More Absurdity

Your Word is "Peace"

You see life as precious, and you wish everyone was safe, happy, and taken care of. Social justice, human rights, and peace for all nations are all important to you. While you can't stop war, you try to be as calm and compassionate as possible in your everyday life. You promote harmony and cooperation. You're always willing to meet someone a little more than halfway.

What's Your Word?

Okay, this is kind of interesting, because while social justice projects are incredibly important to me, I am not a calm and compassionate person, though I promote those qualities in all sorts of ways. But I'm naturally impatient and snarky. Oh dear. No wonder I'm so confused.

End of Year Meme

As seen at Hilaire's and Dr. Crazy's:


1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
-Had a baby!
-Taught the SAT
-Taught at a community college
-Lived in a travel trailer at a campground for five months.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't think I made any resolutions last year. For 2009, I'd like to keep up some daily or near-daily or at least regular progress (darling baby makes daily anything impossible) on my research/academic writing. I'd also like to get into writing essays, a long-promised goal.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
ME! In addition to me there were blogfriends, somewhat distant but very loving friends, and family of friends who all gave birth this year.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
My folks' family cat.

5. What countries did you visit?
Shockingly, none. But after 2007's adventures, staying in one place was enough.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
Money. Much more regular income. And enough of it.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
October 22: Absurdist Baby's birth!
October 10-11: his due date

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Is having a baby an achievement? Really just getting through the incredible stress of working so hard for so little was a huge achievement. Not getting more depressed than I got after my c-section was a huge achievement. Somehow managing to be on the market and teach two classes while pregnant and then in the first weeks with a baby -- I really don't know how I managed that.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not being more gracious.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I had a minor form of preeclampsia. I also had an unplanned C-section. I did have a terrible cold at one point that taught me that you can cough so much you throw up. I went in to check out a breast lump.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
I did not make any fabulous purchases this year.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Absurdist Lover, at least in the five or so months. The world's: we received a lot of needed items like furniture through the whims of fate. One Tired Ema, whose mailed gift makes my continued working life possible. My sister, who has been fabulous.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Judgmental and Rigid Former Friend. When a very good friend of mine told her about some of my life's developments, JRFF said some really hurtful and terrible things, the kinds of things that you don't say about a friend and call her a friend. These things inevitably got back to me (especially since I told my very good friend that I didn't feel I was a good enough friend to JRFF), but when she wrote to me, she was all kindness. Yet I know what she really thinks of me. I've thought often of addressing it, sending her an email telling her I know what she really thinks. But I haven't.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent and bills. Vitamins and supplements for pregnancy. Medical expenses.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Oh the baby, what else? And that I got four interviews at MLA. Christmas.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Probably the MASH theme song, just because I watch that show virtually every day.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
happier, I think, thinner, poorer

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
I wish I'd written more.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Worried.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I spent Christmas cutting fudge for presents, being with Absurdist Lover and Baby, and then went to my folks and ate Christmas dinner.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008?
Only with Absurdist Baby.

22. How many one-night stands?
Zero, thank you very much.

23. What was your favorite TV program?
MASH.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Judgmental and Rigid Former Friend.

25. What was the best book you read?
I've read very few books this year. Early on in the pregnancy, I could only focus on mysteries -- so I reread Agatha Christie's and read an Elizabeth George. Then I started Middlemarch and was reading it for six months in tiny drips. But I listened to both Steve Martin's Born Standing Up and Barbara Kingsolver et al's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Kingsolver et al get my vote -- yes, even over Middlemarch. (I prefer nonfiction to fiction. I don't mean to. I wanted to be a novelist, for goodness sakes. But there it is.)

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I am totally behind the times and made no musical discoveries this year. In fact, I listened to classical music throughout the pregnancy.

27. What did you want and get?
A very healthy baby. Interviews.

28. What did you want and not get?
Financial stability, though with Absurdist Lover having gotten a full-time job recently, I think our financial position is changing.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?
Would you believe that even though Sex and the City and Mamma Mia came out this year, I have not seen either. The only movie I saw in the theater this year was The Dark Knight.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
36 (gulp). I took care of the baby and then went out to dinner with the fam.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Financial or romantic stability.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
As long as it covers me up, it's okay.

