Monday morning things

* I don't like April Fools' Day. We've established that. I dislike the "personal pranks" part of it (because too often it feels like someone taking out their otherwise-suppressed hostility on another person. Or wanting to 'take someone down a peg' by violating their dignity, while not realizing that for some of us, we feel like our dignity is all we have some times. Or causing anxiety in a person*)


(*Some years back a colleague got me by claiming, "Oh, did you hear?? Our post-tenure review reports, starting next year, will have to be as big and as complicated as our tenure files - we'll have to make notebooks and everything, and submit them every year" and he got me totally GOING, but I also think that's a testament to how dysfunctional our university bureaucracy was back then)

(And seen as part of a tweet on Twitter: "The failure mode of 'clever' is a-hole" and oh my goodness, yes, that. I have seen far, far too many people who thought they were being clever and funny but they were just really kind of annoying and abrasive.)

I also...don't love some of the "corporate" bits. A lot of them feel kind of forced. (The MERL going to "The Museum of Garlic Bread" or somesuch for today) and my feeling is "yeah, great, wake me up when it's April 2 and you're posting actual content again."

I dunno. I did see someone on Twitter float the idea of "Try for a change playing "nice" pranks on people" (Like, I guess, putting a nice note under their windshield wiper so they think they get a parking ticket at first, but it's not). I'm not sure about that either because that's hard, though I wouldn't mind someone playing a "nice" prank on me. Sadly, I can't think of a "nice" sort of prank I could easily play on someone. I mean, yeah: ordering someone something off their Amazon wishlist as just a random thing would do that, I guess, because you'd come home and find the package and be like "what?" and then find out it was something you wanted, but....it would come too late for April Fools' Day any way.

* Started the Ocellus amigurumi last night and you know? It feels good. Even though I did make two big critters over break, it's nice to be working on a cartoon-inspired critter. I just barely got her head started but it still made me happy. (I do need to see if I can find either Red Heart "Flamingo" or "Perfect Pink" somewhere - Amazon has them but at prices I am 100% unwilling to pay - JoAnn's near me doesn't carry those colors. I suppose I could try at the local Wal Mart at some point...I wish I had had the presence of mind to look at the Michael's up at my parents'; I do not have one near me).

And at any rate: either I do that on a Sunday (lawyerballing, heh) or wait until Lent is over. Which I guess is three more weeks? Or I dig really deep into my acrylic/wool-ease stash and see if I have a color that's CLOSE, I might. I think my first inclination is to stash-dive; second inclination is to wait until after April 21, and then get what I need.

* Also I worked more on the Deputy Headmistress socks and yes, this second sock is easier now that I kind of see how the pattern works. So that's good.

* Read more on "The Daughter of Time" and thinking about "next books" - I have a copy of Morpurgo's "War Horse" (yes, the movie, which I've not seen, was based on it) on the shelf....though I don't know if a "war book" would go down very well right now. (A friend assures me that at least the movie "ends as happily as a WWI movie can end" which I presume means the horse doesn't die during the war...so maybe I could deal with it. Also it is a YA book and those tend to be a bit less "brutality for brutality's sake" than some adult books...I swear some authors who write for adults are sadists who put in horrible stuff just because they can)

I also have a nice Folio edition of "Black Beauty" (yes, another YA) because I had been wanting to re-read it for a while (And if they do "Heidi" at some point, I will be getting that; loved "Heidi" as a child). I remember being sad during a lot of the book though when I read a copy (probably abridged) that my grandmother had when I was about 8 or so.

(I say "probably abridged" as it was in a compilation volume of children's novels that had been my mother's. There was also a novelization of "Peter Pan" in there, and....a couple other things I forget. Maybe that's where I first read "Heidi"? I guess I did read a lot of "classic" children's lit as a child; I had a copy of "A Dog of Flanders" (also sad) that my grandmother sent me for my birthday one year)

I do wonder how "different a mindspace" one inhabits based on those kinds of experiences: I know a lot of people comment on my large vocabulary (and there is a discussion on ITFF about "toning down word usage in the classroom" remembering that students don't always have the same vocabulary*. And sometimes I mess up and people have to ask me about a word, though with scientific terms I am careful to define them and sometimes give the roots). I think in some ways I may have some thoughts and attitudes similar to older generations than my own because my reading as a kid was heavily influenced by my maternal grandmother (sent me books for gifts that were either ones she remembered, or ones her kids - the oldest born about 1920 - had read). And we were kind of a weird bookish family any way. So in some ways I know more of what kids were reading in the early 1900s than I know about, for example, most current alt-rock (or choose whatever popular genre) music.

(*"It's the unusual student that becomes a professor" was something I was told in teaching-assistant training, and yes, that is true, and it's important to remember that - that our students may not be invested in some of the topics in the same way we are, or have other focuses in their lives, or not have the same academic background)

And I like the older "Children's Lit" or "YA" books - note my high praise of Sutcliff's "Roman Britain" stories - because yes, they are vividly written. I like books that inspire my imagination - like I said with those, you can smell and feel the dust of the Roman road, and hear the tack jingling on the horses, all of that. I have found some adult novels tend to skimp on description of scene or character development, and that is something I really love in a story.

And in some cases, the morals are more...clear-cut....than adult books. And forgive me but: I am a Bear of Very Little Brain and sometimes I like stories where Good is Good and Bad is Bad, and Good wins in the end. And there's not some weird grey area where the "good" characters do atrocities because they "need" to to prevent worse, or where "Bad" isn't really so bad after all.

(And yet, I can totally sit comfortably with the Equestria model, where most - if not all, but the series hasn't concluded yet - of the "bad guys" can be reformed and ARE reformed - from Nightmare Moon (basically: jealous of her sister's popularity, but when she's shown love, she becomes sweet Luna again) through Discord (who is still kind of a selfish manbaby at times, but who has been somewhat reformed by Fluttershy's love) and up to Starlight Glimmer (who was shown friendship, and has given up her authoritarian ways). (And I leave out the movie, because I haven't seen it yet - have it on dvd but just have not made the time - but I understand that a couple others in the movie are redeemed by friendship). And yes, I know, I once said you can't shoehorn Ponies into Christianity (or Christianity into Ponies) but to me, the whole idea of "the redemptive power of agape" (which is really what that "friendship" is) is something important to me and perhaps at the deepest level, that's why I respond to the show and like it - something deep in my psyche looks at it and goes "See? I knew it all along! Being kind and loving towards others 'fixes' them!" And yes, to use explicitly Christian language: I know some people whose "testimony" was that what ultimately gave them the impetus to get "fixed" (in the sense of giving up drugs, or getting help for their other demons, or leaving an abusive relationship) was that some other person just....loved them. Not romantically, not because of any tie of obligation, but just loved them, as a friend, and that love came from a place of faith in that person...)