and now for something completely indifferent

This is in lieu of a real entry, 'cause really, who wants really entries? Actually, the real entries will be forthcoming, once I gear the little rig up and move myself into academic mode. Some neat things are in the works currently, not the least of which is my decision to return to Nipissing for my Bachelor of Education. Thanks to everyone who sent notes of congratulations. I think this will end up being a leave of absense, so to speak, from academia, more than the Exit, stage right that I am sometimes afraid of. TAing this term has really made me like teaching again, so this is promising.

Holy crap, there is a spider in the keyboard. Scary! (Yes, in, not on).

Anyhow. The promised non-entry, before this one looks too much like one of my actual entries:

01. What is the total number of music files on your computer?
I think I've topped out at about 700 right now, but I haven't really counted in a while. My intense downloading days are long passed.
02. What is the last CD you bought?
Tori Amos's The Beekeeper. I'm a bit of a latecomer to the Awesomeness that is Tori, but I'm figuring stuff out.
03. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message?
I'm not sure in terms of actual stats, but the last song in my head was The Beatles' All My Loving.
04. Name the five(ish) albums that mean the most to you. (Not the 5 albums you would take to a desert island.)
i) Twice Removed (Sloan)
ii) Blue (Joni Mitchell)
iii) Recurring Dream (Crowded House) [Yes, I know it should be a real album here and not a greatest hits, but I can't tell you the number of hours spent listening to this on various roadtrips, and it went to France with me when I was fifteen.]
iv) Please Please Me (The Beatles) [Again, could have chosen Sgt. Pepper, but this album is just very me. Very young me, but very me nonetheless.]
v) We Were Born In A Flame (Sam Roberts Band)

05. Name the five songs you are listening to the most right now.

i) When You Come (Crowded House)
ii) Yer So Bad (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers)
iii) Ain't That A Kick In the Head (Robbie Williams)
iv) The Philosophers' Beer Drinking Song (Monty Python)
v) How to Fight Loneliness (Wilco)

06. Name the first five best lyrics that come into your head.

i) "When you come to cover me with your kisses hard like armour/ the sooner the better now" (Crowded House; When You Come)
ii) "I want you to know I feel completely at ease/ you can read me like a book/ that's fallen down between your knees/ please/ let me have my way with you" (Crowded House; It's Only Natural)
iii) "To those of us who knew the pain/ Of valentines that never came/ And those whose names were never called/ When choosing sides for basketball/ It was long ago and far away/ The world was younger than today/ And dreams were all they gave for free/ To ugly duckling girls like me" (Janis Ian; At 17)
iv) "Rely a bit too heavily on alcohol and irony./ Get clobbered on by courtesy, in love with love, and lousy poetry./ And I'm leaning on a broken fence between Past and Present tense./ And I'm losing all these stupid games that I swore I'd never play." (The Weakerthans; Aside)
v) "I'm in love with the world/ through the eyes of a girl/ who's still around/ the morning after" (Elliott Smith; Say Yes)

07. Who are you going to pass this stick to (three people) and why?
Well, I stole it from The Writer. But it can be passed on to whomever.

Note the heavy Finnfluence?

back to North Bay Rock City?

According to Nipissing's webadvisor, I have been offered admission to the BEd program for next year.

Hurray.

one day at a time

I just finished watching Rick Mercer's Monday Report for the first time, and I've gotta say...I wasn't impressed. It's not that I think Rick should exist only in his nice little This Hour Has 22 Minutes box--Made In Canada is lovely, vicious, and delightful. I guess that it's just that I feel everything he wants to do on Monday Report was simply better when he did it on 22 Minutes. I think Mercer benefits from the group dynamic.

I think my favourite 22 Minutes moment is still the one where Marg Delahunty (Mary Walsh) goes to see Stockwell Day dressed in a wetsuit (playing on Day's recent press conference, which he arrived at on a Sea-Doo). For a reason that escapes me, she then makes a joke about wanting to bring him some milk, but not being able to because all the store had was homo milk (homogenized milk is 3.25% m.f. in Canada) which, of course, Stockwell wouldn't like, being the leader of the most conservative political party. Either that or the time that the very same Stockwell Day said that any issue brought forth to his government (if elected) via a petition with a certain number of signatures would be put to referendum. Rick Mercer proposed a referenda that would compel Stockwell to change his first name to Doris. If I remember correctly, the petition got well over a million signatures.

It's always interesting to see which politicians will participate in shows like 22 Minutes and Royal Canadian Air Farce. Even when it's someone whose politics I don't necessarily agree with, I still tend to hve a lot of respect for someone like, say, Preston Manning, who was just awesome on bits like "I Love That Word Refooooorm".

Air Farce actually has the last five or so seasons available to watch online. If you're interested, I was at the taping of this episode and this one. The Open book With Mary Walsh skit in this episode was filmed when I was there, and features Luba Goy as Margaret Atwood (she does a vicious Atwood) and Roger Abbott as Wary Walsh, dressed in her Marg Delahunty, Princess Warrior.

sad, sad, sad

There really isn't much I can say about this, except that it's quite sad, of course.

May flights of angels sing him to his rest.

here comes peter cottontail

Home for the long weekend, at last--however briefly, as am off to visit Family tomorrow, and then to return to Guelph. I have done a considerable amount of traveling these last few days, and I must say that I am growing tired of it, and I am becoming more and more hopeful that I will soon be able to just stay in Guelph for a bit.

Home is a good place, with cats and knitting and friends. I am reading a couple of new books, which makes for a pretty happy Rhi. I am not doing the homework that I ought to be doing, which also makes for a pretty happy Rhi. Unfortunately the school is open on Monday, so I have to head back. Unfortunately that means I have to finish reading The Rover, too--finally.

I have more to write but I'll save it for after the weekend.

read me like a book

Yesterday went quite well, actually. I think--the 15 minutes in which I gave my paper have actually disappeared into a black void. I remember the question period, though--I got great questions about webcams and voyeurism, onine copyright, gendering blogspace, and how authority is established in blogs, particularly those those that deal with politics.

I've also been encouraged to think seriously about publishing what I presented, so perhaps that will be part of my summer's work. After playing video games, writing Finn: The Musical, and other such drunken debauchery.

I've been pretending to be Mr. Butlertron (from Clone High) to my sisters this morning on MSN. He gets all the best lines, Wesley.

what's the worst thing I could do?

Well, project blogger is....doing something. The printer and I are still trying to reconcile our differences; if it breaks and I have to buy a new one, I swear to...someone...that I will be a very, very unhappy Rhi.

Which is much worse than a very, very nervous Rhi, which is what I am right now. God, I hate public speaking.

time for bed

My computer is making some pretty grumpy noises as it prints out my fourth and hopefully final draft of the damned paper for the day--and of course, as I write that it decides to crap out all together. It really has some issues about printing longer documents. If only C3P0 were here to talk to it and find out if I've polarized one of the cables or something.

I am absolutely terrified of tomorrow, but I'm trying to pretend that I'm not. I hope I sleep well, but somehow I doubt it. The best part of the whole presentation is that the room we've reserved for the conference is (probably) the only room on the whole stupid campus that doesn't have a network connection in it. So instead of looking at blogs and posting to blogs, I'll be making people look at screenshots of blogs. boourns to that.

Oh well. At least I'm early enough in the morning that I will get it over with and be able to enjoy everyone else's presentations for the rest of the day.

chained up in a lion's den

Because Ms. Bookish has asked me to, I have decided to post some snippets from the paper that I am currently writing. I have about 1300-1400 words right now. The paper is expect to have a reading time of 15 minutes, but my partner in crime and I are 'playing with the politics of authorship' and providing a joint intro to our papers that we hope will eat up about 5-7 minutes of our time, so I am trying to adjust my paper accordingly. Right now the thing is a mess, full of holes and highlighting about word choice and paragraph order and the necessity of tring to translate what is in essence a specialist paper to a paper being given to a generalist audience. We are being marked on performance rather than content, which helps, but I feel that in order for me to perform well (as I am a notoriously uneven public speaker) I have to have content that is rock solid.

"First, a few words are perhaps necessary as to why I am approaching this topic from the supposition that weblogging can and should be considered autobiography. Weblogging, or more common blogging, can assume a variety of forms. There are blogs for students, teachers, knitters, rock bands, businesses, and dogs. While I do believe that each of these examples does engage the autobiographic on some level, I will be focusing primarily on the personal weblog for the basis of my analysis. A personal blog is written by one person, and is intended to be a general reflection on that author—unlike special interest blogs, which tend to focus on the author’s relation to one specific subject. The personal blog, which can also be referred to as an online diary, becomes autobiographic because it is the writing of a life story."

I'll post more as it gets better--and feed back is *always* appreciated.

this makes no sense

Guys, I honestly can't believe I outscored the Writer on this one. Seriously--I mean no harm by that--my parents make fun of me for how little I drink. (Though, to be fair, that has changed here in the Goo--I've been to more bars this year than I did in four years of undergrad.) I have nothing against drinking (I have a case of Corona and a few cans of Strongbow in my fridge right now)...I just usually...don't.

Speaking of alcohol, the geniuses at the LCBO delisted my favourite white wine, Piat d'Or. That makes me angry--it was such a good, cheap wine.

