Archive for January, 2009

So today we’ll be treading on dangerous territory.  We won’t call it “the darkest wilds” or anything 1920’s pulp fiction-ish like that.  We’ll label it accurately.

We’ll call it “how Aylad thinks.”

I have trouble… lots of trouble… making New Year’s Resolutions.  It’s not that I’m perfect (well, maybe, but I’m not the type of perfect I want to be).  It’s not that there aren’t lots of things about myself that I want to improve.  It’s not even that none of the things I want to change are achievable — most of them are.  Well, a few, anyway.

The problem is that around the last week or so of December, when someone asks me what resolutions I’m making for the new year, my mind goes completely blank.

It’s probably for the same reason that I blank out when someone tells me to “be creative.”

When a thought finally does filter into the white noise that is my suddenly-empty skull, the thought is usually something like:

“I uh I well I um I can’t do this on demand!!!”  With three exclamation points and everything.

Of course, it’s rude to tell someone that, so I usually stutter out something bland, generic, and meaningless.  Like about a month ago when my wife asked me, my response was (eventually) “I resolve to make good life choices.”

I know.  Total cop-out, right?  She knew it, too, but she didn’t call me out on it.

Then, a few weeks into January, I’ll get an idea for a goal I want to accomplish.  As I’m running it through a mental checklist to see if it’s doable (something along the lines of, “does it cost money?  does it hurt?  does it involve effort?  will my peers think I’ve finally gone totally wonky?”), it suddenly occurs to me:

This could be a resolution.

This happened three days ago.  Twice, in five minutes.  So for the first time in a loooong time, I have not one but two genuine end-of-year-goals-we’ll-call-resolutions that I’m going to tackle.

The first one is that I will read (thoughtfully) all of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (although I’m taking a hiatus from my weekly Shakespeare Saturday posts, as my willpower is waning in that regard) and two, count ‘em, two of his plays.

The other one is that by year’s end, I will have read (not counting The Sonnets but probably counting the plays) ten thousand (yes, I said 10,000) pages of printed and bound text.  In other words, stuff in books, not magazines, newspapers, or electronic documents of any kind.

Yeah, 10K.  I think it’s doable.  It’s been years since I’ve even approached that kind of literary intake.  I believe in myself, though.  I can stay away from the video games and DVDs and get this done.  I’ll even post page counts here on Shreds of Truth (although I’ll probably only update the count after finishing each book… for simplicity’s sake).

I’m already in the neighborhood of 850 pages.

Care to join the challenge or to embark upon a similar challenge of your own?  Feel free to post a comment about it and to keep me informed of your progress.

YES!

Whether by nature or by nurture, none can say, but I grew up with a certain “can-do” attitude toward improvising.  Duct tape was and is my closest friend (other than my wife, of course).  Colored duct tape is the greatest thing since WD-40.

This made life as a bachelor… shall we say… “interesting.”

My completely imaginary attorney advises me to say something like “don’t try this at home.”  The realist in me leans more toward “it’s your own dang fault if things screw up, so don’t try it if you’re just gonna blame me later.”

Windows for Dummies

The front door of my old apartment, cursed be its walls, had a nice big window that was completely transparent.  No frosting, tinting, mirroring, or other modern inventions of the 18th century offered any privacy whatsoever.

Walmart bags, on the other hand, are translucent but not transparent at all.  Out came the scissors and the tape and with only an hour or two of painstaking work, I had frosted windows… the bachelor-pad way.

I can’t sew (slightly untrue, actually) and couldn’t afford curtains, but a shower rod and old linens served to improve my sense of privacy in the other windows.

Don’t ask me about the moth holes.  Don’t.  It’s embarrassing.

My Shelves Runneth Over

Weburbanist.com has featured bookshelves made from books.  “This is pretty awesome,” my wife says. I’m not impressed.  She should see the end tables and ottomans I’ve made by stacking up old copies of Reader’s Digest.

