Who Sucks

Orgasm lifters. Those guys at the gym who sound like they're really enjoying every rep. I call them orgasm lifters.

In Pumping Iron Arnold Schwarzenegger is talking about the "pump" or the feeling he gets in his muscles when he's lifting. He says something like, well, here's the video:



Maybe they do have it figured out after all.

New Programs

I don't have much of a winter break. My last final exam was on this past Saturday, and my winter session class starts on January 5.

Next semester, I will be taking 2 high-level Japanese classes for the first time ever. I'm a bit nervous. I was asking the kids in the lower-level classes about their tests and quizzes, and, while I'm pretty set on the grammar, the kanji and vocabulary quizzes are seriously hard. Write out kanji characters? You must be joking! No? Oh... I had gotten used to simply typing them.

Starting today, I will be regimenting myself. I will build up to approximately four hours of straight Japanese studying per day. I'll probably track my progress on my long-silent Japanese blog, http://sokasoka.blogspot.com.

The other new program I will be starting is a program of frugality. Starting January 1, I will make an effort not to buy food at restaurants for the entire month (with the exception of possible Language Exchange meals, which fall under the Japanese-studying program). I'll have to learn new recipes. I foresee a lot more casseroles in my future.

If these two programs can get started easily, I might add a third (an exercise regimen), but I don't want to get too ambitious too fast.

じゃー、はじめよ！

What Unites Districted and Hatandcoat? In a Word: Manblogitude.

One of my favorite word blogs is called "Wordlustitude." Unlike many word blogs (including my own), it's short, funny, and unpretentious. The author finds real instances of made-up neologisms, defines them, gives a real citation, and then makes up a citation.

Here's today's word:

manblogitude

noun. What you'll find, if you dare to look, deep inside the pants of all testosterone-marinated blogs such as this.

Real citation: "I’m not sure I can take a calendar full of steaming hot manblogitude…"
(Dec. 3, 2008, The Comics Curmudgeon, http://joshreads.com/?p=1809)

Made-up citation: "Women love me for my manblogitude. Men hate me for it. Man-blogs admire me. Woman-blogs are curious. Woodland critters are just afraid."

I read that and thought of my little project here with my coblogger.

Please remember, whenever you add "man-" to a word, it makes it not gay and more stereo-hetero. See mancrushish, man-flab, man-fume , man-slutitude , man-strumpet, and mantourage. But I guess that's not a hard and fast rule: see happy man-loaf, man-chete, etc.

Celebratory French Toast

As I drove my rental car back from College Park, finally free of my most-hated class of all time (ANTH 260), I realized I had a car. And I thought, wouldn't it be lovely to go over to Hinata and have some celebratory chirasi-zushi? Yes, yes it would, I thought, and I began plotting my course.

And then I thought, but wait! I have no money. And the $15.00 bowl of rice with fish overtop is the best deal out there, but 15 bucks is still 15 bucks. So I decided to go home and make myself french toast instead.

Celebratory French Toast

• 3 eggs
• some milk (enough to make it a good mix of egg and milk, not just milky eggs or eggy milk)
• bourbon vanilla extract (a glug or two)
• cinnamon (a heavy dusting)
• sugar (a pinch)
  
• bread (I had wheat)

Beat eggs. Add milk. Glug vanilla. Dust cinnamon. Pinch sugar. Drown bread, one slice at a time. Fry. Enjoy celebratorily, with syrup or whatever.

Freedom Is Just Another Word...

As of about fifteen minutes ago my semester's over and I'm now writing stuff on the web again. Unfortunately my subject of study doesn't lend itself very well to long blog posts.

You know what, maybe it could. In retrospect I totally could've tried to explain what I'm learning. It's absolutely true that explaining helps to understand, so now I regret missing an opportunity. But I'm psyched to try it in the future. So five or six months from now when I have more reader-chasing-away fight posts behind me I can break that stream with some talk of greek symbols.

