Episode 261: But It Doesn't Feel Any Different

I genuinely wonder how much alcohol I would have to consume to wake up with a hangover the next day. To my knowledge, I've never had one. Have frittered away my first full day of true summer freedom on music, Season 7 of Charmed, and Cambridge Companions. My autographed copy of Daniel Boys's debut, So Close, has finally arrived, and it is eminently listenable. Also had the chance to take another listen to some of Jon McLaughlin's stuff. I had completely no idea that he was the one who sang 'So Close' on the Enchanted soundtrack, said song having been covered by Boys for his album. The random connections that you can uncover with a few clicks of the mouse! Spent some time downloading various Cambridge Companions while watching the first couple of episodes of Season 7 of Charmed. I think I might be able to finish the entire series before I leave the UK! Am now playing Uno on Facebook. Facebook is slowly turning into this amalgamation of everything that can actually take place in real life. It's cool, but also freaking scary. So I'm going to get off it and read some poetry instead. Go me.

Episode 260: Et L'été Commence...

So it's finally over. My first year as an undergraduate is essentially over. All that remains is a couple of weeks to tie up loose ends, before heading back to a country where the weather is slightly more predictable and spicy food actually packs a punch. The paper went well, I think. Wasn't nervous, although there were moments while writing when I sort of scratched my head and went, I should know what comes next but somehow it's escaped me. Did manage to put together two relatively coherent essays, so I'm almost definitely passing EN123, barring an exceptional disaster. Returned my library books, and then went to hang out in The Dirty Duck, where over the course of the afternoon/evening, I bumped into a lot of other people whom I wasn't expecting to see there. So just to clarify, Dan, I do not in fact know everyone. Today was an anomaly, I promise. We adjourned to Sophie's room, where we were greeted by the sight of Sophie sprawled on the floor, ostensibly asleep. More consumption of alcohol in a confined space followed, including my inviting Laura over in Sophie's name on Facebook while the latter was in the kitchen. To be fair, we could totally have done worse things with a logged-in Facebook account. Now I've just got back from the Library, where I was picking up some poetry to occupy myself for the rest of the week. Cool people go to the Library because we want to, not because we need somewhere to (try to) study. Haha! Lola was supposed to pass me our housing contract today, but somehow she forgot to call me. I would like to say that I was too drunk to call her, but the truth is that I just didn't think it was that big a deal.

Episode 259: Multiverse Morality?

Managed to sort out my essay plans and quotes early in the afternoon. So I'm going to spend the rest of the day re-reading the seven pages of notes that I've made. I'm not sure how much of the critical comments I'm going to remember, but I'm only taking very minimal quotes from the primary texts, so remembering those shouldn't be too much of a problem. Will probably pass the next couple of hours by alternately reading my notes and reading something else, just for variety. All this, naturally, after the Season 6 finale of Charmed. It's so tempting to just blow off work now and assume that it'll all come back to me somehow in 24 hours. Literally. I shan't though! Anyway, watching the season finale has rekindled my interest in the concept of a balanced multiverse, in the manner of Jane Jensen's Dante's Equation. I don't think it's possible to subscribe to it, at least not in the form that it's been portrayed in fiction and media, primarily because it either comes off as too reductive or too complicated, i.e. in practice, morality isn't something that you can conveniently flip in its entirety, e.g. in the season finale of Charmed, whereas the multiverse of Dante's Equation seems to defy the principle of Occam's razor. The idea itself, however it is applied, does seem to generate the sort of patterning and structure that confers a work the sense of substance, regardless of whether that substance is founded on anything to begin with. As Hugh Kenner commented on Waiting For Godot: 'For nothing satisfies the mind like balance; nothing has so convincing a look of being substantial.'

