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[23 Feb 2009|07:49pm] |
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music |
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marissa nadler |
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So while trying out the China Channel firefox addon (an addon that bounces you off a proxy server in china, and lets you see what its like to surf the internet in china) I was blocked from searching "mao zedong criminal", "mao zedong evil", "free tibet" but not "mao zedong pedophile". The ministry of information seems to have their priorities askew, or their values are different.
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| John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester |
[28 Jan 2008|11:30pm] |
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mood |
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pleasantly surprised |
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music |
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liars - drum gets a glimpse |
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During my reading today I discovered something much alluded to by past professors, but never fully explored or discussed, and that is the raciness of some of the 17th century poets. The Restoration period literature, and more generally, the Restoration era itself is proving to be quite an interesting topic. This is a pleasant surprise, considering I was pretty sure this semester was going to be intensely boring.
Romanticism is also proving to be much more interesting that I originally assumed. William Blake is becoming one of my favorite poets, and I've only started seriously reading his works last friday. There is a lot more going on during this time period than I originally thought, and again, its proven a pleasant surprise given my initial thoughts about this semester. What is however proving to be right on the mark is the dullness of Early American Lit. and also my persistent apathy towards Shakespeare. He's alright I suppose. That class sure isn't.
And after the cut, my favorite Rochester poems. The man was a genius.
( Smut and Bawdiness, truly witty )
Also, one would do well to read Signor Dildo. It's exactly what it sounds like.
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| so i think i do this every time i get a new schedule |
[31 Oct 2007|09:39pm] |
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mood |
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fartz |
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music |
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a tribe called quest - excursions |
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but i feel compelled to post my schedule for next semester for the purposes of keeping people informed at what im doing with my life.
ENGL 222: Restoration and 18th Century English Lit
ENGL 223W: Roman and Victorian English Lit
ENGL 230: Shakespeare I
ENGL 270W: American Literature to 1880
HIST 229: Europe in the 20th Century
i really realllllly begrudginly have to take all those english classes, and im not looking forward to most of them. especially 222 and 270. but i suppose thems are the breaks when i am completely in love with my classes this semester.
i should be writing a paper on alienation and paralysis in Dubliners, but im done with that for tonight. theres only so much criticism i can digest at one stretch. the birthday party was good, everyone who i was looking forward to seeing was there, some coming back from the dead, and some coming from as far away as brooklyn. i would post pictures, but they arent really that good as we started taking them when everyone was too drunk to work a camera properly. i suppose its the hallmark of a good night when i dont make it into bed until 7am.
also, im at a real deciding point at what to do with my life post-uconn. i really feel i need to go to graduate school, both for myself and for the purposes of my career(which, if it makes any sense at all, i'd want to be an academic). however with that in mind, getting into NYU(my ideal school for a few reasons) requires some hardcore preparation, in that i should have a well fleshed out resume, which i dont even have the beginnings of now, and various reccomendations and accolades. now, therin lies the dillema, as in order to build a resume i was thinking of going into the peace corps for a stint (see the world, help people that actually need it, and "find myself"), and/or do a year teaching english in china with World Teach. but im apprehensive about bringing these ideas to my parents, as theyll just be like "blarrgh you can't make $10,000 helping people! get a job!". i really am not contemplating these ideas in order to skip outta the working world, which echoes the dilemma in Catch-22(which i still haven't read andyyy).
anyways, this is longer than i thought it was going to be, and you know, halloween and all that jazz.
ps. my friend was telling me about how we should go as the residents next yaer, cause he thought of it too late to go this year. i think its a good idea.
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| summer in sumer |
[27 Jul 2007|08:53pm] |
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mood |
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fucking tired |
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music |
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i drove from boston to home listening to Fugazi and Battles |
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Hey guys my birthday is only a few months away!
Also, my class schedule is 99% finalized.
ENGL 226 - Modern English Literature - MWF 2-2:50
ENGL 233 - Early and Modern Irish Literature - Tu Th 2-3:15
ENGL 264 - Studies in Individual Writers: The Beats - Tu 3:30-6
ENGL 267 - Studies in Literature: Celtic & Norse Myth & Legend - Tu Th 12:30-1:45
and once I get back to campus I'll be adding French 166. It feels good to be done with my Gen. Ed's.
