Sun - May 16, 2004

Reading the New York Times to excess.


My neck hurts from bending over the dining room table for too many hours. Can it really be seven hours I've spent reading the New York Times? I did go make a sandwich at one point, and while I heated up the frying pan and the panini grill (which sounds more elaborate than it was), I watched some TiVo'd This Week with George Stephanopolis (yes, that actually is the sort of thing I TiVo--I know it seems a bit strange). And I did stop to blog about a few things I was reading (on my other blog , of course). And I took a few minutes here and there to interact with my laundry machines. But basically, I've spent the whole day with the Sunday Times. I've yet to leave the house.
Oh noooooo!


Posted at 03:33 PM     Read More  

Wed - May 12, 2004

Little things


Does "freak snow" seem to be a standard expression because of "freak show"? I'm thinking "freak show" got started as an expression, because shows were really made by exhibiting people that we were once unkind enough to call freaks. Later, it snowed in, say, May, and someone said "freak snow," as a bit of a joke. A tiny joke. And it stuck, like snow. It became a standard expression. If this is the origin of the expression, then it's that kind of low grade humor that plagues magazines and catalogues. Like here's one, for a chair: "all about ease." I feel slightly ill or vaguely angry when I read that sort of play on words.

Anyway, a theme of this blog seems to be tininess, insignificance, but I especially like the tiny thing that interestingly branches out, like the one about the saucer. One of my favorite lines in my favorite movie, My Dinner With Andre, is when Wally counters Andre's long set of stories about going all over the world looking for meaning, with the statement that if we could only real look at the cigar store next door it would blow our minds. Of course, that film shows how smallness and intimacy--at least to me--are far more involving that big, active scenes (which usually bore me terribly in movies). And note what they both order for dinner: tiny little quails. And Wally drinks a tiny drink: an Amaretto.

Posted at 03:15 PM     Read More  

Tue - May 11, 2004

The junk drawer


Here's an overview. The contents of the notorious drawer have been dumped on the countertop. Note presence of famous duck.



Ah, there!



So how to go about this? Isolate one type of item. For example, tools. What? You don't keep your tools in the kitchen?



So how much work am I really going to do? As little as possible.


Posted at 08:41 AM     Read More  

Sat - May 8, 2004

The Mystery of the Saucer


The saucer looks like it ought to have a cup to go with it, but I haven't found a matching cup. In the depression in the center of the saucer where a cup would fit, there is a five-pointed star. The points are green, orange, blue, yellow, and white. The center of the star, which is a pentagon, is also white, as is the rest of the saucer. The saucer also has a gold, slightly fluted rim, and ten small gold stars. In the center of the central pentagon is another pentagon, outlined in gold, and inside it the image, drawn in gold, of an open book. In the space between the two pentagons, there are letters: A L F A T--but there is no way to know which letter to start with, which hampers my ability to compose a Google search. On each of the triangles that form the points of the star, there is an image, drawn in gold. The green triangle has a hard-to-read image, perhaps a tall building with a large base. The red triangle has an easy-to-see chalice, which seems quite mysterious. The blue triangle seems to have another building, a low multipart building with an arched central area. The yellow triangle seems to have a sheaf of wheat, and the white triangle seems to have an ancient type of helmet. The reverse side of the the saucer identifies the manufacturer: Royal Stafford (and adds: bone china/made in England). Above that are the letters "OES."

So what to Google? I try "star helmet chalice oes." I'm very excited when the result is a single entry:
----------------------------------------------------------------
The Meanings of Tombstone Carvings

... OES, Order of Eastern Star. OUAM, Order of United American Mechanics. ... Crown Upon Skull, Triumph of Death. Cup or Chalice, The Sacrament. Cypress, Hope. ... Helmet, Military. ...

freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~historic/ meanings_of_tombstone_carvings.htm - 53
----------------------------------------------------------------

The page collects so many things that might be on a tombstone that it doesn't help me as much as I'd thought it would, but I do have reason to think the OES is "Order of Eastern Star." I Google that and get to this page, and there at the top is something quite close to the star from the saucer. I note the site has a counter that says "You are visitor 1 since March 18, 1998." Hmmmm. Oh, there's a "clip art" button. At first I think, cool, I'll put the star here. Then, I decide against it. This is clearly somebody's religious symbol and I don't want to misuse it (even though they are offering it as "clip art").

According to this site there are 1 million members of the Order, which "is not a religion." "Its appeal rests in the true beauty of the refreshing and character-building lessons that are so sincerely portrayed in its ritualistic work." Hmmm. "Dr. Rob Morris, the Poet Laureate of Masonry, founded the Order using beautiful and inspiring biblical examples of heroic conduct and moral values. These portray the noble principles which should adorn the personal lives of Eastern Star members. Eastern Star strives to take good people and through uplifting and elevating associations of love and service, and through precept and example, build an Order which is truly dedicated to charity, truth and loving kindness." Well, that is really vague, but apparently it's beautiful, good, and spiritual. I wonder what those rituals are and if one of them is infiltrating the houses of nonmembers with mysterious saucers. I notice that where my saucer has a helmet, the star on the website has a crown and scepter.

This is a bit more informative. The organization seems to be something like a spinoff from Freemasonry that accepts women (as well as men).

