Jackelopette

According to the Interwubs Meme Generator, and unconfirmed by BBC.co.uk … the BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total and put it in the title.

I added a (-) to the ones I would not willingly read again. Sometimes once is more than enough.

I believe Villanova’s English department is responsible for perpetrating a good half of my list onto my poor, pathetic mind.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen (X)
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien (X+)
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte (X)
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (X+)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee (X)
6 The Bible (X)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte (X)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell (X)
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman (X+)
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens (X-)
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott (X)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy ( )
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller (*)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (* and a partial X+ … I’m slowly working on it!)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier (X)
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien (X)
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk ( )
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger (X)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger (X+)
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot ( )
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell (X)
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald (X+)
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens (-)
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy (*)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (X+)
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh (*)
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky (X)
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck (X)
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll (X+ , especially the all-in-one Annotated copy from my dad)
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame (X)
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy (*)
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens (-)
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis (X+)
34 Emma – Jane Austen (X)
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen (X)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (X … I cry duplicate to #33!)
37. Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini (*)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres (*)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden (X+)
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne (X)
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell (X)
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown (X-)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (*)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving ( )
45 The Woman in White – (*)
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery (X+ … plus the series)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy ( )
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood (*)
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding (X)
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan (X -)
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel (X+)
52 Dune – Frank Herbert (X)
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons ( )
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen (X)
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth ( )
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon ( )
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens (X-)
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley (*)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon ( *)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (X)
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck (X)
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov ( )
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt ( )
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold (*)
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas (X -)
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac (*)
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy ( )
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding (X – … upon further reading)
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie ( )
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville (*)
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens (X)
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker (X)
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett (X)
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson ( )
75 Ulysses – James Joyce (X)
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath (*)
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome ( )
78 Germinal – Emile Zola ( )
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray (*)
80 Possession – AS Byatt (X)
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens (X)
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell ( )
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker (*)
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro ( )
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert (X -)
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry ( )
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White (X)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom ( )
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (partial X)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton ( )
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad (X -)
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery (X+)
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks ( )
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams (X+)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Toole (X -)
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas (X -)
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare (X+ … though I call duplicate to #14!)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl (X)
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo (X)

OK, OK, so I’m an incorrigible geek with a penchant for literary self-punishment. Shaddup.

Put your MP3 player on shuffle, and write down the first line of the first twenty songs. Post the poem that results. The first line of the twenty-first is the title.

I Remember When

You hold the answer deep within your own mind
The moon shook and curled up like gentle fire
Deck the halls with boughs of holly
Feel it break your bones Mr. Jones

Your cell phone, your wallet, your time, your ideas
Tale as old as time
I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together
In a forest of stone underneath the corporate canopy

Crocodile on my feet
I was afraid you’d hit me if I’d spoken up
Bye bye, love.

Pale September, I wore the time like a dress that year
For all those girls, who speak contradiction
And it came to pass, all that seemed wrong
was now right
In the white room with black curtains near the station.

Just got back from Paris, France
Well, I know, I miss more than hit
Cupid hath pulled back his sweethearts bow
A starry destination is where we we’re going
Let me know that I’ve done wrong.

Visited Mount Vernon today with a new friend from Council.

Much fun was had, sarcasm exchanged, and general merriment made.

Highlights:

• “Welcome to Mount Vernon Airlines…”
• George Washington was a 4-Her ahead of his time… he even planted clover to aid in crop rotation!
• “Please do not photograph George Washington’s dentures.”
• “Your Exalted High Mightiness… Mr. President.”
• Cavies and sheep. ‘Nuff said.
• The two primary house slaves at Mount Vernon… names in common with folks I know now, in (dare I say it) somewhat similar positions.
• A Dargan’s-style Irish pub in Old Town Alexandria. Need I say more?

…who stole it from the Internet.

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee.
Savour the coffee, not the cups! The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything. Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly.

Today is May 30. I have tomorrow through Sunday off for a class reunion that’s turned into just another packed weekend at home. Doesn’t seem like the rest of my class is going, either, so even if I do go it’ll be just me and the faculty, and maybe a dragged-along friend.

I gave notice at work, and since Chrissie and Heather are leaving too, we’re trying to plan a blow-out goodbye party for the deli folk.

15 days left, a good chunk of which won’t be work.

