Archive for January, 2009

So today we’ll be treading on dangerous territory.  We won’t call it “the darkest wilds” or anything 1920’s pulp fiction-ish like that.  We’ll label it accurately.

We’ll call it “how Aylad thinks.”

I have trouble… lots of trouble… making New Year’s Resolutions.  It’s not that I’m perfect (well, maybe, but I’m not the type of perfect I want to be).  It’s not that there aren’t lots of things about myself that I want to improve.  It’s not even that none of the things I want to change are achievable — most of them are.  Well, a few, anyway.

The problem is that around the last week or so of December, when someone asks me what resolutions I’m making for the new year, my mind goes completely blank.

It’s probably for the same reason that I blank out when someone tells me to “be creative.”

When a thought finally does filter into the white noise that is my suddenly-empty skull, the thought is usually something like:

“I uh I well I um I can’t do this on demand!!!”  With three exclamation points and everything.

Of course, it’s rude to tell someone that, so I usually stutter out something bland, generic, and meaningless.  Like about a month ago when my wife asked me, my response was (eventually) “I resolve to make good life choices.”

I know.  Total cop-out, right?  She knew it, too, but she didn’t call me out on it.

Then, a few weeks into January, I’ll get an idea for a goal I want to accomplish.  As I’m running it through a mental checklist to see if it’s doable (something along the lines of, “does it cost money?  does it hurt?  does it involve effort?  will my peers think I’ve finally gone totally wonky?”), it suddenly occurs to me:

This could be a resolution.

This happened three days ago.  Twice, in five minutes.  So for the first time in a loooong time, I have not one but two genuine end-of-year-goals-we’ll-call-resolutions that I’m going to tackle.

The first one is that I will read (thoughtfully) all of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (although I’m taking a hiatus from my weekly Shakespeare Saturday posts, as my willpower is waning in that regard) and two, count ‘em, two of his plays.

The other one is that by year’s end, I will have read (not counting The Sonnets but probably counting the plays) ten thousand (yes, I said 10,000) pages of printed and bound text.  In other words, stuff in books, not magazines, newspapers, or electronic documents of any kind.

Yeah, 10K.  I think it’s doable.  It’s been years since I’ve even approached that kind of literary intake.  I believe in myself, though.  I can stay away from the video games and DVDs and get this done.  I’ll even post page counts here on Shreds of Truth (although I’ll probably only update the count after finishing each book… for simplicity’s sake).

I’m already in the neighborhood of 850 pages.

Care to join the challenge or to embark upon a similar challenge of your own?  Feel free to post a comment about it and to keep me informed of your progress.

YES!

Whether by nature or by nurture, none can say, but I grew up with a certain “can-do” attitude toward improvising.  Duct tape was and is my closest friend (other than my wife, of course).  Colored duct tape is the greatest thing since WD-40.

This made life as a bachelor… shall we say… “interesting.”

My completely imaginary attorney advises me to say something like “don’t try this at home.”  The realist in me leans more toward “it’s your own dang fault if things screw up, so don’t try it if you’re just gonna blame me later.”

Windows for Dummies

The front door of my old apartment, cursed be its walls, had a nice big window that was completely transparent.  No frosting, tinting, mirroring, or other modern inventions of the 18th century offered any privacy whatsoever.

Walmart bags, on the other hand, are translucent but not transparent at all.  Out came the scissors and the tape and with only an hour or two of painstaking work, I had frosted windows… the bachelor-pad way.

I can’t sew (slightly untrue, actually) and couldn’t afford curtains, but a shower rod and old linens served to improve my sense of privacy in the other windows.

Don’t ask me about the moth holes.  Don’t.  It’s embarrassing.

My Shelves Runneth Over

Weburbanist.com has featured bookshelves made from books.  “This is pretty awesome,” my wife says. I’m not impressed.  She should see the end tables and ottomans I’ve made by stacking up old copies of Reader’s Digest.

