One reassuring thing about watching Doctor Who?
The possibility of alien invasions is no longer scary. No matter what, nothing could possibly be more fucked up than some of the things I've seen on that show.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Being a teacher
So I'm in the process of applying for teacher training programs. No big deal. The nice thing about my university though is that many professors force students to teach class once per quarter, so I'm at least sort of prepared. Until today I'd only done this for French classes, and I gotta say that I don't remember too well how they went. In French you're too busy trying to remember which word you need and in which tense/mood/person or whatever, and trying desperately not to accidentally say something inappropriate,* so you don't have a lot of energy left to pay attention to the daydreaming, doodling, and facebooking sitting before you.
*Example of something inappropriate: Today in Hebrew class a girl said "to fuck" instead of "to identify with." Apparently I was the only kid in class who knew how to say "to fuck" because I was the only person who laughed.
Anyway, all of this changed today when I had to be the teacher for the Religion Seminar. It actually wasn't too much work. Basically I just had to come up with a couple of questions, ask the class, and then WHOA off they go, debating with each other. For the most part I hate that class because many members of the class seem to think that even choirs of angels in heaven could not compare to the beauty that is their voice. There's one student in particular who's just so arrogant, pretentious and greedy with class time that I sometimes wonder whether or not his presence in my life is the karmic result of a murder-rape I committed in a previous life. The worst part of having people like this is that you assume that the teacher probably likes them, that they must get great grades. But that was until today, when I faced the class....and realized that this guy somehow manages to be even more grating when viewed from the teacher's perspective.
Someone asked a pretty inoffensive question about Emil Durkheim's definition of religion to hear the class's thoughts. You know, it's the sort of thing where you can passionately be like, "Oh, I disagree with Durkheim's interpretation and here's why," but it's hardly the Holocaust. But this boy, draped in a large shawl with swirly patterns with the same feminine drama of a 60's film star, this asshole rolls his eyes with such overwhelming surliness and disgust that I could have sworn he was having some kind of epileptic fit.
"Call an ambulance," I wanted to cry out, "Axe-Chin is having a stroke!" (I call him Axe-Chin because he has such a strong cleft in his chin that it looks like someone took an axe to his face...which is actually what I sometimes imagine doing after two and a half hours of class in which he can't figure out how to shut the fuck up.)
Anyway....it was an interesting experience. Apart from trying to politely beat Axe-Chin into submission so that shier members of class could share their thoughts, I didn't really do much besides watch people as they either paid attention, or daydreamed (and I sort of daydreamed about what they were daydreaming about), or doodled. It was kind of surreal, thinking that hopefully I'll be doing something like this a lot more in the future. Except unlike my profs here, I hope that I'll have the balls to say, "Shut the fuck up so that someone else can share what they think, you greedy bastard." How more professors don't throttle their students is just beyond me...
*Example of something inappropriate: Today in Hebrew class a girl said "to fuck" instead of "to identify with." Apparently I was the only kid in class who knew how to say "to fuck" because I was the only person who laughed.
Anyway, all of this changed today when I had to be the teacher for the Religion Seminar. It actually wasn't too much work. Basically I just had to come up with a couple of questions, ask the class, and then WHOA off they go, debating with each other. For the most part I hate that class because many members of the class seem to think that even choirs of angels in heaven could not compare to the beauty that is their voice. There's one student in particular who's just so arrogant, pretentious and greedy with class time that I sometimes wonder whether or not his presence in my life is the karmic result of a murder-rape I committed in a previous life. The worst part of having people like this is that you assume that the teacher probably likes them, that they must get great grades. But that was until today, when I faced the class....and realized that this guy somehow manages to be even more grating when viewed from the teacher's perspective.
Someone asked a pretty inoffensive question about Emil Durkheim's definition of religion to hear the class's thoughts. You know, it's the sort of thing where you can passionately be like, "Oh, I disagree with Durkheim's interpretation and here's why," but it's hardly the Holocaust. But this boy, draped in a large shawl with swirly patterns with the same feminine drama of a 60's film star, this asshole rolls his eyes with such overwhelming surliness and disgust that I could have sworn he was having some kind of epileptic fit.
"Call an ambulance," I wanted to cry out, "Axe-Chin is having a stroke!" (I call him Axe-Chin because he has such a strong cleft in his chin that it looks like someone took an axe to his face...which is actually what I sometimes imagine doing after two and a half hours of class in which he can't figure out how to shut the fuck up.)
