I am so an Egyptian

Not literally I mean. Actually I'm half German and half Irish. Whodda thunk it?

So, many things have been scrambling my brain since the past two classes. First of all, I recently watched The Virgin Suicides and I thought to myself, "gosh, Shakespeare would have had an orgasm watching this movie." Young girls in torrid love affairs, kept from social interaction and eventually killing themselves all together in horrid ways. He would have been quite pleased.

Its funny that they talk about Cleopatra being of "infintite variety", makes me think about what my thought process is when I hear the name Cleopatra. It has jogged my memory about my cat, whose name was Cleo. Short for Cleopatra but obviously doesn't take a genius to figure that one out.

I got Cleo at the animal shelter umpteen years ago. However, when it came to telling my friends about her I came up with a more "colorful" story, I had her imported from Egypt where she was born. I emphasized that she was really from Egypt and I sometimes even exaggerated the story to the point that she was owned by a princess there. Hence, why I named this blog I am so an Egyptian. I made up shit like that all the time.

Once, I was dating this boy freshman year of High School and I was at my friends birthday party. So I was on the phone with my boyfriend and my friend and I were pretending so play psycho killer. I was the victim and she was the killer. So she pretended to kill me while he was on the phone and he totally thought she really killed me. He freaked out and like screamed into the phone, "TAYLOR!!!! GOD NO!! YOU KILLED HER!!!" Oh it was so dramatic, I loved it. Just so you all don't think I'm a heartless bitch I got back on the phone and calmed his panicked attacked ass down... But I still got a kick out of it.... tee hee

 So, I was also thinking about Romans and they way we discussed them. Immediately I thought of Spartacus: Blood and Sand, a show recently aired on Starz.

Before, I thought the show was quite unrealistic, the women weigh about 90 pounds and are drop dead gorgeous. Now, I realize that may be how women in Rome were. Studying the show deeper, I realize these women are very muscular and strong. Obviously there are still some levels of unrealisticness. (I don't think they all had chiseled 6 packs and were able to fornicate without pregnancy) but, I do think they nailed the hardness in Romans.

To end, I thought I would share my hypothesis on why clouds form images. Again, not something I really believe but something I made up some years ago while writing a screenplay. I thought the clouds were drawings deceased children threw from the heavens down into the sky. The clouds then formed their drawing. Thats why we see what we see in the sky.

class notes 3/7 and 3/10

guest: Gretchen Menten

handout: history Antony & Cleopatra continuance of Julius Ceaser
44- Assasination of Ceaser

*Pay attention to place names and maps while reading

Antony & Cleopatra
High School, sexual references, a lot of characters

Scene 1
Nay is the first word spoken
                    presence of rumor or report
                             "The common liar"-Antony
Antony and Cleopatra are never alone together onstage and there are no monologues in the show

Act II scene 2
       Speech on when A&C 1st meet
rumors, rumors, rumors- think about this and their perspective

Rome- order, masculine, cold-hard stuff
Egypt- passion, feminine, soft stuff

"Upon a tawny front" - Description of Cleopatra- she is dark

Mars &Venus- adultery
Mars is Antony- god of war
                      "Love and War"

Natural world is constantly at risk of dissolving

Act I scene 3
"Sir, you and I must part..."
              poetry through love
                       identity- who am I? who are these people?

Act II scene 7
It is what it is

Montane- french philosopher and essayist
-no such thing as a fixed identity

Antony- identity being questioned

Act I scene 4
demasculization of Antony
                     he used to be one way, now he is a different way
                                          whipped

Act II scene 5
he is two-faced

Act I scene 2
"no he, the queen" 

A&C are not young
                identity changes through the years

"infinite variety"- describing Cleopatra
                    The more you have of her, the more you want of her.

