Do I wake or sleep?

Is Firefox always this terrible? I switched to them because it seems Facebook doesn't like IE 8 (or vice versa)--Firefox takes forever to load *every* site. It's maddening. Is there a better browser than either one of them?

EEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS!!!!

Who Dat Nation rejoices!!!!! New Orleans is on the rise again! Oh, next Tuesday is gonna be MAJOR at my place!!!! Pre-pare to PARTY!! Did y'all see that shot of Bourbon Street with that writhing drunken celebratory mass of humanity? The drought is OVER!

NEW ORLEANS SAINTS, SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS!!!!!

So I finished Wicked a few days ago. Um...hmmm. Color me somewhat underwhelmed. I love the premise, and the weird, carnival-mirror version of Oz is a great idea and fun to explore. But I do not find Elphaba a satisfactory protagonist. It took me a little while to figure out why and it's this--she doesn't do that much, and what little she does do is never carried to its dramatic conclusion. In college she carries on Dr. Dillamond's research--does this go anywhere? Other than teaching Chister how to mimic, not really. In the Emerald City she does one fully realized thing--she has the affair with Fyero (I guess you could say she falls in love, allows herself to be vulnerable). But the dramatic conclusion to that, the apology to Sarima--piddles off into nowhere. She lives there for years and never apologizes and makes her own peace with what she did--yes, I realize that Sarima wouldn't let her but you have to develop that, you have to raise the stakes. If she couldn't do the thing that brought her to the Vinkus, why did she live there for so many years then? Did her feelings change then, did she somehow come to terms with what she did? You can't just have her plop down and then not raise the tension, develop it further. Getting back to her time in the Emerald City, she most noticeably doesn't do something--she fails to kill Madame Morrible. Of course later on she does--or does she? He tries to make it a big mystery--did she or didn't she kill Morrible at the end--but her pathetically bragging about it, while still unsure of what she actually did, just undermined the whole thing and I didn't care in the end. I shouldn't feel that way about the protagonist confronting a major villain.

She really doesn't do much magic at all, and doesn't seem very devoted to or even interested in its practice or study. In fact other than Animal rights, I'm not sure what she stood for.

The lack of decisive action is really noticeable when Dorothy enters the picture. All she does is track her and wait for her! She doesn't do SHIT to confront her, stop her, talk to her--that whole subplot was a major disappointment. I found myself much more interested in Dorothy than in Elphaba. (I will say, I thought the whole section where she sends the dogs, the crows and the bees gripping--like her destiny was inevitably approaching. Of course this was helped by everyone's knowing how the Witch ends up.)

She's really not a terribly likable or admirable character, IMO. Maguire's elliptical writing style doesn't help that much--sure, Baum was WAY in the other direction as a writer (but of course he wrote for kids), rarely did Baum write anything particularly witty or clever. But Maguire seems to be opaque for the sake of being opaque. It's kind of annoying, there's no payoff. Why did Morrible enchant the three girls and why didn't they end up carrying out her plans? What was the point of the Philosophy Club sequence and how did it affect the participants? Why did her friendship with Glinda peter out? And why am I supposed to care about Sarima and her sisters and the children?

Although reading the synopsis of the musical--wow. They really DID change a lot! It's interesting, at first I thought "why the hell did Maguire allow that?" then I thought "well, they aren't his characters to begin with!" I did think the aftermath of the Witch's murder was beautifully depicted, and it's a shame that was changed.

I've been reading Wicked lately which Rachel was kind enough to lend to me. Very interesting book--very, very interesting. I'm just not sure if I like it yet. I think it's a fascinating take on the Oz universe although it seems to favor the movie over the books in some respects. The movie conflates the unnamed Good Witch of the North with Glinda, who is the Good Witch of the South. However as I was saying on Facebook, it's fascinating how he takes little things that are mentioned and explores them much more fully. Case in point: there is ONE throwaway mention of Krumbic Witches in the original series--in the last book, Ozma and Dorothy are confronting this snotty teenage witch/queen, Coo-Ee-Oh, who terrorizes her subjects in her little queendom way up in the Gillikin country. She says "I am a Krumbic Witch--the only Krumbic Witch in the world--and I fear the magic of no other creature that exists!" And that is IT, the only mention in all of the Baum books. But Maguire really develops this--it's a belief system, geographical features are named after the Krumbic. Very interesting.

