Episode 585: Finally, Some Work Got Done

Joel Stein has contributed a snarky list to TIME: Least Influential People of 2010. Some of it is genuinely funny, although there's a lot of empty snark in there as well. I am pleased to note that both Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag made the list though. The Hills is one of those 'reality' shows that's dragged on far too long. Come on people, give Tinsley Mortimer a chance to squander her media standing too! Although why The CW felt the need to create the pointless 'reality' mess that is High Society when fake stuff like Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries, and goodness, even Melrose Place obviously has more entertainment value, I will never understand. Can American viewers really be that thick (and pathetic)? You know what? Don't even answer that. Work went rather well today. I finished off the French comprehension in pretty much record time, and I also stayed up till 4 am last night to finish the portfolio for EN232, which I've now e-mailed to a couple of people for feedback. Now I just need to finish off a short French composition, and then it's time to tackle that monstrosity of a commentary. I'm still a bit bowled over by the fact that my commentary is going to be at least 1000 words longer than the combined word count of my poems.

Episode 584: Abortive Attempt At Work

Have been trying to do work the entire day, but have wound up listening to the duet version of 'Amarrado A Ti' by Álex Ubago and Sharon Corr. She apparently has a pop album coming out this year, and the snippets on her website sound promising. (Yes, there is still room in my iTunes library for music that hasn't been polished to a glossy sheen.) 'Amarrado A Ti', by the way, is really quite catchy. It starts off with a minor chord progression but is nonetheless ridiculously upbeat, and I think that's why I really love the song. Anyway, on the work front, I've decided which two pieces of writing I'm going to discuss for the 500-word pieces. It's going to be Calvin Trillin's 'The Magic Bagel' and David A. Price's The Pixar Touch: The Making Of A Company. I've even had vague thoughts about what I admire in each, which is phenomenal progress by my standards. Am despairing over the commentary for my poetry though. I had a look at the average length that I managed per poem for last year's poetry unit in EN124, and it was about 150 words. It means I need to waffle along for two sentences longer on average, which doesn't sound like a lot, until you realise that really, I was waffling all the way to begin with. Argh.

Episode 583: The Box

Went onto campus to attend an options market briefing that I didn't actually need because I've already picked my modules for next year. I do want to try auditing one or two, since the workload from the French language module at the Language Centre is definitely not going to be as taxing for me as a module from the English department. Spent some time chilling in Curiositea, and then in the Library reading Joey Comeau's Overqualified. It was hilarious, although on the whole, it was the bits about the brother, Adrian, that struck me most and made me sad. That said, I am now also firmly convinced that Comeau is crazy, but a good kind of crazy that I would totally hang out with. (If he tweets me back after I mentioned him and his book on Twitter, I will be beyond happy.) Also saw The Box with Dan, which I would go so far as to say is one of the rare films that defy summarising. Let's just say it raises interesting ethical and philosophical questions, for which the mainstream audience has unsurprisingly hated on it. For me, the most interesting thing to consider is how much free will did the Lewises actually have. It seems to me that from the moment Norma (impulsively?) pushed the button, they were locked into a chain of events beyond their control, although the film does seem to go out of its way to muddy the order of cause and effect. In the end, the film never fully explains all of its events, but yet its two hours made for a richer viewing experience than most Hollywood blockbusters. We need more films like these that make people think, rather than the mindlessness of the likes of Twilight. (I apologise to Twilight fans for constantly cutting it down, but seriously, even if you want fluff of the vampiric variety, there's so much stuff out there that's better. Heck, read Anne Rice if you have to. I know I would.)

