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.