personal_mythos

In the francophone blogosphere (I mostly read CanalBlog), I keep hearing about Marmiton.org, a site where users submit and comment recipes. It's not quite as photo-filled and flashy as some of its English-language competitors, but you're not here to learn English, right? And it's pretty good nonetheless, with features about seasonal recipes, categorized recipes, and versions in Spanish, Italian, and English (the English one is called "Let's Cook French"). Because it's all about user-submitted content, the four sites are probably rather different, but if I was studying those languages I might give them a whirl.

There are a few things to know when using French recipes - they (the French) use the metric system, and measure most dry ingredients (sugar, flour, etc.) by weight, not volume, though liquids are usually in mL and cL. The exception is for small quantities, which I'll explain below. All temperaures will be in celcius or (occasionally) refer to the settings on old French ovens.

( vocabulary after the cut )

Last night I was watching Buffy, and there's this guy who starts going on and on about how sensual languages are, and just think about the difference between "car" and "voiture" for example. He gets really into it, because this is Buffy we're talking about, and there are supernatural forces involved.

It's true that languages are sensual, in the sense that each has a feel of its own, but I don't think that feel has much to do with individual words - it's more about the pacing and the sounds of a language, rather than whether you say "butterfly", "papillon", "chou" or "mariposa". I mean, people say that everything sounds better in French, but I've never really seen it, even though one of the reasons I picked French to study in high school (over Spanish and German) was because I had heard that, and especially from my mother.

That said, while I don't see it on the level of individual words, the language can be downright fun when spoken well. The trouble is that it takes a long time to appreciate it and to be able to play with a language oneself.

Then too, speaking a language is a very tactile experience, the more so the better you get - at first, you use the sounds of your native language to approximate those of your second (or third, whatever) language, but as time goes on it gets easier to use the real sounds of the language. At this point speaking can become downright exhausting, because you're learning to use muscles you've never had to exercise that much. This is one of the reasons why it's difficult to pick up a language again after a long hiatus - you have to get back in shape! I've been known to choke on the French R from time to time myself. But when it goes well - a somewhat arbitrary state of affairs - it makes me feel smart, in control, clever, in a way that's as much about the physicality of words and body language as the slight, mundane cruelty of an expertly-wielded joke. Spoken languages bring with them their own culturally-specific body language, of course - something I'm not all that good at - and human interaction is about the play of space among other things - you can feel it when things are going really well with a friend or lover - something about the way the space between you outlines a certain energy or tension.

Can you tell that I'm a very tactile person? Someday I'll have to write an entry about that...

Push Start is a French show about video games that I discovered recently. They have all the videos on their website and on Dailymotion - a total of 35 episodes thus far. It reminds me a bit of when I used to watch X-Play on TechTV/G4TechTV/G4TV back in the day, except that you never see the hosts and it's not played as much for laughs. The previews are also mostly in the promotional vein, whereas X-Play never had any compunctions about ripping the designers a new one if they didn't like a game. In other words, the two shows are about as unalike as two shows about video games could be.

Many of the interviewees speak English and are dubbed into French - something I always found a little disconcerting (speaking out of my monolingual American childhood here) because it drives home the fact that we're not in Kansas anymore, or at any rate the expected audience isn't. Interviewees who speak French are not subtitled even when they have a noticeable accent (perhaps the producers of Push Start have a better opinion of their viewers' intelligence than G4 execs do). I understand Quebecers (at least of the urban variety) pretty well, but it takes a bit of getting used to if the only accents you know are some of the more 'standard' French ones. French video game terminology is often borrowed from English, much like French computing terminology in general, which could be a boon, although personally I didn't recognize very many of the English words in French when I first started seriously working on my listening comprehension.

As you may know from this previous entry, I think that the easiest (not to mention most fun) way to learn languages is to simply watch, listen to, and read things that you enjoy, even if you don't understand them. That is to say that in the beginning, you'll need to find things that you can enjoy with little to no understanding, and you may want to start mainly with videos, because you can get a lot out of the visuals in many cases.

I didn't come to this idea entirely on my own - I started watching French in Action on my own in order to go faster than my far-too-easy university French course on the advice of the good folks at How to learn any language, and started into internet radio (RFI) and reading novels and French-language Wikipedia, it was slow going and I resented it, because even though it was a goal I had set for myself, RFI was boring, and I was frustrated with not understanding.

