I'm not sure if this is how it's always been, but for my generation of college students, the best way of coping with finals is diving into a bunch of movies and/or TV shows. So I've watched kind of a lot of Netflix here recently.
Last night's movie was the 1993 drama Searching for Bobby Fischer, which I hadn't seen since I was about seven. It's sort of like Finding Nemo - the film may star a kid, but it's really aimed at adults as far as message goes. It was all right, though slow, and somewhat poorly-written. But it's hard to make a movie about chess. I mean, it's a great game, but just not really the sort of contest that makes for dramatic visuals. The night before that was from 1984, Romancing the Stone, which was successful enough for the studio to pick director Robert Zemeckis to direct the Back to the Future trilogy next. That was a strange movie that I wanted to like at some points, with plenty of frustrating points as well. It was a little too romance-y and not enough adventurous-ness. I really disliked the ending in particular, it was way too happy and unrealistic. Saturday-Sunday-Monday was the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy, which was as terrific as ever. And in other recently watched films, everybody's always talking about The Breakfast Club as one of those must-see movies, so I watched that a couple weeks ago and was surprised by how much I liked it(especially since I detest director John Hughes' next best-known movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off). It felt very true-to-life, because as Alfred Hitchcock once said, "Drama is life with all the dull bits taken out," and for the most part, life is made of up rather boring things like being stuck in detention at the school library all Saturday. So that aspect was neat to see. And the acting was great. Also in the "Surprised I Kinda Enjoyed That" category: The Quick and the Dead. Felt very Clint Eastwood-ish. That scenario seems high unlikely to have actually happened, but it was an interesting movie with good camera angles. His Girl Friday Rags didn't like much, but I enjoyed it. There's a lot going on in that movie, needs to be re-watched a couple times to get everything.
Phineas and Ferb is far better than it ought to be, for some strange reason. Mainly, I think, because those working on it had fun, and so it showed in their work. That's paraphrasing Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, so he'd definitely know what he was talking about. It's kind of a modern-day Looney Tunes.
Woke up this morning and saw a bit of the Macy's parade; the Spider-Man balloon and Taylor Swift's new song. We went over to Tahlequah and spent most of the day at Grandpa and Robbie's. Robbie's mom and Sandi and her boyfriend were there, too. Talking, eating, playing with the dogs, good times. It was very good to be back in Tahlequah, felt like home, like Morris or southwest Missouri. Lunch was good; ham, sweet potatoes, rolls and pecan pie(lots of all those). Watched the National Dog Show and commented on our favorite breeds and the ugliness or unpronouceability of others. A bloodhound won Best in Show. Then it was time to turn the channel over to football, where we all sort-of watched the Lions destroy the Bears, and then paid more attention to the real game of the day, Eagles and Cowboys. That was until Dad got back from a hunting trip for the day's Tulsa World, where we all dove into four copies to examine and compare Black Friday deals. And by then Philadelphia was winning easily, so....
Headed over to Louise and Harry's to see everybody over there; it was a great time with the Lankfords, telling stories, games of catch and people-watching. Nobody had any idea who the guy doing the halftime show was, but he was annoying.
I love Thanksgiving. Family, food, sports, dogs, sometimes music - no telling what might happen. And it was nice to have a whole day without homework in it(Monday starts finals week around here). And just about everywhere we passed had some story or reason for visiting attached to it - kind of a "Tattoos On This Town" type of thing. A little bit of a bummer that everybody from NSU was out of town, but it was still a really good day.
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Saturday, November 15, 2014
2014 BCM State Basketball Tournament - Part II
So the BCM basketball tournament was this weekend, in Edmond, at UCO. And since I wrote a recap of last year's(which was actually in March, due to scheduling quirks) and equal parts wanting to know what was happening and let other folks not able to attend know what was going on, I had Elizabeth text me updates to keep track of our teams' progress. Stephen, too. And then I posted those updates on the SWAT Facebook page.
With Bob and Deb busy with everything else going on, the coaching duties fell to Daniel P., Stephen and Bucky. The girls had Carra, Caitlyn, Jocelyn and Mariah back from March's team, with Haley A. and a couple girls I don't know playing as well, and besides Jordan and Mark, I have no idea who the guys on our team were. Probably Sean was there.
Elizabeth and Annie were there as fans, too, plus a handful of various players' relatives.
We got earlier game time-slots than in March, both the guys and girls were finished by 10 p.m Friday night. The girls lost a close one to host UCO thanks to some hometown officiating, but being Thunder fans, we all know all about that and how to deal with it. (Come close to flipping out at the refs, then complain on Twitter afterwards.) But the guys won their game against Rose State College, so that was something.
In the morning the guys hit an Edmond IHOP for breakfast while the girls headed to the gym for a 9:30 a.m. contest. NSU came out on top 34-22, putting everyone in good spirits. And the guys beat TU, so that helped, too. Because with the schedule in disarray, nobody was quite sure of what was going on, as far as when what games would be played. It was a bit of a mess.
