Bitstrips...

...is fun. 

Poetry, Poetry Everywhere

A haiku about how I've begun to feel during those few minutes after the bell rings for a new period and I'm waiting to find out whether students are skipping tutoring or showing up:

I have grown to dread
the treading of sneakers on
the hallway carpet.

Also, apparently marker + newspaper = poetry. It's called blackout poetry, and I think it's kind of neat. I think it appeals to the editor in me, rearranging existing text to make something new and interesting and brief. Plus, there's the satisfaction of having created a piece of writing without having to suffer through the difficult act of actually writing a first draft. And if you mess up, who cares? It's just a newspaper. My first attempt is below.

Strive
to juggle
with friends.
Be careful, however
you might not
be too adept.
Don't ruffle the feather of
Sagittarius.
Don't
build your hopes
on
Aquarius.
Handle your affairs.
Dare
to pony up.

Easy Peasy Literary Wall Art

Behold. Wall art for the study, inspired by the handmadesilhouettes shop on Etsy. I googled silhouettes of fictional characters, copy and pasted them into MS Word, re-sized to my heart's content, added the pencil artistic effect, printed on cotton paper that happened to be lying around, trimmed and placed images in 8 x 10 frames that cost me $4.99 each at Michael's, and then the fiancé broke out the picture hooks and laser level to hang them. If you ignore how our walls are unlevel, making it impossible to ever hang anything in a straight line, I think they look pretty good. Plus, the project killed an afternoon and resulted in more of our immense empty wall space getting covered. So. Good times.

Nerd Girl Problem #182 & Catch-up

Word. I've been reading my way through the Sherlock Holmes canon, and I've just finished His Last Bow. Although I still have one more collection to go until I'm technically finished, the eponymous final entry of His Last Bow is chronologically (in terms of the fictional universe) the final Sherlock Holmes story. I was slayed to find myself reading about Holmes and Watson's twilight years after having followed their friendship and their hijinks for practically their entire adult lives. Seriously, I am so sad it's ridiculous.

In other news:

I have just finished Merlin season three, but cannot move on to season four because the BBC likes to torture me by making their fabulous creations unavailable to me just because I don't live in region 2 or pay for channels like BBC America. So cruel.

We have a new car, I obtained a learner's permit, and I have been learning to drive. I break too hard, turn too slow, and have this terrible, terrible tendency not to notice traffic lights. But it's coming along.

I just finished the last quarter of the Master of Teaching program at Northeastern University. And now the job-rejection emails from local high schools are pouring in. Yay.

Because I have now finished my graduate program, I once again have time to knit. I picked up an old project, and spent most of the afternoon knitting, then frogging, then re-knitting the right sleeve when I remembered I was meant to be working garter stitch, not reverse stockinette. I guess that's what happens when you let projects sit too long.

On the upside, thanks to this knitty article I discovered that frogging does not actually have to be terrifying (only mildly frustrating), because, obviously, any sane person when ripping would pick up stitches where she wants to stop. Somehow I have been bumbling around without knowing this previously. Which mostly resulted in me not frogging anything, even when I really should have.

Made myself a thumb hole using this technique because, well, I’ve always wanted a sweater with a thumb hole. Purportedly it’s an Elizabeth Zimmermann tip, which is not a bit surprising considering how easy and sense-making it was.

Oh, I'm engaged and getting married. And it is awesome because that is space rock, our cake will be game-y, our centerpieces will be literary, our attire will be geeky, there will be BBQ and homemade beer and cows, and no one will be wearing white.




Also, this is awesome:

Also, also, The Legend of Korra pisses me off. But I think it's going to take me a whole post to rant sufficiently about that, so I'll save it for another day.

How to Appease Made-up Pagan Gods

I decided to stop tempting the wrath of the health gods by never exercising at all ever, so I acquired this shiny, new offering. Hopefully they shall react favorably to my meager, semi-daily pedalings. 

What's Awesome Today: The Duck Knight Returns

So, the  boyfriend recently bought me a copy of Darkwing Duck: Duck Knight Returns, which is probably one of the best gifts anyone has ever given me. 

When I was kid, I loved Darkwing Duck. I mean, he was a superhero, he was always screwing up his own lines, he had awesome villains—remember Megavolt? Negaduck?—and though he usually prevailed in the end, he suffered many small indignities and embarrassments along the way. What's not for a kid to love?

However, even though I was into Batman: The Animated Series as well, I think a lot of the true humor of Darkwing Duck—the parody of the superhero genre—escaped me when I was a kid. The cape, the mask, the gas gun, the grappling hook, the Thunderquack plane, the Ratcatcher motorcycle (both shaped like a duck head, specifically Darkwing's), the mild-mannered secret identity (Drake Mallard), the flashy, egotistical introductions—one could go on and on. I'm experiencing no such ignorance this time around, though.

This comic reboot of the beloved series delivers on every level fans and newbies could hope for. The illustrations are beautiful, colorful, and firmly in the bold, flashy style I remember from the animated series. The humor is top-notch; reading at home, alone, I found myself actually laughing out loud at several points, which is rare indeed. And the plot delivers just what the title promises (see The Dark Knight Returns): Darkwing's pathetic civilian life (which makes for some hilarious office scenes), his return to crime fighting, and the reassembly of the Fearsome Five (Negaduck, Megavolt, Quakerjack, the Liquidator, and Bushroot—Darkwing's greatest, or at least most persistent, enemies) with one glaring absence: Negaduck, who is now too taboo to be spoken of (amongst the villains). 

And, I got one of my favorite things of all: fresh quotes to rattle off to anyone who will pay attention:

"I am the terror that flaps in the night!" (of course!)

"Let's get dangerous!" (also, of course)

"I am the awkward goodbye that lasts far too long!"

"I am the HR-Bot! Get ready for the employee evaluation...OF DOOM!"

"You don't say 'Let's get dangerous unless they find out where we live!' And you certainly don't say 'Let's get dangerous unless we can't afford it!'"

"Have you ever had the desire to go gallivanting through the night, ruining other people's fun?"

All in all, I was incredibly entertained, my nostalgia bone was tickled just the right way, and I was left wanting more (Negaduck!?!?).

I definitely recommend giving this comic a read. And hey, while you're at it, why not go watch some of those beloved old episodes, too?

Literary Geekery Redux

Persistent Sentences of the Moment, Part II:

1) "Whether you take a doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit." -Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

2) "What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don’t expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie." -Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

3) "We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some—perhaps many—may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe." -Jimmy Carter, Voyager Spacecraft Statement

Great because:

1) This is exactly the sort of sentence one needs to have in one's arsenal for those times one's philosophical friends require reality checks.

2) It is so satisfying to read words crafted by the sort of mind competent enough to carry an apt metaphor across several sentences. Also, I'm a sucker every time for complication of Truth.

3) How incredibly, movingly optimistic, unselfish, and good-willed. Sadly, the world is a different place these days.