Oh who am I kidding Gary, I've got the Suds.

I guess it's Friday again. Not one of my best days. This particular one, I mean. Not Fridays in general. No, this particular day, Friday April 12, 2013, has not been the best day of my life. Neither was yesterday. You see, I'm a little sick right now. [cough] I think by saying "a little" I may be selling myself short. I'm sick enough to not get on the bus tonight that's headed to [cough] West Point to race a bunch of soldiers in the 5k. Which is a shame, because I really like the 5k. It's also a shame because I have only one more race after this, and now that this [cough] one's gone, I will only have raced two 5ks this season.

There's another reason today is not the best day of my life. Course registration for next semester opened up at 7:00 am this morning. It did not go well. I'm going to have to do some politicking if I want to get into a course that I really need to get into. Not need as in want, need as in need. Because I'm going abroad in the spring, and I need to have taken this class by the time I'm a senior. I would take another month of being as miserably sick as I am now to get into that class next semester.

[cough]

Things to talk about that don't make me angry. Hmmm.

I'm now done with the Shakespeare section of my English Lit class. When I first introduced this class in a post at the beginning of the semester, Ms. T has the following to say about the two plays:

Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare: Comedy? Or tragedy waiting to happen? I wrote a paper, lo these many years ago, on it. Lots of dissoi logoi in there. Really like the Kenneth Brannagh adaptation, even Keanu.

Othello, Shakespeare: Mer. Not a fan. Taught it twice in 10H, dumped it. I hope it's good -- drop a post or a paragraph or an email direct if you will. I'd like to see more in it than weak women and sociopathy.

My thoughts:
Much Ado is the second Shakespearean comedy I've read, after A Midsummer Night's Dream in Mr. Brude's seventh grade class. I think I like MND better. More going on in that one. But MAAN had some good parts. And yes, we talked a lot about how, for much of the play, the story could turn into a tragedy. The Beatrice-Benedict interactions were the best parts, in my opinion. But a lot of pretty boring stuff. Hero was a pretty lame character. Don John wasn't that great either.

Othello was okay. I can see why Iago is considered one of the greatest villains in all of literature. Watching him do his thing and seeing how his plans unfolded (and over-unfolded beyond what he was trying to do in the first place) was very entertaining. But most of the other characters were boring. As Ms. T mentioned, the women are very week. Only at the very end does Emilia speak up for herself against the men, something she should have done long ago. And Desdemona is infuriatingly pathetic.

And we watched a little bit of the Kenneth Branagh adaptations of both plays.

Maybe I ought to rank my favorite Shakespeare plays that I've read. I like ranking things (I have all sorts of ranking saved on my computer), and, as with all rankings, this one is subject to change at any time.

1. Macbeth
2. A Midsummer Night's Dream
3. Hamlet
4. Othello
5. Much Ado About Nothing
6. Romeo and Juliet

Alright, enough about that. 'Cause I'm sick and bedridden (that may make it sound worse than it is), I can really just sit here and keep writing about whatever I want. So I'm gonna keep doing that. How about my other classes, then?

History of the American West is always fascinating. We just never read stuff that isn't interesting. We read the firsthand account of a boy who, when he was eleven, was invited to travel far across the country to attend a boarding school in a completely different world learning things that he never dreamed existed. No, the boy's name was not Harry Potter, and no, the school was not Hogwarts. The boy's name was Standing Bear, he was a Lakota, and he was invited by representatives of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs to attend Carlisle Indian school with a bunch of other little Indian children in 1879.
Half of them died in the first three years. USA! USA!

We've also read some stuff on National Parks and conservation by Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir. And we read Frederick Jackson Turner's famous 1893 essay, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History". All three of those guys essentially ignored the fact that Native Americans ever existed.

Actually, I just wrote a short paper this morning for that class. I'll email it in after I proofread it. The paper is about Carlisle Indian School.

And . . . actually I don't have much to say about my two geopolitics classes right now. Maybe later. As in, not this week. I know you're all so disappointed.

Trying to think of other things that happened this week . . .

Oh! I broke 60 in the 400m for the first time in my life! It was during Tuesday's workout. We had warmup + drills + 2x100m + 3x(400m + 400m + 200m) + cooldown, and each of the three sets was faster than the one before. On the very last of the six 400s, I ran a 58, which is about two seconds faster than the one right before, which was about one second faster than my previous PR.

I realize this isn't one of my more fun to read posts. Sorry about that. Next week will be better.

[cough]

Alright, alright. What is this business with me not being able to put pictures in my post? It's not working at all. Me angry. Is all the new layouting to blame?