Learning Japanese has been a much more positive experience, perhaps partly because, unlike French, it was something I wanted from the start, and also because I already knew a bit about Japanese pop culture and Japanese things I liked, and so when I found All Japanese All The Time, whose author promotes the idea of doing fun things in your target language all the time, I had some idea where to start. I also started doing this three months, rather than four or five years into my studies, and the result is that my progress in Japanese has been fairly rapid and seemed easy, even though I remember months of almost total noncomprehension. Said months were easier to bear because they came towards the beginning - I knew I shouldn't be able to understand, and had no false pride - and because the things I was watching were generally entertaining. I also came to like the Japanese language more than I have ever liked French.

Recently, after I found out that I wasn't going to Japan next year after all, I decided to refocus on French, because I want to study in Montreal and will need all the language ability I can muster. I am still rather ignorant about French things compared to my level of knowledge about Japan, but there's a lot more out there online than a few years ago, and I've found things I really like, which has made me feel a lot better about the language.

Anyway, the authors of All Japanese All The Time and Antimoon have explained the idea at great length, and Khatz of AJATT also gives a lot of ideas of things to watch/read/listen to if you're learning Japanese. There's also 100 Japanese Things, which lists and explains Japanese things for Japanese learners. But I have yet to find such a thing for learners of French (tell me if you've seen one!), and of course I have a lot of favorite Japanese things the above sites don't mention. So I figured I'd start my own list. ( Number one, of course, is the above-mentioned French in Action. )

First off, I graduated with honors in Feminist Studies. Whoo! I'm in consideration for all those types of honors (Magna Cum Laude, etc.) that depend on class standing, too. I got back my grades for the quarter, as well: A, A-, and B+, which is quite good, especially since I had senioritis and procrastinated rather more than I should have. I'm still looking for something for the fall, but I feel good about the one interview I had. I also need to start studying for the GRE, since I haven't taken a class that required any math skills whatsoever for a year and a half or so. I've heard that it's generally like the SAT though, so I'm not really worried.

In other news, I've started making bread. I had previously made pizza dough and sort of cinnamon-y buns (they were supposed to be pan dulce, but I fiddled with them) with pretty good results, but that's it for my previous yeasted bread experience. But for a potluck at the end of the quarter, I made vegan challah, and when my parents and grandparents came up for graduation weekend I made it again. Some people were astonished that it was vegan, and everyone who tried it liked it.

For the potluck. I wrapped a dish towel around it and stuck it in a paper bag, hugging it to my chest so it wouldn't be damaged, since I had another class beforehand. It was really hard not to just eat it!


The second one. Photo taken by my lovely mother. :)

Friday of graduation weekend I spoke at my department's 'senior celebration'. I presented a paper I had written for my senior seminar, entitled "Okinawa: health and militarization in historical context". Afterwards there was a carrot cake with marzipan slugs on top and slug trails made of jam (banana slugs are our mascot) and my advisor came to tell me and my family how well I'd done and that she thought I would make a great librarian, because of my dedication to in-depth research and my curiosity, picking different subjects for the final paper in each class. I was touched, and also surprised - I hadn't realized that most students write their papers on one or several themes rather than using them to explore new things.

That night I made the bread, and served it with a root vegetable bake and a kale-white bean dish. It was really filling, which surprised me a bit. I had the same experience with the tempeh tacos with spicy slaw I made tonight. This leads me to conclude that the ideal mix for a filling vegan or vegetarian dinner (both of these were vegan) is tons of veggies with a decent serving of protein, moderate amounts of starch, and some healthy fat. This is exciting, because one of my main problems as a vegan was that I felt hungry most of the time, perhaps due to not much veggies and too little good fat. If I can fill up this well on vegan stuff, I can reduce my dairy and egg consumption no problem (I have been doing so lately, especially since I decided I didn't want to buy milk so often after a bunch went bad).

I've been wanting to make a quiche for awhile, and I've also been salivating over the lovely first cookbook from Chocolate & Zucchini, a food blog originally in English though now with a French version, which is by a French woman... I hadn't even made any of the recipes from the site, but many of them sounded really good, and I hesitated about buying the cookbook for a long time. Well, as it turns out, my school's Science and Engineering Library has a copy, so here I am!