33. What kept you sane?
IMing Maude.

34. What celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
None.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Local farming/eating.

36. Who did you miss?
Maude. Jane D. All my friends in Grad City.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
My midwife. I also felt like I met my sister all over again.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
Nothing happens the way you want it to, but that's okay. Also, having a baby puts you more in touch with your own childhood and sense of wonder.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
No.

Oh Calliope, Sit with Me a While

What a wonderful idea for a quizzy! As seen at Hilaire's.

Your result for The A-Muse-ing Test...

Your muse is Calliope!

40% Calliope, 10% Thalia, 0% Urania, 0% Clio, 10% Erato, 10% Euterpe, 10% Melpomene, 10% Polyhymnia and 10% Terpsichore!

Calliope is the oldest and wisest of the muses. She is called "The One of Beautiful Speech." Calliope is the muse of epic or heroic poetry and may have been the very one that inspired Homer when he wrote the Illiad and the Odyessy.

Allow Calliope to inspire you.

Begin by trying out different rhyme schemes, to see what you like best. Find a safe comfortable place to work where you will not be disturbed. Bring a candle, some paper, and pens or pencils. Ask Calliope to come and sit with you for a while. Then light your candle for your fire of inspiration. Relax and let your mind go. Put your pen to the paper and just let things go. You may be surprised to see what you come up with as you allow your inner thoughts to take form on paper.

Don't be discouraged if it doesn't come easily the first time. Sometimes the best things come with persistence and patience.

Take The A-Muse-ing Test at HelloQuizzy

Not Loralei Lee, But the Real Marilyn! (Oh Norma Jean!)

It's a bit scary how accurate this is, though maybe I'm just tired and feeling especially vulnerable. As seen at Maude's place:

Your result for Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz ...

You Are a Marilyn!

You are a Marilyn -- "I am affectionate and skeptical."

Marilyns are responsible, trustworthy, and value loyalty to family, friends, groups, and causes. Their personalities range broadly from reserved and timid to outspoken and confrontative.

How to Get Along with Me

• Be direct and clear
• Listen to me carefully
• Don't judge me for my anxiety
• Work things through with me
• Reassure me that everything is OK between us
• Laugh and make jokes with me
• Gently push me toward new experiences
• Try not to overreact to my overreacting.

What I Like About Being a Marilyn

• being committed and faithful to family and friends
• being responsible and hardworking
• being compassionate toward others
• having intellect and wit
• being a nonconformist
• confronting danger bravely
• being direct and assertive

What's Hard About Being a Marilyn

• the constant push and pull involved in trying to make up my mind
• procrastinating because of fear of failure; having little confidence in myself
• fearing being abandoned or taken advantage of
• exhausting myself by worrying and scanning for danger
• wishing I had a rule book at work so I could do everything right
• being too critical of myself when I haven't lived up to my expectations

Marilyns as Children Often

• are friendly, likable, and dependable, and/or sarcastic, bossy, and stubborn
• are anxious and hypervigilant; anticipate danger
• form a team of "us against them" with a best friend or parent
• look to groups or authorities to protect them and/or question authority and rebel
• are neglected or abused, come from unpredictable or alcoholic families, and/or take on the fearfulness of an overly anxious parent

Marilyns as Parents

• are often loving, nurturing, and have a strong sense of duty
• are sometimes reluctant to give their children independence
• worry more than most that their children will get hurt
• sometimes have trouble saying no and setting boundaries

Sock Silliness

As seen over at Hilaire's:

What Your Socks Say About You

You Are: - Simply outstanding - Brave to the core - A person of depth - Infinitely wise

The Socks Personality Test

No Surprises Here

In fact, I was pretty embarrassed when I read the intro to the quiz, complete with nail-biting (yes, even at the age of 35, I'm an inveterate nail-biter), thinking that the "suggestion to 'relax' is as laughable as the command 'sprout wings and fly," and sarcasm as a "conversational tool." So embarrassed at being so known that I had to read it to Absurdist Lover to explain why my blood pressure rises every time he says "relax." I'm neurotic, dude! I can't relax on command!

