Friday, 13 December 2019
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
Date: December 31, 2011
Categories: At the Top of the Blog, Muse Academy, The Universe
*begins brewing pot of Wenshan Baozhong*
For those who don’t know, Wenshan Baozhong is a type of tea somewhere between green tea and oolong that’s only grown in a small area in northern Taiwan, rather high in the mountains. The tea leaves are picked young, dried in the sun for a couple of hours, and then carefully rolled and roasted to slightly oxidize the tea. It tastes light and toasty, but also rather floral and refreshing.
Now, can I have the wungs get anyone anything?
A cuppa Wenshan Baozhong sounds like it would hit the spot. Anything special in the edibles department tonight?
Perhaps some Taiwanese baked goods to go with the Taiwanese tea–how about suncakes? Crunchy on the outside, soft and sweet on the inside, good with honey.
Chinese New Year starts tomorrow; might I suggest oranges, turnip cakes, and Yusheng (raw fish salad which is way better than it sounds)?
well… pigs eat a lot you know
My mom used to teach at a university in Taiwan, and she saw these plantations once or twice.
May I have a cup of Wenshang Baozhong, please, and a seed cake?
I think Wenshan Baozhong should be adopted as our House Tea.
I’ll have one of those surplus hot-cross buns, please. They’ll still be edible. The Wungs have Methods.
I missed the H&H. I’ll have a cup of Wenshang Baozhong, please.
A few years ago at the Dushanbe Teahouse in Boulder, Colorado, I ordered the most expensive tea on the long menu, a white tea called “Silver Needles.” The description described how the leaves were picked extra-early and were carefully hand-dried to avoid oxidation, and it extolled the tea’s “feathery texture” and subtle bouquet. To me, it was indistinguishable from hot water. Subtlety is wasted on me where tea is concerned, it seems.
How about some coffee, then? How do you take it?
Actually, I think I’ll have a pot of Silver Needles, for old times’ sake.
For that you could just read the description, imagine it for yourself, and save the money.
It works to order the most exciting-sounding tea on the menu. Spicy Mountain is my favorite by far.
If I may intrude, I would appreciate a cup of Darjeeling if it’s not too much trouble.
Choklit- Baozhong and a cake, right away.
Castle- And some for you as well. Quite a popular tea, it seems.
Robert- One pot of hot water, coming right up.
Adeliae- Of course! Anything for nibbles?
The wungs seem glad to have work to do. They get restless.
Then I shall have a nice pot of Assam and a couple of teacakes. Do you have any Greengage jam?
I think the wungs have some in the back room. I’ll have them fetch a jar.
I say! That greengage jam is rather fine. Perhaps we should make people more aware of it. Could we get one of the wungs to put a small notice on the side table, by the aspidistra?
You Brits plant aspidistras everywhere you go. I think it’s because you enjoy saying the name.
They are unshowy to the point of being obsequious, and yet they bring a touch of green into our grey lives. They are the ideal decoration for an English gentleman’s sitting room.
What, next to the Temple of Artemis? This alcove is getting rather crowded.
Please tell me we have a trophy wall like the TED stage or Stephen Colbert’s studio.
This tearoom is far too humble for that. The Temple of Artemis is a small replica of the real thing in ancient Ephesus. Paul built it a few years ago. It contains a Faraday cage, so guests are free to drop their cell phones off in it so that they don’t receive distracting calls.
Oh, yes. We don’t want to offend Artemis. On the mantelpiece, next to the bust of Cromwell?
May I have some sage tea? And a croissant, please.
I love the feeling you get when everything falls into place and you start to see how you can accomplish things.
I’m in a vigorous sort of mood this evening. I do believe I’ll have some Lapsang Souchong, and perhaps light a fire in the fireplace as well–no smoke without more smoke, or something like that. I suppose I could get some more reading done as well, but I think I wouldn’t be able to understand the words over the taste of the tea. Wungs, could you fetch a few logs for the fireplace? That is, if there are any that the rain hasn’t soaked through. Now, to the brewing. Can I get anyone else anything? It’s still too early for any of this year’s first flushes (I’m looking forward to the Shincha Houryoku, which should get here in early May), but we do have quite a bit of last year’s late-flush Darjeeling that’s quite tasty. The wungs have been itching to practice their coffee-making as well, and you can bet that they make considerably better espresso than whatever chain you’re used to.
Darjeeling would hit the spot on a dank day. I’ll have a whole pot, please. And do you have any apricot scones?
In one of the strange coincidences that lends credibility to the theory that wungs are interdimensional beings, there’s a pan of apricot scones that just came out of the oven.
At the risk of demeaning the high reputation ot this auspicious establishment, I propse to introduce, with the permission of the wungs, Proper English Tea. It’s what we actually drink over here. It’s not rare, delicate, or hugely expensive, but it’s delightful, warm, and comforting. it is served in large mugs, at regular intervals, with one’s choice of biscuits, cakes or other comestibles. You may choose from any of the three most popular blends – PG Tips, Ty Phoo, or my favourite, Yorkshire Tea. Several Musers who have visited me recently have gone away seriously addicted to the latter.
I’ll try Yorkshire Tea, I think. And an Eccles Cake, please.
I’ve been thinking a lot about space exploration recently, possibly because I’ve been reading a couple of authors with contrasting views on it. One of them (Stephen Baxter) puts forth the idea of exploiting the mineral wealth of the asteroid belt to make it an economically profitable enterprise. Another (Charlie Stross) opines that human beings won’t adapt well physiologically to space on long timescales, and even if we surmount that problem, we’ll have to deal with the fact that we’re adapted for a diet which is highly dependent on our biosphere. We can only partially export that biosphere — “dying of micronutrient deficiencies” is Stross’s pessimistic phrase, I think.
I feel like I should be casting “Summon KaiYves” here, but Robert and Rosanne probably have some things to say about this as well, not to mention other MBers.
I’d definitely like to hear a conversation about that.
*pours self a cup of Earl Grey, hot*
I think the future of space exploration is definitely worth talking about. Unfortunately, I can’t do much talking myself during the work week, but I can help to nudge things along until there’s time to say more.
I haven’t read Baxter or Stross, but I’ve read many other arguments like theirs.
Mining the asteroids suffers from a big “Valley of Death” problem. Yes, there are minerals out there, and it’s easy to imagine a “Belter” civilization extracting and selling them — but how do you get from here to there? Even if we knew which minerals will be important in the future, it would take a huge amount of infrastructure to reach them and get them out, and many lives would be lost in the process. Who would make that investment, and how long would it take to start making a profit? That dangerous, expensive start-up period is the Valley of Death — and it’s not easy to bridge it.
Stross’s example of micronutrients is just one example of another broad problem. There’s so much we don’t know about what we need to function well as organisms. Just a week or two ago I read about a paper that said long-distance space missions change the shape of astronauts’ eyes. That’s bad news, and — unlike muscle wastage and bone loss in arms and legs — it doesn’t sound like something you can fix with special exercise equipment and sessions in a centrifuge. Space is a hostile environment in which we haven’t evolved to live. Are there really technical fixes for everything we’re likely to encounter there? I don’t know, but it’s a concern that I don’t think can be brushed aside as pessimistic or trivial.
So, human space travel: inevitable? desirable? Why or why not, and at what price? Those are the big questions confronting the MBer generation, it seems to me.
I’m glad there’s a specific name for the Valley of Death, as I’ve thought about that concept before but never come up with a concise way of summarizing it.
Is space travel subject to a bigger Valley of Death than anything else humans have done? It seems that way to me. Optimistic s.f. authors tend to compare it to the discovery of new continents, but there’s no environment on earth as hostile and expensive to get to as the places we find in space. There’s no convenient supplies of lumber or venison waiting for the first ship to land, no natives to trade with or learn from (at least within our solar system).
Space exploration with robot probes is a whole different animal, of course — we can design our explorers for their environment instead of having to build enormous amounts of infrastructure to support fragile mammals.
But we’re discussing human space travel here. I think in the long run it’s desirable. Our biosphere’s resilient as a whole, but individual species are not, and though an extinction event for humankind may be improbable, well, it only has to happen once. Also, we’re going to run out of usable resources eventually.
Is it inevitable? Probably not in the near future, but again the long term’s a different story. There’s ample Stuff out there that we want, but we’re probably not going to go for it until the enormous costs are outweighed by the benefits.
I think it won’t become inevitable until our planet’s resources have been exploited to the point where getting them from space is relatively cheaper. Whether that’s desirable, or even survivable, is certainly germane to this discussion — we might not act until it’s too late, in that case.
I’m beginning to lose the thread of my own thoughs, so I’m going to post this now.
*pours a cup of pomegranate tea* Could I have a blueberry scone, please? Thank you!