Anyway, I made the broccoli and apple quiche. It's tasty, in an unexpected way - sour apples (granny smith) and savory things are a really good mix. The only problems were that I used a nonstick metal pan instead of a ceramic dish, so I had to cook it a bit longer and it didn't brown as much as the photo in the book, and that my crust leaked custard (milk/cream/egg, as is typical).

As for the aforementioned cookbook ideas, I have two. The first is based on the same concept as Like Water for Chocolate, which I had to read in high school - I loved the idea (a story illustrated with recipes) and disliked the book itself. And then too, I wasn't as into cooking as I am now - I viewed it mainly as a chore and an occasional source of brownies, pies, cookies, and lemon bars, not as a potential creative outlet. Anyway, I would want to write a cookbook of that type, but more recipes, and short stories or poems featuring the dish, not a novel.

The other came from the thought that something must be done about the lack of decent Mexican and other Latin American food and U.S. regional food in many parts of the world. I've been able to find out about many French cookbooks that focus on U.S. food, some of them even regional stuff, but the question is whether or not any of them are both good and comprehensive. I found one that said it contained 300 recipes, but based on the cover I suspect it had a focus on the kind of food that passes for mainstream (as opposed to ethnic or regional). I mean, muffins, pancakes, cupcakes etc. are great and all, but what about bagels? Pan dulce? Flautas? and a zillion other things. I'd have to do more research though.

Anyway at this point a cookbook is a pie in the sky kind of idea for me - I don't think my recipe-making and modifying skills are up to it yet. I mean, I have maybe two original recipes - multigrain vegan banana muffins and guacamole soup - to my name, and a number of modifications - my (wholegrain vegan) pancake recipe, my variation on (vegan) cornbread, and my versions of cuban black beans, tomato sauce, lentil soup, etc. Fortunately, I've gotten to the point where not only can I follow a recipe and have it turn out well, but I can also sometimes rescue a dish that's gone a bit weird on me.

I think, though, that cooking is like any complex skillset - you just keep going, keep observing, read what interests you about it.

As for the language study, I've been reading and I'm on Skype and Lang-8. I've learned a lot of new words and phrases, and I've been fooling more and more French people into thinking I was one of them (maybe I should see how long I can keep it up sometime) but my grammar issues persist and sometimes I just can't get the words out right. Grrrr. This is mostly French I'm talking about here.

I've been trying to think about the politics of textbooks, and why they usually feel so remedial. This stems in part from my membership in Wikibooks (a wiki textbook site run by the same foundation that runs Wikipedia). I'm considering working on the book about feminism, which is absolutely terrible right now. There is very little content, a lot of red links (removed or never created pages), no readily visible activity, and what little content there is is very textbook remedial (possibly because some of it came from Wikipedia) and fairly U.S. and Europe-centric. Bleurgh.

I'm really not sure if anyone would use even a more complete version of the book, and I like the idea of course readers as opposed to textbooks, because a reader always has a sense of being incomplete, and because readers mean you get into materials used by theorists and whatnot right away as an undergrad. Then again, a wiki is also never complete and it's somewhat egalitarian (depending on access to and comfort with technology). A wiki textbook, then, is odd - although I suppose traditional encyclopedias reflect similar institutional viewpoints and privilege to textbooks. I feel like a feminist textbook ought to look very different from most textbooks, and a wiki might be able to do it, but by definition, of course, I couldn't do it alone, and I'm afraid I'd have to.

My other problem is that though I've been on Wikipedia for a while, I've never felt up to writing an article about feminism - the only article I wrote from scratch was the one about Drakkar Entertainment, a German company that owns several record labels and does other services for bands as well (the current version is probably quite changed from that). That article was mostly an abbreviated form of the English version of the about page on their site. My most significant other contribution was to translate most of the NASA article from English to French a couple of years ago (before that the French version was only a short article corresponding mostly to the introduction from the English one). I've always felt nervous about writing a complete article, especially on a complex and contested subject like feminism. But I suppose I should be bold.

Anyone want to pitch in?



By the by, I ran into a classmate today, and we were talking about wikipedia for some reason. When I mentioned I had an account, she seemed surprised and asked if that meant I could edit it. I said that anyone could edit most articles, even without an account. She seemed impressed and asked if I had done so. This whole incident made me wonder if I'm unusually nerdy or tech-savvy, or if she was unusually the opposite, or a little of both. Hmmm.

