but why are you so expensive? david aubrey
I just ordered a used CD by Gliss. Gotta love raspy vocals.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
cafe reading
Just came back from the coffee house two blocks away from my apt, which is great but it closes at 10 pm. Tonight's reading acquisitions were somewhat modest; definitely not as productive as I would like. O well. Sadly, I'm not a speed reader, but want to learn to read more strategically. Anyhow, read an exciting essay by Nietzsche called "On truth and lies [...]" and now Thomas More's Utopia, which is actually quite engaging thus far. So here's what I'm thinking: after dinner I often retire to my room and read in bed -- bad habit, I know -- but then food coma kicks in and by the time 10:30-11 pm rolls around I am exhausted want to sleep. So maybe the thing to do, at least for a week, is to just hit the cafe after dinner for at least a good solid 2 hours of reading (and with caffeine, too); then go home and read in bed.
What else? Reading de Man is unbelievably painful. I cannot believe I have a whole semester of de Man and Derrida. My only saving grace is that we will be reading Paul Celan, plus some political writings; otherwise, I have to sit still until de Man week and 1/2 is over. Talk about discipline and punish. fuck.
okay, so I believe that latte and cappuccino is beginning to kick in. back to reading -- or shower?
What else? Reading de Man is unbelievably painful. I cannot believe I have a whole semester of de Man and Derrida. My only saving grace is that we will be reading Paul Celan, plus some political writings; otherwise, I have to sit still until de Man week and 1/2 is over. Talk about discipline and punish. fuck.
okay, so I believe that latte and cappuccino is beginning to kick in. back to reading -- or shower?
Friday, September 22, 2006
grading
Tonight I have my first real stack of quizzes to grade: Old English passage IDs. Remember those? ugh. So I've got Japanese take-out, plus choco-cranberry bread to help me get through the entire stack of grading. The plan is to finish early, say, 10 pm, which will then give me 2 hours to read for Monday's class, and then be in bed by midnight in order to rise at 6 am and get to work at 6:30. Must ignore the fact that my laundry is piling up. No time to do it this weekend, that's for sure.
more update on classes soon. need to stick to plan tonight! I'm thinking maybe i should just brew one cup of coffee, you know, for the dessert bread. Did i mention how much cheese and bread I am eating these days ever since I started working at the bakery? hm.
more update on classes soon. need to stick to plan tonight! I'm thinking maybe i should just brew one cup of coffee, you know, for the dessert bread. Did i mention how much cheese and bread I am eating these days ever since I started working at the bakery? hm.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Friday crisis: I wish I was doing
...some form of genre studies: ex. a discourse on current lesbian erotica or queer pulp fiction; or better yet, Native American queer fiction, or edgy Asian American cinema; or "magic realism"; or detective fiction; or the body in cyberspace (ie. science fiction)
what the hell am I doing? thinking of about bodies and regulation. what is that? am I interested in its intersection with disabilities studies? like "defective" bodies? what the hell does that mean anyway? does it also cross with intersexed or transgender issues? what am i really focusing here?
I wish i could collapse in my bed.
what the hell am I doing? thinking of about bodies and regulation. what is that? am I interested in its intersection with disabilities studies? like "defective" bodies? what the hell does that mean anyway? does it also cross with intersexed or transgender issues? what am i really focusing here?
I wish i could collapse in my bed.
Good times
Friend took me kitty-shopping for kitty wipes. Afterwards we made vodka tonics and ate cracker and cheese with apricots. Now listening to Bauhaus (yup, nostalgic afternoon) and getting ready to read three 20-paged secondary readings for monday's class. Attempting to get ahead on my readings as this weekend is shot to hell. Well, I get to see The Tempest with a lovely company of friends. Otherwise, I've got deadlines up the crack. Dunno where to start. Just keep moving, right? one small task at a time.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
performance anxiety: TA-ing
It’s another beginning of sorts, I guess; only I think I’ve kicked it off to a bad start. Even when I think about attempting to sum up my absence from the blogosphere I always find it difficult to get back into the groove of writing once I’ve let the weeks pass by. Wasn’t blogging for 15 minutes a day supposed to help my writing addiction?
In other news, I had my first presentation on an Old English poem in front of 85 students. Of course, I was fretting all morning and tried not to get too caffeinated all at once, but still got a bellyache nonetheless. I got up to the podium, read the first 4-5 lines aloud, and went over some context about Anglo-Saxon warrior culture. I don’t know exactly what was running through my head as I read aloud, but I was ecstatic that my voice was actually loud enough; and at some point, I also thought, “eh, they probably don’t know a thing about Beowulf anyway.” So I projected my voice and even made eye contact a few times—thank goodness I actually typed out a little script of basically what I wanted to cover. Word from prof was that I didn’t look nervous at all. Sweet. Still, it was definitely a bizarre experience. Did I enjoy it? Not sure. Even as I try to recollect what it was like to be in a position of authority, I still feel really ambivalent about the whole thing. I discovered later that afternoon that the students were actually seniors, and are quite familiar read with most of the material on the syllabus. So much for trying to calm myself for next presentation. But I was pleased how it turned out, especially since I got performance anxiety the night before the presentation and imagined exiting the room in the middle of my mini-lecture, just like the way I had imagined walking out of my dreaded piano recital all those years ago. I’m still learning a lot from prof, of course. Just gotta try to be stoked about the reading material somehow. I can’t believe I’m around seniors.
In other news, I had my first presentation on an Old English poem in front of 85 students. Of course, I was fretting all morning and tried not to get too caffeinated all at once, but still got a bellyache nonetheless. I got up to the podium, read the first 4-5 lines aloud, and went over some context about Anglo-Saxon warrior culture. I don’t know exactly what was running through my head as I read aloud, but I was ecstatic that my voice was actually loud enough; and at some point, I also thought, “eh, they probably don’t know a thing about Beowulf anyway.” So I projected my voice and even made eye contact a few times—thank goodness I actually typed out a little script of basically what I wanted to cover. Word from prof was that I didn’t look nervous at all. Sweet. Still, it was definitely a bizarre experience. Did I enjoy it? Not sure. Even as I try to recollect what it was like to be in a position of authority, I still feel really ambivalent about the whole thing. I discovered later that afternoon that the students were actually seniors, and are quite familiar read with most of the material on the syllabus. So much for trying to calm myself for next presentation. But I was pleased how it turned out, especially since I got performance anxiety the night before the presentation and imagined exiting the room in the middle of my mini-lecture, just like the way I had imagined walking out of my dreaded piano recital all those years ago. I’m still learning a lot from prof, of course. Just gotta try to be stoked about the reading material somehow. I can’t believe I’m around seniors.
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