Bacardi 151 Congratulations! You're 139 proof, with specific scores in beer (60) , wine (100), and liquor (86).

All right. No more messing around. Your knowledge of alcohol is so high that you have drinking and getting plastered down to a science. Sure, you could get wasted drinking beer, but who needs all those trips to the bathroom? You head straight for the bar and pick up that which is most efficient.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 86% on proof You scored higher than 89% on beer index You scored higher than 94% on wine index You scored higher than 94% on liquor index

Link: The Alcohol Knowledge Test written by hoppersplit on Ok Cupid

tanglewood days

For all those of you who care about the podiatrical excursion, my foot is only a little infected, and should heal nicely now.

I am anxiously anticipating next week; I need to go home for a bit.

no matter how bad these things can be.

For my paper on the Pythons, corss dressing and constructing masculinity and femininity, my prof suggested that I take a look at the traditions that Monty Python emerges out of, starting with British music hall and moving on to Spike Mulligan. So, I am trying to do that today (instead of working on that paper that I have to present on Monday, of course), and here are some of the interesting things I have found:

Musicals 101: Music Hall
Wikipedia Entry on Music Hall

I think what is particularly interesting (and likely because this is one of my favourite things about the Pythons) is the liminal area between high and low culture that results from music hall.

Two more hours to kill before my doctor's appointment.

burning and exploding

Term Work Checklist Revisted:


+presentation for Politic of the Cross-Dressed Body on cloud 9, and capitalism and cross-dressing
+2 response papers for same (one on butch/femme and one on something I've forgotten)(butch/femme is done, something forgotten...is still forgotten)
+16 page research paper for same (topic undecided--either Monty Python or Denys Arcand's Declin de l'Empire Americain)(topic decided, it is to be on the Pythons)
+3 more response paper for Lit and Anthroone more left, and is optional
+12 page paper for same (on Jesuit Relations, commodification, and appropriation)
+research presentation on above research (initial presentation complete; follow up set for two weeks from now)
+8 page paper for colloquium on weblogging, autobiography, and the instability of identity (this happens Monday; I have not written it yet)
+online tutorial for Tri-Council policy on ethics in research involving human participants (due tomorrow)
+research proposal for research involving human participants (mock) (ditto)
+response to Meyrowitz's No Sense of Place(ditto)
+actual research proposal for summer research project
+three additional assignments, plus exam, to be marked for that class I TA. (Only two more now)

And just like that, it suddenly all seems that much more manageable. I bought myself a new shirt for the colloquium, to be worn with my suit. I tried on my suit pants this morning, and as I have lost about 25 lbs. since I bought them, it was *not* a pretty site. I have the matching skirt, as well, and it doesn't look bad, so I will still be quite stylishly attired for my paper--and, as we all know, stylish attire is 2/3s of having an excellent paper.

fighting the good fight

My blipping, blurping, bleeding entries keep getting eaten by the slow internet connection, or by Blogger. I'm not really sure which. My parents came down to visit today, as they're both on hols this week (like small children everywhere, they are!) It was really nice--I got free lunch, and got to spend time with my parents, who amused themselves by poking fun at my "special" sense of direction. They did admire Finn, and my vacuum cleaner, and Dad stole my Finn Bros. CD.

Speaking of Finn, I had to rescue him yesterday since part of his plant decided today. I'm not sure that he's forgiven me for the undue trauma of cleaning out his vase yesterday...apparently bettas don't like being picked up by hand?

In case you couldn't tell, I really don't want to go do work right now.

missing my family...

The wee one is in Italy for her school break. Before she left, she looked up the names of several internet cafes in each city she would be visiting. She has my digital camera, and a hair straightener of some kind. I hope she is having fun.

Everyone else is just doing what they normally do. Mom might come see me briefly next week, which means cleaning the apartment...but then, I've been looking for an excuse to procrastinate on my colloquium paper...We had to pick titles for them almost a month ago, and now I'm finding that my title doesn't address what I want the paper to. Dammit.

I went to and participated in a reading of Cloud Nine (Caryl Churchill) last week. It was a lot of fun. There was a lot of wine, cheese, and general good company. Being social and productive at the same time is awesome.

My foot is asleep, and I think I'm developing ADD. I either caught it from a toilet seat, or I've been thinking too hard.

best. internet. quiz. EVER.

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

Here's what it says about me:

Ah, the d10! While you aren't actually a true regular polyhedron, you are the only die that makes logical sense--metrically speaking. Chances are, others see you as over-analytical or a goody-goody. While that may be true, you also have a gift for patience and tolerance. Growing up you probably had a calculator wristwatch that you never really needed to use (since you were faster on your own), and you probably aced all your classes (except for gym). You use the metric system almost exclusively, but are able to quickly convert in mid-conversation for the sake of your backwards Imperalist friends. You've coded in at least two different programming languages, and have created more original gaming systems than you'll ever admit. You're generally not a show-off, but you do take pride in being called either a geek or a nerd.

I would absolutely hate to tell you hwo much of that is true, although I should point out that I don't really get points for the Metric thing, because Canada just is that way already.

Best. Fish. EVER.

Finn has learned to tap on the glass of his bowl when he wants me to pay attention to him. He is so awesome.

writing about blogging about writing

Wheels inside wheels, guys.

I wrote half of my response paper last night, but apparenlty I didn't attach the file correctly and so i am having to start from scratch. This is actually working out quite well, as I am writing much more trenchantly this time, and about blogging, which makes me pretty happy as this may be informative for that colloquium paper I have to give in two weeks. Oh god, kill me now.

I'm actually pretty happy with the way this has turned out--I may post some of it tonight.

the morning after

Blargh. Every time I think I have a handle on things, something will magically appear on my horizon to upset the balance. Six months in a leaky boat, indeed, Mr. Finn.

School (er, the second term) will be finished in one month + one day. Here is what remains to be done:
+presentation for Politic of the Cross-Dressed Body on cloud 9, and capitalism and cross-dressing
+2 response papers for same (one on butch/femme and one on something I've forgotten)
+16 page research paper for same (topic undecided--either Monty Python or Denys Arcand's Declin de l'Empire Americain)
+3 more response paper for Lit and Anthro
+12 page paper for same (on Jesuit Relations, commodification, and appropriation)
+research presentation on above research
+8 page paper for colloquium on weblogging, autobiography, and the instability of identity
+online tutorial for Tri-Council policy on ethics in research involving human participants (due tomorrow)
+research proposal for research involving human participants (mock) (ditto)
+response to Meyrowitz's No Sense of Place(ditto)
+actual research proposal for summer research project
+three additional assignments, plus exam, to be marked for that class I TA.

I will not implode, I swear. As I collect interesting resources, I'll try to pass them along here. I'm really interested in virtually everything I have added up there; I just don't know when I will have time to sleep, or eat, or knit, or go home for Easter in the next month. Argh!

this is the worst.

You Are 50% Left Brained, 50% Right Brained

Thanks to Cait and Mz. T for that one.

At school now. No class for another hour and a half or so. No desire to mark student papers which are to be returned on Friday. Slight desire to read Joshua Meyrowitz's No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media On Social Behavior. I have to write a response to it and I was thinking about MMORPGs.

Guess I should go, you know, do something. The Spark thinks I'm a man, by the way.

it's just not practical

I think that in ten years, when I look back at The Great Grad School Adventure, particularly if it ends up being only my MA, there are two things that I will remember learning from the experience. I'll only talk about one now, and maybe make the idea into a different blog post someday when I'm not really having much to say.

So the first thing that I have learned this year is that marks are arbitrary. Completely and totally. Actually, they are neither completely nor totally arbitrary, but there is some elements of those. I say this having just marked five papers tonight for my TA class, my head still full of the difficult negotiation between excellence in ideas and clarity in writing, and how serious mispelling the main characters name throughout the entire paper really is, anyway.

I guess this is also borne out of my experience here. My marks have been good this year, but I find myself wondering if that is because they have to be. I wrote a response to the Radway piece that I talk about below (and I was am quite proud of it) about why the public is eager to have someone make their reading choices for them (and what it means that we are). My prof looked it over and assigned me a mark of B+ (78-79 for the numerically inclined). A B+ is not a bad grade, per se, but it isn't a good one--and I had been so happy with my response.

Then in class my prof mentioned that he had forgotten to tell us that he doesn't give As. ...Oh. He wants us to focus on improving our writing and stuff like that, which is great--god knows I need it. But if you don't give As, doesn't a B+ become, essentially, an A by default?

It made me feel better about the B+, anyway, and he gave me good feedback on my writing. Still lots to ponder, though. Critical pedagogy is so interesting to me.

Freedom to Read

Freedom To Read deals with the issue of censorship in Canada. UGoo will be hosting its own celebration/awareness of Freedom to Read Week on March 1st in the MacLaughlin Library. Should be pretty interesting--they have some of the banned books on display in the library and it's really interesting to see what has been called into question in the past, and what is called into question today. Many of my favourites are there--To Kill A Mockingbird, The Diviners, The Handmaid's Tale (never challenged in Canada, but #37 of the 100 most challenged books in the US, according to the ALA), The Wars, the Harry Potter books, On the Banks of Plum Creek...

