12February2007

Courtesan - Prostitute or kept woman(Pic from Memoirs of a Geisha).

• Octogenarian - a person of eight generations(in their eighties).

Manon>Set in France and Louisiana in the early 18th century, the story follows the hero le Chevalier Des Grieux and his lover Manon Lescaut

Violetta Valery> Baz Luhrmann's 2001 film Moulin Rouge! was inspired by the story.

Odette> of Swan Lake fame. (This link is pretty cool.)

Anna Nicole Smith>In 1997, she recorded a cover version of "My Heart Belongs To Daddy," originally made famous by Marilyn Monroe. The song was released in France and a video featuring Smith was made to promote it.[citation needed]

• Roman Comedy - The comic slave who is smarter than his master has had a long history and has a number of descendants in the form of servants in novels and movie and television comedies, like Jeeves, Hazel, Mary Poppins, Benson, Mr. Belvedere, and the Nanny.


• George Eliot - George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Anne Evans[1] (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), who was an English novelist. She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological perspicacity.


• Screed - A long discourse or harangue.


• Genius - In Roman mythology, every man had a genius and every woman a juno (Juno was also the name for the queen of the gods).



• Life once again has imitated art with Anna Nicole Smith's tragedy.

"Fogs don't exist," One of my favorite parts in Eragon (The Inheritance) : When Eragon and Brom first meet Angela, she is trying to prove that all toads are, in fact, frogs. She thinks that this will mean that, as toads do not exist, they cannot harm people by giving them warts or being used in evil potions. Eragon remains unconvinced. This is brought up again in Eldest; wherein she remarks that "All toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads". This she uses as a basis for her claim that she was "right all along".

So this is art imitating art, and the past becomes the present. Christopher Paolini changes but one word from fog to become frog, and now it is a "new" story.

We must imitate art this weekend, so don't be a toad.

Cleopatra's knot intrinsicate -

• CLEOPATRA: This proves me base:If she first meet the curled Antony,He'll make demand of her, and spend that kiss which is my heaven to have. Come, thoumortal wretch, tan asp, which she applies to her breastWith thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate of life at once untie: poor venomous fool be angry, and dispatch. O, couldst thou speak, that I might hear thee call great Caesar unpolicied!

Hamlet's mortal coil - the phrase “mortal coil,” meaning “the bustle of life.” by Shakespeare(complete works)

• ‘Hamlet’: ‘For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause.’ It seems to mean ‘the earth, this place’ or something similar -- but why is that?”

Eccentric - off center, unfamiliar (funny, this is a word that I use to describe my favorite people.) Eccentricity is often associated with genius, giftedness, or extreme creativity; the word itself is often employed to euphemize or invert a connotation of madness hence the phrase "there's a method to his madness", implying inscrutable complexity or originality in lieu of the dismissible randomness of common lunacy.

Antigone's reference to Niobe - pg. 188 of Metamorphosis(can't get the book? check this out!)