Day 51: "Celebrate Good Times" by Cool and the Gang

I am having a good day, because although I still don't know what my future will hold, my friend Julie is finally coming to visit! She's boarding her plane in New York right now, and in five hours she'll be landing in Salt Lake--Huzzah! And so, in honor of this event and the fact that things might actually start to be coming together at last, I give you this eighties song (You all know it--now sing it with me!):

Yahoo! This is your celebration
Yahoo! This is your celebration

Celebrate good times,come on! (Let's celebrate)
Celebrate good times, come on! (Let's celebrate)

There's a party goin' on right here
A celebration to last throughout the years
So bring your good times, and your laughter too
We gonna celebrate your party with you

Come on now

Celebration
Let's all celebrate and have a good time
Celebration
We gonna celebrate and have a good time

It's time to come together
It's up to you, what's your pleasure

Everyone around the world
Come on!

Yahoo! It's a celebration
Yahoo!

Celebrate good times, come on!
It's a celebration
Celebrate good times, come on!
Let's celebrate

We're gonna have a good time tonight
Let's celebrate, it's all right
We're gonna have a good time tonight
Let's celebrate, it's all right

Baby...

We're gonna have a good time tonight (Ce-le-bra-tion)
Let's celebrate, it's all right
We're gonna have a good time tonight (Ce-le-bra-tion)
Let's celebrate, it's all right

Yahoo!
Yahoo!

Celebrate good times, come on! (Let's celebrate)
Celebrate good times, come on!
It's a celebration!
Celebrate good times, come on! (Let's celebrate)

(ad lib)

Come on and celebrate, good times, tonight (Celebrate good times, come on!)
'Cause everything's gonna be all right
Let's celebrate (Celebrate good times, come on)
(Let's celebrate)...

I didn't even realize there was a band called "Cool and the Gang" until I looked up this song...something new you learn every day, I guess. Anyway, today is a day to celebrate! Find something that makes you happy and do it, or go out with someone who makes you happy and take a walk, sing a song or just let loose!

Day 50: "No Such Thing" by John Mayer

Welcome to the real world", she said to me
Condescendingly
Take a seat
Take your life
Plot it out in black and white
Well I never lived the dreams of the prom kings
And the drama queens
I'd like to think the best of me
Is still hiding
Up my sleeve

They love to tell you
Stay inside the lines
That something's better
On the other side

I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the
Top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
just a lie you've got to rise above

So the good boys and girls take the so called right track
Faded white hats
Grabbing credits
Maybe transfers
They read all the books but they can't find the answers
And all of our parents
They're getting older
I wonder if they've wished for anything better
While in their memories
Tiny tragedies

They love to tell you
Stay inside the lines
But something's better
On the other side

I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the
Top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
Just a lie you got to rise above

I am invincible (x3)
As long as I'm alive

I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the
Top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
Just a lie you've got to rise above

I just can't wait til my 10 year reunion
I'm gonna bust down the double doors
And when I stand on these tables before you
You will know what all this time was for


'Nuff said... I was always one who colored outside the lines, and I like color. For those of you who have been following this blog and my journey, this is the halfway point. For those of you who haven't, this is still the halfway point...just so you're aware.

Day 49: "From the Antigone" by WB Yeats

This is an interesting poem...It was short, but I also thought it was an interesting direction for Yeats. You do need to know the story of Antigone, however, before you read this poem. Antigone is the story of Oedipus' daughter who wants to bury one of her brothers because Creon, her uncle won't let her bury him properly with all the Greek rites. She goes out at night to bury her brother properly and gets caught...I will let you read the rest. But Yeats' poem "Antigone" discusses the constraints of women, who in Greek times as well as during Yeats' own times, were mainly around to take care of the home and bear children. There were some women who rebelled against this way, such as Antigone, but most free thinking women were punished or ostracized; and so, though many women had opinions, they hid them away and "lived lives of quiet desperation" (Thoreau). This poem discusses Antigone's feelings about being a woman, one who is able to do nothing as she watches her family, and her world, crumble about her.

Overcome -- O bitter sweetness,
Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a girl --
The rich man and his affairs,
The fat flocks and the fields' fatness,
Mariners, rough harvesters;
Overcome Gods upon Parnassus;

Overcome the Empyrean; hurl
Heaven and Earth out of their places,
That in the Same calamity
Brother and brother, friend and friend,
Family and family,
City and city may contend,
By that great glory driven wild.

Pray I will and sing I must,
And yet I weep -- Oedipus' child
Descends into the loveless dust.