Anyway....it was an interesting experience. Apart from trying to politely beat Axe-Chin into submission so that shier members of class could share their thoughts, I didn't really do much besides watch people as they either paid attention, or daydreamed (and I sort of daydreamed about what they were daydreaming about), or doodled. It was kind of surreal, thinking that hopefully I'll be doing something like this a lot more in the future. Except unlike my profs here, I hope that I'll have the balls to say, "Shut the fuck up so that someone else can share what they think, you greedy bastard." How more professors don't throttle their students is just beyond me...
Monday, October 11, 2010
Glossary
I've decided I need to form a glossary of Sam-isms. I'll update as I remember more. That way I don't have to explain every time I use one:
Akimba: a state of bra-lessness. Verb: to go akimba.
A Fat Elvis Weekend (sometimes referred to as "A Lost Weekend"): a weekend in which you feel so pathetic and awful that you confine yourself to your room, sometimes with a bunch of movies, and you have yourself a nice long cry.
to Hulk out: to suddenly burst from your clothing, à la The Incredible Hulk. Unlike the Hulk, this can be intentional or unintentional.
Fart Pocket:: a random spot that smells of fart that is contained. Meaning, you can pass through a fart pocket and you can clearly differentiate where it begins and ends, unlike with a real fart. Fart Pockets are native to Evanston and the greater Chicagoland area.
Akimba: a state of bra-lessness. Verb: to go akimba.
A Fat Elvis Weekend (sometimes referred to as "A Lost Weekend"): a weekend in which you feel so pathetic and awful that you confine yourself to your room, sometimes with a bunch of movies, and you have yourself a nice long cry.
to Hulk out: to suddenly burst from your clothing, à la The Incredible Hulk. Unlike the Hulk, this can be intentional or unintentional.
Fart Pocket:: a random spot that smells of fart that is contained. Meaning, you can pass through a fart pocket and you can clearly differentiate where it begins and ends, unlike with a real fart. Fart Pockets are native to Evanston and the greater Chicagoland area.
The one in which I get really patriotic about American hygiene.
Right now here in Evanston we're in that horrible last stretch of hot weather before the final plunge into Arctic temperatures that will see us through May. Sure, it may be sunny and 78 degrees, but no one can enjoy the weather because we all know that this is the end. This is it. When the temperature sinks back down on Wednesday, it ain't coming back up. It's like that horrible moment when you're at the top of a roller coaster about to plummet down a steep drop and you suddenly realize that you're terrified of roller coasters....but, of course, it's too late, and down you'll go.
What's really frustrating about this "nice" weather though isn't just that it's a sort of depressing last hurrah (it actually makes me think of the mass suicide at Masada). The really frustrating thing about it is that it turns my French classroom into a sauna. There's something funny with the building in general in that, even in the midst of a brutal Midwestern winter, it still manages to be warmer and wetter than a Tel Aviv armpit. Normally such armpitness can be countered with air conditioning, but the AC unit is so old that it rattles and makes a noise worse than a toddler banging pots and pans together, which is obviously not conducive to language learning. And so we have to sit in sweaty, sweaty silence. I'm not entirely sure why they can't update the AC units in the building. The university has billions of dollars in the endowment fund...just sitting there...not buying new AC units.
Anyway, when I say the room gets sweaty, that doesn't fully capture the awfulness. I mean that the room has a level of heat so oppressive that you can actually taste it. Imagine that: TASTING heat. You look around and everyone is dripping with sweat, and you can barely hear the teacher because you're so sweaty that your ears feel like they're underwater. You feel like you're in the boiler room of the Titanic (well, before it filled up with water and presumably got much, much colder). It reminds me of those times back in LA when the temperature would get over 100 degrees and my dad would still refuse to turn on the AC, and so I would just lie face down on the floor of my room, spread eagle in my khaki pants (my wardrobe was exclusively khaki pants until I went to college), and I'd just pray to die, just for the heat to end. It's the sort of heat that makes me understand why corseted women of previous eras would faint all the time, because for most of French class I silently wonder to myself if I could get away with simply ripping off all of my clothing in the middle of class and nonchalantly continuing to conjugate verbs in the subjunctive while completely bare-ass naked. On my better days I wonder if I could just go akimba (bra-less), just to have a fraction less warmth surrounding me. Then I think to myself, well, if I can't take off all of my clothing, if only I could just faint at will. Then they'd have to take me to the hospital and it'd be socially acceptable for me to just wear a dress made out of paper.
