you brought it on yourself miss twiddle

I can't decide whether this is an interesting point of view, or whether Stanley Fish is just playing troll. Based on where he ends up (and who he is), I think the latter, though it's also quite possible that he really thinks he is bringing obvious and learned enlightenment to us all (with Milton! Always with Milton.)

(Thought Experiment: Are there situations where a person could be trolling without the intention of doing so?)

...when I log on to facebook and my friend from quartet camp is posting screeds about the evils of Planned Parenthood (it's because she's "pro-woman" don't you know), and I don't want to say anything, because I don't want to be in the middle of an anti-choice funfest.

Anything making you mad?

The problem is that you see people whom you knew were probably conservative but didn't actually *know* were, and whom you respect and like a lot, because they were your high school cello teacher, and have given you a lot of opportunities to play over the years (even though they gave you terrible advice and a recommendation that probably hurt more than it helped when you were applying for undergraduate and you may or may not be bitter over that). Anyway, you can see that such a person has joined a "Support Arizona and Stand Against Illegal Immigration" group whose page is full of pretty nasty hyperbole about protesters against SB 1070 and really despicable comments about the Raza programs in Tucson. And sometimes that makes one sad.

From Pliny (IV.25) (The greatest virtue of the silly mystery is that I am now inspired to read Pliny all the way through (in English, with the ones that seem entertaining in Latin):

Dear Maesius Maximus,

I had written to you that we should be worried about some vice turning up in this secret voting.* It's happened. In the last elections certain ballots had lots of jokes and even obscenities, in one, moreoever, the names of the sponsors were found instead of the candidates'! The senate exploded and with lots of noise begged the emperor to exercise his anger on on the one who had written them. But he got away and hid: perhaps he was even among those enraged. What do we think this man does at home, who in such an important business at so serious a time jokes so scandalously, and finally, who is so utterly sarcastic and witty and cute in the senate? So much license does this trust [of anonymity] give to perverted minds, "for who will know?" He asks for a ballot, takes his pen, lowers his head [to write],** disregards himself. Hence these mockeries worthy of the stage or circus platform. But where are you to turn? What remedies to seek? Everwhere vices are stronger than their remedies. But these are the concern of him above us, to whose great daily task of vigil much labor is added by this useless but still unrestrained insolence of ours.*** Farewell.
*Secret voting had just been introduced in the senate. In the first letter, Pliny interestingly claims that people are less honest when they are voting secretly, probably because they aren't then going to be influenced by the right people.
**Or: "diminishes his status [by writing stupid things on the ballot]"
***cf. Galba to Piso in Tacitus: "you will be ruling over a people who will not endure servitude, but who also cannot handle total freedom."

In more recent news RNC split over whether Obama parody is offensive/dangerous to party's image. To which issue I have nothing to say directly, but to this:

The dispute illustrates a larger Republican challenge in the months ahead: how to oppose the first black president without seeming antiblack.

do you think that a good starting place would be parody and criticism that, you know, don't involve his race?

So here's a story.

Four years ago, election day was November 2. My 18th birthday was November 3. I was too nervous to watch the returns, but when I got up in the morning... thank you, Country, for the birthday present.

So this year, my birthday was the day before election day, not that it matters muc, except that it was an awful day. I had to play a student piece in composition, a piece that I had gotten a few days before, a piece where the "composer" couldn't perform the rhythms he had written for me ("it worked out on the computer") but told me kindly that "for this performance, I guess it's okay if they are only approximate", and I had orchestra, where the conductor patronized us, explained that we were a budding orchestra and not good enough to play real music, was unprepared, conducted badly (these are par for the course), and gave us a program of mostly Christmas music. I was so angry and frustrated and tired that I was in tears by the end.

The point of these sad stories is that you should make me happier by getting Obama elected today.

The last couple days, my last couple days at home, my parents have had the television on more than I can ever remember in my life. (Disclosure: we didn't even have a television until I was at least 12; I remember listening to the Senate vote on the charges against Clinton on the radio). So I have heard bits of a lot of Convention speeches.

I don't like speeches, and I don't like listening to people give speeches. Hilary Clinton is one of the few whose voice doesn't make me uncomfortable; in general, I don't like the sound of politicians making stirring speeches. But mainly, I am a sucker for rhetoric, and I don't like being emotionally taken-in.