When my bookshelves overflowed, I ended up expanding them with empty Velveeta cheese boxes and worthless trading cards.

My ink-cartridge bookends, however, were less than successful.  Those bloomin’ things leak.

Aylad the Iron Chef

We were given an incredibly expensive electric mixer for a wedding gift.  Actually owning a mixer feels strange to me, since duct-taping a couple of plastic forks to a drill bit always worked well enough for me.

While other people my age were learning from Martha Stewart how to turn a DIY herb garden into a seven-course meal, I was learning (via Johnny Depp in Benny and Joon) how to make grilled cheese sandwiches on an ironing board.

With an iron.

Now we have a nifty little panini press (apparently “panini” is Italian for “ironed bread”) that by comparison makes my ironing board look like, well, like an old, crusty, cheese-flavored ironing board.

Of course, the panini press’s duties have now expanded to making quesadillas (Spanish for “ironed flatbread”) and smoothing the occasional wrinkled necktie.  I should have bought one of those years ago.

He: Why do you own seven colors of duct tape?
Me: Why wouldn’t I own seven colors of duct tape?

(Photo credit and license)

So for this week’s biographical tidbit… Shakespeare’s life and lifestyle are so blurred by time that now, four centuries later, very few details about him are without controversy.  Some Shakespeare “scholars,” both genuine and self-acclaimed, seem to delight in questioning common beliefs about the Bard. 

I must confess, I am no exception.  Although I don’t call myself a Shakespeare scholar, I still enjoy finding interpretations of his sonnets that don’t completely mesh with the mainstream.

Even the very idea that he wrote the plays attributed to him is sometimes questioned.

To quote from the Wikipedia article on the “Shakespeare authorship question“:

The Shakespeare authorship question is the ongoing debate, first recorded in the early 18th century, about whether the works attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon were actually written by another writer, or a group of writers.  Among the numerous alternative candidates that have been proposed, major claimants have included Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley (6th Earl of Derby).  The most popular [alternate-author] theory of the 20th century was that Shakespeare’s works were written by Edward de Vere (17th Earl of Oxford).

Personally, I think the notion of an “alternate author” is ridiculous.  Common justifications given for these theories range from “he couldn’t have been smart enough to write those plays” to “there’s not enough evidence that he actually wrote them.”  Considering how few records we have from four hundred years ago — especially about Shakespeare’s intelligence and education — both of these arguments (and most others) seem pretty shaky… or so it seems to me.

Sonnet 23

As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put beside his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love’s rite,
And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,
O’ercharg’d with burthen of mine own love’s might.
O! let my looks be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more express’d.
      O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:
      To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.

What I get out of it

An unperfect actor?

How ironic it seems to us, in the twenty-first century, to think that Shakespeare was sometimes at a loss for words.  However, this is exactly the message he tries to communicate in Sonnet 23:  sometimes, even the great bard is silenced by intensity of emotion.

Like “an unperfect actor on the stage,” whose stage fright prevents him from slipping into his role… or like a “fierce thing” whose “too much rage” proves his undoing… Shakespeare’s poetic persona finds that his overflowing love makes it hard to express his affection with the “perfect ceremony” that love deserves.

His “love’s strength” makes Shakespeare’s composure “decay” – he is “o’ercharg’d” or overwhelmed with the heavy “burthen” of communicating how strongly he feels.

In desperation, Shakespeare pleads that his lover let his “looks,” or facial expression and body language, “be then the eloquence” that he cannot put into words.  His body language and “speaking breast,” which I take to mean his pounding heart, must “plead for love” instead of “that tongue” that he usually uses to express his feelings.

The closing couplet sums up his plea nicely:  “learn to read” the body language that “silent love” has written into his expression and pose; “to hear with eyes” is an appropriate skill for a lover’s “fine wit.”

Is it relevant?