They're even encouraging people to read and release banned books through Bookcrossing. It really doesn't get much better than that.

online books

Black Mask . Com.

Could be quite fruitful, I think.

I never tried to grow flowers in the desert

It has been a while, hasn't it? Reading week was busier than I intended it to be; at the same time I feel like I've accomplished very little. potentially because I have, in fact, accomplished virtually nothing. Nonetheless, I am slogging on with my work today, and have 3/4 finished my paper proposal that's due Tuesday morning...though the hard part will still be the tentative Works Cited list, as it will have probably close to 25 books on it. Which, for a ten to twelve pager, is a pretty sizable list.

I still have to write my response to Janice Radway and her Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature, but that has been burbling in my mind for some time, so I'm hoping that will go will. It's for my theory class on Reader Oriented Theory, if you're wondering, but I did an excerpt of it last year in my Intro to Theory class.

I do actually have more to post, but I should return my work, and make my way back here later on.

really good conversations I have had lately, part I:

"cut me STRAIGHT to the HEART, now we're getting someWHERRRRRE..."
"This is such a good song."
"Bring it BACK to the START."
"Now we're getting somewhere!"
"When I'm with YOU, I don't CARE where it is I'm falling..."
"This song should be--"
"--on Recurring Dream. Yeah, totally."
"It just doesn't make sense--"
"--that it isn't. Although, Chocolate Cake charted in Canada, and it's not on there either."
"What would you take off of Recurring Dream to fit both of those songs on there?"
"Oh. Good question."
"Not the Girl You Think You Are" (simultaneously)
"That's only one song, though."
"Well, I didn't say Chocolate Cake needed to be on there. I just said that it charted. Actually, it was one of only four CH singles to chart commercially in Canada. So in the conceptualization of the "greatest hits" album, it..."
[smack. silence.]
"So...no Chocolate Cake, then?"

off to...never never land?

WAtching MMM's "Listed" which is doing the 40 best albums of the last 25 years. Quite interesting really, inasmuch that I think I have owned two albums between 18-40. Ah well. There are worse things than being perpetually out of step.

The craziness continues on this end; I am definitely thrilled that reading week is next week, but less than thrilled about the amount of work I have left to do before this term is finished. Bleh.

I talked to a friend a few days ago about a paper he has to write for his first year English course at another university. It's a research paper, and he wants to write on Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". "Do you," he asked, an earnest anxiety in his voice, "think there will be a lot of critical stuff on the poem?" Heh. He also wants to talk his prof into letting him right on "The Waste Land" instead, even though they are not studying it. It's just madness.

I've started using TRillian for all my messaging needs. Such a great little program it is. One of the options is that it links to Wikipedia within the context of your messages (ie, certain words will be underlined, and if you move the cursor over them you get a small window with the Wikipedia entry). It's a bit like having The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on your computer.

Speaking of which, has anyone heard anything new about the movie version?

Introducing Finn

Introducing Finn 

Everyone, this is Finn, the newest member of Castle Skylark. His plant is named Tim. He's actually a much more blue colour than this picture indicates, but he is really fun. And his name is Finn.

I've got the urge for going

Urgh. Just as my sister learns to budget her time better, I completely forget...thankfully I've done so much "how to write an essay" teaching this term I could probably do it drunk and half asleep. I am the latter today, but not the former.

Venturing up north this weekend. Updates may be sporadic (read: non-existent) until Monday. Of course, now that I've said that, you'll probably get lots. Or something.

Sock monkeys are totally the new Build-A-Bear. Which, ironically, is where I'm going today. Go figure.

knitting is so bad for the wallet

I bought a whole bunch of really fun Icelandic wool at a Lens Mill. So pretty, so exciting...it's a bit off the beaten track, so I went with an appropriately vehicled friend, and the two of us were just in awe. They have a lot of other crafting notions as well; some days I become quite aware of the fact that I am very much my mother's daughter.

Not much else is new and/or exciting. It's a long day here at school on Wednesday; none of my books are in at the library yet (perhaps tomorrow, if I am lucky?) It is a snowy winter wonderland here in Guelph right now.

I'm tired and I'm sad and I just wish school was over.

past the second post

Back from the weirdness that is Pilates, now. I actually like the exercise and the class and all, but there is just something about "rolling like a ball" that is just plain weird--though I love the way it makes my back feel.

I'm currently in the process of my intial forays into two new projects. The first is my final paper for Lit and Anthropology, which I could take in a number of different directions. One is to look at EJ Pratt's Brebeuf and his Brethren (that's Trent University's annotated version of the text...it's a long, epic poem) and look at how Pratt turns the ethnographic into the literary. Another appraoch might be to take the ethnographic (specifically the Jesuit Relations) and look at how it becomes literary commodity in both the seventeenth century and today. Or maybe something about Angela Carter? (I'm just kidding about that one. Mostly.)

Project the Second is about the relationship between weblogging and autobiography. I have a partner in crime of sorts for this one (or at the very least a sounding board) in one of my classmates, who is working on theorizing hypertext. Oh, the madness that will come from our geekdom.

I wait in 4/4 time...

I've been listening to a lot of The Weakerthans as of late. The sparsity of their music, grounded as it is in what I'll prosaicly call "post-punk" has been striking the right chord with me lately...the right chord of January's desolation. Except that now it's February, and I'm not sure where that leaves me.

You know, there's that scene in Apocalypse Now where Dennis Hopper is talking to Martin Sheen about Col. Kurtz and says, "He's a poet-warrior in the classic sense." I really like that. I like that a lot. Especially in light of John K. Sampson's lyrics. I think what has been so appealing to me about The Weakerthan's music is that their lyrics are so grounded in Winnipeg--they have this weird, almost symbiotic relationship with the city. Left and Leaving, in particular, is just gorgeous. It's a love/hate letter, a myriadic reflection of what it is to be from Winnipeg...and, arguably, what it means to be from Canada.

My city's still breathing (but barely it's true) through buildings gone missing like teeth. The sidewalks are watching me think about you, all sparkled with broken glass. I'm back with scars to show. Back with the streets I know. They never take me anywhere but here.

--The Weakerthans, Left and Leaving

If I ever wind up teaching Canadian lit, I want to teach this. I'll post more about other goings on later--right now now I just want to think about this.

ah, it's not my conscience that begs to be untrue...

What a long week. I keep having to remind myself that it isn't over, as I have to teach tomorrow morning...but for some reason I feel even more exhausted when I think about that. Bleh. We're doing Poe's The Purloined Letter, which I am honestly not a huge fan of...to the point where I've just said "screw it" to the lesson planning and will simply make something up tomorrow on the bus ride to the school.

It is gloriously warm here in Guelph; I am loving this southern Ontario winter thing. It's going to kill me to move back to North Bay Rock City in the fall, if I do.

I have spent a good portion of the evening pondering a House Committee on UnCanadian Activities; I find myself wondering who would chair it, who would be on it, and whom it would be investigating. Deborah Grey could chair...with Jack Granatstein riding shotgun. Certainly my loathing of The Tragically Hip would make me suspicious...

It makes me want to read The Crucible again.

I've got more to say than you but I'm not sure what that proves

Design of this munificence deserves a far better entry than the one below, so here goes:
+drinking at the Pennywhistle is clearly better than doing your homework
+drinking Strongbow at the Pennywhistle is even better than that
+I'm quite happy to be a lit student and not an anthropologist
+gossip is fun
+sometimes being a clueless lit student in a theatre class can be worthwhile
+I still like theory
+I need to start checking my pockets before I do the laundry thing
+Reading week D&D is going to be kick-ass
+get to watch Lost in Translation tomorrow night, and go grocery shopping. I have such a rich life.

the starlight rules

Ms. Starlight gets mad props (as the kids say) for the layout. I love it, I love it, I love it.

sun shiny day

Say what you will about the Norton Anthology of English Literature (and Norton in general)--in fact most of it needs to be said--but their online companion to NAEL is just lovely.

Have started playing Baldur's Gate II; is infinitely preferable to a) my own reading, and b) my marking. This is either good, or bad.

Likely the latter.

Query

Query: Would it be evil of me to mark papers using a D100?

For those of you not in the D&D loop, a D100 should be, theoretically, a hundred-sided die. Mine, however, is much more practical/clever: it's a large, clear plastic D10 that has a smaller, opaque D10 inside, so when you roll it, you read the 10s column number off the clear dice, and the 1s column off the coloured dice. It's actually really fun. And sadly, I am not actually marking papers that way...

a wink's as good as a nod

This marks the 5th or 6th time I've tried to update in the last few days, all of which have been abandoned, forgotten, or eaten by my computer. (Predominantly the latter.)

So. Things I will not be posting about include my dad's reviews of the books the sisters wrote as children, marking, teaching, my life in general.

My enjoyment of tea is increasingly greatly this term, as I find myself drinking amounts that are starting to border on the ridiculous--let's just say that if coffee was my hot beverage poison of choice, I'd be absolutely manic, rail thin, and would not have slept in the past two weeks. Actually, you know what's crazy? i find myself occasionally craving coffee now. I hate the way it tastes (and I know that I hate the way it tastes), but I find myself wanting it--same with beer, actually.