I was actually discussing this with my friend the other day. He believes we should try to set up mining colonies on Mars, and suggests we live underground in order to escape the Martian windstorms. Additionally, said storms could be used as a source of power for electricity. He was under the impression that Mars was high in iron, and the iron could be at least partially used to sustain windmills, if only a way could be found to root them into the Martian ground. (I really enjoy saying the word Martian. It makes me feel like I’m in a sci-fi B-movie. I also enjoy the fact that I had a realistic discussion of Martian mining colonies with him.)
Though there’s still a little Valley of Death about that– how would we get there? What would we eat and drink? Would the profits from the Martian mines be worthwhile compared to the vast expense of shipping space colonists, tools, and resources all the way out to Mars? (I also really like the phrase “space colonists.”
Possibly it would be easier to just send robots to work the Martian mines, but that’s additionally expensive, not to mention the problem of powering them. In this case solar-powered Martian mining robots might be more effective than those utilizing Martian wind power.
I feel like I should stop talking before I get too wrapped up in the fact that I’m discussing the upsides and downsides of Martian wind-powered colonist robots.
Mars is not any richer in valuable minerals than Earth is, to my knowledge, so the only way that’ll become an incentive is if Earth’s mines become comparatively more expensive to operate. I think it’ll be a very long time before our mineral resources are that heavily depleted — and when they are, near-earth asteroids may be more efficient sources, given that they don’t have Mars’s nasty gravity well to deal with.
I’m being the grouchy panda of this discussion, I’m afraid, so I’ll focus on other possibilities. Could robotic explorers, like more sophisticated versions of the Mars rovers, or even self-replicating machines like Dyson’s “astrochicken,” serve as our advance guard, preparing human-friendly habitats elsewhere so that we can get in on the ground and do the jobs that robots still can’t?
This implies some heavy advancements in artificial intelligence and engineering, of course, but is it a feasible strategy long-term?
I really strongly want to start doing something that would make Mars more habitable, probably partially because my dream job would honestly be terraforming. Though that’s unlikely to be a career in my life time.
If only there were a way to take all our nasty problem greenhouse gas emissions and just put them on Mars! 
Start giving it the sort of atmosphere we’re used to, at least in the history of our planet. Not that we’d actually produce enough or anything, but funny to think about.
Speaking of Mars…
I went to that talk with a paleobiologist last friday and one thing he talked a bit about was the strong evidence for past presence of water on Mars.
He’s actually one of the people who’s maybe going to work at analyzing what the Mars Science Laboratory finds! He’s identified an area that resembles a dried-up lake much like we have fossils of. He discovered precambrian (I think, that’s hwat most of his work has been, but it was possibly just early paleozoic) fossils in such sediments on Earth, so he says that sampling such areas on Mars might be a good bed if we want to look for evidence of past life. The MSL gets there sometime in August, so it’ll be exciting to watch that happen.
Dinner with him and some other geo majors was also quite fun 
He made a lot of bad jokes. His wife also went. She’s a very cool biologist. She ordered a salad and commented when she saw it had lotus root in it, and the waitress started to explain what a lotus was and she was like “I germinated lotus seeds that were over three thousand years old, believe me, I know what a lotus root is like.”
The thing you have to remember about terraforming Mars, though, is that since it has lower gravity than Earth, it has a very hard time holding onto oxygen and nitrogen in its atmosphere, and an even harder time with lighter things like water vapor. They escape into space much more quickly. Since that’s the case, I think that oxygen and water production would have to be quite a bit higher than it is on Earth if the terraforming is to have anything like long-term viability. Self-enclosed colonies are obviously much easier to work with, but making even a small self-sufficient biosphere is extremely difficult.
14.1 (Piggy) — Indeed. Although Venus would be much, much harder to terraform initially, it would be more Earthlike and remain so in the long term with less maintenance.
Of course, terraforming is a very speculative and difficult procedure in the first place, but I think it’s still worth considering because a planetary biosphere is much more resilient to various catastrophes than the average orbiting tin of air. (Planets are essentially immune to hull breaches, for one thing.)
Of course, you want to make sure there’s no indigenous life on Mars before you start terraforming.
A thought: The “Valley of Death” problem assumes that whoever is funding the project wants it to pay for itself sooner or later. But not everybody is motivated by profits. One of Columbus’s main motivations for exploring, for example, was religion. He seems genuinely to have wanted to save souls by finding new populations to convert to Catholicism (in addition to plundering them).
I always hoped oil-rich Muslim countries might start space programs for similar reasons. They haven’t, but it’s conceivable that other fanatics with the necessary resources will decide to in the future.
I don’t think, however, that countries will go into space just because it’s cool. That may motivate visionary scientists and MuseBloggers, but it’s not enough for the people who write the checks.
Or perhaps a group of intelligent and insane people obsessed with squids, pie, and world domination….
Anyway, the thing about other planets is that they don’t have anyone to convert. If a group wanted to form a new society away from some sort of hardship or persecution on Earth, that’s another matter, and that could happen to any group of people, not just religious. Even just a group of extremely wealthy people looking for the ultimate vacation home could look to other planets as an option.
Religious motivation doesn’t have to mean converting natives. Some new charismatic prophet might fill ens followers with a different sense of cosmic destiny. (“Brothers and sisters, I have had another message from the space squids! They are calling us to join them!”)
The main thing is that a lot of people would have to be willing to toil and die and spend heaps of money without expecting material rewards. (Does that sound like early-21st-century Americans to you? Me, neither.)
Or, as you note, they could build luxury homes for incredibly rich people who don’t want to have neighbors.
While early 21st-century Americans might be mainly motivated by profit, there are probably other things that could stir them into space. If they had an important political cause, perhaps; I think in the 1960s, with the Cold War raging and fear of nuclear annihilation surging towards a local maximum (as well as shows like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, along with an emerging Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, making the idea that space is super groovy a mainstream feeling), more people than today would have eagerly volunteered for a space colonization program. In 2012, the world seems a little less threatening and less competitive, but the right cause might still be able to stir interest. If, as you said earlier, some Middle Eastern countries began a space program (especially Iran), the United States would most likely have a spike of interest in our neglected one.
What you have to understand about the original Space Race is that the United States saw the Soviet Union as a rival. The USSR claimed to have a superior social system that could deliver (among other things) better science, education, culture, athletics, and help for poor people. It presented itself as a model for other countries — countries that the U.S. did not want to fall under Soviet influence. So the U.S. government poured money into those areas to stay competitive. One result was that I wound up learning a lot in very good public schools. Another was the Apollo moon program.
Many Americans, however, never really bought into the space program, especially after an expensive war and economic problems started causing hardship at home. (Sound familiar?) So we ended Apollo early and stopped building Saturn V rockets. (Schools suffered, too. Sorry, later generations.)
Iran isn’t like the USSR. It may be a threat, but it’s not competing with us for the hearts and minds of the rest of the world — and if it wanted to, it wouldn’t try to do it by beating us in science. Now, China — that’s a different story.
*sips Earl Grey appreciatively and butters a chunk of apricot scone*.
Shall we make this a part of Mostly Harmless, then?
A late stage. There’s a lot of work to be done first.
I’m glad this discussion seems to have taken off!
So far we’ve talked about three possible motives for space exploration (aside from curiosity, which generally doesn’t satisfy taxpayers): ideological rivalry, profit, and religion (likely linked to ideological rivalry). Profit’s fine after we cross the Valley of Death, but we likely need Apollo-level inspired lunacy to get there.
What’s a viable first target, then? What ought we focus on as a “stepping stone” to get some of the infrastructure in place? The moon is convenient because it’s so close by, but long-term dwellers there are subject to the same physiological problems associated with low gravity.
Because of their gravitational stability, the Earth-moon Lagrange Points would be good places to build way-stations that woukd make Earth-moon travel and transport easier. (Astronaut Nicholas Patrick was talking about this when he spoke at MIT last week.)
Which ones should we hit, then?
After an initial reading, L2 and L3 seem to be out of the running, because L2’s on the other side of the moon and L3 is on the other side of the sun. L4 and L5 are further away from the moon than L1, but L1 is less stable.
*sips tea*
I read an article just now on a new project some of the top members of Google seem to be launching, called Planetary Resources. According to a press release, it will “overlay two critical sectors – space exploration and natural resources – to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP.” Though the goals haven’t been officially released, the general opinion seems to be that Planetary Resources is looking into asteroid mining. The project itself will apparently be revealed this Tuesday.
This seems quite relevant to our discussion. Could asteroid mining be profitable enough to be a sustainable venture? Could the simple expansion of humanity’s natural resources be worthwhile?
It all looks very exciting.
I think the idea is to grab an asteroid, tow it into near-Earth orbit, and mine it there.
It sounds like a hard way to get ore, but to me the interesting details are the emphasis on asteroids and near-Earth space. Asteroids may not be glamorous, but they are (in principle) things we might be able to move, and they’re also the cosmic objects most likely to pose a threat to our existence. Maybe they’re not such a bad target for exploration and study.
