A Girl With a Sword

tea and speech act theory

I'm taking Philosophy of Language this semester. It's promising. I'm reading Austin. He writes in a way that makes me feel like we are sitting in arm chairs sharing a pot of tea. If he were here it would be true!

"And is it complicated? Well, it is complicated a bit; but life and truth and things do tend to be complicated. It's not things, it's philosophers that are simple. You will have heard it said, I expect, that oversimplification is the occupational disease of philosophers, and in a way one might agree with that. But for a sneaking suspicion that it's their occupation" --J. L. Austin, "Performative Utterances"

I'm reading Sayer's Strong Poison right now and the style of writing is very similar. Cozy.

Harry Potter/Myers Briggs

At last, an internet quiz that integrates two of my favorite things--Harry Potter and the Myers Briggs test. I tested ENTJ again, of course. I always knew I felt a kinship with Minerva McGonagall. I wonder what Dumbledore is.

Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

Voldemort is INTP, that one seems a little strange to me. I can't imagine any of my INTP friends leading any sort of uprising . . . maybe having pet snakes, though, or drinking unicorn blood.

Remus Lupin is INFP, that makes sense.

P.S. See all results here. It's easy, you don't have to take the test 16+ times like I just did.

P.P.S. Snape is INTJ, rock on.

the toenails, on the other hand, never grow at all

So apparently not fingernails, nor toenails, nor beard grows after death. It just appears that way because the skin is shrinking. I decided to look this up because I had a confused late night conversation about this in which I was wondering if the fingernails grow after death, but the body decomposes, then how long is it before the still growing fingernails decompose and how long do they actually get. My friend said the more interesting idea was what is it about the process of fingernail growth that actually allows it to continue after death. Well now both (fascinating) questions are moot and pointless. Thanks, Snopes.com, thanks a lot for ruining my dreams.

a running start

Some bar/karaoke machine/band down the street is playing "I Will Survive." I'm back in Columbia where my apartment is serenaded at all hours of the night. School starts on Thursday, and even though I'm going to a class that day I'm not sure if it's a class I'll stick with because this is going to be a busy semester for me. Gotta write a thesis, and apply for PhD programs, and oh yeah, regular classes, and work. Man. I'm tired already. Of course, that might be partly because I was in Chattanooga this weekend and when I'm there I just don't sleep.

It was a good weekend, Waffle House trips, going to McKay, crying over the loss of Greyfriar's soul (but not much because I've never really been a fan) (it was just sold to a big restaurant company, can't remember the name . . .). We went to see Stardust (I saw it twice last week, pretty good, reminiscent of Willow, but it doesn't really need comparisons, I mean, Robert DeNiro is a sky pirate and Clare Danes is a star!). Afterwards we were all standing around outside the Bijou and some drunken frat kids went by. I guess one of them had just done a cartwheel in the street. His friend was saying "Do another one, do it one handed, right here in front of the hippies." Yeah, we have achieved hippie status. I think to frat kids, though, that just means we look kind of dirty and scruffy.

I got to go with Natalie on her photo shoot for the Pulse. She was shooting some local artists and it was fun to just blend into the background while she discussed art with them in her melding of art and philosophy and life kind of way. She also wrote some stuff for the Pulse on them, which is way exciting.

I love that everyone's kind of settling into real Chattanooga life, Covenant is fading into the background, and it's a nice background, and it's nice to keep in touch with the place. I was up there on Friday for lunch with Natalie and Aaron in the grounds shed and all the little freshman were moving in. The new dorm is . . . well, built. It looks kind of boring, though, I hope they're going to do something with the outside. I wonder if I would know about that if I read those "BUILD" project things they keep mailing me? But Covenant aside, I love everyone living in St. Elmo these days (I mean that everyone is living in St. Elmo. How can I love everyone in St. Elmo, I don't even know everyone in St. Elmo), makes it easy to walk all over, like Blockbuster and Bi-Lo and Mojo and Mr. T's. It's way different from my college days when I could only get to those places by begging a ride from some friend-of-a-friend with a car.

But now I'm back in Columbia, stopped by Augusta last night, stayed with Hope. We watched Tristram Shandy, which was amazing. It's a movie about a movie. The idea is, Tristram Shandy is an unfilmable book, and this is a movie about people trying to film it. It's self-aware to an embarrassing extent, with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon actually playing themselves, or characters meant to represent them. Some parts are actually the film within the film, also very self-awarely narrated by Tristram Shandy as seen here:

Tristram Shandy: That is a child actor, pretending to be me. I'll be able to play myself later. I think I could probably get away with being eighteen, nineteen. Until then, I'll be played by a series of child actors. This was the best of a bad bunch.

You fans of The (British) Office and Slings and Arrows need to get on this.

rocking the library

Went to see Harry and the Potters tonight.

Harry and the Potters are actually both Harry Potter, actually tonight they said all of us were one big Harry Potter, but as for the band one of them is Harry in his fourth year (keyboard) and one is Harry in his seventh year (guitar). They rocked pretty hard. Oh, but first was Draco and the Malfoys. Draco explained that he was sad his dad was in prison, but when he was around it was hard for Draco because Mr. Malfoy would only let him listen to "Voldemort-approved" music, like Creed and Toby Keith, but now that he's in prison Draco is allowed to listen to lots of his Mom's old Muggle music, she loves Styx. He loves Guns N' Roses.