Then another 2 weeks before I’m planning to leave.

Things I’ve learned in the last week:

• Doing a kitchen’s worth of crusty dishes by hand goes much more quickly with a glass of wine and a good buddy from the old days.
• I forgive and forget way too easily.
• If you show up to a 4-H event without a task, rest (or actually don’t rest… run!) assured that you’ll be given one within a few footsteps.
• Most men are stupid. That’s why I hang out with the few smart ones almost exclusively.
• Newly sharpened knives cut right through stuff that used to be more than proof against them. Oh thumbnail, how I miss thee… now if only I could find a band-aid that wouldn’t fall off at the first sign of water…
• Things change. And change again. And change one more time so that you’re back where you’re started.
• Everyone, everywhere, will always plan all their events for the same day as everyone else. Always.
• “A few days of rest and relaxation” never ends up that way when there are other people involved.
• Murphy’s Law applies.

I don’t understand the poem, and yet it’s in my mind tonight.

The Hollow Men
TS Eliot (1925)
I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer –

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Quote of the day:
“You’re not arm fodder, you’re mind candy.” ~ Foutz

“The production also surcame to the possible pitfalls of two-man shows, and not always gracefully.”

I can only hope that “surcame” is an attempt at conjugating “succumb” when it was misspelled as “surcome.”

At least it was in the Arts & Entertainment section.

I will now sum up the entirety of Winter Quarter 2006.

ESP 100
Ecology means all the species work together to achieve a nirvana of good-enough-to-survive

Comp Lit 20
Nature and man are disconnected because man is arrogant and naive and doesn’t understand Ecology (see above).

SOC 180A
Organizations work on an ecological basis: if they’re not good enough to survive, they don’t.

Latin 125
Semper ubi sub ubi, quod nemo exspectat Inquisitionem Hispaniam**.

Collegiate 4-H
The rules say we have to vote to vote in order to amend the amendment, so you can’t vote.

Guild Wars
Dancing naked in the streets can be fun under the right circumstances, and black dye isn’t just a lifestyle — it’s the means to a better life.

Knees
Cartilage tear: painful.
Surgery: expensive.
Crutches: slightly less expensive.
Getting hit by the crutches ’cause you called your roommate “Hopalong”: priceless.

Heresy
Getting kicked out of the Catholic Church makes for great conversation-starters, and can get you a cool new nickname.

Wine
Vinum is a great way to bring people together with their true love: chocolate fondue. It goes great on strawberries, bananas, t-shirts….

Soccer
No matter where Sandy goes or who she meets from whatever country… she will always be able to strike up a conversation with an avid soccer-lover. Somewhere. And I will sit there, laughing.

Dim Sum
I need to have my birthday more often, in order that my friends and I might indulge in the heavenly meal known as dim sum whenever humanly possible.

2006 Davis City Council candidate forum hilarity (my vague memories of last night)
“Dude, we should have a BMX bike park! The kids’ll love it! It’ll be totally wicked!” ~ Rob Roy (of course)
“Don’t put all your baskets in one egg.” ~ Ruth Asmundson
“There’s a lot of growth down there.” ~ Lamar Heystek
“When I was on the Council…” ~ Stan Forbes
“I have a two-year-old daughter… sorry, make that two-and-three-quarters.” ~ Mike Levy

**Always where under where, because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

2006 National Collegiate 4-H Conference…

• “Sometimes the furnaces worked to keep us warm, and when they didn’t, we all got a little more friendly.” ~ Larry the speaker
• “I thought he was just a really tall guy…”
• “We don’t think that’s safe.”
• “Could you guys not gather, please?”
• “It’s against the mall rules to gather…” (as we stand in front of the rules reading them)
• “I vote to vote that we amend the amendment…”
• “UC Davis: one yes, one no, and a RESOUNDING KUMBAYA!”
• “I remember going to the second National Collegiate 4-H Conference… we were talking about constitutions and amendments there, too…”
• “And the hotel is just a block or few from Baton Rouge’s best bars and clubs…”
• “YOU LEFT THE QUOTE PAPER BACK IN THE HOTEL?!? HOW COULD YOU?”

As usual, the conference was full of fun people and the drama was more entertaining than harmful (for once)… but I think that our own club is tanking badly. It depresses me to think that I wasted three+ years on something that doesn’t accomplish a whole lot of good compared to the hours we invest. I could have done a lot more with my time.

I guess February delayed itself a bit.