It reminded me of the oppressive heat I'd sometimes feel on crowded buses in Tel Aviv or Italy, or on the London Underground, or the Paris Metro. That trapped, suffocating heat. But wait. Where's the smell?
I took a momentary break from fantasizing about Hulk-ing out of all of my clothing and instead cautiously sniffed the air. Sure, it wasn't exactly a good smell...but when you considered how rapidly pits stains were growing in that class, it sure didn't smell so bad. It was nothing like the traumatizing smells I've experienced in other places. In Israel, for example, there's the lethal combination of a water shortage and high costs for deodorant, which makes getting on a crowded bus during the summer more dangerous than if there were suicide bombers on it. And that's not to pick on just Israel. In other places, such as France, there's simply "traditional"--yeah, we'll call it "traditional"--notions about bathing, such as the notion that anything more than three baths a year is an extravagance. But G-d bless us, here in America, environment be damned, I know several people who insist on two showers a day. We throw caution to the wind and use cancer-causing antiperspirants like it's our job. We might be destroying the environment and ourselves, but damn it, at least we're not going to smell like Europeans. And so, trapped in this room of stale sweat, at least it didn't smell like sweat.
So take a good, long whiff of that, kids. That's the smell of the Founding Fathers, Freedom, and Apple Pie. That's the BO of America, boys.
What's really frustrating about this "nice" weather though isn't just that it's a sort of depressing last hurrah (it actually makes me think of the mass suicide at Masada). The really frustrating thing about it is that it turns my French classroom into a sauna. There's something funny with the building in general in that, even in the midst of a brutal Midwestern winter, it still manages to be warmer and wetter than a Tel Aviv armpit. Normally such armpitness can be countered with air conditioning, but the AC unit is so old that it rattles and makes a noise worse than a toddler banging pots and pans together, which is obviously not conducive to language learning. And so we have to sit in sweaty, sweaty silence. I'm not entirely sure why they can't update the AC units in the building. The university has billions of dollars in the endowment fund...just sitting there...not buying new AC units.
Anyway, when I say the room gets sweaty, that doesn't fully capture the awfulness. I mean that the room has a level of heat so oppressive that you can actually taste it. Imagine that: TASTING heat. You look around and everyone is dripping with sweat, and you can barely hear the teacher because you're so sweaty that your ears feel like they're underwater. You feel like you're in the boiler room of the Titanic (well, before it filled up with water and presumably got much, much colder). It reminds me of those times back in LA when the temperature would get over 100 degrees and my dad would still refuse to turn on the AC, and so I would just lie face down on the floor of my room, spread eagle in my khaki pants (my wardrobe was exclusively khaki pants until I went to college), and I'd just pray to die, just for the heat to end. It's the sort of heat that makes me understand why corseted women of previous eras would faint all the time, because for most of French class I silently wonder to myself if I could get away with simply ripping off all of my clothing in the middle of class and nonchalantly continuing to conjugate verbs in the subjunctive while completely bare-ass naked. On my better days I wonder if I could just go akimba (bra-less), just to have a fraction less warmth surrounding me. Then I think to myself, well, if I can't take off all of my clothing, if only I could just faint at will. Then they'd have to take me to the hospital and it'd be socially acceptable for me to just wear a dress made out of paper.
It reminded me of the oppressive heat I'd sometimes feel on crowded buses in Tel Aviv or Italy, or on the London Underground, or the Paris Metro. That trapped, suffocating heat. But wait. Where's the smell?
I took a momentary break from fantasizing about Hulk-ing out of all of my clothing and instead cautiously sniffed the air. Sure, it wasn't exactly a good smell...but when you considered how rapidly pits stains were growing in that class, it sure didn't smell so bad. It was nothing like the traumatizing smells I've experienced in other places. In Israel, for example, there's the lethal combination of a water shortage and high costs for deodorant, which makes getting on a crowded bus during the summer more dangerous than if there were suicide bombers on it. And that's not to pick on just Israel. In other places, such as France, there's simply "traditional"--yeah, we'll call it "traditional"--notions about bathing, such as the notion that anything more than three baths a year is an extravagance. But G-d bless us, here in America, environment be damned, I know several people who insist on two showers a day. We throw caution to the wind and use cancer-causing antiperspirants like it's our job. We might be destroying the environment and ourselves, but damn it, at least we're not going to smell like Europeans. And so, trapped in this room of stale sweat, at least it didn't smell like sweat.
So take a good, long whiff of that, kids. That's the smell of the Founding Fathers, Freedom, and Apple Pie. That's the BO of America, boys.
