That’s right–it’s Saint Urho’s Day!  Now, some of you may notice that Finland is a traditionally Lutheran country and that there is no Saint Urho in the Church, anyway.  Saint Urho’s day is indeed made up–Finnish immigrants wanted their own day to get drunk at the start of Spring (this was back when only Irish people celebrated St. Patrick).

So they made up their own holiday.  And why not?  All holidays are basically made up and/or have changed incredibly over the centuries.  Why not celebrate that which is fake?

Reasons why St. Urho’s Day is superior to Saint Patrick’s day:  it’s the day before.  St. Patrick was a dick.  It wasn’t “snakes” he drove out of Ireland–it was Norwegians.  St. Patrick is famous for being anti-immigrant.

If Patrick drove out the snakes, the Finns decided that Urho drove out the grasshoppers and saved the wine crop.  So put on some green and purple and drink some wine.  And when people try to hand you a green beer tomorrow, tell them you’ve already celebrated (unless you’d still like to drink–in which case, you should have some decent beer or another bottle of wine).

With the advent of Twitter, I don’t see how “twitterpated” won’t make it back into the regular lexicon. Denise and I are fairly twitterpated this week. A certain director of The Simpsons movie twittered us after Denise said she was working on the Linguistics section of the book.

Since, he’s asked to see my syllabus! It’s the best thing that’s happened in a relatively lousy week. I won’t go into the lousy stuff.

Instead, I’ll go back to linguistics–why do we call a twitter response a “tweet” and not a “twit”? Then we could say, “This twit says she’s eating egg salad for lunch.” And, as a friend suggested this week, is the past tense of “tweet” “twat”?

http://www.matchflick.com/column/1893

Woohoo!

I went to the theatre this Friday. Nice little comedy done pretty well by the students here. More fun that the opera, except that the audience was worse (see last week’s blog about the opera audience). At least no one in the opera audience was playing with their phone the whole time (and my position in the theatre would have allowed me to see that).

A girl behind me at the play had her phone on vibrate. And it vibrated every time she got a text. And then she would take it out and answer right away, leading to a new vibration. I could see a bunch of other people texting and/or playing on their iphones during the production. One boy in particular, who attended with his four friends, did not look up at the stage at all. Even during the fight scene.

This was a small theatre. The actors and I could all see who was looking down and who was bathed in the blue glow of a phone screen.

In other news, have finally got around to reading Madame Bovary. I now understand Margaret Atwood’s line about how Bovary would have been saved by knowledge in double entry bookkeeping. The book exists in cultural imagination as being about adultery. Now, there is adultery. There’s commentary on faith and rural life and what we would now understand as crippling depression. But Madame Bovary is not ruined by her affairs. A loan shark takes advantage of her and her husband–he changes rates and threatens with third party intervention and pretends to be their friend. In the end, she’s dead because she’s bankrupt. If there had never been a money problem, the adultery wouldn’t have been a problem, either.

I have to say, it was much more readable than I anticipated, but I’m glad that I didn’t read it in high school. I hate that “classics” are always given to children, when it takes adults who’ve had money problems and more than one relationship, etc. to really empathize with characters. If I were speaking, I would raise a toast to reading the classics as an adult.

When walking across campus on Friday, I saw an ad for a frat, one that encouraged people to join.  The frat proclaimed itself the “ruling elite” of Davis, with “ruling elite” in script.

I’m uncertain that the frat knows what elite really means.  To be elite means you don’t advertise.  To be elite means that you rule quietly, yet powerfully.  To be elite means that your numbers are small, intentionally.

I know of a small group in Davis where membership is by invitation only.  It gives sizable donations to independent film producers.  It doesn’t charge for membership, but relies on donations of fine wine, cheese, and chocolate.  Its weekly meetings are quiet, unknown to the general public, and held in a building without a sign (you have to know where to go).  This group is so elite that some people have fled–they want to be members, but find the members themselves intimidating.

I won’t name the group for privacy’s sake.

Real quick: This week’s episode of Big Love has the family taking a road trip (and reminding me why I refuse to take road trips). One scene is supposed to take place on the Mississippi, but it was apparently shot in Sacramento. See our familiar Old Sac (with weird faux-southern flags) and golden bridge in the background.

First, the bad:

Steven Page is leaving Barenaked Ladies. Perhaps it has finally occurred to him that he is a bloke who is often dressed? Will miss his voice.  Am trepidacious about his upcoming “solo” career, even though he’s incredibly talented.

And now the good news: Stillman (aka Chaz) had one of his songs featured at isound. This is an older one, but it’s the one who got him a contract. Check it out here:
http://www.isound.com/stillman

You can also listen to other songs on his myspace page.  I recommend “The Thaw.”  If/when he ever puts up the song about our summer together, I’ll let you know.

Chaz at work

Also, we can rejoice because Michael Cera has agreed to do the Arrested Development movie.  There’s always money in the banana stand!

These days, the only people who are commenting on the blog are people from .ru. At first, I was getting a bunch of messages that said “yoooo, dr-karma is the best name ever!” They were accompanied by links to other pages, which basically made them ads. Today I have five comments all pending for “A Proper Blog,” the blog that included the glossary at the very beginning of all this:
You may use Yahoo for this question, it can be interesting.
Most interesting blog of this month!
How may I begin won journal?
I agree with all in this post! Thank you
I should find morer infprmation about this post
[sic]
These are not accompanied by ad links, though they may be a gateway (once you get approved, you get to post whatever).
Am I being too cautious about spam or should I embrace my Russian fan club?

Atwood has pulled out of an appearance at the International Festival in Dubai after a British author was banned from the conference due to homosexual content in her work. Dubai is supposed to be the Vegas of the Arab world, but as many countries’ leaders have told us (I’m looking at you, Iran), there are apparently no gay people in the Arab world. This is especially funny since the Arab world seems fond enough of Michael Jackson (maybe they have it mixed up and think he likes little girls?)

In other news, the school board in Canada who heard a complaint about The Handmaid’s Tale has decided that the book is still recommended and has value to students. The newspaper story I read about it quoted the father who complained about the book as saying he wasn’t sure what his son was supposed to be learning from the text. Maybe he’d like to come to book group and we could help him out with that?

First lesson–the book teaches you that the freedom to read is more important than the freedom from having books out there you don’t like.