I went to an art auction for the Guelph Jazz festival earlier this week, and it was really fun. The food was fabulous (if a bit sparing, but then, I got there late) and the art was as well. It was interesting to see the 'who's who' of the Guelph arts community, in a lot of ways. It was also fun because it was a dressy occasion, and my silk skirt has so few occasions that it can bring itself out for. Sadly, however, a dressed-to-the-nines Rhi means that all of her classmates in attendance won't recognize her.

Lots of reading this weekend, none of which I have any real desire to do. I know plays aren't long, but I just can't bring myself to care too much. And I should care--I have a response paper due this week on that reading.

I'm really hoping next week will be better--I need to cheer up a bit.

you're sure? better be...Gryffindor!

It's rather a wonderful thing to find yourself falling in love with your new school and city, and actually being disappointed that you only have another seven months to spend there. The UGoo sports teams are the Guelph Gryphons, and our school colours are gold, scarlet, and black--is it any wonder that sometimes I secretly pretend that I am a student at Hogwarts? (Of course, technically I'm a Ravenclaw, but a girl can dream, can't she?)

The sock minkey obsession rages on through various parts of Ontario. I have made two monkeys (with the help of my lovely baby sister) and a socktopus so far; it's really interesting to see how quickly they develop their own characters...although perhaps that is simply my silly, overactive imagination. The socktopus, in particular, who is destined to control the sock minkey army my family is slowly building (even mon pere is involved), has developed a very dictatorial style and several vicious attack strategies. As the Squidge says, this is what you get for naming him General Socktopus. Alfred, my other minkey, is fun too--he's made from a very small set of socks, and has a correspondingly very sweet disposition, and doesn't mind when I forget that he's on the chair and sit on him.

School is soldiering on at the moment. Am not too panicked yet as am trying to save that for a future date (current prediction for this will be in a couple of weeks).

Surviving January...

And the weeks unfold, slowly but surely, and i am starting to do better with stuff like not making all of my assignments due at the end of the term. It's awesome. Sort of. Interesting observation for the week: The majority of the profs I have encountered this year are extreme Type A personalities. (Which I can respect, having parent(s) who could fall into that category, and, dare I say it, potentially exhibiting some of those tendencies myself. A lot.)

You should really hop on over to Knot Again and see what I made tonight. It's awesome. A sock minkey army couldn't hold me back.

I bought the first Thursday Next book today. It makes me--thus far--very, very happy. I also got a Galileo thermometre. They're so pretty.

plastic daffodils

Argh. Nothing is more frustrating than when your best laid plans are upset by the sudden onset of sickness (and also when your mother neglects to send your bathing suit via the mail). Insomuch that tonight is my first swimming lesson, I'm going to suck it up and go, but I think I will have to forgo what I have termed "Monday Night Club" and just pack myself into bed early. Sore throats are the pits.

The weekend was uneventful, in ways both good (restful) and bad (unproductive).

The Canadian Legends people sent me a very nice email thanking me for the link to their website. Lets hope they are still nice once Campaign Brebeuf gets underway.

there is profit in the love of hate

I taught today for the first time. No. I didn't actually teach for the first time. I taught literature today for the first time, and it was the most wonderful, most glorious thing.

We discussed what would make up the 5 Most Influential Works in English Literature, intertextuality, poetry, and gender and sexuality. It was marvelous. One of the poems that was discussed was William Carlos Williams' Red Wheel Barrow, and one of the students had it on her in an anthology, so I wrote it in the board, and we talked a little about why it was neat. After class, she came up to me and said that our discussion had convinced her to keep the anthology, which apparently she was going to sell to the bookstore.

Lots of reading this weekend, including some academic work by Robertson Davies for my Politic of the Cross-Dressed Body class, on boys in Elizabethan theatre. I also get to review Twelfth Night...skippy.

Yay, refund mon-ay from the school. I am no longer broke.

team history nerd squad

For all my fellow Canadian history buffs (all, er, two of you), you absolutely must check out the sheer, unadulterated genius of Canadian Legends. And before you ask--it isn't a joke, I've actually seen the Sir John A. figures at the bookstore here on campus.* I want a Mackenzie King, please!

I would also like to point out that I did a similar thing for my final project for my first year history course back in the day, which prompted my history prof to push me for grad school (in history).

*but really, how accurate can a Sir John A. figure be without a fifth of whiskey as one of his accessories?

in love with love and lousy poetry!

Today has turned out to be much more perilous than I had anticipated. The buses stopped running this morning because the city is pretty much black ice all over; I (foolishly) decided to walk downtown (about a 25 minute walk from my apartment) to catch a bus downtown (as 2080 was this morning) and got one of the last buses to the school. The university campus has become what I've decided to term 'The Giant Skating Rink...of Death!1!' (typos intended, of course) and it is absolutely treacherous out there, so I think that once I get my lunch I will come back to MacKinnon and park my ass, with my mp3 player, my sweater-in-progress, and my reading.

I finished the His Dark Materials trilogy, and am completely and totally in love. Now that I have read them, I am absolutely boggled by the potential that the film adaptations might be made with no references to the Church. I got a really nice Dell boxed set of the books, which makes me very happy. I am still seeking a nice set of The Chronicles of Narnia, but my criteria are too demanding, I suspect: I'd prefer individual books, and I'd also prefer *not* to pay $90 for the set...

Sarah Harmer will be playing a tsunami benefit concert here in Guelph next week, and I am quite excited for it.

Ah well. Off to lunch, my beauties...

musing on the canon

I just finished reading the first of my readings for Lit and Anthro, the introductory chapter to E. Valentine Daniel and Jeffrey M. Peck's Culture/Contexture: Explorations in Anthropology and Literary Studies. I have lots to say about it, I think--it's a lot to take in at once, but so interesting--so I think I will start with a tiny, near-throwaway reference that Peck makes to the destabilization of the canon in the mid-1980s (and its potential relationship to the intersection of literature and anthropology):

With the surge of social and pollitical criticism in the eighties, the breakdown of the canon, and the exposure of white, Western, male, and heterosexist authority, English departments began to open up to "foreign" literatures and cultures (Native American, Afro-American, Latino, gay and lesbian literature) and to the different languages of popular culture (advertising, political pamphlets and speeches, newspapers and televison), accodomdating thereby a neew subfield called "cultural studies." But they all remained under the privileged eye and authority of a dominant academic English (department) culture. (Daniel and Peck, 14)

Peck's argument is a little ambiguous at this point; he points to the breakdown of the canon but then reverses himself and says that it didn't go far enough in its destabilization. Back in December, I spent a week in Sudbury, and went to the campus bookstore at Laurentian University to check out what their English department was like (which I felt could be done simply from looking at the books for the courses they are offering this term).

This was a particularly interesting exercise for me, as many of the books were ones that I studied in undergrad myself, or ones that I am teaching here at the university. So, with a tacit commonality between three of Ontario's universities, does this not point to a recanonization of some kind?

In yesterday's lecture for the class I am TAing this term, the prof discussed her inclusion of Aphra Behn's The Rover in the syllabus rather than Oroonoko, saying that to her, it seems as though Oroonoko is taught in every second English class at the university. (I should note that I am in no way complaining about this; Behn's novel is dull, dull, dull, and I don't relish the idea of having to teach it some day.) What I am suggesting here, or at least trying to suggest, is that rather than a 'breakdown' of the canon, we are simply seeing the canon mould itself to different expectations, and that "margin" areas of literature have developed a sense of 'canon' as a result. The idea of 'breaking down' the canon implies a malleability to the choices that the canon proffers, which isn't (I don't think) borne out by the reality of the situation. Rather, what we see are almost 'token' inclusions of the marginalized.

I hesitate to say that, as in saying it in this fashion implies a certain devalualing of the texts and authors that I have in mind (names like Behn, Zora Neale Hurston, Coetzee, Thomas King, and Gloria Anzaldua), and I don't intend to devalue their works--Coetzee and King in particular are favourites of mine, and all have made valuable contributions to English, as writers or scholars or both. What I am critiquing, here, is the impulse by which the canon allows so few works to integrate themselves; where one work (or one author) becomes representative of all of texts that could find themselves under the banner of that particular marginalization. For example, King sometimes seems to reside the Canadian public's literary conscious as The Only Native-Canadian Writer Ever (which is ironic, both in that he's "technically" Native-American, and that, well, he isn't).

Of course, the canon wouldn't be the canon if it wasn't what it is. If only the institutions would recognize that...

anthropology and such

Class the first looks fabulous. The work load is not ridiculously intense, the prof is quite personable, and a good number of the people in the class are well-spken and interesting. It is a largish class (13 people) but I have high hopes for it.

I signed up for an adult swimming class today (junior level--despite several years of swimming lessons as a child, my aquatic skills are pretty low) and for a Pilates class. This makes me busy three nights a week, but I think it will be a lot of fun.

Went out drinking last night (which for me, means wine with dinner and two Strongbow...I adore my low alcohol tolerance) and forgot how rough the morning is when I've been drinking Strongbow. I've only been drinking it for a year and a half or so now, and it and my body just don't get along sometimes.

it's a school night...

And so the grind begins again tomorrow morning--although, as I was saying to Ms. Starlite earlier, can it still be called the grind if there's only one hour of class tomorrow? But I do have other stuff, meetings and doctors and such, so it should be a full day.