Mensa Madness
I'm not so sure that being a genius is all it's cracked up to be. I remember when I was on the kibbutz someone told me, while making no claim that I was a genius to be fair, that I was just smart enough to have a miserable life. That only people of average intelligence and below could lead happy lives, and that such happiness would be denied to me. I would be frustrated with people and feel out of place, but there would still be millions of things beyond my comprehension. I remember how painful it felt knowing that I wasn't smart enough to be classified as a genius, that I wouldn't be the one to cure cancer or whatever, but I was smart enough to be miserable. At least if you're a genius you get the curse AND the blessing, rather than just the curse.
Then today I met a genius. An actual, bonafide, certified and whatever genius. How do I know? Because she told me so.
She had gone on this long rant about how when she was a cheerleader she wished to be recognized as being so much more than a cute girl in a skirt. You could tell that the real point of the conversation was not all of this because of how uninterested she sounded while talking about it. Her description of her life as a cheerleader felt rushed and almost mumbled, like she was talking about something less important than what kind of toothpaste she uses. Really, this was just a set-up so that she could tell us, "Yes, and everyone thought I was just a dumb cheerleader when really I AM IN MENSA."
Maybe her voice didn't really go up several decibels, and maybe she didn't really look around at those of us gathered at the table to make sure that EVERYONE had heard the good news that we had been graced with the presence of this genius--but it sure felt like it. Clearly this girl was constantly looking for any opportunity to drop that line into a conversation, so that we mere mortals would know that this veritable Athena had graciously condescended to dine with us.
I gotta admit that for a moment I felt jealous. Why am I some retarded clown who says stupid things in class while this girl gets to be in Mensa?
But then I thought about it. What kind of life is it to be a genius? Does she really get a blessing that I don't have? She's not curing cancer. She's working in a university maintenance office. But does she get the curse that I get? Yes. She seems frustrated by the stupidity of others, except in her case I'm guessing most people are stupider than her (while only a few are stupider than I am). Even worse, she's now doomed to constantly remind others in her presence that she's not like them, that she's in Mensa.
And, well, I'm glad I can't tell anyone that I'm in Mensa. I'm glad that I'm smart enough that I don't require adult supervision but stupid enough to have moments where I silently wonder to myself if I'm borderline retarded. I'm GLAD that some things in this world are still a mystery. I'm proud of the fact that, in spite of almost a decade of working with lighting equipment in theaters, I still don't understand the concept of electricity, instead preferring to believe that in each light bulb lives a Tinkerbell. I'm thrilled that I think that the microwave cooks my food with its light bulb, and that when I'm not looking the girl in the mirror makes faces at me. Being the non-genius that I am, gravity is actually just willpower and planes only work because on every flight someone is on board constantly praying to G-d that it stays in the air (which is why I make sure to take care of that).
Yeah, I may be an idiot sometimes, but I'd rather be an idiot than a desperate Mensan. Hooray for the blessings of idiocy.
Then today I met a genius. An actual, bonafide, certified and whatever genius. How do I know? Because she told me so.
She had gone on this long rant about how when she was a cheerleader she wished to be recognized as being so much more than a cute girl in a skirt. You could tell that the real point of the conversation was not all of this because of how uninterested she sounded while talking about it. Her description of her life as a cheerleader felt rushed and almost mumbled, like she was talking about something less important than what kind of toothpaste she uses. Really, this was just a set-up so that she could tell us, "Yes, and everyone thought I was just a dumb cheerleader when really I AM IN MENSA."
Maybe her voice didn't really go up several decibels, and maybe she didn't really look around at those of us gathered at the table to make sure that EVERYONE had heard the good news that we had been graced with the presence of this genius--but it sure felt like it. Clearly this girl was constantly looking for any opportunity to drop that line into a conversation, so that we mere mortals would know that this veritable Athena had graciously condescended to dine with us.
I gotta admit that for a moment I felt jealous. Why am I some retarded clown who says stupid things in class while this girl gets to be in Mensa?
But then I thought about it. What kind of life is it to be a genius? Does she really get a blessing that I don't have? She's not curing cancer. She's working in a university maintenance office. But does she get the curse that I get? Yes. She seems frustrated by the stupidity of others, except in her case I'm guessing most people are stupider than her (while only a few are stupider than I am). Even worse, she's now doomed to constantly remind others in her presence that she's not like them, that she's in Mensa.
