tea and text

moving.

bylandl — Sat, 03 May 2008 19:50:00 +0000

I am starting to be bothered by WordPress.

So I moved to tumblr.

find me at bellicosity.tumblr.com.

love you all.

teaandtext is closed for business.

thoughts on smell

bylandl — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:07:57 +0000

I was reading a graphic-design blog and came across a comment on how recognizable the smell of Crayola crayons is to American adults (very). In consequence, I thought about what smells I found were so identifiable that they practically screamed what they were, and I came up with:

Coffee (studies have shown that the smell of coffee can increase appetite, even in those satiated or aversive to food)
Laundry soap/ the dryer
Crayons
Play-doh
Industrial cleaner, mostly ammonia
Photocopier/ printer
Old book
Copper/ really any metal that makes your skin smell/ coins
Sunscreen
Baby powder
Batik wax
Nail polish
Toast
Peppermint

Thoughts?

sorry for the hiatus

bylandl — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:00:44 +0000

If anyone noticed, I’ve been away for a little while. Here’s a brief rundown (in no particular order) of what happened to me whilst I was offline:

The Pope came to town and caused traffic the likes of which you’ve never seen
I realized that I can’t remember all of the Chorus Line routine, goddamn
I, once again, remembered why I despise matzos and the kashrut
I felt heavy, bluh
I had an icky stomach thing
I lost three pounds
I got over my icky stomach thing
I gained some back
I picked sonnets for the Shakespeare Revels, with help, hat-tip for you if you’re reading (doubtful)
I got my hair cut to right below my chin
I learned to swallow pills (finally I can stop taking chewable vitamins and liquid tylenol, score)
I got all psyched for Vienna in advance
I was reminded how much I love my friends
I watched spring spring
I picked forsythia
I drew on my hand
I haven’t practiced in four days, shit I need to go do that
I resented kitniyot- can I go be Sephardic please?
I listened to the Barber cello concerto
I tried to get my crazy great-uncle off of me
I watched Charlie’s Angels with my cousin
I did some trig
I once again neglected to ask my grandfather to teach me the four questions in Yiddish, although hearing them makes more sense than it used to
I cracked my knuckles.

QED.

what part of speech am I?

bylandl — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:39:54 +0000

On first read, are these their verb forms or their other forms (some are nouns, some are adjectives, at least one is an adjective-or-noun and has no verb form)? Opinion poll, I guess. Some languages capitalize their nouns. English… you’re left to your own devices.

talk, judge, play, cough, ink, view, read, book, smoke, conduct, walk, run, dance, track, fence, bowl, cut, thread, light, hammer, plug, bike, drink, tile, finger, pen, press, stamp, wax, print, weld, seam, piano, faint, rose, blush, face, tooth, cushion, down, bag, pad, stuff, clean, glow, point, balloon, call, salt, plow, farm, build, plot, travel, tread, plan, map, jog, grenade, steam, paint, figure, pack, shift, phase, rake, shovel, snow, bow, burn, bus, curve, rule, drop, fall, trip, step, fire, spoon, pitch, tune, scrape, fist, curl, mint, shoulder, slide, tack, staple, tape, slice, ski, wire, phone, squash, weave, bar, page, mash, rub, oil, dream, color, crack, punch, fold, crease, sweat, paper, spit, chance, select, special, chain, tie, boil, love.

That was a brief idea that got WAY out of hand. There are so many more.

Feel free to add.

edna st. vincent millay

bylandl — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:33:37 +0000

Love is not all; it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink,
And rise and sink, and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want, past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

I’ve gotten very into this sonnet recently.

ink lust?

bylandl — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:46:14 +0000

Passing thoughts whilst I should be doing my squamous-cell-carcinoma (yes, I know) writeup:

I lost my fountain pen. God damn it all, I lost a canary-yellow fountain pen. I’m waiting on a red one to replace it. Lamy Safari, for those of you who may also be pen people. A moment on the pens:

They’re wonderful, well-designed pens. The Safari is my daily writer, and it serves that purpose beautifully. However, the nib (mine’s an EF) is VERY fine and as hard as nails. Calligraphy with this would be impossible. Thankfully, it’s a daily writer, and so that’s not an issue.

ABS plastic is featherlight and damn near indestructible.

In a flash of design brilliance, the converter has two raised dots on either side that clip into the pen body. These dots are what convinced me that this pen was a model of good “form follows function” austere construction, not hyperindustrial stereotypically-dour-Germany design.

Notes on ink:

Lamy, I hate you for your proprietary-cartridgeness.

I use this pen with a converter (as earlier mentioned).

Right now, my daily inks are both Rohrer & Klingner (permanent blue and verdure, respectively). I don’t know why they call it permanent, but hey. You rub over the paper with a white candle and that’s that. These both flow beautifully and make great daily inks.

