That's Not Punny.

I've had a television in my flat for just under an hour and it's already pissing me off.

I've avoided having one for about a year now, since I've never really watched anything with the exception of one or two shows and baseball. But I was perfectly happy watching that at other people's houses and letting my flat be box free. However, now I have a job that requires me to be "plugged in," "in the know" and "up to speed" and other things that have the faint whiff of obnoxiousness, so I had to cave. Now I don't have to go to my brother's apartment to talk about how much I hate Wolf Blitzer. Thus I join the 24 hour news cycle, and here begins a comedy of errors. Well, really it started when the installation guy showed up an hour before he was supposed to and I was still in bed, but whatever. I'm sure I was charming in my half-dragon bedmonster look and vague aura of dread and hatred.

I just don't like t.v.. I don't like being bombarded with shit. I don't like that you could spend an hour flipping channels, not find anything vaguely interesting. Some argue that shitty t.v. is what distracts them from a long day, or keeps them from getting stressed. Nothing stresses me out like laugh tracks, cheeky misogynism, butched up car commercials, and "The Situation Room." It's pappy crap, all of it, and I'd rather watched a netflixed dvd, something I've chosen, then slurp up whatever tripe gets sent out.

This is what happens when you've watched "Network" recently.

I love a good cheesefest now and then ("Sliding Doors" anyone?), but when I come home tired and in need of some solace, watching twits obsess about McWhoever while simultaneously going in after coronary thrombosis, all while remaining under 105 pounds? That'll just wind me up again.

In other, less vitriolic news, I'm collecting puns about Heather Mills. If you don't know her, there isn't much besides that she's in the middle of a divorce with Paul McCartney, she's on "Dancing With the Stars" and she's only got one leg.

This is what I have so far:

"You know, I really respect her. Going on that show? Anyone who goes out on a limb like that, I admire."

"She could win it, you know. She's got a leg up on the competition."

"On the other hand, sometimes I think she's just a terrible dancer. It's like she's got one left foot."

"Did you see her dance number the other night? She did an unbelievable two step!"

And finally, I have one that only works if you pretend you're Jay Leno (Vom!):

"Hey, did you hear? Kevin Bacon is a huge fan of "Dancing With the Stars." Yeah, especially that Heather Mills. Apparently, he's been a fan for ages. Actually, she actually inspired one of his films. Footloose."

Cue the groans!

Anyway, I'm collecting these horrible, probably insulting things, so if anyone has something, send it my way. I'll post the best slash worst slash best again ones.


Naturally,
Lizzie

It All Comes Together

This winter it was Joan Didion, fellow Sacramento girl. During global warming winter, it was Ted Hughes. It happens -- I get on a kick of reading everything by one writer, submersing myself in their ouvre, if you will. (You won't, and that's fine, I support you.) During my Ted Hughes stage, it was "Birthday Letters" over and over, occasionally watching "Slyvia," though that was more of an excuse to get Daniel Craig fix until the Casino Royale dvd comes out. These days, there's been a rash of children's literature books, mostly in the fantasy realm of things, along with collections of Grimm's fairy tales, folk lore, myths, all sorts of books whose presence in my flat explain why I will be alone for the rest of my life.

Right now, I'm making my way through Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series (It's a reference to Milton! See my brilliant musings on that and why I'd suck face with Satan here!) Now, if there's one thing that warms my geek heart more than Romantic poetry, obsessive patterns in book purchasing, or tea, it's when different things I'm reading come together and connect the dots, with a little side dish of Daniel Craig. Wouldn't you know it, that's just what happened this week. I know you can't wait to read about it, so I won't make you wait any longer. It's a tale the involves geeky young adult literature,Paradise Lost, Keats, particle physics, Dark Matter, Daniel Craig, and more!

