The Friday Five 2 for 1 Sale!

1. What did you have for breakfast this morning? If you didn't have breakfast, why not?

I had coffee and cottage cheese w/ pineapple.

2. What's your favorite cereal?

Maple & brown sugar oatmeal, Fruit & Fibre (almond), Capt'n Crunch.

3. How often do you eat out? Do you want that to change?

Probably 1-2 times a week. I don't want it to change, but it should. Need to keep a tighter control over the purse =P

4. What do you plan on having for dinner tonight? Got a recipe for that?

Well, I was going to make fish, but I completely forgot to take it out of the freezer to thaw, so I'll have to think of something else. Though I might stop at the store and buy some fresh fish for a fish chowder (good on cold days like today when it's -1). Recipe? Um. . . don't often use them.

5. What's your favorite restaurant? Why?

In Denver, McCormicks - because it's the best seafood in the world and they serve dinner at The Cruise Room too (it's the martini bar located in the same hotel - The Oxford - it's histoical in that it was the first bar this side of the Mississippi to open after they lifted prohibition. It's got the original art deco decor as when it opened - and It's truly the best bar I've ever been too and I'm counted all the places in New Orleans.)

In New Orleans - Where to begin . . . Napolean House, The Chart House, The Alpine, Vaqueros, O'Flaherty's (for music more than food, but damn, Patrick's stew and potato salad were awesome), the thai place at River Bend, the chinese place we always got delivery from had the best fried rice in the world. . .


1. Are you a tea drinker?

Yes

2. Which do you prefer: English Breakfast, Earl Grey, Black Tea, or Green Tea?

Green or black.

3. What is your favorite herbal tea?

Chai

4. Do you take ice in your cold tea?

Yes

5. Have you ever had Sweet Tea?

Don't think so.

Hectic yet productive day

I left work at 3 today to talk with my graduate advisor on my thesis paper. And I forgot it was our assistant dean's birthday party at 2, so I ended up having to work my ass off to finish a report that was due today and get all the registrations the students were calling in last minute processed. But i ended up finishing it all (just barely) and dashing off to get to my appointment on time.

So I'm pitching my thesis topic to my advisor and she's smiling and getting all excited. I was worried it would get shot down, but she was absolutely thrilled with it! So now comes the task of pitching it to my thesis advisors (whom I've just choesen with her aid - though I kinda always knew who they would be). But she thinks that they'll love to work with it and told me she'd be willing to help where she can (though her field is hinduism/buddhism and the religions of South East Asia - which isn't mt field at all - but she great at proof reading, so I guess that's something. . .)

So for the first time in quite a while I'm feeling energized to research and write this thesis. I guess what I really needed to hear was some positive support behind it. When you look at something closely for so long, you sometimes lose objectivity and just get drained on it. . . It really helps when you hear that all that work isn't for naught and is, in fact, good.

Bringing Fire to the Valley

My addendum to Nietzsche's Thus Spake, Zarathustra

When Zarathustra surveyed the crowd, his heart grew troubled, and he rent his garment. "Oh, me, oh my," he said, "should I have taught the overman when the apocalypse began?"

A dwarf tapped him on the shoulder, and he spun around in defiance. "Remember, oh great Zarathustra," the dwarf said mockingly, "you yourself have spoken of the great eagles that begin to spread their wings only when they feel the rising air currents from the approaching storm. Can you be such an eagle, Zarathustra, or should you succumb to the great disgust, the disgust that comes when you see that every time of trouble must become a time of confusion, and when those who speak cry out to hear an echo of their own voice?"

"You have spoken well," Zarathustra shot back, "but you have not spoken well enough. Were you to speak well enough, you would have carried your own fire to the valley and not merely commented on the pyrotechnics you saw below you. Isn't it all-to-human to comment on what has already been said, then comment further on what has been commented? No, you must have chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star."

"You sound like a religious preacher," the dwarf retorted with sarcasm. "Zarathustra, the great fundamentalist preacher of nihilism locked in polemical struggle with the metaphysicians. The metaphysicians will ultimately win, Zarathustra, because they are the ones who know how to sigh the ultimate sigh, the sigh we all long for, the sigh of certainty. You cannot compete with the preachers of truth, Zarathustra."

Zarathustra did not reply, because his was quite tired from his ordeal. He handed the dwarf an American flag sticker, and went back up the mountain. When he got to the top of the mountain, he found that his cave had been visited by vandals. All over the walls they had written in a strange white powder the inscription, "God is great."

At that point Zarathustra realized he had failed in his mission to bring down fire. He turned to his lion and his serpent and lamented, "My friends, what shall we do this halloween while the metaphysicians duke it out to the death?"

The lioned snarled. The serpent slithered. Neither had anything to say.

Zarathustra went quietly into the back of the cave and opened a copy of the Bible. At that moment there was an enormous earthquake, the cave was filled with a blinding light, and Zarathustra ascended, like Elijah, into heaven, never to be heard from again.

Years later a wandering archaelogist looking for the original golden tablets of the Book of Mormon stumbled into the cave. He saw the inscriptions on the wall, and ran away excited.

Soon thereafter the cave was declared a great, historical landmark. People of all the world's religions made regular pilgrimages to the cave and heard erudite lectures about how "truth" had been finally discovered in its original, material form. The white powder was now preserved with the latest, miracle technology, and the three little words were translated into all human languages.

Historians of philosophy for countless generations wrote about how Nietzsche had finally been proven wrong, for Zarathustra's "original autographs" had at last been discovered. The moral every school child learned was simple. Nietzsche, poor wretch, was not equal toe great truths taught by his mentor, Zarathustra.