Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

East
by Edith Pattou
During the holidays, we spent much of our time reading books, catching up on my one-book-a-month goal. Although I spent most of my break digesting some books on postmodern theory and archiving (non-related), this book, I mostly devoured on the flight back from Michigan; Rebecca had read it before me during the flight to Michigan.

Again, this is another book we had picked up per Melissa's recommendation; one day it will be my goal to recommend a book to her that she hasn't read yet. But for now, we read East and really loved it - we even plan on including this book in our collection someday. We definitely need more bookshelves.

I was a bit hesitant to get into East because Rebecca wasn't sure I was going to appreciate all the magic in the book. She knows that I have a strong distaste for authors who use magic as an easy literary 'out' for solving the characters' problems without appropriately defining the characteristics of magic within the world that was created. That isn't the case for East at all - it was well built and well arranged how magic fit into this world.

The main character was very endearing and I had a very difficult time putting down this book for any short period of time. Well written, I quite enjoyed myself.

But since no book is perfect, I do have one comment: it slightly bothered me how unhistorical this book was in the feel of the world during the 1500s. I understand that this was a "magical" version of our universe, but ever since I read Doomsday Book, I have become more critical of books which the authors haven't spent the appropriate research time to develop an accurate picture of the misery and the different circumstances that people 500 years ago lived in. Connie Willis did a fantastic job in her book, Edith Pattou should have taken more care of it. But despite questioning the gritty nature of the world, I really enjoyed her retelling of this fairy tale - definitely well done.

Because we got into San Jose on the 31st (last Sunday), and stayed up for 22 hours straight - we kind of skipped writing our email that week. Which is unfortunate, because we had so much going on that it will be hard to keep it straight now. But we shall try.

Going back two weeks to Christmas Eve (was it only two weeks ago?), we put up my parent's family creche display with Camilla and Victor. Rebecca and I decided that we really want a large creche display so we can follow this tradition of talking about the events surrounding the birth of Christ by using a physical display (and a nice one at that!) - despite the fact that we were very silly on Sunday evening because there weren't any little kids around. The bad news about Christmas was that Rebecca spent most of the two weeks coughing with a nasty cold. It was most likely a cold with a heavy dose of a bad allergic reaction to the dog [or Michigan in general...]. But we read our family Christmas stories on Christmas Eve and then went to bed (took some Nyquil) and passed out for the evening.

Christmas day was great (as usual!) and we all had a good time playing lots of games of killer bunnies (wait, we didn't get THAT for Christmas!) with the family. Max and Karen came over for dinner and I spent a good amount of the day playing with Rebecca's box of K'NEX she got for Christmas.

Because Rebecca had finished the library book we brought with us, she and I stopped off at the public library in Ypsilanti to get some options for her to read. After selecting 10 or so books, she only ended up reading one over the next week before we had to leave. But she'll write a book review about that sometime later [when Wayne's done with the computer! -beck]. Boxing Day was nice and laid back, as it should be - we ate and played games and didn't do anything much.

It wasn't until later in the week that we stopped reading our books and went out into the real world. On Wednesday, we had planned to go to Frankenmuth for the day, but those plans fell through. Instead of leaving early to go to Frankenmuth, we spent the morning looking for some lost keys. Then there was only enough time left to go to BW3 and then Dave and his girlfriend came over for dinner and games. It is sad that we don't have a good buffalo wings place around here, but I guess every location has something good to offer "food wise." We just haven't found it yet here in San Jose. Thursday Rebecca and Camilla went with my mom to the fabric store; Rebecca got some really nice purple fabric from the store and is going to make herself a skirt.

So, instead of our Wednesday trip to Frankenmuth, it became our Friday trip to Frankemuth, including a delicious all german meal at the Bavarian Inn, not to mention visits to the local fudge and cheese shops. Rebecca was so giddy to go to the cheese shop and we sampled all kinds of cheese (from chocolate peanut butter cheese to swiss almond spread). Personally, I feel really gross after trying the bacon cheddar spread, so I don't touch that stuff.