Seen at Khora's.

Your Score: The True Neurotic

You scored 59 anxiety, 73 awkwardness, and 59 neuroticism!

Congratulations, you are The True Neurotic, you nail-biting, conflict-avoiding worrier, you. You're plagued by self-doubt and anxiety, which makes social activity hard--even though you may be well-liked, you feel under a storm of silent criticism. It doesn't help that people give you funny looks for organizing all your pens by color or sharpening your gnawed pencils to a delicate point.

Your high anxiety score implies that you are unable to relax, worry about the future often, and probably are plagued by irrational fears and self-doubt.

Your high awkwardness score implies that you are socially inept, probably stick out from the crowd, and feel uncomfortable in large groups of people, such as at parties.

Your high neuroticism score implies that you exhibit neurotic behaviors--probably organization, fanatic obsessions (can you recite the entire first LOTR movie?), repetitive mantras, constant checking, or orderly rituals.
__

See the other results!
Well-Adjusted
The Neat Freak
The Dork
The Geek
Phobic
Obsessive-Compulsive
The Subtle Neurotic
The True Neurotic

Link: The Neurotic Test written by littlelostsnail on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test View My Profile(littlelostsnail)

Oh, Bird.

Found, as ever, at Maude's place. I don't think this is right. Surely, with my crazed nesting and cooking lately, I should be Cookie Monster. And with the camper not selling (!) so we don't have money, I'm a great contender for Oscar the Grouch! But here it is.

Your Score: Snuffleupagus

You scored 66% Organization, 60% abstract, and 64% extroverted!

This test measured 3 variables.

First, this test measured how organized you are. Some muppets like Cookie Monster make big messes, while others like Bert are quite anal about things being clean.

Second, this test measured if you prefer a concrete or an abstract viewpoint. For the purposes of this test, concrete people are considered to gravitate more to mathematical and logical approaches, whereas abstract people are more the dreamers and artistic type.<

Third, this test measured if you are more of an introvert or an extrovert. By definition, an introvert concentrates more on herself and an extrovert focuses more on others. In this test an introvert was somebody that either tends to spend more time alone or thinks more about herself.

You are somewhat organized, both concrete and abstract, and both introverted and extroverted.

I bet you didn't think you were Snuffleupagus. Let's find out why.

You are both somewhat organized. You have a good idea where you put things and you probably keep your place reasonably clean. You aren't totally obsessed with neatness though. Alloyius Snuffleupagus (and all Snuffleupagus') is not sloppy by nature, but he moves so incredibly slowly that it is impossible for him to be totally organized.


You both are about equally concrete and abstract thinkers. You have a good balance in your life. You know when to be logical at times, but you also aren't afraid to explore your dreams and desires... within limits of course. Snuffy generally has very basic interests, but he explores his abstract sensitive side when he plays his snuffleflute.


You both are somewhat introverted. Originally Snuffleupagus was very shy and was only Big Bird's invisible friend. However as he has aged he has started to build new friendships with new characters. Like Snuffy, you probably like to have some time to yourself. However, you do appreciate spending time with your friends, and you aren't scared of social situations.

The other possible characters are

Oscar the Grouch

Big Bird

Cookie Monster

Ernie

Elmo

Kermit the Frog

Grover

The Count

Guy Smiley

Bert

I Should Change My Name

to Earnest Austen or Not-so-Earnest-or-Well-Read-but-Somehow-Got-through-Three-English-Degrees.

Found at Maude, in Progress.
The top 100 or so books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users.
Bold the books you have read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre (the first time was when I was 10!)
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace (We had to choose a classic when I was in 9th grade, so I chose this one, much to the amazement of my teacher. Yes I did get extra time to finish the doorstop.)
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner (I decided to teach this one in a class. That counts as school, no?)
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (One of many books I started but did not finish for school.)
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion is this (?)
There is Confusion (?)
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

My Memoir

Life in chaos. No firm ground.

