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Saturday,
February 28, 2004
The blog is in uncommon high spirits today, hey? Hey? Bush and Blair: Endless Love - Okay, I'm sure you've all seen this before, but I came across it yesterday, and it's still funny. Best Picture Nominees Turned TV Series: 2007-08 - the Seabiscuit one just kills me. And Ambrose, watching the news, today declared: 
- declared by Liusia @ 7:06 PM Friday,
February 27, 2004
Read these books, you lubberly mess of poxy buggers! Actually, I'm a little reluctant to recommend them. Because I'm pretty sure they're aimed at a target audience of people who love a)Jane Austen and b)swashbuckling. And that audience seems to consist of, like, me. And Jessica. We're working our way though Patrick O'Brian's ginormous series of Napoleonic seafaring adventures, on which the movie Master and Commander was based. It's safe to say I'm heartily enjoying the books. I mean, they're about adventure on the high seas! And espionage! And they're written in colloquial charmingly archaic style! But even beyond the pirates and spying and evil Spaniards, these books are just...really good. The plot's a bit spotty, sure, and the author wouldn't know pacing if it punched him in the nose, but the characters are very-well drawn, and their constant petty Jane Austen-esque squabbling carries the stories through any dry stretches in the action. The plot centers on the two primary protaganists, Jack Aubrey, a jovial British Navy captain, and Stephen Maturin, his bitchy ship's surgeon. Like the protagonists of any war story, they're a bit excessively heroic and skillful - Aubrey almost always pulls off his unlikely naval gambits! Stephen can speak any language and cure every ill! - but they make up for it in sheer volume of weird and amusing foibles. Aubrey's constant mixing of metaphors and mangling of literary references, Spanish and Latin never stop being funny (I assume he's mangling his French, too, but I don't speak it, so I can't be sure), nor do the references to him being, basically, a big fat man-whore. And Stephen is, well...he's bitchy. And socially inept. Of course, his social ineptitude is to be expected, since he's an oversensitive manic-depressive Irish-Catalan naturalist surrounded by a bunch of salty British warmongers. But the real joy of these novels is the opportunity to pick up any number of totally useless and silly-sounding archaic British insults, slang and medical and scientific terminology. I, for one, am deriving great glee from the word "swiving," which I am determined to work into my dirty word vocabulary. So, without any further ado, here's a smattering. The ones with readily available dictionary definitions I've turned into links; the others I've explained. Contubernal "Another misery of human life," remarked Stephen to the morning darkness, "is having a contubernal that snores like ten." "I was not snoring," Jack said. "I was wide awake. What is a contubernal?" "You are a contubernal." Quean, Fishgig "It was Joe Dover what [killed her]," [Jennings] said. "Mr White went for to stop her taking his broad axe; she slashed his leg out of hand, and as he lay there, she slit his throat quick as a whistlejack - he screamed like a pig. So Joe served her out with his fishgig. It came natural to him, being a quean, as they say, and carpenter's mate." "Swiving Monachorum" - I'm pretty sure it means "fucking monks" in a combination of Old English and Latin "I have a messenger, in the shape of the Reverend Mr. Hinksey, the new rector of Swiving Monachorum, who will be passing through Champflower on his way to be read in, or inducted, as I believe I should say." - an excerpt from one of Stephen's snottier letters to his friend Sophie Lithosperm "If rage could reunite my sinews, I should be as compact as a lithosperm." -poor gimpy Stephen, after being tortured by the French Posset, Caudle "I will not," said Stephen. "It is another of your damned possets. Am I in childbed, for all love, that I should be plagued, smothered, destroyed with caudle?" Parky "Thankee, Rowland," [Jack] said, "uncommon parky, hey? Hey?" miller - a rat eaten for food, "Dutch-built quizz" - the kind folks at the Patrick O'Brian listserv say that "quizz" meant "weirdo" and "Dutch-built" was a blanket term for general foreign strangeness/being out of one's depth (Dutch ships being quite different from British, and the Dutch navy was soundly trounced by the British around the time the books are set). Though an acting lieutenant, [Babbington] wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and through his sobs he gave Jack to understand that unknown hands had wafted these prime millers into the larboard midshipman's berth; that although he had had no hand in their cutting out - indeed would have prevented it, having the greatest love for the doctor, so much for that he had fought Braithwaite over a chest for calling the doctor a Dutch-built quizz. - Stephen's lab rats have been eaten by the hungry midshipmen lickpenny "Her mother, a widow with considerable property under her own control, is a deeply stupid griping illiberal avid tenacious pinchfist lickpenny, a sordid lickpenny and shrew." -Stephen, re: Sophie's mom - declared by Liusia @ 6:14 PM Thursday,
February 26, 2004
Miserere mei, guys. 
Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, so I went to Mass. I haven't really gone, not since I got back to the US, and I'm not sure why. I haven't suffered some tremendous loss of faith; I just haven't been attending. Oh, sure, my mom and stepdad dragged me to their unpleasant church when I was at their place over Christmas break, but their church really does nothing for me, especially since the old priest got replaced with this new young fellow who seems determined to muck up the status quo in silly ways. What kind of stupid logic leads you to replace the beautiful Latin hymns with generic new age-y Christian stuff, and at the same time replace the prayers, which thanks to Vatican II are in the language the congregation understands (depending on the Mass, around here that could be Polish, English or Spanish) with Latin ones that no one knows anymore? And I swear that on the day where the reading was about Christ friggin' running away from home, and then snotting off to Mary, he gave a homily about respecting one's parents. The hell? And everything is so bland. There are no calls to charitable or social action, no attempts to actually challenge people's beliefs or spirituality. No, it's just like, "Jesus loves you! Let's sing a stupid song! By the way, don't have sex!" But even beyond that, my parents' church leaves me cold. Usually, when I go to Mass, there's...screw it. I'm not waxing spiritual here. Usually when I go to Mass, I really feel like God's hanging around. But when I go to Mass at my parents' church, I just feel bored, and vaguely disgusted with the other parishoners, who keep coming to this soulless place voluntarily. Sorry, kind of got off on a rant there. Suffice it to say, I finally went to my own church yesterday, and I know this sounds melodramatic, but it was honestly the first time I've felt at home since coming back from Russia. The quiet murmurred amens, the polished wood tinted blue and red by the day's last light struggling through the stained glass windows, the feeling of camraderie among strangers, the peace. All at once, I just...relaxed. I know that a lot of people find Ash Wednesday somewhat morbid - the cross drawn on everyone's foreheads, with ashes made of last year's palms, the rather ominous refrain: "remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return" - but while I find it somber, I don't find it sad. In the pew in front of me, a young mother returned after the imposition of ashes, bouncing this tiny infant with a little smudged cross on his forehead. The cantor's thin, ethereal soprano voice was lilting a Latin petition for mercy. And the mother just looked at the baby with this sad smile. I think that image is going to follow me around for quite a while. But it's not despair, or fear of death...it's a reason to fill life with as much meaning as possible before the end. It's...oh, whatever. This philosophy thing doesn't suit me. Anyway, I like church. - declared by Liusia @ 1:38 PM Monday,
February 23, 2004
Ambrose is feeling whimsical today! 
Ha ha! Okay. I'm a little concerned. I think my blog is becoming entirely stupid gimmicks and quizzes. And I'll be sure to remedy that with some actual content...but not today. Today, I need to study for my White People are Evil Colonialist Bastards (okay, so that's not actually the name of the course, but it might as well be ) midterm exam, which is tomorrow. So I'm going to go read some stuff about how white people are evil colonialist bastards, and ponder the definition of "white." Ah-HA! That could be CONTENT! Ha, you just wait, you're about to be inflicted with a post about my views on race. As soon as I figure out what they are. Meanwhile, here's another damnable quiz, because I'm a lazy self-indulgent ass. When I don't have anything to post, I should just NOT POST, but here I go anyway. You know, I would get it on with a stupid pirate type. How presentient of these quiz makers.  Which of Henry VIII's wives are you? Katherine Parr spent nearly her whole life married to crotchety old men: Henry was the THIRD old fart she was forced to marry. Is it any wonder she turned to books and religion to occupy her time? Katherine wasn't just smart, she was a tiny bit uppity, too: she almost got herself thrown in jail for arguing with His Royal Fatness about some theological issues. After Henry croaked, Katherine dropped the prim and proper act and married Thomas Seymour, a dashing pirate-y kind of guy who was dumb as a post. Which goes to show you that even bookworms know how to get it on. this quiz was made by the proper Victorian ladies at Spookbot - declared by Liusia @ 12:52 PM Sunday,
February 22, 2004
My theme song John, bless his soul, found this song for me. It's an Irish jig about a pirate. I'm not a great one for posting song lyrics, but I'll post these lyrics, because the singer is a bit unintelligible. Dude. It's an Irish jig! About a pirate! click me to listen! I'll wait for you till I turn blue There's nothin' more a man can do Don't get your bollocks in a twist Settle down, don't take a fit Ya drank with demons straight form Hell They almost nearly won as well Ya wiped the floor with victory Then puked until you fell asleep Blackened was the banshee's wail These boot will never fill her jail So you crawled into an empty boat For the Gulf of Mexico Till Cortez came an' when so did you From the ashes charred and blue Smellin' like a Salty Dog Back from Hell where you belong Anarchy, the scourge of every sea The Antichrist aboard a rig With us your cutthroat thieves The ship went down we all near drowned Ya stood there on the deck Till the Spanish came and flogged yer arse And dragged you from the wreck They threw a rope around yer neck To watch you dance the jig of death Then left ya for the starvin' crows Hoverin' like hungry whores One flew down plucked out yer eye The other he had in his sights Ya snarled at him, said leave me be I need the bugger so I can see - declared by Liusia @ 3:47 PM |