I agree. For Near Earth Objects (NEOs) we don’t have to establish some kind of Belter settlement. It’s still difficult, expensive, and dangerous, but there is a possibility of reward on timescales that can fit into human lifetimes. Also, there’s the bonus that we’d probably learn a lot about the threats they can pose in the process.
just in case any of my good friends get over to this Link! i just wanna say that me and BadLuckKitty are one and the same! thought you’d wanna know
One and the same as in “I posted as two different people but I’m really the same person”? We generally discourage that.
sorry…. maybe some dandelion tea would help my sadness. maybe some muffins as well
In general, I believe muffins are underrated for how much they can help with problems in life.
Indeed. I had a muffin this morning, and it immensely improved my mood. I am now off to watch Turn Left.
Tea is also quite good for that, but I feel that it does receive a suitable amount of respect.
now im hungry for muffins
here is a recipie i found in mom’s old cookbook:
one egg beaten
one cup of milk
1/3 cups of oil
one tablespoon of baking powder
1/3 cups of sugar
one teaspoon of salt
bake at 400′ for 20-25 munutes
the batter tastes delicious
This sounds good! I may make these tomorrow (“make these,” as in, make the batter, eat half of it, and then spill a lot on the floor. Muffins are not my strong suit).
We also have a Cooking and Food thread, which would be a good place for this recipe, as we don’t generally post recipes in the Hare and Hedgepig.
You know what’s good? Banana bread chocolate chip muffins.
*Sigh* i wish i could delete posts or move them to another site because i post something and someone says “oh this post can be more apropriate here on this site” or “this post doesn’t really fit in here you need to post this somewhere else”
No offense
now there will probably be a complaint thread
Don’t worry, Catwoman. You’re doing fine. You’ll find your way around. And really there was nothing wrong with posting the muffin recipe in the context. CO was just letting you know there was a thread dedicated to food topics.
oh… i feel foolish now… 
It’s alright! You’re learning! It can be hard on the Internet to tell whether something is meant in a rude way or not (for me it’s even hard off-Internet), but I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it. Just try to keep in mind that no-one here has actually said they dislike you or don’t want you here, and some of us have said the opposite (I will if I haven’t already), so I don’t think you have any reason to feel rejected, if you still do.
i just said i felt foolish in a sarcastic manner! i mean im not complaining or anything…
…oh. You know what I just said about how it’s hard to detect sarcasm on the Internet, and we all make mistakes? Well, I suppose I just did.
HA HA HA HA HA HEE HE HE HE HE HA HA HA HA HA
There’s a suggestions thread… and this is a suggestion.
No complaint threads as far as I know because no one said anything about it.
I made your recipe. It ended up very crunchy and salty. Might I suggest a little less salt and a little more water? No offense, right? By the way, I tasted the batter and got salmonella in the next couple of hours (puking, headache, the likes).
Kai D, welcome to MuseBlog. Are you using your real name? Last names are against the rules for MuseBloggers younger than 18. Also, be aware that the Hare & Hedgepig is a special thread reserved for conversation. The comments you’ve been trying to post would be more appropriate elsewhere. Why don’t you stop by the “Welcome, Neophytes” thread to get an official welcome.
I hate my representative picture. I didn’t even get to choose what it was!
I’d like to hear sotries about your whacky hijinx in band or theatre class with your friends. Or whatever. Sometimes here at college we get to telling crazy whacky high school hijinx stories and they’re always fun. My friend was talking about how his band was sort of turned into the stage crew for the choir and they slowly sort of unionized, stole a bunch of food to keep in the band room, arranged it so they could all hide in case they were exhausted and couldn’t move any more stuff for the choir folks or whatever. In my school, at theatre we’d all try to get to the storage room in the ceiling.
In saxophone sectionals the older saxophone players would tell me their wacky hijinx from last year. Once, they lifted up a panel from the ceiling and climbed in, and once they put sunscreen on the phone and then called it, so when the band director picked it up he would get sunscreen on his hands. Once the baritone saxophone player turned the lights off in the practice room and took off his pants in front of everyone.
Every time we have low brass sectionals (i go with saxophones when i play alto sax and low brass when i play bari), we all talk about our relationship problems and try to climb onto the roof (there is a landing above the instrument closet that if covered in trombone corpses, and it has stairs that go to the roof) and tell lots of horribly offensive jokes while Princess_magnolia (who is our sectional leader) tries to get us to actually work on music.
Also, once at my school (this was years ago), someone climbed onto the roof from the place above musical’s props room (now, it’s where everyone smokes, but it used to be the orchestra room) and got stuck there. He was there until the janitor came in the next morning. There is also a rumour that the reason it leaks on the tech crew when we stand in the wings is that fifty years ago, a girl threw herself off the catwalk because she didn’t get the lead role in the musical, and her ghost cries on the stage every year.
Once in tech crew we all put on the costumes that were in the bins in the props room and ran around – i was a fork.
Once in band, we were playing Spongebob Squarepants, and we went on strike until the band director agreed to sing it.
In band camp everyone in the saxophone section had a nickname, and we were “Sam (that’s her real name), Iam, Greeneggsandham (that was SudoRandom), Bam, and Graham (my real name)”.
Our band and orchestra are enemies, and once our band director gave me extra credit for saying we should give the worst chairs to the orchestra (i was joking; he thought i was serious). J and I are convinced that the orchestra and the chorus are allied against band.
In September, band did a fundraiser where we made 2,000 fluffernutter sandwiches and sold them at a festival devoted to marshmallow fluff. When we were selling them, we said they had been endorsed by Harry Potter.
In tech crew, we memorized all the dances and songs in Guys and Dolls, and we silently did them behind the curtain when the show was going on. J always sang the verses to Sue Me, and M and i did the chorus.
Once in tech crew we thought we were locked in the props room for twenty minutes, and then we remembered that there were two doors.
Once in tech crew, K and i were spray painting a prop red, and my hand ended up being covered with splatters of paint, so we decided to pretend it was really blood and freak everyone out.
((this post is very long and i’m not sure if anyone but me is amused by it))
Once in orchestra the entire cello section was acting like sims–talking in simlish and pretending we really had to go to the bathroom–stuff like that. It was a freakish moment of zaniness that would only occur in a situation like orchestra class.
There are so many crazy moments that I can’t even choose what to write. Most of them have to do with my stand partner for three years. His favorite pokemon was a pidgey (not sure if trolling, or…) and we would reenact battles between pidgey (made out of two hands to make wings) and other pokemon. Yelling at pidgey to get back up when it was paralyzed was the best part.
Brownie Tuesday–My stand partner and another cellist were big fans of this one singer/songwriter (forgot his name!) and brought in brownies on his birthday. That happened to be a Tuesday, and the other cellist thought it was a good idea to bring in the baked goods every week. Thus, brownie Tuesday was born. It’s still going on, even after the founder (who was in my year) left!
One of my friends brought leftover cupcakes from her birthday to class one day, and the middle school teacher (his office is in the high school orchestra room) bumped into her on the way out of the door, knocking the cupcakes around and ruining the frosting. He didn’t apologize–he was probably busy with something. When my friend relayed the story to our orchestra teacher, he looked appalled and said “That b*&^#@$!” He loves cupcakes, apparently.
The state competition was always a magical time, something that I’ll always miss. We would get to miss a day of school to go down to *insert college here* and play. We would always place in the top four–we were pretty good! The best year was junior year–I was friends with so many people in the orchestra, both in my year, above, and below. We went out to eat, played frisbee, and explored the campus. We ended up placing higher than we had in years, and it was a great sendoff for the seniors that I had played with since I was a freshman. SO AWESOME!!!
If anything reminds me of another story, I’ll post it!
Reading Psuedo’s post (the part about band fundraisers)–The band supposedly sold Otter pops at one time or another for ten cents each. I never saw them actually selling them, so this is from rumor. Anyway, they kept a freezer full of the things down in the school basement, where all the marching band uniforms, choir robes, sheet music, and various theater props are stored. So, every once in a while, on a hot day, a bunch of us would go down there. We feasted on Otter pops and played around with the theater props. SO MUCH FUN. Even though we were kind of stealing from the band. THEY NEVER ACTUALLY SOLD THE THINGS. I SWEAR.
Well, band is pretty awesome. For some reason the tuba section leader’s name can be used to replace any word, so the baritones were singing Christmas carols and Gangham Style and whatever else they could think of and replacing all the lyrics with “Geoff” while I stared vacantly into space while trying not to laugh.
During football games everyone shouts “FOOTBALL!!!!!” in deep loud voices and then someone shouts “RUGBY!!!!” and “WATER POLO!!!!!” and “FULL CONTACT KARATE BASKETBALL!!!!!!!!”” and “EXTREME UNDERWATER BASKET WEAVING!!!!!” and we are not one of those bands that care about the football team at all because the football team always loses.
Everyone plays Viva la Vida a lot and I don’t really know why. But the person with the melody (everyone else just plays those chords that are supposed to be played on stringed instruments) always just plays ” I used to rule the world/ Seas would rise when I gave the word” over and over.