Harry and the Potters were crazy, I mean, they were serious about rocking the library. They started with Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock and then went through the songs about Harry's first and second years, then they sang songs about Cho and Ginny and Cornelius Fudge and Dolores Umbridge. (okay, this post got really long, you can't stop the rock, but you can hide it below the jump)

I don't know how, but the song about Ginny turned into this long story about how the Harrys (cause there's two of them) went up to Dumbledore's office and he said "there's something your parents left for you" and then he told them how Lily Evans had been in the school band and she'd been really good and he gave Harry fourth year her saxophone and then Harry seventh year was bummed because he'd had the saxophone, three years ago, but he didn't have it now and then Dumbledore said, no, it's alright, because actually when your father was at Hogwarts, aside from being a really good Quidditch player, he was also in a band, a punk band called The Marauders, who would play in the Room of Requirement, and he gave Harry year seven his guitar.

But it was confusing because they also told an alternate version of how it all started. Harry year four was studying and thinking and then Harry year seven burst into his room and Harry year four was understandably perturbed because he knew about time travel from his third year and he thought seeing his future self might lead to all kinds of problems and rifts in the space-time continuum and the delorian might not make it back to 1985! and Harry year seven said, no it's alright, I'm here and now we need to form a rock band! and so they hurried down to the Room of Requirement, because they required some musical instruments, and the room provided them with drums and keyboards and guitars and also with harpsichords and sitars, because it's very generous. So they started playing in the Hogwarts Underground Studio and they were a big hit, except some of the faculty didn't like it much so Dumbledore, being understanding, told them about this place in Hogsmead where his old metal band used to play and he hooked them up so they play there now.

But the best part of the concert, or a best part, was when they were like "well see, there's this movie that we like, a Muggle movie, called Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and we really identify with this movie because it's also about a band and this band has a prophecy about them too and they're going to save the world with rock 'n' roll . . ." They were definitely appealing to their twenties crowd, which was awesome, because I got all the jokes, but the high schoolers around me seemed kind of confused, which might have been part of why it was so funny.

Some of their songs were fun, but really what made the show was that they were totally into it and totally talking non-stop about their times at Hogwarts and their friends and "my literary foil" Malfoy, and how depressed they were the summer after their fourth year when none of their (two) friends would write to them. And it was great it was in a library too, because you know how I like partying in the library. And I realized that it's appropriate for Harry Potter, not just because they're books, but because, when you think about it, how do they go about solving most of the problems they have--research. Bam. I love research, and maybe I don't love libraries as much as I used to, but I think we can all get behind the idea of bringing books into the wilderness with you when you're on the run from the law because you might just forget something you were supposed to learn in history class, and where would you be then, without your research?

So yeah, good times, and check out their shows page because it's like reading a whole nother awesome chapter of Harry Pottery goodness, and I didn't really feel like going but I sure am glad I did.

The Darjeeling Limited

It's coming out on the 29th of September?! Oh my.

funnel cake and rodeo clowns (or, proof that I am a good american)

Will and I drove down a gravel road through the corn fields on our way to the county fair last night.

The county fair was delightful, we met some friends at the livestock pavilion and saw some prizewinning pigs and poultry before we headed over to the other tent where we got to feed the baby bison. Then we ate cotton candy and funnel cake and went on the Tilt-a-Whirl. Boy did we feel sick, but Will still rode the mechanical bull:

and fell off, fairly quickly.  Then we went on over to the rodeo just in time for some barrel racing and bull riding, rodeo clowns! The best part, though, was the wild cow milking. That was when they had some beef cows that had never been milked and these teams of three people each had to get hold of the cows long enough to milk them and then pour the milk into the judges' bucket. Hijinks ensued.

(isn't this totally Great Gatsby . . . if only there was a ferris wheel)

finally finished the book

from the Chicago Tribune review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

Does the Potter phenomenon reveal a desire for escapism, a yearning to turn away from dire complexity to wallow in a make-believe world of wizards and magic spells – or, conversely, do the books’ larger themes of good and evil, darkness and light, battling for supremacy, actually represent a brave engagement with this roiling, strife-strafed world?

Are there more significant issues upon which to focus than a mere book? Yes, there are. Will a single book affect the destiny of nations or the progress of civilization? No, it won’t.

Being back here in Nebraska, where I've finished six of the seven Harry Potter books, and finishing the last book really makes me realize how long I've been reading these and how much of my life and my perspective on the world they've influenced in some way. From starting out as my dream fantasy series (seriously, boarding school meets magical world, who could ask for more?) they've really gone on to give good perspective to difficult events in and out of Harry Potter's world. I don't want to give them too much credit, but I don't want to underestimate the power of a good book to give us perspective on the "real" world. I think Harry Potter has been as real an event in the world as many things that have happened in the stretch of its release, and unlike many things it has been delightfully positive.