woe is upon us

avril is engaged to that sum41 guy. what will i tell the kids at day care when they ask about my girlfriend now?

EDIT: a well turned phrase is just like a well turned ankle. they both make for good butlers.

wow

that was good.

There is a Garden in her face: deciphered

Thomas Campion's "There is a Garden in her face" is a Petrarchan conceit, extolling the beauty and chastity of a virtuous fruit seller. Using floral imagery, the woman, whom we will call "Cherry" for future reference, is described to be bountifully beautiful. The most prominent characteristic of her face are her lips, metaphorically protrayed as cherries, plump and red. Campion's ideal woman starkly contrasts the promiscuous women of his day and it is with this contrast that he critiques the state of society in his time.

The "Garden" (Campion, 1) is a direct reference to the Garden of Eden, and by using it to represent Cherry's face, Campion is suggesting two things: that she is a creature of God, and, as such, a pure and innocent being. Cherry's face is explicitly referred to as "a heav'nly paradice [...]/ Wherein all pleasant fruits doe flow" (3, 4), a common description of Eden. "Her eyes like Angels" (13) stand on guard with "bended bowes" (14). Following the Fall of Man, God placed a cherub and a flaming sword to guard the only entrance into Eden. Cherubim, plural for cherub, are also seen guarding other important things, such as the lid of the Ark of the Covenant and the Temple of Solomon. As such, they are not cute little angels to be trifled with. Biblical imagery encompasses this poem and its moral values are, to a certain extent, represented by the character of Cherry.

The cherries in the poem are used to describe her plump, red lips, as the focal component of the conceit. They "fayrely do enclose/ Of Orient Pearle a double row" (7-8), beautiful pearly teeth. While overtly referring to the lips of her mouth, the embedded metaphor in "Cherries" (7) also refers to another pair of lips. The treasure trove of "Orient Pearle" (8) are obviously teeth, but in the context of the embedded metaphor, they suggest that Cherry's other set of lips also "enclose" (7) a treasure much more cherished. Both pairs of lips serve to guard Cherry's chastity, as figurative and literal doorways.

Cherry is a London street vendor, imaginary or otherwise. The refrain "Cherry ripe themselves doe cry" (6, 12, 18) is an allusion to the cry of a fruit salesperson, announcing the fresh ripeness of his or her wares. Fruit vending was a vocation most common to the female population, mostly due to the laws that did not allow women an education beyond what was necessary to bear children. As such, income was a definite problem for most unmarried women in the big city. They resorted not only to the selling of fruits on the streets by day, but to selling their bodies in the dark alleyways by night. This was not uncommon. Cherry is contrapuntal to the societal pattern of Campion's day. Though she was a fruit vendor, her body remained her own, "which none may buy" (5) until she gives her assent: "Till Cherry ripe themselves doe cry" (6, 12, 18).

"There is a Garden in her face" is Thomas Campion's little snub at the state of his society, in the guise of a romantic poem. His love object, Cherry, is a beautiful and virtuous fruit vendor - a virtually unknown breed of fruit vendor in the 16th century streets of London. Cherry is protective of her chastity, dispelling any lustful stares or errant hands with a "piercing frowne" (15) and a sharp retort. Cleverly wrapped in a common romance poem package, he paints a picture of how women should cherish their bodies as they would gifts from God. While Campion has since died and fruit vendors no longer moonlight as prostitutes, the same problems still persist in our society today.

There is a Garden in her face

Thomas Campion

(1567-1620)

There is a Garden in her face

There is a Garden in her face,
Where Roses and white Lillies grow;
A heav'nly paradice is that place,
Wherein all pleasant fruits doe flow.
There Cherries grow, which none may buy
Till Cherry ripe themselves doe cry.

Those Cherries fayrely doe enclose
Of Orient Pearle a double row,
Which when her lovely laughter showes,
They looke like Rose-buds fill'd with snow.
Yet them nor Peere nor Prince can buy,
Till Cherry ripe themselves doe cry.

Her Eyes like Angels watch them still;
Her Browes like bended bowes doe stand.
Threatning with piercing frownes to kill
All that attempt with eye or hand
Those sacred Cherries to come nigh,
Till Cherry ripe themselves doe cry.

decipher!

i am a mammal. more on this later.

