A Spot of Tea

There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.

-Henry James

William and Kate's Royal Wedding reminds me of those girlish dreams of marrying a prince - not going to lie, in most of those dreams it was Prince William. This same region of my brain that is responsible for these daydreams is also responsible for the urge to have tea parties. As a little girl, I would dress up in my older sister's prom dresses that enveloped me like I was the center of a fluffy pastry. Then I would gently take out grandma's china tea set and fill the cups with hot water, the creamer with corn pops and place cheeze its on a platter (aka crumpets). All this talk about the royal wedding has awakened those adolescent dreams of becoming a princess. It's really not even nostalgia; I still believe in the possibility. Along with the re-awakened dream of living in a palace, is the urge for tea parties.

Tea parties are brilliant affairs. To begin with, I love tea. Last summer I cooled myself down with Iced Passion Tea Lemonade. Even the instruments for making and drinking tea - tea pot, sugar and creamer, and tea cups - are so delicate.

And the hats. Oh, the hats! I love trying on hats at vintage stores, and I could spend hours looking at Yestadt Millinery's inventory. (Unfortunately, I could not manage to get a picture of my favorite hat from their website, so look up the "cookie" hat. Gorgeous.) For a taste of the the style, Anthropologie has a few of there hats: the Periwinkle Plaid Boater.Another store I peruse is

Then there are the clothes. For some reason, I always think of tea parties in some chic historical setting. I wish I could have a tea party dressed like the women in the Edwardian drama, Downton Abbey.I love Mary's dress in this picture (center). There is nothing more chic than well placed lace on an article of clothing. Lace and stripes? Genius.

I also love photos that I love posted on The Sartorialist last summer. They look like they could go to a tea party.

And having tea outside? Perfection. I threw a Garden Party last summer for my engaged friend, Katie (no not that Kate).

I made the Iced Passion Tea Lemonade and decorated with bouquets of hydrangeas and sprigs of mint cut fresh from our yard atop lace tablecloths. But there was a shocking lack of vintage parasols.

Then again, it is also nice to curl up in an old chair with a good book, sipping a cup of tea. No lace. No hats. Just a good old fashioned cup of tea.

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me"

-C.S. Lewis

Shakespearean Profanity

Happy Birthday Shakespeare

To celebrate the bard's birthday, I suggest you use an insult today penned by the love of my life.

"Thou smell of mountain goat"

"Scratching could not make it worse...such a face as yours"

"Bolting-hutch of beastliness"

"I was searching for a fool when I found you"

"Out of my sight! Thou dost infect my eyes"

"Cream faced loon"

"Thou crusty batch of nature"

"There is not ugly a friend of hell as thou shalt be"

"The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes"

"Thine face is not worth sunburning"

"You are a candle, the better burnt out"

Régine Chassagne is a Rockstar

This blog post is way overdue. Typical. I am a notoriously talented procrastinator. Ironically, blogging helps me be a procrastinator in other facets of my life, but this time I've procrastinated blogging about the Arcade Fire concert that I went to a week ago. It's about time I saw them in concert. Two years ago,I had the opportunity to see the perform but I decided to stay home and write a paper. That is a big regret - and I don't often believe in regretting things. Now I regret that decision even more, because their concert last week was incredible.

Their use of film was genius. Some of it was disquieting: i.e. black and white film of women swimmers treading water. My favorite clips were during the song, "The Suburbs." It showed teenage kids messing around on their bikes in front of their houses. The combination of that and the song made me extremely nostalgic: I want to be a kid during the summertime again.

One of my favorite songs they performed was "Intervention." Before singing, they prefaced it with mentioning how a dollar of our ticket money was going to support Haiti. I love how they are still supporting Haiti. Years after a disaster - when everyone forgets - is the crucial rebuilding period; they need the support more than ever. That coupled with the lyrics, "Oh! Who's gonna reset the bone?" almost made me tear up.