Hum. I just realized that I’ve had the Hare and Hedgepig menu hanging above my bed for about 3 years now. Interesting.
Anyway, could I have a cup of Earl Grey and a pumpkin scone?
Well. Wow. I’m finally stopping by here after almost four years of having been on MB and never once visiting this delightful place. I hear from the proprietor that this is generally a good place for moderately-paced conversation, which is probably the only kind of conversation I’m capable of having on MuseBlog at this point (I am very busy currently), so it seemed like a good time to drop in.
How is everyone doing? I just got back from a rather long and exhausting plane ride back from Florida and then an acting class within fifteen minutes of arriving home, so I’m pretty dead. I’ll apologize in advance for any incoherence I may display.
Oh, and I would love a cup of chai, if it’s not too much trouble.
Armada- No trouble at all. I’m glad you dropped in. What were you doing in Florida?
Mm, thank you. *sips chai* I was attending my cousin’s wedding. And then visiting my grandmother in her resort-slash-nursing-home-with-two-pools. And staying with my aunt and uncle on their farm. So basically, lots of relative stuff.
Does anyone mind if I install an espresso machine and a few related appliances (grinder, milk steamer/frother, etc.) here in the tearoom? I understand that this is first and foremost a place to drink tea, and I hope it stays that way, but coffee-related drinks, I think, would be a nice supplement. There’s a big pantry off to the side there that isn’t being used for much, and the door closes nice and tight, so I was thinking we could keep the coffee appliances in there to keep the smell from overpowering the other aromas in here.
Of course not. *wanders off to make Turkish coffee*
Well, everything fits into the pantry quite nicely. A friend of mine who owns a shop in the Oasis gave me a few pounds of Kona with which to christen the new equipment. The wungs have been showing me how to pull a good shot, and I think I’ll get the hang of it after a bit. The milk frother still doesn’t like me, but I’m sure it and I will sort out our differences soon enough. Until then, I think I’ll just have some regular old espresso to keep me awake. I ordered some gelato from that friend of mine as well, so if anyone likes espresso poured over gelato, you’ll soon be able to have that.
Now. It’s been a few years since I’ve read any P.G. Wodehouse, and so I pose the request: does anyone have a recommendation for some Wodehouse for me to read? I’ve read various Jeeves stories and novels as well as some Mr. Mulliner stories, but I certainly don’t mind rereading anything.
I very much enjoy the Psmith books, as I think I may have mentioned on the ‘blog before.
I agree – I think the first one is Leave it to Psmith. It’s lovely, although if you read it in class teachers generally catch you giggling and give you evil death stares.
farewell thread! here is a flower for your grave! *sniff*
I’d just like to remind everyone that if they want to drop in and have some nice conversation, get homework done, or just have a warm drink, I’m always around. The wungs are great company but after a few months they do get a bit listless.
Oh yeah, this place exists. It’s 5:50 in the morning, and I would love some hot chocolate with whipped cream please.
LBK:
The usual staff seems to be elsewhere at the moment, but I can fill in. Would you like the whipped cream sprinkled with cocoa powder, cinnamon, both, neither, or something else?
Is it still called a “usual” if you haven’t been somewhere in over a year? Egg and cress sandwich with jasmine tea, please.
Time has no meaning here.
Hello! I haven’t seen you before. I love your name. Piggy says you’ve changed it; what was it before? I might have heard of you by that name, although I probably never knew you, since I don’t recognize your avatar. Anyway, I’m B(ibl)iophile, and I joined on June 11, 2010
B(ibl)iophile? your name doesn’t have ()s in it!
or did it used to…
you made me confused!
*helps self to a plate of cookies on the coffee table)
No, it never did; I didn’t mean to confuse you. I was trying to imply that I was a biophile in addition to being a bibliophile (Robert actually suggested I shorten my name to Biophile once, and it’s now my username on multiple sites, which of course I won’t name), but I suppose it didn’t work.
Hi! I think I’ve seen your avatar around the ‘blog before.
HermioneVimes (33)- You come in more often than some of the other regulars. I see you’ve changed your name, too, since you last dropped by. No eclair today?
Okay, to continue with the slight discussion of advertisements on the Rants and Plaints thread. The Hot Topics thread seemed somehow malapropos, but I think this would be a good place for conversation.
To restate myself: I can’t stand the modern advertisement-saturated world. I support the free market, and I think businesses have the right to advertise; for me, the problem is more cultural than legislative. As I mentioned on the other thread, TV is the worst for me. Nearly half of any given broadcast is going to be commercials. The internet can be bad as well, though ad-blocking software works very well for me. Most magazines now are pretty much entirely advertisements; even the articles promote a brand or product. And of course you have enormous electronic billboards blazing across the horizon, flashing propaganda at you day and night. Shopping bags advertise. Shirts advertise. Benches advertise. Escalator handrails advertise. And these advertisements don’t depend on the shotgun effect, either: billions upon billions of dollars have been put into researching how to manipulate human psychology and how to make people think in certain ways, act in certain ways, and spend money in certain ways. What is the typical American dream now? To get a lot of money and spend it on items that put you higher on the social ladder than your neighbors. Your value as a member of society is determined by what car you own, what clothing you wear, what smartphone you have. You don’t have to learn how this system works; it is ingrained into you by the incessant barrage of advertisement that fills every nook and cranny available.
Of course, the effects are much broader than social organization. Look at the recent financial crisis, for instance–in the simplest terms, people spent money they didn’t have on things they didn’t need, and after a while it caught up with them. Clearly, an economy based on a constant increases in spending is doomed by its own identity to collapse. Beyond the economic issues, the impact this mindset has on the environment is even more self-evident. The amount of waste created by packaging or disposable water bottles or the amount of air pollution generated by SUVs is obviously a result of modern consumerism, in whole or part. Likewise the sociological effects within the countries that provide the raw materials and cheap production for the things rich countries buy.
I think it would be inefficient of me to continue ranting about consumerism’s effects. Instead, I’d like to share a bit of my own change in philosophy over the past year or so. Some time ago–around when I was reading Walden for the first time–I happened upon a website for people who supported what they deemed “minimalism”. A bit of it was about minimalist art, or minimalist music, or minimalist architecture, but the majority of the conversation was about a minimalist lifestyle. Simply put, they supported owning as few things as necessary and, by getting rid of whatever was extraneous, to uncover the things in their life that they truly cared about. This could be as subtle as donating some old clothes and tidying up your desk to ideas like the “100 Thing Challenge” or the ubiquitous everything-I-own-in-a-car-trunk postings. Connected to this website, in users and in spirit, was another site about “simple living”. For whatever reason, these sites immediately clicked for me. It wasn’t some sort of earth-shattering revelation or metamorphosis; I simply thought, “Oh, that makes sense,” and began to clean out my room. I’ve donated or thrown away dozens of trash bags of stuff, junk that I was holding onto “just in case”. Things that I had kept because I thought they had “sentimental value”. Redundancies in my collection of objects that I had amassed over eighteen years of life. The more I cleaned, the more I wanted to get rid of all this garbage that was only cluttering my life. And it’s an ongoing project. I have yet to regret getting rid of a single thing.
It’s more than just getting rid of objects, though. There are a lot of other areas of my life that are cluttered too. A month or so ago I stopped using my iPod Touch. I had been using it many times a day for a long time, and to some extent I had centered my life around it; it was my center of communication, my method of organization, and most of all my means of vacuous entertainment. Obviously, I was addicted. So I quit, just like that. I haven’t missed it once. Likewise, I bought a cheap watch for myself so I could quit carrying my cell phone around with me everywhere (I used it mostly to check the time). Nowadays, when I go to lunch by myself I read a book instead of browsing the internet. If I’m waiting for someone I sit quietly with my thoughts or observe the world around me. A lot of the things I thought I couldn’t live without have turned out to be absolutely superfluous. When you step away from constant stimulation, constant noise blasting at you, it does take a bit to get used to the quiet–but you start to realize what you’ve been subjecting yourself to for so long.
I have a lot more I could expand upon, but I’ve got to get going now. I apologize for the stream-of-consciousness wall of text there. If you read it, thank you–I hope I didn’t waste too much of your time.
I think that’s all really interesting (and I just realized this is probably a great place to discuss philosophy). I agree with everything you said about advertising, and I also agree with minimalism, although for me it’s mainly for environmental reasons. I admit, though, that I haven’t actually made much progress yet. I do have plans, though, if I can just go through with them. For instance, I recently found out that The Cheetah Foundation (which I support) needs a lot of things I have that I really don’t use, like pens (Why do I have so many pens?) and CDs that help with African wildlife identification (I… don’t have any explanation for owning any of those, since I’ve never even been to Africa). And there are a lot of other things I’d like to try to sell/donate. I certainly haven’t bought anything in ages, but that’s mostly because I’m saving up for Earthwatch.