What a lovely, quiet weekend. I read four books (loved three--His Dark Materials--and was sorely disappointed by the other) and watched a few movies...took a satellite phone call from the mid-Atlantic. My webcam is now functional as well, and I think I have decoded the mysteries of the socktopus.

And so I begin the new term, cautiously optimistic. I am taking two and a half courses this term--Sky Gilbert's The Politic of the Cross-Dressed Body (Aspects of the Theory of Drama, Theatre, and Performance):

This theoretical course will look at two different eras and their approaches to cross-dressed performance, and make inquiries about the fundamental political implications of the cross-dressed body. We will start by examining historical documents concerning the performances of men dressed as women (particularly English Renaissance anti-theatrical texts) and (by careful reading of extant primary sources) consider the sociological necessities (particularly the banning of women from the stage) that precipitated cross-dressed roles before the nineteenth century. What effect did the appearance of real women on the stage have on theatre in the Restoration? When we jump to modern times, we will compare and contrast Farquar’s The Recruiting Officer and Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good. What did the cross-dressing mean then, and what does it mean now, in a theatrical context? We will look at some modern theoretical texts, including Judith Butler, Kenneth Plummer, and Judith Halberstam which discuss the radical, performative and political nature of gender disruption in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Is a performance on stage different from the performative in real life? (Simone Benmussa’s The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs will help us in this discussion, as we examine a contemporary play about a real life nineteenth-century instance of female to male cross-dressing.) We will not ignore nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century English music hall (as well as Vaudeville and contemporary comedy) when we ask the question: is it possible for cross-dressed performers in contemporary culture NOT to have a political effect? Finally, we will examine the different political consequences of male to female and female to male cross-dressing, and the relationship each has to the performative.

and Jennifer Schacker's Between Literature and Anthropology (Special Topics in Literature):

This course will explore the dynamic interrelationship of cultural theories and textual practices involved in the representation of oral traditions. Our reading list will cross some disciplinary boundaries, foregrounding theories of culture and creativity in which conception of a distinct “folk” or “oral style” are salient–from the seventeenth and eighteenth century philological tradition (Lowth, Wood, Herder), through Victorian folklorists and anthropology (the Grimms, Dasent, Müller), early twentieth-century ethnography (Sapir, Jacobs), and more recent cross-disciplinary work on “verbal art” (Finnegan, Tedlock, Hymes, Bauman, Briggs). Our goal throughout is to denaturalize “folk style” and to explore its indexical relations to gender, genre, narrative authority, and the politics of culture. Towards that end, we are likely to return to a core set of questions: In what terms is folk style constructed, and to what is it contrasted? In what contexts is the concept invoked, and to what end? To what extent do such conceptualizations construct folklore as modernity’s “Other”? Does the theorizing of difference necessarily produce imaginative narratives, or conjectural histories? Does the theorizing of folk style heighten scholars’ attention to their/our own styles of expression? What textual practices, cultural policies, and allocations of intellectual energy might such conceptions implicate?

The half-course is my remaining research module, described below, which is apparently dealing with some aspects of Reader Response Theory. I suspect this will be an enormously stimulating semester; I have some interesting things that could relate to potential research projects for the summer...but all of this has yet to be discussed with my potential supervisor.

The New Year and Resolving to be Resolute

The whole New Year's Resolution thing is perhaps silly, and probably overdone, but here I am anyway, as I definitely could use some improvement. So:
i) keep track of everything I read so I can figure out exactly how much I do read in any given month or year*
ii) stay organized and manage time better
iii) do not overeat
iv) manage money more effectively
v) update here more often and more relevantly
vi) turn Snipes and Gripes into something more regular and more funny
vii) see the finn brothers again
viii) submit at least one conference proposal
ix) maintain A average
x) do not get sticky stuff on keyboard

*To date, I have read 6 books in 2005.

true companion by your side...

Since I currently only have one Finn album kicking around my apartment, One Nil, it's a good thing that album is One Nil. (Why yes, Straitsy, I am looking at you.) Many of the songs that I've been hearing in my head as of late have been of the One Nil variety...although, Together Alone and I are starting to become much, much better friends.

I have returned to Guelph for the time being (the time being will be a period of roughly six weeks, I think, unless I take a trip to North Bay Rock City at the end of the month). Guelph is a good place, if (surprisingly) more snowy than that place I just left. School starts again tomorrow, and it should be a busy day. One of the courses that I was scheduled to take has been cancelled. (If you wanted to guess which one it was, it is of course the one that I had already spent $100 on books for....grrr...) So tomorrow (among my TA class, various meetings, signing up for swimming lessons, and a doctor's appointment) will involve trying to figure out what I want to do to replace this class. The options that remain largely don't appeal to me. (scroll down for the Winter05 courses) I would like to take Sky Gilbert's course on The Cross-Dressing Body, but it is technically listed as a drama course and so I am unsure if I am allowed to take it. The other option I am considering is a reading course, but I'm not really sure what that involves. So, needless to say, Monday will be busy...

Suppose I should go get reacquainted with the shower. Funny, because I haven't actually blogged about what I intended to. Perhaps later.

prior to my return to academia...

It's been a lovely, busy few days. Youngest sister and I have been busy puzzling out a CSI mystery, curling (she as skip, me as spectator and official monkey clothier), and lunching with friends, which is quite eerie for me--they are all 16-17 years old now, and I have known a number of them since they were 4 or 5, and my goodness, are they all old. Youngest is also the local high school's athlete of month. Not sure where the athletic gene came from--it is distinctly possible that she is a throwback, as they would say in the 19th century.

Went to the Huronia Museum's Film Series last night with my nerdish compatriots to see Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself. The first thing that I should say about this film is that it is a collaborative effort between Scotland and Denmark; and really, what could be better than that? The Teen Nerd Squad and I enjoyed ourselves enormously (possibly more than other people there) and we even got to see the part of Glasgow where I threw up on the street back in 2003. Ah, memories. A few minor hiccups aside, Wilbur is a subtly realized, but enormously powerful movie...perhaps a bit in the vein of the delicious Harold and Maude.

Guys, I really want a socktopus.

someone might be interested...

Here's the synopsis for my second theory module at school:

Reading Readers Reading
For contemporary scholars in cultural, performance and media studies, as well as literary critics who follow reader-oriented theory, the meanings of a text do not inhere in the text itself but emerge in the set of responses making up the process of decoding. In this sense, meaning is a process of discovery, a result of inquiry, and reading is a journey, an act of critical investigation. To study such critical investigations requires new methods in qualitative research as it applies to performance, media, and texts--broadly defined. This session surveys theories of reception and response as providing the theoretical framework for applying qualitative methods in graduate research.

there's reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last

So apparently it's been a few days since I have written here. It's one of the things that I dislike about being home--going from the free and easy access to my beloved Cortana that I have in Guelph to having to share this new and nameless computer with x-number of other people, who aren't used to having to share it with me. I think what I'm saying is that my internet access and email checking and such becomes very sporadic as a result of such. Not that it matters much, as I've had few emails of note in the last couple of weeks.

The last few days have been sporadic as well. I have hardly spent any time at home, what with New Year's, luncheons, Dungeons and Dragons (in addition to my now epic level, I got take a level in avatar for Bahamut!) and other such lovely things. Apparently my sister's roommate (who may be mine next year) also dabbles in the polyhedral dice, so there may be more playing next year if I end up in North Bay Rock City again.

I also purchased a copy of Diplomacy, which is exciting, though I have realized since that there is only a very small likelihood that I will actually get to play it sometime in the next year. Ah, how I love that game.

Stay tuned for a year end wrap-up sometime soon over here.

it's been a while, indeed

The holidays always take so much out of me. this one in particular has been odd. Owing to the lateness of my return home, I haven't been in much of Christmas (nor, indeed, holiday) spirit, and I haven't been sleeping well either, so the holiday has physically felt as though someone has been kicking me.

It's been an odd day here. We've been without power for 7.5 hours throughout the day--a three hour stretch this morning and then another four tonight. Mercifully I was able to escape--first to Barrie, where I purchased the gorgeous, decadent, marvelous The Museum Called Canada, by Charlotte Grey. Aside from glorying at some THSWSNBN-related information--found in Martyrs' Hall--and the Rights Auditorium, the book has made me smile quite a bit.

I also spent some $60 on yarn and such. Quite a lot of it was on sale, which made me happy, and I got more bamboo needles. I made two sock monkeys yesterday (my family's latest thing) and now am busy outfitting them in the best of knitted finery. In the spirit of the sock monkey book, I am contemplating writing stories for Alfred and Alfrieda.

my marks are in.

And I did reasonably well, I think. Certainly better than I expected. Perhaps that PhD is not so much of a pipe dream as I have been fearing.

Home=where the heart AND the snow are

We currently have about a foot, and counting. It should apparently bring us about another six inches by tomorrow. At least we bypassed the freezing rain. I'd forgotten how much fun shovelling snow off the drive way is. Or rather, isn't--although when the whole family does it, it goes much quicker.

Unfortunately snow+poor driving conditions means no friends today. :( We saw The Series of Unfortunate Events last night, and I must say, Jude Law, you can call me any time.