Now, the gist and thrust of the matter.

I’m lusting after three J. Herbin inks:
rose cyclamen
diabolo menthe
and bleu nuit.

And my timewasting is over… now!

(brevity is a virtue)

bylandl — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 19:24:00 +0000

But that hasn’t stopped me before.

So today, I’ve decided to put out a long-needed post on weight.

Renoir painted me. Michelangelo sculpted me. Countless artists, actually, from Grecian Classicism to the Fin du Siècle, created masterworks with substantial women as objects of beauty. Scattered over the world are these paintings and statues and sculptures and representations, and in not one of them does the subject look ashamed of her size. She looks beautiful. Consider the Venus of Willendorf. Consider Renoir’s series of bathers. Consider Rubens’ Venus at the Mirror. Consider Bouguereau’s Birth of Venus, nonwithstanding that that woman is far from heavy. By modern Western standards, though… whatever. Is it a coincidence that three of those four are goddesses? Anyway.

To a horde of marauding Vikings, I would be the feminine ideal. Long light hair, clear fair skin, bright light eyes, tall and imposing stature. And weight and curves. Hips and breasts and lack of protruding bones and all.

Obviously, being obese is far from healthy. And I’m far from obese. My doctor insists that I’m healthy; I continue to dance and fence and bike. I hold to my strict vegetarian diet (fifteen years running!) and take a daily multivitamin/multimineral and calcium supplement. I’m in good physical shape. God damn it all, I can do nigh-on a hundred crunches without breaking a sweat.

So how did I suddenly get classified as fat?

I’m actually starting to lose my understanding. For years, I believed it. When I was thirteen, for instance, I went through a bit of psychological trouble. I lost a lot of weight very very fast, and I gained it back gradually. As I started to hate myself less, I learned to control my trichotillomania and eventually got out of therapy. I still certainly believed that I was fat, though, hatred or no.

But in retrospect, at 5′9″ and 155lbs, I wasn’t.

And that speaks to both my perception of myself at the time and the images I was displayed of what female beauty looks like.

The whole heroin-chic waif thing really isn’t that great, folks.

I’m not generally attracted to women that look like they’ll collapse under the weight of their backpacks. Since when did being as thin as one’s stripper-heels become a goal (the sixties, sadly. Fucking Twiggy).

Women of all whatevers can look beautiful.

But that’s more a matter of confidence than a matter of weight. Do something healthy. Don’t get so thin that you can’t stand or so heavy that you can’t sprint.

But, most importantly, realize that you’re a work of art, or one of science.

There really is something to that my-body-is-a-temple concept.

We’re sorry. The land of the free and the home of the brave has been relocated to… Germany.

bylandl — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:34:26 +0000

So in Germany, they’ve been planning to include biometric data in things like e-passports.

And the (awesome band of hackers) Chaos Computer Club wanted none of it.

So they somehow got the fingerprint of the secretary of the interior (Wolfgang Schäuble) and published it. Hugely. In their magazine, on foil, with instructions on how to overlay it onto your own finger, making you scan biometrically as the secretary. A bazillion random Germans could, in e-passports, pass as Schäuble.

I find this awesome.

The government is considering legal action.

Schäuble has been going on and on about how taking fingerprints wouldn’t really be a breach of security. I’m intrigued to see how he reacts to this.

the original news story, in german

slashdot’s take

best comment I’ve seen so far: “in other news, German officials have stopped touching things.“

Thoughts? Justice or overkill (or both)?

So I’m not the only one that does this

bylandl — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:01:39 +0000

Choice of literature as a barometer for love?

Um, ka-YES.

It’s not the only factor; it’s not like “YOU LIKE DAN BROWN OBVIOUSLY WE CAN’T DATE,” but matching taste in literature is wonderful.

I would completely shriek to my friends if someone I liked didn’t know Pushkin. Eugene Onegin, anyone?

Although I take offense at the “Virginia Woolf (too Virginia Woolf)” comment. I like Virginia Woolf, though she may overuse semicolons at times. Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself, and well she should. Everyone has a suicidal lady author phase (some people love Woolf, some Plath, some Sexton, etc.).

Thoughts? Books you like?

I may be forced to put up a book list eventually. Jesus.

If you like trashy chicklit, now is your chance to confess.

Man, I’m an English dork. Books and grammar all the way….

I would like to issue an apology

bylandl — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 22:44:11 +0000

for the steady stream of angstiness that this blogger has been spewing forth.

And I mean that in the classical sense. Angst! Not moody teen with a bad haircut angst, but… like, Rilkean angst. Angst in the sense it was loaned to English with. Check the etymology.

So, once again, I’m sorry.