One of the important trips we had included in our visit to my parents' house was a trip to the Detroit temple. We woke up early Saturday morning to learn that our plans had been foiled and the temple was closed that day. After mulling about without anything to do, we decided to go visit the Toledo art museum because it was free. Although it isn't a large city, the museum is really quite nice and I always forget how well stocked it is. Here's my big tidbit of advice about art museums: when you go to an exhibit and you like what you see, you should always buy the exhibition catalogue from the museum store afterwards. I'm finding that when I don't do this, the catalogue triples in price because no one wants to part with it (the old "limited edition print" ploy). I really shouldn't be so stingy about not buying a book on impulse from a museum store (I really wish I could go back in time and kick myself for not having bought that Rauschenburg catalogue from the MoMA). When we got back from the art museum, Rebecca went to work with my sister in making skirts and fixing her shirt: it had a torn sleeve from our airplane trip out to Michigan. And while I went over to Dave's apartment one last time, my parents played Nintendo games which is really funny to watch. We spent the rest of the evening watching them play.

Our flight left early Sunday morning, but on the way out the door, we decided to check if our luggage was under the 50 pound limit. We got out the bathroom scales and at 5 in the morning, we were busy weighing and adjusting our luggage to fit the limit. And eventually we ended up borrowing another piece of luggage from my parents to get everything home with us. The flights were (mostly) uneventful, minus a 2 hour delay in Minneapolis. I'm really not impressed with Northwest airlines - Delta has always been on time for me. Our friends came and picked us up from the airport in San Jose and then we proceeded to stay up until midnight (California time) with them to celebrate New Year's eve. It was fun and Rebecca found out that she really loves makingfiends.com; Chris introduced us to this cute cartoon and then Rebecca had to watch all the rest of them this week. Also, staying up for 22 hours straight really wears a person out.

So we took Monday easy: woke up late, cleaned up, packed Christmas stuff into boxes, ran errands (bought cheap Christmas tubs to organize all our Christmas stuff!) and then celebrated New Years Day by taking our friends out to dinner at Buca di Beppo, courtesy of Discover Card. We even managed to get the kitchen table and sat watching the cooks frantically keep up with orders. If anyone goes there, we'd love to know if you ever try the large lasagna: it is the largest brick of lasagna I've ever seen. The rest of the evening we spent playing our new games with Chris and Alyssa, and there was no football involved. Nope. Not one lick of it.

Then, painfully, Rebecca went back to work on Tuesday morning. But she couldn't stand it (being away from me), so she came home and worked remotely for the last couple hours. During the day, I started my week long project of refinishing the piano. Sanding down the old stain has taken up most of the week and I put in about 5 hours of sanding a day. After seeing how nice Camilla and Victor's piano turned out, I wanted to make this a priority to refinish our piano.

Wednesday night, it was really cold here and we decided to go see what our indoor apartment gym facilities were like. It is nice to have something indoor to do because it has been very windy and cold in the evenings this week. Rebecca worked remotely a few other days and on Friday, I convinced her to come with me to the Humane Society around the corner to pet some cats. I'm amazed at the sad reasons people abandon their pets.

So, yesterday we finally got to the temple. The session was very large and very good. By the time we got home, we were beat but still heavy cleaned the apartment. The next time we refinish furniture, I need to make sure we cover up our other furniture so the sanding dust doesn't get everywhere like it did this week. I'm already to the staining, so I had made a good dusty mess everywhere in our apartment this time. But next time...

That's about it for the past two weeks for us. Church starts really late for us now, we don't have sacrament meeting until one in the afternoon. I never like late church, it eats up most of the day. But have a great one and best New Year's wishes to you all!

We went to Michigan this year for the holidays and had lots of fun. Besides having a wonderful Christmas day, we also visited Frankenmuth and got into some mischief the rest of the week with fancy meals and playing games. It wasn't as cold as we feared and we had a very brown Christmas this year - not a spot of snow all week long. But who needs snow to celebrate the magic of Christmas?
We wanted to be the first in the family to post pictures of Christmas, but then we forgot our USB cable at home. And then when we got home, the website wasn't allowing us to post pictures until now. But now you can see our pictures!

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There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

-Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Reading and Writing"

I have been reading Steven Best and Douglas Kellner's Postmodern Theory over the past week. I believe I will be able to retain this information if I put some of my thoughts down into writing.