Oh yeah, that's a warning of more fight posts to come. Have you people seen the stuff in store for this month and next?

During my study period, this past Sunday, I have implemented a trial for the following month. This is part of my ongoing efforts to become more personally productive. I am now writing down a weekly schedule and sticking to it. This is revolutionary. Time is blocked out on a piece of paper (screw online calendars), longer term goals are written down and broken into doable chunks, lesser goals are getting triaged and then nixed or postponed. It is only a trial to see how I like the process. Next month I'll try catching squirrels with my bare hands.

Studying: Mongolian Impact on China, Japan, and Korea

The last question specifically focusing on the Mongolian Empire asks how it impacted the histories of the three countries above. This has elements that lead me to suspect that I'll need to know it for the exam: it's open-ended, vague, and has to do with a nomadic people's interaction with settled agrarians (which my professor really likes to dwell upon). But I'm a little tired of talking about the Mongols, so I'll keep this in outline form.

The Mongols in China:

• Unified the north and south for first time in a long time
  
• Militarized China. We see the Chinese arming themselves (Mongols had banned weapons) as control loosened. The countryside fell into chaos. Multiple warlords cropped up in microeconomic regions, and the eventual victor (Zhu Yuanzhang) was in the richest of these regions (Jiangnan).
• Encouraged interchange of ideas, arts, culture (see culture post).
• Prohibited Chinese scholars from getting positions, so they turned to writing dramas and operas.

The Mongols in Japan:

Okay, I need to tell this story. You know the word "kamikaze," right? But originally it did not mean a suicide-missioned pilot; it meant "divine wind" and referred to the storm that saved Japan from a Mongol invasion. Twice.

The Mongols had Korea and China, and Kublai wanted to enter into friendly relations with Japan. He wanted to send Japan a letter. Korea didn't want to send it; they had been suffering from "Japanese" pirate attacks for years. But Kublai knew how to twist Korea's arm, so they ended up sending the letter in 1266. The letter called for peace, saying ominously "nobody would wish to resort to arms." The Korean king appended the letter, saying that submitting would lead to prestige.

Japan said nothing but began fortifying defenses.

In 1268, Kublai sent another envoy. In 1269, he sent two more. 1271 and 1272, one each year. Nothing from Japan. The Japanese court was pretty terrified and wanted to surrender, but it was out of the emperor's impotent hands; the Kamakura shogunate (Tokimune) was in charge and ordered forces to be stationed at the most probable point of Mongol entry: Kyushu.

When the Mongols came in 1274, they landed on Kyushu a few times and just wiped the floor with the Japanese warriors. The Mongols were soldiers used to fighting in units; the Japanese had a tradition of one-on-one combat, even on a battlefield. Picture a lone samurai, expecting to fight just one Mongol at a time, yelling at the enemy--and getting shot by 10 arrows from all directions.

Then a storm came, and Mongol leaders told their troops to get in their boats (which had been made by Korean hands) so as not to be marooned. Smart move, that; about 200 ships were lost in what would later be called the Kamikaze, the storm that defended Japan. Japanese boats, which were better maneuverers, quickly finished off the remaining Mongol fleet. (wiki)

You'd expect the Khan to go back right away. Well, maybe he wanted to, but his navy had just been destroyed by wind. He needed time to build it up again. In the meantime, he sent embassies to Japan, telling them not to leave until they got a response. The shogun, after a while, decided to behead the ambassadors. Kublai, showing remarkable restraint for a Mongol whose ambassadors had just been killed, sent a few more. Same result; five heads came back.

In 1279, Kublai had conquered the Song (finally) and now had possession of their formidable navy. (Unfortunately, they picked riverboats to go to Japan in, and the Korean boats they commissioned were also unsuitable on the high seas.) In 1281, the Mongols landed once on Japan, but this time the samurai were much better trained to deal with them; the Mongols were forced back to their ships. All along the coast, they were repulsed, until finally, the second Kamikaze wiped out between 69-90% of the army.

