So on my birthday, my best friend went to Germany for the summer and I've spent a majority of the time since then
1) working.
2) moping.
3) trying to turn Ladyboner into "a thing."
And creative pursuits, like my blog, have fallen by the wayside because I am crafting especially witty emails and letters to said best friend. Also, since the invention of twitter, it has become easy to whip out a bon mot as I think it and not have to save it for a blog post. Twitter is the new blog. QUICK SOMEONE TWITTER THAT. I already did.
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I went with LBCS to Iowa today to pick up her new family member, Phoenix the Dog. He's a rescue-dog, an Aussie, and he's a sweetheart. His "foster" family lived outside of CRapids and couldn't meet us half-way, so we made a day of it, making it back to the Cities successfully, even though we were sure for a moment that the city of Faribault was trying to suck is into its terrifying center, where a Minotaur would be waiting to devour us.
Phoenix was found in IL back in May, wandering about with a sheltie who was his fellow hobo friend. He's a young guy and seems to have some training and no fear of people. He also really, really likes being around people. I suspect he was abandoned by a thoughtless owner who couldn't handle a dog past the puppy stage, and probably wandered about for a few weeks before he was found. It's a guess, but I think it is an accurate one. It makes me so mad I could spit. I found a stray dog once -- an english bull dog who wandered into my yard when I lived in IL. She was friendly and sweet but someone had decided to let her go and who knows what would have become of her if I hadn't found her, given her water and taco meat, and let her stay in my air-conditioned house until I could get her to someone who could help her out? If we can't treat our dogs with decency, what does that say about us?
A few weeks ago, a friend commented that I would be a good trainer for seeing-eye dogs. I would think that I could be a foster-mom for dog rescue organizations. It seems like a really worthwhile thing to do, and I would get to hang out with dogs as much as I would with people. Oh man, part of a golden retriever rescue? I love their sweet, dopey little faces. Yes, sign me up. As soon as I, you know, have a yard for them to play in.
So lately the trending topics on twitter have been pretty sexist. I'm trying to counter with "#ladyboner." If you don't know, a lady boner is the name I give for things that make me excitedly happy. One day Pineapple said, in reference to something awesome, "Oh my God, is this what a boner feels like?" I started calling them Lady Boners. Also, no word makes me laugh harder than "boner." If men can accuse each other of having vaginas, why can't I say boner?
If you're a lady and something makes you happy and you have twitter, for goodness sake type in #ladyboner and go for it!
The final cause of an egg is to be a chicken.
The egg's sole aim is to be a chicken.
Without the concept of a chicken, how can we know the final cause of the egg?
Without the concept of a chicken, the egg is a useless thing, a mystery.
Therefore, a concept of a chicken is needed to understand the final cause of the egg.
The chicken came before the egg.
College-aged me (when I re-read this I said, "Damn, man, my MOM listens to Coldplay now."):
I have to write a one-to-two pager on what we would learn about love if Ovid's Apollo and Daphne were our only example of it. My paper is about halfway finished and it is getting rather cynical. But then I guess it's easy to play the cynic in love when you are surrounded by happily in-love people while you yourself are unattached.
"What's that? Oh, you're all talking to your boyfriends? That's great. No, I'll just be in my room listening to Coldplay. Yeah."
BONUS! Here is the "cynical" paper. Guess who reads a lot of Milan Kundera? That's right, College-me:
Love’s childlike body gives him the appearance of innocence personified, but this is a dangerous assumption to make about the one responsible for the most adult stirrings in mortals and gods. Dare to approach Love flippantly, or worse, mockingly, and learn that Love, after all, is not patient, kind, or free of envy. Especially is Love is prone to anger when mocked, and what Love lacks in benevolence he makes up for in power. Anyone else’s weapons might kill, if aimed correctly, but Love’s arrows are always sure, and always have the desired effect.
Love encourages its victim to engage in a hopeless pursuit, without rest, without thought. Because of Love, one loses grasp of rational thought and thinks instead in the language of hyperbole, or worse, metaphor. In the eyes of the afflicted lover, the beloved is flawless and this perfection is only enhanced in flight. The disorder of the beloved is juxtaposed with the lover’s wish to reign her in, and this destructive line of thought blinds the afflicted to anything the beloved might be lacking, including the rather important detail of reciprocated interest. Even so, as the lover longs to hold and control the beloved, it is the hopeless pursuit that beckons him further.
This mad, Love-led chase does more than put its victim outside of rationality. Love is essential for the survival of the lover, detrimental to the continued existence of the beloved, turning one into a predator, the other into prey. The beloved must also pay for refusing Love by an even more drastic dehumanization – losing love altogether. Her coolness towards her lover turns into a veneer impenetrable not only from the outside, but also from within. Her heart is trapped; she doesn’t have to accept the unwanted advances of her lover, but she’ll never have that chance again.
Strangely enough, the scorned lover is further blinded by Love, and accepts the loss of his beloved as a gain due to the imagined consent of the beloved. Under Love’s spell even a sneeze seems significant; a slight nod of the head, as subtle as a light breeze in a treetop, may as well be a profession of love. If anything, the lover carries his lost beloved forever, through the memory of that shared, insane chase. In this way he makes the beloved his completely, no one else had that chase, and no one else ever will. The lover can forever exalt in the beauty of his beloved, and perhaps the better for him that that perfect chase will remain unmarred.
