Wherein the Blog-mistress posits a grammar question and bores her readers

Maybe you can clear something up for me. All through my brief stint in Academia, I was taught that when incorporating a quotation into a longer sentence, one is meant to put the necessary punctuation inside the quotation marks, so long as it doesn't change the essential meaning intended by the original speaker/writer. For example, try this sentence:

Roosevelt's aphorism, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," marks him as a forerunner of the New Age Movement.

You might consider that statement absurd, funny, or even annoying, but you cannot deny that the presence of the comma does nothing to adulterate the meaning of his words, though my editorializing might. Were I to insert a question mark before the end-quotes we would have a problem, and you might think FDR a big sissy-man.

Maybe that is why people are having some sort of aversion, because nowadays, I see sentences like this happening:

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself", would not have been punctuated thusly in FDR's time.

Was there a conference on this? I don't remember signing any petition... Did we vote on it? I don't see the need for it, and it just looks messy.

Because really, there are no guarantees

Which is why I feel these two belong together:

Your Moment of Zen

I don't even know what to say, this is so amazing.

We have secretly removed your memories and replaced them with a set of new and improved ones.

She landed in Bosnia under sniper fire. That's what happened, says the former First Lady, and that's why she's got better experience than her opponent.



Even if it were true, it doesn't show me her "toughness," rather it demonstrates poor decision making. Why would she bring her daughter into the line of fire? What's that little braided girl doing there? Sheryl Crow, the talentless do-gooder? I would have lied about being there at all given that musical line-up.

Copernicus Wept

From the deep and penetrating mind of an online journalist: "...In related news, it was also revealed that Daylight Saving Time actually creates no additional daylight." Well, no shit, Sherlock.

Mr. Null, your surname says it all.

A Movie I'd Like to See, v iii: There Will Be Bloods

A story of star-crossed lovers, wherein crusty oilman, Daniel Plainview, and gangsta baby mama*, played by Kelis, are caught in the blackgold typhoon of his turf war with her old man's posse. We know why she brings all the boys to the yard, and he drinks her milkshake. He drinks it up!



*Gary Coleman plays H.W.

Affleck

It's nice to see a star who has fallen so far out of the good graces of the critics and his public start to regain a foothold. I especially appreciate Brad Pitt's participation in this, and the ironic dedication.

Rach Out!

Me and my homies

Thank God we kept our noses clean (although somebuddy's got awfully hirsute sinus cavities). That's Tex, on the right.



Here I'm presenting Buddy, in my ersatz Vanna White impersonation, at our local watering hole.



This one's of me, triumphing over evil, and not in some odd, compromised sexual mischief (I don't swing that way, anyway). Actually, it's my sweet erstwhile roommate, Rachel P., on her birthday, and that naughty bug, Levi. She thought it would be fun to rent sumo suits and have a wrassling contest in Griffith Park. It was fun, especially rolling her down the hill in that big balloon she's wearing. I don't know what Levi thought of it, but he was glad to be running around and sneaking treats.



Here's Rachel's man and Tex, about to square off.



Tex and me at a friend's costumed birthday party last month. The theme was 1978. Tex wore his '07 Halloween costume, Brian Fantana. It was a good opportunity for me to wear my vintage cotton dress from that period, the one that looks like Rainbow Brite vomited up the Crayola box. I confess the last time I wore that was also on Halloween (c. 04, I believe), when I met this man. Apparently, he liked the dress.



Here's my very dear friend, JMT (you might recognize him from the tube), at the same party, with his old friend RH (and my newer one) in the white cap. They're just a couple of dumbass hicks from Georgia. JMT describes RH as, "delightfully unhinged." That describes a lot of people I know.

Hell Just Froze Over

Litigate, You Will, Jodee Warrior!

Sometimes old news is still good news, and this one is also true.

Though long ignored by most of the press, Yoda had a few things to say about the incident -

Interviewer: What do you think about Jodee's efforts to win the beer selling contest?

Yoda: Do or do not... there is no try.

Interviwer: Well, she did "win," after all, on both counts.

Yoda: Jodee's strength flows from the Force.

Interviewer: Which is why she ultimately got her Toyota?

Yoda: Always in motion is the future.

Interviewer: Jodee left her place of work following her disappointment. What is your feeling about Hooters?

Yoda: Size matters not, ... Look at me. Judge me by size, do you?

Interviwer: Do you find the Toy Yoda to be a flattering likeness?

Yoda: When 900 years you reach, look as good, you will not.

Interviewer: Any final thoughts?

Yoda: May the Farce be with you.

I am like those birds

come to rest awhile before the next leg -
dislocated, confused by the static wake
of the lover who leaves.

Seeking refuge among humans is a desperate act
at best
one more break and you wonder
if you've ever been in love at all.



I hear the utterances
a coo
a caw
the hum of something they’ll eat later.
These simple words scrawl,
finger-waves across the lake
the curls and spines on an unsteady page.
I can read,
I can form these sound.
I don't know what they mean anymore.

When they go the should-be silence
is shattered in complaint
of what is left behind
a jeer
a cavil
a cry
the shrike cleaving the black and blue calm of night
as she climbs, as she dives
What will answer?

The opposite of love is nothing.



(photo: Hiroji Kobuta, China 1979)

Chivalry

“There is no art in turning a goddess into a witch, a virgin into a whore, but the opposite operation, to give dignity to what has been scorned, to make the degraded desireable, that calls for art or for character.”

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

For the best mythic example of this I know, look at the story of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle.

This is the tits!

When the Spirit of the Lord moves you... More evidence that the profane really is sacred AND super funny.

(thanks to Dooce for posting this.

“Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called 'the love of your fate.' Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, 'This is what I need.' It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment--not discouragement--you will find the strength is there.

Any disaster that you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.”


-Joseph Campbell

Task to Be Who I Am

I'm ordered out to a big hump of stone as if I were an aristocratic corpse from the iron age.
The rest are still back in the tent sleeping
stretched out like spokes in a wheel.
In the tent the stove is boss,
The big snake that swallows a ball of fire and hisses.
It is silent out here in the spring night amongst the stones waiting for the dawn.
In the cold I start to fly like a shaman to her body, some places pale from her swimming suit
the sun shone right on us, the moss was hot
I brush along the side of warm moments
But I can't stay here long
I am whistled back through space;
I crawl among the stones
Back to here and now.
Task: to be where I am.
Even when I am in this solemn and absurd role
I am still the place where creation does a little work on itself.
Dawn comes, the sparse tree trunks take on color now
The frost-bitten forest flowers form a silent search party after something that
has disappeared in the dark
But to be where I am and to wait.
I am full of anxiety, obstinate, confused
Things not yet happened are here and now
I feel that—they're just out there—
A murmuring mass outside the barrier
They can only slip in one by one.
They want to slip in.
Why?
They do one by one.
I am the turnstile.


Tomas Tranströmer (b. 1931)

Monkey!

I'm going to go ahead and say that they are actually better at this than I am...

Season of Gimme

(...us every one!)

For Huck - Keep Fighting the Good Fight (which really means, PLAY!)

RESPECT

: (ri-'spekt; Latin) 
" From respicere -- the act of looking back,
regard, the act of giving particular attention,
consideration, esteem."
                          • Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Respect is not fear and awe; 
it denotes, in accordance with 
the root of the word (respicere), 
the ability to see a person as (they are), to be aware of (their) unique individuality. 
                  • Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving