Episode 626: New TV Shows!

Just when I thought it was safe to get on with revision, I discovered that the pilot for Pretty Little Liars has aired. This is yet another book-to-TV series, but don't dismiss it just because of that. The basic premise is intriguing enough, and I can see why the show has been described as I Know What You Did Last Summer meets Gossip Girl, and Desperate Housewives for tweens. I think the series has potential, even if some of the controversial elements are completely unnecessary (like that passionate teacher-student kiss at the end) and make this an odd choice for ABC Family to air. I will say though, it's nice to see Holly Marie Combs back on a television series. If there's one thing strange about this show, it's how flat-out unattractive some of the cast members are. Lucy Hale (from Privileged) is really pretty, but the other girls in the clique are better described as 'striking' or worse, 'ordinary'. If they'd been more uniformly attractive, I'd say this series was a better fit for The CW, although the apparent target demographic may be too young for that network. The pilot for NBC's Persons Unknown has also aired, but I think I'm going to save that one for summer viewing when I'm home. Am still waiting for the new season of Hung to air, but I'm glad Royal Pains is back, as well as Lie To Me and Three Rivers, the latter finally brought back to burn off its remaining episodes after being cancelled earlier in January.

Episode 625: Books, Books, And More Books

Got both portfolios back today, and they turned out okay. Had hoped for better, but I'll take what I've got. Still, thank goodness for my French marks. Even though they're not going to be as fantastic as I'd been aiming for initially, they're totally fulfilling their purpose of pulling up my average. (All of this, naturally, only matters because I need a First if I want to have a shot at getting sponsored by MOE for a Masters.) Also picked up a lot of books at the department's book sale, most of them being free books donated by tutors. A lot of poetry, mostly from Shearsman. Carried it all the way home, and thankfully, it only started raining after I'd got home. Mad props, by the way, to the delivery guy who showed up just before 10 pm with my books from Amazon UK. Talk about crazy dedication from a shipping company that's usually pretty lousy. Among the books they've brought me is Peter Blegvad's The Book Of Leviathan, which should prove interesting reading when I'm not pretending to revise. Speaking of which, I have finally begun re-reading the Romantics. Have only gone through part of Blake's The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell, which is still brilliant. Coming up though, is Charlotte Smith's 'Beachy Head'. That's going to be painful. Randomly, there's a fly in my room and it's really annoying because I can't catch it. Also randomly, for the amount of effort I put into making sure we don't get cheated of our money, my housemates really should pay me. Haha...

Episode 624: Stupid Short Loan!

Am almost finished with The New Poetry. Not quite sure what to read after that for revision. Oh well. So it's been raining for the past couple of days, and I was going to stay at home and chill with the new episode of Lie To Me, but I discovered that I had an overdue Short Loan book, so had to race down to campus. The damage was £10! Not amused. Anyway, I've been spending a while on YouTube, watching music videos. Have seen Lady Gaga's 'Alejandro', which I found interesting, but less impressive than her previous videos. For one, it felt overextended, which was never a problem before. With 'Alejandro' though, there were segments where the track was obviously mixed just to pad out visual sequences that felt like they could have been trimmed without losing much. Plus the simulated orgy motif is really getting a bit worn out now. Mylène Farmer's 'Dégénération' had it, and then it popped up on a literally massive scale in Kylie Minogue's 'All The Lovers', so it's not particularly shocking. (They weren't even that good-looking in 'Alejandro'!) Miley Cyrus's 'Can't Be Tamed', on the other hand, intrigues me. I've never been a fan of her voice, which actually really annoys me. It's not the country twang so much as how shrill she gets. Have a listen to 'Party In The U.S.A.' to see what I mean. On her newest single, however, bless Auto-Tune for making her sound at last like every other disposable female popstar on the scene, i.e. this is something you can listen to without wanting to saw your ears off (unless you're a musical purist/snob). The video isn't particularly original, but for an artiste who's (unsurprisingly) trying to break away from her Disney origins, it's a decent piece of work. It's completely trashy, of course, but in a way that slots it neatly into the current landscape of pop. I've tried listening to the song without the video though, and it doesn't have quite the same impact without the visuals, so I'm not holding out high hopes for the rest of the album.

Episode 623: Boxes Packed...

I'm sure there's a satisfying psychological explanation for my love of administrative work, like data entry, but I have yet to have it told to me. Well, it's good to know that if all else fails, I can always become a secretary. Went to Varsity after that and had myself another curry. The vindaloo there packs a good enough punch. You can literally feel it burning inside you after you've eaten it. Also managed to find the time to finish packing my boxes for shipping home. There's three in total (one for Chris, two for me), and if only I'd not forgotten to photocopy my passport, I could be getting Seven Seas to collect it on Wednesday. Instead, I'm going to put it off till Friday, since I should be heading down to the department's book sale on Wednesday and I think Seven Seas needs at least 24 hours' notice for a collection. I've still got way too many books left in the UK, but I've convinced myself they will be utterly necessary and that I will have plenty of time next year to read them. (I tell myself that all the time.) Randomly, I've also decided that my ideal life would be to spend half of the year in Paris, and the other half in New York. Yes, I am a huge, walking cliché. So what?

Episode 622: The New Poetry

Just done the titles for the week that nobody signed up for. Still don't have remote desktop access though, so I can't upload anything yet. Managed to read about a third of The New Poetry in the Library between morning and evening services (was singing today), and that was after having a longish chat with Gaby over tea. The Library is starting to reek of sweat and desperation, by the way. Not very pleasant. Was very glad for the rain today though. It was kind of getting too warm to concentrate on anything! Mel has repeatedly assured me that the EN227 paper isn't a difficult one, so I'm hoping she's right. I guess I just need to focus and start do a bit of research, enough to throw in a bit of contextual knowledge. I'll feel more confident about the essays then. The New Poetry, incidentally, is pretty good, although because it came out so long ago, it's a bit strange to look at the dates of birth for most of the poets, who are largely in their 60s by now. Doesn't mean they don't still sound fresh though. From the selection in the anthology alone, Paul Durcan has definitely secured a place in my list of favourite poets.

Episode 621: Poets/Themes Chosen!

So my Harris matrix was apparently pretty much 100% correct, save for those bits that I wasn't sure about. Have corrected and printed it out, so that's 20% of the assessment in the bag. Should probably get cracking on the report that constitutes 80%, and it's totally going to be an exercise in making up stuff that I don't actually understand fully. Sort of. What could go wrong? Headed to the Library after that to force myself to figure out what I want to do for EN227. Have settled on John Keats and John Clare in relation to nature and solitude, as well as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Amy Levy in relation to sexuality and religion. I really hope I don't regret those choices eventually! I deliberately picked two pairs of poets that could be used for two themes (although I'm on slightly shaky ground regarding the theme of nature), as I'm lazy and don't feel quite up to learning more than a pair of poets for each half of the module. In line with this general burst of sudden industry, I've finished packing one of my boxes to be shipped back! Have estimated that I should be just under the weight limit, seeing as the box is full to the brim with only paperbacks and it makes no sense to create a box for books that can't be filled completely without exceeding the weight limit. Right?

Episode 620: Revision Blues...

So the flash fiction I wrote a while back is in The Green Bike Stories from Six Sentences! My biography at the end looks embarrassingly wordy compared to the majority of the other contributors. I tried to catch some rays in the afternoon, but that only worked out for about an hour before intermittent cloud cover drove me back inside. (Incidentally, Tesco must be conspiring to make students fat. Buy one, get one free for Doritos, less than half-price for Pringles? Madness. I caved, naturally.) I've managed to re-read all my lecture/seminar notes for EN227, which has led me to conclude that I really don't care much for most of the Romantics, and this is definitely going to be the biggest problem for my revision, not being able to find poets and themes that I want to write about for that half of the module. The Victorians aren't as hard to choose for, mainly because their obsessions are things that I am personally drawn to as themes anyway, and who can't like a group of poets as neurotic as them? Still not buying Hopkin's sprung rhythm though. It works fine when you read it on the page or aloud, but try and read his technical explanation of it, and the whole thing smacks of trying too hard.