Kublai was seriously put out, and he nearly planned another invasion, but didn't go through with it. Still, his historical impact on Japan was tremendous, even though the Mongols didn't actually succeed in invading.

• The shogun had no money to reward both the samurai he used and the priests (who claimed the Kamikaze was due to their prayers). He gave what little he had to the priests. The samurai, who were used to getting land after fighting, were discontent. They would stay dissatisfied with the Kamakura bakufu.
  
• This was a signal of the shift in power from the kuge (landed aristocrats) to the buke (the warriors, like those who had fought the Mongols).
• Kamakura became further unpopular due to the extra taxes it charged people for more defenses against a future invasion.
  
• The Hojo lineage used the occasion of the invasions to expand their power. They did this by promising more land to warriors, but they could not follow through. This was even more unpopular, and their power decreased.
• Pirates had taken advantage of the invasions to raid the countryside--people took this as further proof that the Kamakura bakufu couldn't do anything right.
• All in all, the invasions paved the way for Emperor Go-Daigo to make a play for power in 1333-1334, beginning the middle ages of Japan.

The Mongols in Korea:

• Neo-Confucianized Korea. They invited Korean successors and scholars to Beijing, where they could meet Neo-Confucians from China and eventually take the ethos back. This changed Korean society from partly matriarchal to very patriarchal.
  
• Bad economic situation. Big landowners became bigger, especially if they allied themselves with the Mongols. Land was snatched away.
• as they militarized China, Korea also became more reliant on military. The next leader, Yi Songgye, rode to power in 1392. He was from a military family and he was a yangban. His goal was to strengthen the monarchy, a direct result of the Mongol vassalship that Korea had been in.
  
• Yeah, I really don't know much else about the effect of the Mongols on Korea. I should ask the TA.
  

Interlude: More Mongol Destruction

The Mongol Empire didn't just spread culture, art, and ideas. It also spread the Black Death. All these people going around, low sanitary standards... yeah, it was likely to happen.

They've traced the Black Death to rodents in Central Asia. It was spread through the trade routes that the Mongols protected as well as through maritime trade on the Mediterranean Sea. But it didn't reach Europe until the Mongols reached Kaffa.

Kaffa was a city in what is now the Crimea, in the Ukraine, on the coast of the Black Sea. The Mongols were besieging it, like they were wont to do, but their army was not doing well. They were infested with the plague. So what's a Mongol army to do in a pinch but innovate?

They catapulted the dead bodies of the afflicted over the walls of Kaffa.

Whether or not this story accounts for the spread of the disease in Europe (Kaffa was full of maritime traders, who would've sailed west after the Mongols gave up and the siege was over) is far from proved. I'm not sure that the dead bodies were even contagious. But dude, flinging the dead over to the other side in a primitive attempt at biological warfare? Genius.

Studying: Mongolian Empire's Cultural Implications

The second question on this study guide asks about the cultural implications of the Mongolian Empire created by the carnage I related to you in the previous post. Again, a fun question, but I doubt that it will be the big essay on the exam--because the answer is at once too obvious and too impossible.

The obvious answer: it connected all of Asia with Eastern Europe and Persia, enabling globalization of culture and goods.

Take a look at the post below, again, and look at that animated GIF that I nabbed off of Wikipedia. The empire was huge. No other empire has ever covered that kind of area in the history of the world.

But just conquering the world would not have led to such a profound effect on these countries, had it not been for the way the Mongols ruled. Unlike Chinese and other governments of the time, the Mongols did not look down on merchants. On the contrary, they liked them, encouraged them, and protected them. The Mongols invented a kind of passport for travelers riding through their lands; it protected their right to be on the trade route. (Interestingly, the passport was written in the Mongol script, which was related to Aramaic.) The Mongols created and protected a unified, continuous, and safe trading network: the old silk routes as well as new avenues (maritime, etc.). The flow of goods was unmatched in world history.