I would say so.  In fact, this might be the first sonnet I’ve discussed that genuinely struck me as being rather sweet.  Sonnets like “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” is so often quoted, it has become more of a cliché than a romantic expression.  Many of Shakespeare’s other poems, such as Sonnet 22, contain a hint of warning cynicism within their lines.

The sonnet above, on the other hand, expresses a sweetly innocent love that we can all recall… the moment of being left speechless, hearts pounding, staring into the face of our adoration and having absolutely nothing coherent to say.  I felt this way many times as my wife and I began dating.

You know what?  I often still do.

[T]hou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. — Song of Solomon 4:9

(Coat of arms credit and license)

Training is key.

There was a fight in my hall today.  It’s the first genuine fight I’ve witnessed since becoming a teacher; most of them tend to happen elsewhere on campus.When I was a student, I was completely nonaggressive.  I never got in a fight; in fact, I never provoked anyone to the point where he tried to start one.  I also never played any sport or took part in any other physical extracurricular activity.  I can count on one hand the number of times I play-wrestled with my friends.

As a result, the prospect of having to break up a student fight invariably leaves me shaking with tension.  Heroically charging in and separating two beefy farm boys who are trying to kill each other doesn’t exactly fit with my personality.

On the other hand, I am more or less obligated to do so.  If I stand by and allow Billy Bob and Jimbo Joe to crack each other’s bones, I could be considered neglectful of my duty to maintain a safe learning environment.

All of this flashed through my mind before I reluctantly charged… er, stumbled… heroically forward.

The blur zipping past me, fortunately, was the football coach from across the hall.

I could say that Billy Bob went tumbling head over heels in one direction as Jimbo Joe slid chin-first across the floor in the other.  I could, but that would be a more obvious exaggeration than I generally like in my writing.

Suffice it to say that all I had to do was escort Billy Bob, now looking decidedly more like a B.B., to the office.

And yet… even so, as I returned to my classroom, restored order, and began writing vocabulary terms on the board, my hand was shaking.

Are you ready for some down and dirty deep-fried fisticuffs? I know I am! — Alton Brown

Windmill

Big admission coming:  I still play with Lego bricks.

That is, er, let me edit that a bit.  I “model” with Lego bricks.  That’s what I do.

By that I mean that once the epic castle with the small blacksmith shop and mysterious wizard’s tower has been constructed, I don’t line up the knight and soldier mini-figures and launch an assault on the battlements.

My wife takes care of that.  I just build.  Mostly.

A basic set of red, blue, and yellow bricks with a single minifig is probably the earliest birthday present I remember getting from my parents.  I played with it every day.  A couple of years later, I got a helicopter on a specially-designed flatbed truck; a year or two after that my parents and my aunt gave me two copies of the same Robin Hood-style set.

I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

From that point, 90% of the sets I bought or received were either medieval- or pirate-themed.  That includes the dozens of Harry Potter sets I bought on clearance several years ago.

I bought big castles.  I bought little guard shacks.  I bought inns and blacksmith shops.

I built massive fortifications, tiny villages, taverns and bridges and mills and hideouts.  I built an Elven library and a fortified windmill.  I built giant trees with battlements on the branches.  I built pirate bases and colonial trading posts.

I discovered Lego websites on the Internet:  Brickshelf, Bricklink, and yes, Lego.com.

I built a Lego website… one which, unfortunately, my students eventually discovered and continue to ask me about, even though I’ve taken it down…

Juliet

…but in a few days, as my students finish reading Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” I will review the story by showing them slides of Lego minifigs acting out the plot in a Lego catacombs.  (The Lego “Amontillado” isn’t my work – it’s better than what I could do.)

Someday, my wife and I will finish building our Lego Romeo and Juliet project, and my (already shaky) reputation as a mature, adult professional will be forever shattered.

I can’t wait.