But the girls had their third-place game at around 1 p.m., while the guys got their game going somewhere around 2 p.m. NSU trailed early on, but they hung in there and eventually pulled out a win for third place. The guys faced Cameron and the refs. It was a hard-fought battle most of the way through, seesawing back and forth, but in the end the RiverHawks came up on the agonizingly frustrated wrong side of a 41-40 score. The calls still sucked. So it was pretty much exactly a Thunder game, except thankfully I don't think anybody got hurt.
So overall it didn't go quite as well as we'd hoped, but third and second are still pretty good. Our teams played hard and stayed classy, representing our group, our leaders and school well. It was a worthwhile ride and they gave it everything they had. I'm really proud of our guys and girls, wished I could have been there in person. #BCMRiverHawksRule
Basketball-related tweets -
Elizabeth - "NSU is gonna dominate this basketball tournament."
Mark - "Ladies and gentlemen, it's game day."
Bucky - "My soccer mom yelling voice is just extremely impressive."
Daniel - "I'm the Nick Saban of women's BCM basketball."
Bucky again - "Shoutout to Stephen and Jordan for holding me back for holding me back on the bench tonight to keep me from trying to fight a grown man."
Elizabeth again - "Super proud of my RiverHawks for playing hard and keeping it classy out there tonight."
Annie - "Shoutout to all the BCM basketball players. You guys are awesome.It's been a great weekend."
With Bob and Deb busy with everything else going on, the coaching duties fell to Daniel P., Stephen and Bucky. The girls had Carra, Caitlyn, Jocelyn and Mariah back from March's team, with Haley A. and a couple girls I don't know playing as well, and besides Jordan and Mark, I have no idea who the guys on our team were. Probably Sean was there.
Elizabeth and Annie were there as fans, too, plus a handful of various players' relatives.
We got earlier game time-slots than in March, both the guys and girls were finished by 10 p.m Friday night. The girls lost a close one to host UCO thanks to some hometown officiating, but being Thunder fans, we all know all about that and how to deal with it. (Come close to flipping out at the refs, then complain on Twitter afterwards.) But the guys won their game against Rose State College, so that was something.
In the morning the guys hit an Edmond IHOP for breakfast while the girls headed to the gym for a 9:30 a.m. contest. NSU came out on top 34-22, putting everyone in good spirits. And the guys beat TU, so that helped, too. Because with the schedule in disarray, nobody was quite sure of what was going on, as far as when what games would be played. It was a bit of a mess.
But the girls had their third-place game at around 1 p.m., while the guys got their game going somewhere around 2 p.m. NSU trailed early on, but they hung in there and eventually pulled out a win for third place. The guys faced Cameron and the refs. It was a hard-fought battle most of the way through, seesawing back and forth, but in the end the RiverHawks came up on the agonizingly frustrated wrong side of a 41-40 score. The calls still sucked. So it was pretty much exactly a Thunder game, except thankfully I don't think anybody got hurt.
So overall it didn't go quite as well as we'd hoped, but third and second are still pretty good. Our teams played hard and stayed classy, representing our group, our leaders and school well. It was a worthwhile ride and they gave it everything they had. I'm really proud of our guys and girls, wished I could have been there in person. #BCMRiverHawksRule
Basketball-related tweets -
Elizabeth - "NSU is gonna dominate this basketball tournament."
Mark - "Ladies and gentlemen, it's game day."
Bucky - "My soccer mom yelling voice is just extremely impressive."
Daniel - "I'm the Nick Saban of women's BCM basketball."
Bucky again - "Shoutout to Stephen and Jordan for holding me back for holding me back on the bench tonight to keep me from trying to fight a grown man."
Elizabeth again - "Super proud of my RiverHawks for playing hard and keeping it classy out there tonight."
Annie - "Shoutout to all the BCM basketball players. You guys are awesome.It's been a great weekend."
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Mid-November
Last Saturday night we went to go see the Mingo Valley production of "The Curious Savage", a play written in 1950 and performed ever since. Suzanna played the lead, a millioinaire widow named Mrs. Savage, Bennett played Jeff the WWII veteran with mental problems, and Paige played the nurse Miss Willie, Jeff's wife. It was a good show; with interesting quotes to think about, and the plot was about a common-sense filled widow and her hidden fortune, her scheming stepchildren and the quirky inhabitants of a psychiatric facility.
It's sort of a funny thing about plays, though; they never quite fully capture the sense of reality of a book or TV show or movie; as an audience it's hard to trick yourself into believing the story is real. I think a lot of that may have to do with all the structure based in dialogue - it's hard to convey a sense of reality when every scene is a bunch of people in the same room talking to each other. Because in real life, we do other things while talking, we multitask. And that can be shown in novels and movies and TV episodes much more clearly than plays can. They're sort of like the entertainment-production equivalent of baseball. Fine enough once in a while for a casual observer, and wonderful for those avid fans, but for the general populace it drags on too long and seems sort of out-of-date and antiquated. (If you know people in the production, though, that makes it a lot better.)
