I Love The Internet

Ever wanted to argue about when to use diacritical marks?

Or hunt for a word that means "the feeling of sorrow one experiences upon finishing a really good book?"

The Ask Metafilter language tags section is the place for you!  Seriously, check Ask Metafilter's main section out too, it's a wonderfully crazy spot.

In Like a Lion, Out Like a Quiz

Quiz postmortem!

Very well done to all, even though you were out of practice, you came through with stellar results! Extra credit for Lyrical Liz and Corndog for above and beyond the call quizzing.

(oh, and it was Gary Wright who did Dream Weaver – I really thought it would be a more recognizable name. Did he do anything else?)

Now, on to the fresh meat:

1.

Outside the rain begins
And it may never end
So cry no more
On the shore, a dream
Will take us out to sea
Forever more forever more

2.

If I'm laden at all, I'm laden with sadness
That everyone's heart isn't filled with the gladness
Of love for one another

3.

And Mr. Baker, can you tell us why your secretary had to leave this town?
And shouldn't widow Jones be told to keep her window shades all pulled completely down?

4.

She’s got electric boots a mohair suit
You know I read it in a magazine

5.

Well I tried to make it sunday, but I got so damn depressed
That I set my sights on monday and I got myself undressed
I ain’t ready for the altar but I do agree there’s times
When a woman sure can be a friend of mine

6.

Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searches all say they’d have made whitefish bay
If they’d put fifteen more miles behind her.

7.

Ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn
Tryin’ to find a woman who’s never, never, never been born.
Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams,
Telling myself it’s not as hard, hard, hard as it seems.

8.

If you wanted the moon I would
try to make a start.
But I would rather you let me give my heart

9.

In a coffee house Sebastian sat
And after every number they'd pass the hat
McGuinn and McGuire just a-gettin' higher
In L.A., you know where that's at

10.

Suzanne calls from Boston the coffee's hot the corn is high
And that same sun that warms your heart will suck the good earth dry

Cinextatic

Ok, a whirlwind of posting here, but there's more to come :)

This is Roger Ebert's 101 movies you must see before you die. I've meme-ified it to bold the ones I've seen. I'm at 38/101. It's pretty humiliating and more than enough evidence that I need to see more movies :)

Feel free to steal the meme if you are so inclined. And if you are so inclined, either lie down or sit up straight. No one likes an incliner. A recliner, sure, a barco-lounger, sure, but never an incliner.

"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) Stanley Kubrick

"The 400 Blows" (1959) Francois Truffaut

"8 1/2" (1963) Federico Fellini

"Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972) Werner Herzog

"Alien" (1979) Ridley Scott

"All About Eve" (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz

"Annie Hall" (1977) Woody Allen

"Bambi" (1942) Disney

"Battleship Potemkin" (1925) Sergei Eisenstein

"The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) William Wyler

"The Big Red One" (1980) Samuel Fuller

"The Bicycle Thief" (1949) Vittorio De Sica

"The Big Sleep" (1946) Howard Hawks

"Blade Runner" (1982) Ridley Scott

"Blowup" (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni

"Blue Velvet" (1986) David Lynch

"Bonnie and Clyde"
(1967) Arthur Penn

"Breathless" (1959 Jean-Luc Godard

"Bringing Up Baby" (1938) Howard Hawks

"Carrie" (1975) Brian DePalma

"Casablanca"
(1942) Michael Curtiz

"Un Chien Andalou" (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali

"Children of Paradise"
/ "Les Enfants du Paradis" (1945) Marcel Carne

"Chinatown"
(1974) Roman Polanski

"Citizen Kane" (1941) Orson Welles

"A Clockwork Orange"
(1971) Stanley
Kubrick

"The Crying Game" (1992) Neil Jordan

"The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) Robert Wise

"Days of Heaven" (1978) Terence Malick

"Dirty Harry" (1971) Don Siegel

"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972)
Luis Bunuel

"Do the Right Thing" (1989 Spike Lee

"La Dolce Vita" (1960) Federico Fellini

"Double Indemnity" (1944) Billy Wilder

"Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb" (1964) Stanley
Kubrick

"Duck Soup" (1933) Leo McCarey

"E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) Steven
Spielberg

"Easy Rider" (1969) Dennis Hopper

"The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) Irvin Kershner

"The Exorcist" (1973) William Friedkin

"Fargo"
(1995) Joel & Ethan Coen

"Fight Club" (1999) David Fincher

"Frankenstein" (1931) James Whale

"The General" (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde
Bruckman

"The Godfather," "The Godfather, Part
II" (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola

"Gone With the Wind" (1939) Victor Fleming

"GoodFellas" (1990) Martin Scorsese

"The Graduate" (1967) Mike Nichols

"Halloween" (1978) John Carpenter

"A Hard Day's Night" (1964) Richard Lester

"Intolerance" (1916) D.W. Griffith

"It's A Gift" (1934) Norman Z. McLeod

"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) Frank Capra

"Jaws" (1975) Steven Spielberg

"The Lady Eve" (1941) Preston
Sturges

"Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) David Lean

"M" (1931) Fritz Lang

"Mad Max 2" / "The Road Warrior" (1981)
George Miller

"The Maltese Falcon" (1941) John Huston

"The Manchurian Candidate" (1962) John
Frankenheimer

"Metropolis" (1926) Fritz Lang

"Modern Times" (1936) Charles Chaplin

"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975) Terry
Jones & Terry Gilliam

"Nashville"
(1975) Robert Altman

"The Night of the Hunter" (1955) Charles Laughton

"Night of the Living Dead" (1968) George Romero

"North by Northwest" (1959) Alfred Hitchcock

"Nosferatu" (1922) F.W. Murnau

"On the Waterfront" (1954) Elia Kazan

"Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968) Sergio Leone

"Out of the Past" (1947) Jacques Tournier

"Persona" (1966) Ingmar Bergman

"Pink Flamingos" (1972) John Waters

"Psycho" (1960) Alfred Hitchcock

"Pulp Fiction" (1994) Quentin Tarantino

"Rashomon" (1950) Akira Kurosawa

"Rear Window" (1954) Alfred Hitchcock

"Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) Nicholas Ray

"Red River" (1948) Howard Hawks

"Repulsion" (1965) Roman Polanski

"Rules of the Game" (1939) Jean Renoir

"Scarface" (1932) Howard Hawks

"The Scarlet Empress" (1934) Josef von Sternberg

"Schindler's List" (1993) Steven Spielberg

"The Searchers" (1956) John Ford

"The Seven Samurai" (1954) Akira Kurosawa

"Singin' in the Rain" (1952) Stanley Donen &
Gene Kelly

"Some Like It Hot" (1959) Billy Wilder

"A Star Is Born" (1954) George Cukor

"A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) Elia Kazan

"Sunset Boulevard" (1950) Billy Wilder

"Taxi Driver" (1976) Martin Scorsese

"The Third Man" (1949) Carol Reed

"Tokyo Story" (1953) Yasujiro Ozu

"Touch of Evil" (1958) Orson Welles

"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) John
Huston

"Trouble in Paradise" (1932) Ernst Lubitsch

"Vertigo" (1958) Alfred Hitchcock

"West Side Story" (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert
Wise

"The Wild Bunch" (1969) Sam Peckinpah

"The Wizard of Oz" (1939) Victor Fleming

Today's Mission

Haircut

Result:  Nearly bald.

I Annoy Even Myself

I really hate people who wine about good fortune, but I'm going to do so.  I just got an email from a uni that I'm 99% sure I'm not going to attend (To be brutally honest, they're a very good school, but not in the same league as the #1 on my list).  The email offered a pretty generous fellowship for the entirety of the PhD program.  See, here's the thing.  I'm really excited, because that's not that common, and it's very cool to be selected (even if I imagine at this date, I'm probably not the first person to be offered this fellowship).

I haven't sent out the 'thanks but no' emails yet because I haven't gotten the final acceptance letter from #1, so I'm delaying on the reply to the fellowship email.  I wonder if there's a way to explain how grateful I am while saying I'm not going there. 

See - even in the midst of great good news, I can still be fretful :)

Oh yes, and I'm not running today.  I'm going out to eat and heading off to a birthday party tonight and another one tomorrow.  Look at me being all social and stuff.

If I had my druthers, I'd probably stay home. :)

8.17km - 39'54"

Guess how far I've run this year?

256km! Thats about 159 miles! yea me!

Sigh

If I hand you a list of names folded over with the names on the back side crossed out in pen and say two times, "Don't do x with the people on the back of the paper. We need to talk to them first," It'd be cool if you didn't do x with them until we could talk to them.

