Random Thing

Watch this. I command you.

Thanks.

P.S. I don't know what the weird Spanish one is, so ignore that.

It is...

SNOWING!

Literary Loveliness

While discussing grace in my Intro to the Christian Faith class, we were assigned to read Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. This was most fortuitous as a ppreparationfor going to see RHS do the musical version next month (Yaaaay! Portland!) and because awesome literature makes me happy. This is awesome literature. These are some of the quotes that struck me the most. Some are simply beautiful others merely resonate with my current mindset. I'll let you determine which is which.

"He plainly perceived this truth, the basis of his life henceforth that so long as she should be alive, so long as he should have her with him, he should need nothing except for her, and fear nothing save on her account."

"Her happiness was the aim of my life. Now, God may beckon me away. Cosette, you are happy; my time is full."

"It is all over. I shall never see her more. She is a smile which has passed over me. I am going to enter into the night without even seeing her again. Oh! a minute, an instant, and then to die! It is nothing to die, but it is dreadful to die without seeing her. She would smile upon me, she would say a word to me. Would that harm anybody? No, it is over, forever. Here I am, all alone. My God! my God! I shall never see her again!"

"These two beings, who loved each other so exclusively, and with so touching a love, and who had lived so long for each other, were now suffering by each other, and through each other; without speaking of it, without harsh feeling, and smiling the while."

"And then, is it not when the fall is lowest that charity ought to be greatest?"

"He fell upon the seat, she by his side. There were no more words. The stars were beginning to shine. How was it that their lips met? How is it that the birds sing, that the snow melts, that the rose opens, that May blooms, that the dawn whitens behind the black trees on the shimmering summit of hills?"

"The smile of the woman whom we love has a brilliancy which we can see by night."

"It was all over with him. Marius loved a woman. His destiny was entering upon the unknown"

"Alas, the supreme ordeal, let us say rather, the only ordeal, is the loss of the beloved being."

"Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another."

"A Dream is a WIsh Your Heart Makes"

Does that include nightmares?

I've been having a lot of bad dreams for....several months now. Usually they're just shocking, embarrassing, or saddening, but last night's imagining was by far the most memorably frightening.

I won't go into details, but I will say these dreams are often of a disturbing nature and involve me doing awful things I would (or at least should) never do in reality and feeling totally content or even really happy doing it. The cast of characters in my dreams tends to vary pretty widely, with repeats being a rarity. This...keeps it interesting? I don't know.

Probably the worst dreams are the happy ones. Like ones where I'm with my best friend and then I wake up to discover that Best Friend isn't here. No, Best Friend is so very far away.

As far as last night's dream is concerned, I don't remember a lot of it, but the thing that stands out to me the most is the fact that Daddy went crazy. Daddy tried to kill me because I found out (by reading the back of a spoon) he was having loco serial killer (or, in light of the spoon, perhaps cereal killer?...I slay me!) thoughts against Mommy. Then I said something about Jesus that he didn't like or something...and he tried to strangle me.

First of all, Daddy, you are not a serial(/cereal) killer. I think the only reason you parental types were in this dream was because Parent's Weekend is tomorrow(!!!) so I was thinking about you near the time I went to bed. I'm pretty sure the sinister part of my dream was inspired by this creepy short story by Truman Capote called "Miriam" I had to read for my literature class. It had this scary little girl in it who I'm pretty sure just came to harass people right before they died...IT'S LIKE THE RING! AHHHH!

You might have noticed I said this was the most memorable frightening dream I've had. That's because the first fantasy in this multi-month-spanning series was also a nightmare, but I can't remember anything about it. All I recall is waking up very early that morning realizing that I'd had some sort of terrible nightmare, not remembering what it was at all, and being very frightened for over and hour. I was overcome with a grave sense of peril and foreboding.

If these are the wishes my heart makes...I need a transplant.

May I return to the beginning
The light is dimming, and the dream is too
The world and I, we are still waiting
Still hesitating
Any dream will do
- Donny Osmond, "Any Dream Will Do"

A Penetrating Experience.

1. I told my parents about it before I did it, so I'm not a rebel.

2. I did research and visited the place beforehand, so I'm not stupid.

3. I'm not going to start wearing revealing clothes to show it off, so I'm not a tramp.

4. I did it for myself and nobody else, so I'm not a slave to peer-pressure.


Oh, also:
5. It's cute, so...it's cute!

I've got you under my skin
I've got you deep in the heart of me
You're so deep in my heart, that you're really a part of me
And I've got you under my skin
- Michael Bublé, "I've Got You Under My Skin"

P.S. - Yes, it hurt.

For Good

I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn,
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them,
And we help them in return.
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true,
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you.

Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun,
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood;
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good

It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime.
So let me say before we part,
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you.
You'll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart.
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend.

Like a ship blown from its mooring
By a wind off the sea,
Like a seed dropped by a skybird
In a distant wood;
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you,
Because I knew you,
I have been changed for good.