I'm done with biology now, so that's something. I probably won't know how I did for another month while the handful-of-projects-awaiting-grading stand in line, but it's good to know it's over with. Photoshop is coming along. It's very interesting, but complicated and intimidating.
The BCM state tournament is this weekend, so everybody's heading down to OBU for some late-night basketball in Shawnee. (Elizabeth, Stephen and Jordan are all very excited.) Apparently they flipped the basketball and volleyball tournaments, so this will actually be like the 2014-Part II tournament. (See this post for the March recap.) Hoping NSU's teams do well. It's the one time I ever accept and wear the RiverHawks label. Reminded of 1 Corinthians 10:31 when it comes to sports(and really, everything else, too.)
(And maybe I'll be able to make the volleyball tournament as a Hillcat? We shall see....it got moved from UCO to Falls Creek, so sand instead of indoor. Which, in theory, gives me slightly better odds, having more experience in sand than indoors.)
In SGYC news, I've looked over some school stuff for Ash here recently, glad to be able to help her out a bit. It's Mrs. Boyer's birthday, so just about everyone had to write something on her Facebook wall. Jon's doing well, and Amanda's having a baby. So are Matt Jacobs and his wife, and so are Dylan and Grace.
This is weird, seeing everyone start having babies and getting married or engaged and everything....I just keep thinking of what everyone was saying in July; the buzzword (phrase?) was variations of "Don't outgrow us, please!" If I can be there this next summer, I totally will. But it's not really up to me, it's more of a "If the Lord allows, then..." like in James 4:15. But mentally I've been back in Mizzou pretty often here in the last few weeks.
Rags has been awfully cuddly and shadowy. She's purring on my arms right now as I type this. It's really nice except for when I'm trying to do homework or something like that. We watched the Cary Grant movie His Girl Friday earlier tonight; I liked it a lot, she fell asleep pretty quickly.
It's sort of a funny thing about plays, though; they never quite fully capture the sense of reality of a book or TV show or movie; as an audience it's hard to trick yourself into believing the story is real. I think a lot of that may have to do with all the structure based in dialogue - it's hard to convey a sense of reality when every scene is a bunch of people in the same room talking to each other. Because in real life, we do other things while talking, we multitask. And that can be shown in novels and movies and TV episodes much more clearly than plays can. They're sort of like the entertainment-production equivalent of baseball. Fine enough once in a while for a casual observer, and wonderful for those avid fans, but for the general populace it drags on too long and seems sort of out-of-date and antiquated. (If you know people in the production, though, that makes it a lot better.)
I'm done with biology now, so that's something. I probably won't know how I did for another month while the handful-of-projects-awaiting-grading stand in line, but it's good to know it's over with. Photoshop is coming along. It's very interesting, but complicated and intimidating.
The BCM state tournament is this weekend, so everybody's heading down to OBU for some late-night basketball in Shawnee. (Elizabeth, Stephen and Jordan are all very excited.) Apparently they flipped the basketball and volleyball tournaments, so this will actually be like the 2014-Part II tournament. (See this post for the March recap.) Hoping NSU's teams do well. It's the one time I ever accept and wear the RiverHawks label. Reminded of 1 Corinthians 10:31 when it comes to sports(and really, everything else, too.)
(And maybe I'll be able to make the volleyball tournament as a Hillcat? We shall see....it got moved from UCO to Falls Creek, so sand instead of indoor. Which, in theory, gives me slightly better odds, having more experience in sand than indoors.)
In SGYC news, I've looked over some school stuff for Ash here recently, glad to be able to help her out a bit. It's Mrs. Boyer's birthday, so just about everyone had to write something on her Facebook wall. Jon's doing well, and Amanda's having a baby. So are Matt Jacobs and his wife, and so are Dylan and Grace.
This is weird, seeing everyone start having babies and getting married or engaged and everything....I just keep thinking of what everyone was saying in July; the buzzword (phrase?) was variations of "Don't outgrow us, please!" If I can be there this next summer, I totally will. But it's not really up to me, it's more of a "If the Lord allows, then..." like in James 4:15. But mentally I've been back in Mizzou pretty often here in the last few weeks.
Rags has been awfully cuddly and shadowy. She's purring on my arms right now as I type this. It's really nice except for when I'm trying to do homework or something like that. We watched the Cary Grant movie His Girl Friday earlier tonight; I liked it a lot, she fell asleep pretty quickly.
Sunday, November 9, 2014
First Half of Junior Year
Well, this semester has only about a month left to go. Sure hasn't gone the way I thought it would. For one thing, I thought it would begin in late July, just after the Tulsa group got back from SGYC. But that class was canceled due to not enough folks signing up. And in early August there was a chance to leave NSU, so...
Oh, by the way, I found a new Relient K song that I really like.
It was a hard decision to make, with really no good answers. Like Coulson said in the fourth Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode, sometimes you have to make a hard call and live with what happens afterward. It really hurt to abandon my place within the leadership structure and leave the BCM gang. College is a miserable and lonely experience, but it becomes a tiny bit easier when there's coworkers around who are just as miserable, confused, cynical and frustrated as you are. And it was really nice living nearby Grandpa and Robbie. And there's a serious lack of Tiger Cookies now...