To explain Postmodern Theory, it is very important to explain when Modern Theory began and ended in order to help quantify what characteristics construct Modern Theory (hereafter Modern theory). Modern theory was the age of reason and enlightenment, a period of time when western civilization strove to attain a utopian ideal through reason and truth. This age began after the upset of the imposed truth through the Catholic church during the age of Enlightenment, when characters like Rousseau and Descartes defined truth as attainable through Aristotelian systems of inquiry. As we see in the writings of the Modern age, there was a standard lifted up by Reason and this standard was the ultimate goal for society to reach peace and universality through science and facts and a Marxist socialist dream.

Then came the World Wars and the cynicism of the 1960s to authority and traditional methods of understanding the world around us. This was the beginning of the Postmodern age for most, because of the obvious breakdown of the Modern theory to function without killing millions of people.

Why Postmodern? There isn't any coherent Postmodern theory which encompasses the past 70 years (or more, depending on which historian you talk to), but currently the recurring theme which threads between all Postmodern theories is the attack on Modern theories of totality, universalism and macrosystemic understanding. Instead, the Postmodernist focuses on evaluating a micropolitical way of life, a Nietzschean system of paradoxes and a cynical evaluation of "what went wrong." There also exists a number of Postmodern theorists who talk about society as a system where the currency is language systems. This is where most of my interests lie.

I'm not certain how I could break down Postmodern theory or Modern theory anymore than this. One of my last (and by far, favorite) classes during my undergraduate degree was a critical thinking class in Psychology which compared the possible theoretical approaches to psychology - the postmodern and the modern - in an attempt to help us see how the modern influences much of our society's thinking as biases, not conscious decisions. Now that I understand better the holistic approaches to both, I'm pretty sure that neither theory functions as an adequate model.

Here is a breakdown of some interesting points:

I disagree with Loytard (as well as some others) about hermeneutics. I am definitely a (partial) hermeneuticist, in that I believe that some events have significance despite culture and beyond microsystems of thought: if a child is suddenly hit by a bus and killed, that event has inherent meaning which breaches micropolitical systems (even sadists feel the same thing, but they only enjoy that sensation and crave more of it, whereas "normal" people desire to avoid that sensation at all costs...at any rate, it's the same inherent meaning which is placed on certain events). That being said, there are very few experiences/events which can be chalked up to universality; even those events which have communal meaning across language-sign borders contain minute differences due to the philosophical base rooted within the language-system (see Derrida). I hate to be a fence-hopper on this one, but the reality of many of these theories is their limited ability to appropriately model much of the human condition - things are much more complex than any simplified model can give credit for.

One of the strongest points of postmodern theory is the recontextualizing of known ideas, by critiquing the Aristotelian systems which have governed Western society since the Enlightenment. With this re-evaluation of thought (from 'what is beauty?' to 'can we even prove the scientific method works?') comes a harsh criticism of the utopian ideals that come with the dialectic of Knowledge-as-Truth. One of the most profound thoughts I was given by a professor was the heretical notion that laws possibly don't exist (physical, not societarian): but what if matter acts as it does because it chooses to. Sound crazy? I still think it really is nuts, but it is a liberating thought because it questions our belief in the system of physical normatives. What if we only know what is going on around us because we are limited to our semiotically-based belief system which requires the physical laws to be fact? I know many religious people would concur with this idea and as a result many Enlightenment-based-Aristotelian thinkers would respond counteractively to it. This postmodern idea of critiquing our thoughts by evaluating where they came from is a very pertinent direction that postmodernism offers us.

On tolerance:

One of the greatest exemplifications of postmodern theory in society is the notion of tolerance for "differing lifestyles." The postmodernists are big on the idea of tearing down a Marxist belief in utopian ideals and class/culture systems' unity. Whether we adopted this belief as a society through an organic response to the forces which created postmodernism or whether we have taken a liking to tolerance because of the postmodern academic influences could be debated. Either way, tolerance is still yet to be seen if it will avoid the consequences viewed through the postmodernists as caused by modernist and Marxist ideologies (i.e. World Wars, nationhood strife). Sixty years after World War II, we can postulate very little about the causes of war. According to many postmodern theorists, utopian ideals of uniformication and homogeneity led to nations attacking other nations; ergo, to avoid conflict, we need to be accepting of all choices made by all people.

