pay-per-bagging

(no duh)

the cultural baggage of countries now seems to include...er...bagging.

paper or plastic? - i'd never known it any other way. you went to shop rite, you bagged (or someone bagged for you) your groceries in either the yellow plastic shop rite bags or in the brown paper ones (or, if you're my mom, in both, wherein the paper bag goes into the plastic bag and voila! has spiffy, easy-to-carry handles).

i love mark twain

i never used to. in high school, i thought "huckleberry finn" was the most boring book i had ever read. and "the adventures of tom sawyer" was 10 times worse.

but twain is also a humorist and a satirist, and i find myself drawn to those writers. his undercurrent of love for the europeans in his "tramp abroad" is also obvious to those who can sense it in his writing, and it always goes hand-in-hand with his fondness for the foibles of americans. any culture you experience has its ridiculousness, and that is fertile ground for the humorous mind. we love the deliciousness of it.

so here are some of my favorite quotes from twain...

"Classic." A book which people praise and don't read.

MARK TWAIN, Following the Equator

To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.

MARK TWAIN, "How to Tell a Story"

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

MARK TWAIN, Autobiography

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

MARK TWAIN, Innocents Abroad

a little bit of heidel-lovin'

because i'm nostalgic, and because it's just so goddamn gorgeous...
also:
the heidelberg webcam
for live pictures

on procrastination

procrastination it seems is only a permitted indulgence to one class of careerist - the writer. i'm reading about mrs. parker's first few meetings with ernest hemingway, in which the already-established writer impresses her with the common knowledge among novelists that a single passage or a single page may be re-written 60 or 70 times before it finally sounded right. creativity also hardly strikes everyday, unless you are an innately talented individual with a recipe for avoiding writer's block. there are days when you wander around aimlessly, looking for the right wording or inspiration, or an idea of any sort.

today's a day when i can't write words. yesterday was fantastic - all day, i wrote vignettes in my head, waiting for the chance to post them to my blog. when i finally sat down at my computer at 11 last night, all vignettes promptly fled my brain, and i haven't been able to express anything properly all day. there aren't always opportunities to capture your own personal genius and bottle it. just rest assured that it exists, even if it's just in your head.

intellectualism

during our formative years (which - if you maintain the idea that we are constantly learning, whether at 8 or 80 - lasts all our lives), we have a tendency to want to like things. the want is there, but the fulfillment of it may not be. for instance, i've always wanted to like jazz. i've always wanted to like flaubert's "a sentimental education." i've always wanted to like depressing new wave french films by truffaut. because even in the intellectual world, there is certain pressure to like things, as that will make you a truly intelligent intellectual.

"blue is the color, football is the game..."

yesterday's uefa champion's league final had all the drama, heartache, and joy we've come to love in the world of soccer - a fierce 1-1 tie, double overtime, penalty kicks, rain, sweat, blood, and tears. even if chelsea weren't my team, my heart would have gone out to john terry in the end - his obvious despair at the end of the game would only have left the staunchest man u fan unmoved.

i never was a huge fan of any sport until i experienced all that soccer could be while living in europe. there is such a pure love of the game there, this worldwide phenomenon which brings people together all over the globe (and, like everything that brings people together all over the globe, leaves this isolated little island of ours called america untouched). it takes me back to the first time i really experienced soccer, during the 2004 european cup in portugal.

on tangents

of course i realize that my posts go off into tangents, which usually seem unrelated to those people not fully familiar with the inner workings of my brain. i realize this because upon looking at anything i've written, there seem to be a profusion of dashes and parentheses. and because i've been told this by quite a few people.

but there is a method to this madness, and it stems from a number of reasons. i'll seek to be succinct in laying out these reasons, will lay them before you in an organized fashion befitting a research paper or a thesis. anecdotes will be relied upon however, and the Reader may be required to participate in a few mental calisthenics.

somewhere in the atlantic

spoke to two of my very dear friends from heidelberg today after a long time. we bemoaned together (well, the three of us, in separate conversations with each other) how everyone seems to be moving away from heidelberg, and i suggested it may be best to meet somewhere in the middle of the atlantic.

the vicious circle

my brother tells me that when i become interested in something - be it a film, book, author, television show, whatever - i become something like a woman obsessed. he's 14, so he says it to tease (and i tell him he's wrong). but secretly, i've realized that he's very right.

since watching "mrs. parker and the vicious circle," dorothy parker has become my newest point of interest, and i will read anything i can get my hands on to know more about her, and about the algonquin round table (also known as "the vicious circle").

of course, this all stems back to my interest in anything pertaining to the 1920's - the "lost generation," the meetings in paris of minds like f. scott fitzgerald and earnest hemingway, the flapper generation, the jazz age, sylvia beach's iconic "shakespeare and company," the emptiness and hedonism of a generation between wars, books by evelyn waugh. all of that however lay in the realm of expat life, which was rampant in the 1920's. dorothy parker however has brought me home.

watching two movies about the '20's back to back ("bright young things" and "mrs. parker..."), along with my recent book purchases ("the beautiful and the damned," "a moveable feast," and the diaries of anais nin) have probably fueled the obsession. or as i like to think of it, stoked the fires of my curiosity.

the algonquin round table began as a joke. in 1919, one member invited another to lunch at the algonquin hotel, supposedly to celebrate the latter's return from europe. in fact, the former took the opportunity to thoroughly roast the latter, and the joke was enjoyed so much that lunch at the algonquin became a daily ritual for this collection of literary humorists, satirists, wits, and critics.

they met there for lunch (and outside of lunch) from 1919 til 1929. the "ten-year lunch" resulted in countless collaborations, friendships, and affairs (both real and imagined) between the circle. from this group arose the cultural icon that is "the new yorker."

like any friendship, it had its tensions, its jealousies and critics. after 1929, when the group disbanded because of projects that took them outside the scope of new york city, many found they no longer had anything to say to one another. they became dissatisfied, and dorothy parker herself derided the group as just a bunch of jokesters looking for a forum for their wit.

but something about the idea appeals to me nonetheless.

why mrs. parker...

i finally finished watching "mrs. parker and the vicious circle," which i loved. the movie was a bit too long, but the scenes in which dorothy parker recites bits of her biting poetry to perfectly match a certain situation in her life, as well as the buzz of the 1920's literary circle and that unsatisfied, ever-present love between dorothy and mr. benchley, made it worthwhile. it made me go back and read some of my poetry books as i haven't read them before.

of course, my taste in poetry still veers towards the sarcastic and sharp-witted - the "up-yours" poetry that is e e cummings is my favorite, and has been for awhile, but after looking up and reading some of dorothy parker's verse, that may change. one of my favorites is a poem entitled "experience":

"Some men break your heart in two
Some men fawn and flatter
Some men never look at you;
And that cleans up the matter."