But the highlight of the concert was Régine Chassagne.She is a rock star. My friend Kylie always says people are rock stars, but she is the real deal. These are the reasons she is a rock star:

1. She plays the accordion

We all know how I feel about the accordion.

2. She plays multiple instruments, which is the sign of a gifted musician.

3. Her outfits

4. She is Canadian

I love Canadians. I cannot wait for my road trip to Prince Edward Island this summer, and to see my Canadian friend Janet when she gets back from studying abroad in New Zealand.

5. Her dancing

Oh my goodness, her dancing is a revelation. It's eccentrically raw. It is refreshing to see someone not restrict and conform their emotions to movements that society views as "normal dancing."

When she was singing Sprawl II, she spun around swirling the colorful ribbons on her tambourine...sigh...there are no words for that moment.

Reader, I married him

While many movie directors’ desperate attempts to stay true to a book makes them forget they are making an adaptation, Cary Funkunaga Jane Eyre illustrates that he understands that a movie should use the unique elements as a medium to provide additional depth and insight to a novel.

One way in which Funkunaga "adapted" Jane Eyre was the liberty he took in presenting the story en media res – it proved to be an absolutely brilliant stroke. It allowed Funkunaga to condense the earlier portions of the book; as the Rivers’ question Jane about her history the camera would cut to short snippets of Jane’s memory to answer the question. When St. John asks about her school, the camera abruptly cuts to the back of a girl’s bare neck that is struck with a stick. In one shot, Funkunaga encapsulated Jane’s experience at Lowell school.

Okay, so Funkunaga knows how to work a camera, but was it really necessary to present yet another movie of Jane Eyre? Jane Eyre has been translated to the screen more than a dozen times – surely everyone has said it all. Right? Au contraire, contrare mon frère! Because so many movie adaptations simply portray the book as a love story, Funkunaga wished to illustrate that there is much more to the novel. Although this adaptation begins in the middle and cuts out large portions of the book, it is the most successful at emphasizing the bildungsroman genre. Mia Wasikowska – thank you for an actress that is not over 30 playing the role of a teenager – shows how Jane is growing up by highlighting her discovery that she has a libido. The movie highlights Jane's ground zero by Jane's conversation with Mrs. Fairfax. This reminds the audience how naive Jane is – she has not traveled or even interacted with men in years; talk about sheltered. The cure? A sexy Byronic hero played by Michael Fassebender. He is perfect – (perfectly sexy.) I mean if this scene does not awaken your libido, you might as well cloister yourself in a nunnery.

It’s not all sex though - it portrays Rochester as – dare I say it – patient. Eh, perhaps patient is a stretch. But I always hated reading the numerous conversations in which Rochester pretends he is going to marry Blanche Ingram; he is such a manipulative jerk. Yet the movie highlighted more of Rochester’s motive – which downplayed the cruelty – by presenting the context of Rochester as a mentor in Jane’s journey to personal discovery. Rochester knows she needed to discover and boldly declare her love for him, so he used jealousy as a tool to exhume these feelings that were deep inside her. (I still think it was manipulatively Machiavellian, but it was a bit more palatable in this interpretation.)

That being said, the proposal scene left me a bit miffed. I don’t know if they used up all the passion juices in the earlier almost-kiss-scene, but I did not feel the chemistry here. One friend suggested that it was because the score was not utilized enough to draw out our emotions. It could be that. Personally, I think Jane is just a bad kisser. (Granted she is better than the last Jane Eyre adaptation. I think Toby Stephens didn’t know how to handle that huge frog mouth and just decided that aiming anywhere on the lower half of her face would ensure a hit – unfortunately he still missed her mouth every time.)

Another element that Funkunaga resurrected from the novel is the Gothic roots. Yes everyone, Funkunaga has put the Gothic back in Jane Eyre. He utilizes long drawn out silences that are interrupted by rearing horses, birds shooting out of the underbrush, and smoke cascading from chimneys. I literally jumped in my seat several times. However, I do wish that Funkunaga could have played up the mad wife in the attic a bit more though. I mean, a mad wife hidden in the attic? How can you not play that up? That is straight Gothic gold sent from the Gothic Gods.

Like the movie, I'm going to end this long review with an abrupt end. While the movie had its faults, lackluster chemistry and exploitation of the lunatic upstairs, this proved to be an incredible movie. Better yet, it proved to be a brilliant adaptation.

Trying not to Trip & Douches: Adventures at the National Undergraduate Literary Conference

Last time I presented at a national literary conference, I tripped in front of all the prominent Cormac McCarthy scholars on my long walk to the podium. Luckily, I managed to stay on my feet this weekend when I presented at the National Undergraduate Literature Conference.

The NULC is held at Weber State University. Random, right? I thought it was fake - by fake I mean that I thought they were just titling it a "national" conference when in actuality, the only participants were university students studying in Utah. After meeting people that traveled from Florida, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado I realized that it is legit. It's always nice to realize that you are presenting at a legit conference.

Another random thing about the conference was the re-occurring topic of douches. It began with my friend Amy, who presented a brilliant paper examining different levels of violence in a play by T.S. Elliot. In her analysis she examined this particular part of the play:

SWEENEY: I knew a man once did a girl in
Any man might do a girl in ...
Once in a lifetime, do a girl in.

Well he kept there in a bath
With a gallon of lysol in a bath

Amy argued that this image of preserving a body in Lysol functions as a violent attack at the audience for their perversion of fertility rituals. She came to this conclusion because during this time Lysol was advertised as a douche and was believed to also function as a birth control. Don't worry, they soon discovered using Lysol this way could be fatal.

I'm not going to lie, I'm jealous that Amy got to use the word douche several times at an academic conference. It has always been a goal of mine to use unsettling words in such an erudite environment.

But the douche references did not end there! A guest poet, Sharon Olds read a poem entitled "Ode to a Douche." What are the odds? The poem began with how my peers use the term Douche bag without knowing that it symbolized the suppression of women. Suffice it to say that I became a fan of her work; she combines humor, poignant thoughts and speaks about female experiences without being cliche (i.e. being a mother). Apparently other people like her too. She was invited by President George W. Bush to the National Book Festival. She published a letter to the first lady declining the invitation, and ended with:

"So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds, and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives, and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it."

Damn.

I wish that some day I will be able can write something this powerful to someone as powerful as the first lady.

This is the reason I love literary conferences: the stimulating conversations, hearing provocative ideas, using the word douche in an academic paper, being inspired, and experiencing the deep sense of camaraderie with people who love to study literature.

Fashion: Boutique Multiculturalism

The other day I looked at my outfit and realized it was not particularly PC: I was wearing my vintage cowboy boots, a Navajo print shirt and a necklace I bought off a Bedouin on Mt. Sinai. As people would comment on my outfit, I would respond by explaining my weariness of being a walking contradiction. By walking contradiction, I was referring to the fact that I was wearing a symbol of American westward expansion - boots - and a pattern from a people exploited by Manifest Destiny - shirt. But then I realized something even worse, people could interpret my "eclectic" outfit as me being a Boutique Multiculturalist.

Oh dear, I can see it now: people on my college campus spotting my outfit and smugly thinking to themselves, "what a boutique multiculturalist."

It is one of my goals in life to avoid being associated with Stanley Fish. Fish's argument boldly asserts that multiculturalism is an impossibility; a statement that just pisses liberals off. Oh Stanley, you just love pushing those liberal's buttons, don't you? In his words, this term refers to the "multiculturalism of ethnic restaurants, weekend festivals, and high profile flirtations with the other" (1). The superficiality of this brand of multiculturalism becomes apparent as "the boutique multiculturalist will accord a superficial respect to cultures other than his own, a respect he will withdraw when he finds the practices of a culture irrational or inhumane" (3).

Does my outfit - fashion - apply to this culturally flirtatious group?

