Bits

I earned five dollars for filling out a survey for someone's Psych study last Thursday. I don't think I was much help.

Went to the Electronic Music Festival at Civic Plaza for a bit on Saturday. We didn't catch the best DJ, I think.

I was looking over various requirements for both Reed and UNM today. I have fewer of them than I originally thought. Ah well, more room for classes taken just for the hell of it.

In Shakespeare today, the professor mentioned a filmed version of Macbeth featuring a writhing Lady Macbeth during the "unsex me here" bit.

Am putting off writing the response paper for Chaucer until tomorrow. It would probably be good to say something besides, "Squee!" It's late, and my brain is done functioning at a higher level than that for today.

Things and Stuff

Mozilla still refuses to let me send e-mail via the mail client. Everything is set up as it should be, as far as I can tell, but still no go with the sending. At least it has quit freezing things up when I try to send things.

Finished The Birth of Tragedy today. Gah. There are parts of it that could be cut out and the work as a whole wouldn't suffer. Like the paragraph where Nietzsche praises German culture and criticizes French culture, which is out of line with his usual vein of criticizing the Germans. And I'm not entirely sure what he's up to in his discussion of opera. First, opera is an offshoot of the degenerated, de-Dionysized (a word I just made up...) Greek tragedy that is actually not tragic at all because the focus is shifted off the music and onto the words and images. And music, he argues, is what really makes the tragedy because it is the crucial Dionysian element. But, Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde is the epitomy of good tragedy. The proper balance of the Apollinian and the Dionysian is restored; the Apollinian veils the Dionysian so that we can understand the ideas the music represents without our brains exploding. The last ten sections of the book are not necessary, as Kaufmann the translator suggests, because it does start off (and even maintains throughout) by continuing to unravel the threads introduced in the beginning, but it could do without the sometimes sycophantic attitude toward Wagner. But heck, Wagner liked to surround himself with the sycophantic.

Took another look at the Wife of Bath today; decided she is ostentatiously religious and very good at and generous about certain wifely duties. It's interesting that her portrait comes just before the Parson's.

Today was the first meeting of the semester of the campus ACLU group. Found out some interesting things. Michael Moore is going to speak on campus in October. And on Monday the city of Albuquerque is voting on a resolution against the PATRIOT Act. About damn time.

Also went to the budget workshop, after having gone to the chartering workshop yesterday. 'Tis going to be a busy week for the Pervy Tolkien Fanciers.