LATER:
mammals have warm blood. that is, a central heating system that allows them to frolick in otherwise uncomfortable climes. as such, i, as a mammal, can play hockey on the cold, cold ice, whereas lizards, generally accepted as the generic non-mammal, will liken the hockey experience to something along the lines of "uncomfortable lack of heat". on the other hand, having central heating comes with a cooling mechanism for hot, hot days of dancing under the hot, hot sun to Hot Hot Heat. lizards, by and large, have no such luxury and will find it difficult to dance on a hot, hot day under the hot, hot sun to Hot Hot Heat. however, they will still find the vibrations in the ground, generated by the band's amplification system, to be happy. mammals, that is bi-pedal ones with rubber soles, do not get to experience the thrill that is splaying on the ground and jiggling to the lower frequencies of Hot Hot Heat down to the tip of your detatchable tail.

the moral of the story is that mammals and lizards have had a millenia-long hot, hot hate relationship. no one really knows when it began or who started it. reptimammalian relation historians have hypothesized that it all began with the exploitation of dinosaurs in Hanna "the Barbarian" Barbera's phrehistoric production of The Flintstones as household appliances and other such anachronistic paraphenalia. what reptilian protesters fail to note is the use of prehistoric mammalian appliances as well, i.e. mammoth vacuum cleaner, human foot brakes. needless to say this resentment has been fueled in more contemporary times by movies such as Jaws (sharks are just water lizards and you know it), Anaconda I/II, the Jurassic Parks and that Discovery Channel special on predators, which featured a crocodile (super lizard) ambushing a wildebeest (mammal) while at a local watering hole trying to pick up a nice, lean female wildebeest. the unfortunate, lovelorn wildebeest was later avenged in India when a Bengal tiger (mammal) attacked a lazing crocodile.

now crocodiles generally fear nothing, and for good reason too. they are the biggest, baddest non-mammals left on land since the tyrannosaurs roamed Kansas in the late Cretaceous. row upon row of wicked, jagged teeth line their long, muscular jaws. leathery armour lines their backs, protecting them from anything short of a crocodilian attack. in the case of the Indian tiger vs. crocodile, the tiger pounced upon the hapless crocodile, straddling its back, out of reach of the teeth, claws and whippersnapping tail (proving that non-lovelorn mammals are smarter than the average reptile), and dug a claw into a flaw in the armour. after a few hours of prying and gnawing, the tiger had dug herself a handsome crocodile hole at the base of said crocodile's barely identifiable neck. satisfied, the tigress strolled off to wash up while the crocodile wallowed for another 3 hrs in agony before succumbing to it's grievous injury. the tigress later came back with cubs and had a nice riverside meal to cap off a tiring day.

that's not to say that mammals are better than lizards in general; it's pretty evenly matched as evidenced by Godzilla's various forays into the heart of Tokyo culture. what can be seen in these instances is that mammals can actually set aside their differences (if only momentarily) with another dastardly foe to defeat a common enemy. that dastardly foe is the Bug. let's face it, mammals don't like bugs. they live in their furry places, bite them, poison them, find ways inside to steal a meal... bugs are annoying. however, reptiles don't fancy them much either, but more often making meals of them as bugs have an inherent weakness to cold-blood. this momentous occasion of "the enemy of my enemy's is my enemy" culminated in 1964 when Godzilla took exception to Tokyo being hit by a typhoon and decided to raise a ruckus. the natives of the land (small, pale, dark-haired mammals with a penchant for improving on lowly western products) enlisted the help of overseas mammals (rotund, very pale mammals with a penchant for shoddy workmanship and stormtrooper accuracy) to try to quell the furious beast from the East. after an ineffectual salvo of missiles missed their mark again, the natives turned to their only hope, a huge mother of a flying Bug, Mothra. though upset at an earlier merchantile misunderstanding (someone pawned off her typhoon swept egg and decided to artificially incubate it), decided that Godzilla was a threat too great to be ignored (recall that lizards eat bugs and that bugs have a weakness to cold-blood, fire type pokemon and being eaten). after a vicious battle (Mothra flapped for awhile and then spewed sparkly pollen before dying) Godzilla appeared victorious. however, the incubated egg, due to the ingenuity of the native mammals and the short gestation period of the bug, hatched! and the larvae horked up a major loogie that broadsided the flailing Godzilla, thereby drowning the lizard in the very ocean that he lived and breathed in.

rory

i've never noticed before, having never really watched Gilmore Girls or Sin City, but Alexis Bledel has very, very pretty eyes. they're huge, electric blue and would be scary if they were on a robot. and she's extremely white, which leads me to believe that she might actually be a killer robot from Krikkit, but i digress. this is alexis seen at the premiere of her new movie, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, sporting an excellent haircut.