Bookstores on the Chopping Block

Here is an article which, I heartily believe, expresses the opinions of true book lovers everywhere.

Slainte!

Californian Once More

Whelp, I'm back. I suppose it was inevitable. So lets get this part out of the way before I forget:

Above: College choice numero uno. Pretty, no? I do love brick.

Above: The college hangout of choice: Bucer's (pronounced Boot-zer's) coffeehouse and pub. Their americanos are amazing.

So. I'm still mulling over how I want to address my trip, but more on Idaho later. Today, I received my official acceptance package for Pepperdine University, Seaver College. And I got enough financial aide to MORE THAN pay for tuition. But I LOVE my Idahoan school! What should I do, internet? What should I do...

As always, there will be books here! While I was away I added several books/authors to my "must read" list. Enjoy:

-(more) Lewis
-Nietzsche
-(more) Dostoevsky
-Ogden Nash
-Elizabeth Eliot
-N. D. Wilson
-The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

More to come.
Cheers.

Here I go.

photo credit to Brooks!

College Trip: Idaho

Tomorrow, at precisely 8:15 in the morning, my mother and I will be cramming pounds of cardigans and scarves into our suitcases, and heading northeast for Idaho. 


A little background here:
I don't really know where I want to go to college next fall, but my first choice is a teeny college in Moscow, Idaho. I've already been accepted, but the school follows a classical education curriculum, which essentially means freshman year looks like this:


Latin Colloqium
Lordship Colloqium
Classical Rhetoric Colloqium
and Music Colloqium


...for everyone. Everyone = 60 students. So there's that...


I love the idea of learning Latin, but I'm really worried that school is a little more than I'm ready for. Anyways, I'll be finding out a lot more about it soon, but this relates to the blog because I'm not sure if I'll be able to post while I'm gone at all. If not, here's a story to tide this thing over:

Last year, I was (somehow) convinced (wheedled) into taking AP Psychology. And our teacher asked us to email her the morning of our absence, just to let her know we wouldn't be there. I don't have a clue as to why. But that was the rule. Anyways, as I was a particularly prickly brand of junior, I missed class... a lot. So I felt the need to spice up my absence-emails. Upon one such urge, I thought a little, and ended up sending her this:

A Poem to Inform You of My Absence

It is to my distress
that on this very day
I do heartily confess
that sadly I'm away

The funny part is that my psych teacher is best friends with my journalism teacher, and apparently they talked about it because the next day I had to explain why I hadn't written a poem to/for my very indignant journalism teacher!

If I can't post on the road, I'll be back Tuesday, and hopefully I'll be brimming with good things to say about "Operation: BIG, Scary Decision" (a.k.a. the college search).

I also wanted to say a quick hullo and thank you to Sarah and Dani-Elle for their kind comments on my last post, I hope I didn't scare you people with my bitter sarcasm... though perhaps it was only fair to warn you. ^^ 

Writing > Therapy

More writing. I did this during a free 7th period... and during a fit of frustration at my peers. Enjoy.

Prom.
One word.
One night.
But oh, the agony.
Nothing, nothing, instantly vaporizes the brains of hormonal teenage girls everywhere--like prom. And the fact that I go to an upper-middle class private school doesn't help the situation much. Essentially, nothing ever happens to these people. They skip first period and go to Starbucks instead, and then they feel bad ass for a week. We don't have world travelers here, we have Thursday-night teenybopper party-ers whose vernacular probably doesn't include the word vernacular. So it comes as no surprise to me that when a dance is held--gasp--an hour away and--faint--on a boat, the girls nearly forget to use two forms of the word "f***ing" to describe how ugly their friends' dresses are behind their backs or neglect to show even one of their unwilling classmates photos of all three of their prom dress options.
I say nearly.
What kills me is that I can see how exciting this occasion must be for them. A typical teenage female will spend the entire year WAITING for someone to ask her about herself--just so that she can feel as though she really is the expert on something the rest of the population is interested in. But here is this opportunity: this shining chance for them to unashamedly gab about the exorbitant amounts of money their parents are paying for a night of loud, loud slut-songs and a show of their class acting as though civility will have to pause for a moment as this generation makes its mark on history. But let me tell you ladies, the rest of us? We don't care where you are going to get colored and glitterized plastic super-glued to your fingers. Your shoes don't hold us captivated with awe at your glory. A limo is just a very, very long taxi. And we certainly don't need to hear the story of how "omg, the very first dress I tried on was just--THE ONE! I knew it right when I gazed, lovingly, at my reflection in the mirror at Macy's--I said it right then, "'I am done, THIS IS IT! MY PROM DRESS! AAAAAHHH!"'
Save it for facebook people, as for me, I don't want to hear about prom until I get to laugh at humiliating pictures of my peers on Sunday. ...what can I say? Prom IS good for something.

Clipping Salinger

You really should read this. And the book. But mostly the book.

"If there is an amateur reader still left in the world--or anybody who just reads and runs--I ask him or her, with untellable affection and grattitude, to split the dedication of this book four ways with my wife and children."

"In this entre-nous spirit, then, old confidant, before we join the others, the grounded everywhere, including, I'm sure, the middle-aged hot-rodders who insist on zooming us to the moon, the Dharma Bums, the makers of cigarette filters for thinking men, the Beat and the Sloppy and the Petulant, the chosen cultists, all the lofty experts who know so well what we should or shouldn't do with our poor little sex organs, all bearded guitarists and Zen-killers and incorporated aesthetic Teddy boys who look down their thoroughly unenlightened noses at this splendid planet where (please don't shut me up) Kilroy, Christ, and Shakespeare all stopped--before we join these others, I privately say to you, old friend, (unto you, really, I'm afraid), please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming parentheses: (((()))) (98)."

"By every logical definition he was an unhealthy specimen, he did on his worst nights and late afternoons give out not only cries of pain but cries for help, and when nominal help arrived, he did decline to say in perfectly intelligible language where it hurt (104)."

From Seymour an Introduction

by J.D. Salinger

I love Salinger because he makes for a fantastic narrator. He lies to you. He knows his own weaknesses. Salinger gave us a bouquet of parentheses, who else gave us a bouquet of parentheses? Who thinks of such things? J. D. Salinger looked at the world and saw what shit it could be, but he also found immense satisfaction out of a hot day and a silent old man. His narrators were wrong, and sweaty, and hopeless. But Salinger can do something no one else can: he can be haunting AND funny AND morbid AND detatched AND overcaring. AND AND AND. And when he gave us a floral arrangement made out of punctuation, we took those beauties and ran away with him. Who could blame us?

Cheers.

Series: Etymologies for Posterity

Learned this in class today:

So good.

...and I finally remembered to look this up just now:

Did everybody know what a confab was but me? Goon guys, help a brother out next time.