At a certain level it appears to be incompatible, because it seems that the importance of aesthetics in fashion attempts to divorce any deep cultural meaning behind a particular look. For example, for many the Boho-chic refers to a look that has little to do with the pretentious pretending of tolerance for bohemian and hippie lifestyles. So those who wears these styles do not profess to advocate different cultures. Then again, wearing the outfit inherently suggests that you are well traveled, and in tune with other cultures. So maybe fashionistas are the lowest of the low in the boutique mutliculturalist group.

For many fashion is blindly following a trend. It is those 13 year old girls who wear a Kufiya and have no idea what region of the world it originates from. However, I feel that within the fashion industry are people who understand the aesthetic beauty of different cultures and incorporate it into their creations. Perhaps it is a bond with a culture at a very basic level, appreciating craftsmanship, innovation and beauty.

I could be being an idealistic liberal - I'm sure Fish would see it that way. Even if i am being idealistic, it is a healthy beginning to be aware that the incorporation of different cultures into fashion is problematic. I like to think that my outfit is a symbolic healing of an old wound. Okay, that is perhaps taking it a little too far. Honestly, this blog post is just a way for me to feel better about a culturally insensitive outfit, because I like that outfit and I want to wear it again guilt free. I also wrote this to justify the fact that for over two years I've wanted

a handbag made out of a Native American blanket.

I'm such a boutique multiculturalist.

Accordion Love

It's one of my life goals to date/marry someone who plays the accordion. It's super nerdy and random. I blame it on:

Enjoying French films

That it's an instrument firmly rooted in folk music

Being in love with Beirut for five years

The fact that it has bellows, and I like saying that word.

The memory of an old, Florentine restaurant owner who came and played his accordion while we ate dinner

And that accordionists are just plain sexy

I also have a thing for guys who play the banjo.

St. Patrick's Day

Last year, I took a class that made me question traditions: can traditions be positive or negative? This questioning began right around the time of St. Patrick's Day, which led me to question my tradition of wearing green and eating lucky charms on St. Patrick's Day. These are fun traditions, but I came to the conclusion that these acts have been stripped of any substantive meaning for most Americans.

It's a hollow tradition.

I didn't want to blindly take part in this tradition any longer, so I went to the library and checked out a book about the celebration of St. Patrick's Day in America. St. Patrick's Day became a holiday in the early 20th century because of the conscious effort of Irish Americans to show their support for the Ireland's movement for independence.

If you don't think I'm nerdy yet, it gets worse. I'm sure my roommates hated me for doing this, but at our St. Patrick's Day feast of dyed green eggs, bacon and pancakes, I brought down a stack of books containing my favorite Irish writers. Then I made them listen to me as I read passages from James Joyce and Yeats.

So here are a few passages to celebrate St. Patrick's Day:

"The Dead"
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the c o rooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Hunger

A few months ago I watched this film on Instant Netflix. It is about the hunger strike led by IRA leader Bobby Sands. I was blown away. It is directed by Steve McQueen, written by Edna Walsh (a brilliant playwright whom I love), and acted by the talented, beautiful Michael Fassbender.

You can watch the trailer here.

"Hunger" Sands & Priest Dialogue: witness some incredible dialogue.

"Lakes Isles of Innisfree"

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

A Very Hipster Weekend

If you want to be a hipster, this is how you should pass your Friday nights:

1. Find a friend that is at the same level or higher on the hipster hierarchy to be your comrade in arms for this weekend outing. I chose my good friend Amy, who is fantastically stylish, a brilliant creative writer and a film aficionado. She is also Asian, and as my friend Becky says"It's so hip to be Asian right now."

2. Replenish your hipster wardrobe by shopping at off the beaten path stores to set the latest unique fashionable trend (i.e. a vintage store, salvation army, D.I, or Urban Outfitters for a synthetic hipster look).