Off to do a puzzle with my dad, A Hard Day's Night-style

getting there

Finally done all my marking. I have a meeting with the prof tomorrow, one more exam to mark once I get it from Special Needs, and then I get to enter my marks on the computer, and then I'm really done, but I'll take what I can get for right now.

I got to go out for lunch, dessert, and coffee with the Mathman and his new lady friend. It's good to see old friends, and to hang out with people in my (now mostly clean) apartment. I also finished the pair of mittens I was working on, and if you are interested in my knitting capers, you can go see the end result over at Knot Again. I'm pretty happy with them, all told, although the second one's thumb is really wonky.

My dad's father usually gives us each a sum of cash for Christmas, and this is what I'm thinking about getting myself with it; kicking in a little extra on my own if need be.

questions of science

Finally, finally back in Guelph. It has been an eventful few weeks, but as i stumbled off the bus in Guelph at 7:45 a.m. on Wednesday (having caught a 1:00 a.m. bus up north) and made my way to the MacKinnon building to hand in my paper on Ethics and Motherhood in A Yellow Aster, I realized that my first semester of grad school is finally over. A sobering but uplifting thought in a lot of ways, I suppose. I am grateful for the break ahead (though I still have to proctor and mark the final for my TA class finish marking the exam for my TA class), especially as I have received mysterious Christmas cards from the cats telling me that they want me to come home. Who can say 'no to two such enterprising kitties?

I've had a few really nice days as of late. I've spent a fair bit of time in Toronto, particularly in and around Queen West, checking out the Silver Snail, Lush, and various bookstores. I've also returned to the Royal Alex to see Mamma Mia for a second time, and quite enjoyed it. When you can get 8th row Orchestra tickets for $26, there is something very right with the world.

So yesterday was the day of exam proctoring and such, which involved a LOT of walking around the room and glaring at students for two hours...surprisingly not as painful as the other exam I proctored, but then I wasn't trying to frantically write a 12 page paper. Postexam, we had an exam marking party, which was ridiculously productive--I have about 8 exams left to mark, which makes me crazy happy. Thus, I will be able to devote an appropriate amount of time to cleaning my apartment (oh, my poor bathtub) and organizing my affairs (read: wrapping presents), with a visit from everyone's favourite Mathman thrown in to boot.

I think there will be a sizable roast beast, Yorkshire pudding, mashed potatoes, and miscellaneous vegetable type dinner tonight. Mmmm...

verb the adjective noun

Still up north. It has been a reasonably uneventful few days, for which I am thankful, although I would have been much happier if my Topics in 19th Century paper would just bloody write itself already, because I am just not in the mood to deal with 3000 words or so today. Especially since there is so little written about New Woman stuff (er, comparatively with the rest of Victoriana, that is) and on my chosen text, A Yellow Aster in particular--it's not even bloody in print anymore. Hey Broadview, if you'd like to take a chance on a rising young scholar with absolutely no credentials and no intention of specializing in the nineteenth century, I would *love* to do an edition of A Yellow Aster for you.

Here's the Dictionary of Australian Biography entry for Iota. (She's the second one down.) Bloody hell--if she wrote 17 books, some of which, it looks, were relevant to the New Woman...and there's nothing academic done on her? Hmm...

Here's the Literary Encyclopedia's entry on the New Woman novelists.

My arm is itchy, and I really don't want to write this paper.

if it isn't chickens, it's feathers

What a grum couple of days. (Grim+glum=grum.)

And, of course, it bloody never ends.

I'm back up north for the weekend. It's part of the static.

oh it meant nothing to ya

I've been on a bit of a Pulp kick lately, which is funny because I really don't think I had much to do with them when they were actually making music. There's just something about "Disco 2000" that I really enjoy, I guess. I've also been on a bit of a techno kick lately as well, which is totally weird for me--but I have a friend who is introducing to me to some of the less mundane, not-so-mainstream-club-oriented stuff, and I'm surprisingly enjoying it quite a lot.

I have two papers due this week and no particular ambition to write either of them; as they are due quite soon perhaps I *ought* to pick up some of that ambition.

RIP, Pierre Berton

Because I forgot to post this yesterday: Rest in Peace, Pierre Berton.

For the non-Canuck readership of this blog (ha ha...oh...) Berton was a popular history writer who was able to make the opacity of Canadian history presentable to the Canadian public. His work will certainly be missed. I think the first Berton that I read was either Vimy (about Canada and WWI) or The Dionne Years (about the Dionne quintuplets, and one of his best). I would have been about eleven or twelve at the time, and I think it is a testament to the man's skill that I would find those books engrossing at that age, and be able to turn to Marching As to War when writing about the Canadian war experience in a history class at university.

Apparently he was a cat lover with approximately 17 cats. (warning: it's a PDF, but it is worth it.)

I think I like what J.L. Granatstein (from the Globe and Mail article linked above)said best of all:

Mr. Berton approached history very differently from most academic historians, Prof. Granatstein said. "He chose good subjects and wrote them up in a way that people wanted to buy them. The academics, by definition, picked obscure subjects and wrote them terribly, and nobody wanted to read them. It was inevitable that there was a clash between the two."

As the decades passed, the academics looked much more favourably on Mr. Berton's work as a popular historian. "Without Pierre Berton there would scarcely be any Canadian history left," Prof. Granatstein said. "For the last 40 years he has popularized Canadian history in a way that nobody else was doing."

get a haircut and get a real job

I have a new job! I finished TAing ENGL1200 today, and got my letter of appointment to ENGL2080, which is fantastic as it is a "real" English course. (Real pretending to mean one that is based in literature; where my seminar segment is one that will be based on the texts that we are reading rather than grammar.)

And check out the booklist:

Aiken, George. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (in course package)
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. (Broadview P) *
Behn, Aphra. The Rover. (Broadview P) *
Glaspell, Susan. “Trifles” (in course pack)
Hansberry, Lorraine. Raisin in the Sun. (Spark Publishing)
James, Henry. Turn of the Screw. (Dover)
Joyce, James. “The Dead” (in course pack)
Milton, John. Selected poems (in course pack) *
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Purloined Letter” (in course pack) *
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. (Broadview P) *

One of my favourite things about TAing is the free books. And after all the raving I've done lately about the prettiness of Broadview's books over at Tinka's, it's pretty exciting to know that soon I will have almost a full shelf of them. The * are to indicate stuff that I've already read, or in the case of The Rover, stuff I should have already read...damn Studies in 18th Century and Restoration...I'm excited about the Woolf, as well, I was trying to explain it to a friend the other day (specifically the Shakespeare's sister segment) and it'll be good to go over the text again.

Which reminds me, if any of you haven't seen Eileen Atkins's turn as Woolf in A Room of One's Own, you really should. Then watch The Hours to see her cameo as a flower shop owner. Such a lovely moment.

And I am, at last, all Christmas shopped out.

shiny, shiny, shiny

Though she is unlikely to write about in on her own blow, The Squidge has just finished a paper for her Gender, Literature, and Culture I course called "Look, That's Shiny" which links Rosetti's "Goblin Market" to Tennyson's "Lady of Shallot" in that the women in both are tempted by something that's shiny.

I don't know why I find that so cool, but it seems really neat to me.

Not too much new round these parts. Lots of reading, helping undergrads with papers (which I will eventually have to mark), worrying about presentations, and being sad about the relatively miniscule size of my upcoming holiday break, as I'll only get to head home for a few days. Kinda miss the family. Kind of a lot, you might even say.

My beloved Horatio Hornblower is being considered as a possibility for the next Bond. Oh, please, say it is so--he would bring some good fresh blood to a series that needs it...

and in the eleventh hour...

...inspiration strikes. New mix CD project: Songs for English nerds

Possible selections include:
+Sloan's Underwhelmed
+The Weakerthan's Aside
+Moxy Fruvous's My Baby Loves A Bunch of Authors
+Simon and Garfunkel's I Am A Rock
+The McGarrigle Sisters' Schooldays (actually written by Loudon Wainwright III, Kate McGarrigle's ex and Rufus's dad)

Suggestions are VERY, VERY welcome - I know I'm not the only nerd out there...and of course, should you wish for a copy, just ask nicely.

ah, things that make me laugh.

This is just bloody fantastic. (stolen from Dave, who Tinka thinks has the best blog going.)

Want to be a songwriter? Let Junior Eurovision show you how with these ten handy tips. Also, why was Celine Dion allowed to compete, back in the day? Why?

Just got back from taking the afternoon off to go see this film which was delightful and captivating and more than a little bit fluffy...all very wonderful things.

Canada Reads!

The books and panelists for Canada Reads have been announced...and when Rufus Wainwright is one of the picks, it's hard not to be exited. (Perhaps I shuld have listened to my mum and written the Ceeb a letter pitching myself as a panelist...)

Rufus is championing Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers, which is such an odd choice. It's certainly the strangest book I've ever read. This is what the CBC has to say about it:

One of the best-known experimental novels of the Sixties, Beautiful Losers is Leonard Cohen’s second novel, and his most defiant and uninhibited work. At the centre of the novel are the members of a love triangle, united by their sexual obsessions and their fascination with a mythic seventeenth-century Mohawk saint. There is the bereaved and nameless narrator, an authority on the vanishing A------ tribe; his wife, Edith, one of the tribe’s last members; and their maniacal and domineering friend, F. By turns vulgar, rhapsodic, and viciously witty, the book explores each character’s own version of self-abandonment, in which the sensualist within cannot be distinguished from the saint. Funny, harrowing, and fiercely moving, Beautiful Losers is a classic erotic tragedy, incandescent in its prose and exhilarating for its risky union of faith and sexuality.