Day 48: Lady Windermere's Fan

This is a play by Oscar Wilde that I had never read before, and it is also on the darker, more macabre side of his work. The other works I have read are The Importance of Being Ernest and The Picture of Dorian Gray. I thought that Lady Windermere's Fan would fall into the comedic set, but I was wrong. Not that I didn't like it (It would be a great play to act out and be a part of)--it was just a reminder that though Oscar Wilde is better known for his comedies, he is just as good in other genres and themes. Wilde's work is social commentary on the "Age of Decadence" (1900-1930) in England, also known as the Edwardian Era. Social decorum and manners "come before morals", as Lady Erlynne addresses in this play, and often Oscar Wilde addresses also the deceit behind the masks of social status and gossip. Even now we live in a time where convenience often meets with avarice and crime, when behind the curtain much more happens than the world is made aware. And so we must do all we can to combat these dark clouds of immorality, greed and other social troubles--there are more deadly sins than seven. We must fight with virtue, humility, love and sacrifice, and do what we can to make this world a better place.

Day 47: "Jack's Lament" written by Danny Elfman

Today has been a struggle...I thought I had a reason to celebrate today, because my friend Julie Eccles was supposed to fly in today to see me for the week. She missed her flight (there was a miscommunication on dates), and so she won't be able to come until Monday...:( Also, trying to figure out my future was a struggle. It's just been a tough day; usually I can do something to get over it (That has happened several times with this blog literature, which helps...), but today I haven't been able to. So to express my feelings, I have chosen for my blog literature "Jack's Lament" written by Danny Elfman for The Nightmare Before Christmas. I like the movie and I always enjoyed the idea that Danny Elfman, the composer, sang the voice of Jack, the main character. Anyway, hopefully tomorrow will be better.

There are few who'd deny, at what I do I am the best
For my talents are renowned far and wide
When it comes to surprises in the moonlit night
I excel without ever even trying
With the slightest little effort of my ghostlike charms
I have seen grown men give out a shriek
With the wave of my hand, and a well-placed moan
I have swept the very bravest off their feet

Yet year after year, it's the same old cheer
And I grow so weary of the sound of screams
And I, Jack, the Pumpkin King
Have grown so tired of the same old thing

Oh, somewhere deep inside of these bones
An emptiness began to grow
There's something out there, far from my home
A longing that I've never known

I'm a master of fright, and a demon of light
And I'll scare you right out of your pants
To a guy in Kentucky, I'm Mister Unlucky
And I'm known throughout England and France
And since I am dead, I can take off my head
To recite Shakespearean quotations
No animal nor man can scream like I can
With the fury of my recitations

But who here would ever understand
That the Pumpkin King with the skeleton grin
Would tire of his crown, if they only understood
He'd give it all up if he only could

Oh, there's an empty place in my bones
That calls out for something unknown
The fame and praise come year after year
Does nothing for these empty tears

Day 46: Tu N'en Reviendras Pas, Charlie Brown

Does it sound foreign and yet somehow familiar? That' because it is....Charlie Brown, the famous Peanuts protagonist created by Charles Shultz along with the whole gang, has now been translated into French! The book is my dad's...He gave it to me to use so that I could keep up on my French skills. I took French for six years, and I would say now to you who know a foreign language, this is a good way to keep up on them. Asterix and Obelix is another way, if you are taking French specifically. But if you are taking foreign languages, definitely use comics or short stories to keep up on it--and you'll get some laughs anyway! The book, literally translated, means "You'll Never Remember Charlie Brown", but the original American comics are a book called "You'll Flip, Charlie Brown", if you ever want to read them in English. It was a fun read, but it was also refreshing because I felt like I was still learning.

Day 45: The Jabberwocky

This poem, written by Lewis Carroll for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is a poem I memorized a long time ago in sixth grade...I was just thinking about it today, wondering if it has any real meaning. We know that some of the characters have meanings, such as the Mad Hatter is actually a social problem given in character form (He stood for those of the working class who made hats--they went mad because there was arsenic in either the machinery or some part that had to do with hat making), the Dodo is a manifestation of Carroll himself, because Dodo was a nickname given to him for his stutter, when he could not say his real name, Dodgson. So, like these characters, does Jabberwocky have real meaning--or is it something totally ridiculous (Historians also say he was very much on drugs when he wrote this--why am I not surprised?)? Food for thought...Anyway, here is the poem:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.



“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”



He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.



And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!



One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.



“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.



’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Think about it....And get back to me on what you think!