Instant Classic

When my professor, helping me with graduate school application prep, asked me why I wanted to study 18th century British literature, I talked about how I felt that period of thought and social development had many parallels with our own time. I felt legitimate in my opinion, but not confident enough to have expected her response. "Exactly!" she exclaimed, continuing into a familiar conversation to me that draws a line from the printing press to the internet. Suddenly, people popped up all over the place writing short publications like "The Spectator" where they wrote their little musings and said things were often pointless, but occasionally brilliant. Blogging and its various media brethren are affecting our culture in ways we don't understand.

How often have you heard someone say, "I was reading online the other day..." It's a good phrase because it's honest in its own way. It creates a foundation for any comment to be taken on its own merit. You can take any comment that comes after "I was reading online that..." and trust it or throw it away and no one will care.

The obscure writer's of our age will rarely make it to a noticeably powerful place in society and maybe that's a good thing, but it makes me wonder who will appear in 50 years as the genius of the early 2000s. Who have we already forgotten from the 20th century. If we go back to 19th century America, we'll find that Walt Whitman was one of the most influential and his contemporaries were Hawthorne, Emerson, Sigourney, Longfellow. Who remembers Longfellow? How much more famous is Emily Dickinson since she was discovered... what? 40 years ago?

Today's writers might disappear into forgotten corners of literary history, but someone always seems to show up and take the spotlight.

Feeeear, and other scaryness

Nothing about Halloween in scary. I even tried to watch the season's "scariest movie" that already made it onto scariest movies of all time lists and whatnot, Paranormal Activity. Anyway, it was weak. It makes you jump once or twice, there's a cool part where a table catches on fire, and the ending is disturbing... but those are distinctly separate experiences in an otherwise dull movie.

Back in real life, I dressed up as a miscellaneous character from Mad Men:

Yes, that is, in fact, me... almost smoking. Thrilling, isn't it? But even though that glass has coke in it, I think I looked like I work in the 1960s, especially since I put about a quart of gel in my hair (if only I could have found a matching hat). Also, I got to go to work like that...

Yep, it was pretty sweet. A good costume... a little hard to guess (only a couple people knew straight away). One person said I looked like a Young Republican, except that my tie was green and someone else said I was... some American celebrity from my pence days... or possibly my centimes days...

Best of costume of the night, though?

Legoman. Yes.

Corn... currency of the Midwest?

Apparently, there's a big difference between the things in my life that are worth taking pictures of and the pictures I actually take, which is why I haven't been posting much recently. But, for the Halloweeny-Fallness that just happened, there was a brief intersection. So, I went to Richardson Farm, which you can look up online as one of the biggest corn mazes in the world (woo.), with Ellen, Derrick, and Erica (Derrick's girlfriend).

Off we go...

...as Ellen stares at the Sun. I sort of assume there was something else to look at other than the Sun. You could pay $35 a head to go on a helicopter ride, which would have been cool because it's pretty hard to see the shapes of the maze while you're in it. This year it was Abraham Lincoln related because we're in Illinois and something important happened... 200 years ago? My American history is pretty sketchy in the 19th century.

So, this gesture intrigues me. To me it represents the spreading of peace and pure aggression. One of the things that's nice about being in the US is that I get to enjoy the positive side of it instead of wondering why everyone is so mad all the time. I remember waving from a bridge to drivers who were about to go under the bridge and receiving this as my response. Unfortunately, that was years ago, in England, before I could have pretended the driver was a hippy, or just a genuinely nice fellow.

You know, it occurs to me that I didn't ask for permission to put these pictures up, oh well.

Anyway, we had a good time and it was all very wholesome. Also, everyone else cheated, but we stuck to the path, which seems important somehow.

Now, let me find the Halloween pictures.