Episode 258: Work Has Been An Eye-opener

The title of this entry says it all. While reading an essay on gender and modernism, I stumbled upon a paragraph that confirmed what I'd suspected ever since I began doing serious work for Tuesday's paper: I could have completely swapped my texts between the questions, and they would still provide adequate material for crafting answers. Different answers, obviously, but decent nonetheless. That's versatility for you. Have pretty much sorted out Q3, so as long as I don't forget what I'm actually planning to say, I should be fine once I stick a couple of choice quotations in my head. Am now in the process of fleshing out a plan for Q7. Tempting as it is to actually write out bits of my answers in full and memorise them instead of relying on an admittedly sound plan, I'm not going to do that. Knowing me, I'd probably blank and end up writing rubbish. As it is, my plans are pretty straightforward. None of the subtlety that usually turns up in my usual EN123 essays, at least not at a structural level. I am hoping that the arguments I'm making for each question are sufficiently nuanced to impress, and I am particularly pleased that the vague idea I had about using chronology to answer Q3 has turned out to be something workable, thanks to a critical essay I found in a Cambridge Companion. Will probably do a little bit more work, and then get some, for once, well-deserved rest.

Episode 257: Modernism? Postmodernism? Does Anyone Even Care?

Have started reading my secondary critical stuff and have already managed to round up some snazzy quotes. Now if only I could remember all of them! I've pretty much sorted out Q7 in my head, even though it's the question I've done less reading for. Still not sure what sort of argument I'm trying to make for Q3, although chronology might possibly be a point I want to raise, except that I'd then have to deal with the whole modernism-versus-postmodernism thing, which I'm keen to avoid because I think for me it'd end up muddying the waters rather than clarifying them. We shall see! Need to get some serious, hardcore reading done after church tomorrow. Dinner at Jerrick's went well, although I still have an entire jar of pasta sauce, and it probably wasn't a good idea to spend so long nattering away after dinner and dessert were actually done. Maybe I'll try to return the jar of sauce at Tesco? Feels like too much effort though. Might as well just use it at some point in the next three weeks. Anyway, I got so tired of procrastinating that I've written a parody of Robert Frost's 'Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening'. I actually think it's not bad, so I've posted it as a Facebook note for the amusement of my friends. I even tagged my tutor!

Episode 256: Today, Revision = Epic Fail

I think David Morley just gave me the Facebook equivalent of a slap on the wrist. So yeah, I will try to memorise some quotes for Tuesday's examination, even if they're all just incomplete fragments in my memory by the time I get to the venue. Today, so far I've failed to get any work done, despite staying up last night to read Williams. Am now taking my first tentative steps through Elizabeth Bishop's Complete Poems, and after that it shall be Eliot's Selected Poems and perhaps some random stuff on modernism to give all my reading a context to flounder in. The plan is to finish with all the primary texts by tonight, mull over it and quite literally dream up two brilliant theses. That will help to give my further reading some sort of direction. I'm not too bothered about Q7, since I'm writing about Eliot and Bishop for that. To be terribly reductive, he was sexist and she was lesbian; they're perfect for the question. If I can find a good quote on sexism in relation to modernism, I think I might have the beginnings of an opening sentence. Am feeling more iffy about Q3, simply because I'm not very sure what to say about Williams, Stoppard and Beckett. There's the obvious contrast between Williams early spareness and Stoppard's dense allusions, but there must surely be something to be said for Beckett and the idea of le mot juste too? Perhaps I should be decisive and eliminate one of the three?

Episode 255: Post-Varsity Industry

It's now a little after 2 am, and I'm about to try and finish reading Williams's Selected Poems. I've pretty much decided that I prefer his early work. Not to say that the later poems are bad, but for me they lack that spare quality which was the appeal of his early poems, and more succinctly conveyed his position, 'No ideas but in things.' I'm finding the stepped triadic line particularly irritating. I've got a book here that may shed some light on the complexities of it, but I'd just like to point out that it is rather trying on the eye to shift focus just a little bit across the page with every single line. Anyway, I've decided that the Library actually does make me more productive, as I don't have ready access to all my TV shows. (I think I've said this before!) I will probably not go to the Library on Friday though, as I'm almost done with reading the primary texts and will be moving on to criticism, including all those Cambridge Companions that I've downloaded. Everyone's hating on my Facebook status at the moment, and replying is actually keeping me from getting started on Williams, so I'm just going to get to the end of the selection from this collection, and then I'm going to shut my laptop and crawl into bed to finish the rest because it's too cold!