And it's worth upending the Oz universe and examining some of its assumptions and biases. Talking with my mother, I realize how bizarrely anti-intellectual the books come off as sometimes. We'd been talking about the better books in the series, and she's never read Tik-Tok of Oz. TToO is actually based on one of Baum's earlier shows--it's about one of the minor Queens of Oz (Queen Ann of Oogaboo, reigning over "eighteen men, twenty-seven women and forty-four children") who decides she wants to conquer the rest of Oz. (Yet another strong female figure, a la General Jinjur.) Glinda sees what she's doing and casts a spell that makes them wander way off-course, across the desert, and they end up running into Betsy and Hank, Tik-Tok, one of my favorite characters, Polychrome the Rainbow's Daughter, and the Shaggy Man. The Shaggy Man always got on my nerves a bit, mainly because frankly I'm shallow and dislike ill-kempt people. But he has a tendency in this book, and none of the others, to quell people in a really annoying way. Someone will ask a question and Shaggy will jump in from across the room and say "Don't ask that--don't ask her or me either."

Then, after a pause, she added: "But where do you s'pose we're going to, Your Maj'sty?"

"Don't ask her that, please don't!" said Shaggy, who was not too far away to overhear them. "And please don't ask me why, either."

"Why?" said Betsy.

"No one can tell where we are going until we get there," replied Shaggy...

Um--what? How about minding your own damn business, Shaggy! He does this a couple of times on TToO. It reminds me of when I was at the West End Dinner Theater and Kim K. and I would talk about--oh, politics or T.S. Eliot or something, and Krissi D., never known for her intellectual tendencies, would whine (literally, she had this very distinctive squeaky voice) "Why are you talking about that? Don't talk about that."

Anyway, I remember reading an essay in Salon comparing the Narnia and Oz books, and one thing stuck with me. the essay said that in Oz, people are always declaring themselves--who they are and what they are. "Here in Oz, we..." "You're in the Land of Oz now where we..." This is a little mean-spirited but hilarious nonetheless:

Then there's the universal narcissism of the characters. Social conversation in Oz consists almost entirely of creatures explaining themselves to each other. It weirdly resembles the brandishing of identity credentials seen in certain graduate seminars, with "as a working-class lesbian ..." replaced by "as a scarecrow ..." In a typical disquisition, the straw man announces, "I am never hungry, and it is a lucky thing I am not. For my mouth is only painted, and if I should cut a hole in it so I could eat, the straw I am stuffed with would come out, and that would spoil the shape of my head." I mean, I love the books but yes, people ARE what they ARE, they never really change in the Oz universe. And they certainly don't grow, which creeped me out even as a child. Baum explains that when Oz became a fairyland, people stopped growing--nobody ever died, nobody got bigger and--this was creepiest of all--babies who were babies never got older. As organically feminist as the Oz books are (notice how most of the strong, kick-ass characters are female? Baum's mother in law was a suffragette and had a great influence on him), it's obvious the man has never had to watch a baby all day!

And don't get me started on the completely WTF? pacifist slant of The Emerald City of Oz (which I rave about in this entry, still so hilarious!). Okay, to sum up, the Nome King and a bunch of very, very evil allies--I mean, truly evil--are tunneling under the desert so they can invade Oz and enslave/murder everyone. Ozma happens to catch wind of this via the Magic Picture (don't ask me why Glinda wasn't on top of this) and she's all "hmm, isn't it sad that someone can be so angry?" and goes on her merry way, picking roses and whatnot. When Dorothy hears the news, she's devastated, as are Scarecrow and Tin Man. They, and all the others (Wizard, etc.) have a powwow to discuss what's to be done:

"Our enemies will be here sooner than I expected. What do you advise me to do?"

