Happy Valentine's Day!

Here's what I'll be doing today:



(Just kidding... to some extent...)

Ambiguity Revisited

I just remembered what my "ambiguity" post was going to be about: the relativity of the word "long" in reference to blog posts. Some people in my family think everything I do is "long," and others don't. Some think "long" is anything with more than one paragraph, others don't think it's too "long" unless it both has 37 paragraphs and is boring (or at least dry). An interesting subject, to be sure, but I don't have the time to write a disquisition on it now. Schoolwork calls.

The Work of a Feverish Mind

I caught some sort of sickness yesterday afternoon that left me feeling tired and weak. I can’t usually fall asleep in the daytime when I’m well, but I had no problem then. I think I must have had a fever, too, because I woke up covered in sweat even without any covers. Mama thought I had one today, too, although the only symptom I still exhibit is a general feeling of fatigue. Further supporting my theory that I had a fever, I dreamed some interesting dreams yesterday afternoon, dreams with more plot than any I’ve had in a long time. Here they are for your benefit:

My first dream began with me driving Bria along some street in the commercial section of some town. I don’t think it was a real town, for I cannot conceive of its location in reality. I have all these perplexing “memories” of places suddenly popping up in my head, too, that were either long-forgotten real places or the fruit of my feverish imagination. Anyway, to return to my dream…

I was driving along some road a bit like South Willow St with shops on only one side and hills on the other. There was not much traffic, and the road was smooth and long. As I turned right to go into a large shopping plaza with Ames on one side and some other building on the other (at least it wasn’t Caldor or Bradley’s or Rich’s), I was excited to perceive Diane R. following us into the place in her red SUV. I wove around the parking lot looking for a good spot, although I ended up parking right in the middle for no clear reason.

The parking lot was unusual in that it was, shall we say, inhabited. In fact, there was quite a community! There was a “lot overseer” and many people just living in the parking lot. It was very much like the trailer park in “The Long, Long Trailer,” except that people lived in cars. One fellow asked if he could park there “until Tuesday”, and everyone shouted his joyful assent. (“Welcome to the best parking lot in New Hampshire!”)

I got out of the car and looked for Diane, but I had been mistaken: it was not she. Instead it was a teacher from the Christian school where I took the Stanford Achievement Tests in every grade from first to eleventh. I walked over toward the building into which she directed her steps, and it turned out to be the schools new location! And it was time for the tests! I was rather peculiarly unsurprised to find that Bria was no longer with me and that Daddy and Cara had taken her place. The three of us walked into the building. Interestingly, the first floor was the basement of the church (CHC), and it was full of preschoolers painting at two long tables that took up most of the width of the room. Cara and Daddy forged their way through to the door leading to the stairs, but in the hustle and bustle of the crowd, I could not keep up. I even tried diving between the backs of two long rows of chairs, but all I got was paint on my new white jacket (which I don’t really have). I did make it through, but my family had disappeared.

I continued to climb level after level in search of the “Executive Office,” as I called it. People laughed at me when I asked where the Executive Office was, but I didn’t know why. I finally reached the second-to-last floor (I think there were four stories in all, including the basement) and found that the stairs to the final floor went in a circle getting increasingly narrow without rails. It all looked rather perilous. I can still picture it clearly, although I cannot describe it well. I was in the middle of trying very, very hard to gather enough courage to go up when Mama called me on my cell phone. I don’t remember what she said, but I think she was angry that I wasn’t home yet. I thought that was strange, since I was at tests, and just hung up without answering (an action I would never consciously consider, I assure you).

I headed down the other way just in time to see Cara go into a classroom and close the door. I didn’t want to interrupt her tests, so I explored the building looking for someone who could tell me where to go. I knew the principal of the school could help me, but he was giving tests to some of the younger kids, so I just hung around waiting for light to be shed from some other source. When Cara emerged for a break, I was just starting to talk to her when I suddenly remembered that twelfth-graders do not take this kind of SAT, and that I had no reason to be there. I left feeling both relief and embarrassment.

Then I was Spider-man watching Cara’s store for her while she ate dinner, and I stopped a bunch of robbers by making a cool web, but that’s another story for another day.