I believe that reading should be enjoyable. Ditto language learning. In fact, an excess of unfun reading or language learning can kill motivation to do either one. And yet teachers often advise the (very unfun) use of dictionaries and laborious reading methods that are supposed to improve comprehension.

This bugs me, and not just for the reason I gave above. There are several other problems with this approach:
-looking up words is rarely helpful unless you understand the surrounding text quite well and have a vague idea of what the word means already (from having seen it before). Otherwise, not only will the definition not help you much to understand, but you won't remember it later.
-If you do it in a bilingual dictionary, it causes you to start translating, which impairs comprehension quite noticeably.
-it slows me down a lot. I want to get to the point.
-it makes me feel like I'm in class. This is stressful and makes me think in terms of numerical progress, though language learning does not work like that.

I think that for language learning, it's best to read things you enjoy in large quantities and as fast as is comfortable or as allows for acceptable (to you) comprehension. Only use the dictionary when you've seen a word repeatedly and it seems important but you're just not sure what it means (for nouns, an image search sometimes works better). I think this is the best way to become a better reader and writer in the language of your choice (and enjoy it, coming to like the language more).

I believe that Stephen Krashen has something on his site about how counterproductive teacher-imposed "reading strategies" often are. Khatz of AJATT of course writes a lot about the importance of enjoying the journey, but he's largely pro-dictionary.

Just a note - I'm not against dictionaries on the whole. I love looking up words and phrases that have been bugging me or to find out their origins. I think the way that words travel and change their meaning over the years is fascinating. For instance, "alley oop!" is from the French "allez hop!", and "entrée" is borrowed from French, but in French it means appetizer, not main dish.


EDIT: I forgot to add that eventually it's helpful to use monolingual dictionaries, in part because it teaches you how to define words, in part because you may need to know how to use them. I've also heard of people who learn to read and write in a language by working their way through a good monolingual dictionary.

I speak of Script Frenzy, of course! It's a challenge from the NaNoWriMo folks (The Office of Letters and Light) that entails writing a hundred-page script (or several totally one hundred pages) in April.

I'm tempted. I've never written a script longer than two or three pages. I've never written a decent to good script at all. But several years ago I had an idea for a superhero-type show (the same one that evolved into high fantasy-slash-somethin-or-other that I mentioned before). And I'm crazy.

I had had this great plan to read a bunch of TV scripts as research, but I'm not going to have much opportunity to do so before April, because once the quarter ended I went to see my parents, and then I'm going to the crepes thing, and then the next day I'll be on a train to Oregon and I'll spend most of what's left of break there. It'll be great.

As it is, I managed to dig up some Power Rangers scripts and read two (terrible). I also read the script for the never-made last episode of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon (never liked the cartoon, but the script was pretty gripping) and I read part of the script for the Doctor Who episode Smith and Jones (in which Martha and the Doctor meet for the first time), which was rather good. So basically I feel unprepared, but I have an idea and Celtx on my computer, so we'll see how it goes. Just have to sign up, I suppose.

On the left, my newest acquisition. On the right, the reigning champion, Captain Amazing. Who will emerge victorious in this battle for the ages?



I don't really have any news... just felt like posting an image of my cute little $1.50 rhinoceros before I go bury myself in a pile of homework. >.<

I did manage to find pan dulce... at Longs Drugstore. O_o They had conchas, ears of corn, and gingerbread pigs (I forget the Spanish for the last two). Anyway, I bought the conchas... they're okay, but the package is full of LIES! It says "Serving size 1 pastry. Servings per container 6." but there are in fact only four. Lies. It's okay though, I realized there were four before I bought them. In fact, I didn't notice the text until later.

Also, I baked a pumpkin pie, which came out well, and tomorrow night I'll be seeing Queer Fashion show.

Oh, and I noticed a while back that you can edit your post time here on Livejournal, but by default it goes off of whatever your computer says, or something, not off of GMT or any other standardized thing. Weirdness.

Okay, so I have three pieces of news:

1) I've been writing fiction again. :D
It's a story I've had bumping around in my head for years. Somewhere on the six to ten years scale (since middle school or early/mid high school). It's all very silly and I've always known it, which is why this is my most substantial attempt to write it thus far... my previous attempt was late last year, and I got part of a page done on a road trip before the sun went down and I had to stop. But back in the day I used to fantasize about it for hours and I even sat down and drew some logos, because it started as a superhero team story and turned into high fantasy and then kinda maybe possibly back into a superhero story? I don't know... I've (mentally) laid out more of the middle ages-y part than the modern-day bit. I did think of a cover for it in class today... very old-school fantasy. Never mind that it has no title. Beyond that I'm being intentionally vague.