I think that tolerance has its positives, but also some clear negatives. We do need to be accepting of other lifestyles and forms of life, other than our own because they have the justified right to life and control of their life, just as we do. However, by propagating the acceptance of other lifestyles, that means you are accepting of belief systems which are in direct conflict with your own. And those two belief systems believe that they are both correct. And this leads to war.

I don't believe the 'war on terror' can ever be won for many reasons, most of which are obvious in the field of anthropology. But this system of accepting beliefs which are in direct conflict with our own, these two diametrically opposed forces collide to produce war. So instead of overcoming the glaring shortcoming of Modernist thought, the postmoderns have created a new reason for people to kill each other.

As far as tolerance goes, there is not going to be peace on Earth. I'm sorry to all of those people who believe in Peace on Earth, and may you be comforted in finding your own small slice of Peace on Earth. But peace has no place in a world society like ours. You ultimately have a few choices about how to respond to our global social atmosphere: you can be a jerk and tear other people down, you can be a nice person and not tear other people down. Me, I'm non-confrontational. But that's just my off-topic rambling.

"Postmodern theory in its more extreme forms tends to be exactly what it accuses modern theory of being: one-sided, reductionist, essentializing, excessively prohibitive, and politically disabling."

When they said "add some garlic," I don't think they meant to cover the kitchen in garlic...

-Rebecca after I dropped a tub of minced garlic which exploded in our kitchen

I like being busy. I can say that now because I feel like we're working on things and making progress, but I don't have to stay up all night to finish a project for school or a paper. :) Oh, I loved school; I just also love being able to work on my own projects in the evenings.

This week we found the closest fabric store we could find. About eight miles from our house. Another mile, and we could have been at Jo-Ann's or Hancock. But Beverly's is sufficient for my needs and has similar sales (and is a local CA store, I'm told). It's just funny that with three malls within five miles of our apartment, we have to go eight miles and cross the borders of two towns to get to a fabric store. Real estate prices being what they are near us, I guess there's not enough demand close to the center of Santa Clara or San Jose for fabric stores? Either that or I'm just not in the know. Anyway, I was able to find some elastic and update the pajamas I made for me and Wayne a few months ago to have elastic waists instead of just a drawstring. It's nice to not feel like I'm wearing clown pants that could fit two of me in them.

Wayne continued plugging away at refinishing the piano; it's almost done, and looks fabulous -- we'll post pictures when it's all put together again. He ran a few other errands during the week, so I used that as an excuse to work from home a few mornings or afternoons so he could have the car without making tons of trips back and forth to drop me off at work. A few of my coworkers were working from home, recovering from being sick, so I don't think I missed much on interaction with them and still got work done.

We rearranged some furniture. We both think the new arrangement works nicely, we just can't use our heater. The bookcase is in front of one of the baseboard vents now. Which is slightly unfortunate timing, because we're actually getting lows near or slightly below freezing. Oh well. We have a fireplace and blankets. Sacrifices must be made for aesthetics! :) Besides, it was at a high of 70 here early last week; we can't stay at cold temperatures forever.

The worst part of the week was finally seeing a dentist for the first time since we've been married (I think for me it had been about five years since I last saw a dentist). What I learned is, even with insurance for this visit, we probably would have been better off paying for regular cleanings the last few years out of our own pockets. We let not having dental insurance keep us from visiting a dentist, and we shouldn't have. The verdict: I had 4 cavities (old sealants worn down), and Wayne had to have a laser blast at his gums to get rid of plaque in small spaces that formed between his gums and teeth. We flossed occasionally before, but now we resolve to floss every single night. I had always been told by dentists to floss, but never shown why (or what the result on your pocketbook is if you don't). Lesson learned: lasers and drills banging away in your mouth make things very uncomfy. But at least we have super clean mouths and can now continue with 6-month cleanings as usual. [Here's the real problem: we seem to have found a dentist who doesn't think it is important to keep his procedures within the confines of what our insurance covers. As a result, we paid for MOST of our visit out of our own pocket, which became quite expensive, quite quickly. And now, I want to find a new dentist, one which doesn't think it's "necessary" to do things that our insurance provider doesn't. -wayne]