And, well, I'm glad I can't tell anyone that I'm in Mensa. I'm glad that I'm smart enough that I don't require adult supervision but stupid enough to have moments where I silently wonder to myself if I'm borderline retarded. I'm GLAD that some things in this world are still a mystery. I'm proud of the fact that, in spite of almost a decade of working with lighting equipment in theaters, I still don't understand the concept of electricity, instead preferring to believe that in each light bulb lives a Tinkerbell. I'm thrilled that I think that the microwave cooks my food with its light bulb, and that when I'm not looking the girl in the mirror makes faces at me. Being the non-genius that I am, gravity is actually just willpower and planes only work because on every flight someone is on board constantly praying to G-d that it stays in the air (which is why I make sure to take care of that).
Yeah, I may be an idiot sometimes, but I'd rather be an idiot than a desperate Mensan. Hooray for the blessings of idiocy.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Doctor Who Now?
I'm still recovering from this past weekend's Doctor Who marathon. It pretty much made me lose all sense of reality, and I've learned my lesson to never again watch 15 hours of sci fi or ANY one tv show, because it got to the point where I was on the verge of believing that a Cybermen or Dalek invasion was a question of when rather than if, and even my dreams were about being the Doctor. I feel more disoriented as I try to recover from this weekend than I would if I were recovering from lethal quantities of beer. That's exactly it, I feel drunk. I'm trying to counter the effects of Doctor Who poisoning by trying to read as much news as possible. I'm even trying to watch Prime Minister's Questions, even though I'm not British, because I feel that I need to be reminded that boring things happen in London, too. Things like government overspending, welfare reform and the placing of park benches... and not just massive alien invasions that put the very existence of all dimensions in the universe at stake.
Before I move on from Doctor Who, I just gotta say: I love that the Doctor is non-violent and that the most aggressive thing in his arsenal is a thing called a "sonic screwdriver," which, with a light at the tip instead of a point, is even less threatening than a plastic Fisher Price screwdriver used by small children pretending to be Bob the Builder. Having said that, however, I feel that I must also point out that it seems like the vast majority of the villains in Doctor Who are villains from previous episodes that the Doctor was too much of a pussy to kill off. And so they come back, stronger than ever and now aware that at the very worst the Doctor will blink them with a tiny, non-lethal light bulb. I'm all for giving villains a second chance, maybe even a third one, but when the Daleks invade for the gazillionth time, I think it's time to start kicking ass and taking names. I mean, for fuck's sake, the man has a spaceship/time machine. Maybe this proves that it's all for the best that I'm not a Time Lord and that I've only got the one heart, but if I had that kind of technology I'd have traveled to a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away and stolen some weaponry from the Star Wars world. If the TARDIS has towed Planet Earth in the past, I'm sure it could tow the Death Star. No Dalek is going to want to mess with a man wielding the power of Darth Vader. Are lasers too violent for the Doctor? Fine then, he has all the time in the world, he could spend a regeneration learning Jedi mind tricks and learn to choke people without actually touching them. Heck, even if the Doctor didn't want to go to the trouble of towing the Death Star or spending years under the tutelage of a wrinkly little green thing that speaks English with Latin syntax, he could still just grab himself a couple of lightsabers and start wailing on some Dalek ass. He'd like that, I'm sure, because lightsabers are kind of like his trusty sonic screwdriver, as both emit light. But unlike the Doctor's trusty sonic screwdriver, lightsabers can do so much more than just unlock shit.
I also understand that Doctor Who is a kids' show, which may explain the Doctor's reluctance to choose violence. And while part of me respects that, I also fear that the Doctor may be teaching kids to simply buy themselves time rather than solve their problems once and for all. Instead, the Doctor teaches kids about procrastination of cosmic proportions, that it's a happy ending if the threat of the annihilation of humankind is put off until tomorrow. Yeah, the Cybermen are going to come back, stronger and angrier than ever (okay, maybe not angrier since Cybermen have emotion inhibitors), but let's not kill them because we can get out of this current mess without doing so, because killing them would be mean.
I also have to wonder about the Doctor. The poor thing has to travel throughout time and space saving people from the same villains, time and time again. Sure, not all of the villains in Doctor Who are repeat offenders, but a large enough percentage of them are, large enough that the Doctor, being the clever Time Lord that he is, has probably noticed. Had he just started EX-TER-MIN-ATE-ing them after maybe the fourth time they tried to destroy Earth, or enslave the human race, or turn the population into pigs, or whatever they're up to this time, then maybe the Doctor could have retired five regenerations ago. Instead of saving the planet from Cybermen or Daleks for the umpteenth time, he could be sipping margaritas on a beach on some distant planet, occasionally coming out of retirement to defeat a new challenger who has creative ideas of how to kill the human race, a challenger who could really push the Doctor's cleverness to its limits.
