It looks like the excitement of my artistic triumph is too much for Squidward.

Did you feel the eathquake? Only a 4. Weaksauce. It should be obvious which one of you I'm addressing here.

In case anyone missed it, on Friday Rachael talked a little bit about art history and asked for our preferences. I started writing about my favorite artists in a comment to her post, but quickly realized that such a small comment box would not do the thing the justice it deserves. For that reason, I am starting out this post with something of a slideshow of some of my favorite members of the art history canon as we learned it, and by that I mean my just a few of my favorite works by white males between 1400 and 1900. An exhaustive list would be exhausting. My apologies to those who don't give a damn.

Death and the Miser by Hieronymous Bosch, c.1494. I love the little gremlin taking the bribe under the curtain. This piece, by the way, is currently in a city that is currently inhabited by one of us.

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1563. Bruegel has lots of other good stuff too. His Proverbs is hilarious.

Church of St. Ignatio Ceiling by Andrea Pozzo, 1685-94. Though I really don't like the subject matter here (aggressive Jesuit missionaries), I have to admit this would be really cool to stand under and look up at.

The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli, 1781. You start to feel sorry for the girl, then your realize that the incubus isn't looking at her. No, he's staring directly at . . . [gulp].

All those images are really high resolution, so in their natural form are superbigified, but I felt it would be best to scale them down to manageable size. If you want to look at them in closer detail, I suggest Google image search with size set to "large", an option that appears on the left-hand side of the webpage. Or, if you want to see a mind-blowingly large image of a great painting, take a look at this,
or perhaps this.That last one wasn't a white guy. Weird, right? Maybe by next week I'll have some more worldy tastes. Wait a minute, I already let you guys see some African art. Remember that exhibit I went to a month or so ago? Yeah, that's on the blog. Look it up. Culture. Mmm.
Alright. Now we're going to go on a quick tour of some of the works of my very most favoritisterist painter, one Caspar David Friedrich, who lived from 1774 to 1840. I will omit what might be my favorite painting of his because, if you viewed my post on the 26th of September, you have already seen it.

Morning Fog in the Mountains, 1808

Moonrise Over the Sea, 1822

Ruins of Eldena, 1824-5

Seashore in Moonlight, 1835

And to close out today's art discussion, I'd like us all to acknowledge the passing of an extremely influential artist a couple days ago, which occurred in a city that one of us currently inhabits, though a different city from the one that houses the Bruegel painting. The artist I am referring to is Ralph McQuarrie, and I do not feel the need to show you his work because you all know it so well, even if you don't recognize his name, for it is none other than Mr. McQuarrie who designed the characters of the original Star Wars trilogy. Think, for a second, about how ingrained the figures of Darth Vader, Yoda, C-3PO, and R2-D2 are in our culture. That's quite the legacy for one man.

But enough of things that are not specific to my week. Come my young apprentices, learn the craft that is living as Derek for one week!

The first thing I would like to say about my week is that I am really, really, really done with everyone on my hall blasting dubstep at all hours conceivable to man. And woman, fine. Calm down, you two. Yes, I am perfectly aware that I am not "done" with it in the literal sense, because of course it will continue, but that will not stop me from being annoyed and doing absolutely nothing about it.

In Biblical Lit we've been reading the Bible. Surprise! (Do any of you ever pronounce the first 'r' in 'surprise'?) God is such a douchebag. One minute it's, "I don't hold grudges, I'm a nice guy, and I definitely won't punish your children for your own errors," and the next it's, "Your father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's sister's father's father's father's father's  father's mother's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father sacrificed a she-goat to the Asheras of the Canaanites. So now you get to die a slow and tortuous death." Right.
And another thing. Whatever you do, don't mess with Jael. Ever. Or she will drive a tent peg into your head while you're trying to crush a nap, and then you'll go to hell and she'll become a legendary heroine. Don't forget the 'e' at the end of that word. And that's a verbatim translation of the Hebrew in Judges 4:21.

And now, using the Bible as a starting point, I am going to lead us to a quick discussion of Spongebob Squarepants. Watch as the genius unfolds.

"She broke your throne, she cut your hair."

In the Bible we have the story of Samson and the story of David. Both of those stories are referenced in the song "Hallelujah". That song is played in Shrek, specifically in that sad scene where it seems to the eponymous character and his object of desire that they will never see each other again. At the end of the movie, the song "I'm a Believer" plays. Neither of these songs are original version; the original version of "I'm a Believer" was sung by the Monkees, of which Davy Jones was a member. The only reason I know this is because he died last week and therefore figured prominently in the news. Now, the name Davy Jones is not simply the name of a deceased British musician, it is also, as I am sure you know, two thirds of a euphemism for the seafloor, as in "What happened to Palinurus?" "Oh, he's in Davy Jones' locker." Now the path to Spongebob is clear. As anyone familiar with the episode "Born Again Krabs" knows, the Flying Dutchman (voiced by John Rhys-Davies, the actor who plays Gimli in the LotR trilogy, who also voices Manray in some other Spongebob episodes) sentences Eugene H. Krabs (Yes, I know all of their first names. Plankton's is Sheldon. Fact.) to an eternity in Davy Jones' locker, which he eventually gets out of by selling Spongebob's soul for 62 cents, which Spongebob gets out of by trying to befriend the Dutchman.