2) I got into H.P. Lovecraft
At some point around a week ago, I realized that while I hate horror movies (they turn me into a jibbering paranoid insomniac) I rather like prose and comic book horror... at least of the creeping evil with scary PUNCHLINE type, if you get what I'm saying. I mean the type that's ominous, then more ominous, then OH SHI-

Anyway, this lead me to check out Lovecraft, and this is exactly the kind of horror that he writes. He does it pretty well, but there are a few issues: blatant racism, well-nigh unreadable dialect, overly wordy descriptiveness, repetitive use of certain adjectives (you will get tired of 'gambrel', 'cyclopean' etc.), and predictability.

I kind of suspect Tolkien read his work, or some of it, mainly due to their shared liking of lengthy description and horrors from the deep. I have yet to find any other reference to such a connection, however, and wordiness is fairly common... honestly I thought Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was the worst I've read so far in that respect, though (I read it in the original French).

Anyway, Lovecraft was not an especially prolific writer, so I'd like to know others to check out... I liked one of Stephen King's short stories, so I'll probably start there. After that, maybe I can write something. I mean, cosmic horrors are all well and good, but as for things that really creep me out...

3) I just got an email from my college telling me how to register for commencement.
On the one hand, YEAH! I'm graduating in June! *triumphant dance*
On the other... EEK!
So yeah.

いきなりENGLISHって言う事は知り合いの人が二人や三人で日本語かあなたの他のしてる言語で話しても、あなたにはいきなり英語で話す事。私には良くおこる事よ。

ちょっと説明する。もうしてるだろうけど、フランス語話せるので、フランス語話す家ですんでる。同居人がフランス人で、彼女が知り合いのフランス人を二回こちに招待してたんだ。そのフランス人たちが二人でフランス語話しても、私に何か言おうとしたら、よく英語でしてんの。もちろんその後フランス語に戻るんだ。フランス語がよく分かるのに、同居人の友人さんが時々訳す事にもなるんだよ。わざとは思わないけど、なんか彼女らが私との違いや遠さを感じさせるように見えるの。むかつく！

で、同居人にこんな事説明しようと思ってたんだけど、今日ちゃんと私にもフランス話してくれる。気づいたかどうかは分からないんだけど、気がすんだ。いつか話さなきゃならなくてもね。

で、その「いきなりENGLISH」と言う名前好きなので、サイトにしようと思ってたんだけど、何のサイトがいいかな、そのタイトルで。

ふーん。日本語で家の事話すのをやめようか。同居人が日本語分からないんだから、ちょっと何っていうか、sneakyかも。

This is the inside of the bus I took to campus this morning (perhaps I should say yesterday morning):

If you're not from the area, you may not initially see how this bus is weird. Local bus service is mostly provided by the one system, various school buses aside. There are several models of bus that run the local routes, and another couple that run the route through the mountains to the nearest big city, about a one-hour trip. These buses are distinct in that they are higher up, in order to accommodate baggage underneath. On the inside, the seats are more separate from one another, there are overhead baggage racks, and as you can see, the walkway in the center is weirdly lower than the rest of the floor (or the rest is weirdly higher). I find that this produces a more claustrophobic feeling than the regular buses since the ceiling feels lower, but at least you don't usually have someone's backpack in your face. Anyway, apparently they didn't have a regular bus available to run the route to school or something.

As to the rest of the title, I noticed that I've been keeping late hours lately. Usually this means that I'm avoiding something, and I think I know what it is. Ah well.

Also, today I've been thinking about two creative pursuits - writing and costume-making. I have to make a costume in the next three weeks or so for my History of Clothing and Costume class, based on the theme of "fashion victims", and I want to make a costume for Friday for the upcoming drag ball - the theme being "anything but clothes". Both costumes would need to use found objects, so I thought I could just use one for both. The big question is whether or not I can get anything together in time for the ball. Certainly trying to do drag and fashion victim at once makes it a little harder, but I'll think of something (hopefully).