I mean, who is he trying to be? Jesus? For pete's sake, even G-d smites people from time to time.
Before I move on from Doctor Who, I just gotta say: I love that the Doctor is non-violent and that the most aggressive thing in his arsenal is a thing called a "sonic screwdriver," which, with a light at the tip instead of a point, is even less threatening than a plastic Fisher Price screwdriver used by small children pretending to be Bob the Builder. Having said that, however, I feel that I must also point out that it seems like the vast majority of the villains in Doctor Who are villains from previous episodes that the Doctor was too much of a pussy to kill off. And so they come back, stronger than ever and now aware that at the very worst the Doctor will blink them with a tiny, non-lethal light bulb. I'm all for giving villains a second chance, maybe even a third one, but when the Daleks invade for the gazillionth time, I think it's time to start kicking ass and taking names. I mean, for fuck's sake, the man has a spaceship/time machine. Maybe this proves that it's all for the best that I'm not a Time Lord and that I've only got the one heart, but if I had that kind of technology I'd have traveled to a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away and stolen some weaponry from the Star Wars world. If the TARDIS has towed Planet Earth in the past, I'm sure it could tow the Death Star. No Dalek is going to want to mess with a man wielding the power of Darth Vader. Are lasers too violent for the Doctor? Fine then, he has all the time in the world, he could spend a regeneration learning Jedi mind tricks and learn to choke people without actually touching them. Heck, even if the Doctor didn't want to go to the trouble of towing the Death Star or spending years under the tutelage of a wrinkly little green thing that speaks English with Latin syntax, he could still just grab himself a couple of lightsabers and start wailing on some Dalek ass. He'd like that, I'm sure, because lightsabers are kind of like his trusty sonic screwdriver, as both emit light. But unlike the Doctor's trusty sonic screwdriver, lightsabers can do so much more than just unlock shit.
I also understand that Doctor Who is a kids' show, which may explain the Doctor's reluctance to choose violence. And while part of me respects that, I also fear that the Doctor may be teaching kids to simply buy themselves time rather than solve their problems once and for all. Instead, the Doctor teaches kids about procrastination of cosmic proportions, that it's a happy ending if the threat of the annihilation of humankind is put off until tomorrow. Yeah, the Cybermen are going to come back, stronger and angrier than ever (okay, maybe not angrier since Cybermen have emotion inhibitors), but let's not kill them because we can get out of this current mess without doing so, because killing them would be mean.
I also have to wonder about the Doctor. The poor thing has to travel throughout time and space saving people from the same villains, time and time again. Sure, not all of the villains in Doctor Who are repeat offenders, but a large enough percentage of them are, large enough that the Doctor, being the clever Time Lord that he is, has probably noticed. Had he just started EX-TER-MIN-ATE-ing them after maybe the fourth time they tried to destroy Earth, or enslave the human race, or turn the population into pigs, or whatever they're up to this time, then maybe the Doctor could have retired five regenerations ago. Instead of saving the planet from Cybermen or Daleks for the umpteenth time, he could be sipping margaritas on a beach on some distant planet, occasionally coming out of retirement to defeat a new challenger who has creative ideas of how to kill the human race, a challenger who could really push the Doctor's cleverness to its limits.
I mean, who is he trying to be? Jesus? For pete's sake, even G-d smites people from time to time.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Manic Impressive/Anthem for a Doomed Twinkie
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all? -
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
--"Anthem for Doomed Youth" by Wilfred Owen
Knowing that the end is nigh, that my senior+ year of college has begun and that my days of sitting around and having Doctor Who marathons with the tacit approval of society are numbered, I feel that I should reflect. I came to this town an 18 year old, half excited to go off on this next adventure and half devastated that I didn't end up in England or Wales for school, and I'll be leaving a 23 year old finally on her way to school in England (hopefully) and who's had adventures that 18 year old me couldn't have possibly imagined--not that my life adventures were the stuff of legends or whatever, it's just that 18 year old me, given the opportunity, would have chosen to flee to England, and the possibility of going to Israel wouldn't have even dawned on her. And people who meet me and people who know me keep asking me if I regret my choices, whether coming to this school in the first place or whether dropping out to go to Israel. And that's a complicated question.