We talked about Maxwell's equations today in Physics. As my (stuck up and annoying but still a good teacher) professor very unoriginally put it,

"And God said

and there was light."

British History is getting pretty crazy. Civil war and stuff, ya know? Poor Charles.
I turned in a short paper for the class on Thursday. That was fun. But not as much fun as my professor has teaching this class. He gets really into it and thinks things are funny that really aren't, which makes for an entertaining lecture.

Dur-er.

Ma-SACC-io!

World Lit is getting interesting. Last Friday I handed in a paper comparing Shamhat (the prostitute in The Epic of Gilgamesh) to Eve (the non-prostitute in Genesis), which I think I did a pretty good job on. [By the way, don't try to understand the captions of the pictures on either side of this text. Yes, they are both the names of the artists who created them, but the way in which I have chosen to pronounce them reflects an inside joke that, unless your name is Nicole Danser, you will not get.] Better than my British History paper, anyway. I think. Now that I've said that I'll probably end up with a better grade on the history one. Either way, we're done with really old stuff in the class, and now we're reading Waiting for the Barbarians by the South African writer J.M. Coetzee, which I intend on finishing tonight. It's pretty good so far. Hopefully it stays that way. But it probably won't have as much of an effect on me as the other books written by an author born in South Africa that I can think of. Anyone know who this is?
I haven't really talked about my professor for this course. He teaches Italian here as well as comparative literature, and, being born and raised in Italy, has a pretty thick accent that I can understand most of the time. Whenever he tries to say "particular" it comes out as "particyurur" and this is funny.

Here's the thing about Middlebury: Everyone cares so much about the environment that it gets in the way of everything else. I realize you have all just thrown up your arms and let forth a roar of disgust, and now you are storming away, soon to return to finish reading this because you want further evidence that I am evil incarnate. But hold your scathing wrath for one quick paragraph; allow me to explain.
There are lights in the various rooms in Bicentennial Hall. As their are in virtually all rooms on all college campuses, at least in the world we have grown up in. These lights, much the same as many but not all of their unnumbered counterparts spread across the Four Corners of Civilization (hands up if you know the specific reference), turn on at the press of a button, and they turn off at the press of the same button. Simple, right? Not here. Not at Middlebury. Not where 25 hundred self-righteous young people gather at 44˚N just to prove that they don't need climate change, despite the fact that every one of us would welcome it with open, short-sleeved arms. No, we need lights that turn off after 30 minutes, because that way nobody can accidentally leave one on all night and consequently destroy the planet. And as a result, every time I work in Bi Hall, I do my thing for half an hour completely unburdened by thoughts of good people with good intentions doing bad things (unless I'm reading about Puritans in 17th century Scotland, as I have been lately), when all of the sudden I hear the infernal beeping that tells me the light has been on for 29 minutes and you've got 60 seconds before you are plunged into darkness, not average everyday darkness I tell you, but Advanced Darkness. (Yes, I made use of that poriferan joke last week, but no, I could not resist using it here.) And then I've got stop working, stand up, walk over to the button, press it once to turn off the beeping which would cease shortly anyway but not soon enough, press it a second time to turn on the light, walk back to my place of sittage, sit in my place of sittage, and resume work. The horror, the horror.

And now that you've waited patiently, valiantly fighting the urge to skip down to these words from the outset, I will reward you with the most important of knowledges. And here it is: The Ducks, barring a miracle a la 1980, aren't gonna make it this year. They have 16 games remaining on the schedule, and they'd have to win at least 14, more likely 15 of them to qualify for the playoffs. That hurts me. But just as long as the Kings don't make it (they're on the fence), I won't have to off myself. Hopefully Selanne will sign on for another year. Hopefully they trade Visnoksky in the offseason. Hopefully Fowler turns into the second coming of Scott Niedermayer. But that's not likely to happen any time soon.

I've been slowly wading my way through the Hitchens book. Not because it's boring, because it isn't, but because I never don't have reading to do for class, so most nights I don't get to it. I have, however, enjoyed two of his essays in particyurur that I have read in the last week. The first one was his book review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which contained some opinions that I agree with and some that I don't. More interesting and entertaining, though, was the essay that comes right after that one in his book. It is titled Why Women Aren't Funny, and I shall say no more of it here lest I incur the wrath of some of my audience; let me just leave the subject with a strong recommendation that you read it before you declare it anathema. Then you may tear it apart at will.

He knows, man. He just knows.

And, oh what do you know, I have found it online. It isn't terribly short, and I don't want you to read it if you're in a hurry. But when you have the time, I encourage you to take a peek.

Rachael wants a question, a riddle, something like that. Well, I've already asked a question; it appears right at the bottom of the Expulsion painting. To paraphrase: Which author, born in South Africa, is important to me? I'm not worried about the picture giving it away because I figure if you can recognize him at this pre-fame age, you probably know he's from South Africa anyway.

That's all I've got for you this week. I'd like to remind you that I miss all of you very much; you know this already, but I can't help but think that it's something I can't repeat often enough. Now go back to your learning, and do try to enjoy it.