Intimidation of the 3

-Thanks Tautological Tai, for writing an introduction to your paper that I might only be able to understand with a dictionary in one hand, and a can of courage in the other. It is papers like this that makes me develop serious authorship anxiety when posting my paper online.

-Alex's Video. I will never be technologically savvy.

-Jamie's impressive drawing of the tombstone. Yes, I took oral traditions and thought that I had honed in on my memory skills, apparently I was mistaken. Do I even need to say it? -glad I was not the one asked to draw it.

Are we all thiefs?

In my notes from earlier in the semester, I wrote down how everyone steals from everyone else. Ex: In the novel Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov, the moon steals its light from the sun. This interested me because it made me wonder if anything in our world exists without stealing something from another being, element or object. (I understand that in an ecosystem, all the different elements and beings work together and need each other for existence, but lets forget about that right now.) For example, are the words that leave everyone's mouth's truly their own, or are they a combination of many different ideas that have evolved into ones way of thinking over time? (Greg Keeler once said that there are two types of writing: creative writing and plagiarism.) It makes me wonder where original thinking actually takes place- and if someones supposed original thinking is truly original, or if another unknown had thought about it once before and failed to publish it.

When I was a child, I struggled with the concept of being the only person in the entire world to do something, so I would sometimes contort my body into a weird shape or make some bizzare noise and wonder if there has even been a person in the history of existence to do that before me. On other occasions I would find a small piece of sand on the beach, or notice a small blade of grass, and wonder to myself if I was the only person, in the entire world, to ever look at that particular object.

So this makes me wonder, on a different level than when I was a young child, if our thoughts and ideas are ever 100 percent completely original or if we are just stealing them from all the different pieces of knowledge we have learned over time.

Anyways- is everything in our world guilty of stealing? Ill let you decide. Here are some ideas of how everything steals: The moon steals its light from the sun, the pencils used to write down "original" ideas steal their body from many trees, clouds steal their entire makeup from the depleting bodies of water on earth, tall structures steal daylight from the smaller ones that lurk in their shadows, this computer is stealing energy from our earths remaining recourses, my dog is stealing my attention that should be focused on school rather than her ball, and the ball is stealing valuable space in my house. Regardless. My question to you is, is there anything that exists in the world solely on its own, and does not depend on or steal from anything else?

In a quote from Singer I realized what he would consider at thief, and what is not classified as one.
(1986), Singer wrote, "When a human kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice. Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why should man then expect mercy from God? It's unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give. It is inconsistent. I can never accept inconsistency or injustice. Even if it comes from God. If there would come a voice from God saying, "I'm against vegetarianism!" I would say, "Well, I am for it!" This is how strongly I feel in this regard."
-Is being a thief just taking something that you are not willing to give back???

MS quotes I have written down over the semester.

-No longer use the word just: It diminishes everything it touches.

-An answer closes down discussion rather than opening it up.

-Don't go for the pretty one, go for the funny one.

-Don't get attached to anything.

Testament

The other day I learned something new that I had never in my life heard before, but now it makes complete sense. In my Nabokov class, MS brought up the word testament, and I apologize, but I do not remember the context. Dr Sexson asked the class if they knew the origin of the word or the literal meaning of it. I did not. The word testament, when broken down, makes the word testa, or testes. In fact, this word literally means a person placing their hands in between a persons thighs, as closely to the testacles as possible. This amused me, for I had no idea that this practice took place during a testament. When I googled the word testament, the dictionary and encyclopedia references did not allude to testicles, but instead a person's covenant with God.

Here is what the definition is:

Main Entry: tes·ta·ment

Pronunciation: \ˈtes-tə-mənt\

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin & Latin; Late Latin testamentum covenant with God, holy scripture, from Latin, last will, from testari to be a witness, call to witness, make a will, from testis witness; akin to Latin tres three & to Latin stare to stand; from the witness's standing by as a third party in a litigation — more at three, stand

Date: 14th century

1 a archaic : a covenant between God and the human race b capitalized : either of two main divisions of the Bible
2 a : a tangible proof or tribute b : an expression of conviction : creed
3 a : an act by which a person determines the disposition of his or her property after death b : will

I also googled testicles and testiment together and found this Q and Q:

SWEARING ON ONE’S TESTICLES

[Q] From Ron Ferguson: I just saw this on the Net and wondered if it was true: was the word testify based on men in the Roman court swearing to the truth of a statement on their testicles?

[A] I’ve seen that, too. This would seem as good a moment as any to scotch the story. There really is a strong link between testicle and testify (as well as attest, intestate, testament, contest and other words) but those who swear by this belief have misunderstood the matter.

The Latin word for a witness was testis, which derives from an Indo-European word for the number three. That was because the Romans regarded a witness as what we would call a trusted third party, one who stands aside from the dispute and can tell it how it really was. The Romans did also use the word testis in a figurative way to mean testicle. The idea seems to have been that a testicle was a witness to a man’s virility. And that’s the whole story of the connection.

One reason for the confusion may be that swearing on the testicles is recorded in the Bible. The practice is mentioned in the Old Testament, though the King James’ version bowdlerised the reference in Genesis to “grasping the thigh”. But there seems to be no evidence that the Romans — a long way away and in another era — used a similar method. In any case, the Biblical reference implies that the person is swearing on the testicles of the king, not on their own.