We did have some entertainment thrown in the week. We saw a movie (at the theater!) for free -- Night at the Museum -- it was entertaining, for what it was, but a little predictable and not worth seeing a second time [worth the free price we paid for it, courtesy of Discover card]. And we went to the library to pick up some good books. I learned that on some of the exercise machines in our exercise room, you can prop open a book and read while you bike! Excellent. Much better than watching the tv they have up there. :)

Applewood Bacon and Chicken Sandwich
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Per 2 Sandwiches:
1 large chicken breast, sliced into two thinner fillets
4 thick full slices of applewood bacon, halved
salt and pepper to taste
4 slices honey wheat bread
4 slices swiss
olive oil
mayo
darkberry jam (boysenberry or blackberry)
romaine lettuce

In a TBS of olive oil, fry the chicken breasts at medium high heat, approximately 4 minutes on each side. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper, to your own tastes. Fry up the bacon, approximately 4 half slices per sandwich. Lightly brush olive oil on the top of the 4 slices of bread and then toast until lightly brown. When the toast is done, spread mayo on the top of two and the jam on the top of the other two.

Layer sandwiches: piece of toast with mayo, bacon, 1 slice swiss cheese, chicken, 1 slice swiss cheese, lettuce and top with the slice of toast that has the dark berry jam on it. If you want to increase the amount of sandwiches, this recipe shows you multiples of two.

I stayed up really late last night finishing this book and so I'm really tired while writing this review. It is a short read, approximately 4-5 hours; and it definitely is not for children.

I've been trying to pick up some Neil Gaiman books lately and see if I do or don't like his writing. His style and flow is a bit choppy for me (just different, not bad) and so it was a bit hard to get the cadence of this book until after the first chapter... but then, I was unfortunately hooked.

It was a good tale - I see why some people compare it to a contemporary Princess Bride, although it is missing much of the witty banter that makes Princess such a beloved tale. It isn't the fairy tale story of love and trials which makes the book interesting. But whatever.

Neil Gaiman is one of those authors who likes to throw characters into "checklist" stories: tales where the protagonist has many adventures which are (mostly) unrelated to the story arc of trying to do something (whatever the plot requires). This can be very entertaining, as Gaiman has a wild imagination for devices he can throw at his characters, but I can't tell you how frustrating it is to have the middle of the book say "and they had many adventures and many meetings and many..." Why is there a great big fat ETC in the middle of this story?

Maybe I'm just really tired, but I liked the book. But don't let your kids read it.

Fancy Taco Salad Bowls
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2 12" flour tortillas
1 lb. beef (any of your personal choice cuts of steak), sliced thinly
1 cup sweet corn
2 cups sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
2 heaping tablespoons of sour cream
2 TBS fruit salsa (mango or peach recommended)
1 TBS taco seasoning
2 TBS lime juice
salt to taste
lots of lettuce, possibly 3 cups?

Start by putting flour tortillas into two separate oven-safe bowls. The size depends on how deep or wide you want your taco salad to be; I would generally recommend bowls that are 6" in diameter. Stuff the tortillas into the bowls, creating a bowl out of the tortilla. Shred the cheddar cheese into the base of the bowl. Stick into the oven on the lowest rack at a broil for about 4 minutes, or until the tips of the tortillas are brown and the tortillas are to your preferred crunchiness. Take out and let cool.

While the tortilla shells are cooking, thinly slice the steak and marinate in the lime juice, fruit juice and fruit salsa. This could even be done overnight, to add extra flavor. Sear the beef in a heavy skillet on high, continually pounding at the beef (to maintain a softer consistency) with your spatula. Once the juices have evaporated the beef will get a nice sticky crust quickly, so take it off the heat and pour the beef into the base of the finished taco shells.

Then add the sweet corn, followed by the heaping tablespoon of sour cream and topped with as much lettuce as you can fit (the lettuce tends to absorb the moisture and quickly compact itself). Add some additional salsa, if you'd like. Or you can add some real salad dressing.

Serves 2. Or 4.

Ever wonder how to teach children that they won't be happy getting everything they want? This story would definitely scare that lesson into them.