Maude tagged me for the memoir meme,encouraging me to sum up my life right now in six words. I'm sure I've never been so succinct. I never thought about it before, but Munch's screamer is screaming so he can't hear anything. I'm too worn out for screaming. I'm trying for movies and books to drown everything out. Suffice it to say, life is shit, and I almost wish I were dead.

Here are the meme rules:

1. Write your own six word memoir.

2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like.

3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.

4. Tag five more blogs with links.

5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

Who to tag? Hilaire and Medieval Woman, who've both had bad news this month and could maybe use the diversion, Sisyphus,whose sense of humor and command of metaphor may just cheer me up, Khora, who needs an excuse to blog more, and T.E., just because.

I Lose Energy in the Afternoon, But. . .

As seen over at Maude's.

Five Loved Books of 2007: A Meme

Jane D. over at Unnoted Unseen Unsung notes that the National Book Critic's Circle recommends five books per month. This list is derived from asking "What 2007 books have you read that you have truly loved?" to writers, critics, and book lovers. I am a writer and book lover. And most of you fit one of those descriptors. So it's our turn.

My 2007 is not everyone's 2007 -- the books I discovered in 2007 are not the same as books that came out in 2007. But these are books that I came to love this year. Here goes:

1. Possession by A.S. Byatt: I laughed, I smirked, I cried, I bawled.
2. Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver: Okay, so this is not The Poisonwood Bible. In fact, I started this book five different times since I bought it in hardcover when it came out and couldn't really get sucked in. Then finally, I got sucked in. I did find that there was a fair amount of environmental information in the book, which I found interesting but didn't need. I'm always interested in the balance of information/position-taking and story in a given novel, especially because I love novels that have political content. I don't know what I think of the balance here, but I definitely lived with this book for a good long time -- and even now remember the old man who got jealous of the scarecrow looking inappropriately at his neighbor's legs!
3. Traveling Mercies and Grace (Eventually) by Anne Lamott: I needed these books. I just needed them. My life is so strange and odd, it's nice to hear about someone who is totally as neurotic as I am trying to live a good life. I'm not a Christian, but I found that Lamott's Jesus was the good and generous within ourselves -- and you don't have to be a devout or born again Christian to want to live your life centered in the generous, good, divine part of ourselves.
4. On Writing by Stephen King: Lamott and King together gave me permission to write -- again. King has also given me this vision of being a poor near-starving writer typing like mad in a trailer, a vision I'm taking way too seriously about now. But there it is.
5. I can't think of a fifth! What's that about??? I've been reading, but this is about books I've loved. I'm screwing up my own meme. Nuts. I guess the closest right now would be Helen Fox's Listening to the World: Cultural Issues in Academic Writing. I did not finish the book, but I've referenced it in conversations something like 87 times. That may not be love, but it's certainly some form of mild worship.
   

I'm tapping five people for the Five Loved Books of 2007 Meme: Maude Lebowski, Jane D., Hilaire, Medieval Woman (because she needs something else to think about other than the obvious), and Sisyphus.

Seven, Seven, Seven into the Future

Though I've had this blog for a year and used to be an avid blogger, I have only for the first time been tagged for a meme! It is the ubiquitous Seven Random Things about Me meme -- and darling Maude Lebowski is the one who dun it.

Here are the rules:

The rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog. (I'm sorry, but shouldn't that be person "who" tagged you? Forgive me; I've been grading.)
2. Share 7 random and/or weird things about yourself.
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs. (Come on! If I've been tagged, there is practically no one in the blogoverse who has not been tagged.)
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog. On it. (Uh huh.)

So here are some weird facts about me:

1. Apropos of the title of this post, when I was a child in the '70s, I loved The Steve Miller Band's song "Fly Like an Eagle." (Also, The Kinks's "Lola," though my mother worried about me loving that song.) Maybe it was too much Sesame Street and "today was brought to you by the letters X and Z and by the number seven," but I was convinced that part of the song went: "Seven, seven, seven. . .into the future."
   