When my bookshelves overflowed, I ended up expanding them with empty Velveeta cheese boxes and worthless trading cards.

My ink-cartridge bookends, however, were less than successful.  Those bloomin’ things leak.

Aylad the Iron Chef

We were given an incredibly expensive electric mixer for a wedding gift.  Actually owning a mixer feels strange to me, since duct-taping a couple of plastic forks to a drill bit always worked well enough for me.

While other people my age were learning from Martha Stewart how to turn a DIY herb garden into a seven-course meal, I was learning (via Johnny Depp in Benny and Joon) how to make grilled cheese sandwiches on an ironing board.

With an iron.

Now we have a nifty little panini press (apparently “panini” is Italian for “ironed bread”) that by comparison makes my ironing board look like, well, like an old, crusty, cheese-flavored ironing board.

Of course, the panini press’s duties have now expanded to making quesadillas (Spanish for “ironed flatbread”) and smoothing the occasional wrinkled necktie.  I should have bought one of those years ago.

He: Why do you own seven colors of duct tape?
Me: Why wouldn’t I own seven colors of duct tape?

(Photo credit and license)

So for this week’s biographical tidbit… Shakespeare’s life and lifestyle are so blurred by time that now, four centuries later, very few details about him are without controversy.  Some Shakespeare “scholars,” both genuine and self-acclaimed, seem to delight in questioning common beliefs about the Bard. 

I must confess, I am no exception.  Although I don’t call myself a Shakespeare scholar, I still enjoy finding interpretations of his sonnets that don’t completely mesh with the mainstream.

Even the very idea that he wrote the plays attributed to him is sometimes questioned.

To quote from the Wikipedia article on the “Shakespeare authorship question“:

The Shakespeare authorship question is the ongoing debate, first recorded in the early 18th century, about whether the works attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon were actually written by another writer, or a group of writers.  Among the numerous alternative candidates that have been proposed, major claimants have included Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley (6th Earl of Derby).  The most popular [alternate-author] theory of the 20th century was that Shakespeare’s works were written by Edward de Vere (17th Earl of Oxford).

Personally, I think the notion of an “alternate author” is ridiculous.  Common justifications given for these theories range from “he couldn’t have been smart enough to write those plays” to “there’s not enough evidence that he actually wrote them.”  Considering how few records we have from four hundred years ago — especially about Shakespeare’s intelligence and education — both of these arguments (and most others) seem pretty shaky… or so it seems to me.

Sonnet 23

As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put beside his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love’s rite,
And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,
O’ercharg’d with burthen of mine own love’s might.
O! let my looks be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more express’d.
      O! learn to read what silent love hath writ:
      To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.

What I get out of it

An unperfect actor?

How ironic it seems to us, in the twenty-first century, to think that Shakespeare was sometimes at a loss for words.  However, this is exactly the message he tries to communicate in Sonnet 23:  sometimes, even the great bard is silenced by intensity of emotion.

Like “an unperfect actor on the stage,” whose stage fright prevents him from slipping into his role… or like a “fierce thing” whose “too much rage” proves his undoing… Shakespeare’s poetic persona finds that his overflowing love makes it hard to express his affection with the “perfect ceremony” that love deserves.

His “love’s strength” makes Shakespeare’s composure “decay” – he is “o’ercharg’d” or overwhelmed with the heavy “burthen” of communicating how strongly he feels.

In desperation, Shakespeare pleads that his lover let his “looks,” or facial expression and body language, “be then the eloquence” that he cannot put into words.  His body language and “speaking breast,” which I take to mean his pounding heart, must “plead for love” instead of “that tongue” that he usually uses to express his feelings.

The closing couplet sums up his plea nicely:  “learn to read” the body language that “silent love” has written into his expression and pose; “to hear with eyes” is an appropriate skill for a lover’s “fine wit.”

Is it relevant?

