Bored at work, I just picked up the Independent from last week and read my horoscope. Which told me I should "expose [my]self to concentrated doses of poetry this week." Done, and done. Do y'all know about this Wordsworth cat, by the way? Holy crap.

But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: — feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love.

My other horoscope tells me that I should invent a trumpet that can be used as a flame-thrower while it's being played. Well, okay, that's already been invented, so I guess I'd have to try for something similar in spirit. A flugelhorn that shoots ninja stars every time you hit a low E? A violin bow that transforms into a lightsaber, allowing you to fiddle, slash, and stab merrily all at once? Ah, weaponized musical instruments. As if music itself couldn't already hurt us badly enough.

Seriously, though, I really love the idea of going undercover as a trumpet-player into a situation that might require the use of a flame-thrower.

i love heresy

Hey, Idler! We should totally hang out when we both get to The City of Dis. Anyone else going to be there?


The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

ups and downs, mostly downs

Hi there, folks! It's been a while. Nice to see you stuck around! Did you stick around? Okay.

So, today in class my pre-1800 English Lit professor talked to us about his mid-life crisis.

Then I came home and worked on my paper about Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," which is a really spectacular antidote to last week's Spenser and Fatal Attraction blues. The poem, not the paper, though the paper isn't bad either — I have what seems to me like a strong thesis, and I'm actually excited about it, except for the having to write it part. The particularly awesome thing about this paper, though, is the fact that sometime around the third hour of work tonight, I found out that I've now been given two extra (weekend!) days to do that bit. Aaaand of course, in accordance with the laws of my nature, as soon as I found that out, I decided to sport me while I might.

However: I regrettably chose to do so by watching Battlestar Galactica [spoiler!~~~ ha ha, sorry Idler, there is no way to capture that hand motion in print], and I just watched the episode in which the President decides to outlaw abortion, because, hey, the survival of the species depends on allowing parasites to hijack the bodies of the handful of women out of 40-odd-thousand who get pregnant and don't want to be — even the ones whose parents are going to kill them for being pregnant. But it's okay, because guess what flavor of genitalia every single person who is opposed to the President's decision has? Yes! Penis!! And, more importantly, guess what flavor of genitalia every single person who is in favor of the President's decision has? Uh, I'm not allowed to use that kind of language!

Three steps back, one step forward, one step back. Keep going until you're backed against the wall, then get punished for stopping. And that's what it's all about. Hey!

your rhetorical history lesson for today

Courtesy of Norton:

In Renaissance England, certain syntactic forms or patterns of words known as "figures" (also called "schemes") were shaped and repeated in order to confer beauty or heighten expressive power. Figures were usually known by their Greek and Latin names, though in an Elizabethan rhetorical manual, The Arte of English Poesie, George Puttenham made a valiant if short-lived attempt to give them English equivalents, such as "Hyperbole, or the Overreacher" and "Ironia, or the Dry Mock."

Please, folks! Call me "The Dry Mock" henceforth.

why doesn't anyone tell me these things?

So apparently I've been locked up in my house reading Blake while Southern California burns. What can I say, I do not own a fiddle.