Sheen, Beck, or Qaddafi?

Think you can tell Crazy from Equally Crazy and Also Crazy? Find out in New York Magazine’s fun new game!

Sheen, Beck, or Qaddafi?

The rules are simple: Guess which insane rant belongs to which person: Charlie Sheen, Glenn Beck, or Muammar Qaddafi. Yet the game is surprisingly difficult because when people reach a certain level of insanity they sort of blend together, it would seem.

Jeanie Bueller: Stay clear of this man. He will not cure your neurosis. He will only make it worse.

Enjoy!

At the Lightouse Is Flosshilde and The USC Master of Liberal Studies Program Hostes Wagner Lecture

So, Wagner has been popping up several times in my life this week.

First in the shape of a facebook quiz named “Which Wagner opera character are you?“. I took the quiz, and here is my result:

Flosshilde

You love singing! And swimming. You are one of the Rheindaughters swimming around in the Rhein (where else…?). Your job is to guard the Rheingold. This gold gives the power of the world to whoever owns it. (Then wonder why you and your sisters are just swimming around in a river…)

I am Flosshilde! Which isn’t so bad. I mean, she’s vivacious. And as the quiz creators hint at; she is obviously more into love than power, because she resists using the Rheingold to gain world domination. And according to Alberich, she’s the prettiest of the three Rheindaughters (“Für dumm und hässlich/darf ich sie halten,/seit ich dich Holdeste seh’” says Alberich, ever the smooth-meister). Although I think that that statement should be read in the context of the I’m-horny-and-I’ve-already-hit-unsuccesfully-on-the-two-hot-girls-so-now-I’m-gonna-settle-for-their-dumpy-friend dynamics that we all know from bars and clubs, so who knows, Flosshilde could very well be the ugliest of the three.

Flosshilde is no shrinking violet either, as Aubrey Beardsley captured in his art

Also, I’d like to thank the quiz’s creators for glossing over the fact that Flosshilde (as well as her sisters) is an out-and-out tease who likes to taunt the vertically challenged. I don’t see that as part of my personality.

Scarcely had I finished the quiz before I received an invite on Twitter from the USC Master of Liberal Studies Program to attend a lecture on Wagner’s Ring Cycle. The lecture is called “From Nietzsche to Star Wars: The Wagnerian Power of the Ring”, and here’s a description of the lecture:

Through his “Ring Cycle” of operas, Wagner has profoundly influenced the way we think, feel, and imagine the 21st-century world. A panel of experts, including faculty from the USC Master of Liberal Studies Program, take on how have “The Ring” themes and symbols have permeated 20th-century literature, philosophy, psychology, and even movies and cartoons. No singing required; mind-opening insights guaranteed.

Moderator: James R. Kincaid, USC Aerol Arnold Professor of English and faculty chair, USC Master of Liberal Studies Program

Panelists:

Leo B. Braudy, University Professor and Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature and Professor of English

Hilary Schor, Professor of English, Comparative Literature, Gender Studies, and Law

Roberto Ignacio Diáz, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature

John P. Nuckols, Vice President, Advancement, LA Opera

John Carlos Rowe, USC Associates Chair in Humanities and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity

Dr. Imogen von Tannenberg, translator and author

Register now: http://www.regonline.com/WagnerianPower

From the lecture’s facebook event page

It looks awesome! And that lecture title? It’s as if someone had shaken my nerdy head and made a lecture title based on the random nerdy words that fell out of it. I love it.

The seminar is taking place in Los Angeles, so I can’t be there in person, but the event can be followed live on Twitter, and they even accept questions for the panel from their twittering audience. It will mean that I have to stay up very late on that night, due to the differing time zones, but I am so there. The panel looks great, and I have no doubt that this will be interesting. I’m really looking forward to everyone’s insights on the Wagnerian influence on our culture.

The Moomin Quiz

My mother tells me that as a child I had this weird fixation on personality tests and quizzes. I’d always try out the tests and quizzes in magazines, and I considered them to be a kind of oracles that could look into my soul. I would take the tests with my heart pounding in my chest, and there was no way of convincing me that just because the Disney magazine stated that individuals born on Saturdays were cunning, scheming and greedy individuals who had luck in gambling rather than in love, it wasn’t neccesarily true of me.

Over the years I would say that I’ve developed a more laid-back attitude towards tests and quizzes, which I’m sure is a good thing, because in these internet times the quizzes seem to be countless, and they’re everywhere.

Which moomin character are you? Find out in my quiz!

One of the sites that give out hundreds of new quizzes every day is quizilla.com. Now, while the site is a display of bad, bad grammar and spelling, and general abuse of the English language, and most of the quizzes bear names such as “which bratz doll r u?” and “Date or do Orlando bloom??? girlz only!! *s* *s*”, it was the only site I knew of for creating your own quiz, and so that’s where I went the other night when I had a bad case of insomnia and a vague idea for a quiz.

The result you can see here. It’s a quiz that should determine which character from Finnish Tove Jansson’s Moomin Vally books that fits your personality the best. I invite any one of you who feel like it to take the quiz, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.

(By the way, the Moomin books range as my favourites among children’s literature, and I think they’re pure genius and much more profound than most people give them credit for, and, in particular, more than that awful anime Japanese series will show. But I don’t have the time to get into that issue right now.)

/marie

PS: For those enquiry minds out there, I’m Moomin, apparently. I feel more like the Fillyjonk, but there you are.

See how relaxed I am about not getting the expected result? I’ve come a long way since childhood.

(…)

 *runs off to ask people, desperately, if I really remind them of a fat, male troll*