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Lightning Could Strike
Meet Joe Black at MOVIECLIPS.com

Currently cursing university registration practices.

30 March 2011 12:00 AM MDT means right now, doesn't it? 

So explain to me why we're an hour past deadline and not a single class has gone through. 

I am NOT staying up til two 

just to be elbowed out of my Senior Course in PoMo. 

Good thing my sister sends me pretty things to make it all better.

[ Still. Only so many times you can replay three minutes over two hours. ]

Am giving up and going to bed.

Wish I were here.

i do.

[ i am not engaged. that would be ridiculous. but they are. ]

I know you know this, have heard this, have seen this a million times over and are now probably at this minute simultaneously questioning my self-declared Anglophilia, post-mission adjustment rates and pop-culture knowledge in general. Which is fine; I think those are logical conclusions really anyone could come to, and I'm not offended, really I'm not, because who's to say I am adjusted and what is normal, anyway, and besides all that here is the main point: I know you know this, I know you know that Will and Kate are finally, officially WillandKate. But did you know I think this engagement photo is possibly perfection? That I think it's not just the very height of classy and colour combination but a lot like love? Well. I do.

And I bet you didn't know the Royals had a Flickr account, either. A Royal Engagement Set, even. Well. They do.

This is our dear Duke of York marrying Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, 1893. Cozy, no? And below, the Elizabeth's 1947 engagement to Lt Philip Mountbatten, notable for both genuine smiles and the divine drape of that dress. Issa's good, but post-war glamour? That's style.

All in all, good. England. Love. Castles and their respective princesses. I like them all. But this I love:

 

The light, the dress, the mirror, the stance. The asymmetrical symmetry of it all, the engagement photo elevated to art. Which I think is what a lot of people are trying to do these days, which is what I appreciated in WillandKate's version (that they didn't try, thank goodness), which is what this Prince Albert and his Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon did so effortlessly. To which I say: dead cert dynamite, old chap. Truly top-notch.

this is a poem.

For those of you within Utah driving distances, I co-pres a little thing we like to call LIFEclub and you're invited. Details for this week's soirée below; email me if you want any further assurances of pure awesomeness.

       .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
 
Friends, dearest LIFEers: it's coming, it's time;
The Club is in session be it free verse or rhyme.
This Thursday (four and twenty) just past 8:53
We gather for L.I.F.E. and life's breath: poetry.

Yes that's right, a reading--it will be corking splendid!
(As long as you're there, t'will be well-attended.)
You can memorize a favorite or make up your own
(Really anything goes by way of a poem).

Try the Beats or Post-Mod or the very Romantic;
There's Edwardian, Georgian---even intergalactic!
Be inspired by Uncle Walt or dear Anne with an E---
Or the snark of the art like Taylor Mali.

And maybe you're thinking Meh, not really my thing . . .
But remember L.I.F.E.'s point, to give our souls wing?
Love's language is certain to do your heart good;
Come hear and be merry (e.e. surely would).

So be it in beanie and Converse or puff sleeves and white lace
Come Thursday night, Kimball Three is the place.
Forget stagefright or wordfright; poems are worlds without laws---
At the very least come to snap-snap your applause.

     .  .  .  .  .  .  .

And don't worry. I'm sure the poetical offerings on hand will be ten times my above attempt.

see you there!

apple of my eye

[ as in: you are the ]

ROOMMATE: So I actually really love to carve fruit.

E: Wait, what . . . does that mean?

ROOMMATE: Here. I brought apples. Try it.

[ your turn. grab a steak knife and go. ]

grey, quiet and tired and mean.

[ image my own : wales 2008 ]

One of those days, you know? Where it's not really like anything bad's happened--it's just nothing's happened. When you just wake up, and go to school, and do your homework, and come home, and do the dishes, and take out the trash, and do your homework, and make some dinner, and do your homework. Where you get emails every forty minutes or so, except they're emails from University Communications or InStyle or Jody Wilkinson Acura (why?). Or your phone rings and it's telemarketers. Spanish. Three times in one hour.

Sigh.

In Tolstoy today we got to the very heart of Anna Karenina, Part Four, you know, the really messy bit where you write dramadramadrama in the margins and discuss the mechanics of Vronsky's attempted suicide with the military boy who sits one desk ahead of you and to the right (because if we're talking guns, we should really talk to him). But once Mark wrote a few salient and numbered points on the board and our thoughts could follow with a bit more focus, the capital event was the spiritual revolution among the three main characters (and okay, I know, I know. Tolstoy doesn't do main characters. But for the sake of the story . . .). Most everyone was so super inspired by this meridian moment of forgiveness--I mean, you even like Karenin, for goodness' sake--but the thing about this incredible inner change is that it begins and ends in Part Four. In chapter seventeen we've got Karenin and Vronsky in tears on either side of Anna's deathbed. Twenty-four pages later Karenin's filed for divorce Anna's off to Italy.

And actually this is something Tolstoy does a lot, something I think is called reality? People were very upset by it. How do you feel the fire of forgiveness, the light of love, and then remain the same? Why would you make yourself miserable when you've seen the way to joy? Um. I raised my hand. Aren't we all this stupid? Isn't that part of the reason we find this so tragically beautiful? How many times have you done exactly this same thing? As in, like, for example: today I turned in a paper that was due 56 hours ago. It was miserable, the worst. Never again, I said. Which is why I am at this moment blogging when I have yet another paper to be turned in 42 hours from now? Right.

We fall down. And we get up.

the ides

Twenty-three on the fifteenth of the third month in twenty-eleven = just a little bit magical. Any odd number seems a lucky one to me, and this equation even had two of my most favorites, a sum that can only mean happiness ahead. A sum proved by the llama.

Also, bread pudding at Communal and Sweet Tooth Fairy in Indonesian. A morning prayer in Bulgarian and happy birthday to a Dutch tune. Calls from all over the country and emails from across the world. Oh, how I love you all.  

Terima kasih for a birthday of epic goodness.

so prettier than all the rest

This is a Justin Bieber cake, and that was a Justin Bieber lyric. Yep. So prettier. I don't really know exactly entirely how he got famous either, but I'm guessing it wasn't for grammar. 

But I will just be glad we've got him anyhow, because Bieber makes for great birthdays 

and Sharlie's was stellar. Pretty people. Pop-art posters. Pin the Kiss on the Bieber.
May or may not have won the trivia contest.

buon compleanno, amica!

[ you put the L in L.I.F.E. ]

the rock + the tide.

[ he sings the secrets of my soul. ]

Naomi's birthday. Sixteen (since when?!). In the Venue, seven o'clock. We got there just past eight, alternately pushing past high school hipsters and cuddly couples to stand at the edge of the stairs, where we could be a good head taller than anybody else and close enough to catch his eye. I'd forgotten this, concerts. The calculated slap-dash of the venue, the muddied lights and maddening crowd. The music. The way it gets up into your bones like spring rain on the East Coast. How sometimes you hear words you remember your heart beating. That rush of city air after the second encore, the moment you walk out into the world again feeling like you just might get it right this time. See a mountain, see an ocean.

you looked right through me/there was no one else

sat beside you and became myself