"It is now too late to assemble our people," said the Tin Woodman, despondently. "If you had allowed me to arm and drill my Winkies, we might have put up a good fight and destroyed many of our enemies before we were conquered."

"The Munchkins are good fighters, too," said Omby Amby; "and so are the Gillikins."

"But I do not wish to fight," declared Ozma, firmly. "No one has the right to destroy any living creatures, however evil they may be, or to hurt them or make them unhappy. I will not fight, even to save my kingdom."

ARE YOU F-ING KIDDING ME? You won't fight *even* to save all the innocents in your coutnry FROM getting killed? Oh good LORD. Look, even if you posit that self-defense is "evil" (a highly questionable statement), sometimes you have to do "evil" in order to prevent a worse evil. I have a feeling your subjects might feel a little differently about being handed over so blithely to the Nome and Growliwogs and Phanphasms just so your conscience is clear.

It gets better. Scarecrow has a genuinely good idea (not all of Baum's endings are as clever as this--frequently good conquers evil because of a completely new magical device that just enters out of nowhere (Rinkitink in Oz, an otherwise excellent book, is somewhat marred by its Dorothy-ex-machina resolution). Because the tunnel is going to emerge right on the royal grounds in front of the Water of Oblivion, he proposes to fill the tunnel with dust so that the armies get very thirsty--as soon as they exit the tunnel, they make a mad rush for the Fountain. Having drunk from it, they've now forgotten everything they've ever known and so are no longer evil, nor do they have any plans now to conquer Oz. In fact they're like little children now. And this is seen as a good thing:

"But, best of all," said Dorothy, "the wicked people have all forgotten their wickedness, and will not wish to hurt any one after this."

"True, Princess," declared the Shaggy Man. "It seems to me that to have reformed all those evil characters is more important than to have saved Oz."

Oh, shut up Shaggy, that's not really reform--they didn't genuinely repent, they didn't make a conscious choice to turn away from evil. That's more like a lobotomy!

The Saints are goin' to the Super Bowl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh. My. God. WOW. This is HUGE, y'all. The SAINTS, this just does not happen.

Well, obviously God was listening to me Saturday afternoon because I went to Saturday 5:00 Mass at St. Mary's and our rector said we should pray for the Jets "even though it's not going to help" and I spoke up "we should pray for the Saints!" Of course I was making a liturgical joke but yes, I do love the Saints and YEEHAW!!!! Geaux Saints!!!!!!

And guys, I'd support you no matter who you were playing but you especially gotta kick the snot out of the Colts. I grew up in DC, we do not forgive (the Indy Colts used to be the Balmer Colts, and they picked up literally in the middle of the night and skedaddled out of Balmer. I'm a DCer, not from our neighboring city, but we thought it was disgusting).

Geaux Saints!!!!!

Unbelievable. History, man.

Tesse and I are doing another Drunken Knitting sesh at my place Sunday evening, starting around 7 (maybe earlier, depending on when we get back from Three Sisters. It's Chekovian angst though, I don't think it's going to run that much under 3 hours). We were gonna get together last week but it ended up being moved to Rachel's place, and then Tesse couldn't make it, so this is a makeup sesh of sorts. All are welcome, of course, and I talked to Susan who is likely to be there as well.

I'm going to try to finish that complicated herring-bone-stitch bag beforehand and start an easier project, so I can concentrate on the conversation better!

This is last minute so don't feel bad if you can't make it, we just didn't want anyone to feel left out. If you are coming, just let me or Tesse know.

So, class. Class started last Tuesday and it has been a bu-sssssy week for me. Normally I work Mondays, Thursdays and Friday--this week Monday was a holiday, so I worked Tuesday instead--which meant my first two days of class were a little hectic, running from and to work. I have to get to work early to make up the hours. Luckily the woman for whom I work is amazing and is cool with this, very supportive.