2. Connected to this is that my parents were very young when they had me. So I grew up with parents who were alternately Nichiren Shoshu Buddhists, avid bowling team bowlers with trophies all over the house (including the special joke one given to my mother when she bowled a season pregnant), and rally racers. After Urban Cowboy came out, I babysat my much-younger sister on the weekends when it was imperative that my parents had to go "ride the bull." This said, I still sometimes forget about all this and wonder why I don't fit in with the status quo. Then I remember.
3. Further connected to this is that recently my wonderful bashert, OPL told me that I'm one of those crazy people who don't know they're crazy. (Okay, so I asked him and he said: "a little." "Really? I'm one of those people?" I asked again. He said: "a little.") The really crazy thing is that this makes me feel better. When I was young, I feared being normal and average. I needn't have bothered. For the last couple years, I feel like I've been pouring lifeblood into the project of being "presentable" ("a vegetable," goes the next line in the super-fab "Logical Song" by Supertramp). It's exhausting. The seams of this "presentable" costume are so frayed, I must look like the Scarecrow without a Brain.
   
4. The strange thing isn't that I am divorced but that I was ever married. People who know me now (and didn't then) can never remember that I spent ten years with someone. That's how single I seem, I guess. And I no longer remember what it felt like to be married. Could it have been that my marriage was just like having a roommate around?
   
5. In the last three stressful work environments that I've been in (which is to say the last three work environments I've been in), part of my coping strategy has been imagining my work as a TV series with long, complex and totally over-the-top storylines. Grad school was simply called "English" and featured a homeless grad student who slept on a cot in his office and showered at the gym, a hapless new grad student who had terrible teaching nightmares and whose teaching scenes would be shot like acid trips, and the scheming social climber grad student who was alternately screwing professors and students in her office. In my previous work environment, the series starred Martian engineers, a drug-dealing cat who slapped his owner around, a boss who seemed incredibly competent to all and sundry but secretly freaked out and shot up under her desk, and the graphic artist who was turning into a fly who was the only one who could see the boss as she was: totally and completely freaking out all the time. Of course, all the characters were based on someone real. Right now I'm working on a movie. I'm keeping this one to myself for now. I still need its good healing mojo.
6. Contrary to my sarcastic and cheeky affect, I'm a total romantic, loving Jane Austen movies (and, of course, the novels, though really they are all about money and virtue, which I find satisfying for my heart and my head) and a sweet and much-beloved British comedy series called As Time Goes By, about two people who meet up again thirty-eight years after their romance abruptly ended. I also love old-fashioned things like needlepoint and cross-stitch. I'm sarcastic and self-effacing as a defense because I'm sort of embarrassed about my old-fashionedness. At the same time, I have totally liberal views about relationships and gender roles. In theory. In practice? I still think the man should be the one to smell the milk to see whether it's gone off.
   
7. For many, going to grad school and pursuing the life of the mind and the uncertain life of a grad student-turned-professor is a dream that requires a giant leap of faith. But I worry that it's a way for me to cop out and give myself an excuse to not try to live out my dreams. I've sought out structure and security in my life. What's more structured (if not secure) than the tenure track? Leaving that sure-step future is, I think, a bigger leap of faith for me. It's scary.

Can't Help Myself

It must be the countdown to the Interviewing Conference that has left me only able to appreciate Memey Goodness. (Of course, there is also the all-important Return of Earnest English to Absurdist Paradise from absurdist inferno to look forward to.) So here are some Random Facts, as seen over at Jane Dark's Rome Colored Glasses:

People have often asked the United States, What is your secret weapon against terrorists? We simply reply...Earnest English.

When Earnest English goes to out to eat, she orders a whole chicken, but she only eats its soul.

Earnest English has 12 moons. One of those moons is the Earth.

Earnest English's calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd; no one fools Earnest English.

When Earnest English sends in her taxes, she sends blank forms and includes only a picture of herself, crouched and ready to attack. Earnest English has not had to pay taxes, ever.

Most tough men eat nails for breakfast. Earnest English does all of her grocery shopping at Home Depot.

Earnest English is the only woman to ever defeat a brick wall in a game of tennis. (But only during my dissertation.)

Never Fear

Earnest English will be back and the absurdity will continue! One month from today (ish). Same bat time, same bat channel. Stay tuned. Until then. . .

Eternity was in our lips and Earnest English.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Get your own quotes: