Episode 950: Enough With The Elections Already!

Light bulb blew today, completely out of the blue. Friends recommend letting natural light into my room more. They're probably right, and to be fair, I have drawn the curtains a bit more recently, now that the weather is no longer freezing and the amount of daylight we get verges on the excessive. Anyway, that's fixed now. Finished reading Carrie Etter's The Tethers last night, which was very good, and now I'm getting through Zoë Brigley's The Secret. Incidentally, Doctor Who this week was pretty damn amazing, if you ask me. Can't wait to see how this week's plot developments fit into the series arc, and how heartbreaking was it when River realised she was never going to kiss the Doctor again? To finish off this post, since it's a week before the elections in Singapore, I thought I'd say a quick word or two, possibly the only time I'm going to comment on them here. Firstly, enough with the Nicole Seah adulation that's flooding my Facebook. Seriously. Yeah, she sounds great and poised. There was a video of her at a rally that was a bit too fire and brimstone for me, though it's clear that wherever she got her training in public speaking from, she sure knows how to have a crowd eating out of her hand. That interview she gave to a foreign journalist was a bit awkward though. Too many Obama-style references to 'change' (maybe they were deliberate?) and she sounded like she was trying to modify her accent for the foreign media. What annoys me about the Nicole fans though, is how no one's bothered to point out to them that if she gets into Parliament, she's also taking an entire GRC team in with her who've not been nearly as vocal. Isn't this the sort of 'free ride' the PAP is constantly being accused of? Yet because this is the opposition we're talking about, it's like a massive betrayal to even breath a word against anyone running on a non-PAP ticket.

I also detest people who blindly distil political debate down slogans and rhetoric, and in the process make it sound like voting for the opposition is some sort of civic duty. News flash! It isn't. Vote opposition if you want. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. Just don't do it because you've been convinced by someone's Facebook link that it's the 'right' thing to do. Like I've commented to several friends online, judging by the sort of comments netizens throw out, Singaporeans genuinely deserve the politics they've been getting over the past decades. How many of us can honestly say that we're casting a vote for the national good, as opposed to our own self-interests disguised as the national good? Look at all the issues people are so riled up about. Even when they're 'big picture', like immigration, it's always in the selfish context of 'me, me, me'. I don't want to live in an overcrowded city any more than the next Singaporean, but short of turning the island into a complete urban sprawl, I still say people should suck it up and be a bit more tolerant. Admittedly, for a party that's been around for over 40 years, the PAP definitely needs a way better PR machine. So when the men in white are back in power (because let's face it, it would be a freak result if they were kicked out, and I guarantee lots of people would actually regret it, just that the MM shouldn't have said so publicly), they need to figure out why GE 2011 nearly went so horribly wrong. I could have made this post way more cogent, but I figured it wouldn't matter. Those who agree with me probably won't see a need to speak out in solidarity against the emotional rhetoric that's overtaken any sort of rational discourse during these elections. Those who disagree with me are just going to label me a pro-PAP lackey and wouldn't have been prepared to listen to anything I had to say anyway. Everyone wins.

Episode 949: What Royal Wedding?

So as you may have gathered from the title, I don't really care about the royal wedding. It's not that I'm an anti-monarchist. I mean, it's not my king/queen, and you have to admit, it's a good tourist draw for people who are into that sort of thing. Instead of trying to watch the royal wedding online (although I hear Pippa Middleton was smoking hot), I was reading the April edition of New Linear Perspectives and reviewing it for Sabotage Reviews. It was decent, though it didn't really amaze me like some stuff I've reviewed in the past. Also got around to reading my first batch of fiction submissions for The Cadaverine. Exciting times! Now I'm about to log off and so some leisure reading. Read Stephen Brown's Future Me last night, a play about a lawyer who gets busted for paedophilia, and to quote the back cover, the play 'is a devastating study of unlawful desire. With unflinching honesty, it examines the destructive power of illicit deeds and the limits of forgiveness. For someone who has crossed the line, is there really any chance of a 'future me'? In light of what happened to an acquaintance late last year, it was an interesting play to read. Now the question is what do I read next? If only something like David Louis Edelman's MultiReal existed, yeah? That would be awesome.

Episode 948: So, What Next?

