oh, lots of things

Well hey, guys. It's officially Monday the 29th and therefore the first day of school...BUT NO. No it's not. Because this year my school is School Year Abroad, and in like a week I'm leaving for Rennes, France. So all my friends are soundly asleep, but look at me, I'm posting on the blog. HA-HA.

Meredith, what is this bubble-crepe place you speak of? Where? I did a massive Google for such a place (bubble tea, I mean, not crepe) around here and I did find a washington post forum mentioning somewhere new but not its whereabouts. Inform me, please! (I know of just four tea places in the area: there's one in Montgomery Mall, which is where I tried my very first bubble tea a year ago. I hated it and didn't finish, amazingly. But it's an acquired taste, so I'll go back and see. There are a whopping two in Wintergreen Plaza on Rockville Pike--I.Cream, an ice cream store, and TenRen, a tea supply store, whatever that is. I've been to I.Cream but have not had tea in either of those places. Then there is Teaism in Dupont Circle and two other locations. I went about a week ago and had a chai shake, which was decent, and then a "zhengzhou pearl", what they call a bubble tea, which was barely passable. It only came in one flavor--milk tea, presumably--and the bubbles were soft, soft, soft! Pshhh. On another note, I was reading the YDN college guide's entry for UMich, and they mentioned Amer's, Stucchi's, which they spelled Stucci's, and our very own Bubble Island. This parenthetical has got to end. Here we go.)

Jason, if you're still reading this post, what a rockin' coincidence: I'm reading A Clockwork Orange too (I'm like 35 pp. from the end.) I'm reading the superspecial new edition with Anthony Burgess's hidden chapter at the end (omitted from the movie as well as most editions of the book.) My copy has no Nadsat dictionary, though I did start reading one online (and stopped once I realized how much I disliked it.) Anyway, learning the language myself was (is) an aweeeesome experience--to anyone who hasn't read ACO, do it this way. Not nearly as vertiginous as flipping to the end all the time as you read, I would say, and much much cooler. Whenever a new word came up I'd take a stab at its meaning (usually easy, given the context) and write my guesses in the margin. Surprisingly, I remembered most of my inferences and thus did not have to turn back to them as I read. Some I changed as I went. I started internalizing it and even thinking in Nadsat a bit ("this veck is full of cal!"). The online dictionary was bothersome--I thought cantora meant room, not office, and creech was definitely scream, not "yell or scream" or whatever. I still don't know what they think horrorshow means and I have no desire to look it up because I have my own definition all nicely formed in my head. ANYWAY, as soon as I found "govoreet", one of the very few Russian words I know, I started suspecting Nadsat had Russian roots, which indeed it does, although when I got to "toofles" for slippers I started thinking there might be some French influence (in French pantoufles are slippers, yeah?). Apparently, though, toofles is Russian-derived too. Cool stuff! Anyway, that's enough of this, droogie.

So the past week I spent volunteering like whoa, trying to get my 60 hours done all at once. I did it in a nursing home. I thought the people would like me and I would learn great things about the world and my own character, but alas, no. They resented me, told me to stop wandering around, etc. I ended up doing massive amounts of clerical work to avoid them including this filing project that near killed me (I finished it at almost 11:00 last night.) Anyway I'm done there, for which fact I am mad glad.

Has anyone heard of Christopher Paolini, the seventeen-year-old author of "Eragon" and now "Eldest"? It seems he's challenging Harry Potter for the number one spot on the bestseller lists. He was at my Barnes and Noble today and I came to see him at 1 p.m. naively expecting coming on time would be enough (as is usually the case at readings), but no, there were massive crowds and I couldn't find parking so I missed him. Pity. They closed off the whole bottom floor of Barnes and Noble to laymen, too, so I couldn't even look at French grammar books. I was crying inside after all that Sturm und Drang so I got myself a venti frappuccino, normally too indulgent even for me, and drank it all superquickly while reading Bobos in Paradise. Scary.

Sorry to be unloading all my topics all at once (i should post more frequently, shouldn't i) but, well, I finished High Fidelity at home rather than at TASP and I had a question. At the end when he's DJing again an annoying guy comes to the door of the club and says something in "a familiar voice". I don't remember exactly but he's this kind of obnoxious guy with whom Rob promptly deals and then he is gone. Are we supposed to know who this fellow is? Do any of you?

Speaking of HiFi, I think the title is so cute, and I had a discussion question for you guys: what are books you've read with exceptionally good/appropriate titles? I can't think of many. I guess Crime and Punishment is an okay title, although it's a translation. And The Great Gatsby is a good title, and Of Mice and Men, and The Catcher in the Rye (school books all.) I can't make heads or tails of The Sun Also Rises given the book itself, and frankly I don't much care--Hemingway is poshlust. But yeah, my favorite book title is "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin, a Russlit book I read last year. I know Samyu has read parts of this book but if you haven't, you really ought to. It is the most underrated member of the troika (!) of dystopian novels and, in my humble opinion, outdoes 1984. Brave New World, too, I hear. The Mirra Ginsburg translation is awesome, so read it when you get a chance and you'll see how ill the title is.

Actually I like the Pussycat Dolls song "Don't You" (properly "Don't Cha"), although I don't see why he'd care that his girlfriend wasn't a freak or, for that matter, raw (wth?). Is it just my poor understanding of Motown or does it get faintly Motownish during the verses? I will say it is so characteristic of dumb pop songs to slather on the indicative. I feel like I listen to enough of them that I've forgotten when to use the subjunctive! For instance, do you guys remember (not that a TASPer would ever listen to such dross, ahem) Gwen Stefani's "If I Was A Rich Girl"? It was a hit like four months ago. It's stolen from Fiddler on the Roof's "If I Were a Rich Man", but oooh no, Gwen Stefani could not deal with that, so she changed the "were" to "was" and made it an obnoxious song in other ways too.

Okay, this was terribly long, and if you're still reading this why thank you very much and I'm so sorry. And I miss you guys times ten to the fourth. k that's enough.

PS emma thank you for the letter! I just got it and am responding soon yay