A little while ago I was leaning against the doorway to my room, seeing more or less the following:

My housemate asked what I was doing, and I said I was thinking, but it occurred to me that perhaps it's a bit odd to lean on your own doorway like you would on someone else's. But really, there were two reasons I was standing there, rather than sitting in my own chair or something. Firstly, I kind of wanted to talk, but it seemed like we weren't going to, so I was thinking about what to do. Secondly, and a bit more existentially, I feel weird looking at my life, and looking at my room is kind of symbolic of that.

It's not the first time I've felt weird - disconnected, disbelieving - about my own life. The first time I can remember feeling strongly that way was when I was seventeen, a senior in high school, about to go on winter break, and I realized that I might, just maybe, have a crush on a girl I knew from school. This was the first time I can remember seriously considering that I might be interested in girls. But even that wasn't the first time I felt this sort of discord. Suffice to say that I don't know why, but I feel like an observer in my own life sometimes.

I've been doing pretty well lately. But I have trouble realizing that in a few months I'll graduate from university, and I don't know what's next.

Tonight I finally saw Milk. It was good, although at first I had trouble suspending my disbelief. I think, though, that seeing movies at night, at least ones that have something intellectual going on, makes me really thoughtful. And so I was looking into my room and thinking about what I want (February's NaBloPoMo theme, by the way!).

I want a lot of things. Many of them are hard to get, and some of them I know I can't have. One of the things I want, though, is to sit up half the night talking with a close friend. I miss the days when I lived on campus, and I could drop in on certain of my friends pretty easily. Occasionally we'd get started talking and simply not stop until three or four in the morning, sometimes even five. It was a lot of fun - those were always the best conversations, ranging from silly to serious (they'd have to be to last that long).

Another thing I want is, well, a relationship. It's been almost three years, and there are several things I miss about it. One of them is simply validation - self-confidence and self-acceptance are not, unfortunately, things that you keep indefinitely once you get them - you have to keep working for them, and lately I've been having a little more trouble along those lines. I always dissociate more when that happens, but oddly this time it wasn't triggered by a mirror. I guess I'm more confident about my looks these days (that, and I realized that everybody looks weird - it's part of being human).

I dunno. Maybe I should just stop watching movies at night. I enjoy it, though.

I found this lemon in a giveaway box in front of the neighbors' house on Tuesday. I showed it to my friend and my housemate, and they refused to believe it was a lemon, but I thought it was based on the smell, color, and skin texture. Cutting it open revealed the following (ruler for scale):

I tasted a little bit. It tastes like a normal lemon. The question is why is it so big? The box claimed that it was organic. I guess even organic fruit is enormous these days.

Also, I played around with the colors of the image a bit. I like GIMP (even if it's not quite a spiffy as Photoshop). :)

I made a batch of cupcakes today, and as you can see in the photo below, they turned green during baking.

We named them, top to bottom, Blorp (or The Holy Blorp), Guinevere, and God. This lead me and a friend to invent a new religion in which God is a curiously green cupcake, Guinevere is his father, and so forth. I commented at one point that if anyone read what I was writing, they'd think we were high.

Anyway though, what I really want to know is what on earth could have possibly caused them to turn green. The batter was pinkish when I put them in the oven, and contained the following ingredients, baked about twenty-one minutes at 350°F (modified from the Golden Vanilla Cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World):
all-purpose flour
soymilk
lemon juice
blood orange juice and zest
sugar
canola oil
corn starch
baking soda
baking powder
salt
vanilla extract

It doesn't seem to have affected the flavor or texture any, as far as we could tell, and I think it doesn't look too bad with blood orange buttercream frosting (it was going to be vegan, but my margarine went bad so I used butter). It was also my first time frosting anything from a bag (I used a star tip, then a rose tip when that got clogged) and that's why it looks really messy.

Back in high school I saw a cartoon that explained the history of the United States in terms of white people being afraid of everything. Apparently it's from "Bowling for Columbine" (which I'm pretty sure I saw as well).

I remembered this because recently I've been watching a series called "Hetalia Axis Powers", a loosely historical but very silly show in which the countries are people. I just watched episode three, which is set just before/during World War II and mainly features Italy and Germany. I find Germany adorable, and it kind of bugs me... he's a Nazi at this point, yes? Or at any rate a nation of Nazis... trying to think about countries as people is hard. At any rate, so far the show is mostly from Italy's perspective, and Italy really likes Germany, but thinks France is a bully, etc.

