Via Sojourners...

Quote of the Week
++++++++++++++++++++++++

"I love my church, and I'm a Catholic who was raised by
intellectuals who were very devout. I was raised to believe that
you could question the church and still be a Catholic. What is
worthy of satire is the misuse of religion for destructive or
political gains. That's totally different from the Word, the
blood, the body, and the Christ. His kingdom is not of this
earth."

- Stephen Colbert, of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

Source: TimeOut New York :
http://go.sojo.net/ct/Gp_aDjd1czm3

The next D-Day is Tuesday

Big thunderstorms here last night. Rattled the whole building. They disturbed my night of peaceful slumbers, from which I was intending to draw strength for the task ahead of me. (What musical did I watch part of last night?)

D-Day approacheth

I teach my first class on Thursday. I hope I don't look like an idiot; but if everything goes really well, I'll probably get a big head and be a jerk about it. So I guess I should hope that I make a fool of myself somewhat.

Life's hard when your heart is deceitful above all things.

Sorry: an ancient Egyptian game

There's archaeological evidence to prove it. Check out the pieces on the left.

Could that be Middlebrook 623?

Could he have occupied the same room as me?

Scroll to the bottom of the page if it doesn't take you there.

Goldman and Lileks

I'm re-reading "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman. He grew up not far from where I live now, incidently, according to his prologue. (Add him to the list of famous North Shore-ites: Ray Bradbury, Neil Flynn, John Ankerberg...) If you can trust the prologue. One of the ways that the book is better than the movie is that Goldman's voice as the narrator is so great. His voice comes through on about four levels, actually: there's "William Goldman" as the supposed editor of the book, "Morgenstern" as the author, the narrator, and the characters' dialog. In the movie, you mostly get the dialog, with a little bit of the narrator's voice from "Grandpa." What I'm saying is that, although the movie is spectacular, it's only half of what you get in the book.

Last time I read this book was in college, before I started reading Lileks. I'm noticing a big similarity in their voices--they're both fond of parenthesis and fanciful dialog. They both have interesting use of hyperbole and understatement. I'm trying to figure out what it is, exactly. I think it might be that their words are understated, but what they describe is exagerrated. [That makes no sense] Ok, fine, stop reading then. Both of you who read this blog.

Oh yeah, and self-deprecation. They use a lot of self-deprecation.

On the other hand

Back in the great title category, I would like to mention a class that Mama Bear had freshman year:

Silencing the Gods: The Hebrew Bible and the Religions of the Ancient Near East.

and a fun book:

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

and a movie (lest anyone be confused by the last line of my previous post:

The Others

Bad Titles

Linus wants to nominate some bad titles. Ok, for starters, how about "Bad titles"? Not much creativity there. Also, "The Skilled Helper"--a counseling book I read last semester. Good book, lousy title. It always made me think of "Skillet Helper," a generic meal-in-a-box ripoff of Hamburger Helper (TM).

Anything that begins with "The Adventures of...."

Others?

Good titles

Pirate Brandon's reference to Housman's poem "Terence, this is stupid stuff" reminded me how great a title it is for a poem. My all time favorite title is "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven" by Sherman Alexie.

What are your favorite book/poem/song/album/movie titles? The actual contents of the artwork need not be good, just the title.