Okay, be fair, the nearing the end in itself didn't bring this on; rather, looking around my apartment brought this on. A lot of the stuff decorating my walls, residing in my music collection and sitting on my bookshelf are things that I brought with me to this town as an 18 year old. I still have my Liverpool FC sheets and soccer scarves, my Monty Python crap, and a few comforting books like "The Once and Future King," "Pride and Prejudice" and some Little House books. Not everything's the same though: now I have more versions of the Bible than I know what to do with, books in Hebrew, an Israeli flag hanging, and (more recently) enough Doctor Who DVDs to induce a "David Tennant is unbearably hot" coma. Also, most meaningfully, I now have an Israeli passport, ID and draft papers tucked away in a drawer.
What's striking to me is that, as I prepare to finally get my wish of going to school in England and not return to Israel, I've basically come full circle and returned to 18 year old me. The me that was such a passionate Anglophile that she could recite entire episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, that she made her own Beatles posters, that she forced herself to drink large quantities of tea until she could finally stand the taste, that she would go to pubs in the middle of the night or early in the morning simply to cheer on the English soccer team, that she was obsessed with the Round Table and that she spent an entire year claiming to be Anglican simply because it was English. That version of me wouldn't have recognized the girl who spent so much time at Hillel and (formerly) Chabad, who abandoned everything to live in Jerusalem, and who spent some time running around the Israeli wilderness in an IDF uniform with her face completely covered in mud. "No!" teenage me would have screamed, "If anything your face is supposed to be painted blue, like the Celts!"
Having said that, I am not exactly the same as I was at 18. For a start, I'm fatter. I like hummus now. I can speak Hebrew. I'm no longer an Anglophile, someone who likes things simply because they're English, and instead I simply like a lot of things, many of which just happen to be English or British. But more importantly, I'm less terrified of the world. Okay, that's not true. I'm still absolutely terrified of the world, but I'm better now at just sucking it up. Before I tell you how I coped during my freshman year of college, let me just tell you that it wouldn't have worked during the many times in Israel when I was surrounded by strangers and needed to make a support system for myself immediately.
While in Israel I learned to simply thrust myself into the company of strangers, but in freshman year of college terrified little Sammy carried around a copy of "The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen," a young English soldier in the Great War who died in combat. Absolutely terrified of my new neighbors that I was expected to befriend and dine with, I instead spent mealtimes in the company of good ol' Wilfred. Part of me thought it was amusing to ironically compare my own struggles with strangers to Owen's struggles with gas attacks and deadly assaults, but a larger and more alarming part of me likened our struggles with a complete lack of irony. You can tell that one poem in particular, "Anthem for a Doomed Youth," really captivated me because this page lays flat more easily than all the others. If I remember correctly, I was particularly attached to the word "cattle" because that's exactly how I felt. I felt bitter that I had no choice, that I was being forced to go to school, in a country I didn't want to be in no less, when all I wanted to do (if I remember correctly) was to open a vegan bowling alley in Wales and roam the countryside of England like a gypsy (minus the whole house squatting thing). I was miserable and lonely and frustrated and bitter and I was blaming it on society and my parents for requiring an American college degree, and at 18 I was convinced that Wilfred Owen alone, that doomed youth sent by Mother England to die in a foreign land, he alone could understand what that felt like.
Now of course, as a wizened woman of 22, who was denied jobs in Israel for lack of a degree, who spent time away from the educational universe, now I understand what an idiotic little shit I was. And though I may have felt like I had no choice and that I was surrounded by terrifying soldiers, but I wasn't exactly facing enemy artillery fire. Even now I can barely stand to look at "The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen," because on the front cover I now imagine Wilfred Owen holding back tears caused by my teenage insensitivity, and his picture on the back cover appears to be holding back a smirk caused by my teenage idiocy.
So to go back to the question of whether or not I regret any of my choices that brought me to this school or to Israel or back here..... No. Because without it, I don't know that I would have come full circle back to my true (but more mature) self. Yeah, I'm still a work in progress, but I no longer compare my struggles to those of World War I poets. I'm more prepared than ever to go forth and be awesome. And that's what I plan on doing.
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all? -
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
--"Anthem for Doomed Youth" by Wilfred Owen
Knowing that the end is nigh, that my senior+ year of college has begun and that my days of sitting around and having Doctor Who marathons with the tacit approval of society are numbered, I feel that I should reflect. I came to this town an 18 year old, half excited to go off on this next adventure and half devastated that I didn't end up in England or Wales for school, and I'll be leaving a 23 year old finally on her way to school in England (hopefully) and who's had adventures that 18 year old me couldn't have possibly imagined--not that my life adventures were the stuff of legends or whatever, it's just that 18 year old me, given the opportunity, would have chosen to flee to England, and the possibility of going to Israel wouldn't have even dawned on her. And people who meet me and people who know me keep asking me if I regret my choices, whether coming to this school in the first place or whether dropping out to go to Israel. And that's a complicated question.
