contumacious

so on page 78 in his super awesome book that i just desperately love, ong says "texts are inherently contumacious." after reading that sentence, i was like wow - what a profound though. oh wait, i have no idea what it means.
so after a little trip to dictionary.com, i found out that contumacious means disobedient, more or less. i don't feel like texts are disobedient because they've surrounded me my whole life. to me, they represent structure, information, and a gateway to my imagination. i consider puppies to be disobedient - and i challenge you to find a piece of literature that pees on the new carpet (although some of them pee on my soul). i would argue that texts aren't the disobedient ones - authors are. they are the catalysts hurling the written word into our faces.
and now that i know what contumacious means, i'm going to try and incorporate it into my vocabulary to sound like the pretentious english major i'm meant to be. thank you, walter ong. not for your book or your ideas, but for your choice of word.

l'examen

so i just finished the test, and i have to say...it wasn't too bad. although, i'm saying this before i know my actual grade, so maybe i should shut it. the only part i was frustrated with was ong's 9 parts of orality...i just couldn't memorize them. boo. and i couldn't remember who else was sitting at the quiet desk, so i put kevin bacon. it just seemed right.
now i feel like i can devote more time to memorizing my list of 50 cities in montana! a woohoo! i wonder if the governor knows the name of every town/city in montana off the top of his head. my guess is no. in which case, i declare him as a governor fail.
hopefully on monday i won't be too surprised at my grade - i just wish there had been an extra credit section where we could have written about our favorite muse or something. oh well, maybe on the final...

word magic

so while we were talking about #3 on ong's list of things that are part of our memory systems (redundancy or copious...ness?), it made me think of my world lit class with professor coffey because on tuesday he talked to us about "word magic" in the norwegian folktale traditions. word magic is kindof like chants or little prayers that we repeat, expecting some sort of awesome result. like at football games - the whole premise of cheerleaders getting the crowd to shout things like "we want a touch down" or "defense!" could somehow improve the performance of the team. even if the crowd knows they're cheering for a team whose record is 0-10. or how some how repeating "hail mary, full of grace..." 15 times will cleanse you of whatever sin you've done.
the redundancy of chanting at games while knowing they probably won't effect (affect?) the game, and the copious amounts of little things we say to ourselves over and over get passed on to others, and that's how "word magic" stays relevant. how else can you explain the fact that we still say "bless you" when someone sneezes over and over again, even though i doubt anyone still believes one can lose their soul through a giant "achoo!"? ...that doesn't sound to homeostatic to moi.

east helena is a town? i thought it was more like a parasite that had latched onto our capital...

i'm not very good at memorizing things that don't have to do with entertainment. so, for my list of 50 things to memorize, i was going to do 50 famous people from the 90's - that list took me about 5 minutes to come up with during class. but then i figured i should do something at least a smidge more useful, so i'm going to memorize names of towns in montana. ok, so i've lived here my whole life - whatever - that doesn't mean i know all of the towns in the fourth largest state in america. although, i do know that our state motto is "oro y plata," our state tree is the lodgepole pine, and the state bird is the western meadowlark. so booyah.
anyway, here's my list, in alphabetical order, because that's how it's displayed on wikipedia when i looked it up...


Anaconda
Baker
Belgrade
Big Timber
Billings
Bozeman
Butte
Chinook
Choteau
Colstrip
Columbia Falls
Conrad
Cut Bank
Deer Lodge
Dillon
East Helena
Forsyth
Fort Benton
Glasgow
Glendive
Great Falls
Hamilton
Hardin
Harlem
Harlowton
Havre
Helena
Kalispell
Laurel
Lewistown
Libby
Livingston
Malta
Miles City
Missoula
Plentywood
Polson
Poplar
Red Lodge
Ronan
Roundup
Scobey
Shelby
Sidney
Thompson Falls
Three Forks
Townsend
Troy
Whitefish
White Sulphur Springs

too bad whitehall isn't on the list - it's my fave ;)

and i have to say, i'm not really digging the fact that we have to memorize the nine muses in the order that kyle put them in, because i was having enough trouble memorizing them using my own mnemonic device, and now i have to start all over and learn them in a new order using new things, based on someone else's ideas. y no me gusta. no me puedo. you could be thinking to yourself "shit happens, shannon," but that, my friend, is a cliche. so shut it.
here's a list of some of my favorite cliche's (not in alphabetical order)

saying things are cliche
isn't that the pot calling the kettle black!
it takes two to tango/it's a two way street
bro's before ho's
people who thank god during award shows (i don't think god helped you win that grammy, lil' wayne)
when life hands you lemons, grab some vodka and have a party! omg! girls night!
i love you more than ___ loves ____
watching middle school girls in public - i bet the conversations haven't changed since 1900.



oh, and here's proof that rats can laugh - in class i was like, psh! cha right! ...but youtube = truth, so that ends that debate. although, if you ask me, the dude tickling the rats is a creeper, so maybe the rats have been roofied. just sayin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myuceywaOUs

zucco's lookin pretty good today, huh riz?

