I'm cleaning out my room in my parents' home. I'm giving a lot of stuff away, but I'm throwing a lot of stuff away, too. When I do deep-cleans like this, I realize that I have some tendencies pack rats have, and I like to squirrel things away in random corners.

I've accumulated a lot of religiously-themed bits of paper, pictures, writings, pamphlets, and bookmarks. Every time I recycle a bookmark with Jesus' face on it, I feel as if I'm committing some act of high sacrilege and sealing my fate in some form of fiery furnace.

But, Jesus-faced bookmark, if I haven't used you in the past 10 years, do you honestly think I'm going to start using you now? I'm recycling the piece of paper, not the religious idea/belief...

Yes, there is an image of the bookmark on teh interwebs.

And yes, I still feel guilty. 

Excuse me, now I must go and take out the recycling.

Because I Have Lacked Lists Recently

The thesis is done and turned in, and so that means that it is time for Lizzle to take back the blogosphere. At times, I've used this blog to fit a variety of purposes (unfortunately, none of them are remotely professional and can be used on a resume, which is a pity, indeed), from a mini-travelogue to a journal of thoughts and experiments. In the foreseeable future -- i.e. the next two weeks -- this blog will serve as a journal and a job-hunt diary.

This isn't really related to anything.

But before I get into all that, I must make the disclaimer that a good family member encouraged me to restart the blog. I have interesting things to note (such as, in the midst of cleaning my room, I found two copies of Parzival, a 12th-century epic German poem -- how did they get there?), but there are some things that I don't want all of you oh-so-many readers to know about. So I'm going to be circumspect, while still putting out some content.

• Watching the latest episodes of Sherlock really puts a damper in getting other things done, such as cleaning one's room or sending out various thank-you notes for graduation accumulations.
• Goodreads keeps on making me friends with people I have not consented to being friends with on their website. Facebook is behind all of this -- I am friends with them on Facebook, therefore Goodreads must think they can assign me as a book-buddy to anyone they desire. They will be hearing from my settings very shortly.
• There is too much stuff in my room. I recently found an old chapstick that expired in 2004. I also found an invitation to a ceilidh in November 2010 in Edinburgh. I remember that ceilidh.
• I like moaning piteously at things. Particularly at night.
• Computers are anathema to productivity. I have a lot of things I could be doing, and yet if there is a computer on and within 50 feet of me, I'm on it. Somehow I find myself on Facebook, or on Gmail, or on webcomics. This is never a problem with blogging. Ever.Music and iPods have put a damper on how productively I think. Listening to music is like watching tv for me, but without actually having to watch tv. It babysits my brain instead of letting it function on its own like that of a capable adult's. I can have really interesting conversations in my head, not unlike the first dozen exchanges in this transcript from the Big Bang Theory.

no words I don't even

Gasp. Wow, it's been a difficult process to find myself here, writing this, now. I don't even know what to think, my mind feels numb. I've just been in a thesis-editing hole. Extraneous functions have been  pared down to a minimum - no Facebook, no Gunnerkrigg Court, no webcomics, no Attack of the Cute or even Cake Wreaks (okay, well, maybe Cake Wreaks). And that goes for many social interactions, too. And yet I find myself here, writing a blog post.

I think I've come to the realization that I almost did it - I almost got away from the internet for recreational use (Oh, OED Online, I could never get away from you. Or Pandora's "Baroque" station. Or Gotye and the Bee Gee's on Youtube.), and here I am feeling something vapid and whiny about how one chooses to spend one's time and how to find value.

All I wanted to do was tell someone that I found a way to work "witch which" into my thesis.

George Takei: The Center of the Universe, Take Two

Brother: "How did George Takei end up the center of the digital universe?"

Me: "Because he's George Takei. He posts really amusing images/memes that must be shared. I will get on Facebook just to see if he's posted anything new. True, he does not create these tropes, but he has a largish sphere of influence, so that makes him like an Erasmus of the internet. That's funny, because Erasmus was like the internet of the 15th century. How times have changed."

George Takei: The Center of the Universe

"George Takei is now the tropic center of Facebook. We orbit him like little tiny satellites around a shining (non-sparkling) sun as he collects and sends forth amusements. They must be shared." -- myself on Wednesday

A Paraphrased Conversation with I.*

Me: "Friend I., do you watch 'Once Upon a Time'?"

Friend I: "I do. I watched the pilot, and I thought, 'This is stupid.' Then half an hour later I had a craving to watch the next episode."

Me: "Agreed. It's my guilty pleasure. I watch it, and then I think, 'I have to balance this out with a respectable show. I'm going to go watch "Battlestar Galactica."'"


*No, I did not have a schizophrenic conversation with myself.

Refrigerator Magnets: I've Made it to the Big Time

I have made it in life! To a certain degree anyway. A fellow student in my poetry writing class said that one of the lines I wrote could be put on a refrigerator magnet: "among siblings, one is always a child."

Whoo for freshly-minted aphorisms, or possible koans.

I'm a Centaur! Wait...

I have a a pair of black ballet slippers, and if you just look at the toes, they look like hooves. Every time I slip them on while wearing long pants, I look down at my legs and think, "I'm a centaur! Hi-ho, awaaaaaaay!!!" Then I remember. I am not a centaur.

The Pleasures of Break

If I have done nothing else during this break, I have read. Nothing too fancy, but it has been a delight to devour books of my own choosing, at my own pace, at my own level of difficulty. Not that I don't enjoy struggling with the prose of Henry James or the ideological complexities of Ralph Ellison, but fluff (which comprises much of the books that I completed) has its place. As the Sister has done over at Vie Lyonnaise, I'm including my own list of the books I've read over the break.

Completed:
Eternal Man - Truman G. Madsen
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
Abarat - Clive Barker
Days of Magic, Nights of War - Clive Barker
Absolute Midnight - Clive Barker
Ella Enchanted - Gail Carson Levine
assorted Edgar Allan Poe short stories
assorted articles from the "Edgar Allan Poe Review"

Started:
A Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Embassytown - China Mieville
Night's Master - Tanith Lee


To-read:
Rough Stone Rolling - Richard Bushman
Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith
The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan


In other news, Avi, if you're out there reading this, know that I have been listening to "Morally Sound," and I adore it. I make my home-friends listen to it, and in turn it makes me everything I always wanted to be: the cool kid with (at least, comparatively) the most obscure music.

"The men felt overwhelmed by their most ancient memories in that paradise of dampness and silence, going back to before original sin, as their boots sank into pools of steaming oil and their machetes destroyed bloody lilies and golden salamanders. For a week, almost without speaking, they went ahead like sleepwalkers through a universe of grief, lighted only by the tenuous reflection of luminous insects, and their lungs were overwhelmed by a suffocating smell of blood."

-Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

On "Maria" again

"These tints of feeling indeed were doubtless but the iridescence of his idleness, and they were presently lost in new light from Maria."

--Henry James, The Ambassadors, 12.iii

because

"The awful tragedy of this life, as of the next, is not suffering. It is "suffering in vain." Or worse, it is suffering that could have been the elixir of nobility, transforming us into a godliness beyond description which, instead, has become the poison of bitterness and alienation.

"But this is equally certain: from the smoldering rubble of our lives, stricken and agonized though they be, there can arise, through Christ, an incredible shining joy, a joy in the image of Christ who is the image of God who overcame all things."

-Truman G. Madsen, Eternal Man