Developing Genius: Or, Plans for the Present

Well, she's here.  Yesterday was Gabriella's one month birthday and she celebrated by crapping herself in the most explosive manner.  Also, she recited the first 3 lines of sonnet 141:

In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,
For they in thee a thousand errors note;
But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise.

 Most people would not have been able to understand her, but that is only because of their relative lack of brainpower.  My kid's a genius.

So what about that list?

I suppose to require her to adhere directly to the list would imply that I had the intellectual and physical capacity to plan the path of success and world domination (logically--I put the list together, so I had to have been able to think up the process by which she could become the first great American author/take over the world/become a hermit/etc).  However, this can't be the case as I have not fulfilled the list myself.  Therefore, there must be some room for improvement.

I know I just compromised my life's declaration, viz. I am smarter and better than everyone else, but she is my progeny, and with my immense genetic development, I am sure to evolve more rapidly than most mammals.  In other words, she's going to be smarter, better, and faster than me.

So what does the present hold?  She is currently singing Mussorgsky's The Nursery progression.  Perhaps her life does not hold a literary or spiritual bent.  She may have some musical talent.

Who am I kidding, My genetic pool has NO musical talent whatsoever.  But the fact that she is singing in Russian certainly cheers me up!

Vuvuzelas in Golf?

I think golf would be the perfect game to introduce the Vuvuzela--lots of men with grimaces and focused looks playing with long sticks and wrinkly balls, occasionally grunting or vocalizing deep-throatedly as others stand around staring at their postures, the length of their "drive" and their ability to put the balls in the holes--definitely makes me want to toot a phallic horn...

Also, the nature of my last two posts somewhat worries me.

Literary Joke of the Day

A Pathetic Fallacy is when a naturally lifeless object is treated as having human traits; a Phallic Patheticy is when a human object is naturally lifeless and not straight.

Satan's Child Revealed

“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.

Now if only our professors and business executives could figure this one out, the world might be a smarter place.

More Erudite Ramblings

I am thinking of changing the subtitle of my blog to match that of my friend, bjorniavelli, who is "Less Humble Than Others", with a slight change.  It would then read, "So Vastly and Supremely More Humble than You, You Just Wouldn't Believe It."

Since I am so well learned in the ways of becoming and maintaining the status of household Genus, I will enlighten you with some of my hard-earned and always humble wisdom:

To be, or to be believed to be, a Genus, you must adopt an objective viewpoint of the world...and a rather subjective viewpoint of yourself.  Take for example a young man, say in his mid-or-early-twenties, who works in a rather affluent suburb.  He often sees middle-aged women in Cadillac or Lexus SUVs in the drive-thru of his local Starbucks and thinks to himself, "Why are all these women so obnoxiously self-absorbed and stupid to be buying coffee from this company every day?  I mean, their coffee is so notoriously bad and their atmosphere is so blatantly anti-rational (I mean for crying out loud, they sell Sufjan Stevens, The Beatles, and A Charlie Brown Christmas all on the same counter!) and so unbelievably corporate, yet hypocritically "socially-concious", and faux-artsy, and--" then he interrupts his thoughts to pay for the coffee.

See, it is the innner conundrums of the Genus' mind that make him what he is.  He is not a hypocrite; a hypocrite is one who uses the same rules to mean different things in different situations.  He is a realist--he understands he can't expect everyone to live by the necessarily objective rules of life, rises above the despair of the nihilist, simultaneously denounces the Absurdist absenteeism, and becomes what can only be known by one who is also a Genus: that Other, which other than which cannot be thought not to exist (take that Anselm the blunderer!).

Plans for the Future

When one's significant other adopts the status of impregnation, one tends to reflect in ways that are not necessarily common to his nature.  In some cases this takes the form of planning for the future.  I have compiled a list of things to be accomplished by my offspring in chronological order.  Assuming I do not perish in childbirth or the assistance thereof, I will provide this list to the little growth upon its ingression.  I may return to the subject after further reflection, but as my mood stands, the chemical depository must:

1. Speak in full sentences before it can walk
2. Swim at least 2 legal strokes before it is weaned
3. Sleep 8 hours a night or learn to cry "mama", not "aaah"
   
4. Recognize the difference between a trope and a theme before it recognizes the difference between milk and juice
5. Learn to read before it learns to change the channel
6. Potty train itself by age 1
7. Know how to mix a good drink or to open a beer
8. Select an appropriate mate
9. Select an appropriate pre-school with fast-track liberal arts focus and college choices posted on the wall
10. Learn to fail in appropriate circumstances so as to undermine and disguise its inherent genius
11. Learn to cheat only when it already knows the answers, but has more important things to do in life than simple mathematics or scientific equations
12. Learn to appreciate the plight of the lunch-lady, yet despise her insolent ungratefulness
13. Stay out of petty arguments by means of erudite sarcasm cleverly disguised as "pussying out"
14. Know the appropriate moment in which to establish dominance in social situations
15. Graduate Kindergarten in the middle of the class
16. Read every book in the house before getting a new one from the Library
17. Be able to adequately explain in concise detail the central purpose of any book or be forced to read it again
18. Spend all of second grade in silence and learn the distinction between false humility and vain conceit
19. Successfully accomplish the requirements for the USA Junior National Team
20. Describe in detail the intricate relationship between Farmer and Samurai in Kurosawa's films
21. Build a little empire out of some crazy garbage called the blood of the exploited working class.
22. Skip fourth grade
23. Learn not to ask why everyone else is so slow to realize that it is indeed the rightful ruler of the world out loud
24. Spend the next twelve years in college studying and appreciating the minute pleasures of life.

By this time, the brood will be of age and wisdom enough to return to its mate and determine its path of success.  At this point it will have many options:

1. Become the first great American author
2. Write an exposition of the modern English language that reveals how inferior it is in comparison to modern Russian
3. Win 9 Gold medals at the Olympic games
4. Become a hermit
5. Birth a child
6. Take over the world
7. Destroy the world

Any final realization, or all of them, is acceptable.

Bauerlein's Irony

Maybe he was serious.  Maybe he was up late downing pots of coffee because he felt obligated to squeak out some form of intellectual commentary on the state of higher education.  Maybe he knew what he was doing and knew it was flippin' hilarious.  Whatever the case, Mark Bauerlein of the Chronicle of Higher Education made me chuckle this morning.  In an article about the apparent lack of aesthetics in the ever-increasing vocational age and college students' inability to write palatable sentences, he writes this:

With college campuses becoming ever more preprofessional and vocational, it's getting harder for humanities teachers to get freshmen and sophomores to appreciate the aesthetic side of things.  That goes for both their interpretation of texts and for their creation of texts. They read everything for the kernal of fact and value, the information, the point, not for the expression (whether beautiful or vulgar or flat or conventional . . .).  And they write sentences that have no flair, no element of balance, rhythm, metaphor, or other aesthetic feature.

(emphasis mine).  I find this last sentence utterly hilarious in its own right, but the entire article is like this--short, pointless sentences with no imagery, flair, metaphor, or balance...

The Humble and Defecatory Posture (and Unpredictably Irregular Poetry Exposure #12)

Something humble, placid even, about inert feet under stall doors.  The defecatory posture is an accepting posture, it occurs to him.  Head down, elbows on knees, the fingers laced together between the knees.  Some hunched timeless millennial type of waiting, almost religious.  Luther's shoes on the floor beneath the chamber pot, placid, possibly made of wood, Luther's 16th century shoes, awaiting epiphany.  The mute quiescent suffering of generations of salesmen in the stalls of train-station johns, heads down, fingers laced, shined shoes inert, awaiting the acid gush.  Women's slippers, centurion's dusty sandals, dock-worker's hobnailed boots, Pope's slippers.  All waiting, pointing straight ahead, slightly tapping.  Huge shaggy-browed men in skins hunched just past the firelight's circle with wadded leaves in one hand, waiting.

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

Shittard
Squitard
Crackard
     Turdous.
Thy bung
Hath flung
Some dung
      on us.
Filthard
Cackard
Stinkard:
     St. Antonie's fire seize on
           thy toane,
If thy
Dirty
Dounby
     Thou do not wipe ere
            thou be gone.