Episode 582: Getting Back To Work

So after learning today that my French examinations have been brought forward, I'm pretty psyched. That's one entire module that'll be ought of the way in less than a month! Have actually spent some time this afternoon after getting back from class doing French coursework. Isn't that amazing? I've also decided it's time to actually start writing the commentaries for my poems, so I'm going to do a couple tonight, if I can be bothered to exert myself that much. It's probably also a good chance to do some editing, if I feel so inclined. 200 words per poem seems rather a lot though, and it's a bit daunting to have to keep finding things to say when it feels like my approach for the entire portfolio was basically wanting to chronicle the paradoxical feelings evoked by holidaying. Admittedly, a lot of thought went into some of the poems, and on the whole, I think I made more revisions than average for me, but I'm still a bit embarrassed by the quality, seeing as how I'm going to be citing Elizabeth Bishop, Thom Gunn and Philip Larkin as the major influences on the portfolio as a whole. Maybe it is time to edit brutally, as someone suggested?

Episode 581: Clubbing On A Monday!

So what was originally meant to be a celebration of our deadline turned into a celebration of, I guess, the extension we'd been granted. (It also means we get to celebrate the deadline again in two weeks' time. Yay!) On the way from Sophie Mac's place to Kasbah, I finally knew what it felt like to be one of the annoying, tipsy kids on the top deck of the bus. Except there weren't a lot of people around to be annoyed with us anyway, so I guess that was okay then. (Plus we were quite well-behaved. Really.) Kasbah actually isn't that crowded on a Monday night, and it was pretty nice to know that I was having fun while lots of people I know had just had their first day of the new term. I believe the term for this is schadenfreude! Then again, it's not like I've gone out a lot this year, so why deny myself a bit of fun? Walking back in the early hours of the morning was a bit creepy though, even though I wasn't in any danger of getting lost. I did post a tweet saying that if I didn't tweet again in 20 minutes, the police should be informed since it meant I'd probably been mugged or something. The funny thing? After 20 minutes, I nearly forgot to tweet again, despite being almost home.

Episode 580: Countdown To...Nothing!

'Styles change. / The democracy of it: / eventually everyone / can hope for a turn / at being wanted.' Thanks, Thom Gunn, for that reassurance. I might just have to buy your books now for those lines, even though I'm still hoping Faber & Faber will update the Collected Poems. (If it doesn't happen by the time I'm due to graduate next year, I'll just buy the Collected Poems and Boss Cupid separately because that's just how much I like Gunn's poetry.) Anyway, I'm not usually a big YouTube person, but I couldn't help checking out a video of Paul Muldoon analysing Ke$ha's 'Tik Tok' for The Princeton Tiger. For a gag, it really wasn't as funny as I thought it would be, so slight disappointment there. Especially awkward was the joke about 'junk' being a reference to China. Logical? Yes. Funny? Well, not really? Even Cyanide & Happiness got more laughs out of me. Admittedly, that brand of humour is only tolerable in moderate doses. Too much of it, and I start to wonder why the heck I'm reading this webcomic. I only picked Cyanide & Happiness because Dinosaur Comics is too wordy to get through 200 comics at one go. It is, however, much, much better. Fact! One day, I'm going to mention Ryan North in a tweet and see if I get a reply. (Yeah, my life is that boring. Hey, it's actually worked before.)

Episode 579: The Angels Are Back!

You know what sucks? Finally deciding to go to bed at a decent hour, and then not being able to fall asleep because your feet are constantly aching. That was me last night, so I ended up sleeping till 1 pm again. Anyway, I've finally read the last of the plays that I bought in London, Paul Sellar's 2 Graves. It's a one-man play and the lines display some virtuosic rhyming, but the ending's pretty disappointing in that it's too conventionally moralising and happens far too quickly, compared to the rest of the play's action. It's like Sellar decided, right, that's enough now, so I'm just going to finish this off as quickly as possible. (I should probably point out in all fairness that I don't have an idea as to how the play could have been finished off. I'm just saying the ending as it is didn't quite work for me.) Am heading to the pub in a bit to meet Dan, but hopefully, by the time I get back I'll be able to find the latest episode of Doctor Who. I really do love the Weeping Angels. They creep me out more than the Daleks ever will. Otherwise, I'll just get around to reading either Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes or Paulo Coelho's The Winner Stands Alone, both of which recently arrived in the post. (This whole not-buying-books thing really hasn't been working out too well, as you can tell.) There are worse ways to spend a Saturday night!