Don't get me wrong, I quite enjoy the book (it was a big part of my research problem paper, actually) but it's quite deliberately inaccessible, and not something I'm sure I want my mom to read...

For the other panelists/books/info on what this whole "Canada Reads" deal is, anyway, you can visit the site here.

I'm gonna make it after all...

Today was a reasonably tumultuous day. Mostly in a good way, I suppose, but also in a just plain chaotic way. My 10 a.m. class (Topics in American Lit) was cancelled, which was good (and bad) because I was supposed to give my major presentation. While extra time is always appreciated in such matters, I would have liked to have at least gotten that one more thing out of the way. I'm presenting on John Edgar Wideman's Philadelphia Fire with the loose topic of "Islands and Isolation" and eventually while build an argument around the island as a masculine space. For the time being, this is within Philadelphia Fire, but could potentially be extended to African-American lit in general (or the texts we've studied this year in specific). Wideman uses The Tempest as an intertext, which intrigues me, as I tend to associate it more with Caribbean lit than American.

So instead of presenting I marked more thesis paragraphs (oh boy, do I have some that are real doozies), made oven fries for lunch (mmm...potatoe-y goodness), and picked up my (marked) Research Problem...

...and I got a 90 on it.

I am so frigging happy about that. (I refer you to last week's posting about the nausea that handing it in induced.) Since school has started, I've been feeling like I'm doing everything I can to keep my head above the water (and being only marginally successful in doing so). The last two and a half months have been coupled with a feeling of marginal adequacy, a feeling of constantly being *barely* able to grasp at the theoretical texts we've read--a feeling of being a fish who has suddenly realized that her little pond has turned into the entire Atlantic Ocean. (How's that for hyperbole?)

This is exactly the mid-November confidence boost that I need. Oh, and if anyone wants to read how it came out, they are more than welcome to--just email me. Is it sad that I'm considering putting it on my fridge with a bit gold star?

some other beginning's end

So here I am, in North Bay Rock City, visiting the Squidge and not helping her clean because I am a big fat jerk. Actually, I am going to go help her (our parents are also en route this weekend) but I wanted to write something first.

So I checked out Hayden with Cuff the Duke at the UGoo on Wednesday night, and it was a pretty solid show. Hayden is kind of a Neil Young for a new generation...he's almost the cliché of what a sad, bordering-on-emo-indie-folkie guitar player ought to be, only he makes itw ork. Cuff the Duke were also quite entertaining (aside from vaguely assholic audience members) although if I had gotten the chance to talk to their lead singer, I would have been all, "Dude, Chris Murphy called, and he wants his schtick back. Oh, and his hair. And his glasses."

In all seriousness, I enjoyed them, and since they are semi-Guelph local, apparently they'll be playing again in January or so,t o which I can only say...rockzaurs.

I Pity the Foucault IV: Search for the Blood Orchid

It's a Foucault time of year again, what can I say? It snowed briefly here in Guelph today, and I rather suspect that this is going to be a very snowy winter. Perhaps not here, but my comrades in the Bay that is Northerly may in for something a little rougher.

Which is where I am headed this weekend, so perhaps I ought not to be too smug about such goings on.

I handed in my research problem today, and nearly threw up afterwards. I wasn't nervous about it until after it had been handed in and then I suddenly remembered exactly how sucky my argument was...I really hope I don't flunk out. I ended up writing about the Canada, history, and national identity thing that I've been going on about for ages, and I think some of my argument is quite good, but some of it is decidedly weak...and dare I say, cursory. (My bibliography was also much shorter than everyone else's--waaaaahhhh!)

I did find a spectacular website that has some wonderful ruminations on the Great Questions of Canada, contributed by such notables as Charlotte Grey, Jack Granatstein, and Neil Bissoondath.

There are some meditations on foucault and Nietzsche that I will get around to later this week, possibly, as they are quite interesting.

now would be a BAD time to run out of gas

So birthday Cranium was a reasonably successful event; with good food and surprise brithday cake for me, which is pretty fun. (Speaking of which, there's a piece in the fridge..hmmm...) Unfortunately, it was quite the late night, which led to me being wickedly tired for my TAing today, which I hate. Oh, and no one came to see me in my office hours again. And I tried to explain why Eats, Shoots & Leaves" is funny, but I don't think that anyone got it.

THe nerd factor was deliciously high last night; we had nearly a half hour conversation amongst the 8 or so of us about performative punctuation, or what happens when air quotes are taken to the extreme...and being English majors, "punctuation" was expanded to include proper MLA formatting. Performing the interrobang (or as I prefer to call it, QUESTION MARK-EXCLAMATION POINT) is still my favourite thing.

Tomorrow I am off to a colloquium being held at this school, with whom our PhD program is joint. It will be long, and the food possibly bad, but I will get to see one of my undergraduate classmates, who is pursuing her MA in their Gender and Genre program, which should be great. And then my very own Scottish Lass is venturing up for an evening of...well, probably an evening of movie wwatching, because she is the sick.

I'm strong and I'm hardly ever wrong

So. Birthday XXIII is on the books for the moment, and it has been a reasonably good day, netting me the following: two Care Bears nightgowns, peanut butter lipgloss, The Finns's Everyone Is Here, more yarn, a flu shot, and a Cranium party. It has been a wonderfully music-ed day as well, with such selections as Jesse Cook's cover of "Fall at Your Feet," Concrete Blonde's "happy birthday" and The Pursuit of Happiness's "I'm An Adult Now". Oh, I also now have a 20 year old sister, and though I have difficulty imagining myself as 23, the knowledge of her 20 years makes me feel old. My Care Bear is also now twenty years old.

Project Apartment Clean was not so successful as anticipated; but this will be rectified tomorrow, as I got a considerable amount of miscellaneous other stuff done, like lesson plans for tomorrow, which I hear are important. Hey! tomorrow is pay day too.

Owing to my own stupidity, I do not get to go see Bill Whitehead read Timothy Findley tomorrow. I suck.

"Poem" of the "Month":

Well, I don't hate my parents
I don't get drunk just to spite them
I've got my own reasons to drink now
Think I'll call my dad up and invite him
I can sleep in 'til noon anytime I want
Though there's not many days that I do
Gotta get up and take on that world
When you're an adult it's no cliche, it's the truth
--the Pursuit of Happiness, I'm An Adult Now

some days are diamonds, some days are rocks

and shout out to Rob, whose discussion of Tom Petty put that song in my head. And an appropriate one it is too, as I just spilled oil all down my pants. Damn it.

I present on my research problem in an hour and a half or so; I'm not particularly prepared but not particularly unprepared, either. I've been thinkng about the darned thing long enough that I could probably talk about it at length without even realizing that's what I'm doing...hopefully it goes well. I havent been able to put the itme or effort into in that it deserves, unfortunately.

Hayden is playing at the school on November 10th with Cuff the Duke, and I think it's safe to say that you can colour me excited for that.

I will be celebrating my birthday this week by getting a flu shot and cleaning my apartment.

Buddy Holly, is there any room on your plane?

One of the Worst Feelings Ever: REalizing that a book that you need to have read AND written a two-page response journal for is not actually on your bookshelf...because....YOU NEVER BOUGHT IT.

Dammit, dammit, dammit. I think the bookstore might be open tomorrow, but I'm really not sure...I know I can pick it up on Monday and have it read for Tuesday, no problem, I just don't WANT to do that. I hate it when things like this happen, especially since it means my Saturday night reading is Ella Hepworth Dixon's The Story of a Modern woman instead of some Toni Morrison. I'm just not sure about this whole 19th century thing...

There is a club (sort of, I think it's really just someone's apartment) downtown that is having an event entitled "What the Thunder Said." Unfortunately, it won't be my kind of music, though I am tempted to go just for the sheer awesomeness of the name.

Then again, I've been fantasticizing lately about making a music video that would borrow extensively from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, so what do I know?

still, a pretty good week...

The new computer (henceforth known as Cortana) has been here for a week or so, and I haven't really had much of a chance to sit down and get to know her (and the Windows XP - I held on to 98 SE for so bloody long) but now I am, and it really seems like we will get along well. The last week has been decidedly busy, what with my gallivanting and attempting to get educated/educate others, and general avoiding of the fact that it's my birthday on Wednesday.

I got see The Prisoner of Azkaban in an IMAX theatre, which made quite happy. I'd forgotten how much I had enjoyed the film, and seeing it again made me appreciate some of the more subtle points of David Thewlis's performance as Remus Lupin. Of course, hanging out with that guy and my lovely best friend doesn't hurt, either.

Ventured into Toronto, and spent too much money at the Lush store, as per usual. I also got my first set of role playing dice, which are orange and look like candy. (This may or may not be why I chose them.) Stupid Silver Snail...

