Lieutenant Abarai Renji, Reporting

Hear ye, hear ye.  It used to be that women of the English cultural tradition did not attend funerals.  I was watching Middlemarch and observed that there were women at a funeral portrayed therein, and doubted whether convention would have changed in the couple of decades between when it is set and Jane Austen’s own time (when I know women definitely did not attend funerals).  I doubt it.   I think the creators of the adaptation simply made an error–that, or they decided to represent what the vast majority of viewers would expect to see: men and women at a funeral.

Now everyone, male, female, young, old, goes to funerals.  But I hope that women will never be pallbearers.  If I were a pall-bearer, I’m sure my strength would  fail me at a crucial moment, thus making me drop the casket, and unless Uzzah was there to steady it, what remained of the dearly departed would tumble out and, with the impetus of its fall, roll upon the verdure like an errant croquet ball until it fetched up against a tombstone (this functioning like a wicket?).  The sensation this would cause might be gratifying to some but certainly not to all.

This is a very late response to a post of someone else’s.

*Amphibian, my colours hid by day

Such brilliance as I possess close kept

Which leads me to present myself inept

My mind bright red if I should jump astray

Am I alone within the world of gray?

Around me, are there others who have wept,

**Have hidden their eternal selves except

When dusk shall come, and give the stars away?

If I prefer the night to any light

That is yet offered to my waking sight

It is because I find release in dark

For my own living soul; flint strikes the spark

As flame takes life, my colours, every hue

Appear, and I reveal myself to you.

*originally the first five syllables were “My life as a frog” and the title was simply “Sonnet”.

**originally I wrote “To have hid” and there was no comma on the above line.

I sent this comic to my archaeology teacher.  She didn’t reply.  Who can guess at the reason?  Possibly it is because she has no sense of humour.  Perhaps it is because she tries to dissociate dinosaurs and archaeology whenever possible.

We viewed this in class the other day.  It is a list of kings from a temple erected by Seti I (far left).  Also pictured is his son Ramses (right of far left).  If you were an unsuccessful pharaoh you were left out of or obliterated from the record.  This led me to ask my teacher is Ramses’ feet, conspicuous in their absence, were unsuccessful or only damaged over time.  She didn’t think that was funny either, alas.

pro·cras·ti·nate

v.intr.
To put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness.

v.tr.
To postpone or delay needlessly.

[Latin procrastinare, procrastinat- : pro-, forward; see pro-¹ + crastinus, of tomorrow (from cras, tomorrow).]

dire

adj.
1. Warning of or having dreadful or terrible consequences; calamitous

2. Urgent; desperate

[Latin dirus, fearsome, terrible; akin to Greek deinos.]

trag·i·com·e·dy

n.
1. A drama combining elements of tragedy and comedy.

2. The genre made up of such works.

3. An incident or situation having both comic and tragic elements.

[French tragicomédie, from Italian tragicommedia, from Late Latin tragicomoedia, short for Latin tragicocomoedia : tragicus, tragic; see tragic + comoedia, comedy]

to·mor·row morn·ing and the re·main·der of the sem·es·ter

phr.

a trial without precedent!!

If a blog falls on the Internet, does it make a noise? Except for an image-only post a while back, I’ve been pretty silent for some time. I’m sure you’re all wearing blogging black trim in memory of the passing of my blog. Be that as it may, now that I’m back in school and not in a writing class, ha ha, you should be seeing me often enough to believe me returned from the Paths of the blogging Dead. I did not, however, bring back an Orb. But then, my father is a Lyorn and my mother is a Yendi.

Things have happened. I decided on my major. I signed up for classes. I moved to a different apartment.

Then: I changed my mind about my major. I changed my classes. I stayed in my new apartment.

I’ve been selling textbooks with wild abandon on half.com. That is to say, with gratifying success.

Entertainments I have partaken in: I finished Dune, I impaled myself upon the literary pike of Breaking Dawn, I saw Othello and Cyrano de Bergerac live, I went to a storytelling festival, and I’m reading Steven Brust’s Taltos series. And, of course, Bleach. I saw all but the last half hour of BBC’s Robin Hood season 2, which I heard ended absolutely miserably. Season 3 may not even be watchable.