If you don’t like LEGO, you don’t like yourself. — attributed to Jonathan P. Kennaugh

Shakespeare, sorta

I’m kind of drawing a blank on any interesting biographical bits to share about the Bard today.  There are lots of interesting factoids about him; I’m just not really in the “researching” state of mind at the moment, and nothing comes immediately to mind.

The Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare’s plays were famously performed, burned down as the result of a cannon misfire.  There, how’s that?

Meh… on to the weekly sonnet.

Sonnet 22

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee,
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
How can I then be elder than thou art?
O! therefore love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
      Presume not on th’ heart when mine is slain,
      Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.

What I get out of it

Shakespeare is considering his increasing age as he writes this poem.  He could, at this point in his life, be feeling the ravages of time (or any other cliché you might care to use), but he refuses to be negative about his own lost youth.  He says that his mirror, or “glass,” won’t make him feel depressed about growing “old”… at least, not yet.

“So long” as the object of the poem has his or her “youth,” Shakespeare claims that he won’t feel old.  When “time’s furrows” appear on the young person’s face, on the other hand, the poet feels that “death” will bring an end to his “days.”

The poem’s metaphors get a little more complicated as Shakespeare explains that his own heart lives in the heart of the youngster to whom the poem is addressed, and the younger heart lives within Shakespeare’s “breast.”  The “beauty” that appears in the young man or woman’s face therefore is “raiment,” or clothing, for the poet’s heart.  “How,” we are asked, can Shakespeare “then be elder” than the youthful body which contains his heart?

I’m thinking that this might be one of the more tangled sonnets I’ve discussed here.  The tangling continues:  Shakespeare promises to be “wary” (cautious) with his own body – as cautious as a “tender nurse” is cautious with “her babe” — not to preserve his own life, but rather to protect the youngster’s heart beating in his chest.  Likewise, he would appreciate some care taken for his own heart.

To understand the last couplet, I admit, I sought help.  I wasn’t sure in what sense “presume” was being used.  It appears that after the tender expression of love Shakespeare offers in the first dozen lines, he throws in one brief admonition:  if my heart (in your body) is “slain,” don’t expect to get yours back.  You “gav’st me” your heart freely, and I don’t intend “to give [it] back again.”  This might, possibly, be just a hint of a threat… if your carelessness or infidelity breaks my heart, I can do as I please with the heart you have given me.

Is it relevant?

I don’t know the average ages of my readers, but even I (who am still young) have felt years younger while watching or interacting with a child.  Grandparents and parents often say that playing with children makes them feel young again.  Shakespeare is expressing similar sentiments to the object of his poem.

Once again, a sonnet which is usually labeled as a love poem could also represent an expression of familial love.  I’ve probably mentioned before that, whatever Shakespeare’s relationship with his wife, he apparently loved his children dearly.  The first dozen lines could be a way of letting his children know that they make him feel young again… and the closing couplet could be a warning that they’d better make the old man proud.

Or not.  It probably is a romantic poem.  It’s just fun, sometimes, to look for other applications.  Shakespeare was a complicated man, and I hate making assumptions about what he had in mind.

Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. — Proverbs 4:23

(Photo credit and license)

Two new Wordpress errors:  if you see the “financial advice” post appear in your feed, it’s not supposed to have gone public yet… and if you see this post doing anything weird, it’s because Wordpress is giving me fits with posting at the correct times.

Now that I’ve finished whining, on to the post…

“It wasn’t written like I thought it would be,” he said.

“How so?” I asked, although I had warned him the book isn’t what most people expect.

“I thought it would be written from Dracula’s point of view,” he said. “Instead it’s written from Jonathan’s.”

Written fr… what?

Then I remembered which generation I was dealing with, and it all made sense.

Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series is now at the height of its popularity (the cynic in me expects the books to be “so yesterday” in a year or two). In case your personal world has been teenager-free for the last twelve months or so, Twilight is about a teenage girl named Bella Swan who falls in love with Edward Cullen, who happens to be a vampire.

Part of me is rolling its proverbial eyes right now.

