Philosophos, "a lover of wisdom"

It's so weird that no one ever took any interest in ancient Egypt. A large portion of my day was spent reading all about it, and now that I'm an expert, I'm pretty sure people should start making movies and writing books on the subject. I would even suggest that it be taught in classrooms, and maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but wouldn't it be cool if someone spent $44 million making a movie about Cleopatra?

Oh, wait a minute. Someone did.

Phil and I started watching Cleopatra (1963) last night. We decided to break it up into four one-hour segments because it's absurdly long, and due to an obnoxious compulsion to dissect every movie I watch, I couldn't fully enjoy it without a better understanding of Alexander the Great. So I started my morning off with too much coffee and a short documentary about Alexandria, Egypt...

A kindly British lady (whose name I didn't catch) informed me of Alexander's thirst for knowledge and how it set the stage for Alexandria to become the epicenter of intellectualism in the ancient world. The city's Great Library, established circa 300 BC, managed to amass a collection of 500,000 books in a time period when all of six or seven people knew how to write [citation needed]. But in spite of the massive effort by the Ptolemaic dynasty to gather all the world's knowledge within the walls of the Royal Library, it was eventually destroyed and everything was lost.

The only book present in both my "library" and the Ancient Library of Alexandria.

...which brings me to the point I've been dying to make for several paragraphs now. Even though the ancient library was destroyed, Alexandria maintains a library today that contains roughly 500,000 books. What's better still is that they house a supercomputer, and it's only purpose is to record the entirety of the worldwide web every couple of days. You know who that includes, don't you? 

YOURS TRULY. 

My inner narcissist did a cartwheel when she heard the news. If the modern Library of Alexandria sees fit to record my thoughts, then they must count for something, right? It's surely the end result Alexander desired! Now, here's hoping an alien race one day discovers my memoirs and bases their entire perception of humankind on my blog alone. Feel free to record your legacy in the comments section. 

The List

Part I: The Project

My project is coming along nicely. I fnished my second patch this afternoon, and it's time for the big unveiling:

Ta-da!

To be honest, I'm not terribly impressed with the turn-out. It too closely resembles ClipArt for my liking, but I haven't yet decided to give up on the theme. I think it'll help to make the next piece a little less abstract. Hopefully the juxtaposition will gloss over any resemblance it has to something one might find in Microsoft Word. It's all about context, I think...

Context, I tell you!

Part II: The List

Intriguing, huh?

"The List" is taped to the side of my bookcase. It's a catalog of the books I own and haven't read yet. If everything goes according to plan, I will have finished all 27 by 2014. I guess you could call it an early New Year's resolution, and it's going to require a lot of discipline on my part. As someone who isn't exactly famous for her self-control, this may prove problematic. To help motivate me, I've made a personal commitment not to purchase a single book or even set foot in a library until I've crossed off every item. I've already knocked out Room by Emma Donoghue, and I'm about halfway through The Book Thief by Markus Zusak right now.

The Book Thief grabbed my attention when I saw an advertisement for the theatrical adaptation at a bus-stop downtown. I'm sure my impulsiveness is the reason I've amassed all these books so much faster than I can read them, but that's beside the point because my only reason in bringing it up is to say that it's a good book. Even if I haven't finished reading it, it's clear already that it's entertaining and well-written. What more could you ask for? 

That's all for now. More later...