Don't look at me like that, you old hag.
Apparently one isn't supposed to speak in the library. Even the friendly smile to the withered old bat in the seat next to one is greeted with a certain air of suspicion. No, the proper demeaor is that of intense, curmudgeonly study. If possible, one should possess a debilitating tick or two. It is best, really, if one can mutter to one's self under one's breath, and occasionally walk about aimlessly looking at shelfmarks before forgetting where one's original seat was and so ending up with a whole stack of books on Baroque architecture instead of on Edward Lear.
Furthermore, signs posted on every flat surface remind me that I have undertaken not to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame. It makes me wonder, a bit, who brings in fire or flame. Kindle therein, all right. Sometimes that happens, it's completely understandable - one is reading along peacefully, and whoops, fire/flame is kindled. Happens to the best of us. But bring in? Even Prometheus would have his bag checked at the front door, and I suspect that the guard would not believe that it was a tube full of office supplies. Old P had better watch it, too, because if he did try to bring in the mystery of the gods, the sign informs him that he might incur a fine and would find his reader's ticket in forfeiture pretty smartly.
This article is hideously dull. The author, one Felice Lifshitz, has an annoying habit of using qua every third word. This is a usage which, qua rhetorical device, I find completely ineffective. Furthermore, she has an absolute rash of italicizations, resulting in so much emphasis that one finds one's self a little dizzy by the end of a paragraph. Really!
In an atmosphere so hostile to the affable give and take of civil conversation, I find myself starting to mutter a bit myself, mutter a bit, a bit, myself, yes, a bit, another waffle of lobsters, my good sir, mmmbbffp.
Ahem.
And so, lest I should start to give enterprising and bright-eyed undergraduates chary glances when they sit down, surely it is best that I divert my attention for some short while. To such an end, therefore, I turned my thoughts away from the matter of hagiography and towards you, cognoscenti. Now it's back to work, absent kindled or imported flame of any sort.
Furthermore, signs posted on every flat surface remind me that I have undertaken not to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame. It makes me wonder, a bit, who brings in fire or flame. Kindle therein, all right. Sometimes that happens, it's completely understandable - one is reading along peacefully, and whoops, fire/flame is kindled. Happens to the best of us. But bring in? Even Prometheus would have his bag checked at the front door, and I suspect that the guard would not believe that it was a tube full of office supplies. Old P had better watch it, too, because if he did try to bring in the mystery of the gods, the sign informs him that he might incur a fine and would find his reader's ticket in forfeiture pretty smartly.
This article is hideously dull. The author, one Felice Lifshitz, has an annoying habit of using qua every third word. This is a usage which, qua rhetorical device, I find completely ineffective. Furthermore, she has an absolute rash of italicizations, resulting in so much emphasis that one finds one's self a little dizzy by the end of a paragraph. Really!
In an atmosphere so hostile to the affable give and take of civil conversation, I find myself starting to mutter a bit myself, mutter a bit, a bit, myself, yes, a bit, another waffle of lobsters, my good sir, mmmbbffp.
Ahem.
And so, lest I should start to give enterprising and bright-eyed undergraduates chary glances when they sit down, surely it is best that I divert my attention for some short while. To such an end, therefore, I turned my thoughts away from the matter of hagiography and towards you, cognoscenti. Now it's back to work, absent kindled or imported flame of any sort.
posted by Katie at
7:30 PM
6 jibber-jabber(s)