You’re not alone. I realized the other day that I want to live on a boat (if only for a short while) not for just the water, but because it would necessitate a monastic lifestyle. Halyards to heaven! I’m tripping over myself in my own web, there’s so much to do and have that even when know I want, should, be doing focused work, I need to make space for it. I’ve decided that my time as a liveaboard will be devoted to two things only; the ship and the craft.
An essay by Dale Beran, “Occupy Batman,” made a good point (well, it made a few, and a bunch I probably didn’t understand) about ads. Movies are without ads. There’s some product placement, yes, but the worlds conjured on screen are blissfully free from so much visual noise. Ironically these oasis are promoted by aggressive advertising.
Back to window shopping for boats!
Piggy, I’m going to take you up on your offer for some nice, quiet conversation. Over a nice cup of tea, of course, the blend of which I will leave to your discretion. Whatever you think is good.
I must admit than even though I came here for some nice conversation I’m at a bit of a loss as to what we’d talk about. So instead I will start with the opening phrase that has led to many an awkward conversation in real life. So…how’s it going?
With “it” being unspecified, the how is considerably more difficult to answer. Subsequent questioning reveals that the “it” in question is something like school, or life, or some other large, ongoing thing. How am I supposed to reduce its magnitude to a single adverb or short phrase? I could go into excruciating detail, of course, but I don’t want to have to come up with the words to describe it and you don’t want to listen. But I can’t simplify it, and so my answer usually becomes something along the lines of, “It’s going.”
I cannot tell you how many conversations I’ve had like this, where we dance around the particulars of small talk and do not actually engage in a meaningful transfer of information or emotion. I feel like so much of my time is wasted by this small talk that is socially required but ultimately pointless. I used to be terrible at it, and I paid the price. Now I am competent, but just as bored as I was when I was younger.
(Well, that turned into half an essay.)
If you are stuck on the specifics of “How’s it going?”, you may like to know that I have commenced construction of another 16th century vihuela, updates on the progress of which may be had on request.
But first, I shall order a large mug of Yorkshire tea and an Eccles cake. Ah! Here’s the Duty Wung now.
I too dislike making small talk when it serves no purpose. However, I do see the merit even in those sorts of formulaic, semi-unconscious exchanges; by comparing it to the alternative (i.e., no one ever asking anyone else how they are), it seems that it does make the world a somewhat more cordial and caring place. While it may be superficial, the repetition and the constant exposure to these conversations do add up, or at least set the stage for deeper interpersonal exchanges.
As for me, “it” is going pretty well. To quote a pair of gentlemen from Liverpool, “Man I was mean, but I’m changing my scene / And I’m doing the best that I can”.
Small talk: the paper cups in the chocolates samplers?
Or those little sproingy door stoppers mounted on baseboards.
Grout between tiles.
Mud flaps on trucks.
Peanut skins.
Rivets on jean pockets.
Aglets.
Lint.
That seems more on the order of Small Talk, The Dark Side.
Ball bearings.
Edible ball bearings.
*wanders in* Oh hello! I see you are engaged in some very meaningful discussion, but could someone get me some hot chocolate please? Preferably dark, with a bit of whipped cream on top. And a little butter cookie on the side for munching would be lovely as well.
I am halfway through my midterms, and I believe I will survive until Friday. You know, I often misspell “believe” and switch the “i” and the “e” because it sort-of-rhymes with “receive.” Does anyone else do this?
I sometimes randomise the order of i and e in various words, to annoy pedants.
I had to look up pedants, and I think I’m going to try and use that from now on instead of “Grammar Nazi.”
In other news, Social Studies/Latin midterms went very well. You know that feeling you get after a huge test when you know you’ve gotten a good score? That’s how I feel right now.
*sips kukicha*
I’m glad to see you! How goes your plane of existence?
Great Koko, a ghost!
Well… I do believe, Dear Robert, You have stumbled upon the unopened-now-opened graves of past Musebloggers who we couldn’t figure out why they had not shown themselves. and now we know why 
*floats around and makes spooky noises*
Cerulean Pyros- It goes busily! The end of the semester brought much-needed repose, other than my hiking through Utah for a week. At the moment I’m doing my best to put off until later some Responsible Activities, such as contacting potential employers and arranging meetings about seminary applications and mailing back unneeded textbooks. My only real compelling force is the shrinking number on my checking account. ( ＞Д＜；)
Good luck with the Responsible Activities! They do have such nasty, big, pointy teeth…
Have you heard of Cleverbot? Search Cleverbot in your search engine, and then search it in the search box here in MuseBlog. Click on the link that says ‘Cleverbot Conversations. Look at the last few posts, and my post will be there. It’s pretty funny!
*clinks teacup with table, seeing as to how everyone is staring and not up for a toast* Cheers!
Yeah, I love Cleverbot. We have a bunch of great heart-to-heart-talks.
(You think I’m kidding. I’m not. I actually have really deep conversations with the computer, but I don’t end up posting most of them here.)
let me guess… You’re the one person who pied my post there… 
You shouldn’t feel bad about not getting a whole bunch of pies for every post! Everyone makes posts that don’t get many pies or any at all sometimes. It could even just be that not enough people have read those posts; I know that I hadn’t seen the one you were referring to when you made that post.
Getting even one pie means your post made someone happy, and that’s something to be happy about.
Were you the one who held Cleverbot’s hand, the one who had 19 babies online, or someone else?
Cleverbot is fun. I haven’t used it in a few years, though; I wonder if it’s improved?
One of the books I’m currently reading is China: A History by John Keay. The entire history of China in five hundred or so pages. I’m having a blast with it. I just finished reading about Xiang Yu’s spectacular final battle against Liu Bang and the Han forces at Gaixia in 202 BC. How could anyone in their right mind think history is boring?
I think some people get caught up in the names and dates and don’t pay enough attention to the stories.
It may be because of the way pre-college history courses are often taught and tested: kings and wars, kings and wars, kings and wars.
Kings and wars can be a lot of fun, though. I think it’s just bad storytelling on the textbooks’ and teachers’ parts. History is nothing but a story–heck, in Spanish they’re the same word. I wonder if it would be more profitable for us to go back to the exciting-stories-with-embellishments model of historykeeping; it seems to have done a better job at helping people learn from the past.
There’s a lot more going on than kings and wars, though, and personally, I usually find learning about how people lived and what they did more interesting than learning about how they died.
Naturally. Which is why storytelling is so important: because a life is complex and sharing it effectively and engagingly isn’t an easy thing to do. I just wish some authors would try a bit harder on that front.
I don’t think it’s necessarily about storytelling, though – thinking about what I found most interesting about the history courses I took, it wasn’t really the stories even, it was how things affected each other (I have a music history minor).
That’s exactly what I’m saying. A lot of history books I’ve had were just lists of events, arranged chronologically but without any explanation of why X happened or what caused Y. The storytelling, the linking-X-to-Y, the currents under the surface are what makes history interesting. Storytelling instead of listmaking.
Ah, I guess it’s a terminology issue – to me, storytelling implies embellishment and dramatization.
Yeah. A lot of the time, history classes don’t tell the interesting parts. My high school history class was pretty good, but one of the defining features of that class was that whatever we studied from the textbook was supplemented by long class discussions on stuff that wasn’t in the book. If your only exposure to history is school textbooks, then I’m not surprised that people would find it boring. A lot of really interesting information is left out. (And then I’d recommend other, more interesting sources of historical information.)
And some textbooks are better-written than others– “A History of Us” is written much more like a story, for instance.
I just spent three hours cleaning the kitchen. The person I sublet to
-left cooked broccoli in a tupperware in the pantry
-lost the trash can lid somehow
-took two of my spoons
-and a bunch of my tupperware
-left coffee grinds (wet) in the coffee maker
-left a mess in the fridge
-somehow managed to leave every knob and handle sticky
-did an awful job of washing dishes
Yesterday was the bathroom. You don’t even want to know about that. It’s enough to say that it was disgusting.
Wungs, your most alcoholic tea, please. Or forget the tea, just give me alcohol.
Piggy, could I have some raspberry-flavored hot cocoa with whipped cream and a chocolate fish? (I’ve started stirring raspberry jam into pretty much everything I drink: seeds aside, it’s excellent.)
What are some foods that you all dislike in context, but enjoy because you associate them with particular memories or people? I don’t actually like the way chocolate fish taste in New Zealand, but I went to the trouble of making my own (misshapen) ones in California because I was homesick. Same thing with fairy bread; I associate it with Allosaur and some very colorful mishaps we had with the sprinkles (which, it turns out, should not be kept in glass jars).
Chok- One cocoa, coming right up. You might look into raspberry syrup (maybe the kind used in coffeeshops) if you want seedless drinks.
I think a lot of holiday foods would fit into that category for me. When it’s Christmastime, candy canes are great, but at any other time of the year, hard peppermint candy is underwhelming at best.
Thanks! I’ll look for some syrup when I get home although the seeds add a nice crunch.