The two hubs in this system, the two areas of privileged positions, were China and Persia. These were the two richest settled regions in the world of that time. Persian and Chinese scholars translated each other's countries' works on medicine, politics, economics, and agriculture. Artistic styles spread. And a very important export of China became so much more beautiful: blue-and-white porcelain.

While true that porcelain production had been going on for some time during the Song, and while true that the cobalt (for the blue color) had been able to be obtained from Baghdad since at least as far back as the Southern Song Dynasty, the Yuan period swiftly developed the art, the craft, and the market of the porcelain wares. The Mongols supported ceramic production at Jingdezhen, where cobalt was never in short supply (due to the stable trade routes). The kilns there were upgraded, and higher temperatures could be reached, which made the porcelain more durable and more sanitary. Arab orders for porcelain affected the pictoral style, the content of the pictures, and the very forms of the ceramics themselves.

Market goods, arts, and scholarly works flowed freely, and so did religion. The Mongols were originally animists, and they were extremely religously tolerant. From the textbook: "Khublai, for instance, welcomed Buddhist, Daoist, Islamic, and Christian clergymen to his court and gave tax exemptions to clerics of all religions" (page 165). On the same page the author goes into the fact that "European popes and kings sent envoys to the Mongol court" and it wasn't just to get them on their side against the Muslims; it was also to find "Christians who had been cut off from the West by the spread of Islam, and in fact there were considerable numbers of Nestorian Christians in Central Asia... there were enough Europeans in Beijing to build a cathedral and appoint a bishop."

So who were the winners in this situation? Merchants, of course. The Mongols allowed mercantilism to rise so much that, as we'll see when we get to Ming China, nothing could stop the economic development, not even Daoism.

Who else won? Islam. The Mongols enabled Islam to stretch all the way into Central Asia, pushing out Buddhism (the previous benefitor of the silk route, all the way back in 300-500 AD) in some areas.

Who else? Europe. Europe was far behind in the 1200s, technologically and scientifically, compared to the East. Europe got gunpowder, printing, and the compass from China and learned astronomy and mathematics from Persia (page 166 of text).

What did China get? Money. And an economic system that would only grow in the next dynasty.

Studying: Mongol Campaigns

The first study guide question is about the military campaigns of the Mongols. This topic is the most fun, because the Mongols are just a heck of a lot of fun to talk about. It's also least likely to be the big essay on the test. So I'll attempt to be brief.

I knew about Temudjin (later called Chinggis/Genghis Khan) through having seen the movie Mongol. My professor had seen it, too, and said that it was pretty darn accurate according to historical record. Temudjin did marry Borte, his father was assassinated by a rival tribe, he did live in poverty and enslavement for much of his young life, and there was some question about the paternity of Temudjin's first child. The only big thing the movie left out: that Temudjin killed his own brother.

The movie only takes you up to when Temudjin had just begun uniting the tribes of Mongols under himself. Imagine, if you will, the kind of man you would have to be to gather all of these commanders, who are used to doing things their own way, under you as Great Khan. You would have to have a superior military, great tactics, and a vision for unification.

You would also have to bribe them all. That's what began Genghis Khan's raids.

As a Mongol, your life generally sucked. Your food was pretty scarce. You relied on grass plants on the Steppe and on horsemilk (which was usually made into an alcoholic drink called "kumis," strong stuff). Since this sucked so much, you looked to your local khan to lead you into raids to plunder settled people, so your life could get better. The Mongols were really good at this, because they were horse people. They could ride the hell out of their little horses. They also had light armor, which they supplemented by wrapping silk around their bodies as a base layer. Was this just for comfort's sake? No way. Silk could not be punctured by arrows. If a Mongol got shot by an arrow, yeah, it would pierce the skin, but it would take the silk in with it. Upon taking out the arrow, the silk was immeasurably useful, ensuring the arrowhead could be cleanly retrieved from the wound.

The normal ways of the Mongols: small-time raids of settlements, or extorting tribute from same. So why did these guys build the biggest empire Asia had ever seen? What changed?