Part of me wants to send Meyer a thank-you note for getting teens to read.

The English teacher in me is taking full advantage of the situation by pushing my students to read Wuthering Heights, which (according to Wikipedia) is Bella’s favorite book, and Dracula, the granddaddy of all modern vampire novels.

So this obliging young man had paid a visit to our school’s media center and checked out a copy of Bram Stoker’s novel. About a quarter of the way through the book, he commented that he was surprised the narrative wasn’t from Dracula’s point of view.

It’s a Victorian vampire novel, I thought. Why on Earth would it be written from Dracula’s point of view?

Then I realized my confusion was the result of a generation gap. From this fifteen-year-old’s perspective, it made perfect sense for Dracula’s voice to carry the narrative forward. After all, teens and vampires have a lot in common.

…Now, after I make that statement, your reaction indicates your age. If you’re old enough, you’re thinking something like, “Did he just say that? Holy crap… he really doesn’t like teenagers, does he?”

If you’re young enough, on the other hand, you’re thinking, “Well, duh, I mean, vampires rock. I wish I could be one!”

Think about it. Vampires get to stay out all night, sleep all day, and wear all black. Vampires captivate their prey with forceful and often rather sexy charisma. Vampires are, like, dark and gothic and wicked. They’re the rock stars of the undead.

On the other hand, Stoker’s narrator (Jonathan Harker) is a bloomin’ lawyer. Not. Cool. At. All.

My student was fully enjoying the novel, however, and I expect he finished it over Christmas break. Too bad I couldn’t be there when he encountered the character Renfield, who is possibly the coolest vampire-groupie ever.

Never read Bram Stoker’s Dracula? As I told my student (and as he discovered), it’s really not what most people expect. Modern vampire fiction is mostly a pale, cliché-ridden, and rather juvenile imitation of the original. Go buy it… or if you’re strapped for cash, Project Gutenberg has text and audio downloads for free. So you really have no excuse.

Likewise, you might be surprised by Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights if you haven’t picked it up yet. Project Gutenberg can help you out again with the text, but you might have to visit LibriVox to get the audio download.

Now, go read.

One thing vampire children are taught is, never run with a wooden stake. — Jack Handey

We’re back.

Our late-honeymoon trip to Pigeon Forge was quite memorable.  The theme of the trip, apparently, was “apples.”

We stayed in a cabin called “Apple Blossom” by the rental company.  Ironically, I didn’t notice any apple blossoms anywhere in the decor… but with apple doorknobs, quilts, knickknacks, and a gigantic apple statue scattered in and around the cabin, I think it may have earned at least half of its name.

Then one morning we discovered a whole cluster of shops and restaurants named Apple this-or-that… the Apple Barn, the Applewood Farmhouse, and so forth.  The Farmhouse served what might be the best breakfast in Sevier County, where the primary (and almost the only) source of income is the tourist trade.  While seemingly nine out of ten restaurants seemed to have either “Pancake” or “Flapjack” (or, occasionally, both) in the name, the Applewood Farmhouse was a breath of fresh, appley air.

The first thing we noticed is that, in comparison to our cabin’s decor, the restaurant’s interior was virtually apple-free.

The second thing we noticed was the huge basket of apple fritters plunked down in front of us by the waitress.

What is a fritter, anyway?  Whatever it is, these were GOOD.

The third thing we noticed was that the complimentary juice wasn’t orange juice.  Rather, it was a blend of pineapple, lemon, orange, and… you guessed it… apple.  It was also quite tasty.

The fourth and final thing we noticed was the amazingly good food served up for breakfast — some of which didn’t actually contain fruit.

We really must go back.

More details in later posts, probably.

Happy New Year.  I’ll get back to my regular blogging activities now that my schedule has returned to the routine.  Oh, and photos will arrive in good time (we didn’t take many, but the good ones are all on old-fashioned film which hasn’t been developed yet).