Episode 578: Writing About Enfance...

I really like how the sun seems to have decided to make a permanent acquaintance with us. It's about bloody time too. The title for the mini-essay I'm writing in French right now on Nathalie Sarraute's Enfance is 'Les mots qui blessent.' It's going pretty well, and I should be able to finish it by tonight, just to get it out of the way. I've been putting it off for too long, and now I feel a bit rusty, partly because I'm not used to carrying out literary analysis in a foreign language. Still need to think about the topic for my oral presentation, and actually prepare something to say that lasts five minutes. Anyway, I've decided that next year, I'm going to spend more money on acquiring poetry. It's a decision that's arisen out of the realisation that for someone who mainly writes poetry, I don't actually have a very wide exposure to it. Oh, I read enough to get by, I suppose, but not nearly as much as I think I should. (This probably applies to my reading in general really!) So yeah, less spending on frivolous things like clothes next year, I think. Well, unless there's a really good Diesel or G-Star RAW online sale.

Episode 577: An Unasked-for Extension

Woke up this morning to learn through Twitter that we now have an extension on our EN232 portfolio. So that makes two portfolios due in for Week 3, both of which I've brought so close to completion that if I stayed up all night, I could have them printed off by tomorrow morning. Instead, I've taken a day off. Again. Watched the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, which was awful because not a lot seemed to happen and Keanu Reeves may have done some good work, but watching him being expressionless isn't very entertaining. Am now reading the latest entry in The Dresden Files series and it's like coming back to an old friend. You can spot the jokes before they come, but you still like them anyway. I'm planning to stay up as long as necessary to finish it in one sitting, and then I'll try to finish off whatever's left of the Thom Gunn volumes I've been reading on and off, if it's not too late. Am going to get a long-overdue haircut tomorrow, so I might as well drop stuff off at the Library while I'm at it.

To be honest, I don't know whether to feel pleased or annoyed about the extension. I'm sure there are people for whom it's literally a godsend so bully for them, but for me, the problem now is that I can't pretend that I haven't time to revise my work to make it better. Oh, it's been well-received so far by people who've bothered to let me know they've read it, the most random being Vishna dropping me a message on Facebook telling me she loved it, even though we hardly see each other despite being on the same course. So the work is resonating with people. Some people, anyway. Am I prepared to spend the effort tinkering? To be brutally honest with myself, no. If it was good enough for half a dozen people so far, it's good enough for me to want to just print it off and hand it in. In all likelihood, this is also the sort of attitude that will hamper any of my attempts to become a 'serious writer', whatever that even means. Does that bother me? Some days, yes. Most of the time though, I just want people to like my writing, even if it doesn't measure up to my own perfectionism.

Episode 576: Back Up North (Relatively Speaking)

So I'm back home in Coventry, trying to do work but feeling too lazy to actually make a serious effort. I even procrastinated by watching the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror. The things I subject myself to in the name of avoiding work! I've pretty much figured out the rest of the piece at least, but it feels pretty flat to me somehow, and I'm not sure how to fix it. Probably requires something like a complete change of topic, but it's a bit late for that, I think. Was reading Thom Gunn again on the ride back and feeling humbled by what I like to think of as the uninhibited restraint of his poetry. (Yes, I know it's a contradiction in terms, but I don't think anyone reading this really cares about my feelings on Gunn's poetry that much to warrant a detailed explanation.) Have also been reading a couple of the plays that I bought at Oxfam. (Only realised today that my copy of Kingfisher Blue by Lin Coghlan is autographed by the cast that premiered it!) Nothing particularly amazing so far, although Gregory Motton's God's Island had its moments, but got too caught up in its attempts at philosophising, in my opinion.