And just to clear the air,
I ask forgiveness
For the things I've done you blame me for.
But then, I guess we know
There's blame to share,
And none of it seems to matter anymore

...

Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
I do believe I have been changed for the better.

And because I knew you
Because I knew you
Because I knew you
I have been changed for good.

Idina Menzel & Kristin Chenoweth, Wicked

I'm Sorry, Professor, My Roommate Ate My Homework.

So, I've been in college for nearly three weeks now, and here are the highlights:

I only cried once due to academic overload the first week of school. Sweet. I mean, for me, that's quite an accomplishment.

I got into Women's Choir and love it. (The dresses aren't even that ugly!)

I went around and hugged random people for an Intro to Sociology project.

I had a guy tell me I look like Kristin Bell.

I got A's (48/50 for Core and 49/50 for Intro to the Christian Faith) on my first two official college papers.

I bought the new John Mayer CD, Continuum, and adore it. There are so many amazing songs on there that totally fit me right now. Brilliant.

I joined lastfm.com, so if you want to check out what I've been listening to, pop on over.

If you include the 301 pages I had to read over the summer, I've read 1,597 pages since school started.

I will end up having read 5,267 pages (including the summer reading) by the end of this semester .

Hmm, nothing else terribly amazing going on, except that, while doing some research on doves and pigeons...

Okay, that probably could bare further explanation. In Core we had an interesting/enlightening lecture on Genesis 15 and the and God's covenant Abraham. I had some question for Dr. Beebe after the lecture about a few details, such as why Abraham didn't cut the two birds (a dove and a young pigeon) with the other animals. We had learned in class that the other animals were cut in order to "cut a covenant" as was the custom of the time in that region, but didn't talk about why the birds were left untouched. I talked to Beebe for a while and discovered that there is no definite answer he could give me, so I ventured to do some research on my own as to the role of doves and pigeons in animal sacrifice in the OT, as well as their symbolism. So yeah, if anyone is interested I can e-mail you what I found and subsequently deduced, but that is so not the point right now.

Anyway, I was researching pigeons and doves and somehow stumbled upon the Ig Nobel Awards. "The Ig Nobel Prizes are a parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early autumn — around the time the recipients of the genuine Nobel Prizes are announced — for ten achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think." Organized by the scientific humor journal Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), they are presented by genuine Nobel Laureates at a ceremony at Harvard University."

Basically, I spent (/wasted) a good hour cracking up over these awards. Here are just a few of my favorite recipients:

Mathematics, 1994:
The Southern Baptist Church of Alabama, mathematical measurers of morality, for their county-by-county estimate of how many Alabama citizens will go to Hell if they don't repent.

Medicine, 1998:
To Patient Y and to his doctors, Caroline Mills, Meirion Llewelyn, David Kelly, and Peter Holt, of Royal Gwent Hospital, in Newport, Wales, for the cautionary medical report, "A Man Who Pricked His Finger and Smelled Putrid for 5 Years."

Literature, 1999:
The British Standards Institution for its six-page specification (BS-6008) of the proper way to make a cup of tea.

Chemistry, 2000:
Donatella Marazziti, Alessandra Rossi, and Giovanni B. Cassano of the University of Pisa, and Hagop S. Akiskal of the University of California (San Diego), for their discovery that, biochemically, romantic love may be indistinguishable from having severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Astrophysics, 2001:
Dr. Jack and Rexella Van Impe of Jack Van Impe Ministries, Rochester Hills, Michigan, for their discovery that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell.

Literature, 2001:
John Richards of Boston, England, founder of The Apostrophe Protection Society, for his efforts to protect, promote, and defend the differences between plural and possessive.

Economics, 2003:
Karl Schwärzler and the nation of Liechtenstein, for making it possible to rent the entire country for corporate conventions, weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other gatherings.

Public Health, 2004:
Jillian Clarke of the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, and then Howard University, for investigating the scientific validity of the Five-Second Rule about whether it's safe to eat food that's been dropped on the floor.

Medicine, 2004:
Steven Stack of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA and James Gundlach of Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA, for their published report "The Effect of Country Music on Suicide."

The Ig Nobel pize cermony for 2006 is scarce days away, so I'll be posting the best of this year's for your enjoyment.

When you're dreaming with a broken heart
The waking up is the hardest part
You roll outta bed and down on your knees
And for the moment you can hardly breathe
Wondering...
"Dreaming With a Broken Heart"

Pain throws you heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
No, it won't all go the way, it should
But I know the heart of life is good
"The Heart of Life"

Oh it's taking so long I could be wrong, I could be ready
Oh but if I take my heart's advice
I should assume it's still unsteady
Oh I'm never really ready, I'm never really ready
I'm in repair, I'm not together but I'm getting there
I'm in repair, I'm not together but I'm getting there
"In Repair"
- John Mayer