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Posted at 10:35 AM
"I was hoping the new Pope would take the name Jesus II. Or, Leroy."
"Leroy would be awesome. That would scare the wrath of God into people." (courtesy of The Dialog Blog)

Habemus papam!

& his name isn't Leroy, either. Viva il Papa -- Papa Benedictus Sextus Decimus, Episcopus Romanus. (Formerly known as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.)

Don't you know how sweet and wonderful life can be?

I haven't posted a real post in forever, and I still don't feel particularly moved to do so, due to a (continued) derth of interesting material. But here's what I will do, I'm will post some sweet links to some of the best recent food-related finds on the internet.

The blog of an itinerant chef, for all the nitty-gritty details.

Recipes! (From The Splendid Table)

And lastly, a blog about farming at small farms in California.

Oh, also: this guy has resumed blogging.

If you want to hear new music and participate in a sociological study, then check out Columbia University's Music Lab website.

Listen to: The Decemberist's newest album, Picaresque. Its story-songs are stunningly beautiful (Of Angels and Angles, The Engine Driver, and We Both Go Down Together are especially good. Breathtaking, actually.), not as cloying as I've found them in the past, with lyrics that will make your heart ache with recognition. Music this good is not made every day--if you want something that really lives up to the fuss made about it BUY THIS ALBUM! (It's the kind of album that when you first hear it--in the car at night, with the darkness smelling of orange blossoms through the open windows--you immediately start trying to sing along with it and impress the lyrics in your memory, so that you can have something that beautiful with you all the time.)

"Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible to himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it."

Redemptor Hominis, Vatican City 1979

I went to the Getty yesterday. It was sunny and warm, we packed a fabulous picnic lunch (chicken on french rolls with sprouts, avocado, tomato, cucumber, lettuce, onion, cheese, mayonnaise, and mustard), stopped for donuts, and then I slept the rest of the way there, which resulted in the two-hour ride feeling like half an hour. I'm not crazy about modern architecture in general, but the museum is big and airy and blindingly white in the sunlight and there are fountains and pools everywhere that are a cool blue against all the white. The six of us (including jack and the buddhist) wandered around and soaked up art and culture inside the museum, and then, shortly before we had to drive back to campus (yes, it's true: Don Rags is not a break and we still have seminar) we went outside and lay on the grass around the garden. I took my sandals off and the sun was warm on the soles of my feet. I fell asleep and woke up a little while later to my feet being tickled... Back in the car (back asleep), back to campus, seminar on the first half of the Paradiso (which didn't suck as much as I thought it was going to). Then I hung out and played music until curfew and collapsed shortly afterward, because I had gotten three hours of sleep the night before (that'll teach me to watch sappy chick-flicks such as While You Were Sleeping and then stay up talking for several hours afterward). Today: Well, it's not sunny anymore (Mother Nature has got to stop toying with my emotions), but I did go out to breakfast with the girls and had piping hot chamomile tea with a lot of sugar and cranked up Jagged Little Pill on the way back to campus for my Don Rags. Which are now, happily, over. They didn't suck (in fact, much to my delight, it was reported that I have "a real sense for literature"--damn straight... & no sense at all for math. c'est la vie), but I need to talk more/more consistently. I know, I know. That's going to be so hard for me to do. Right?

Set me like a seal upon your heart, like a seal upon your arm; for love is as strong as death, jealousy is as hard and cruel as Sheol. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man would offer all the goods of his house for love, he would be utterly scorned and despised.
-- The Song of Solomon

Lab class is only good when we're actually in the lab. When we have to sit around and discuss, oh, say chemical affinities for an hour and a half I begin to feel like at any second I won't be able to take it any more and I'm going to start climbing the walls. But when we get to burn things, or at least heat them until they start emitting a gas (or reacting significantly in any other way), then I'm interested. And the goggles are hot.

Dr. M (from this morning's Theology class) on eulogies and how we're all going to heaven these days: So, I was sitting in the pew and the priest was going on about how nice it was that he (the deceased) was in a duck club, and I was sitting there thinking, "Being in a duck club is not gonna do it!"