By the way...

Click here to discover the secret source of the soundtrack for The Gigantic Amoeba at Medfield College! In case the audio doesn't work, or you don't want to take the time to check, it's the second movement to Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 21 in C: Elvira Madigan. It's a fantastic piece, and if you don't have it in your music library, you should definitely add it.

Video: My Nomination for the Oscars

"Best Short Film: The Gigantic Amoeba at Medfield College"

I think it's a winner, don't you?

Click here to view in Windows Media Player.

Big bonus points for those who can identify the soundtrack!!!

Ambiguity

I wrote the title of this post a day or two ago when I had a terrific idea for a post. I didn't have time to write the actual body of the post then, so I wrote the title thinking that the word "ambiguity" would of course be sufficient to jog my wonderful memory. Well, folks, it seems I overestimated myself. I opened the "Manage Posts" page without even the faintest recollection of what I was planning to write, and the single title word is doing nothing to resolve my perplexity. Therefore I will now move on to other things.

Such as...Samson. Have you ever thought about how many elements of that story are truly bizarre, especially in the context of modern culture? The first thing we hear about Samson (besides his birth) is that he took a trip to the land of the Philistines, nemeses of the Israelites, and came home saying, "Hey, Mom and Dad, I saw a girl while I was in Timnah. Go see if she'll marry me. She looks good." I don't know about you, but I can't imagine saying that...even if the Timnah part were replaced with Manchester!!!!

Samson ended up marrying the girl, but he didn't stick around after the wedding for more than a week, and the impression I get from the Bible is that he spent that week celebrating with a bunch of guys who weren't even his friends. Feasting buddies, or something. Then he went off who knows where, so his father-in-law said (of course!), "Well, there goes Charlene's husband, off who knows where. I guess I'll just have to give his wife to his best man."

I must admit that I do not know that her name was, in actuality, Charlene.

Well, Samson came back "a while later, in the time of the harvest," for his honeymoon. Rather poor prioritizing, in my opinion. In fact, he lost his wife because of it. As his father basically said, "Oops. So you did want to marry her after all. [nervous laughter] OK, hmm, how can I resolve this situation peacefully? Do you want to marry Darlene instead? She's actually even more good-looking that her sister." But Samson would have none of it. He was so mad he burned down the entire wheat field, and in the time of harvest, too!

"Who has done this?" cried the Philistines, and then again they cried, "Samson hath done it! He did it because his father-in-law gave his daughter, his wife, to someone other than him, who happened to once have been his friend." Then they all got confused because of the ambiguity of the pronouns. Which pronoun went with which antecedent became a matter of great conjecture among the lot of them. Some argued this, and some argued that, but eventually they determined that the fault lay with Samson's in-laws, so they killed them.

This turned out to be a big mistake. "You have gone too far!" cried Samson. "I will get revenge again, but then I'll stop." He was wrong (about stopping), but that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is that people weren't always that level-headed back in the good old days.

Here's another example to back my point: the story of Samson with his second wife, Delilah. I will never understand why on earth Samson gave the secret of his strength away to his wife. After all, every time he bluffed, she tried to take advantage of him. "Just tie me up with seven new cords, and I'll be helpless," said Samson. Delilah tied him up with seven new cords." Just tie me up with new ropes, and I'll be helpless," said Samson. Delilah tied him up with new ropes. "Just weave my hair into a cloth, and I'll be helpless," said Samson. Delilah wove his hair into a cloth. (I know Samson had inhuman strength, but how he disentangled his hair is beyond me; maybe he just kept it like that and used it as an umbrella when one was needed.) Every time Samson told Delilah a false secret and she proved it false, she cried, "You don't love me!"

I would have shot back, "Well, hello!!! You obviously don't love me either! Why do you think I don't tell you the truth when you keep trying deliver me over to the bad guys who happen to be your relatives?" But I was not Samson.

Samson had different ideas. He said, "OK, I know you have tried to deliver me over to the bad guys (who happen to be your relatives) again and again and again each and every time I pretended I told you the truth, so I guess I might as well tell you the truth and be delivered over because, um, because, um... just because." So he did.

Sometimes I think Samson had more brawn than brain.