"He felt as if high principle and noble precept ought to perform an immediate work. But they do not, for there is always the unknown quantity of individual experience and feeling, which offer a tacit resistance, the amount incalculable by another, to all good counsel and high decree."

"She felt that he did her good, she did not know why or how; but after a talk with him she always fancied that she had got the clue to goodness and peace, whatever befell."

-Elizabeth Gaskell

I love books.
People think I read a lot, but I don't really.
I'm too picky.
I'm getting to the point where I spend nearly all my reading time with the dead.
The living are just morons.

Sometime I hate people.
Not as a habit, just when they do really stupid things.
Generally, they're somewhat stupid. But when they do really stupid cowardly things...
That bugs me.

Do you know what you are when you do something without telling the powers that Be because you KNOW they won't approve?
You are a coward.
Worse than a coward.
You're a loathesome despicable coward.
If you're going to do something that you know they won't like, have enough guts to tell them beforehand. You're still stupid, but at least you're not a stupid coward.
Bah.
Why do people do stupid cowardly things.
They do them because they care more about themselves than about the people who care about them.
What a horrible way to live.
And then they try to justify their actions. And they apologize. After they plan the whole thing from the beginning.
Stupid cowards.

I know I'm not immune from this disease of stupidity.
I'm sure I have it in some form.
But I certainly hope I never enter the stupid coward terrority.
I refuse to be a disappoinment to MYSELF.
I'm the one who has to wake up with ME every morning.

Exam

Got the Statistics exam back.
Complete devastation, as I imagined it, did not take place.
I'm happy being an average Statistics student.
The even better news is that most of the class stunk royally, so Lohse is giving us 5 problems to do next week which will add to our exam scores.

As the Knutes say, "One could do worse!!"

Guy Noir

For anyone who cares...

The James Sewell Ballet Company is doing a Guy Noir ballet at the State Theatre in Minneapolis.
Very cool.

Plans

On the agenda...

Haddon Hall


Chatsworth


Sudbury Hall


Willersly Castle


Elvaston Castle

Stuff

So!
I'm headed back across the pond next spring.
I'll get a bus to Oxford and meet up with Becca.
We go South to Brighton, Dover and Salisbury then North to the Peak District then farther North into Scotland then back down to London.
Should be splendiferous fun.
I've got a map and everything.
*rubs hands together*

I love me some Garrison!

Men fought and died in 1776 so that your children would not be subjected to cricket! We fought so we would be free of those wretched fried tomatoes that the English have for breakfast!
So that we would be free of Corgis, those ugly little rodent-like dogs that are favored by Queen Elizabeth.
The English even wrote a musical about it, it's called Corgi and Bess.
It's a terrible musical, like most English musicals......Andrew Lloyd Webber - the Walmart of musicals!
The only great English musical was written by Americans and that's My Fair Lady, but nevermind!
People think of the English as civilized but that's because they never attended an English soccer match!
Enormous red-faced men bellowing and throwing up on each other...that's what that's about.
When was the last time you had 30 people trampled to death at a baseball game?

I love my iPod.
Muy mucho.

And Jane.
Dear Jane.
*sigh*
There are things in life that we like and then there are things that become a part of us. They're grafted into us. They are as natural as breathing. The thing and us are like the sun and sunlight - you can't have one without the other.

I love Chopin.
Dear bi-polar Chopin.
He sure knew how to crank out a good tune.
I'm forming the opinion that normal (for lack of a better term) people are somewhat uninteresting.
It makes me hope that I'm not normal.
Of course, the space between normal and bi-polar....that's sooooome space we're talking about.

I had some funky dreams this morning.
One of them centered on me being involved in a crime. I'll just say that I was the victim.
Sleeping dreams.
Odd things.

Then there are awake dreams.
Those are sometimes the ones that cause the damage.
It's a sad day when you have a sudden realization that you have dreams that will never BE. Very sad. It isn't as if you previously consciously believed that they truly WOULD happen, but then you realize that they WON'T.
You sit and cry about it and then you sort of lose that part of you that wanted those dreams in the first place.

I look at my cat, asleep in his box, and I admire the pure self-indulgence that he displays.
A dog's perception of people: You feed me, you take care of me - YOU must be god!
A cat's perception of people: You feed me, you take care of me - I must be god!
That's why I like cats. They're so magnificently stuck up.
Is that perverted of me?
Take Lucy from Peanuts, for example.
I love her.
She's such a pain.
BUT - she's a funny pain.
Alas, that doesn't often happen in reality.

I better stop before I start debating the merits of rice farming in Topeka.

Signing off.
*beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep*

Guess who!

Good old Hammie

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

-William Shakespeare

Thoughts

Wow.
I'm sick.
I'm tired.
And depressed.
Probably because I'm sick and tired.

Foolish mortals

As a rule, man is a fool
When it's hot, he wants it cool
When it's cool, he wants it hot
Always wanting what is not
Never wanting what he's got