~Monday~ I had the most ridiculous dreams all night long about editing a document in Microsoft Word that was going to be published on the web. Inane.
I got behind enough this morning to miss the 8:15 city bus, so I carried myself over to Gorman Street to catch the #9 Greek Village Wolfline bus. The bus was fairly crowded with students, but not jam-packed to the point that it usually is. No doubt at least some kids extended their long weekend home for the holiday by one more day—or perhaps, were taking a day to recover from being home again for an extended stay.
The guy sitting across from me sat with his legs spread open far enough that they overlapped the front of the seats on either side of his, but not to the point that they precluded someone from taking the seats. As—fortunately thin—people did take each seat, it never once seemed to dawn on him that maybe he ought to pull his knees in to make it more comfortable for those around him.
A young lady, a sorority girl with a dramatic blond “up ‘do” and rather large breasts, ended up standing in the aisle right in front of me and she held the strap from the bar above her to keep her balance in such a way that the short sleeve of her blouse pulled back enough to reveal stubble in her armpits. If she doesn’t attend to that soon, she’ll be moving from Alpha Gamma Delta to Gotta Braidya Pithair.
I had a breakfast sandwich using my penultimate massa roll this morning: turkey sausage, a fried egg, and some melted pepper jack cheese on it.
I hate 9:00 meetings on Monday morning, but that’s exactly how my day started. My boss’ boss was out of town at his 102-year-old grandmother’s funeral in Kansas, so a peer boss of my boss ran the meeting. She was a little distracted facilitating, and later told me it was because she had checked her e-mail real quickly during the meeting and found out a friend of hers had died.
Just to complete the “death comes in threes” superstition, I’m going to go ahead and use up the third one by saying that several years ago in my book club, I read “Death Comes for the Archbishop” by Willa Cather.
In the afternoon, I had a meeting of the organizing committee of our holiday party which is coming up this Friday, December 4th. Out of a potential of just under 150 people, 62 have signed up.
Tonight was Salon VI from 6:30 until 10:00 at Mitch’s Tavern. Our ever-diverse agenda included the following (various and sundry notes have been added in and around items):
- If you were the saint of something, what would it be?
- Kim: Patron Saint of Undercats
- Anna: Patron Saint of Human Magpies and People Who Love Office Supplies
- John: Patron Saint of Protecting Straight People from Drag Queens
- Sarah: Patron Saint of Being on Time
- Etta: Patron Saint of Possibilities
- Brad: Patron Saint of Immediate Connections
- Are northerners easier?
- No: Extra layer of clothing
- Yes: At least they tell you when they’re not interested
- The value of authorial intent, redux
- Brad maintains his posit that listening to an author read his or her work is not a valid method by which to determine its authorial intent. He would appear to espouse “New Criticism, which argues that authorial intent is irrelevant to understanding a work of literature. The text is the only source of meaning, and any details of the author’s desires or life are purely extraneous.”
- Most of the group seemed to disagree—Anna the most vehemently. Perhaps she is simpatico with the Reader Response critics, who have argued the author’s intent will shape the text and limit the possible interpretations of a work. Then again, she might just have a psychological complex as a result of hearing her father read his own work.
- Anna’s father, in response to such a possibility printed on a piece of paper, might get out his rubber stamp and stamp the page:
Beneath Contempt! - Then again perhaps we’re all just preoccupied with intent, which Wimsatt coined intentional fallacy.
- Catalogs for salonist(a)s: Despairwear and one other. Visual aids to be provided by Anna (who promises to remember this time), so hold your Google fingers steady if you can.
- Anna shared a catalog from Dispairwear
- She also shared a Bas Bleu catalog, complete with an insert to join their society, one of whose membership benefits is “a membership card to flaunt your bluestocking status.”
- A copy of Curious Lists, a creative journal for list-lovers, and we attempted to create a list for the list title of, “Substitutes for Marshmallows.”
- A copy of Wicked French, which was just hysterical.
- Anna’s wedding photos, if anyone still cares
- Poles, cleavage, and a stripper with a mullet, OH MY!
- Etta’s wedding photos, if she brings them
- This topic got rather incendiary; we’ll just leave it at that.
- Why Brad HATES people who use sentences like “We’ll need to be planful” or “Would someone language that up for me” [don’t even get me started about “Thought Leaders”]
- We talked about a few other words that set us off, such as administrate and followership
- Kim said she likes words like gihugic and I asked what differentiates that word from ginormous, and she said gihugic is “bigger and grander”
- Anna noted that she loves business-speak
- Sustainable sustainability: On buses, gardens, avoiding elevators, and sleeping all day
- a.k.a. “The Lazy Man’s Guide to Sustainability”
- This item did, however, spark an interesting discussion about public transportation (the impetus for, and the rationalization for not—a lot of which was quite valid)
- The etymology of “worry”
- This discussion was gihuged by our server saying, “No worries” when we asked for something
- What we don’t like (and it’s plenty) about the phrase, “Don’t worry!”
- It’s negative
- It’s an imperative statement
- It’s an incomplete sentence
- It invokes worry with the mere mention of the word
- It invalidates one’s feelings
- STC End-of-Semester Party
- We agreed to keep a low profile as Salonists
- We left that fact that Anna changed her RSVP alone
- John was reminded about his potential Twitter balls
- STC-SIGDoc transition update
- In short FAB (however, not an abbreviation for “fabulous,” but an acronym for “frustrated,” “angry,” and “bitter”)
- Magic underwear
- This item was a place holder just to make sure everyone had seen A Flowchart to Determine What Religion You Should Follow
- Holiday letters (Love ’em or Hate ’em?)
- Kim: Doesn’t like them
- Anna: Most of them make her sick, but she sends one herself
- Etta: Likes them if they’re well-written
- John: Sends one himself; likes most, but like Etta, they must be well-written
- Sarah: Likes them, noted a series of satiric episodes in which each next update of a holiday letter gets more tragic
- Brad: Likes them
- The Cost of Celebrity (Fame vs. privacy)
- Tiger who?
- Check Mitch’s for an arcade machine with Word Dojo on it
- There wasn’t one.
Other notable moments/ponderings/quotes:
- With the ubiquity of Facebook, are holiday letters heading for extinction?
- Brad recommended checking out goodexperience.com/games.
- “If you ask a boy to get naked, he will.”
- The “secret hover” of xkcd comics
- A potential preferred appositive for Brad after sharing his story involving a bathroom, matches, and tissues: “Brad, builder of fires.”
A few suggested agenda items / action items for next time:
- Sarah will bring body glitter
- Our impetus for going to grad school
- Each read a paragraph from Brad’s book (sent to us before the meeting); have him read the paragraph at our next meeting, and tridux on the value of authorial intent
- John to create a doodle.com poll for our 2010 meeting schedule
I stopped by karaoke at Flex tonight to meet Joe for a couple of drinks. It was pretty tragic in there, and I left at a little after 11:00, unfortunately before Joe got called up to sing his song. David (the emcee) took a break that I didn’t want to wait through, so I left before Joe’s turn.
Some of us have to work tomorrow.