Coraline is a short book by Neil Gaiman about a little girl and the nightmare world she falls into, and how she tries to escape. A great story about overcoming fears, nerves, what it means to be brave and ultimately that getting what you want can be a very scary thing.

A horrifying story. I can't imagine any child reading this book, unless they are already comfortable with the horror genre. This isn't for your "Harry Potter" readers...

"This book tells a fascinating and disturbing story that frightened me nearly to death. Unless you want to find yourself hiding under your bed, with your thumb in your mouth, trembling with fear and making terrible noises, I suggest that you step very slowly away from this book and go find another source of amusement, such as investigating an unsolved crime or making a small animal out of yarn." [-Lemony Snicket]

But this is an amazing tale. You see, Neil Gaiman is to literature what Tim Burton should have been to film. When I read his books, I see the visual world so clearly and it is a wonderful world, especially Coraline's nightmare world. This is a book I plan on owning.

When we got the piano, I decided I wanted to refinish it. After we got back from Michigan, I took two weeks to sand, stain and varnish the piano. I hope it looks better than it used to. We used a little lighter color, but since the piano used to have different parts stained different colors, the uniform stain was an improvement. Here are some before and after pictures.

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This was my last real week of break before school. I have been trying to take advantage of the last relaxing moments of my life by sitting around and doing nothing, but this week I sort of worked on painting at home. We stopped by campus late last week to pick up my paints and stuff so I could paint from home. And it worked, because I did paint from home this past week. I received a commission from some friends who wanted a monkey painting for their nursery room (they have it safari themed), so I took care of that early on and then dove back into some technical skills projects.

Although we worked real hard this week, we didn't do many interesting things. For example, instead of an action packed Monday evening, Rebecca gave me a hair cut. Wednesday night, we decided to use one more of our free video rental coupons and after wandering the Hollywood video for a long time, we finally chose to rent Over the Hedge, not because either of us wanted to see it, but because we couldn't find anything else in the store we wanted to see less. So, we're not good candidates for Netflix: our philosophy is that if we were to rent the movie twice, it probably means we should just buy the film. But since we don't buy many films, we try to only rent movies that we haven't seen before. And it is hard to determine if a film is worth renting without having a good recommendation (which matches our personal tastes). Over the Hedge was an alright show, very predictable though.

Mostly, this week we read lots of books. I had a meeting with a professor to discuss independent study credits (which I need to fill out a proposal for quickly) and stopped by the library to pick up a pile of books to read. So our evenings passed us by while I painted and Rebecca read stories to me. It's a pleasant and peaceful way to have the time pass.

Saturday, we had double booked service projects: one for Rebecca and one for me. I had originally wanted to drive up to Lehi Park and camp out Friday evening because the campsite manager had some projects that needed to be taken care of Saturday morning. But I was scared off because he kept talking about how cold it gets up in the hills in the evening. Sadly, we should have ignored his words of warning, because it turned out to be in the 70s during the day and not much colder in the evening (probably the 50s) so it would have been a pleasant campout. But now we know where the campgrounds are and instead of fumbling around to find someplace new in the dark, we explored the whole grounds in the daylight, so I believe we'll have to head up there some other weekend. For those of you not from the area, Lehi Park is a large campground owned by the church up in the Santa Cruz mountains. Nice place.

But back to the tale of the two service projects. Rebecca had signed up for helping with a primary kids service project for Saturday morning while I was signing us up for the Lehi Park service project. I guess this is bound to happen when they pass around sign up sheets while we aren't in the same room. So instead of camping out Friday morning (which we were too scared to do in the "cold"), Rebecca went to her service project Saturday morning (early) and then we drove up to Lehi Park to move many truckloads of wood and debris around in the afternoon. By the time we got home, we were exhausted and sore, but we still made it to Kate's potluck/birthday celebration. It was fun and we played too many hours of party games. We're not big party game people [party games are fun once in a while, and good for laughs, but not necessarily "challenging" :) -beck]. After two hours of Apples to Apples and Taboo, we were ready to call it quits.