Because I desperately want a Democratic victory in November, I want things to get fixed and get better, and I want to have people in office and around the (Oval) Office who are trying and successfully doing good and who will let me say that "government is more necessary than evil" not just in theory but in reality.

But I don't really believe it. Obama as president, even with the most intelligent, capable, and progressive cabinet, wouldn't fix half the things that need improvement half as much as they need it. And it just isn't the case that the Democrats are saints trying to selflessly serve the greater good.

On the one hand, I do understand that politics more or less works through the pretense that it is all about ideals and service, and I suppose I tend to think that many of them (on both sides of the aisle) do think that they are playing the politics game in the service of something other than their personal/party's gain. But on the other hand, well, you know: the dirty world of political infighting and ambition, all politicians are alike and greedy, the system is inherently broken, etc.

THERE IS A GAP HERE, DAMN IT, AND SAYING "WE'RE MOVING BEYOND ALL THAT BAD STUFF AND CORRUPTION DOES NOT ADDRESS IT AT ALL

Yesterday, the voice teacher who is in charge of the opera came up to me in the hall and told me that he had just been talking with one of his students -- a fried of mine -- about me, and that it was very impressive that I had "managed to pick up Greek in no time at all" and that he was a classicist at University, although he's forgotten his Greek by now. Compliments are so much more rewarding when given with a British accent. He also assured me that I was definitely on for bass continuo in Dido and Aeneas. YAY!!!!!!!

We started the St. John Passion in Bach seminar today. I was surprisingly disturbed, hearing all of the "and then the high priest of the JEWS" &c. (No, I don't know German, but having been given a translation, I can pick out a few words as it goes by.) I mean, I know that it's there, and that it was a standard part of the story as it was understood in that time, and so forth. I know I've encountered lots of works containing "historical anti-Semitism." And it doesn't usually make me uncomfortable. I do think that the fact that it's a big authoritative German work -- and this makes it sound as though I have a very personal family connection to the Holocaust, which is not, thankfully the case -- makes the reaction different than if it were in just about any other medium.
I started to try to explain it to J. -- but I got into an argument with him last year when Handel's Messiah was in the news because someone had determined that large portions of the libretto came out of a strongly anti-Semitic tract. He was righteously indignant that anyone could complain about Great Works of Art and, today, too, he made one of those "well, I guess Bach isn't so politically correct these days" remarks that I find so annoying. Because I am conflicted on how to approach Great Works of Art whose ideologies are Not Okay -- and you can't excuse the problems, even if they do come from modern history, as "political incorrectness" as if oversensitivity to prejudice is the only issue. On the other hand, I don't support changing the text, or not performing them, because they are great musical works -- the opening chorus of the St. John Passion is one of the most wonderful concerted chorales I've heard. And, sometimes editors' notes/conductor's notes/program notes that try to explain or apologize for the bigoted content are embarrassing to read. But somehow you do have to face it, and I think there is a responsibility to make clear the limitations of a work in view of more enlightened (and I do, I hope, use that word advisedly) ideas and inescapable historical fact. /my thoughts on art and ideology

Books to read when I'm back home and have time for utterly frivolous reading (and don't have to request them via inter-library loan).

-The new Chrestomanci book (the existence of which I just learned about yesterday) about Cat and Chrestomanci.
-All of A Series of Unfortunate Events (a reread for the first two-thirds-ish), so I can read the last one.
-Twilight, to keep on top of the latest teenage vampire trends.
-The New Tamora Pierce Book, I guess, even though I couldn't make it through the exerpt on her website. But I have to see if it has any howlers along the lines of "Hakkoi's Hammer! What is that?"
-The new Wrede-Stevernmer novel, even though Grand Tour wasn't nearly as good as Sorcery and Cecilia.
-Imperium (I'm blanking on the author) -- maybe. It got a good review in today's Book Review, but then, I've also read some pretty negative reviews, and it's long, and I sort of want to get a handle on the Late Republic history-wise before I launch into a lengthy novel about it.
-I think there were another couple, but this will serve for now.

I am going to mail in my ballot tomorrow. Oh, I hope we can get some decent people into the legislature! And then there are the propositions. Among the things that I, as an Arizona citizen, got to vote on this time:

-Whether or not to establish a lottery in which everyone who votes will be entered. The idea is that it will make people vote. I guess some people don't think the nifty little stickers are enough of an incentive.

-The obligatory marriage amendment, which would additionally bar any kind of civil unions AND prohibit any local governments from giving partner-benefits. Can we say spiteful?