Will you have any more of it?  Yes, yes (answered Grangousier.)  Then said Gargantua,

A ROUNDLAY
In shiting yesday I did know
The sesse I to my arse did owe:
The smell was such came from that slunk,
That I was with it all bestunk:
O had but then some brave Signor
Brought her to me I waited for,
       in shiting:
I would have cleft her watergap,
And joyn'd it close to my flip-flap,
Whilest she had with her fingers guarded
My foule Nackandrow, all bemerded
     in shiting.

Gargantua and Pantagruel - Francois Rabelais

Cure for the Swine Flu!

I am going to a TMBG concert on the 10th of October (do what you will with their lyrics, I just like them), and this was on their website recently.  At this concert, they will be playing the entirety of their album "Flood".  I have never heard this album, and, though tempted, will not be purchasing it on iTunes before the show.  Why?  I like the idea of going to a concert and being interested, not singing along and bobbing my head.  Do you think Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov had his audience listen to a pre-recorded portion of his music:



(By the way, this, along with part 5, is my favorite song of ALL TIME!!!  Take the time to listen.  I don't care what you are doing, this will improve your life more.)

Do you think Phelps is Sexy?

Admit it, you've looked at the body of a swimmer at the Olympics and either said to yourself "I want to be that" or "I want that." No one can argue that swimmers have the best, most natural bodies in the world. Runners tend to be more legs than arms, weightlifters are grotesquely over-featured, baseball players and football players eventually get fat, but swimmers are the main course. So what about the last Olympics? Was everyone disappointed that the swimmers all wore big body suits that covered everything?

I noticed that all the major highlights all involved Phelps with his suit rolled down to his hips...

The World Championships are going on right now and Swimming's international governing body (FINA) has decided to (yes in the middle of the most important competition outside the Olympics!) eliminate all full body suits from international competition FOREVER. So get your TVs adjusted, the guys will be rolling out the six packs (or eight packs) again. The males will now be limited to a Jammer, or tight shorts.

Unfortunately, Fina will still allow women to wear "knees to shoulder" coverage, sorry no Bikinis, guys.

Drew's Back!!!

Drew has finally revived his blog, and there are some rumors that other former Ante-Occidents may return in force!! Here is an excerpt from the Paradoxicon. An inescapably intelligent man, Drew lends a heavy weight of honor to any conversation.

In particular, I am curious about Luther's view of the Doctrine of Justification, and how it relates to Predestination on one side, and Sacramental Grace on the other. In a word, the question is, What does "Justification by Faith Alone" mean in Lutheranism?

Comments on Location in Lear

While one can pull many quotes out of Lear to discuss and, by use of synecdoche, claim that each exemplifies the whole play, it is not as simple to do nor as defensible as in many of Shakespeare’s other plays. As in the others, the first thing to be taken into account must be the statement; second the speaker; and finally the context (an inversion of this order might be suggested, but it would not be as simple to explain, nor would it make sense until the conclusion).

However, in Lear, the latter consideration must be almost the greatest focus. For the complex situations in which the characters find themselves often lends to a confusion of context. For example, any of the statements of the Fool could be taken as such and regarded as reversals of tradition merely because of his role as the fool. However, when the situation has already been reversed (as when Lear bears “thine ass upon thy back” or makes “thy daughters thy mothers”), the role of the fool is not only to point out the situation at hand, but to create a reversal of the inverted situation.

In other words, when the fool speaks in the context of Lear’s madness, he is not merely speaking the truth in riddles, but speaking it from the midst of a riddle. Thus the role of place, context, and plot act in this play as figures of greater import than in Macbeth or Othello. In fact, location itself must be the key determinate in interpreting the statements of any character in this play.

For example, the short scene V.ii takes place in a “field between the two camps.” The exchange between Gloucester and Edgar here becomes not only representative of the “ill thoughts” (V.ii.9) in the play, but also the lack of established relationship; Edgar says, “Give me thy hand”, but Gloucester says that “a man may rot even here.” Thus, the location takes an integral role in showing the lack of safety in conventionally accepted places of truth.

By the way, my favorite Shakespeare quote of all time is in this play. I just love the last line of Edmund's soliloquy, read loudly and viciously:

Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!