Plunder: Structured, faux snake skin purse and a velvet hat bedecked with feather

We went to Decades: one of the best affordable vintage shops. I desperately wanted this simple yet chic cream 1960's dress. Alas, it was too small. Luckily it fit Amy's tiny Asian body perfectly. Ah, to be a hip, tiny Asian.

3. Go to a hole in the wall restaurant that serves organic food and saves the world. For us, One World Everybody Eats fit the bill. When you go to this restaurant avoid showing elements of your character that contradict the easy going and cool nature of the hipster persona. For example, do not ask if there is liquor in the split pea chicken soup because it tastes suspicious. I know it is hard, you may have had past experiences in which servers accidentally give you alcohol, but overcome this paranoia that is not hipsterish and just eat the damn soup.

4. Go to an event that is obscurely highbrow (a good test of this is to ask yourself: would Matthew Arnold approve of this?) and has quirky elements that give it a slightly kitschy flavor - this is your cool factor. We decided to go to a silent Buster Keaton film with live organ music. *Notice the Buster Keaton film is the obscure highbrow and the organ music is the quirk*

5. Intelligently discuss the event. If you feel like the event was ridiculous, do not say so. Admitting this will destroy all your credibility as a hipster. If you cannot come up with an intelligent observation, do not panic; hipsters are by definition posers. In fact I'm sure your friends are struggling with the same conundrum. To keep up appearances, simply feign appreciation and speak about how the masses fail to be cultured hipsters like yourselves.

For example, "I thought the part with the umbrella was clever. The slow motion, which I did not realized was used as a film technique during the silent film era, exaggerated the physics going on to a Mary Poppins level. It also highlighted Buster Keaton's genius as a comedic contortionist. People really miss out on the peak of slapstick humor by refusing to see silent films."

If you do the following, congratulations you are on your way to being a hipster. Now don't tell all your friends of your success - admiting you are a hipster or calling yourself a hipster destroys the most important element of being a hippster: pretending to not be self conscious about being cool. Now you may wonder about my credibility to instruct you how to be a hipster when I've proclaimed myself a hipster and thus broken the cardinal rule of hipsterdim.

My reply? Exactly, Becky Hayes.

Save Antiques Roadshow

I've recently read several intellectual arguments for or against the Republicans budget proposal that would cut funding for PBS and NPR. To be frank I don't understand half of what they are arguing about and nor do I care. They can argue about politics, freedom of speech, and educational programming until kingdom come, but if Antiques Roadshow is taken off PBS I will be legitimately pissed.

For those who have not experienced the brilliance of Antiques Roadshow, it is a program that travels around the country and gives local people the opportunity to have their antiques appraised by professionals. It may sound a bit droll, but nothing can describe the suspense that builds as the expert slowly reveals the unique history of an antique and you wonder: will it only be worth a few hundred dollars or a few thousands? (In my experience it is always the Native American artifacts that consistently hit the jackpot.)

Not only is it suspenseful and an interesting, but the “human” aspect of the show is brilliant. Those who bring in their antiques are consistently eccentric, and the antiquarian’s extreme passion for obscure topics (e.g. 19^th century toy soldiers) is boundlessly entertaining. I remember one episode where an appraiser was so moved by the beauty of a Ming Dynasty Magdog statue that he began to weep. At this moment I knew that this show had all the potential elements for a Christopher Guest mockumentary (here is an example of Christopher Guest's genius work). Where else can you find such raw human emotion anywhere else on national television? Nowhere.

You may argue that allotting millions of dollars to keep one show running is not pragmatic, but I would like to remind you of the other irreplaceable shows that PBS gives and has given us. PBS is the creator of Wishbone, the television series about a jack Russell terrier who relates the events of his master to classic works of literature. Because of Wishbone my brother passed high school English, and I felt that I possessed more knowledge about literature than my classmates. Subsequently I felt English was strength of mine. So it could be argued that my exposure to Wishbone at a young age inspired me and predisposed me towards my current path in pursuing a PhD in English literature.