One interesting theory is that the mean temperature of the Steppe regions declined leading up to the 1200s, leading to an increased scarcity of resources and restless, hungry Mongols. Their economy, which relied on trading horses with settled peoples (when they weren't raiding them) just couldn't sustain them. So a leader emerged from the North. Temudjin had had little-to-no contact with the settled peoples of the South, so he had very little respect for them. He gathered khan after khan under him, and, since so many people in the tribal confederation demanded lots of rewards in return for their service, Temudjin, now Genghis Khan (had been as of 1206), led his armies into China.


1209: Genghis Khan led armies into the area of the Tangut Xia dynasty (another traditionally nomadic people who had taken a chunk of China long ago). He captured a few cities, and the Xia were forced to surrender.

1211: Not content with petty raids, Genghis Khan made a major move into Jin Dynasty territory (North China). The Jin did not strike first, to their cost. The Mongols would raid and destroy a city, then withdraw, leaving the Jin to pick up the pieces. During this time, a Jin messenger, instead of delivering a message, totally stabbed the Jin in the back, informing the Mongols of the Jin army's location.

1214: Jin negotiated peace, and the Mongols withdrew, but their new emperor was worried about the security of their capital (modern-day Beijing). They up and moved south. Genghis took this as a violation of the peace accords, so set out again.

1215: Mongols burned the Central Capital of the Jin (Beijing). Jin's control diminished to almost nothing, a mere province around their Southern Capital (Kaifeng).

1218: Genghis led his First Western Campaign into Central Asia (Kazakhstan and such) and captured all the big cities there, then went to the Indus River in 1221. This is the first time Mongol forces were conquering Islamic cities. And boy, did they ever. This stuff was quite bloody, even though Genghis at first claimed he only wanted trade relations with the Khwarezmid. The Khan sent a 500-man caravan of Muslims to establish trading ties, but all of them were arrested on suspicion of spying. Then he sent three ambassadors, and (from wiki) this happened:

Genghis Khan then sent a second group of three ambassadors (one Muslim and two Mongols) to meet the shah himself and demand the caravan at Otrar be set free and the governor be handed over for punishment. The shah had both of the Mongols shaved and had the Muslim beheaded before sending them back to Genghis Khan. Muhammad also ordered the personnel of the caravan to be executed. This was seen as a grave affront to the Khan himself, who considered ambassadors "as sacred and inviolable." This led Genghis Khan to attack the Khwarezmian Dynasty. The Mongols crossed the Tien Shan mountains, coming into the Shah's empire in 1219.

After that, it was pretty much a bloodbath. The Khwarezmid empire was done. So much more to go into here, but we didn't really concentrate on it, so...

1222-1224: Genghis left for Mongolia, leaving main forces behind to finish the job.

1226-7: Xia had been sneaking around, trying to build support against the Mongols, and finally the Khan had had enough of that. He led the assault against the Xia again, and this time, it was personal. He obliterated every city in his path. He led the siege against the Xia capital. He died during this siege, but the army kept it under wraps. Quoting from the textbook by Ebrey, Walthall, and Palais (link):

When the Xia ruler offered to surrender, he was persuaded to walk out of the capital with a small entourage.... he was promptly hacked to death, and the Mongol troops, on entering the city, did their best to slaughter every living being in it.

At this point, when the Great Khan died, the Mongols had to regroup. That's the Mongol way. Genghis had picked his son Ogodei to be his successor, but this was not finalized for two years (until 1229). Our story pauses here, while, I assume, Ogodei was strengthening his empire, building his capital (Karakorum), and letting a few raids go around at the edges of their already quite large empire.

1235-1241 (2nd West Campaign): Ogodei's general Subotei and Jochi's son Batu (Jochi was Temudjin's first son, who was a bit bitter about Ogodei's succession) led the campaign to the West, first destroying the Bulgars, then going on to Moscow (not so important back then) and Vladimir (very important back then). They galloped through the Kipchak Steppe, Kiev, Liegnitz (Poland), Lithuania, Thrace, Bulgaria, Serbia, and part of Hungary. They might not have stopped there, were it not for Ogodei's death in 1241 that called them back.