so i thought it was funny that everyone in class that had seen "groundhog day" before (by the way, it is actually groundhog day - not groundhog's day...the celebration centers around one groundhog, after all. little things like this bug me - like when people say "expecially" or "deers"), couldn't remember character names. it seems odd that we can watch or hear something so many times, and yet not be able to recall certain aspects of the thing. like, i know "grease" practically by heart - all of the songs, almost all of the lines - i even know the schools mascot, the rydell ranger. it's kind of sick. i know i have seen that movie more that 50 times. but i've also seen "10 things i hate about you" probably 30 times, and the only characters i can remember are kat and bianca. and even though i've seen the scene sooooo many times because its one of those things where whenever it's on tv, i always seem to catch it at the exact same moment, but i don't actually know the 10 things bianca hates about...uh, heath ledger. no idea what the character's name is.
i can recite word for word every song from beauty and the beast (oh, and in class on wednesday, i was dying to burst into song and keep going with the bonjour song...little town, it's a quiet village; every day like the one before. little town, full of little people waking up...tooo....saaaaay....bonjour! bonjour, bonjour, bonjour, bonjour! there goes the baker with his tray like always, the same old bread and rolls to sell - every morning just the same, since the morning that we came to this poor provincial town - "good morning, belle!"....oh, belle. i want to be you. i'd marry the beast if i could have a library like that), and even though that proves that i have mad skills and no life at the same time, it still doesn't explain to me why i can remember so much from some movies, but not others. do i have to love the movie to remember? is that why i'm so bad at learning foreign languages? my hatred for any other language other than english must somehow inhibit my brain from absorbing spanish vocab. although, when i took irish gaelic last fall at UM, we didn't have a book, and we had to learn everything through vocal repetition. and while i was pretty kick-ass at speaking gaelic in the class, in the environment - the minute i left i had no idea what i had just studied. and right now, all i can remember is that when someone says "dia gwit," i say "dias moodagwit"...that's phonics, by they way. if i could remember how to spell in irish, i probably would have passed with more than a C. that's why i find it hard to remember the names of the nine muses away from the environment i decided to actually memorize them in. so for me, my way of putting loci into use is using my personal location to my advantage. hopefully when i come up with a list of 50 things to memorize, i'll be able to regurgitate it in class. i can't decide if i want to use song titles or food. but i kind of want to alphabetize my list to make things a little easier on myself. maybe i'll get extra credit if i just sing a song....

yo' mama's so fat, she...well, she's obese. please help her.

so i just read zach morris's blog (side note: zach - please tell me you have dated or are currently dating a girl named kelly. her last name doesn't have to be kapowski, but it would be nice. also, might you know anyone of the name a.c. slater? just wondering. and what kind of cell phone do you have....?)
because i saw the word "sandlot" and i have to say, i'm glad i'm not the only one who immediately thought of ham porter during the flyting discussion in class on friday. i will literally drop what i'm doing if i see the sandlot on tv and watch it until the very end - it's almost a spiritual experience. plus, my boyfriend from camp huff n' puff looked like smalls, so yay me. i could watch those kids play ball forevER forevER forevER....
anywhey, i'm a girl (doy), and i know girls aren't usually known for witty flyting skills, but i know when i was younger, i not only made my sisters cry (and i might *might* still, today), but i could also throw down with the best insulters...five minutes after they walked away. but at least i experienced the satisfaction of getting the best of my older sisters - and i'm still much, much better than them at handing out a spoonful of dis.
and all that talk about freestyle rap in class reminded me that i actually did win a rap-off in my high school chemistry class - but the only thing i can remember is telling the kid to "kiss my asthma - PEACE!" and then i think i turned on the non-working gas valve for effect. what i really wish is that i could participate in mud-slinging with normal people who just bug me whilst i work. i mean work work, not school work - i love getting bugged when i'm trying to do homework because it helps me with my goal of eternal procrastination....
but seriously, i think i could really do some damage if i started treating/speaking to people the way they do to me - for example:
lady: um, this tag says this shirt is $19.50. how much is it?
me: it's $19.50
me in my head: did you pass 2nd grade?
lady: so it's not on sale at all?
me: no, it's actually brand new - we just put out all of our spring stuff
me in my head: was it in the sale section? when you picked it up, was there any indication that it was on sale? seriously. read.
lady: well, could you check what the price is for me so i know for sure?
me: yeah! definitely!
me in my head: i swear to god, woman - i will go back in time and make sure your mother never gets pregnant.

ok, so thats not really clever insult-trading, but sometimes i think really cruel thoughts but i never get to say them out loud because i like having a paycheck. it is neat. like, i love when someone sees a stack of jeans, but instead of doing what i like to call the "lift and separate" to find the size they need, they just rip the jeans out and mess up a stack of like 10 pairs of pants. then they look at me with faux-guilt and say "ooops - i bet you hate when people do that...heh" and i say something like, "oh, no - you're fine, don't worry about it," while what need to say is, "yeah, i seriously hate people like you. get a job in retail and learn how to shop you selfish turd. by the way, you are not a size 4."...or something like that. maybe i should just work on being more clever than the customer so they won't even realize i'm insulting them until after they buy stuff. then the store won't suffer. ^_^

i hope i won't be as cruel as king lear was to gonoreil when he cursed her womb, and in the even that she may actually become preggers, cursing the child to be ridiculously horrible. that was harsh.
by the way, the best insult ever is "your mom." trust me.