But they needed me here, too. And free rent is good. And Rags is a very happy cat.
But...yeah, it's been kind of a hard semester, for a lot of reasons. Online classes are pretty time-intensive and accelerated, without a whole lot of direction or feedback. So in a way you're flying mostly blind the whole time. (Which I'm used to, but anyway...)
Going into my freshman year, in the post called "The Golden Road" I mentioned that the Montgomery title sort of symbolizes our journey throughout life, and college in particular. That road can take some pretty strange paths, let me tell ya. Fall semester freshman year it lead straight into the middle of a Fire Swamp, more specifically into and through an oily quicksand well. Once it cleared out there it led into a desert straight from Josh and the Big Wall. And then there was the break over summer, which didn't exactly feel like anything other than plugging my dead battery into a wall-socket charger through GBC and SGYC.
But once the time for the third semester-battle came around; for that is what college is: A war, between society purportedly offering this education for unclear reasons and far too involved a process - both time-wise and financially - and knowledge, learning and wisdom. And also it was re-entering a spiritual warground as well, but that's a different post for another time. Anyway, this path I've been walking along plunged into the valley of death from Psalm 23 or the Paths of the Dead from The Return of the King. And I'm not Strider, nor Aragorn. But God is faithful; and he carried me through it, mostly with getting involved with the BCM, and the usual camp folks, reruns, long walks and random strangeness of life. As Abigail the Cow told Joshua in The Crippled Lamb, "The Lord has a special place for those who feel left out." The second half of my sophomore year was back in the desert. Most of the summer, too; though the road began to get slightly greener as it went up a sloping incline.
This semester, this first half of my junior year, the road has gone meandering and twisting along a mountain with cliffs and drop-offs and hairpin turns. And it's really foggy, and the radio is broken, so it seems kind of cut off from civilization.
There's also been this small plane that took off somehow despite enormous headwinds along the runway as I was starting out, and it's been steadily flying through stormy weather ever since. One of the engines started failing late last fall or early this spring, and then it started dropping from there. It's pretty much crashed by now, which could explain the mountain terrain. It'll probably be patched up somewhat soon enough to take off again, but how well will it fly?
I somewhat know the literal terrain of Rogers County; it's mostly plains and hills. But I don't know what the terrain mentally I'll be traveling over.will look like. I mean, I'm hoping it will go okay, but I really don't know. Why should RSU have a different tone than NSU(or TCC)? Sure, it's been different than either of those so far on this admission stuff, more human and less factory-like, with less interruptions and hassles than expected, but how much of that is politics? Once the election's over...then what?
I really don't know. But there will be some lessons to learn and ways to grow in Claremore, just as there have been in Beggs, Tahlequah, Westville, Morris, Tulsa, Broken Arrow, Conway, Louisville, D.C. and everywhere else I've traveled through. There's still a lot more plot twists in this script we call life that I didn't expect.and will face. I'm a master at planning things that don't quite work out at the last minute. The hard part is to say "God's will be done," and actually mean it. But that's why we keep going. We're not there yet, but maybe someday we will be.
Oh, by the way, I found a new Relient K song that I really like.
It was a hard decision to make, with really no good answers. Like Coulson said in the fourth Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode, sometimes you have to make a hard call and live with what happens afterward. It really hurt to abandon my place within the leadership structure and leave the BCM gang. College is a miserable and lonely experience, but it becomes a tiny bit easier when there's coworkers around who are just as miserable, confused, cynical and frustrated as you are. And it was really nice living nearby Grandpa and Robbie. And there's a serious lack of Tiger Cookies now...
But they needed me here, too. And free rent is good. And Rags is a very happy cat.
But...yeah, it's been kind of a hard semester, for a lot of reasons. Online classes are pretty time-intensive and accelerated, without a whole lot of direction or feedback. So in a way you're flying mostly blind the whole time. (Which I'm used to, but anyway...)
Going into my freshman year, in the post called "The Golden Road" I mentioned that the Montgomery title sort of symbolizes our journey throughout life, and college in particular. That road can take some pretty strange paths, let me tell ya. Fall semester freshman year it lead straight into the middle of a Fire Swamp, more specifically into and through an oily quicksand well. Once it cleared out there it led into a desert straight from Josh and the Big Wall. And then there was the break over summer, which didn't exactly feel like anything other than plugging my dead battery into a wall-socket charger through GBC and SGYC.
But once the time for the third semester-battle came around; for that is what college is: A war, between society purportedly offering this education for unclear reasons and far too involved a process - both time-wise and financially - and knowledge, learning and wisdom. And also it was re-entering a spiritual warground as well, but that's a different post for another time. Anyway, this path I've been walking along plunged into the valley of death from Psalm 23 or the Paths of the Dead from The Return of the King. And I'm not Strider, nor Aragorn. But God is faithful; and he carried me through it, mostly with getting involved with the BCM, and the usual camp folks, reruns, long walks and random strangeness of life. As Abigail the Cow told Joshua in The Crippled Lamb, "The Lord has a special place for those who feel left out." The second half of my sophomore year was back in the desert. Most of the summer, too; though the road began to get slightly greener as it went up a sloping incline.
