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July 11, 2002

Why I Failed Physics

Here's how it went:

Kristen: So you're reading the L'Engle books, eh?

Michele: Yep. I'm up to the ones where Meg and Calvin are grown up and have kids. Seven of them. Holy God.

K: Yeah, later on Meg's mother explains it by saying she thinks Meg didn't want to compete with her on a science level so she had a bunch of kids as a copout.

M: But Meg's mother had four kids, and she won a Nobel prize for discovering farandolae at the same time. You know, those small, friendly creatures who live inside your mitochondria?

K: Right, but Meg's mom was in a pretty stable environment. See, Meg had to be with Calvin on all these remote islands and stuff while he did his science experiments, so she had to home-school the kids a lot.

M: Well couldn't she just live somewhere civilized and wait for him?

K: See I think she had separation anxiety after all those years she spent waiting for her father to come home from that other planet.

M: Oh, yeah. So what happened to Charles Wallace?

K: Oh, he does top-secret missions for the government. Wait, no, that's Denny. Or was it Sandy? Oh yeah, they all do work for the government.

M: Cool.

K: Yeah. Did you get to the part yet where they regrow that girl's arm using research on the regenerative abilities of starfish?

M: Wow, science is so keen.

K: Yeah, and just think: none of it would be possible without the man upstairs.

M&K: Thank you, God!

M: Wanna try and fold space in half so we can go see other planets?

K: Neat!

Posted by didofoot at July 11, 2002 02:43 PM

Comments

HA HA HA HA HA!!

so she dates this boy and he dates this other girl and then his brother dates the same girl and in the meantime they all travel thru time and save the planet with the help of our holy savior time and time again? spiffy!

how do they even have the time to birth so many kidlings when all the time they are in the future or the past or with dragons, unicorns, or strange furry aliens named sporos who dance around trees and giggle EVILly? oh wait possibly it's because of the huge tracts of time which go unnoticed between books. first she's in high school. whoo now she's pregnant. oh oh oh now there's 7 of them. ALL WITH THE SAME NAMES AS HER BROTHERS. except for 3 of them who don't ever get named. even though that whole 2nd book was all about NAMING things. where's the imagination which produces uber-fake science now madeline? where but only where?

Posted by: michele at July 11, 2002 02:50 PM

The best part is in the other series, where the heroine decides to stop dating the boy who wants to buy her nice meals and make out with her, and instead turns to the boy who likes to turn cartwheels and swim with dolphins. I think we can trace my lifelong (unhealthy) interest in gay and asexual men to RIGHT HERE.

Posted by: didofoot at July 11, 2002 02:54 PM

hey! i liked cartwheel boy!

but then again i never read the one with the other boy.

Posted by: michele at July 11, 2002 03:19 PM

i can't believe it. a madeline l'freakin-engle discussion. i've been hanging out with the wrong crowd lo these many years.

just so we're on the same page, she wrote "a wrinkle in time," right? where the lady turns into a centaur and they go to the town where the kids are bouncing the balls in unison, and then the fourth-grader takes an amorphous blob of all-color play doh, sticks it on the end of a pencil, and calls it a model of IT because he didn't start his project until the night before?

so it was all about god? how did i miss that? goddamn california public schools.

Posted by: tokamack at July 11, 2002 03:52 PM

how DID you miss that? all the time they are like, "god wouldn't let anything bad happen to our farandolae names sporos." and "god will stand between us and the dark." and "i call upon god in this final hour, and the snows with their whiteness and the rivers with their swiftness and the sun with its heatness and my heart with its giddy love of godness and most of all throw open the doors of heaven and let my chuck in because he is not an idiot!"

the whole thing is this big scientific deluded worship of god.

and oh sweet fried jesus christ in a chicken basket the singing stars. the fucking stars that sing.

i love you god!

he might believe me more if he liked me. but it is too late after the whole shin kicking cripple incident. godammit.

Posted by: michele at July 11, 2002 04:03 PM

please, baby jesus, make it stop! (hi millers.)

that rant was so beautiful to anyone who has memorized the books. so just me then.

the books about the austins are even godier. gaudier. heh. they've got all kinds of hymn-singing and no-premarital-sex-havin'.

Posted by: didofoot at July 11, 2002 04:10 PM

anything about that book. we only had about 25% of the copies we needed, so we got into groups of four and took turns reading aloud in small circles, while six other groups of four were doing the same in close proximity, making it completely impossible to follow anything. so all i remember is the centaur, the play doh brain, and something about water.

i stand by my california public schools comment.

Posted by: tokamack at July 11, 2002 04:12 PM

mmmmm play doh.

what is it about the smell of play doh that is so appetizing? what is that smell?

we should sue the school system for indoctrinating us with religious propaganda when we were in 3rd grade or whenever you read that. i mean look at the pledge of allegiance. we might have a case. i would have more of a case if i had read that for school at any point. sadly for me though no. i was too busy trying to make it through that book about the rabbits. what was that book called? hmmmm...stumper...

Posted by: michele at July 11, 2002 04:17 PM

and p.s. if the school is going to force you to read what amounts to a christian fanfic about god, why not narnia? at least they had sword fights and never actively misled anyone about science.

Posted by: didofoot at July 11, 2002 04:18 PM

michele, I believe you are thinking of Watership Down(s?) (book of rabbits).

Posted by: didofoot at July 11, 2002 04:20 PM

yeah! rabbits!

Posted by: michele at July 11, 2002 04:21 PM

which also segues nicely into me wanting to see black hawk DOWN.

ah josh hartnett....

ah ewan mcgregor....

ah two-timing....

Posted by: michele at July 11, 2002 04:22 PM

christian fanfic. i love it.

when you mentioned a rabbit book i was thinking rabbit hill. you want to talk about misleading children? "hey, if you don't put up a fence, the rabbits will respect you and not eat your crops. but if you do, they'll eat them out of pure spite." thank IT no one in the burbs has to be an actual farmer.

the worst thing about rabbit hill, though, is that it was printed in brown ink for some reason, so after reading two hundred pages of that your eyes got accustomed to a certain degree of contrast, and then why you try and read a normal black ink book you feel like you're staring at the sun.

Posted by: tokamack at July 11, 2002 04:26 PM

"thank IT no one in the burbs has to be an actual farmer."

A disturbing number of burb-raised kids DID go into information technology though...

Posted by: didofoot at July 11, 2002 04:28 PM

I don't get it. But you funny girl and real smart-like.

Posted by: tracy at July 11, 2002 04:30 PM

IT was the villain in a wrinkle in time, and IT is also the abbreviation for information technology...it's like my whole peer group read the scene in the book where IT made everyone look act think alike, and with one voice my peers said "YES! that's for me!"

Posted by: didofoot at July 11, 2002 04:34 PM

So THIS is what you guys do all day at work!

Posted by: Kimsta at July 11, 2002 04:35 PM

naw, sometimes we go over and comment on tracy's site.

http://www.redhott.blogspot.com

BLATANT PLUG

Posted by: didofoot at July 11, 2002 04:37 PM

THANKS KRIS!!

Posted by: tracy at July 11, 2002 04:39 PM

kimsta! nice to "see" you!

or jacob's or gene's or anyone who is special enough to have comments feature which rules me out right there. blatant plug at gene. sorry gene.

brown ink! rub your nose in that for a while.

Posted by: michele at July 11, 2002 04:42 PM

well these cretins have nothing better to do so lets you and I rile em up

Posted by: at November 27, 2002 04:44 AM

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