Since we've got a one-day extension for our PWP submission and so I'm getting it bound on Tuesday instead, I popped in to see Michael Hulse during his office hour today. We talked a bit about my PWP and what's next for the poems, and Michael noted that perhaps the exposition in the poems wouldn't necessarily be an issue when sending them around, since the reading public's tastes actually can't be said to lean definitely in one direction or the other on this point. As evidence, he cited the reception of Ted Hughes's Tales From Ovid, which stays close to the original text, and where Hughes invents, the additions tend to be expository anyway. With the cuts in Arts Council funding though, now's a terrible time to be hawking poetry manuscripts to publishers. He did point out that one possible way to go is to try and get a manuscript accepted with a Singaporean publisher (choices I can think of literally take up the fingers of one hand), and then approach publishers here about putting the collection out as a co-publication. Not sure how the legal mechanics would work out, but I suppose it's the most plausible next course of action, if I wanted to do anything more with these poems. For today though, I think I'm just going to get fully caught up with 90210 (already read and scheduled all outstanding submissions for Eunoia Review), and maybe read something for fun.

Episode 947: PWP Done!

3884 words. It's finally finished! Wrote the last couple of pages while watching 90210, although since I was scrounging desperately for words by that point, I don't think my divided attention actually adversely affected the quality of the writing anyway. It's definitely too heavy on the quotes, but hey, it's not easy trying to pad an essay out when you want to avoid making it all about interpreting your own work for the marker, which is a bit of a pointless exercise. At least last year for EN238, each poem kind of had its own little story behind it that I could talk about. This time, it's literally just been a case of me wanting to write something that riffs off the Bible. Michael Hulse sent me an e-mail saying he liked the complete sequence, with the same qualification as last time that there's more exposition than he thinks is necessary. Personally, I think he's probably right, but I wouldn't know how to fix that, to be perfectly honest. Stripping it out would probably free the poems up to speculate even more wildly, but I don't know if I could write those poems. Still, whatever, it's finally done. Now to take a break over the long weekend, and then start worrying again about my EN236 portfolio (about 75% done, excluding the rewrites that will supply the missing 25%) and revision.

Episode 946: DR@W Made Me £39.50 Richer Today!

So after a total of six e-mails back and forth, this submitter finally let me read her poems. These were sent along with a request that she be credited should they be accepted for publication, which immediately tipped me off that she'd never visited the journal's site before. Otherwise, she'd have realised that there are currently 200+ pieces of writing there that have been properly credited to their creators. I should have known better, since all her questions in her e-mails dealt with matters that could have been cleared up by paying attention to the submission guidelines, which I even gave her a link to in one of my replies. To top it all off, the poems weren't even any good! Now I feel like I've trampled on her soul by rejecting them. Already anticipating an aggrieved e-mail when I wake up in the morning, but at least I will totally enjoy laying into her with my reply, since her response is almost guaranteed to be so ridiculous that it'll be all I can do to dial down the sarcasm. Anyway, DR@W made me £39.50, which I believe may be the highest payout I've ever received from it. Not really a fair gauge, of course, since the payment this time was for a part of the experiment carried out last term as well. Still, it's nice to be paid for, you know, making decisions. The Economics Department is literally just handing the cash out. As for essay progress, still not nearly enough, but enough done that I could finish it by pulling an all-nighter tomorrow, which is something to be grateful for. Library trip was definitely worth it!

Episode 945: Hating This Essay...

Technically, taking into account the +/- 10% provision for word counts, I've finished a third of my PWP essay. I worry that I'm running out of things to say, partly because I am consciously trying to avoid explication of the poetry and deliberately concentrating on questions of purpose instead. I've pretty much exhausted the whole vein of what it means to write Christian poetry, I think, short of starting on a sweeping analysis of the history of English poetry or doing close analyses of poems that other people wrote and somehow trying to make that relevant to what I've written. I'm hoping that once I start talking about the whole sibling rivalry thing, I'll get a lot of mileage out of that. Otherwise, I have no idea what else I can talk about anymore. This may change, of course, after I've been to the Library tomorrow, before or after the DR@W experiment I'm doing. In fact, I'm counting on it. I've worked out the general idea of the next couple of pages, but even that will probably only double the current length of the essay, unless I can find something really compelling tomorrow that will expand the ideas I've got into something more substantial.

Episode 944: Happy Easter!