Episode 619: Harris Matrix Draft

So I woke up at about 9.30 am and then decided to be productive, even though I'd planned on sleeping till much later. Spent the morning looking for the second batch of film titles, and then in the afternoon, I decided to start cracking on my Harris matrix draft, which I've just finished now, after getting back from cluster at church. Have done it in Word because it's just silly to draw it by hand, although I will do that if the tutor insists. It's just so much easier to edit in Word, and it actually looks very good. Tidy, clean lines. I could so have gone into architecture. Or engineering. I'm pretty sure there are at least two or three mistakes in what I've done, but on the whole, it's on the right track, I'm absolutely certain. Now if only there wasn't a report to write as well. Only 1500 words, but it's painful when you have no clue what you're actually doing for once. Oh well! It's such a shame that I had to spend a bit of the afternoon doing this, when I could've been outside the entire time, topping up my tan. I did manage to get some time under the sun, but not nearly enough. I want a tan, damn it!

Episode 618: Drinks + Leamington > Revision + Coventry

Still haven't done the things that I should have, like collecting a second batch of titles for WSC or doing a draft Harris matrix for Saturday's lesson, but I did get some more re-reading done for EN238. Had to go to campus to zap a copy of the revision lecture handout for Dan, but my stupid iPod was being cranky and my laptop's running out of space, and technological crises are too tempting not to attempt to resolve, so I ended up arriving a full hour after he did. (Sorry about that!) Had band practice in the evening, so I wasn't planning on turning up at Christian's drinking session in Leamington. Practice ended earlier than I expected though, so it was only about 8 pm by the time I left church. Figured I'd turn up for drinks if I could get a 12 that would put me in Leamington by 9.30 pm, which I did manage to catch. Having travelled back and forth from there a couple of times over the past few days, I'm actually quite surprised by how little time it takes, now that practically nobody gets on or off between campus and Leamington. (Yeah, Jerrick, it's like nobody likes Kenilworth, despite it being so pretty and all.) Oh, by the way, my book review is up here, so if you'll excuse my shameless self-promotion and check out the other stuff Evolve Journal has to offer, I'd be most grateful!

Episode 617: Boxes, Boxes, Boxes...

Managed to get started on revision today, even if it consisted of re-reading EN238 handouts and I haven't actually cracked open The New Poetry yet. Dhruvni, Sophie and I were in Costa for about three hours, before the barista came to chase us out, ostensibly because there were a lot of customers in the queue. Ironically, by the time we actually left, quite a few seats had become empty, definitely more than enough. Plus Sophie hadn't even finished her frescato! So we ended up in Starbucks. (You can see how expensive this not-revising-at-home business is.) Anyway, the boxes have arrived for packing my books to be shipped off, so I've just had a stab at that. What I really need right now is a weighing scale, so if anyone has one that I can borrow for a few days, please let me know! Chris's books will definitely fit into one box, except it'll probably be insanely over the weight limit. The good news, however, is that we'll probably need only three, at most four, boxes. Seven Seas actually delivered four more than what I ordered for some reason, but they take unused ones back and don't charge you, so it's not a problem. In other news, Firstfruits back in Singapore are calling for submissions for a new anthology. Am honestly tempted, since I definitely have six to eight good poems, and since the editor for the anthology is open to taking reprints, I get to resubmit some of my best stuff! Would actually be really cool if I make the cut. We'll see? Off to work out the harmony for that new song Matt wants to do tomorrow, and then bed...