Episode 254: Productive Day!

Ah, the weather has returned to more bearable conditions today, and looks set to for the rest of the week. I went over to Mel's place to collect some stuff that she didn't want anymore, so that took up the morning. Then I headed over to the Library to join the 'cool' people who were studying there. While there, I found out from Sophie Mac via Twitter that there's a case of H1N1 influenza at Warwick! Cue mass hysteria and panic. Not. Although if anyone has some Relenza or Tamiflu handy, do share, thanks! I managed to read Beckett's Endgame, which is an interesting counterpoint to Waiting For Godot, although it made me feel more bleak than Waiting For Godot did. Then I read Stoppard's Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, which has completely cemented my respect for Stoppard as a playwright. I've never actually read Hamlet, but I do have a rough idea of the plot, and I thought Stoppard's play raised some intriguing issues. Finally, I re-read Travesties, which is full of pithy lines. 'I may occasionally be a little overdressed but I make up for it by being immensely overeducated.' 'To lose one revolution is unfortunate. To lose two would look like carelessness!' How can you not love a play that has lines like those? Took a break for a disgustingly oily dinner, and then I read the introduction to William Carlos Williams's Selected Poems before heading back to my room. All in all, a very productive day indeed. I feel like I deserve a slap on the back. Or two.

Episode 253: The Mercury Climbs...

Our spell of warm weather continues, with temperatures comparable to those back home in Singapore on a rainy day.How did I celebrate this spate of glorious sunshine, you ask? I got my hair cut. Yeah, the windswept look just wasn't working anymore. In fact, it was beginning to get very annoying. So my hair's back to a short crop, which I will allow to grow out for the remaining three weeks that I'm here. Also picked up the essay questions for EN123, and after figuring out which two questions I want to do, I went to the Library to pick up a few more books. I definitely have more material than I need, so it's just a matter of synthesising a sound argument. Twice. The good mark on my Heart Of Darkness essay was heartening, no pun intended. As expected, I've dropped Yeats from my list of writers to be revised, so I'm looking at a 2-3 split. Not sure if I'll revise Beckett, suppose it depends on whether I find anything terribly compelling and/or relevant in the criticism on him. Cooked for cell today, with some help from John. I thought everything turned out rather well, considering my inexperience, although I did splash sauce all over my t-shirt when the bottle of cooking oil slipped through my fingers. We shall see if the stains come out!

Episode 252: Threadless Sale. Again!

Got back grades for EN124, and that's worked out to a high 2:1 overall, which is great. Have discovered that the cover of my laptop now has a lot of random scratches and scuffing. A little annoyed, but have realised from the moment the laptop arrived that choosing glossy over matte was one of those stupid moments when I traded common sense for aesthetics. Oh well. On to happier things, like the $5 Threadless sale! I'm going to get myself some new t-shirts again, except this time, I'm going to pay for as little of them as possible. How, you ask? By referring people to Threadless, as well as taking pictures of myself in Threadless tees and uploading them to the site. I've already earned USD 6 through referrals, and after I'm done with the photographs, I should get another USD 24. That's going to be enough to cover the shipping and then some, so I won't have to break the bank just to get some additions to my wardrobe. I will stop buying clothes after this, I really will. Only one caveat to this, and that's if I come across a leather jacket. Still slightly sore about missing out on that Zara one all those months ago! One last thing: shopping for groceries is still something completely alien to me. At least this time, I took less time to figure out the location of everything that I was looking for!