Funny story about our game of Taboo. We played boys against girls. We were both tied. The last two players were me and Rebecca. Rebecca got three points, and then it was my turn. And I got the word Flamingo to start with. Granted, there could have been several possible approaches to getting my teammates to guess the word Flamingo, but I thought that the easiest way would be to give a visual image that wouldn't include any of the words on the card: I went with Aladdin. I quickly described the scene where Iago tricks Aladdin into leaving the lamp alone so he can steal it, and what was Iago dressed as? Well, apparently, it has been 15 years since anyone except Rebecca and I have seen that movie. And since my brain was dumbfounded by this shocking news - I couldn't think of any other way to explain "Flamingo." Oh well, you win some and you lose some. Was Aladdin really that forgettable of a movie? [just that scene, silly goose! -beck]

[Comtemporary art] is a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

-Al Capp, US Cartoonist

Swiss Chicken (casserole?)
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5-6 Chicken Breasts
1 lb. Sliced Swiss Cheese
1/3 C. Butter
1 can Cream of Chicken Soup
1/2 C. White Grape Juice concentrate
1 box Chicken Stuffing

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Thaw chicken and put it in a casserole pan. Put a generous amount of swiss chess on each breast.
Mix together 1/2 C. White Grape Juice concentrate and 1 can Cream of Chicken Soup in sauce pan and heat up slightly. (This can also be done in the microwave.) Pour over the chicken.

Melt 1/2 C. Butter and mix with 1 box Chicken Stuffing, mix with grape juice and cream of chicken. Spread the stuffing over the top of the chicken creating a top layer of stuffing.
Cover casserole pan with foil and bake for 40-45 minutes. Take the foil off and cook for another 5-10 minutes.

I have been listening to a podcast from the MoMA THINK series on Brice Marden, following his retrospective at the museum. Brice Marden has quickly become a hot item in the past 30 years (is that quickly), but people are collecting and talking about him in the "art scene." The podcast is of a panel including Francesco Clemente and Christopher Wool (others as well) discussing Marden's work and forms.

I believe I am from the group of people who believe painting is dead. Or at least, only alive in a postmodern re-assessing sort of way. If there is anyway to resurrect painting, I'm sure it's through a re-evaluating by critiquing what the modernists did to painting. But what I wanted to discuss doesn't deal with Marden's work, but with some comments made by Clemente and Wool.

Clemente started his presentation by claiming that he isn't a part of the contemporary scene of ideas and instead concerns himself with form. I want to be a part of the culture of ideas and have thought about how the museum culture fits into this culture. Museums are places where history is archived and debated over. Ultimately, the ideas behind history are catalogued and labeled, organized and given organizational structures. Museums, as they exist for art communities, are about what is dead - history. Not to claim that history is dead in the sense of being immaterial and unalive, but dead in the sense that historical ideas are points on which we hang contemporary ideas. Much like a funeral, where everyone talks about how wonderful the person is, now that we have hindsight to their many good points, a historical retrospective attempts to label the dialectics of a previous generation - something not of the now. This labeling is a process whereby ideas are come to be known in the now and hold their presence in the now. It is the process of collecting.

Ultimately, museum art is about ideas and giving meaning to otherwise complacent meaning-items. Ideas from the past existed and had their meaning in their contemporary circles. We, through museums, attempt to possess these ideas and give them our own explanations and objective forms. This is why I have been reaching out to collecting and archiving as my art forms - this realm of ideas is where we get "ideas" from: they are labeled by us, for us, through the process of organization.

There was something else I heard in the discussion of Brice Marden which interested me. Francisco Clemente said that "artwork of our time is dedicated to the celebration of the fact that human experience is something we can not reach." I am reminded of Zen koans and that the dialectic of "never reaching knowledge" have been around for much longer than postmodernist thought, but it is a resurfacing of the postmodernist attempting to return to preEnlightenment thought. Ultimately, I'm reminded of David Ireland and John Cage. More and more, I think about David Ireland.

That's right. I went back to school. This late into the year. While everyone else has been in school for several weeks, I had my first classes today, which turned out to only be one day's worth of classes on Thursday. Pretty uneventful, but at least I'm finally getting back into school.