I found out that Danielle and her family are moving to Arizona because her dad got a job there (her dad has already relocated, taking the 3:10 to Yuma, so to speak). She plans to move to California soon after to pursue an education in marine biology.

As for me? Things are all right. Just last Friday I used public transit by myself for the first time, and it came off without a hitch.  At this rate I may even learn how to do my own laundry.

Here’s a little joke, only partially of my own make, but most humour is either stolen outright or lightly disguised in a semantical peach-coloured party dress.

Post and Riposte are sitting on a wall. Post pushes Riposte off. (I’d say why, but that would interrupt the flow of the joke.) Riposte then pulls Post off the wall.

The end.

The long and curling fingers of bureaucracy have grasped and are twitching about the neck of my life plans. If that doesn’t give you the jibblies, I don’t know what will.

I made a narrow escape from an English professor who chewed gum throughout the lecture and whose repeated use of the word ‘awesome’ must have numbered in the dozens.

I have seen not one but two cats running across a main campus road. (Different times, different cats, same road.)

I have picked up two dimes since my last post.

I have finished spring term and begun summer term.

I have rewatched the original Star Wars trilogy.

The elevator in one of the places I picked up a dime has a notice that says: ‘If the elevator stops between floors, do not get off.’

One of the exits to the building with this computer warns you to make use of the exit only in emergencies and further cautions, ‘This door is alarmed.’ It is now my favourite door. I have resolved to use it regularly.

A couple semesters ago, one of my professors misspoke and said of someone that he was ’speaking from the seat of his pants.’ Either no one else noticed or they stifled their hilarity, because laughter did not ring out.

If I were operating from the Wizard’s Tower, the weather would be pretty darn bad.

It is six months to Christmas.

The end.

Not quite. Happy birthday, roscivs!

No, this post isn’t really revolutionary, it’s just a continuation of the temporary government theme. There are now not one but two posts waiting in the would-be wings, waiting to fly to you as soon as they are fully feathered.

It has been unseasonably cold here. I am usually unseasonably cold, so this is more of a problem for me than most, particularly as I forgot to bring my bedding with me when I made my weekly southern migration. Not southerly enough to render unnecessary the warmth of blankets, I assure you. It is therefore a happiness to me that I possess many fine and heavy jackets with which to swathe myself during those hours in which I must sleep. An hour spent in discomfort, a lesson in packing learned. Were I a swallow, I would not pack at all, but I would go all the way to Mexico, so there you have it. If it comes to that, the life of a swallow requires neither rest in bed nor the wearing of jackets. I may have to come to earth in the wrong material form entirely.

Just yesterday, as I was walking home from class, a flash of colour positively zoomed towards my legs, and I reflexively looked down to see the result and espied–a ladybird beetle! One with five spots. Not at fortuitous as, say, seven, but still a nice, odd number. I put my palms on either side of it so as to encourage it to leave my jeans (against which blue its red admittedly turned up well) and climb onto my hand, which it did without too much coaxing. I then walked along and watched it crawl about my fingers for a few moments before it flipped open its wings and crossed the street more quickly than I can run. Prior to this, it had been just more than a year since I had last seen and indeed held a ladybug. I was on the shore of Lake Michigan, and saw, very much to my surprise, one of the dear little bugs crawling amidst the beach pebbles! I admit that whenever I see a ladybug I want to hold it and it was so on this occasion. After succumbing to capture, this ladybug clung to my hand for a very long time, and did not want to seem to relinquish its hold on me, though I encouraged it to fly by flapping my hand. When it finally did go, I wondered where it would settle, since it seemed to have strayed so far from where a ladybug ought to be.

The thing that ties all this together is that at the time I thought I should write about the ladybug on my blog, which I had just started. Further in re of this, there was a duck on Lake Michigan that day or one like it, a male Mallard that bobbed in and out with the waves, nature’s own surfer, possessed of a delightful buoyancy to counterpoint my completely inexpert attempts to skip stones. (In truth, I fell to chucking stones that were obviously completely unsuited to the job, simply to disguise and demonstrate my failure as a futility of logic rather than skill.) The mallard, in whom my heart delighted (and at whom I did not throw stones, futile or otherwise), was another subject I considered for a post, and as my frequent reader knows, ducks are a favoured subject of my recent writings.

Thus it is shown that my yen for nature hasn’t changed; I’ve just finally got round to writing about it.