The funniest thing about this plate is that for years I've noticed it lying around and I've always thought it was a souvenir from Texas! My parents used to live in Texas (I was conceived there), and so I see a star on a plate that was theirs, and I think Texas. I was ready to throw it away if it was some sort of Texas souvenir, because I'm trying to dejunkify and stop using my house as a place to just store things I don't like and don't use. But if it represents something profound that had to do with one of my grandfathers (who were both Masons), then I think I shouldn't toss it.

I still don't know what the ALFAT letters represent, So I decide to Google the letters in order, putting a different one of the letters first until I get somewhere. The first two attempts produce nothing. The third attempt scares me: it's FATAL! (It's a real "redrum" moment.) Now, I want to throw away the horrible plate. If I were Stephen King, I could write a 500 page book about the plate. Are there any movies about scary plates? Yeah, I know there's that Nazi plate in American Beauty, and there's probably an animated plate in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, and there are the amusingly pornographic plates in "The Birdcage." Okay, I collect my senses and Google "FATAL Eastern Star" and get this : "At the end of the initiates ceremony, the signs, passes, grip, and symbols of the Order are explained to the candidate, including the letters F.A.T.A.L. which appear on some Eastern Star documents.  These are an abbreviation of the Cabalistic Motto: 'Fairest Among Thousands, Altogether Lovely.'  The abbreviation FATAL is said to remind the initiate that 'it would be fatal to the character of any lady' to disclose the secrets of the Order. Those who do not assassinate their character by telling the secrets are assured that their faithfulness to the Order of the Eastern Star will grant them eternal life." I also find this : "The Eastern Star emblem is similar to the Goat of Mendes (Baphomet), its initials F.A.T.A.L. stand for the fatal attraction and bondage of Eastern Star. The Congressional Medal of Honor has an inverted star with three dots after each point (Masonic points). The streets around the White House were designed by a Masonic architect and form the Goat of Mendes. Jefferson and Franklin were both Masons. The statue of liberty was given by French Masons to American Masons and has Masonic occult symbols all over it."

All right, now I'm really upset about the whole thing, not just the saucer, but the Medal of Honor, the White House, and the Statue of Liberty! The hell!

Posted at 07:52 PM     Read More  

Ann/Anne


I see Gordon linked to me on his blog and managed to spell my name correctly and incorrectly in the same post. There are people in the Law School who have known me for 20 years and still spell my name wrong. "Ann" is such a simple name, the plainest possible name, so plain that it seems people feel a pull to make it less plain. Surely, it can't just be "Ann." It seems to need the kind of fancying up that only an "e" can provide. There, now, doesn't it look so much more elegant, so much more anglophilically royal? I tried to use Google to trace down the reason for the two spellings. I had a theory that "Anne" related to various English queens in a way that led Americans to go for the "Ann" spelling, and a related theory that "Ann" was chosen by various severe Protestant groups who rejected adornment. (I note the Shaker leader Ann Lee.) It's very hard to write a Google search for this, and I was stymied by the tendency of "no e" to draw in "no e-mail." Well, at least that connected two of the banes of my existence: junk email and the "junk" e people want to put on my name--and how hard it is to stop both things. When telling my name to a stranger who is writing it down--such as when making an appointment or placing an order--if I anticipate the problem and say "Ann A-N-N...," the person frequently seems disturbed, as if I think they are an idiot because I'm spelling out such an easy to spell name. If I say "Ann, that's Ann with no e," they often don't hear what I'm saying. (As for my last name, I've learned to spell out the first three letters and then say "house," with no warning that I'm going to stop saying letters in a row, and people always get it. I used to try to say the first three letters, then say "and then just house," which people found puzzling, because of the intrusive "and then" which they just couldn't hear straight. There's no similar solution for spelling "Ann.")

(Hmmm.... my little Google search turned up this episode of The Simpsons, in which Ann Landers is a character and Homer has trouble writing on a typewriter because it has no "e" key. Maybe I'm too lazy to read enough about this episode to see if the answer is on this page, but did Ann steal the "e" key as a protest? Kinda like that "w" key vandalism by the outgoing Clinton people?)

But why did my parents choose "Ann" and spell it that way? My parents thought avoiding nicknames was important and deliberately gave all three children one syllable names so they were unshortenable. They chose "Ann" to produce all As--my middle initial is A too. They liked the idea of "triple A" for some reason, and maybe it helped me be a good student by giving me the sense that I had a special relationship with "A." But why did they pick Ann and not Anne? Why give me the plainest possible name and deprive me of even the last morsel of decoration? Were they interested in rejecting anglophilia? Did they think it was more Protestant? Or was it some concept about being modern? My parents were great at leaving me to figure out things for myself, even if I asked a direct question. For example, the answer to the question "Where do babies come from?" was, in its entirety, "You know how men and women are physically built." So even if you asked, you could at best hope for a clue--oh and an implicit expression of confidence that you could figure it out for yourself or maybe only that you're better off with something to figure out than an answer handed to you on a plate. This may explain why I became a law professor. And it even suggests why they named me Ann in the first place: because it created the question, why Ann and not Anne, which I could wonder about for the rest of my life, without ever reaching an answer, but having various theories along that way that would give me something to think about. That thought reminded me of something my mother used to say, her favorite answer, and possibly her only answer, to the childish habit of asking why: "That's so little girls like you can ask questions." Hmmmm.... that reminds me to try to use the Socratic method more in class, in honor of my mysterious mother, who is no longer in a position even to deflect my questions.

Posted at 09:26 AM     Read More  

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