We didn't do much this week, or at least not much for the first half of the week: I painted at home on personal projects during the day while Rebecca went to work. Then in the evening, we read, worked on personal projects, and ran errands together. The entire week was only building to Thursday and beyond. Thursday, I went to school very early because I have a TA position for a foundations class at 8am. Which means catching a bus at 7:15. And respectively, waking up earlier than that. This is very unusual for me and Rebecca since we moved here to California. In Utah, we would often have semesters which required us to wake up at 7am, but never earlier. Since we moved to California, we've become more night owls, waking up at 8-9 and staying up much later at night. For my TA position, I'm going to need to plan a section on digital 2D art for the end of the semester, so I should get in some teaching time. I am currently enrolled in an artists-teaching-art class which will allow for me to teach in the future. The plan being that I can TA a class this semester, get a good recommendation on teaching, and then be able to have my own foundations course in the future (which will be good prep for professorship).

Sadly, I think I will have to drop one of the classes I would like to take because we're still paying out of state tuition, which increases drastically for each credit hour I take. Instead of being able to take how many classes I believe I am capable of taking or interested in taking, I have to take how many we can (barely) afford. Let's hear a shout of joy for next year and in-state tuition! [assuming of course we pass the appeals process... :)]

My classes seem to be really interesting this semester. Thursday evening and Friday during the day, we got ready for Jon and Faith to come visit us from Oregon. We had hoped to go visit them over the three day weekend we had a few weeks ago, but weather was bad and other things didn't work out, so instead Jon and Faith planned on coming down here this weekend.

They pulled in very late Friday night, so Rebecca and I did our best to stay up for them by watching all kinds of films we haven't seen yet (Raising Arizona, The Cruise, 49 up). While watching The Cruse, I kept thinking about the conversation Rebecca and I had with Camilla and Victor after we sat them down to watch The Devil and Daniel Johnston. Victor pointed out the fascination we have with crazy people - an interesting parallel to the tour guide featured in The Cruise. It was a good documentary, but only if you're interested in that kind of film.

Saturday, we played with Jon and Faith all day. In the morning, after a good breakfast, we drove to campus to show them my studio and where I take classes. In the middle of the day, we played games. In the afternoon, we drove out to Half Moon Bay and enjoyed the ocean. In the evening, we ate at a wonderful hamburger place (probably some of the best hamburgers we've ever eaten). In the night time, we watched movies and played games. It was a good day. It's only sad that they have to leave this morning. But we will see them again soon.

So next week, my classes will be full swing and Rebecca has to take care of sharing time for the Primary kids. But we're excited for another stage of life.

When Jon and Faith visited this weekend, we had nothing planned. But we decided Saturday morning to go spend some time at the ocean, so we packed up the car and took a swift drive to Half Moon Bay. Although it is one of the prettiest beaches in the area, it pales in comparison to Oregon beaches. But that's only because I like how Oregon beaches are set up. Half Moon Bay, as you can see in the pictures, is an amazingly beautiful beach. It's hard not to take a good picture there.

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Eragon (pronounced EHR-uh-gahn) is your average dragon/fantasy tale which follows after the J.R.R. Tolkien legacy. I have avoided this book because of the huge negative press around the relationship between this novel and the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars series. People have claimed the book is cliched and derivative.

And I have to say, it's all true.

But in saying that this is all true, you diminish Star Wars to being a copy of Lord of the Rings and you diminish Lord of the Rings to being a copy of Homer's work and then you keep going from there. So, yes, there are some similarities but those similarities are used in a much better way than most of the DragonLance series and I hear very few people complaining about those. It's because they are fantasy pulp, so get over it.

The one thing I am bothered by was all the hype around the author. Purportedly, this novel was written by a 17 year old boy. I don't believe that. I believe that the person who came up with the story, the characters and the plot was a 17 year old kid, I'd even go as far as claiming that some punk kid wrote a whole mess of words which became this book, but he did not write this book. The editor wrote a good chunk of this book. Read it and see why: no 17 year old would have enough dedication (or knowledge) of how to find out details put into this book.

But, it was entertaining for what it was. Sure there are parallels between this book and others. Aren't there always? Rebecca and I sat down and decided the only two things which are originally Star Wars is the concept of the Force (which both of us are hesitant to really claim as being uniquely Star Wars because this concept exists in many fantasy genre tales, in one form or another), but ultimately the "main bad guy turning out to be your father" is the only plot device Star Wars brought to the world. So live with it.