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Those who know me know that I love The Time Traveller's Wife with all my heart. I'm going on my tenth full reading right now from front to back, specifically to refresh myself before seeing the movie which will be coming out on August 14th, featuring Rachel McAdams of Notebook fame and Eric Bana. I've seen the trailer, and I'm not going to lie, it's possibly going to be one of those movie adaptations of the book that you just wish they never made. Look, I hate those people that are always like, "You should read the book it's always better" because that's not true, sometimes the movie is better than the book, but in this case they would have to do something truly Jesus + Goku + Obama + Schwarzenegger + Rocky Balboa miraculous to save this one. I'm really going to hate it when people who have just seen the movie read the book and then it becomes a huge overrated hype when the book came out long ago and deserved your respect when it first came out.



Rant over.

Everytime I read The Time Traveller's Wife, I always notice something different which makes the book profoundly amazing. For example, I just realized how much Henry likes Helen but he never ever gets with her because he stays with Claire. Anyways, I also notice every single time I read the book that I don't understand the German poet Rilke. At all. The Hundreds discussed a tee that hosted a Rilke tribute and The Time Traveller's Wife features Rilke about a half of a dozen times throughout, so at least pop culturally his influence seems to be rather large. Maybe I'm just not as much of an intellect that is required to understand Rilke, or maybe I'm just not aesthetically sensitive enough to acquire this taste, but I have consistently had my difficulties and I wonder if that will ever pass.



I must admit, however, that I recently found myself relating to one of his lines. At one point, Claire and Henry are discussing religion and science. Henry talks about St. Thomas Aquinas, who believed in both Aristotle and angels, and tried to move towards synthesizing order and reason and God, much like I am trying to do so. I have always said I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive, but it's very difficult to find rational evidence beyond faith and conjecture that the two worlds intertwine. Realists want cold, hard evidence that is scientifically based, and aren't willing to believe that the scientific method is just that - a method - and that many things can fall outside the bounds as simple confounds of being unable to be measured by the scientific method. Anything beyond that is just blind faith and deemed to be ignorance, and it really doesn't help that some people truly ARE ignorant about believing in God and haven't really thought it over, which gives people that have mulled it over a bad name. I really do think God is a confound, and a beautiful one. Speculation, perhaps, but hey I'm entitled to an opinion.

Which leads me to Rilke:

Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.
Every angel is terrifying.

Maybe only Rilke would think to make the central star of Touched By An Angel and Angels in the Outfield terrifying, as if with one word he could spin an entire stereotype of what an angel should be 180 degrees. What a powerful line, that an angel in all its glory and majesty can be such a powerful symbol for turning our world of apathy and Bill 44s on its ear.

maintenance pt. 3

Posting for me will be rather sparse for the next few days due to an upcoming midterm that's so large that its penis makes the Great Wall of China look like a ruler. I'm not making good progress with it either, because our prof is making us memorize every single DSM-IV classification that accompanies a mood disorder (major depressive, dysthymia, bipolar I, bipolar II, cyclothymia) including modifiers, specifiers, epidemiology, treatments, and exclusion criteria. I don't like mood disorders to begin with, so this makes me actually want to have a major depressive episode myself.

I have new linkage as I promised every Monday. I think it's decent, but I suppose it's up to you to decide whether you agree. I'm trying to make medical conditions a recurring theme (I think I try to do that throughout all my posts, whether it's effective or not, I don't know), so let's check them out:

Asia's poem The Waiting Hour was something I came across when I was in my Def Poetry Jam phase. I still kind of am (remind me to show you guys The Beach next week) actually. It's about testicular cancer, and my favourite part of the poem "playing Russian roulette with α-feto protein levels and tumor markers" really defines what the human body is like fighting pathology. Continuing with medical themes, Man in the Box (which is actually one of my favourite YouTube subscriptions) features Greg with paruresis. Actually Woody halfway mentions about a kid who couldn't take a shit just anywhere - I knew a kid somewhere I used to work with that actually had to leave being on shift (leaving me alone by myself to fend for customers for 15 minutes) so that he could drive home and do a deuce. Weird.

The next has nothing to do with biology, but is just a mind-blowing cover I came across of Outkast's Hey Ya. The ONN clip is just really funny.

I think my favorite this week is Bobby Hundred's Pat vs. Oranges I. I had mentioned in an earlier post about disorders that we can get earlier in our years - 13% of people will get a specific phobia in their lifetime, most people around 7 years. The general case is fear of: situational > natural disaster > blood injection > animal > other. I'm not really sure what category Pat's falls under...maybe just plain bizarre?

buffalo & fish

Maintenance: I added a linkset on the right titled 'lien de lundi' which I think translates to monday linkage in french. I'll try to hit you up with some clips I found interesting and/or educational. I found the Bats for Lashes clip actually on Bobby Hundred's youtube favorites, which shows my level of creeping. Someone commented that it reminded them of a David Lynch movie, and rightly so - ever see Eraserhead? The Coraline one is a piece of art they made for the upcoming Coraline movie (same guy that did Nightmare Before Christmas); I'll never get tired of seeing installation art that makes its way out of the gallery setting. The Gwen Stefani/Jacques Lu Cont remix is currently on my mp3 player on repeat, the Jon Coulter one reminds me of my geek childhood copying the moves list from NintendoPower for Killer Instinct because I couldn't afford to buy the book, and the Kate Micucci one is a rather cynical outlook on life from the makers of Man in the Box. I feel like each link could be a post in itself, but I have other things to talk about so I'll keep this to a minimum.

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I have to get one more thing off of my chest, because I am sick and tired of hearing Fat Man Scoop's Be Faithful. How his screaming doesn't induce auditory provoked seizures in anyone is beyond me; I just crawl away with pressure headaches after listening to this track. Anyways, the part that bugs me is that this track is simply a thin veil disguised as true hip hop, when the actual hook to the song is real hip hop, but it only gets a small cut. People dig the "Engine Engine No. 9" hook when it's not even his. Remember Black Sheep's The Choice is Yours? Now you know.

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Jia pointed this out: Apparently "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a gramatically correct sentence. "Fish fish fish fish fish" is also another one. How? Keep in mind three things:

• Buffalo (as in Buffalo, New York)
• buffalo (as in the animal)
• buffalo (meaning to bully or intimidate)

That being said, try it like this:

[Those] (Buffalo buffalo) [whom] (Buffalo buffalo buffalo) buffalo (Buffalo buffalo).

[Those] buffalo(es) from Buffalo [that are intimidated by] buffalo(es) from Buffalo intimidate buffalo(es) from Buffalo.

Bison from Buffalo, New York, who are intimidated by other bison in their community also happen to intimidate other bison in their community.

Now try the fish one yourself and see if you get it. =)