FRIDAY!

If anyone wants to fall asleep don’t take pills… just pick up a copy of Gadamer’s book and read the chapter “The Ontology of the Work of Art and Its Hermeneutic Significance” It will put you to sleep… it worked for me! Last night wasn’t as productive as I had hoped because of good ole Gadamer and Gell. I fell asleep!

Today was a normal morning except for the fact I actually got out of bed when I was supposed to! (it helps taking a 45 minute nap before dinner and then going to bed at 10!) I went to school and watched as people sprinted around trying to print off their projects and freaking out because the color printer broke. That is why I get things done early. I ate my cheerios and instead of reading watched the drama unfold. Hehe. I am evil I know… but it was entertaining.

Lecture today was Caravaggio. Gah. It was the same old story, but with one of the really awesome guest lecturers who is really entertaining. At least he left out the debate of was Caravaggio gay or not, and liked little boys. That is so old! I observed for the first time today Armistice Day. I am so stupid. I never connected why Veterans Day is on November 11th. Gah! I felt so dumb. Anyways at 11am we had 2 minutes of silence for the end of WWI. Everyone had a poppy on today (actually all of November they have worn them!). Remembrance Day is bigger here than at home. Maybe its because where Im from… but besides getting a day off we don’t do much. Maybe its because we were more removed from the War and we weren’t effected like Europe was, or Britain for that matter. I don’t know… it was interesting anyways.

Then I ate lunch and hung out with Freya. It is just annoying that we have to wait from 11:45-1:30 for class. When we don’t have work we eat and just sit around waiting. I would rather have class again at 12:30 and be out earlier!

As I am every Friday… I am intellectually drained. Our seminar today was long and difficult. We got out 15 minutes earlier than normal but it felt 45 minutes longer. Gadamer was really hard to understand and Gell was boring and so logically that it was common sense. The only thing I really got out of it was Winston Churchill was just as good as the Nazi’s in the propaganda department, and the history of the development of the unicorn. The unicorn part was really interesting actually and I understood it (which is amazing) Basically a unicorn was conceived of by the Swedes/Northern parts of Europe that were near the coast. There were long beautiful horns that were sometimes washed up on the beaches and they were collected. (They were actually from the Narwhal it turns out!) Anyways they took a pre-conceived notion of the horse (which was very important to their society) and added the horn to it and the myth unfolds. (Apparently only “pure” people could catch a unicorn. That would be virgin girls. The unicorn would be drawn to their purity and lay their head in their lap where the virgin girl would kill it for its horn. Yeah… weird. ) Anyways the point of this is that mystical creatures are created by a culture. America could not invent the unicorn because they didn’t have horses until the Spanish. So our brain is influenced by society (duh) and in order to have an image of the unicorn you first need the idea of the unicorn. Only after you have the concept that a unicorn is a horse with 1 horn can you have the word and finally the image. (then the Christians take the unicorn for a symbol of Christ.) Hopefully everyone just learned something! And just think… you learned it for free!

We talked about other things too that were way more theory based but I didn’t really understand all of it and wont try to explain it to you. I felt better that no one understood it though. A lot of stuff about agents, patients and such. It’s a long story :) Oh I completely forgot… I was so happy! My professor is another person on the short list of people who doesn’t think much of the Mona Lisa. My list is up to three… Myslef, Dr. Michael Michael and a guest lecturer.

I rewarded myself with a coffee on the way home and grabbed an Evening Standard. I feel so un-aware of what’s happening in London when I forget to grab my free paper. I love free papers!

Tonight is the trip to the library for internet. I have to look up the Lord Mayor’s Parade that I want to go to tomorrow. I need to know the route. It goes up to St Pauls in the morning and back down in the afternoon. Freya is going in the afternoon but Im going to try to get there in the morning. If I have a good spot and saw everything I wont wait for it to come back down. I ay try to find Freya though in the afternoon and watch it with her so I can do something with someone. Then the fireworks are at 5 on the river which will be cool. I probably wont have internet access tomorrow because the library closes at 5! Everything will go up on Sunday! I have 5 more days (including today) without internet. Im so pumped. I am going to try to get a paper started this weekend so when I have internet I can watch greys in my pjs until I catch up!