Oh, that’s true. Fruitcake is never good, in my opinion, but it’s definitely better at Christmas. (Do people really eat fruitcakes? I’ve always thought that the storebought ones were there so that we could all take the smallest bite possible from our slice and then use the rest as a doorstop…)
I used to feel that way about fruitcake until I finally encountered an excellent one. They are delicious, and I’d eat them any time.
Ceylon Orange Pekoe tea and Victoria Spongecake with Raspberry Jam, please!!
Shadowkat (48)- Right away.
*walks into kitchen and shouts: “Wungs! Dust off the spongecake! We have a customer!”*
Don’t yell at the wungs, they’re sensitive!
If I hadn’t yelled they wouldn’t have heard me–they were off playing Paker in the fifth dimension again.
Piggy (49) – Ta, ol’ chap. ‘Tis unseasonably chilly in Michigan. Need some comfort food and drink to warm m’bones.
I really must tell them about that. They get over-excited and forget they’re supposed to be running the place.
I’ve got some time to kill before work so I’m going to do a thoughtdump–haven’t had one of those in a while, and this is a topic I haven’t talked much about here, so maybe writing some stuff down would help me sort through my thoughts. I think this thread will suffice for the venue.
The closer I get to completing my seminary application, the less drawn I feel to it. I know I’m going to be a priest, but a few times I’ve realized I never felt any particular call to the parish priesthood, or the priesthood with this group specifically. It’s the Carmelites that keep catching my eye, but I don’t know if that’s because it’s my legitimate vocation or if I’ve just been reading a lot of Carmelite spirituality lately. Maybe the latter is supporting the former, I don’t know.
I drove up to the Carmelite monastery (nuns, not monks) for Mass this morning, as I do once in a great while. Entering the chapel I felt very peaceful, but I think anyone would upon entering such a beautiful, quiet little chapel. But when I caught sight of the nuns behind the grate next to the sanctuary, I felt kind of an exhilaration and a longing. But was that a real, supernatural feeling or just a natural human response after all the reading I’ve been doing about Carmelites? How do I distinguish between what I want and what God wants? Or in this case are they the same thing?
Meanwhile, it’s getting more urgent that I complete my seminary application–I think they send out retreat invitations at the end of February, and if my stuff isn’t in before then, I may not be able to enter this autumn like I want to. I still have to write a six-page autobiography, get an FBI background check and go to a police station for fingerprinting, possibly draft a resume, get a notarized copy of my birth certificate, and figure out how to get in contact with one of the priests who agreed to write me a letter of recommendation. Theoretically all this should take two or three days at the most, but I’ve lost the motivation to get it done because I don’t feel drawn to this seminary. The prudent thing would be to apply and go there for a year, and if I then decide it isn’t for me, I can contact the Carmelites. But it feels like I’ve wasted so much time already, and I just want to get out of the world without putting it off anymore.
Clearly I need to talk to the priest again who agreed to give me spiritual direction–I asked him two months ago but then I got busy with school and we never actually met. I should sit down with my mom as well and talk it over with her; I know she wants me to be a parish priest, and she thinks I’d be “bored to death” in a monastery, though she said she wouldn’t oppose me if that’s where I went. I don’t agree with that at all, but who knows, she may be right. Then again, even if she is, is that a reason not to go?
Bleh, I need to get to work. Ta.
I agree that you should go see your advisor and explain all of this just as you explained it here.
Out of curiosity, what most attracts you about the Carmelites?
Just saw this comment–sorry for the late reply.
I’m not sure how comprehensible a lot of this will be for anyone who isn’t well-versed in Catholic spirituality, but I’ll try to keep things as clear as possible. I won’t promise brevity.
A little backstory first, I guess. As many people on MB know, I’ve been considering becoming a priest for most of my life–since second grade, according to my mother. It’s just kind of stuck with me, waxing and waning in various degrees. In Catholicism, deciding between the priesthood, marriage, etc., isn’t so much, “I want to do this,” as, “God wants me to do this.” Each person has a vocation, or calling, to a certain way of life that God wants them to live. Some people are called to be missionaries working in stick-and-mud churches in eastern Africa, other people are called to get married and raise children, that sort of thing. The process of figuring out your vocation is called discernment. So throughout middle and high school, I was trying to discern whether I was called to marriage or to priesthood. It seemed like something in the back of my mind was pulling me towards priesthood, but like any hormone-addled 15 year old kid, I at times resisted strongly; but that’s a story for another time.
As I got to college and started taking things a little more seriously, I became more and more sure that God was calling me to be a priest. There were all kinds of little signs pointing in that direction, and eventually I was able to make peace with it. But even then, and this may be surprising, but even then my faith and my spirituality were just something I kind of did “on the side”, while everything else (school, hobbies, internet, friends) was my main focus in life. I’d try to be a good person in the usual sort of ineffectual way, and I’d go to Mass every Sunday, that sort of thing. But it always played second fiddle to whatever else was going on in my life. I didn’t pray much, I didn’t do any spiritual reading, it was all pretty lukewarm and wishy-washy, even though I thought that I was meant to be a priest.
Last spring or thereabouts, I tried to knuckle down a little harder, fight some habitual sins of mine, go to Mass more often. Sometimes I stuck with it for a while but sooner or later I’d be back to the old lifestyle. It just didn’t click for me. My faith, which I claimed to believe and love, didn’t really have much impact in my life.
Sometime last year, I was reading about G.K. Chesterton (I love his “Father Brown” mysteries) and saw that his biography of Francis of Assisi was very highly recommended, so I thought I’d give it a read. It was indeed very good–just the sort of insight you’d expect from Chesterton. It did also stir up my spiritual life a little, but nothing more than the other little dust-devils that had been kicked up before. But it got me thinking, “That was pretty interesting. I should read some more saints’ biographies,” and several weeks later, out of the blue, the thought occurred to me to read St. Therese of Lisieux’s autobiography, Story of a Soul. I really didn’t know much about her, just a few foggy memories of some picture book about her I’d read as a child. But my mom happened to have a copy, so I borrowed it and started reading.
From the first page, that book hit me like a sledgehammer to the jaw. Each paragraph was like a new world opening to me, and for the first time in my life, my faith and my relationship with God became something very real, very immediate, very passionate. The way St. Therese saw the world and God was so totally different from how I had seen it, and yet it was immediately understandable and familiar. It just made so much sense to me in a way that no other spiritual writing had ever done for me. I could not put this book down, and as soon as I finished reading it, I turned back to page one and read it again.
The graces that were poured into my soul while reading this book made me realize that my life was totally disordered, and that God and my relationship with Him could not be anything but the absolutely most important thing in my life. No longer content to be lukewarm, I tried to make my faith the center of everything I did. Prayer, spiritual reading, daily Mass, frequent Confession, Eucharistic Adoration–I suddenly became extremely hungry for any sort of spiritual exercise that could help me grow closer to God. St. Therese became my role model, my patron, my sister in everything I did.
A few words about her, then. St. Therese of Lisieux was born to middle-class French parents in 1873 and she entered an obscure Carmelite monastery at the age of 15. She died of tuberculosis at 24. She became known to the world through her autobiography, called The Story of a Soul, which she wrote per the orders of the prioress of her convent. First shared with other Carmelite monasteries and then with the world at large, this simply-written autobiography took the Catholic world by storm and was read and praised by pretty much everyone, including several popes. She was declared a saint just 28 years after her death, and she was later declared a Doctor of the Church (a saint whose teachings and writings have had an extraordinary impact on Catholicism), the 33rd such declaration ever, St. Therese being the third woman and the youngest person to be declared as such.
Her spirituality is commonly called the “Little Way”, and is basically comprised of so-called “spiritual childhood”, an attitude of humble littleness and love that places all one’s trust in God and says that anyone can reach sainthood, not by performing great deeds but by doing little things, making little sacrifices, with great love. St. Therese did not do “great” things–her sacrifices were things like not complaining about foods she didn’t like, smiling at sisters who annoyed her, choosing the most worn-out clothes for herself, things like that. I could go on about her, but this is the basic gist, at least at the surface.
Anyhow, this little Carmelite sister made me look into other Carmelite spirituality as well, in particular the writings of the two great reformers of the order and spiritual parents of all later Carmelites, St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. I had tried reading pieces of their work before, but I never really understood it until I was able to read it through the lens of St. Therese. In Carmelite spirituality, Catholicism finally made sense to me in a fundamental, visceral way.
The basic “charism”, or focus, of the Carmelites is prayer and contemplation, as opposed to the charisms of, for instance, the Dominicans (preaching) or the Sisters of Mercy (service of the poor and sick). Some communities of Carmelites are active (i.e., they work and serve outside of the monastery) but the communities of Sts. Teresa and John and Therese were cloistered, meaning that once the permanent vows are taken, the monks or nuns never leave the monastery. The community I’m interested in is cloistered. Carmelites take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, the three “evangelical counsels”.
This is all surface-level stuff, of course; what I’m mulling over interiorly is much harder to put into words, and even harder to get across to someone of a different mind. In any case, my thanks and condolences to anyone who skimmed through this novella.