I would say so.  In fact, this might be the first sonnet I’ve discussed that genuinely struck me as being rather sweet.  Sonnets like “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” is so often quoted, it has become more of a cliché than a romantic expression.  Many of Shakespeare’s other poems, such as Sonnet 22, contain a hint of warning cynicism within their lines.

The sonnet above, on the other hand, expresses a sweetly innocent love that we can all recall… the moment of being left speechless, hearts pounding, staring into the face of our adoration and having absolutely nothing coherent to say.  I felt this way many times as my wife and I began dating.

You know what?  I often still do.

[T]hou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. — Song of Solomon 4:9

(Coat of arms credit and license)

Training is key.

There was a fight in my hall today.  It’s the first genuine fight I’ve witnessed since becoming a teacher; most of them tend to happen elsewhere on campus.When I was a student, I was completely nonaggressive.  I never got in a fight; in fact, I never provoked anyone to the point where he tried to start one.  I also never played any sport or took part in any other physical extracurricular activity.  I can count on one hand the number of times I play-wrestled with my friends.

As a result, the prospect of having to break up a student fight invariably leaves me shaking with tension.  Heroically charging in and separating two beefy farm boys who are trying to kill each other doesn’t exactly fit with my personality.

On the other hand, I am more or less obligated to do so.  If I stand by and allow Billy Bob and Jimbo Joe to crack each other’s bones, I could be considered neglectful of my duty to maintain a safe learning environment.

All of this flashed through my mind before I reluctantly charged… er, stumbled… heroically forward.

The blur zipping past me, fortunately, was the football coach from across the hall.

I could say that Billy Bob went tumbling head over heels in one direction as Jimbo Joe slid chin-first across the floor in the other.  I could, but that would be a more obvious exaggeration than I generally like in my writing.

Suffice it to say that all I had to do was escort Billy Bob, now looking decidedly more like a B.B., to the office.

And yet… even so, as I returned to my classroom, restored order, and began writing vocabulary terms on the board, my hand was shaking.

Are you ready for some down and dirty deep-fried fisticuffs? I know I am! — Alton Brown

Windmill

Big admission coming:  I still play with Lego bricks.

That is, er, let me edit that a bit.  I “model” with Lego bricks.  That’s what I do.

By that I mean that once the epic castle with the small blacksmith shop and mysterious wizard’s tower has been constructed, I don’t line up the knight and soldier mini-figures and launch an assault on the battlements.

My wife takes care of that.  I just build.  Mostly.

A basic set of red, blue, and yellow bricks with a single minifig is probably the earliest birthday present I remember getting from my parents.  I played with it every day.  A couple of years later, I got a helicopter on a specially-designed flatbed truck; a year or two after that my parents and my aunt gave me two copies of the same Robin Hood-style set.

I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

From that point, 90% of the sets I bought or received were either medieval- or pirate-themed.  That includes the dozens of Harry Potter sets I bought on clearance several years ago.

I bought big castles.  I bought little guard shacks.  I bought inns and blacksmith shops.

I built massive fortifications, tiny villages, taverns and bridges and mills and hideouts.  I built an Elven library and a fortified windmill.  I built giant trees with battlements on the branches.  I built pirate bases and colonial trading posts.

I discovered Lego websites on the Internet:  Brickshelf, Bricklink, and yes, Lego.com.

I built a Lego website… one which, unfortunately, my students eventually discovered and continue to ask me about, even though I’ve taken it down…

Juliet

…but in a few days, as my students finish reading Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” I will review the story by showing them slides of Lego minifigs acting out the plot in a Lego catacombs.  (The Lego “Amontillado” isn’t my work - it’s better than what I could do.)

Someday, my wife and I will finish building our Lego Romeo and Juliet project, and my (already shaky) reputation as a mature, adult professional will be forever shattered.

I can’t wait.

If you don’t like LEGO, you don’t like yourself. — attributed to Jonathan P. Kennaugh