Another example is School House Rock. At my middle school we mostly did the grammar ones ("conjunction junction, what's your function," "Mr. Morton is the subject of the sentence, and what the predicate says, he does," etc.) and the math ones, in part because we had the same teacher for math and English and she liked Schoolhouse Rock, and perhaps in part because the history ones seem really outdated. They're from the seventies and eighties, and they're very patriotic, very whitewashed, and very into the melting pot, from what little I was able to sit through.

Animaniacs takes a more snarkily humorous approach to educational programming - their educational segments are also musical, but somehow connected to a silly scenario such as a contest, and performed in a silly manner, like the anatomy of the brain segment or the state capitals one.

Education is always political - no matter how careful teachers are to keep their politics out of the classroom, and in American public schools up through high school, they're often very careful, their politics and those of the school come through in the curriculum. Not only are patriotic gestures, such as students having to recite the pledge of allegiance, important, but so are the questions of what is included and excluded, as well as the phrasing used. The American public school system, and especially the 'social studies' classes (more or less a mix of history, geography, and area studies) are oriented towards legitimizing the U.S. state (that is to say the existence and authority of the United States as a nation) and forming students into patriotic citizens.

This becomes increasingly clear as I study more international history as well as the history of native Americans and blacks - my history classes before university continually glossed over the histories of slavery, segregation, and of the native peoples of this continent, as well as U.S. colonial interventions and the continuing effects of racism, sexism, etc. Certainly these classes acknowledged the existence of at least some such atrocities, but there was no in-depth description or attempt at analysis.

English classes, too, exemplify this trend - I'm far from the first to note that most authors considered notable or literary are dead white men. Women's writings and the writings of people of color are often excluded, to the degree that there have to be specific classes to study them, and even then, 'genre' fiction is rarely the object of study. Certainly it's impossible to please everyone or to arrive at a perfectly balanced curriculum, but more variety and more choice for students would both certainly help.

I also don't believe that one always has to read things that are difficult in order to learn from reading. Certainly the learning is more obvious when the material is somewhat challenging - one picks up a good deal of new vocabulary and background information - but even easy material can teach the reader a lot about structure, pacing, genre conventions, literary devices, that sort of thing - especially useful for writers. Then, too, reading ultimately needs to be fun in order for students to start reading on their own (the best, and perhaps only, way to attain really high-level literacy). In order for reading to be as fun as possible, there need to be few constraints, so that readers can choose material that interests them, likely at a level they find either easy or moderately difficult. Level of interest is more important than level of difficulty, though - I, for one, am often willing to push through a difficult piece if it is fascinating, but may stop reading an easy thing if it is deathly dull. I feel like classes that force students to follow a prescribed set of materials are largely responsible for students who do not like to read and write, or in the case of foreign language classes, do not enjoy using the language, find it frightening or unpleasant, etc.

This got pretty long and rambly, so I'm going to cut it off here and maybe continue it in a later entry.

It's beautiful, is it not? As you can see, I bought it from the Vagina Monologues group on campus. Around the edges, the flyer reads: Whats special about your vagina - What does your vagina remind you of - what does it smell like - if your vagina got dressed what would it wear - if it could speak what would it say

Very thought provoking. When I attempted to imagine my vagina getting dressed, I could only imagine a sort of butch dyke look (although how it manages that I couldn't tell you).

Also, I was going to get into some long introspection about why I'm sometimes shy and how much it sucks, but then it occurred to me that it would be far more entertaining to post Anaïs' "Mon coeur, mon amour", (my heart, my love) which explains part of how I feel these days. Basically it's a song about finding self-absorbed couples really annoying when one is single.
( Video and English translation after the cut )

The Darkover series by Marion Zimmer Bradley is one of my favorite series of novels. I discovered it thanks to my parents, who own copies of Exile's Song and Sharra's Exile, which sparked off my love for the series, as well as The Heirs of Hammerfell, which I thought was rather terrible. I haven't read all of the books by any means, but loved Exile's Song, The Shadow Matrix, and Traitor's Sun, which form a kind of a trilogy, as well as the various bits about the Renunciates. I've also read Stormqueen, which was enjoyable, Two to Conquer, which is weird in an interesting way, Rediscovery, which I liked, and The World Wreckers, which made me rather uncomfortable at the time. I was somewhat disappointed by The Alton Gift, published posthumously. I just read the much older The Bloody Sun, which I'll discuss below. There might be others I'm forgetting.