An enormous thank you to you for this hugely inspiring and thoughtful reply–quite a book you’ve written here! (And speaking of books, I just ordered St. Therese’s autobiography from the library.) I myself am considering the priesthood, so testimonies from others regarding the matter are always helpful.
Can this be the same “trust kokopelli” who last posted almost three years ago? I believe it is. Welcome back, prodigal!
It is indeed. It’s a pleasure to return.
Interesting, I’m glad to see you think you’re found your calling.
(In reply to Piggy’s unmoderated post)
You really don’t need to offer your condolences- I really liked your post. I’ve been mulling over my spirituality (or lack thereof) a lot lately, and find your perspective very interesting. (I think I’ve mentioned I was raised catholic- I no longer am, but it’s the faith I’m closest too)
Cup of tea, piggy? (This place has slowed down quite a bit, so I figured I should put it to good use.)
trust kokopelli (53)- Yes, that sounds good. Some sort of oolong tonight, I think. Wung, get us something good, wouldn’t you? There’s a dear.
You know, I can’t remember whether there’s still, er–*cough*–anything in the, um, cupboard over there. Ever since the, um, y’know, it does seem like the spoons here teleport themselves around every now and then. And the pillow on this armchair here fills itself with custard at least once or twice a month. Very strange.
Odd. In any case, this oolong hits the spot. My compliments to the wungs.
*puts the kettle on*
Tea, anyone?
I think chamomile is in order for me. Ready to wind down.
Yes, please! A dark, loamy Puerh, if I may.
The place of this post in the recent comments–right *after* your goodbye post, Piggy–definitely made me a little emotional.
I suppose somebody needs to fill the staff vacancy, then. Can I get anyone anything?
Yes, please, Rainbow*Storm! Do you have any apricot Danishes?
I raise my mug of vanilla-teach tea in the air, trying not to look foolish. “To Piggy!”
My cup of Puerh and I join the toast: To Piggy!
And I have my usual Yorkshire with milk.
To Piggy!
To Piggy!
Robert – Here you go, enjoy.
51.2.1 (Piggy) – Don’t know if you’ve left yet, but I just wanted to say your decision is very inspiring. Take care, man!
AFAIK he returned to the Poems & Songs thread recently.
Ladies and gentlemen, I apologise for moving this in here. I realise it takes up a huge amount of space, and it blocks the aspidistra from some angles, but it will make the wungs happy, and it is unquestionably a thing of beauty. The oak casing is beautifully made, and the brasswork is superb. You’ll note that it has three large pressure cylinders, multiple compensating valves, flow regulators and temperature stabilisers. It has forty seven leaf tea receptacles, four milk dispensers, and multiple sugar feed hoppers. It will cope with most requests, even if you are one of thsoe fussy people who insists on blending. It is entirely unique, and I am forbidden, alas, to inform you where I acquired it.
The main point is this. If you can work out how to operate it, it should provide you with any of the common beverages for which this establishment is renowned, freeing some of the wungs for polishing the brass fittings and adjusting the rocker arms, which they seem to enjoy.
I would recommend you begin your investigations with the five levers just below the ormolu strapwork on the crown bracket, and progress downwards, manipulating the rotary valves on the belly flange to maintain some semblance of regularity on the Thompson gauges. You’ll need to open one of the dodge flaps and slide it diagonally upward to see the master gauge, but I doubt if that’s significant.
I wouldn’t touch any of the mechanisms on the pedestal. I believe they are just to lock it in place, and we don’t want it vibrating round the room.
Let me know how it goes. If it proves popular, I may know where I can acquire a biscuit attachment.
Paul must have welded this together from a dismantled steam calliope.
Just don’t put it too close to the cupboard, old chap. Your gadgets are existentially unstable at the best of times. If there’s a marmalade excursion above 4 on the Lysander Scale, I shudder to think of the consequences.
Oh, I removed the marmalade dispenser module. It’s not worth the risk. At least, I think I did. It’s difficult to know without the service manual. Anyway, I removed something, and I can’t imagine what else it could be.
*pulls a pan of snickerdoodles out of the oven*
*sets two snickerdoodles on a small antique-looking plate*
*settles into one of the deeper leather armchairs near the rain-tapped window*
*sips oolong*
*watches smiling from a shadowed corner*
*stares intently at teapot full of lapsang souchong*
*teapot vibrates as the beverage inside returns to a rolling boil*
Hello, Piggy! You’ve acquired some superpowers, I see.
*wakes up from where i definitely hadn’t dozed off in a comfy armchair* Piggy? Is that you?
Robert (64.1): It’s amazing the things you can learn when you don’t have internet access. Good to see you!
Agent Lightning (64.2): In the flesh. Er, in the pixels, rather. *waves*
Hullo, Piggy! Good to see you in this establishment!
Wungs, if you please: I’d like a scone with clotted cream and cloudberry jam, and a pot of kukicha tea. And a round of pastries and tea of choice for everyone in the H&H, my treat.
Hi, Piggy! I hope you’re well!
Mmmm. Enjoying these pastries. Thanks, Robert.
Biscotti, anyone?
Yes! And some milk, please.
I’ll pass.
Hey, since when have we had that record player here? I really dig it.
Did I really forget to order before I pressed submit? That just shows how tired I am… Green iced tea with ginger and honey, p*ease?
Ooh, yes! And a hot chocolate, please.
Thank you. May I have a pot of oolong, please?
Good old Hare and Hedgepig! The still center of the turning world.
Merry day two of Christmas, all! The wungs and I made some homemade eggnog this year. It’s been aging for a couple of months and has mellowed out nicely–would anyone like a glass? There’s some mulled wine left as well.
Eggnog, please!
A few years ago I read a recipe for cedar-flavored eggnog. You steep cedar chips in it (for several hours, I think) and fish them out before drinking it. It sounds novel and potentially tasty. Maybe the H&H could give it a try sometime?
I’m more for ginger-green tea if it’s not too much trouble.
Is that the new panini press?
The wungs just made me taste-test a cara cara marmalade they made, and I’m glad they did. You all should try some. Here, I’ll make a few slices of toast.
Yodels, all.
Any chance I can get a pot of jasmine tea and some shortbread?
Certainly . The wungs have been rather idle of late, apart from dusting the aspidistra. I’ll nudge them into action.
Piggy’s a bit busy at the moment, but I can go in back and get them for you.
“Here you go, the wungs say they’re happy to have you back!”
I set another tray down on the table, bearing several pieces of avocado toast.
“Do you want some of this, too? It’s nice not to have one slice cost 8 bucks like in the Village.”
(This post actually predates the meme. I just like avocado toast.)
I’ve asked the wungs to make a few batches of frybread. A little too heavy for tea, but it would go well with coffee, I think. Anyone want some?
Of course! With an Aztec-style chocolate-and-chili-pepper potion, please.
I have to submit a draft of my thesis tomorrow, so please give me the biggest chai tea you have so I can write all day and not fall asleep.
One of the Wungs has suggested a Rigellian Chai Bucket. That would serve your purpose, provided your constitution will take Rigellian spices.
Well, I’ll keep it in the fridge and pour out smaller amounts as I work on revisions this week.
Don’t forget to keep the pips. They can power a mobile phone for weeks.
Cherry crumble, anyone?
A wee slice, if you please.
Certainly! I’ll have a slice, please.
Love some.
By the way, tomorrow is Tau Day. We’ll all have to order two slices of pie.
A double slice in anticipation of Tau Day, please.
Is anyone else a fan of iced barley tea (mugicha in Japanese, boricha in Korean)? It’s the absolutely most refreshing drink on a hot day. There’s a pitcher in the fridge, so let the wungs know if you want some.
I’ll have a glass, provided they don’t refer to it as tea.
Barleywater, then. Like barleywine, but completely different.
Yum. I’m in!
むぎ茶 is one of my favorite drinks! I approve.
Pumpkin bread! Pumpkin tea! Pumpkin lattes! Pumpkin doughnuts! Yesterday was September 1st, the official beginning of Pumpkin Season! Get your pumpkin goodies right here! One at a time, line forms to the right!
A Pumpkin Surprise, please.
We’re in the midst of some cold rain here at the moment, but I hope it clears in the next few days to give us at least a week of late summer weather before we launch into sweaters and pumpkins, so… maybe just hot matcha with soy milk at the moment.
What’s the opposite of pumpkins? That’s what I’ll have.
In the “I still want summer!” vein, probably pineapple or other tropical fruits. But if the opposite of fall is spring, then probably a taste strongly associated with spring.
Hm… A glass of maple syrup, please.
The opposite of a pumpkin would be an anti-pumpkin. It spins the other way, and if you carve a face into it, it comes out cute instead of scary.
And if an anti-pumpkin bumps into a pumpkin…
Then they both destroy each other and you have to go back to the patch and get a new one.