This semester, this first half of my junior year, the road has gone meandering and twisting along a mountain with cliffs and drop-offs and hairpin turns. And it's really foggy, and the radio is broken, so it seems kind of cut off from civilization.
There's also been this small plane that took off somehow despite enormous headwinds along the runway as I was starting out, and it's been steadily flying through stormy weather ever since. One of the engines started failing late last fall or early this spring, and then it started dropping from there. It's pretty much crashed by now, which could explain the mountain terrain. It'll probably be patched up somewhat soon enough to take off again, but how well will it fly?
I somewhat know the literal terrain of Rogers County; it's mostly plains and hills. But I don't know what the terrain mentally I'll be traveling over.will look like. I mean, I'm hoping it will go okay, but I really don't know. Why should RSU have a different tone than NSU(or TCC)? Sure, it's been different than either of those so far on this admission stuff, more human and less factory-like, with less interruptions and hassles than expected, but how much of that is politics? Once the election's over...then what?
I really don't know. But there will be some lessons to learn and ways to grow in Claremore, just as there have been in Beggs, Tahlequah, Westville, Morris, Tulsa, Broken Arrow, Conway, Louisville, D.C. and everywhere else I've traveled through. There's still a lot more plot twists in this script we call life that I didn't expect.and will face. I'm a master at planning things that don't quite work out at the last minute. The hard part is to say "God's will be done," and actually mean it. But that's why we keep going. We're not there yet, but maybe someday we will be.
New Blog
It's Sunday night, the start of the college school/work week. It's also early November, so there's about a month left in the fall semester. And so, predictably, I'm worn out. Which is why I''m reading(just finished To Kill A Mockingbird) and blogging, might watch a movie in a minute. It's about survival.
But in the "productivity" department, besides getting about six-eight quizzes completed and five-six lab assignments done, and two football games covered, in the last two weeks, last weekend I created a new blog.
It's called You Keep Using That Word..., and it's where I'll put most of the "writing-specific" posts in the future. A little of everything is on there; essays, poems, short stories, songs, ridiculous fake news stories and movie reviews, to name a few. So check it out, if you would.
The reasoning behind the title is pretty self-explanatory, it being me and all, haha. And it needs less explaining than this one.
But in the "productivity" department, besides getting about six-eight quizzes completed and five-six lab assignments done, and two football games covered, in the last two weeks, last weekend I created a new blog.
It's called You Keep Using That Word..., and it's where I'll put most of the "writing-specific" posts in the future. A little of everything is on there; essays, poems, short stories, songs, ridiculous fake news stories and movie reviews, to name a few. So check it out, if you would.
The reasoning behind the title is pretty self-explanatory, it being me and all, haha. And it needs less explaining than this one.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
More Well-Written Passages From Old Books
Another notebook's worth of great sentences copied down in the margins.
"I sometimes think Atticus subjected every crisis of his life to tranquil evaluation behind the pages of the Mobile Register, the Birmingham News and the Montgomery Advertiser." - [Scout Finch], Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird (Possibly my favorite first-person narrative ever written. Which is saying A LOT.)
"It may have been 100% truthful, but 100% truthful isn't always the truth. It may have been accurate, but it wasn't fair." - Dick Schaap, sportswriter
"It[the weather] drizzled a little, shone a little, blew a little, and didn't make up its mind until was too late for anyone else to make up theirs." - Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, chapter 26, page 260
"Fanny went to a fashionable school where the young ladies were so busy with their French, German and Italian that there was no time for good English." - Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Girl
"He's now, in baseball lingo, a 'submariner', which is baseball's way of making a guy who throws underhanded sound manly." - Michael Lewis, Moneyball (Nobody else could make a book about the history of advanced statistics a worthwhile enjoyable read. Check it out sometime.)
"It takes a man a lifetime to find out about one particular woman; but if he puts in, say, ten years, industrious and curious, he can acquire the general rudiments of the sex." - O. Henry, "Cupid in a Cafe"
"They're chummy and honest and free and tender and sassy, and they look life straight in the eye." - O. Henry, "Cupid in a Cafe"
"He had a voice like a coyote with bronchitis, but whenever he chose his song he sang it." - O. Henry, "The Caballero's Way"
"'To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy; but all the same, Elinor, one would not be without that experience. Anyone who has never really loved has never really lived.'" - [Laura Welman], Agatha Christie, Sad Cypress (This wasn't one of her best works, but this might be my favorite Christie quote out of everything she wrote. She wrote a ton of really great-to-think-about things in her lifetime, mostly in the books that suffer in terms of plot.)
"Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway." - Earl Nightingale
"'Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways, then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes they brace us up, until perhaps the strain becomes too great, and we break. But King Laugh, he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we beat to go on with our labour, what it might be.'" - [Dr. Van Helsing], Bram Stoker, Dracula (I really don't like this book much, reminds me too much of Dickens. But I really liked that quote.)