Bathos- climaxes and anticlimaxes

Plenty of fish in the sea

History
       Everybody already knows the story

Act III scene 13
           how are they going to be remembered











3/10/11
Revisiting King Lear

Book Worms

Shakespeare helps us to endure the unendurable

Antony & Cleopatra
Cleopatra always needs an audience
                     -she wants to be a beautiful corpse

Egypt and Rome are metaphorical for place of mind

Gypsy- from Egypt

A&C plan to be gods, heres what they do
1. say 2. see 3. do

Isis- goddesss of fertility
apotheosis- to make devine

Antony=Hercules
"The shirt of Nessus is upon me"

Antony's cloud speech

flyting

I was thinking about some flyting incidents that may have happened between my sister and I, the only thing I can think of that I might have said was "stupid face" or "poo head." My sister is an extremely intense person so getting into fights with her was something I avoided because she loves to fight, she gets some sort of weird pleasure out of it. Not I, being the pretty laid back person I am I avoid confrontation unless it is absolutely necessary.
  However, I do remember a time I was in 6th grade and I went to Wendy's (the cool thing to do after school in 6th grade) with some friends and I winded up in a flyting of words with a fellow patron who attacked me out of nowhere. You see, I was at a rebellious time in my life and had decided to dye my hair green. I wanted blue but didn't take into account my hair was red and when you don't bleach the hair first it will turn green. Anyways, this girl thought it necessary to say a rude comment to me.

"Where did you get your hair dye... Wal Mart?"
-her friends around her giggled and laughed. Mind you, these girls were probably sophomores or juniors in high school. After she said that comment, something inside of me snapped... normally I would brush it off and be the bigger person... not this time, oh no, this time I was gonna kill with words.

"Yes, in fact, I think it was right next to 'slut brown' the color you have right?"
-she then proceeded to get very angry and call me a little bitch and I just interrupted her,
"I find it sad that a girl of your age needs to come to Wendy's after school and pick on young girls to make yourself feel better about yourself. Wow, I feel sorry for you."

I then left the restaurant as she was trying to continue the argument. I still feel like I won...

Lear

Upon our discussion in class about King Lear. The more things you have, the more things you want. My boyfriend would be the perfect example of this. He buys some big fancy thing and then need every bell and whistle to go with the damn thing. Take his Xbox for instance.
"But you have an Xbox already John"
"No I need to buy an external hard drive for it"
"Doesn't it come with a hard drive?"
"Yes but only 4 gilgabites" (or whatever they are)
"Ah"

Nothing is ever good enough unless you can have more. This is why I live an extremely strict lifestyle of not falling into the common habit of buying a bunch of (excuse my french) shit. All I really need is myself and my brain and I think I can get by.

notes 3/1 and 3/3

King Lear - read the conflated text

mythology and Shakespeare
                                        We're demytholigizing through the works

"The Ailing King"

Frazer- conflicts of kings in The Golden Bough

Lear- restricting consciousness of world
                        egoist- Jennies blog

Cordelia= Heart

realistic and mythological levels

King has beautiful daughters, he marries them all off. He loves himself the most.

Gloucester is involved in subplot which is the same as the main plot.

Lear banishes Cordelia
(Lear= Cinderella)

Edmund is a villain because he has been demytholigized

Nothing & Nature are two words used often in Lear

"It is never the worst, unless you can say it is the worst"

"We are to the gods flies to the wanton boys, they kill us for they're sport"

Oswald= dumb villain

Albany- marries horrible bitch- Goneril

* Blog about flyting- exchange of terms of abuse back and forth between two people.

Tom of Bedlam who Edgar disquises himself as.

* What do you need?
find youtube clip of King Lear




Notes 3/3

Tuesday- required attendance- guest speaker

Read first two acts of Antony & Cleopatra--come with a question

John Orsi- Remainder - Tom McCarthy

King Lear- Who are you?
-Shakespeare manipulates


What do we really need?

Lear
Daughters say too many knights... well 50 knights is better than 25.... why do you need one? Something snaps in Lear
pg. 1592

most people are distracted by their possesions

Lear turns to compassion and sympathy... he has lost the mind that he had which was not a mind worth having at all

"Thou art the thing itself;"

pg.1600 Edgars speech
                  "The worst returns to laughter"
"The worst is not so long as we can say this is the worst"

*Nathans blog

Lear- "If thou wilt weep my fortunes; take mine eyes"

Alchemy- a person must empty themselves out to truly find themselves