Wednesday, August 26, 2009

CONTEST WINNER: That Summertime Sound


I put names on slips of paper and pulled em out of a bag. doesn't get more random (or cliche) than that.

the winner is...

tamsterg!

congratulations!

the rest of you can buy the book on AMAZON or get it from your local library. it's a good read, I'd recommend it highly. you can read my full review HERE

I'm going to try to include more giveaways on this site in the future.

to tamsterg, could you please email me your mailing address so I can have the book sent to you? my email is h_erikat89@yahoo.com

7 comments:

Allie said...

i believe i just read onthe green day post that you were 6 in 1995, so you are 20? me too! how the heck do you have your bachalors degree? i came into college as a sophmore (credits from IB & AP) and I still might not even get it by spring 2011. Also why arent we friends? You like my fav band and you live where my dream grad school is (UCSF)

tamsterg said...

Yay!!! Thank yoU!

Hanan said...

Allie,
first off, if by your fav band you mean the Strokes, I don't like them, I ADORE THEM.
secondly, I did a middle college program during junior and senior years of high school so I got my AA two weeks before high school graduation. I went into Uni as a junior, changed my major after the first semester (from Architecture to English lit) and nevertheless finished my degree in three semesters. I don't really sleep and had the tendency to have 25 units a semester, which is more than you're allowed to take normally. I graduated this Spring, and turned twenty three months later.

UCSF used to be my dream grad school then I finally detached myself from my parents' desire for me to go to med school.

I'm gonna be living in the area for the next couple of years (then I'm hoping to move to NYC), so if you do come to SF for school, make sure you let me know if you need a record shopping buddy or something.

thanks for reading the blog!

Allie said...

if "units" is the same thing as credit hours then you are fucking insane! I struggle with 12 or 15. I'm gonna go ahead and assume liberal arts degrees are as easy as I tell myself they are so I can feel better when it takes yall years less than us hard science people to graduate. damn you 1-credit worth but five hour long labs!

Hanan said...

yeah, it's credit hours (one for each hour you're in class per week), and yes I am insane. but I also really love reading and learning, as that is the thing you're supposed to do in university.

hm, well a lot of lib arts majors are easy but English lit is the devil.

they expect you to read Milton in your free time and be able to know all of William Carlos Williams' work, plus be familiar with the entirety of England's history from 1066 onwards, and loads of other stuff.

I always laugh bitterly when science majors think English lit is a joke, all my science major friends KNEW how much time I spent reading and writing. the difference is there isn't so much memorization as there is READ, absorb, absorb, absorb,and WRITE.

I did comp lit too, so I worked with Arabic manuscripts and medieval french poems. I couldn't decide what to write my thesis on so I wrote two, one at 62 pages (on virgin saints in a 14th c. manuscript), the other at 38 (on the Arabic/French stuff).

I learned Latin in my free time. I read Proust's novel my last semester, it was 3500 pages.

I read AT LEAST a whole book a day, and by book I mean those big literary criticism books, at around 250 pages each, just for my thesis, not to mention all of the other assigned reading and writing.

for my thesis, I read every version of the saints' lives of Katherine, Margaret and Juliana I could get my hands on. that includes Latin, Middle English, Old English and Middle French.

here's a random section from my larger thesis:

"The empress is usually considered an important character in Saint Katherine’s tale because the sexual violence which is traditionally directed towards virgin saints is dispelled onto her when she gets her breasts torn off and is executed by her own husband. However, she plays an even more important role in the Auchinleck text, as she instigates Katherine’s most poignant speech.
ȝe, trowe on him
Þat is lord of swiche pouste.
His seriaunce no forȝet he nouȝt
Þat him serue wiþ hert fre.
Certes, dame, y rede þe wel,
forsake Maxens & al his miȝt
For þat ich kinges loue
Þat made þe day & eke þe niȝt (167-170)

It is my speculation that the authors of the Auchinleck text chose to draw attention to this scene because they were remaining faithful to the source text (Bodley 34) itself. Katherine is re-endowed with her rhetorical capacity to convert others in a specifically feminine context. Her words echo a passage from “Hali Meidhad”—a tract found in Bodley 34 which attempts to establish that an earthly marriage is the ultimate desecration of the body and spirit; that it is drenched in shame, pain, and depravity. In summation, Katherine becomes a model for recluses and anchoresses, who indeed must remind each other the glories of leaving worldly men behind for Christ. According to Bodley 34 and the Auchinleck, virgins need not concern themselves with spreading G-d’s word, unless it is within the confines of their community of women. Near the end of the “Hali Meidhad”, the author of states: “now, then, blessed maiden, if you want wealth, take him for your L-rd who rules all that is and was and ever will be”(Savage/Watson 240). This raises many issues as to the audience of the Auchinleck. If the authors of the Auchinleck were concerned with catering to the virginity-obsessed recluse audience of Bodley 34, what does this mean about the audience of the text, or of the authors themselves? Could the authors have been female recluses concerned with the re-amalgamation of spirit and flesh via the written word? Indeed, many of the texts found within the Auchinleck deal with the struggle between the flesh and the spirit. It is possible that the Auchinleck was written with Bodley 34 in mind, even if it is not a text for recluses per se."

Ana said...

Hanan. you are crazy. I just popped on today cuz I missed you and your musical advice, and saw this thread. you are crazy.
um... go bears?!

Hanan said...

Ana! haha well I am absolutely done with all of that now, I decided against doing more lit stuff in grad school. have you started Penn yet? EMAIL ME!