Darkover is interesting from a feminist or a queer perspective. Many of Bradley's works contain some critique of gender roles, including Darkover. Darkover itself is a cold planet settled by humans who end up losing their advanced technology. Over the course of hundreds of years they develop psychic power and a feudal system ruled by a class containing many psychics. There are also several other intelligent races on the planet - Chieri, isolationist telepaths who sometimes interbreed with humans (usually under the influence of the local halucinogenic/aphrodisiac pollen), Trailmen, the equally shy carriers of Trailmen's fever (deadly to humans), and Kyrri, occasionally used as servants, among others.

Darkovan society is basically patriarchal, but it has local groups that contest this, as well as the occasional well-meaning offworlder once explorers from Earth reestablish contact (in Rediscovery). More unusually for a series of science fiction/fantasy novels, many of the protagonists are female. Some are gay or lesbian ('lovers of men' and 'lovers of women') or bisexual. 'Lovers of men' find an outlet in certain traditional relationships - oaths of brotherhood, the paxman/lord relationship. 'Lovers of women' find it in the Renunciates or Free Amazons, a group that renounces traditional subservient types of marriage, takes their mother's name instead of their father's surname, and passes their own name onto their children. Of course not all of them are into women, but it's basically a friendly place. Then too, the Chieri are hermaphrodites as one character finds out to his surprise and consternation. There are a lot of stories about forbidden love here.

One wonders if the conflict between the Terranan, who wish to add Darkover to their Federation and the Darkovans, who by and large wish to remain independent in order to change at their own pace and preserve their culture is not in fact an allegory about post-colonial contexts or development. Certainly the context is very different, but some aspects are similar, such as the Terranan sending numerous anthropologists, musicologists, cartographers and so forth to the planet. It's amusing to see descriptions of Darkovan reactions to these people. One of the areas where the analogy really breaks down (besides, you know, the whole history thing) is that the saturation of Darkover with Terranan and their projects would appear to be rather lower than that of many countries with development projects. Bradley offers several explanations for this - Darkover is remote, it is cold, and Federation law limits the amount of permissible interference.

Onto The Bloody Sun. This is the story of one Jeff Kerwin, Jr., a character who shows up in Exile's Song and the subsequent books. I was eager to read it, but what surprised me was that The Bloody Sun felt like a prototype for Exile's Song in some ways - both are the story of a Darkovan raised primarily offworld who has suppressed some memories of their early childhood on Darkover. They come to the planet for different reasons - Jeff to seek his heritage and return home, Margaret from Exile's Song for work, but both find the planet of their birth at times confusing, at other times familiar. Locals treat them with a mixture of friendliness, suspicion, and confusion. On the other hand, The Bloody Sun offers a fairly different view of life in the Towers - the centers of psychic activity on Darkover. In the time in which The Bloody Sun is set, the Keeper, a woman leading a Tower, who is as much symbolic as actually powerful, is required to lead a very isolated and virginal existence. By the time of Exile's Song, this has changed, but the later books do not mention the otherwise high degree of sexual activity in the Towers - polyamory is considered not only a-ok but expected! There is also a level of cameraderie even in the stodgiest of the Towers, Arilinn, that surprised me.

When I got The Bloody Sun, I also bought a book by the same author called Witchlight, because it also reminded me of Exile's Song. Perhaps I'll write about that when I finish it.

Also, I was telling one of my classmates about it, and she said she would love to have a class on feminist fiction. I agree, especially if it can include 'genre' fiction (science fiction, fantasy, mystery, etc.). I often finding myself exchanging book recommendations based on which books have interesting female characters, relatively positive portrayls of same-sex attraction, gender-bending, etc.

Last Thursday in section, as I sketched some of my classmates in order to stop being bored out of my skull, I realized that it would be a good idea to dedicate time every day to drawing in the hopes of someday not sucking. These days about all I do drawing-wise is sketch garments for my history of fashion class and sketch classmates if I get really bored. Otherwise I would aimlessly doodle and write more angry marginal notes than I already do. :)

So anyway, the idea I had was to do a drawing month inspired by NaNoWriMo - something like sketch for an hour every day. Or do a certain number of drawings in a month. Turns out that such an event already exists, but I'd rather do it sooner than November, because I'm impatient like that.

Anyway, for the particularly brave, I have the least-awful classmate sketch.
( Clicky )