-To deny punitive damages to parties in civil suits who can't prove their immigration status. This one is just STUPID. The whole point of punitive damages is to punish the other party: it should have nothing to do with who the injured party is. In other words, we are going to say that it's less bad to, say, kill the relative of an illegal alien while drunk than to kill the relative of a citizen. And the terrible thing is that this probably IS what the proponents of this proposition believe, but won't say in so many words. I think its in defence of this proposition that someone submitted a claim about "gangs of illegal aliens roaming the suburbs and committing organized crime." (Oh, please. The only gangs of illegal immigrants in your cookie-cutter gated community are the ones trimming your lawn.) Or maybe that was for the proposition to deny bail to those who can't prove their immigration status at the time of arrest.

But undoubtably the stupidest proposition on the ballot is the English as the Official Language of Arizona one.
Among its provisions:

Section 3. A. Representatives of government in this state shall preserve, protect, and enhance the role of English as the official language of the government of Arizona.

"Preserve, protect, and enhance the role of English" includes:
(a) Avoiding any official actions that ignore, harm, or diminsih the role of English as the language of government
(b) Protecting the rights of the persons in this state who use English."

So if this passes, I could sue Bush next time he makes a speech in Arizon, right?

But seriously, what is wrong with this state country? We already have English Only education; this one is mostly designed to protect employers from discrimintion suits when they fire their employees for speaking Spanish during the breaks (it won't do much else, as Federal law requires us to provide government documents in other languages). One would think that living on the border with a country that speaks a foreign language would make use less, not more phobic about multi-lingualism.

Now I wouldn't want to deny a hard-working and dedicated patrician his well earned vacation, but doesn't it seem like a rather poor time for the President to take off for a week and a half?

Speaking of patricians (well, not really) Penguin describes Tacitus as "occasionally partisan, or perhaps merely malicious." Teehee, and thence the title of this entry, although I don't think that either partisan or malicious is really a good description of Tacitus. Can one even be a partisan when there aren't any factions? And one of his big points is that there are no factions or debates under the Principate. Just like the United Arab Emirates, where there are no politics, according to that infamously hilarious website N. and I found a few years ago. And "malicious" -- it makes me think of a somber Roman in a toga with a gleefully wicked grin on his face as he raises his stylus.

Maybe. I am definitely preparing to fake my way through class tomorrow by not really studying and doing this instead.

New York was awesome, but that may be because anything with F. is awesome. We went to the Frick gallery, which was… oh my goodness so unbelievable! We were looking at an Renaissance Adoration of the Magi and making fun of the angels on hovercrafts* and then I turned around, and there was Sir Thomas More. The Holbein portrait! (Although I don't suppose there is another one.) I am of two minds about More. On the one hand, I've seen A Man for All Seasons, but on the other, I like Richard III. I cautiously accept, therefore, the hypothesis that he was actually satirizing Henry VII and the Tudor Myth when he wrote his biography of Richard, but a)I don't know enough to know if this is a legitimate theory or not, and b)it does seem like a cop-out. I bought a postcard, though, which I now have on my wall.
*seriously. The background sky was full of these hovering cloud things with angels perched on them. It was very funny.

But it did make me wonder again what I'm doing here, being in New York. I love cities. I hail mostly from western suburbia, it is true, but whenever I spend time in a realy city, I love it. I like walking on treets, and watching people and looking at buildings, and feeling like I'm part of something. I LIKE being anonymous, sometimes. I knew this before I went to college, and yet I still ended up on an ugly campus roughly in the middle of nowhere. In high school, it was "in college, you'll be somewhere you want to be," and now it's, "in grad school, you'll go somewhere you really want to go." Which means that I'll probably end up at U Death Valley for grad school, with the proviso that, "when you get a job, it will be where you want to live." Ha.

The first rehearsal for the Monteverdi was tonight. It went pretty well, I guess. The coach only had baroque bows for the violins, which was too bad, as holding my bow out on the stick kind of makes my hand hurt. But she did say that she would bring the contact info for the head of that summer baroque program next time, and this is good.

David Brooks was his usual hideous self this morning.

( Lunch Period Poli Sci )

Now, to cheer myself up, I will do the Alphabet Meme:

Comment on this entry (er, if anyone reading this hasn't done this one already or wants to do it again!) and I will give you a letter. Write ten words beginning with that letter, and tell us what the word means to you and why.

I have the letter "n" from st_egfroth:

( 10 N-words )