Well-Written Passages Found in Old Books
This is exactly what it sounds like: A collection of quotes and passages that are very well-written, that I scribbled down in the margins of a notebook or two. I've been scrounging through my large stash of notebooks over the weekend and thought a post on here was in order. As best I can figure, most of these books were read from 2009-2011.
Joe DiMaggio, when asked why he hustled on an absolutely meaningless play; "I figure there's some kid out there in the stands who's watching me for the first time. Don't I owe him my best?"
"The search for Deborah's undiscovered genius continued through cello, flute and clarinet lessons as well as several other instruments that wheezed, whistled and bawled like dying animals. The piano was a last resort, Mrs. Harding-Smith confessed. It was difficult to make a piano sound like anything other than a piano, no matter how badly played it might be." - Bodie Thoene, Danzig Passage, page 176 (Read this and the rest of her Zion Covenant series as soon as you can, if you like WWII or character-driven historical fiction.)
"Books don't transform you, but paragraphs and sentences do." - Unknown (AMEN.)
"....returned Amy, who was gifted with domestic power, but was chosen because she was small enough to be carried away shrieking by the hero of the piece." - Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, chapter 1 (Very good book.)
"Amy followed, but she poked her hands out stiffly beside her and jerked herself along as if she went by machinery; and her "Ow!" was more suggestive of pins being run into her than of pain and anguish." - Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, chapter 1
"She has the close-to-the-door-when-anything-interesting-is-going-on technique highly developed." - Agatha Christie, Remembered Death
"But some girls seem born for the express purpose of making trouble, and would manage to do it if they lived in a howling wilderness." - Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Girl (This would not be included in my list of favorite Alcott books, but it had a fair amount of quotable phrases.)
"Able-bodied men are apt to leave the place[the town of King's Abbot] early in life; but we are rich in unmarried ladies and retired military officers. Our hobbies and recreations can be summed up in the one word, 'gossip'." - Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Amazing. But no spoilers here....)
"The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst no worse, if imagination amends them."
"It must be your imagination, then, and not theirs."
"If we imagine no worse of them than they of themselves, they may pass for excellent men." - Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 5, Scene 1, lines 206-210
"'He's a cobweb; a pinch would annihilate him.'" - [Heathcliff], Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (This book was unbearably depressing, but I did like this quote.)
"He spoke like a gardener should, mournfully, but with dignity, something like if an emperor spoke at a funeral." - Agatha Christie, The Seven Dials Mystery
"The only thing that we knew about the man was that he grew vegetable marrows. But that was not the sort of thing Caroline wanted to know. She wants to know where he comes from, what he does, whether he is married, what his wife was, or is, like, whether he has children, what his mother's maiden name was, and so on. Somebody very like Caroline must have invented the questions on passports, I think." - [Dr. James Sheppard, speaking about his sister and Hercule Poirot], Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
"It's not your average, ordinary, run-of-the-mill ho-hum fairy tale." - the previews tagline for the movie version of The Princess Bride
"She was a tall, serene-looking young woman of 27, who, although her face was unlined, looked older than her years, probably from a sedate maturity that seemed part of her make-up." - Agatha Christie, Ordeal by Innocence
"They moved down the field with maniacal relentless precision. If the Japanese had invented football, this is how they would have played it." H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights (Extremely well-written book. If you've seen the TV show, they matched the tone perfectly.)
"It did them all good, for music is a beautiful magician, and few can resist its power." - Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Girl
"Nobody likes to be talked to, but nobody can resist the eloquence of unconscious preaching." - Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Girl
"...said Maud, who had a talent for betraying trifles which people preferred should not be mentioned in public." - Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Girl
"It was Mr. Blatt's apparent ambition to be the life and soul of wherever he happened to be... He was puzzled at the way people seemed to melt and disappear whenever he himself appeared on the scene." - Agatha Christie, Evil Under the Sun
"She moved with that insolent effortless grace that is common among those who have been professional mannequins." - Agatha Christie, Hickory Dickory Death
"I think you can always tell when the artist is having a good time: the energy and life come out in their work." - Bill Watterson, The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Collection (I agree. And it's been too long since I read Calvin and Hobbes or Peanuts.)
Joe DiMaggio, when asked why he hustled on an absolutely meaningless play; "I figure there's some kid out there in the stands who's watching me for the first time. Don't I owe him my best?"
"The search for Deborah's undiscovered genius continued through cello, flute and clarinet lessons as well as several other instruments that wheezed, whistled and bawled like dying animals. The piano was a last resort, Mrs. Harding-Smith confessed. It was difficult to make a piano sound like anything other than a piano, no matter how badly played it might be." - Bodie Thoene, Danzig Passage, page 176 (Read this and the rest of her Zion Covenant series as soon as you can, if you like WWII or character-driven historical fiction.)
"Books don't transform you, but paragraphs and sentences do." - Unknown (AMEN.)
"....returned Amy, who was gifted with domestic power, but was chosen because she was small enough to be carried away shrieking by the hero of the piece." - Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, chapter 1 (Very good book.)