The His Dark Materials series concerns itself with a lot of standard children's literature (talking animals, archetypal figures, action and adventure with the smallest hint of young love) but it differs in that it resists pedantic rhetoric of "good vs. evil" didacticism. If you read an interview with Pullman, he loves to talk about his work as being a direct reaction to C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He faults Lewis for being so rooted in regurgitating Christian doctrine, and Tolkien for poor writing and faulty structure. Not to mention, they can both be insulting to children's intelligence, and frequently fall into the trap of simplifying things to: "There are bad people, and there are good people and they should fight to the death." While I'm at it, both Lewis and Tolkien bust out some pretty blatant misogyny, which may not be the best thing to inundate children with. (Lewis definitely takes the cake in that regard BTW.) While Pullman's books still have a characters who are villains, and a heroine and hero to root for, each character has complex layers to them, resist stark definition and Pullman never paints in blunt swathes of black or white. One topic he won't to bend on is the corruption of the Church. It's cruel, perverted, and power hungry. The Church (or, in the world of HDM, "The Magisterium") is looking to discover the secret of what they call "Dust," which they believe to be the source of Original Sin. As the plot moves forward, it's clear that this Dust is what we call Dark Matter...

....Which was the focus of a fantastic article in the New York Times sunday magazine. In it, they explain that scientists are now describing the universe as being composed almost entirely of dark matter. 96% of the universe if made of it, while only 4% of the universe is made of the same things we are. I spent all night trying to come up with an analogy that would explain this, and this (measly) example is what I came up with:

Say you have a glass which has water in it. On top of the water are a couple drops of oil, separate from the water, naturally. Would you say that you have a glass of water, or a glass of oil? Unless you're usually required to wear a soft-shell helmet at all times, you would say that you have before you a glass of water, especially if you were told that the glass in front of you is 96% water, and only 4% oil. Our entire approach to the universe, to the matter that makes up the cosmos, has been to describe it as if it were a glass of oil. (I'm mixing metaphors here, but bear with me.) Galileo was once branded a heretic for suggesting that the sun, not the earth was at the center of our galaxy. Who knows what kookiness the Evangelicals will come up with once word of this gets to them. I'm gonna hope that they can't come up with anything, so they end up spouting up whatever comes to their mind first: "Gays killed the dinosaurs!" But anyway, back to my point:

What makes us (our toothpaste, your mom, Mars, carbon) is an aberration to the rest of the universe. We're something for the gag reel of the cosmos.

Something about this article struck my imagination. I like thinking of everything we know as just a blip, a possible mistake, a hair on the plate of the Big Bang. Everything we know about the very basics of matter - neutrons, protrons, electrons - is completely moot when it comes to Dust. I like that Dark Matter seems like something we can only understand if we confront the ego with which we've been looking at the universe as being made of what we are made of; I like that it seems like it'ss something that could only be illuminated to us if we stop trying to try and define it in terms we understand...

Which is precisely the point Keats was trying to make when he wrote of his philosophy of Negative Capability, which would be my creed, if had one. If I had more than a ridiculous mid-20's understanding of what "creed" means. What luck then, that Pullman quotes Keats himself! Lyra, the brave and foolish heroine of the series, is racing to stop the ominous Mrs. Coulter (her very own mother!). It seems the beautiful, cruel woman is intent on defining Dust, only so that she can destroy it, eradicate the threat it poses to the Church's power. Lyra crosses into our world (long story) and meets up with a Physicist in Oxford who may just have a clue (but definitely has good taste in poetry). She explains to our heroine that Dust can be found in our world too, and it looks like it's not just thoughtless matter:

"Yes," Dr. Malone went on, "they know we're here. They answer back. And here goes the crazy part: you can't see them unless you expect to. Unless you put your mind in a certain state. You have to be confident and relaxed at the same time. You have to be capable -- Where's that quotation..."
She reached into the middle of papers on her desk and found a scrap on whcih someone had written with a green pen. She read:
"'Capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.' You have to get into that state of mind. That's from the poet Keats, by the way. I found it it the other day."


So really, between HDM, some dark matter, and some Keats, I'm one very happy, very massive dork. Oh, did I promise some Daniel Craig? They've just wrapped shooting the film version of "The Golden Compass," book one of the His Dark Materials series. And who's playing Lord Asriel, Lyra's ominous father? Daniel Craig, natch. Don't say I never do anything for you.



Naturally,
Lizzie

Subway Thoughts With Lizzie

A bizarre phenomena sometimes strikes me on the subway. Amongst people in homogeneous black coats, iPods blaring Evanescence, and homeless people urinating, the mind can wander through those corridors of day dreams which are usually shut soundly, thanks to common sense and medication. My tendency to let loose my tenuous grasp on sanity while enjoying public transportation has given me a small on-going conversation with my general acquaintance. It's called, not surprisingly, "Subway Thoughts with Lizzie," and usually make me sound a particular brand of deranged. What better place to share these thoughts than on the magical internets!!!