But here's the fun. I did explain it, but I feel guilty for the crapfest that's going to come down. It's not even going to lead to any trouble on my end. It's going to be all falling on the guy who didn't listen. But I feel guilty still. Maybe I should have marked the names off with a sharpie. Maybe I should have shooed him away and done it myself. Maybe I didn't explain things clearly.

ugh. I'm going home.

So Bummed

The "free massages for grad students" notice neglected to say that they only had 2 masseuses. By the time I got there, there was a sad dazed line of folks sitting out on the patch of grass. The last woman in line told me that she was about an hour away from the front of the line. I've got class in just a little bit, so no massage for Overread. :(

There was another table set up giving out coupons to grad folks, though, so I got a coupon at least. Funny thing was that the woman at the coupon table offered coupons to the folks in line - "come on over and I'll give some coupons!" Three people in line said almost in chorus, "I can't leave the line" in a kind of desperate drugged voice.

Grad students, part of the second best job in the whole world! By the by, I wonder if they factored the salary of TAs into their rosy picture

If It Were A Quiz, It Would've Bit You

Wow, I'm not even sure I remember how to do this :)

Thanks to Zerodoll (although I was really hoping she would drunk blog too) and Jayfish for kicking me in the tush and making me start this up again :)

1.

Lotta places I've been, lotta names, lotta words
No one compares to my real gone girl
Lighten up baby, I'm in love with you

2.

I call you on the telephone my
voice too rough with cigarettes.
I sometimes feel I should just go home
but I'm dealing with a memory that never forgets

3.

I felt a rush like a rolling bolt of thunder
Spinnin' my head around and taking my body under.

4.

You talk, talk, you talk to me
Your eyes touch me physically
Stay with me, we'll take the night
As passion takes another bite

5.

How many times must I tell you babe,
How many bridges I’ve got to cross?
How many times must I explain myself
Before I can talk to the boss,

6.

Fly me high through the starry skies
Maybe to an astral plane
Cross the highways of fantasy
Help me to forget todays pain

7.

Know it sounds funny
But I just can't stand the pain
Girl I'm leaving you tomorrow
Seems to me girl
You know I've done all I can

8.

Oh my love you’re so good
Treating me so cruel
There you go with your fancy lies
Leavin’ me lookin’ like a dumbstruck fool

9.

He’s tearin’ you apart
Every day, every day
He’s tearin’ you apart
Oh girl what can you say?

10.

Listen to the wind blow
Watch the sun rise
Run in the shadows
Damn your love
Damn your lies

Where'd They All Go?

Also, in case you're wondering where all the Eastern Orthodox, or maybe the Unitarians are, you can check here. What can I say, I'm a sucker for maps.

I'm Appreciated!

The department took out the office folk and the grad folk out to eat tonight for some kind of appreciation week. Tomorrow, we get free 10-minute massages and 'frozen treats' from the university. Good times, good times...

Cool thing was that for dinner, I got a plantain sandwich. That's a sandwich that uses fried plantain as the 'bread.' I chose falafel as the innards. Extraordinarily yummy. Oh yes, and sweet potato french fries. num num. I'd never been to that restaurant as it's a bit out of my regular biking circle, but I think I'll have to go back.

And it's all good, because I went on a run today too!

8.20km - 39'36" (getting closer to my pre-conference lazy days time :) )

Originally uploaded by Overread.

State of the Overread

I'm feeling a bit distanced from my thesis right now, which is not a good thing, to be sure. Crunch time has begun and I really need to be churning out some pages, but I can't seem to get back into it. The last few months have been so busy that I've lost the habit of writing often. That seems to be the key. When I'm writing often, even if I end up deleting a lot (which I do), at least my brain is tumbling around in the general area of where it should be. I'm going to try to ease myself back into writing a bit today by starting with a dip into the readings for the class I'm TAing. The readings are tangentially related, so I'm hoping that I might get a bit of a click.

Also, because this seems to work for Profgrrrrl, has anyone seen that book? You know, the one I was looking at maybe using for the summer class? Um... 'cause I can't find it. Did I lend it out? Anyway, if you see it, just stamp 'Overread' on it and drop it in a mailbox. Thanks.

The Simpsons - Cultural Phenomenon or Linguistic Puzzle?

Why not both?

The Jabberwocky Of Authors

Pure genius

I wonder if I could fit "he kiplinged in his joy" into casual conversation?