I was reading an email from Patrick today, and I noticed the phrase "iced tea" was underlined in a dashed blue line. When I put the pointer over it, that "Y! Shortcuts" window popped up explaining what ice iced tea was with a picture of some.
I'd like to share a verb with you. Patrick made an important discovery as to the origin of the H in Jesus H. Christ, but I won't steal his beans, though, and spill the thunder.
However, his research prompted me to read about Christian symbolism, and the pelican.
1. The pelican is a bird.
2. In olden days the pelican was a symbol of sacrifice.
3. Because they thought it fed its young by piercing its own breast and feeding them its blood (eww)
This is referred to in a Shakespeare play, but I can't remember which one, and a Google search for "shakespeare pelican" yielded like a million hits for Pelican®-brand Shakespearean plays. Thanks for nothing, Pelican!
We'll say it was Romeo and Juliet. You remember that scene where Juliet's like:
The pelican's beak, the pelican's blood. The six-legged monkey, fell down in the mud. Violet's a tramp, and the roses are blue Oh that my name, could be Montague too!
I think it's in the sixth act.
Anyways, ad rem nostrum, the verb.
The verb is VULN.
vuln
tr.v. vulned, vuln·ing, vulns To wound (oneself) by biting at the breast. Used of the pelican, which was once believed to feed its young with its blood, as a heraldic motif and symbol of Christ.
[From Latin vulnerÄre, to wound; see vulnerable.]
I think it could make a good adjective. A vulning confession? A vulning gesture?
I tried to learn more about this and googled "breast bite", but I got a LOT of pictures that were not work appropriate at all.
We have a good relationship with our new neighbors. We hang out, we help each other carry stuff, we lend each other things.
Patrick went to San Diego last week and brought back a bunch of our books, so the joke was that we have a library now, and we should issue the girls library cards so they can borrow books.
Under normal circumstances this would have remained a joke, possibly referred to again once, and then forgotten forever. However, given the magical confluence of
1. A computer
2. A Thomas Meaney, stuck in front of this computer for 8 hours
3. A laminator
jokes have a way of turning into reality.
And so, without further ado, I am proud to present to you the official Apartment 4, Meaney Brothers library card:
The background of the left-hand side is a page of the folio version of Hamlet. Artsy, no?
The Latin is "Liber scriptus proferatur," taken from the fifth stanza of the Dies Irae. It means "A book will be brought forth," which I thought was appropriate.
I'm not sure what to add next, but I found a painting yesterday that I thought was really funny, so I figured I'd put that up.
It's by one of my favorite artists, Henri Rousseau, and it's called Exotic Landscape, Fight between Gorilla and Indian (1910). Now, the junglescape is lovely, of course...but then at the bottom (as foreshadowed by the painting's title) we find a motif seldom invoked in French Post-Impressionism: a gorilla fighting an American Indian!
Never mind the sort of awkward postures. Never mind that they seem to be smaller than flowers. Never mind that gorillas and Indians come from two different continents. That's part of what I love about Rousseau: it's a pastiche of imagery, a sort of hodgepodge. And while the painting might not be factually accurate, it works very well visually. His jungle paintings are less like a National Geographic photo, and more like a dream you had about the jungle.
I was excited to find an homage to the painting, created by American artist Donald Simpson in 1990. I like to think of it as what Rousseau would have created if he'd had a stronger technical background:
After more research, I found a similar piece, also painted in 1910, that shows an uncanny prescience for video-game-robot/devil imagery on Rousseau's part. Housed at the Fresno Guggenheim, the exultant Exotic Landscape: Fight between Cyberdemon and Woman in Pink
So Karlo had a blog. And Jack too. And Patrick. So I got jealous and figured I'd start one too. Theirs are rather coherent and article-based. Maybe I'll move in that direction eventually. At this point, however, I don't feel a tremendous amount of pressure to make mine very "polished" since it will be read only by me (hi, Thomas!).
I feel like having a blog will:
1. Help to stave off boredom at work
2. Improve my typing
3. Siphon off some of the energy I currently put into my (hilarious) emails, so that my close friends and family won't be so overwhelmed by an inbox full of stuff from me
Yahoo thinks I am dumb.