Okay, be fair, the nearing the end in itself didn't bring this on; rather, looking around my apartment brought this on. A lot of the stuff decorating my walls, residing in my music collection and sitting on my bookshelf are things that I brought with me to this town as an 18 year old. I still have my Liverpool FC sheets and soccer scarves, my Monty Python crap, and a few comforting books like "The Once and Future King," "Pride and Prejudice" and some Little House books. Not everything's the same though: now I have more versions of the Bible than I know what to do with, books in Hebrew, an Israeli flag hanging, and (more recently) enough Doctor Who DVDs to induce a "David Tennant is unbearably hot" coma. Also, most meaningfully, I now have an Israeli passport, ID and draft papers tucked away in a drawer.
What's striking to me is that, as I prepare to finally get my wish of going to school in England and not return to Israel, I've basically come full circle and returned to 18 year old me. The me that was such a passionate Anglophile that she could recite entire episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, that she made her own Beatles posters, that she forced herself to drink large quantities of tea until she could finally stand the taste, that she would go to pubs in the middle of the night or early in the morning simply to cheer on the English soccer team, that she was obsessed with the Round Table and that she spent an entire year claiming to be Anglican simply because it was English. That version of me wouldn't have recognized the girl who spent so much time at Hillel and (formerly) Chabad, who abandoned everything to live in Jerusalem, and who spent some time running around the Israeli wilderness in an IDF uniform with her face completely covered in mud. "No!" teenage me would have screamed, "If anything your face is supposed to be painted blue, like the Celts!"
Having said that, I am not exactly the same as I was at 18. For a start, I'm fatter. I like hummus now. I can speak Hebrew. I'm no longer an Anglophile, someone who likes things simply because they're English, and instead I simply like a lot of things, many of which just happen to be English or British. But more importantly, I'm less terrified of the world. Okay, that's not true. I'm still absolutely terrified of the world, but I'm better now at just sucking it up. Before I tell you how I coped during my freshman year of college, let me just tell you that it wouldn't have worked during the many times in Israel when I was surrounded by strangers and needed to make a support system for myself immediately.
While in Israel I learned to simply thrust myself into the company of strangers, but in freshman year of college terrified little Sammy carried around a copy of "The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen," a young English soldier in the Great War who died in combat. Absolutely terrified of my new neighbors that I was expected to befriend and dine with, I instead spent mealtimes in the company of good ol' Wilfred. Part of me thought it was amusing to ironically compare my own struggles with strangers to Owen's struggles with gas attacks and deadly assaults, but a larger and more alarming part of me likened our struggles with a complete lack of irony. You can tell that one poem in particular, "Anthem for a Doomed Youth," really captivated me because this page lays flat more easily than all the others. If I remember correctly, I was particularly attached to the word "cattle" because that's exactly how I felt. I felt bitter that I had no choice, that I was being forced to go to school, in a country I didn't want to be in no less, when all I wanted to do (if I remember correctly) was to open a vegan bowling alley in Wales and roam the countryside of England like a gypsy (minus the whole house squatting thing). I was miserable and lonely and frustrated and bitter and I was blaming it on society and my parents for requiring an American college degree, and at 18 I was convinced that Wilfred Owen alone, that doomed youth sent by Mother England to die in a foreign land, he alone could understand what that felt like.
Now of course, as a wizened woman of 22, who was denied jobs in Israel for lack of a degree, who spent time away from the educational universe, now I understand what an idiotic little shit I was. And though I may have felt like I had no choice and that I was surrounded by terrifying soldiers, but I wasn't exactly facing enemy artillery fire. Even now I can barely stand to look at "The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen," because on the front cover I now imagine Wilfred Owen holding back tears caused by my teenage insensitivity, and his picture on the back cover appears to be holding back a smirk caused by my teenage idiocy.
So to go back to the question of whether or not I regret any of my choices that brought me to this school or to Israel or back here..... No. Because without it, I don't know that I would have come full circle back to my true (but more mature) self. Yeah, I'm still a work in progress, but I no longer compare my struggles to those of World War I poets. I'm more prepared than ever to go forth and be awesome. And that's what I plan on doing.
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