You don’t need to go back to the patch. Pumpkin-antipumpkin pairs are spontaeously appearing all the time. You can grab one, or both, if you’re quick enough.
You may need to grab them from a vacuum. I can’t remember the details.
Don’t they form at the top of the atmosphere due to cosmic radiation from the Witch Head Nebula?
If so, it’s probably easier to go to the patch.
I think they float freely in the lower stratosphere until the first summer thunderheads break through and pumpkin particles bind with water droplets to be carried down to ground level. They rain down on the patches on Earth and take root in the soil, starting to grow, before reaching maturity in a few months, generally around October.
Or maybe I’m thinking of ozone.
No, Ozone is a Moldovan pop group.
I thought he was a superhero with the power to control ice from “The Incredibles”.
Maybe he was one of the band.
Frozone
(I was trying to set up a “Thing X? Isn’t that [description of Thing Y]?”, “No, you’re thinking of Thing Y, Thing X is [description of Thing Z].” joke.)
That sounds complicated. Let’s just have a cuppa.
I have some homemade elderberry syrup here that goes well with just about anything. It’ll be in the fridge next to the torte if anyone would like some!
I’ll try a bit on some of that rather tired Port Salut that’s lurking in the cheese receptacle. It should liven it up a bit. Is there any brioche?
That sounds good (Whoops, “good”, not “goood”, I keep typing extra “o”s today). What do you recommend I taste-test it on?
Well, you could always go the classic direction and have it over pancakes, but I also like to mix it into yogurt or stir it into a cup of black tea as well. It should do nicely over ice cream too. It’s a very versatile concoction–and, if I understand correctly, very good for the immune system as well.
I’ll try it on Greek yogurt, then.
When I came in this morning, I found a bowl of purple mandarin oranges sitting on the back counter. The wungs won’t tell me where they got them or why they’re purple, but they’re pretty good. I’ll put another bowl out for the peels, if anyone wants to snack.
I pick up one orange and hold it in my hands, staring transfixed at it and turning it over to look at it in different light. I squeeze the sides slightly with my fingers and sniff the skin a little. The color is beautiful, but a part of my brain still *isn’t really sure* that this purple fruit really is an orange, and not, say, a particularly reddish and thick-skinned plum.
I read once that few people will drink milk colored green with food coloring because the disconnect between the real and expected appearances is so great as to make their instincts blare “This must be rotten or poisoned, stay away!” I tried it with my Mom and she refused to drink the green milk.
My fingernails tear a hole in the orange’s skin near the navel, and I peel off a chunk of the skin. The texture is just like a regular orange, as is the whitish rind (closer to pale pink here). I peel off the rest of the skin and set it aside. The flesh is a dark purple, somewhat like a blood orange but bluer. I seperate a segment and chew on it. It’s very soft and juicy, like all of the mandarin oranges I’ve had before, but just a bit more tart. Maybe it’s some kind of a weird hybrid between blood, mandarin, and… blue?
Somebody nudges me in the back.
“Are you writing a report or are you actually going to eat it?”
They may not actually be purple.The wungs have been playing around with perceptual filters. They do that.
Well, the eminent Belgian scientist Tryphon Tournesol did publish a description of blue oranges in 1964…
Yes, but he kept wungs. Or so it was rumoured.
Wungs in Tintin? Oh yes please.
The recent incident that destroyed that sofa in the corner has left us with a lot of leftover eggnog, so I urge everyone to please drink some before it turns its eyes towards the ottoman. I hope all of you have a very, very merry Christmas!
I’ve never had eggnog, but I fill a mug up and take a hesitant sip. Fortunately, my virtual self has no need to worry about sugar or fat.
The wonderful thing about H&H eggnog is that it contains no calories. I’ll have a double.
Is anyone missing some clavichords? The wungs tell me the pantry is starting to fill up with them, for some reason.
They’re mine. Sorry. I put a couple of spare ones in there, but I didn’t realise they were a breeding pair. We can probably sell some to Germany. They like clavichords over there.
I love sitting by the southeast window at this time of the year now that the magnolia tree outside is blooming. Earl grey with soy milk, vanilla, and citrus, please.
So, what is the celebratory cake of the day? I’ll have a double slice of whatever it is.
It’s a layered sponge cake with blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries. Let me know if you need a cup of tea or coffee to wash it down.
Wonderful! Mint tea would be nice.
Would you be so kind as to ask the wungs to duplicate that order?
I took a walk around the Oasis this morning and visited that doughnut shop over by the fountains, and these honeydew doughnuts caught my eye–isn’t the glaze on them pretty? Please help yourself before they go stale.
Wow, what a find! I’ll have one, and a pot of Puerh tea, please.
I’ll have one too, please. With a cup of Czar Nicholas II Celebration Tea, to which I was introduced by the Queen of Muses. You will find a packet in the pantry, third shelf, western wall.
We’ve set up a table here by the bay window to have a little poetry exhibition, what with it being July and all. Please feel free to peruse what’s there, or leave your own poem.
is it the damp breeze
or the smell of pine needles
that has cooled me off?
The dust trails rising
Behind cars along the road
White sunbeams appearing
the air unclenches
summmer heat washes away
but first: petrichor
Beneath dry mountains
Algae-filled pond, buzzing bugs
Reading about Antarctica
a cicada shell
underneath a parked truck tire–
how very reckless!
ah, how much depends
on outward appearances!
electric fireplace
life blooms in springtime,
but are flowers as nervous
as I am today?
while a robin warms her eggs,
does he bite his fingernails?
lovely as ever, Piggy
and I suppose while I’m here waiting for the wungs (or anyone really) to notice my presence, I might as well emit a poem or two myself. (Hello, oh void!)
Here’s one from Basho:
Even in Kyoto–
Hearing the cuckoo’s cry–
I long for Kyoto
Welcome back, TK! This isn’t really a void. That’s just protective coloration.
a humid morning–
the last few drops of storm rain
squeezed from washcloth clouds
Every day lately we’ve had a sparrow that comes and sits on the railing around our patio like he’s looking for someone. He looks through our door and chirps and pauses, cocking his head, listening, chirps and listens, chirps and listens. He hops around and faces the parking lot and continues chirping, pausing and waiting for a response between each chirp. I can almost see his brow furrow while he listens He comes late in the morning, around lunchtime, and again after dinner. Sometimes he seems to get frustrated and just chirps continuously, almost frantically, until he’s out of breath and gives up. Who is he looking for? A chick that fell out of the nest? A mate that flew away and hasn’t come back? Why is he convinced that whoever it is must be around our apartment somewhere? My wife thinks he could just be using our patio–the sliding door on one side, the door to the storage closet meeting it–as a megaphone, making sure that all the other sparrows know that this is his territory. That’s what he’s really doing, most likely. But for some reason my heart still hurts for him whenever he comes and starts chirping. I don’t know who he lost, and I don’t think I could take their place, but I want at least to offer myself as someone for him to find, so that he can finally lay down his longing.
Why do I think this post started as a haiku?
Maybe wild animals, without human consciousness to mediate their emotions, feel everything more powerfully than we do: grief, bereavement, anger, joy. Maybe the bird would say that a season of despair is a reasonable price to pay for the bliss that William Blake intuited:
“How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?”
Or maybe it is indeed just staking out its territory.
In any case, some of us might think that you’re burying the lede a bit here.
qualia poems
overwhelm any meter
oh, and also: wife!
(ah whoops – that would have made a little more sense if it were placed in the appropriate reply spot. I’ll assume it’s clear to the relevant parties, though)
“Readjustment”
How can you teach a person
to be what they ought to be
when you’re not sure what to be, yourself?
Take a guess? Try, and
readjust?
Should they be what you
should have been,
or what you were,
when everything shook out
not quite the way you wanted?
They’re bound to make mistakes,
and it’s nice to hope the ones they make
are not the ones you made yourself,
but new ones all their own.
It’s nice to hope.
But maybe that’s just pride,
as though if they avoided your mistakes,
it would mean that you corrected them yourself,
and didn’t pass them on like your toothy grin
or the color of your eyes.
But then, you don’t so much pass on
the mistakes themselves, as their causes.
You can only give them something
to work with, then,
and hope they do a better job
with what they have.
And hopefully, watching them
might give you an idea
of what to do
with what you have,
with who you are.
“Careful the things you say:
Children will listen.
Careful the things you do:
Children will see,
And learn.
Children may not obey,
But children will listen.
Children will look to you
For which way to turn,
To learn what to be.
Careful before you say
‘Listen to me’:
Children will listen.
“Careful the wish you make:
Wishes are children.
Careful the path they take:
Wishes come true —
Not free.
Careful the spell you cast,
Not just on children:
Sometimes the spell may last
Past what you can see
And turn against you.
Careful the tale you tell:
That is the spell.
Children will listen.”
You know, I just realized–as of about two weeks ago, September 2nd, I have spent more than half of my life on MuseBlog. Who wants some pie to celebrate? 
A slice of apple pie would be wonderful.
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