It’s a good thing I woke up early

Because I’m going to need all the time I can get.

You see, I woke up, and felt like challenging myself today. The first thing that came to mind was to continue copyediting that highly theoretical MPhil thesis on a subject that I know exactly bugger all about (that would be archaeology). But no, I felt like I needed something bigger. Something more daunting. Something that would take blood, sweat, and tears (even if they’re only metaphorical).

So I decided, today I am going to attempt to have fun.

I texted Roger, God of Weather, and asked him if he could return that favour he owed me and make today’s weather glorious. He was a little reluctant, but eventually gave in.

As luck would have it, my Shakespeare tutor is psychic, and when he was organising the course, he sensed that I would need a day free of any real obligations, so he decided to cancel today’s seminar.

And there seems to be something going around, as my geek friends also divined that today was the perfect day to go watch superheroes blow shit up.

Thanks to this, my day is going to be filled with the following:

• take shower
• buy breakfast and supplies
• ingest breakfast
• slather on vast amounts of sunscreen
• go to the castle (I can’t believe I live round the corner from a bloody castle, it’s fantastic)
• sit in the sun
• read books
• ingest shandy and possibly a croissant
• go to Amsterdam
• have food with friends
• go see Watchmen on a dizzyingly big screen

No, it won’t be easy. No, it won’t be fast. But I think that if I work hard and get a little lucky, I’ll be able to pull it off. Ladies and gentlemen, I think that I might actually enjoy myself today.

Whodathunkit

I’m currently doing a course on Old English literature, and although sometimes the words make me want to poke a crochet hook up my nose and pull my brain out bit by bit, I am loving the course. It is, without a doubt my favourite course outside the actual lit section so far. (It might have ‘literature’ in the course title, but it is most definitely philology.)

Not only do I love how the Anglo-Saxons turned everything into EPIC WAR in their poetry and prose, I also enjoy the fact that Aelfred was all about culturally uplifting his people, not to mention the culture that he was so crazy about.

Christianity was a large part of that culture. I’ve been interested in it since my first year at uni, when I took a Cultural Backgrounds course. We had to read the classics and the King James Bible. I was familiar with the classics, thanks to my gymnasium high school thing. (Here in the Netherlands, that doesn’t mean that you’re good at sports–it means you’re taught Greek and/or Latin, and you’re made familiar with classical culture. For the record, I was dreadful at most sports, unless it involved doing lots of sit-ups, being really flexible, or hockey.)

I can tell you about the odd plumbing reference in Piramus and Thisbe (and how, unfortunately, Shakespeare left this out of Romeo and Juliet), but my knowledge of Christianity still feels lacking. Luckily for me, I’m friends with the awesome Matthew Baugh, a pastor who writes wonderfully pulpy fiction in his spare time. He’s helped me learn a lot about religion and spiritual matters, and has done so in a kind and understanding way. 

Now, the denizens of the Interwebs who are not fortunate enough to have Matthew as a part of their lives can read his musings on this subject in his blog God and Stuff.

It’s readable, interesting, accesible, and just plain good.

Also

Crass language, surprising thoughtfulness, and Shakespeare. ilu, cracked.com.

Needful Things

Every so often, I need to lose myself in a good story. The longer, the better. Movies are good, full series are even better, but nothing quite beats a huge brick of a novel.

So I was stoked as all get-out when I finally found a copy of Needful Things.

Steve, God of Dolphins

Written in two hours. It’s only 2k, but it’s fun. I expect I’ll have to rewrite it at least two or three times before I’m even remotely happy with it, but it’s good to have written something after weeks of bugger all.

Options

Either something funky has happened to one of my wisdom teeth, or some kind of alien disease is causing my skull to change shape and sprout random sharp bits that poke through my gums where my (possibly impacted) wisdom teeth ought to be coming through.

I’ll keep you updated.

Gezelligheid and the ‘flu

Yes, ‘flu. I have fallen victim to the bug that’s been going round. I thought I was going to manage to avoid it, but alas, I didn’t get in enough vitamins and other awesome stuff, so now I’m full of aches and pains and semi-human croaks.

I’m sojourning with the fam, and attempting to not spread the lergy while still being gezellig.

For the non-Dutch reading this, that link may not say that much at first. I mean, it’s all Dutch, with a few nice pictures. (I think that that photo of the pigs is the best depiction of gezelligheid I’ve ever seen.) But look down the side. There’s no links to versions of that article in other languages.

But if you go to the Dutch page for cats, you’ll see that there are loads of other language versions of that page. There’s even on in Anglo Saxon, which is wicked awesome.

But yeah, gezelligheid seems to be something uniquely Dutch. Well, the word does. That feeling of happiness that you get when partaking in particularly successful social interactions is not something you feel only when around people who speak Dutch. But the Dutch are the only people who have managed to capture it in a word, related to company (gezelschap in the abstract, whereas one who keeps you company is a gezel). If I had to translate the word literally, it’d turn out to be something like ‘company-y’, which fails at English.

I think the Germans came quite close with their Gemütlichkeit. But if you Google it, the first link that comes up is the Wikipedia article about gezelligheid.

Does this have an actual point? Nope, not really. I just really like gezelligheid, and I like thinking about fairly unique words.

Not the ‘flu, though. That sucks.

Zuiverloon

I’m watching the West Ham v West Brom match with my dad. There are few things better than hearing someone with an accent as English as his pronounce Dutch names.

Arrogance

I think the pretty bird I saw outside has every bit as much to do with the discussion on race as the various other issues I raised on that idiotic post did (that is to say, they are all equally irrelevant), and it was arrogant to detract from a discussion that is so sorely needed.

I appreciate that others have taken the time to point out my errors. I wish that I hadn’t said anything hurtful, as no personal lesson is worth hurting others.

Addendum to the Racefail post and an apology.

Please, if I’ve said anything offensive/clueless, and you are willing to take the time to help someone you don’t know on teh interwebz, let me know and point out what it was. I don’t want to be a Clueless White Chick, or Clueless Straight Chick, or Clueless in general.

I’m trying to become aware of the stupidity that my own privilege is resulting in. I hate the idea that my ignorance could lead to other people being offended or hurt.

Also, to clarify, the ‘mess’ that I was referring to was referring to the name-calling, the disrespect, and general flip-flopping and flailing going on. There have been a number of posts that really made me open my eyes and realise how damned ignorant I’ve been, but there have also been plenty of posts that made my mind boggle.

ETA: I realise now how incredibly me-centric my previous post was. Unfortunately, it took someone else pointing it out for me to see that. It just goes to show how bloody ignorant I am, despite my hopes that I had at least  a smidgen of insight. 

I even mentioned people making it about themselves. Big fail on my part.

It was also pointed out that I didn’t make any clear reference to RF for people who haven’t been following it. I use the link list complied by rydra_wong here.

The post that pointed out how egocentric and essentially stupid my post was may well be the most important thing I’ll ever read. I really did think I had a grip on the subject, but I made it about me, and put my foot in my mouth on a massive scale. If I’ve upset or offended anyone, I’m sorry.