Summer has been going quite transcendentally. I certainly made it worthwhile and have a lot of zany stories and good times. I can safely say that I am 100% where I want to be with my life right now. My class schedule looks exciting, things for next year are shaping up quite well. Now all I need to do is get my plans for grad school into gear. Grad school or Peace Corps. That really depends on how the next year-and-a-half goes. I feel that the Peace Corps is a good option because a) I want to see the world at large, not just America and b) given that I've pretty much had everything in my life either handed to me or readily available to me, I feel that I owe something to the world that is suffering so much (and there are places in the world that need aid much more than America and its poor).
Something is also about to happen that I don't think has happened ever, something I sorely need. I might (nothing is ever certain until it happens) actually be in a relationship with a female whom I actually quite enjoy (as opposed to awkward teenage high school relationship based entirely on a physical attraction). Needless to say that I cannot read women at all, so I'm not sure what exactly is happening, I just know that something is happening. It's not like me to write about this on Livejournal, but it's cathartic to write this all out, publishing it for the INTERNET might not be so smart, but oh well. However, I'm fighting every single urge to get my hopes up in any way, because I am a cold and cynical bastard like that.
Also, this summer I decided to take a vacation from caring about politics (most especially that god-awful hype about the 2008 election), and let me just say that it was the best decision of my life. As a secular progressive it's so very easy to get depressed about the neo-conservative takeover of this country, ergo I decided to just turn my ears off for awhile. It's all been bad news since about 2000, and I don't want to care anymore. I'm thinking more and more seriously about moving to Toronto someday. They have a vibrant music community and Canada is so much friendlier than the USA.
And finally, I quit Geisslers, I am out of that hellhole! I can have weekends now!
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| decisions decisions |
[08 Mar 2007|01:43am] |
new york or chicago?
teach abroad or go directly to grad school?(i think this one's moot, or at least 95% decided)
lastly, east asian studies or english lit?
steak or chicken?
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[03 Mar 2007|06:32pm] |
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it's a long day's journey into night.
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| so i finally had a dream worth retelling |
[16 Feb 2007|11:09am] |
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i dreamt that last night the gang was all back in high school, except we were in some surreal parallel universe where andy was talking about going to his brother's bachelor party where he was gonna do a bunch of meth and punch a stripper. there were really tasty philly cheese steaks for lunch, mr folan for some reason was our gym nazi, george was talking about going home and watching a shitload of anime, me and daryl were sitting in the library all day talking to mr soutra while smoking pipes and dave hastings said he lived udner a bridge and was talking about trying to date a homeless girl. it was a good time.
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[22 Jan 2007|02:11pm] |
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is communications a marketable/viable minor? i don't think i can do a math minor.
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| i cut for no real reason. |
[03 Jan 2007|02:52am] |
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music |
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asobi seksu - umi de no jisatsu |
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im thinking of migrating to a port city upon graduation, for either employment or grad school. boston, new york(while great, i dont think i can live there its almost too much) san francisco, seattle, maybe ill be gutsy and try vancouver(although living internationally has an entirely different set of complications). i'd still like to do the teaching abroad(however you know, i dont really want to be a teacher for the rest of my life, i just need to find something productive to do with an english degree and see more earth.
chicago would be...well i don't know alot about chicago, and its not a port, but its the birthplace of the atomic bomb and deep-dish pizza, so, its....diverse?
providence is also a nice city. vibrant community, and good schools. but it miiiight be too too close to home.
more after teh khut
( Read more... )
oh, and Ana Ng is totally about communism/ists
think about it, it lines up well. and the video backs me up.
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[19 Dec 2006|01:22am] |
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music |
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bob marley - three little birds |
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its hard to make resolute plans 2.5 years in advance, but i came up with a really good idea of what i want to do upon graduating. given the gist of my google search, most english majors (eventually) migrate to the field of business, i say, fuck that shit. so what im gonna do is teach english to kids in third world countries. this is a perfect idea, and it still allows for graduate work later in life, when i finally am ready(have enough life experience under my belt) to settle down and become the professor i aspire to be.
only thing i am unsure of is if teaching abroad in third world places requires any teaching training, in which case, i sure hope not. my creative writing professor mentioned it once with respect to china and made it seem like anyone who spoke english and was college educated could go to china and teach english. i'd love to teach in china for awhile.
As I Lay Dying is also a really nice book.