Today's post is mostly just random stuff/links strung together with little pretence that they connect up in any especially coherent way. So can I just say I don't get how I haven't noticed Sky Ferreira's music before today, especially her single 'Obsession'? Love it. Also finally found a review of Lady Gaga's 'Judas' that echoed my problems with it, but a bit more snarkily. The last two paragraphs are hilarious. Staying on the topic of music, check out the amazing origami stop-motion music video done by Opaque Nature for their song 'Mixing The Colours'. It's a great song, and the video just makes it even better. Moving along, it turns out WordPress was probably lying to me about the limit of 100 scheduled posts, as I've scheduled up to 110 now, and if the system for detecting the number of scheduled posts was an automated one, it should have locked me out by now. So either the WordPress guy was lying to me and covering up for the fact that I was aggressively censored, or they've lifted the limit on my account because they've reviewed what I use it for (i.e. running a daily literary journal). So that brings me to this blog, which is the best Internet trainwreck I've seen in a while. That woman either has zero EQ or she's crazy.

Episode 943: £4.10 For The Scenery?

So I travelled to Stratford on the X18 to pick up a copy of The World's Wife from the library there, but it turned out not to be there, contrary to what the online catalogue indicated. Borrowed a Li-Young Lee's From Blossoms: Selected Poems though, so not completely a wasted trip. Didn't realise Stratford lies outside the Unirider zone for Leamington/Warwick though, so ended up having to pay £4.10 for the stretch of the journey from Stratford till the Hilton Warwick. That was slightly annoying, especially since the driver was quite rude about it. (Of course, what this means is that I can totally avoid paying for a return ticket to Stratford, though I have no idea how much that saves me really.) It's a pretty scenic route, especially in the spring. I haven't really started on my 4000-word essay for my PWP, apart from laying down the introduction's opening sentences. It's a good start, and hopefully, I'll do more tomorrow. You know, tomorrow being Easter Sunday and all. Oh, the symbolism! Incidentally, the new Doctor Who is quite disappointing, especially after the hype from the trailer, although unlike a lot of people, I do like how the relationship between the Doctor and River is continuing to develop. That piece of River's dialogue when she was with Rory was genuinely moving: 'My past is his future. We're travelling in opposite directions. Every time we meet, I know him more, he knows me less. I live for the days when I see him, but I know that every time I do, he'll be one step further away. The day is coming when I'll look into that man's eyes, my Doctor, and he won't have the faintest idea who I am, and I think it's going to kill me.' (The execution of the concept, however, totally rips off Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, yeah?)

Episode 942: Parlez-vous Le Français Des Affaires?

Managed to read both Kathy and Sophie Mac's PWPs, which I really enjoyed. Kind of made me feel like for all the reading I do, not a lot of it ends up filtering into my own writing, at least not thematically. I really like non-realist stuff, but I never end up writing it? Oh well. Sat in the garden and finished reading Elizabeth Jenning's Christianity And Poetry. Couple of quotes from there that are probably going to make it into my essay, though I'm not sure what the structure of that looks like yet. Definitely need to do some more reading if I want to have anything to say in the essay. Would have gone into the Library to browse through some books, but it's closed for Easter weekend, so I'm only going to be able to do that on Tuesday. Ideally, I'd like to get started on the essay before then. For a change, I already have the opening sentence! It's something I read in a newspaper a while ago about the centrality of the Bible to English literature. Have also begun revising my French, since I figure that if I start making attempts now, by a week before the paper I'll actually have done enough that I don't spend the whole week after my birthday freaking out that LL251 is going to pull my average down. That would be ironic, considering my Language Centre module is meant to be a lock for me and compensate for my other modules.

Episode 941: PWP Done!

Well, the poems are anyway. I'm going to read through them again tomorrow before I e-mail Michael Hulse. Now to wrestle with that 4000-word essay! Also need to write some fiction, but that deadline seems comparatively distant right now. As for revision, what revision? Sigh. I should start on the business French vocabulary though. After a month of no lessons, I bet most of it's fled my brain. Not good when you can't use a dictionary during the examination! Finally finished off the review for Sabotage Reviews tonight as well. The online magazine I was reviewing this time actually took way less time to read than I expected, so I'd done that a couple of days ago while procrastinating from writing my PWP. The review turned out a good deal longer than I expected, partly because I had some slightly harsh things to say about one of the contributors' poems. Why is it that I never second-guess myself when I like someone's writing, but if I don't like something, I always hesitate to criticise it if the writer's been published in numerous places? It's unwarranted insecurity about my abilities as a critic, since I don't think I'm exactly shabby in that department. I think I might take a breather tomorrow since it's Good Friday, although I'm not planning on attending tomorrow's service. It's too early in the morning and I'm not used to waking up at that time of the day anymore, and I just never seem to get anything done after a morning service because I just end up lazing about when I get home from a long lunch. Planning to read Kathy's PWP and give her feedback, and I don't know, maybe start writing the essay even. If I bash away at it, something will emerge, right?