1235-1281 (2nd East Campaign): Bam! no more Jin. Then Mongke Khan (successor of Ogodei) wanted to dip into the real South: the Song Empire. His brother Kublai was assigned this task. Problem: the Chinese navy was too good in the wetlands of South China. So the idea was to go around and flank them to the west. Kubilai went for the land of Dali, at first sending an envoy. Envoy was executed--and Mongols HATE that. Kublai captured the Dali king and found & killed the envoy murderer.

• 1250s: Mongols had Korea (Koryo).
  
• 1253-1257: Mongols still flanking Song, going south into Annam (Vietnam), but it's a little too wet for them and their horses.
• 1257-1279: The invade the Song empire. Back-and-forth until 1279.
  
• Success for the Mongols depended on Chinese generals surrendering.

1255-1260 (3rd West Campaign): Mongols go into Persia. Sack Baghdad, take Aleppo, then Damascus. Tried for Lebanon and Egypt, but were beaten back, finally settling in Persia for a good long time. The Khans of this region converted to Islam.

Kublai ruled in China in what became the Yuan Dynasty. For the first time since the Han Dynasty (one thousand years previous), China was united. And it took a nomadic conquest to do it.

I guess that wasn't very brief. I'd make a terrible history professor; I love the little details.

Merciless Ming

Last night I had a dream that Ming-Dynasty China (1400-1600 AD or so) was taking over the US. There were all these little hints that nobody else seemed to notice: a piece of pottery, horse tracks, etc. I was the only one in the country who realized that Ming China was coming from the past and preparing for a full-scale invasion of the country. The government only realized it when I showed them a piece of graffiti that clearly said "MING CHINA." By then, it might have been too late. The Ming men had adapted our technology to their knowledge of horseback riding, and they were poised to take us over. I woke up before I found out what happened.

My exam is on my mind. (In the spirit of full disclosure, however, I must say I gorged on Chinese food last night, too.) Therefore, I will be blogging about China again. Please don't complain, Lonely Readers of Hatandcoat, for, after all, nothing else has been going on here in this blog for over a week.

Robin Hood

I watched one of my favorite movies from teenage-hood last night, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. It sucks.

I still enjoyed it because I could watch anything with castles and fighting and a well-built community in the forest, and I'd watch Morgan Freeman read the back of a cereal box for two hours, Alan Rickman too, but watching Kevin Costner act is torturous. He tries to make all of his lines dramatic by hurling out the last word in a sentence as forcefully as he can. He trips over the language horribly. He has zero charisma.

The movie itself isn't much. It has a bunch of pretentious crap, like director's obsession with the fish-eye, or bubble, or whatever you call it lens. Conflicts are hastily thrown together and overblown. It's just not interesting.

My roommate is a theater critic and I get her input on productions or tv shows sometimes (though we rarely hang anymore due to scheduling). One insight she sometimes throws out is a particular performance or show and its quality having to do with the writing as opposed to the acting. I'll stretch that concept to direction and whatever else goes into making a film - lighting, editing, etc. I can't parse those things. I can't tell what did work and what didn't. Maybe Robin Hood was a stellar piece of writing, direction and everything but just needed a more charismatic star. Or maybe the whole thing sucked from top to bottom. I don't know. But the whole thing was downright silly in the rewatching. Too bad I spent many hours on that movie in my life. I've seen it about a dozen times.

And you know what...I'll watch it again. I loved their outfits.

Productivity

In the interest of greater productivity I am now imposing deadlines on myself. Instead of allowing myself open-ended time periods to take care of a bunch of stuff, I set a date. I will have my online class material done by Friday (possibly tomorrow - Thursday - for studying today was promising), request the quiz that day (it's a file that the prof. sends out), then I'll set a new timeline to take the final. The timeline stuff gets more difficult when it comes to learning new material for class, which is about as open-ended as it gets. It's also frustrating when your day gets away from you. But I figure that imposing such limitations may focus the learning mind.