**note to self, look heavily into apartments soon
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| a digital camera might be a good investment |
[06 Dec 2006|04:08pm] |
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music |
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tmbg - your racist friend |
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So im walking to Lit today, strolling down glenbrook road there, sippin coffee, minding my own business, when i pass this tree across the street from the chem building, with a thong that says "porn*"(pornstar) hanging from a branch about 8.5 feet off the ground. i really want to know the story behind that one. especially since that part of glenbrook is quite far from anything resembling a dorm. are chem majors wackier than i think? needless to say i spent all of lit writing a backstory to it, which i may or may not post later, im betting on the latter.
and, can i take a loan out from the bank and pay rent with it? i'm trying to think of ways to finance an off-campus place next yaer, and i dont know things like that work. i'm atrociously bad with all aspects of financing.
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| i am alive |
[29 Nov 2006|08:34pm] |
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music |
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theyre playing sonic the hedgehog in the next room |
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i'm just really fried. I've been going through books like fat people go through plates at a buffet. Finished Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata yesterday. Finished Necessary Illusions by Noam Chomsky today. Finished the short stories in my Oxford Anthology of Japanese Short Stories earlier today. Tomorrow I'm going to start back up with Foucalt's Pendulum by Umberto Eco and then after that probably Lolita by Nabakov.
waxing philosophic: reading is a really worthwhile activity. people don't do enough of it. good literature seems to be a lost art as most things written in the last 20 years havent been that good(to my knowledge). i'm hoping Eco is as good as i hear. also, world literature is something oft forgotten, and thats a shame. one of my all time favorite novels i just read came from china and was translated from chinese. Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian. its a little bildungsroman, although im not entirely sure if that term can be applied here.
point is, i'm really really tired and i cannot wait until this weekend.
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| some things that im enjoying |
[07 Nov 2006|06:49pm] |
Final Fantasy XII
the chilly, yet snowless nights.
most creative nonfiction, i've been reading literary journals.
my new sweater.
good sushi, i was pretty impressed with the sushi place in bloomfield.
good coffee, mainly fair trade stuff. i've decided that as soon as i have the means i'd like to start going to whole foods more. organic stuff might be a fad worth looking into.
Necessary Illusions by Noam Chomsky. its pretty important that people understand the 'propaganda model'.
foods involving apples. mainly, apple cider, apple crisp and apple pie. one plus to being from new england is that we're incredibly good at making all three.
and attempting to start a work of fiction, but only coming up with vague character descriptions and plot outlines, giving up, and going back to trying to find good fiction to read(its hard! good nonfiction is easier to find strangely enough).
also, chose my classes for next semester. they are as follows.
ECE 100: Survey of Modern Electronics (dont look at me funny, its my last gen ed)
ENGL 216: The Short Story
ENGL 217: Rhetoric of Political Discourse
LING 103: The Diversity of Languages
MATH 223Q: Geometry(for my Math minor, difficulties getting into multivariable)
whats good with all of you?
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[27 Sep 2006|04:16pm] |
So last night I went to see Howard Zinn give a talk at the student union. And I must say, he's surprisingly charming for being an incredibly old person. He was a little slow to find his narrative pace, but once he got into it, there was no stopping him. And as i looked around the room to get a sense of the human makeup of the audience, the group was a surprisingly diverse bunch of people. There were people who looked to be as old as world war two veterans all the way up to kids who looked to be juniors/seniors in high school. There were people of all races, creeds and religions there to enjoy the discussion. And as i looked around the room i felt a wave of empowerment come over me seeing such a diverse group there to hear such a prolific intellectual speak.
He talked for about an hour and fifteen minutes or so, and the core of his speech was about the necessary role citizens play in world events and the absolute necessity for dissent. His support for these points was taken from history(which is logical since he is a history professor) and he brought up numerous examples at how the situation in our country is nothing new. he also kept bringing up the american invasion of the phillipines at the turn of the century as an example where our gunship diplomacy didn't turn out so well(which gave me even more respect for mr. croft for teaching us this in APUSH because it gets so often overlooked).
I really wish i had brought more money, so i could've gotten a copy of A People's History of the United States and gotten it signed for Mr. Soutra, seeing as it would've made him really happy and Soutra seems to embody everything Zinn was talking about. All i had on me was my beaten up copy of Artists in Times of War.
This whole thing has rekindled my interest in politics and activism. I had gone into a summer lull and i barely read anything. I think there's something about being at college and wanting to read a lot of incendiary stuff and get fired up about things. it's a good feeling, i don't want it to be apathized in my twenties.
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