I get to class early on Tuesday and we're in a little lecture hall. I take a seat in the third row and the room really starts filling up. The class is limited to 100 but there looked like more than that--and quite a few of them, at least 20, didn't get seats and had to sit against the wall or on the window sill. Our professor really seems to know his stuff but he has a strong Italian accent and tends to speak softly, so you have to listen intently to make sure you understand what he's saying. This wouldn't be so bad, except that of course you're also taking notes, and when you're writing, you might misunderstand a word in his accent. It can be a little grueling, you really cannot phase out during the lecture. I mean, I find the course material fascinating, I'm certainly not bored, but every now and then your mind might want to wander and you just can't.

The class was so stuffed that they ended up moving it to another building, and today's class was in a good old-fashioned huge-ass lecture hall with a balcony and an aisle down the middle, just like in Mona Lisa Smile. Although it was nice to be able to spread out--again I took a seat closeup in the fourth row--the volume was even worse, because of the slight echo and again, the accent. At one point he started a new topic and said a word like mayedeeTERRuneyan. We all sat there frozen, as he said several things about this mayedeeTERRuneyan, desperately listening to the rest of it to try to decipher the context and finally it all hit us at the same time: Mediterranean. As one, 90+ students bent over and frantically scribbled the salient points of the last five sentences he's just uttered. He was able to pump up the volume a bit for the lecture but I may try to sit in the first row, and the TA has promised to get a mike. For the most part the professor lectures but he does throw out questions to us, and of course I'm all raising my hand. Professor: "What distinctive features does the mayedeeTERRuneyan have that helped shape the cultures around it?" My hand shoots up immediately: "It's small and easily navigible, which encourages the growth of trading and the spread of technology." I might've also added: "Plus when you're doing a cruise ship contract on it, Spain has topless beaches where you can buy beers, which encourages social contact and better tans, which I think we can all agree is good for everyone!"

During the first class, they sent around a questionnaire for us to fill out, asking what our classics background was, what we wanted to get out of the class, which particular areas we wanted most to study. I put down as particular areas of interest: Roman lit, especially the plays and epic poems, and the late Empire. What I really want to explore are all the insane-ass emperors. Nero and Caligula? Yes, please. The drama, like Antony and Octavius, sparring across the seas, Titus Andronicus and Tamora, baking people into pies. Shakespeare didn't write about nice tame safe Romans--he wrote about the exciting ones who did cool shit.

Columbia has an online feature called Courseworks--it's accessible through their website, and this is where you can download all the delicious graphics in the PowerPoint lecture you just attended (during his lecture today he kept scrolling through the slides to get to the one he wanted, and they all looked SO tempting). This is awesome enough but it gets better--it also features links to online libraries, including Oxford and Cambridge, and access to approximately a bajillian scholarly journals, stuff you just can't get on your own unless you go in person to a library. Oh man, am I drooling. PLUS you can borrow books from all the other Ivy League school (except for Harvard, *sniff*). There's just SO MUCH KNOWLEDGE out there, and now *I* get to roll around in it!

Taxes, so tedious. But this year I got smart and started a spreadsheet and entered the receipts as I generated them. In categories. I know, right? That's 8 hours of toil saved right there (well, not really saved, I just did it in bits and pieces over the past year--but that means I get my refund THAT MUCH FASTER. Woo hoo!

Because ladies and gentlemen, I am extremely poor. Really, really poor. I am now on the Nicolae Ceauşescu Austerity program to Pay Off Romania's foreign Clara's school debt. No going out and dropping $20 on drinks, no impulsive sushi purchases, no *sob* impromptu dinners at Indian Road Cafe. Cannot. Afford. It. Srsly. All socializing will have to be done at someone's apartment, or at the park or something. Maybe a splurge of a cup of coffee, but it won't be Starbucks.

Speaking of which, our start-up again of Drunken Knitting this weekend was so much fun--love to do it again soon! See, you can have a good time without dropping lots of money! Let's think about another one in a month or so.

Had my first class today--woo hoo!

Hilarious!

"Oh, you did NOT just say Phantom of the Fucking Opera!"

...but a headsup/reminder that you can donate to the Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti very easily. Just text the word HAITI to 90999. Let's all remember our neighbors to the south.