Incidentally, testis sometimes appeared in the form testiculus, a diminutive form; this was converted into English at the end of the fourteenth century first as testicule and then as testicle. The Latin testis, with its plural testes, has continued in medical use to the present day.

Bad Day.

I cannot say that I have ever had someone tell me to go out and have a bad day. (other than Dr. Sexson) If anything, people have told me, "hey, hope you have a great day!" Unfortunately it seems like bad days seem to outdo the really good ones, but I guess that just comes with the stress of taking 7 classes for the last 3 semesters, and the burning need/desire to graduate.

Even though bad days in my past can strongly out-weigh this one, my worst day so far this semester was last Thursday. My boyfriend lives up by Hyalite, and around 3 in the morning, my dog Ruby began to bark (really, really ferociously) at the front door. I had just fallen asleep an hour earlier, and was really pissed off to be woken up again. I walked to the door where she was barking and opened it up to let her go outside. As soon as I opened the door, I realized what a mistake that was... a large black bear was sitting on the upstairs porch, on his butt, smiling up at me, having a hell of a snack of egg shells, corn cobs, meat/fat scraps, old pasta, thrown out rotten veggies, and whatever else we had thrown away that week. I freaked out, grabbed my dog before she could get herself eaten, and put her in the bedroom. After we scared the bear off the porch, he was still really hungry and walked all around the outside of the house, taking down every single bird-feeder (that we had just filled up that weekend) and polished off the seeds.
I included a picture of this awful bear who we later named Bozo. (only because he came back every night after his fantastic meal)
Well, around 4ish I finally fell back asleep and woke up again around 7, freezing, because the heater had broken. I walked into the kitchen to make coffee, only to find that we were all out. Instead, I just fed my dog. As I was setting down the water bowl, I accidentaly nudged my boyfriends cell phone, and it fell off the counter into the full bowl of dogwater. I pulled it out as quickly as I could, but it was too late. The blackberry that he had gotten in the mail the week earlier was ruined. I heard about that accident the rest of the morning- needless to say, he was not impressed. When it was time to go to school, I ran outside in the 4 feet of snow to start the trucks. Low and behold, I left my truck bed light on and the battery had died. After we finally could clear out enough to snow to get another truck in for a jump, my Boyfriend had missed his first class, so he left immediately. So, I hopped in my truck and started going down the road. You can imagine what happened next- my back tires began to slide as I went around the hairpin of a corner on Hodgeman canyon road, and my entire tail end was in a really deep rut. I could not dig myself out, all I could do was wait until noon when someone would come back to the house and pull me out.

I got pulled out of the rut just after noon, and drove to my house to drop off Ruby. As soon as I opened the front door of our house I could smell it. My sisters little dog had taken a huge dump, right front in center, on our white carpet. There were also two poops in the living room. And one upstairs in my room as well. Ugh. I made a quick attempt to clean them up then drove to campus to get some last minute studying in for Sexson's Nabokov exam. As soon as I got to school, the line for pay parking was 10 deep, so I parked down by the school police station. I got out of my truck, put on my jacket, then ate shit. On the ice. I still have the bruise on my leg to prove it. So I walked all the way to the library getting more and more nervous for the test that I can never seem to be preparred for. (I dont think I have ever gotten above a C on a sexson test) Low and behold, I get to class, start the exam and am feeling pretty good. The first two pages were easy, I was flying through them... then I reached the dreaded second half of the test and panicked. Yep- another C.

I left school feeling like crap. Called my mom, she didnt answer the phone. (she never answers the phone when I want her to.) I almost reach the truck when my cell phone beeps. Its an email. Overdraft Notice from Wells Fargo. Great, just my luck. Driving home was not much more fun. Since the roads were awful, people were driving around 3 miles per hour, and I swear it took almost an hour to get to Durston. Later that night I decided to go bowling with some girl friends. I offered to drive because I wanted to be able to get back home early enough. I was driving across 19th street when the light changed to yellow, so, I accelerated to try and beat the red light. I beat the light. But not the cops. All of a sudden, two cars are behind me with their lights flashing, so I pull over. The cop walks up, shines his light in my eyes and asks for my licence and proof of insurance. I cant find my insurance. Since I was panicky, the cop asked if I had been drinking. I said no, but my friends had had some beers so they smelled a little like alchohol. The cop asked me to step out of the car for a sobriety test! (great night to leave the warm jacket at home. Jeeeez!) I spent the next twenty minutes on one foot, two feet, turning in circles, watching fingers and laughing when asked to say the alphabet backwards. Thank goodness I was sober, cause I passed the tests with flying colors. However, the cop informed me that my licence had expired and was upset that I didnt have my insurance on me, so he wrote me a nice little ticket. (This would make my insufficient funds in the bank look even better)

After this last experience, I decided not to go bowling. It was not my lucky day and I didnt want anything else to go wrong. I pulled up to my house and went upstairs. I opened up my backback to look at what I needed to do for the next week- only to realize I had a paper due bright and early in the morning. Great, another late night for me. Anyways. Yes, Thursday was a really bad day for me, and thanks for encouraging me to have such a bad day as this so I could have something to blog about. ;)