How can we cut a program that grooms our future intellectuals through the assistance of a clever jack Russell terrier? Also, how else am I supposed to watch Masterpiece Theatre when PBS is the only provider? No more Downton Abbey? Can we support such injustice? These are serious questions.So please sign the following petition so we may continue enjoying the epic episodes of Antiques Roadshow.

Conspiracy Theory

While a fair number of people consider Simon and Garfunkel lyrical geniuses, few hail them as the inspiration for Christopher Nolan's film "Inception." It seems that Simon and Garfunkel have been cheated out of fame for the movie's plot, despite the fact that the evidence is blatantly obvious. I stumbled upon it when listening to "Sounds of Silence." Within this song is the basic idea that drives the movie.

Hello darkness, my old friend

I've come to talk with you again

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain

Still remains

Within the sound of silence

To give this theory a healthy dose of irony, I believe that someone played this song while Nolan slept as a child. Who planted this idea in his brain while he was sleeping? That is a discussion for another conspiracy theory blog post. Now I must go and scour the musical duos' lyrics from "Little Boy from New York" to discover the connections to Nolan's Batman trilogy.

Arcade Fire's Album of the Year

"What is an Arcade Fire and why are people excited for it?"

"Album of the year goes to: Arcadia Fire, WTF are they???"

I'm tempted to attribute the above misspelling of Arcade Fire to reading too much Tom Stoppard, but I think the closely trailing WTF safely rules that out. These two comments represent the topic that is feverishly being tweeted and facebooked about: who is Arcade Fire and why do they deserve to win album of the year. For those miffed tweeters, facebookers and bloggers, let's attempt to answer the question.

From what I can gather, the root of the problem is the differing opinions about the criteria of album of the year. A girl's facebook comment succinctly illustrates one of the main reasons for outcry when she states that "anyone who wins album of the year should be known by EVERYONE". While I would like to avoid the dangerous tangent of debating the merit of award shows and review critics, I do see some problems with these complaints. I expect award shows, like the grammys, to choose artists based on musical merit and not popularity. If the award was given on popularity, Justin Beiber would have swept the awards. Now ideally popularity and merit should walk hand in hand, but often this is not the case in pop culture. If anything, I often use reviewers and award shows as a resource to find new artists; they save me some time sifting through thousands of the up and coming.

Another common compliant is that neither Eminem or Lady Gaga won. Both Eminem and Lady Gaga are great artists - I listen to them both. I think Eminem is an incredible rapper, and undoubtedly he was Arcade Fire's most menacing competition. However, Arcade Fire won this year because they have mastered an important criterion that people commonly overlook when deciding who to back for album of the year. A majority believe that album of the year equates to the largest number of best selling hits per album. Yes, this is part of it. But it also about the album as a whole: how the songs cohesively work together to create a larger work of art (i.e. the album). Arcade Fire has been experimenting with this in their previous albums, and The Suburbs represents a masterpiece where they seem to have nearly perfected it. In this album, Arcade Fire coagulates sixteen diverse songs into one fantastic symphony. That my friends, is why the unknown band, Arcade Fire, won best album of the year.

Nickled and Dimed: Coming up short

*This is an embarrassing story. I should not put myself up as such an easy target for ridicule on the blogosphere, but it is too funny to pass up.*

I love the symphony/orchestra. I also love my friend Kylie. So when she told me that she was playing in University Orchestra, I knew I had to attend.

The day of the performance came and I went to buy a ticket for myself; the ticket was the loose change amount of three dollars. As I’m paying for my ticket the box office attendant tells me “your card has been declined. Do you have any other way of paying for the ticket?” I reluctantly tell her that I only have the card. I walk away empty handed and officially embarrassed.

Like any normal, self-respecting person I only use cards and the occasional check at Costco, so I had to scour my room for any kind of cash. Finally I exhumed two one-dollar bills and a dollar worth of change in nickels and dimes. As I walk towards campus with my money I turned red just thinking about how ridiculously pathetic I will look paying for a three dollar ticket in change.