I had to go back to the school today to have some blood work done. I actually had it done yesterday, but the nurse forgot to label the tubes, and so I found myself back in the health clinic. YEsterday it was easy; today the nurse missed my vein on the first go-round and so we had to go to the other arm, which didn't want to produce enough blood to fill a small vial. Somedays it seems like I just can't win.

I have no desire to get homework done, tonight, either, which is very bad.

pimping the CBC

So the CBC's The Greatest Canadian has made it to TV at last, and the website for it is pretty good. In particular, I recommend the trivia. I scored a cool 17/20, which I'm quite happy with. It's been a good day for trivia. Having arrived in Barrie, and detoured to the mall, I won a free coffee for knowing who the female lead in Algiers was. (Hedy Lamarr, if you're interested...and yes, I know this even though I haven't seen the movie.)

Handed back the first round of papers this morning, which was a little stressful--some of the papers were pretty bad, and I know there are at least a few people who didn't get the marks they wanted. I also did a Start, Stop, Continue evaluation, and it came out pretty well...some effective suggestions, and no one said that I sucked as a TA. Apparently they like that I bring them candy.

Having reflected on the paper marking experience (and by reflected on, I mean "considered seeking therapy to avoid thoughts of bodily harm in order to escape marking papers") I have decided that for the next round, I will simply invent the Undergraduate Paper Marking Drinking Game (tm):

+comma splice - one drink
+dangling modifier - one drink
+pronoun/antecedant agreement - one drink
+improper MLA formatting - one drink
+improper colon/semi-colon use - one drink
+excessive summarizing of text - two drinks
+pretentious language - two drinks
+colloquialisms - two drinks
+faulty apostrophes - two drinks
+no topic sentences - two drinks
+"In conclusion..." - two drinks
+"This paper will discuss..." - two drinks
+a proper thesis statement - three drinks
+your name/the instructor's name spelt incorrectly - chug!
+an A paper - drain your glass

I just...don't think my body can hold that much alcohol.

she took centre stage

I just finished invigilating my first midterm. Not nearly as much fun as it looks, I must say...especially since I went to bed late last night...and it was still bloody dark out when I left for school this morning.

Not having internet access has definitely resulted in a decrease in my typing skills, I think. Hopefully this will change with the advent of the new computer. I think I am leaning towards Cortana as a name. Halo 2 is coming out in three weeks, which would be much more exciting if I had a freaking Xbox...it's sad that even though I only have a 13" screen TV, I'm still contemplating purchasing one. It's the online capability that has me excited, it would be just like I'd never left the bay.

The PS2 faction is up in arms, because apparently the only RPGs that matter are PS2, but I just like the Xbox, and being contrary to the PS2 faction.

Am off gallivanting this weekend, so don't antipate updates until sunday night/monday...if the new computer lives up to its promise.

it's only in your head you feel left out

So I should really point everyone to this blog. It is loquacious, opinionated, arrogant, exceptionally longwinded, and dare I say, a little pretentious...and written by one of my very best friends, who would (no doubt) apply many of those same labels to me and this blog. Regardless, straittohell is a pretty interesting guy, and you should read him, since he and I are working on blogging in dialogue once I get my computer on Sunday.

He has decided to call me "the lark", which I find funny...as I believe it was one of Joan of Arc's names...

off to class I go!

frigging maroon five

Just in case there's anyone out there who likes that pesky maroon five type band, I have one thing to say to you: SO DOES MY DAD.

So it's Sunday, je suis a l'ecole and too lazy to put proper accentage on my French, which is probably a bad thing, since I need to start brushing up on my written French. I should be doing work on the imagined community of nationalism, which I've decided to tie to Matthew Arnold and the rise of English as a subject, but somehow I just can't seem to focus enough to get anything done. Big surprise there. I came up to the school because the Live at the Hollywood Bowl DVD sitting in my DVD player at home seemed to just turn itself on and be all, "watch me! Monty Python is always more fun than homework! Watch meeeeee!" And really, how can you say no to that?

Especially when the Bruces are there, and the Red Riding Hood sketch is shown, because the Red Riding Hood sketch was your introduction to all things Python, and even though you've seen 80 bajillion times since that first time when you were 13, it still makes you laugh in a way that jeopardizes the dryness of your pants.

It has rained all weekend here, which has been thoroughly depressing. I went to the Farmers' Market yesterday, and scored 6 litres of potatoes, 1 litre of fresh apple cider, and a pomegranate. I also checked out the local art supply store, and bought some sketching pencils. The store had two things of particular interest to me: sealing wax (and seals) and linoleum blocks for print making...the possibilities truly are endless.

Internet access at home: t-one week, pending the arrival of *drumroll please* my new computer. Which, of course, needs a name.

I saw you lying in the arms of a poet

Ron Sexsmith is just a doll. He totally rocked my socks off last night. Although it was weird to go to a concert by myself, I suppose it is something that I will have to get used to, as I don't have the stable of concert buddies that I used to. Fortunately I don't think there's anything coming up in the next little bit, so I will be able to concentrate on the school work I need to do.

+presentation, twenty minutes or so, on Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities
+presentations, ten minutes or so, cultural context summary of Scientific Naturalism in the late Victorian
+response journal to Alice Walker's Meridian
+marking...and more marking...and then maybe some stabbing out of eyes
+other readings for the Anderson class, and a response to them as well

If he ever sang this, I would probably simultaneously implode and explode from its beauty.

I've got the urge for going, but I never seem to go

I am in a decidedly Joni Mitchell mood, as of late, though I'm not particularly sure why. As my birthday approaches, I become increasingly anxiously about my Finn Brothers CD...which is rumoured to be coming some time around then.

Two of my classes were cancelled this week so i'm not feeling terrifically academic at the moment, although there are books waiting for me at the library for that conference proposal I am trying to write. I need to get started on my research problem, which is due around the same time as that birthday of mine. Our outline for it has been simply that we should imagine that we are writing a critical preface to the definitive book on this particular problem.

So. If the problem is, how does Canadian literature deal with the concept of national identity?, where should I get started?

Or, more importantly, will I be able to finish after only 12 pages?

Ron Sexsmith tomorrow night, hurrah.

if you can tell me the name of the bird on the back of this $50 bill, I'll give it to you

The weekend has been good to me so far. The giving of thanks is important, surely, and what I choose to focus on considering the "true" origins of the day. I chose my reading wisely this weekend; a few verses from Ecclesiates in King James, and of course, Brébeuf Saves the Worrrrrrrrrrlllld. It always seems that there is never as much time as I want on these sojourns home. It's difficult to find a balance between old friends, new friends, and family, but I think that for once in my life, I've figured it out. And I found my Nipissing ring, which makes me quite happy.

Derrida has died, which is quite sad, though I am not as familiar with his works as I ought to be.

It's amazing to me how this stupid blogging box can make every logical thought in my head disappear in a matter of moments. I swear I'm an intelligent person sometimes. Today was chock-full (chalk-full?) of bad 80s ballads, which I sadly quite enjoyed...total eclipse of the heart, indeed.

Plans for tomorrow: back to Goo-elf, where there will reading, and knitting, and cooking, and some drafting of a proposal for a PCA conference...I have some serious thinking to do.

get me to the church on time!

MAn, I really wanted to update before today, but Blogger and the school computers just haven't been cooperating the way I'd like them to. The first paper for ENGL1200 is due tomorrow, so I have been working my way through office hours and emails and such. Some of the students are just so funny.

I finally got my SSHRC refund, and I must say it is nice to no longer be living on the brink of destitution, especially as my september bills are starting to trickle in, bit by bit.

I have been rather socially active as of late, which is always odd. The MA and PhD Society (colloquially known as MAPS) did a thing on Friday night, which involved the grad lounge, and later the Albion Hotel (hencely referred to as the Alby) and me consuming a great deal of Strongbow. By a great deal, I mean two pints, but that is a lot of liquid for me...especially since it affects me (in a morning after sense) far more than my usual vodka and cranberry juice. It was good to get out and talk with people from the program in a non-class setting; and it has made me very happy that I am postponing any PhD plans for at least a year, as everyone is running around writing proposals for SSHRC.

Straittohell ventur'd to my place on Saturday night; we ran amok watching Life of Brian in theatre, eating Swiss Pigeon, and ultimately ended up dancing at an undergraduate bar, befuddling undergrads everywhere with our requests for David Bowie and Billy Idol's "White Wedding," parts one AND two. If you hop on over to http://straittohell.blogspot.com, you can actually read a much better account of exactly how much fun the evening was. I will give away the secret surprise ending by telling you now that our dancing to Bowie's "Modern Love" was such that drunk farmer boys felt it necessary to mock us through ridiculous exagerated dances of their own...

Canon formation will be a topic of discussion again next week, when Strait and I post a discussion we held over the weekend.

I'll post some interesting school stuff later. I promise.

more knitting

Having finished hat the second about a week ago, and despite the fact that it gives its owner a decidedly "thuggish" look, I am embarking on hat the third, which will be mine, once it gets finished. To be precise, it is this hat.

I joined the staff of The Ontarion yesterday. It has been far too long since I have done any meaningful newspapering. So I amy be writing some news and some music reviews, channeling the spirit of my old friend, the Schrode.

Hey everybody, it's time to apply for teacher's college in Ontario. You know you want to.