddenly plops into view.

Like this. Mmm. Soft but satisfying. Yes, these are real. My stepdad and I used to use something like these when we went fishing.

So you swim on up and are just about to devour that delicate, delicious morsel, when all of a sudden -- OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT IT'S SHARP AND IT HURTS -- you've been hooked. Grats -- now you have a sharp (usually barbed, typically made of metal) hook in your mouth. Your delicious salmon roe was merely a fiendish disguise, shamelessly bent on your death.

Now you're being pulled through the water by a string you didn't even see before. How did you not see it? How could you be so stupid? Where are you going? What's that dark, looming shadow on the surface? Why is the surface getting closer? What's on the other side? OH GOD THE OTHER SIDE ISN'T MADE OF BREATHING

Oh yeah. By the way? If you're being caught by salmon roe, underwater, that means you're not a fish typically caught by fly-fishing, so you've probably only had very limited experience with the bright, shimmering, now-taking-on-mystical-properties Surface. So yeah. Now you can't breathe, your wonderful lunch date suddenly ruined and a piece of metal sticking through your lip (if you're lucky -- you may have swallowed it, which is even less fun).

If you struggle you might free yourself! Maybe you should struggle! Get away! GET AWAY GET AWAY GETAWAYGETAWAYGETAWAYFLAILFLAILFLAIL

By now everything's going dark. You're asphyxiating with a barbed hook in your mouth. Life's just dandy, especially if they take the hook out. Now your giant weird-looking air-breathing evil captors have a choice: they can either let you die of lack of air (read: "water") on the bottom of the boat / the boards of the dock, or they can drop you in a bucket full of water and other fish.

If they do put you in a bucket, your life will get increasingly fun (after the scant compensation of a few measly, probably stale, still-cold eggs -- at least they're "Soft but Satisfying!") as you struggle to breathe. Each fish requires so much oxygen, and at a certain point, the water's surface won't be a large enough area to pass enough oxygen into the water. You will become slow and sluggish until the fisher takes you out of the bucket, at which point you may be too weak to struggle, so that you can be bludgeoned to death. Hopefully it'll only be a single sharp whack to the skull with a fish bat.

My friend prefers to fish for her own fish rather than buying from a supermarket not in support of local economy, not to save money, not for the peace or relaxation of it, but because "it's more humane."

Yeah. Seriously.

"You should mend my PANTS"

Oh, silly, silly people who don't know how to sew.

I don't remember exactly why I got so annoyed, except that it involved one of my friends sounding really condescending and condescending people piss me off a lot. I got annoyed and he said that it was because I had low self esteem.

Actually it's because you sound like an arrogant holier-than-thou prick, but ok. Self esteem. Sure. Don't let me confuse you with facts or anything. I'm sure it's that I have low self esteem and not because condescension is one of my pet peeves. I'm sure you're right, because you're always right, and because you clearly know absolutely everything there is to know about me and how my brain works.

Anyway! After that I got up and left because me being irritated and sharing a room with people whose habits hit some of my pet peeves isn't a good plan. Then, once I was all settled and lying on my bed with my poor haggard laptop, my ADHD kicked in. For those of you who don't have it, I believe Allie over at Hyperbole And A Half summarized it quite nicely in one of her old posts (which I was reading through today for lack of anything better to do). Actually, that whole blog is pretty good. You should go read it. :3

Public transit is hilarious.

Today I took the bus out to see my father so we could go to an arts festival (we both had to work on father's day). I'm on the bus going through town and these two guys get on the bus right behind me. They sound like 13-year-olds trying to be gangsta, and because one guy's voice kept breaking, that's what I assumed they were. Which made this conversation really interesting. I will try to paraphrase it in the most generic possible way.

Guy 1: talking about his ex who's now in jail, and who has his Xbox 360, which technically she bought for him. Also she owes him over $1k, and has his blue skateboard and a few other random things. A drill or something.

Guy 2: you still have her keys man?

Guy 1: making plans to check and see if the Xbox works and if it does to just put it in a bag and take it. Take a bag from ex, as he doesn't have any on him. Leave a note saying "I hope your house doesn't get broken into while you're in jail." Pretend that a neighbor stole the Xbox, as apparently everybody around her knows that she has one.

Guy 2: Dude nice plan!

[Too bad you're yelling it for the entire bus to hear. A girl gets off the bus. She has to walk past them to exit.]

Guy 1: man it was so hard not to just smack her ass as she walked by. Effort of will, man. So hard not to. Man. I just want to smack some asses. I was at this party this one time and just smacking girls' asses left and right and finally this one girl said "hey let me introduce you to my boyfriend" and her boyfriend says "hey man is there a problem?" and I say "hey man just smacking your woman's ass" and he says "good call man, I do that all the time" and asses and asses for like five or six minutes seriously.

Guy 2: hey man invite me once in a while.

And on and on. Guy 2's voice kept cracking and he was wearing the most hilarious green-and-yellow-tie-dye bucket hat, so I assumed they were pretty young... but when they got off the bus, I glanced up and they were about 28 years old. Both of them.

As soon as they were gone I cracked up.

Later, I was walking the 25 minutes from the bus stop to my father's house and this guy who looked oddly like my old neighbor. We walked on opposite sides of 4- to 5-lane traffic, paced pretty evenly, for several minutes and about a block and a half. Then he started walking on the curb, then in the bike lane, looking both ways for oncoming cars. Then he sprints madly for my side of the road and ends up about four feet behind me.

Hello, super sketch man. How are you? If you touch me I'll bash your face in with my stainless-steel water bottle. :)

He caught up and walked next to me (a few feet away -- potentially to negate any intimidation he might be exuding with his incredible manliness -- he was a nerdy computer guy, CS major apparently). He asked if he could walk with me. We talked about stuff. He asked where I was going and I told him that I was walking another 5 miles or so (more like five minutes, but whatever) and all kinds of things that aren't true.

I learned that I enjoy lying to strangers. "So, where do you live?" Uh, hi, sketch stranger, why should I tell you that? "Total lie."