I reach the Ticket Office and I place the ratty dollar bills and sprinkle the change on the counter to order my ticket. “I don’t know if we accept change” the Box Office attendant says and he quickly turns to the two or three chatting employees and asks “hey, do we accept change?” Fantastic, apparently paying in change is more pathetic than I even anticipated. Not only that, let’s alert everyone in the BYU Ticket Office that I’m paying for a three dollar ticket in change. A fellow employee answers, “we normally don’t, but if she does not mind that we cannot give any change back.” I sigh with relief - crisis averted.

But then he begins to count the money.

“You are short a nickel. Do you have one on you?” Crap. I must have miscounted. How could I miscount? I worked as a bloody cashier! I’m blushing like mad at this point, and I begin to look furiously in my bag.

Nothing.

“Hey does anyone have a nickel?” he asks the employees. Brilliant. Now I’m the Box Office charity case. And of course no one has a nickel.

I’m standing there not knowing what to do. Should I grab the money and run? He looks at me and says, “don’t worry about, we will figure something out.” I walk away almost laughing out loud with embarrassment. It was a kind gesture, but it was also the only gesture that the box office attendant could make - I was so pathetic that I basically cornered him into giving me a nickel.

The love child of John Smith and Pocahontas

The other day I noticed that my brown flats, of three and a half years, were falling apart. So, I recently bought a pair of shoes as a replacement.

While breaking my shoes in, a friend commented on how they were an interesting mix of Native American and European culture.

They are the love child of John Smith and Pocahontas.

We all laughed heartily at the joke, patting ourselves on the back for being so witty and clever.

But then I realized just how much the joke revealed. Historically speaking, John Smith and Pocahontas never had a love child. There was not romance. She married John Rolfe, became a Christian, adopted the name of Rebecca Rolfe, and assimilated into English society.

So why did we all make John Smith and Pocahontas a couple?

Disney.

I love Disneyland and Disney. However, I do not appreciate their romanticized and false portrayal of early American history. I remained a disillusioned, naive, indoctrinated child for a long time because of institutions like Disney. It was not until high school and college that things were told in there more gritty reality. This incident is similar to the quixotic history of taught at schools about Christopher Columbus discovering America, and the relationship between Native Americans and the English.

I realize that history in of itself is a narrative and cannot be relied on as fact. However, there are some renderings of history that are more accurate than others. Also, I realize that Disney made a Pocahontas II in which they tried to rectify their historical mistake. But it is too late. It is like an unwritten rule that sequels never create as much revenue, are as well written, or as widely viewed by the public as the original (excluding the anomalies of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Batman). In other words, Disney cannot undo the damage that has been done.

On that note, I would like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. I don't know about you, but I'm thankful for adorable brown flats, Disneyland, Disney, and the wonderful songs from Pocahontas.

O.R.C.A Poetry

Warning: The following may contain graphic or violent images that may be upsetting for animal lovers or followers of P.E.T.A. These views do not reflect the views of the author of this blog. These ideas are the rant against writing a academic grant proposal entitled O.R.C.A. Whales were not intended to be hurt in the process of the making of this poem, but unfortunately the name too closely resembled the grant's name - whales became collateral damage in a bitter diatribe against the grueling task of writing a proposal.

O.R.C.A. Blood

Kill the freakin whales

Harpoon them

Use their blubber to fuel industry

Destroy every copy of Free Willy

Put Shamu in a 9x10 tank

And buy hundreds of tickets to see him

fueling the industry that traps these wild animals into captivity

"There she blows!"

See capitalism reap and Marx weep

Tears that may be similar to his twin Fredrick Douglas

See me weep

I swim and jump through hoops

to the whistle of my trainer

to be rewarded with a fish

"My mother was a fish"

Well I'll Northrop FRYE that Stanley FISH

bite the hand that feeds

my academic needs