One of the first installments of "Subway Thoughts with Lizzie" was focused on the basic mantra: "I could take that baby. I could totally take that baby." Of course, I couldn't, but for a moment there, I thought I could. This baby and I were having one of those mind melds when a baby is zoning out, staring at you (also frequent at zoos, when the gazelle are feeling cheeky) and, since I was going to my crazy space, I realized that this baby was young enough that if I took it and raised it as my own, it would never know. It would never know I wasn't its mother, that it had one been the child of two lovely, if poorly dressed people from Brooklyn who thought it was ok to dress it in a yellow hoodie with ears on the top. It would never know that it was stolen. On the F train. By me.

Of course, it might. It might grow up haunted and unsure, silently feeling as though something were dreadfully wrong, and that Mother was hiding a horrible secret, some hidden history that was slowly rotting away at the core of our supposedly happy little family. It might start acting up, staying out late with hoodlums, and stop visiting Old Mrs. Cooper down the street. It could start to resent me, sense that I was a phony, and then one day, while shoving black shirts into a trash bag, yell that it was leaving (don't even think about looking for it) was never going to call home, and never loved me anyway!


This is when I might add that this segment is also frequently called "Bat Shit Insane Thoughts With Lizzie." But before you begin to worry that I'm about to bogart someone's baby, I'll leave you with this comforting thought: the baby was in one of those backpack things, so there was no WAY I could get the baby out of the papoose, under my arm, and stand clear of the closing door. It would never work. Logistically, I mean. Probably for the best, I guess.

Stay tuned for more more Subway Thoughts (Coming soon: the time I planned out my outfit as a resistance fighter if crazy christians ever waged war on the island of Manhattan while on the shuttle between Times Square and Grand Central Station.)

I'd Totally Bang Satan

It's true: I have a thing for Satan. Blame it on my up-bringing in an Evangelical Christian home, but I just think he's dreamy. Blake and Shelley thought so too, thanks to Milton's "Paradise Lost." He was the proto-Romanticist, the pre-Byron Byron. (I actually think Byron was a bit of a hack, but that's for another post.) Because of this, I find most things pertaining to Lucifer, that don't involve blood letting or Hot Topic, to be fairly fascinating, and so I was well pleased to discover something new about my favorite Fallen One while watching The Power of Myth.

Here's the little tidbit: One of the differences between Christianity and Islam is their reasons for why Lucifer was cast of out heaven. Both agree it happened after a war in which the angelic hosts chose sides and warred, but it's Lucifer's reasons for rebellion that differ. God created his chorus of angels and told them that they would worship none other than him. Check. Then, he created man, and told the angels that they would serve man, and bow to him. Lucifer refused. Check.

The Christians believe that Lucifer refused because of his ego, that he could not stand to put man above him, no matter if his God decreed it, and for his pride he was banished. The Muslims believe that Lucifer couldn't bow to man because his love for God was so consuming, so powerful, that he could not bear to bend to beings so decidedly below the Creator. He loved God so much, he was willing to be banished to hell for rather than give that love up. The Muslims teach that hell is the absence of God, who is love, and so to survive, Satan (stripped of his original name) clings to the mere echoes of God's voice as he condemns his once beloved son to eternity in hell.

Of course, this is all more interesting if you spend half that paragragh misreading it as about why Santana was cast out of paradise.

I was thinking about this difference this morning, and was struck by how emotional, how poetic, this take on the Fall is. It's certainly more bitter sweet than "Satan was a jackass who wouldn't suck up." But in view of how desperately people are trying to understand the mind frame of fanatical Muslims who are willing to blow themselves up for their beliefs (a sect that does not represent Islam as a whole), this could be something that is illuminating. If one believes in this largely sympathetic depiction of Satan, it's an affirmation of sacrifice at the cost of that which you're sacrificing for (Lucifier loved God so much, he gave him up to sustain that love - like that shitty cliche, "If you love something, let it go.") So if:

(Self-Sacrifice) - (God) = Good / Poetic

then it follows that

(Self Sacrifice) + God + Virgins = Having Your Cake and Eating It Too


So, for the record, Satan is still hot, I'm still creeped out by organized religion, and blogs are not the place to pontificate about Muslim Extremism.

Maybe I should go back to NOT posting.

Naturally,
Lizzie