There's no shortage of personal productivity gurus out there, I'm aware. On impulse I bought Getting Things Done, or "GTD," and I haven't cracked the book yet. And I don't plan to any time soon. I'm peripherally aware of productivity buzzwords such as Parkinson's Law, which is precisely what I'm going for with the deadlines, but I'm not a student of the genre. It would just be a whole bunch of stuff that I would inhale voraciously and do nothing about it.

I like the idea of Parkinson's Law because I hate losing a whole bunch of time unnecessarily. If I can define my goals for a given time I want them done asap, and if this is a tool that can focus the mind, bring it.

I read an article once about calculating your "fudge ratio," where you predict how long you'll take to complete a given task and divide it by how long it ended up taking. If your ratio is close to one then you're a good predictor. You can take it for periods of time over various tasks. If you know that you have a tendency overguess such and such a task by a certain percentage of its time, you plan accordingly. Over time your goal would be to get as close to one as possible. Then if you're a massive nerd you put it all on a spread sheet.

I'm a nerd, but a lazy one. I foresee many unfinished excel files.

Post Thanksgiving

Much of Thanksgiving was spent in the bathroom. I went to the gf's parents' place and someone in attendance tracked in one of those 24-48 hour bugs that completely levels you and empties your insides. Fun, fun. Gf and I are normally chatty when together, but the entire 4-hour drive home was in silence because talking was too painful for both of us.

I think my life is coming full circle, or at least my driving-listening habits. Along the way home I was in no mood for music. Instead I had a craving for talk radio. That didn't pan out at first, so we listened to classical for a while until we later found Prarie Home Companion. Yep, that's right. I'm in my 20s and I chose the two stops on the car radio dial that remind me of my mother. Garrison Keillor was a fixture in my home growing up. The man with the world's noisiest nostrils make me feel like it's Sunday afternoon, I'm playing Baseball Stars on the NES and in the other room I can hear that my Mom has NPR blaring in the kitchen while doing housework. But we were in the mood for relaxation the other night and found it.

I'd like to know if other people have the following experience. When I have a window open on my computer, there's often a pause while the computer is farting around trying to execute its next move, such as logging off my current page or loading a new one. Since I'm pretty impatient, that pause is plenty of time for me to decide that I want to look up something completely new. I then rapidly try to type a new url, usually wikipedia.org, before it loads the next page. It's a quick race against the comp that I just won about a minute ago. I do it all the time.

Messages in Books

I often buy used books, especially if there are some mementos left in them. I like bookmarks, receipts, memos. I like things written on the back-inside covers or maybe just one note in the margin on page 192. I don't like underlining and highlighting; it sounds like someone desperately trying to connect with the book, grappling with the neck of it, and I can't read with all that noise.

I like leaving my own mementos in books as well. I rarely write in them, but I leave bookmarks, receipts, memos, sometimes Polaroids or prints. If I ever sell a book, I hope that it will keep that memento like a secret until the right person finds it. If I lend you a book, it might very well have a bookmark that I insist you keep with it.

But today, as I lazily avoid working on my paper for class, I skimmed the spines of the books to my right and saw something I didn't ever recall: a heart sticker on the spine of my copy of Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body.

And on the inside, opposite of the backmost cover, I found a note:


"Stamp redeemable for all positive feelings of receiving a 1.5 carat 'Bad Ted Special' diamond ring."

It's not my handwriting. The humor and the all-caps reminds me of an ex-girlfriend, but we were never even close to such a thing. Furthermore, it's not appropriate. Written on the Body is as sexy as its title, but, given the way the book ends, the reader would in not be in a joyous mood to be surprised by such a token.

But questions persist. Why did I never see these things before? I know I read this book to the end... maybe not this copy? Was someone proposed to through this book? And was the stamp unnecessary? Can I still redeem it? And where?