Just the other side of that clock over there. Until then, let’s have some chill out music while we watch the world go by.
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I am neither young enough, nor old enough, to get by on 6 hours of sleep. I am sitting, reading, and now drooping badly. Blech.
I’m with you there. I got about five hours of sleep, and it was interrupted a couple of times so no amount of caffeine is helping right now. And I’m continuing yesterday’s trend of saying/doing stupid things. Can I go home and curl up on the couch and not deal?
I woke up for no reason roughly every 45 minutes all night long, before finally ending up wide awake just about an hour before the alarm. Today is Not So Great, as a result.
At the risk of projecting, have you been checked for sleep apnea?
I don’t think that’s it at all… it’s not common for me to sleep so poorly, although in this instance it may indeed have been related to breathing (by the time I finally woke up for good, I was so stuffed up that I feel like I spent the entire next hour blowing my nose).
No, I think this was just something in my body saying, “haha, fuck you.”
Here is my last reminder about our Oscar pool, if anyone wants to do it. The password is “oatmeal”.
http://www.funofficepools.com/invitationLink.php?ps_key=debd4b397a3&Pool_Key=0278da7623e
Oh I am planning to tweet along to the Oscars. At least to the red carpet part.
Then why not join the pool? It’s a multiple choice test, but nothing happens to you if you get them wrong.
Nothing? Not even, like, eternal humiliation?
Mr Bear has found All The Star Treks in Netflix. I am space-opera’d out.
They are always on when I wake up at 4am and come downstairs.
Mr Bear loves DS9 and Enterprise more than all the rest. Netflix means he can watch an entire series consecutively.
Which means that I now recognise all the tropes (hey, it’s an Odd Couple episode) and if I were planning to write the Grand Unified Field Theory of Star Trek Plots, that would be great. But I’m not. So.
I’ve got a firend somewhere who has been posting links to what I think is a marxist guide to watching Star Trek if you are interested.
Buh. I think I had enough of that in my critical theory classes in college/grad school.
My baby sister (12 years younger) decided a while back to watch the Original Series, being too young to have ever seen them on broadcast television. Her response: 1) she loved it. And 2) “Now I get those inside jokes you guys have!”
The shameless camp is what makes the original series for me. That and Nichelle Nichols, who I’d like to be when I grow up, if white girls can do that. The later series strike me as a little too self-serious.
God, Nichelle Nichols. If I had an ounce of her grace and talent….sigh. But yeah, the combination of camp and earnestness in (mostly) the right measures makes the show. And there was some pretty terrific writing and acting. Also some really bad writing and acting, but still.
I always wanted to be Barney (Greg Morris) from Mission: Impossible when I grew up, because he had all the cool toys.
One of the tv science fiction shows that was on re-runs when I was growing up. We would watch them over and over. Used to love it when Twilight Zone with Shatner would come on with a Star Trek soon before or after. It was like the scheduling elves were bringing gifts. Space 1999, Creature Double Feature, Twilight Zone, Buck Rogers (so bad it was almost good), The Hulk, The Greatest American Hero… The shows and choices are better today, but we had something. Not sure what to call it, naïveté?
We are clearly much the same age. In my family, it was Star Trek, Twilight Zone, Battlestar Galactica and the various superhero-type shows (The Hulk, Six Million Dollar Man, Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, etc).
Funny you should mention naivete. I recently caught an early episode of the X-Files, and its pre-Sept 11th view of government, fear and conspiracy seems downright charming in its innocence. It kind of got me down.
No cat pic today?
Never fear, I have a cat poem.
This poem was found in the manuscripts of a 9th Century Irish Monk and is about his cat Pangur Ban.
The cat searches out and hunts mice, the monk searches out meanings in manuscripts.
The translation is from the early 20th century.
I first found it in The Rattle Bagan anthology edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes, one of my all time favourite collections
I and Pangur Ban, my cat
‘Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will,
He too plies his simple skill.
‘Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way:
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.
‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!
So in peace our tasks we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.
There is a setting of this poem composed by Samuel Barber, called “The Monk and His Cat,” and I’ve sung it once or twice. Pretty neat.
Thank you for the tip. I went and listened to it. One can find anything on YouTube.
I first learned of this poem on a medievalist listserv, MEDTEXT-L, where is was a favourite of the founder, Jim Marchand. His translation, with the original Old Irish, is here: http://www.ceantar.org/pangur.html
In other kitty news, in the 1st century AD, in Britain, a cat walked across a new made brick before it was fired. That brick, cat prints intact was later found in Portland Oregon area.
The whole story is here.
Cats. They will walk on everything,
Speaking of manuscripts and preserved cat prints…http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/the-15th-century-equivalent-of-your-cat-walking-on-your-keyboard/273283/
Also, someone posted Pangur Ban in the comments!
I has a sad. We have to leave for Spokane tonight to catch a very early morning flight, and have just a little more time to hold brand new baby human. I am pleased to report (again) that my daughter is already better at this than I ever was.