"Amy followed, but she poked her hands out stiffly beside her and jerked herself along as if she went by machinery; and her "Ow!" was more suggestive of pins being run into her than of pain and anguish." - Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, chapter 1
"She has the close-to-the-door-when-anything-interesting-is-going-on technique highly developed." - Agatha Christie, Remembered Death
"But some girls seem born for the express purpose of making trouble, and would manage to do it if they lived in a howling wilderness." - Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Girl (This would not be included in my list of favorite Alcott books, but it had a fair amount of quotable phrases.)
"Able-bodied men are apt to leave the place[the town of King's Abbot] early in life; but we are rich in unmarried ladies and retired military officers. Our hobbies and recreations can be summed up in the one word, 'gossip'." - Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Amazing. But no spoilers here....)
"The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst no worse, if imagination amends them."
"It must be your imagination, then, and not theirs."
"If we imagine no worse of them than they of themselves, they may pass for excellent men." - Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 5, Scene 1, lines 206-210
"'He's a cobweb; a pinch would annihilate him.'" - [Heathcliff], Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (This book was unbearably depressing, but I did like this quote.)
"He spoke like a gardener should, mournfully, but with dignity, something like if an emperor spoke at a funeral." - Agatha Christie, The Seven Dials Mystery
"The only thing that we knew about the man was that he grew vegetable marrows. But that was not the sort of thing Caroline wanted to know. She wants to know where he comes from, what he does, whether he is married, what his wife was, or is, like, whether he has children, what his mother's maiden name was, and so on. Somebody very like Caroline must have invented the questions on passports, I think." - [Dr. James Sheppard, speaking about his sister and Hercule Poirot], Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
"It's not your average, ordinary, run-of-the-mill ho-hum fairy tale." - the previews tagline for the movie version of The Princess Bride
"She was a tall, serene-looking young woman of 27, who, although her face was unlined, looked older than her years, probably from a sedate maturity that seemed part of her make-up." - Agatha Christie, Ordeal by Innocence
"They moved down the field with maniacal relentless precision. If the Japanese had invented football, this is how they would have played it." H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights (Extremely well-written book. If you've seen the TV show, they matched the tone perfectly.)
"It did them all good, for music is a beautiful magician, and few can resist its power." - Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Girl
"Nobody likes to be talked to, but nobody can resist the eloquence of unconscious preaching." - Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Girl
"...said Maud, who had a talent for betraying trifles which people preferred should not be mentioned in public." - Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Girl
"It was Mr. Blatt's apparent ambition to be the life and soul of wherever he happened to be... He was puzzled at the way people seemed to melt and disappear whenever he himself appeared on the scene." - Agatha Christie, Evil Under the Sun
"She moved with that insolent effortless grace that is common among those who have been professional mannequins." - Agatha Christie, Hickory Dickory Death
"I think you can always tell when the artist is having a good time: the energy and life come out in their work." - Bill Watterson, The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Collection (I agree. And it's been too long since I read Calvin and Hobbes or Peanuts.)
Grades
GRADES....
They can terrify, dishearten, and frustrate students everywhere. They can discourage, and depress teachers everywhere. They can either make parents proud or horrified. They largely determine whether you get saddled with tons of loan debt or come out okay financially each semester. Pretty impressive power for a string of letters to hold.
Prof. Semrow said once that a grade is just an opinion of how much effort the teachers think you put into a project. I guess that makes sense. Good teachers know that we have a handful of classes we're juggling at the same time, so you can't always give everything all you've got, you kind of have to prioritize the tasks required over the next few days and then run from there. You can(and should) polish as much as possible before deadline, but at some point you have to kick a field goal and take whatever you get; accept that it's impossible to score a touchdown or hit perfect bulls-eyes every time. That doesn't mean you shouldn't aim for perfection in everything. It just means that you probably won't always have a nice grouping of your arrows on the target.
I guess it comes down to discipline. You just do it, just like Nike's told the world for the last thirty years. Somebody defined discipline as "doing what you need to even when you don't feel like it." So you just plow along and get that assignment or whatever it is finished as best you can, and then wait anxiously for the verdict. If you do well consistently over time, that creates expectations for next time, and as Philip Gulley humorously pointed out about a friend's daughter in an essay on expectations, "if she fails, the entire town will basically lose its will to live. Other than that, I don't think she's under much pressure."
That pressure can be tough to deal with, though. Because the longer you do well, when you slip, it's a longer fall. That's why it's better for a college football or basketball team to lose games earlier in the season than later; the impact is less. And it's the same way in baseball; because it's the World Series at the end. And to fail....well, you kind of feel like the guy in the video above this paragraph.
And I suppose grades do matter in some sense, because good ones allow other people(in one way or another, the government) to pay the way-too-steep prices for an education that will lead to you earning a slip of paper that's apparently the Golden Fleece, the way employers hire. And that slip of paper means that you managed to survive four-to-five years of incarceration in public (or private) factories. So in that sense, they matter.
And it's easier to get good grades if you enjoy what you're studying. For example, then you say things like "You know you're in the right major when you're ecstatic about dissecting a cow heart.", or "You know you're a MassComm major when you watch the Super Bowl because it''ll be homework for the test on Tuesday." or "Practical things being a theater major has taught me #4826 - How to sew!" (I pulled those from Facebook, didn't write any of those quotes.)
And if you enjoy what you're studying, and therefore get decent-to-good grades, then you'll probably have a small dose of confidence going into the next test or class or semester or whatever. (The exact level depends on many, many variables.) And as this Tina Fey quote printed in the September 2012 copy of Reader's Digest says, "Confidence is ten percent hard work and ninety percent delusional thinking."
So that's all I can think of to say on this topic at the moment. More will probably be said at some later point.
They can terrify, dishearten, and frustrate students everywhere. They can discourage, and depress teachers everywhere. They can either make parents proud or horrified. They largely determine whether you get saddled with tons of loan debt or come out okay financially each semester. Pretty impressive power for a string of letters to hold.
Prof. Semrow said once that a grade is just an opinion of how much effort the teachers think you put into a project. I guess that makes sense. Good teachers know that we have a handful of classes we're juggling at the same time, so you can't always give everything all you've got, you kind of have to prioritize the tasks required over the next few days and then run from there. You can(and should) polish as much as possible before deadline, but at some point you have to kick a field goal and take whatever you get; accept that it's impossible to score a touchdown or hit perfect bulls-eyes every time. That doesn't mean you shouldn't aim for perfection in everything. It just means that you probably won't always have a nice grouping of your arrows on the target.
I guess it comes down to discipline. You just do it, just like Nike's told the world for the last thirty years. Somebody defined discipline as "doing what you need to even when you don't feel like it." So you just plow along and get that assignment or whatever it is finished as best you can, and then wait anxiously for the verdict. If you do well consistently over time, that creates expectations for next time, and as Philip Gulley humorously pointed out about a friend's daughter in an essay on expectations, "if she fails, the entire town will basically lose its will to live. Other than that, I don't think she's under much pressure."
And I suppose grades do matter in some sense, because good ones allow other people(in one way or another, the government) to pay the way-too-steep prices for an education that will lead to you earning a slip of paper that's apparently the Golden Fleece, the way employers hire. And that slip of paper means that you managed to survive four-to-five years of incarceration in public (or private) factories. So in that sense, they matter.
And it's easier to get good grades if you enjoy what you're studying. For example, then you say things like "You know you're in the right major when you're ecstatic about dissecting a cow heart.", or "You know you're a MassComm major when you watch the Super Bowl because it''ll be homework for the test on Tuesday." or "Practical things being a theater major has taught me #4826 - How to sew!" (I pulled those from Facebook, didn't write any of those quotes.)
And if you enjoy what you're studying, and therefore get decent-to-good grades, then you'll probably have a small dose of confidence going into the next test or class or semester or whatever. (The exact level depends on many, many variables.) And as this Tina Fey quote printed in the September 2012 copy of Reader's Digest says, "Confidence is ten percent hard work and ninety percent delusional thinking."
So that's all I can think of to say on this topic at the moment. More will probably be said at some later point.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
Now November
It's been about two weeks since I posted something on here, I guess.
Nano's home now. She left two weeks ago yesterday, and the funeral was last Saturday. It went well.
Enrolled at RSU on Wednesday, so I'll be headed to Claremore in January. Not sure where this'll take me, but it's in the Lord's hands.
The coldness is signalling that winter will be coming soon, and so does the Halloween candy on sale. That also means you can officially start playing Christmas music anytime you want(although I'm a rebel and do that anyway) and plan for Thanksgiving. I'm a big fan of Thanksgiving, and also of Christmas. Family, music, decorations, fellowship, music....
That also means that it's been a year that Copper's been gone. It's been a very, very long twelve months. Yes, there's Rags, and Banjo and Captain, but....it's just not the same. Miss her. It'll be a year tomorrow. And that's also the first SWAT show this season(with everything that's been going on, off to a bit of a late start).
School's keeping me busy plowing most of the time, Photoshop is interesting(but confusing) and biology is for the most part more confusing than interesting.
Nano's home now. She left two weeks ago yesterday, and the funeral was last Saturday. It went well.
Enrolled at RSU on Wednesday, so I'll be headed to Claremore in January. Not sure where this'll take me, but it's in the Lord's hands.
The coldness is signalling that winter will be coming soon, and so does the Halloween candy on sale. That also means you can officially start playing Christmas music anytime you want(although I'm a rebel and do that anyway) and plan for Thanksgiving. I'm a big fan of Thanksgiving, and also of Christmas. Family, music, decorations, fellowship, music....
That also means that it's been a year that Copper's been gone. It's been a very, very long twelve months. Yes, there's Rags, and Banjo and Captain, but....it's just not the same. Miss her. It'll be a year tomorrow. And that's also the first SWAT show this season(with everything that's been going on, off to a bit of a late start).
School's keeping me busy plowing most of the time, Photoshop is interesting(but confusing) and biology is for the most part more confusing than interesting.
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