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Everything's right in America... |
Sunday, April 2, 2000 Last Week Oh, it's been a while. Sorry about that. At least you had fair warning in my last entry... Let's see. My sleeping schedule -- or, rather, lack of same -- remains bizarre, and things are still somewhat crazy, although I'm doing better now than I was this time last week, I think. I hope. I may be deluding myself. At any rate, sleep-related fallout knocked out half my classes last week; I was out cold for my Tuesday noon British Literature class, and for my Thursday night Geology lab. Although I could've made part of the latter; basically, I finished my job at the English Dept. at 5:00, exhaustedly walked down the hall to Prof. J's office, curled up on his armchair, and slept for the next two hours or so. (Well, he did interrupt me about five minutes into that to tell me he was going home, and I should close the door behind me when I left.) After which point, I woke up, and could have gone to the Geology lab, but I was still zonked, and I decided to go home and go to bed instead, which I did. I'm getting a C in Geology, I think.
Thursday night's portion of the above can be traced back to the American Studies Web site, which I worked on 'round the clock for about twelve straight hours, from Tuesday night 'till Wednesday morning. And, lo and behold, it doesn't look too bad. Lots more information needs to be filled in, but the basic frame is decent, and we should be taking this thing live in the near future. After this, I stopped by a former professor, to ask about the possibility of doing an Independent Study tutorial on, well, the history of dirty words and the way society reacts to them, with a special focus on "fuck" and "cunt," and the way the sexual and feminist revolutions have affected their meaning and use. And, well, it looks like that'll be one of my courses next semester. I just need to come up with a suitably official title for the thing. "Special Studies in Language"? "The Historical Development of English Terminology"? "Modern Problems in Sociolinguistics"? "Essay Workshop: Scrutinizing the Vernacular"?
At any rate, upon leaving her office, I proceed to the English Department office, where I worked for the next hour and a half. (It's not my usual timeslot there, but I was on campus anyway, and I anticipated missing an hour or so the following day, 'cause I was meeting somebody in the middle of my usual time.) I spent much of this time finally reading A Streetcar Named Desire. This was followed by my acting class, which started with a quiz on the above play. I don't think I had any problem, although I'd have liked more time to give more complete answers. (She was only looking to make sure we'd read and thought about the play. Whereas, as an English major, I had lots more to say about it. I mean, I didn't come close to a complete answer on the causes of Blanche's breakdown at the end...) This, in turn, was followed by a discussion of graduate school with a professor on campus, with whom I'd made an appointment for that purpose. She's a recent arrival from grad school herself (well, compared to most of the faculty), who's managed to juggle both creative writing and literary criticism. Which is something I'm interested in doing, I think.
I didn't get much sleep Wednesday night simply because my internal clock hates me. Well, I did fall asleep shortly after I got home (thus missing the weekly Clean Sheets chat session again,) but I woke up maybe six hours later. I generally need eight, and I was still short from the previous day. But my body decided it should be awake, especially given the track record of the previous days. This did, at least, give me the chance to write my column for the college paper. And, despite its content, I have to say that I really like the way it turned out. One of my best, I think. And, for a limited time (I really do plan to take 'em down eventually), it can be found here, in Rich Text Format. Do check it out, please.
You've already read about Thursday night, back at the start of all this. I slept for a while upon returning home, and then made it to class on Friday afternoon (comically arriving over an hour early, 'cause I forgot that it starts at 1 PM on Fridays, not noon, like on Tuesdays), and then eventually went home. There's stuff I'm forgetting to write about in the above account, I'm sure, but it's been a long and crazy week. Oh, and check out Clean Sheets (with the usual caveat that it's an adult site, and so on); there's a transcript of a recent staff meeting that includes a section from Yours Truly -- the bit I wrote appears right after Chris's, if that helps (although each of us involved the other... honestly, if we ever do meet in Real Life, people are going to be running to escape the puns as fast as their legs can carry them) -- and Mary Anne's editorial simply must be read.
Anyway, I slept lots over Shabbos, and promptly ruined it by staying up all of Saturday night, for no good reason except that I was searching for stuff on the Web, and I didn't want to stop. It seems that now that domain name distribution has been deregulated, it's actually become quite possible for me to get one of my own; instead of having to come up with $70 for the first two years, I could pay for just one year at a time at $15. I can swing that. But I spent awhile looking for the catch (there doesn't seem to be one), and checking out web hosters, one of which may also solve my ISP problem, at least in part, as -- in addition to hosting my site -- it would include a Unix account with Pine 4.10, which is what I've wanted. But it doesn't have a very good reputation, based on a search of Usenet, so I'm a bit uneasy about that. Plus I'd still need a dial-up connection, but I may resort to a free provider for that. FreeWWWeb seems to work pretty well... on the other hand, I feel better knowing that I've paid for my dial-up access. That way, if something goes wrong, I can hold them accountable. Somewhere during this time, I sent out a few cranky messages to Diary-L, one of which I rather regret now. Oh, well.
Incidentally, this is old news by now, but there's a pretty good article in Salon Magazine about the hazards of keeping an online journal. Nothing really new for those familiar with the genre, but it's well-written and worth a look. Finally, over in television news... I just wanna say that I love the new "West Side Story" Gap commercials, with the Jets and the Sharks replaced with the Jeans and the Khakis. 'Course, I like pretty much all the TV commercials the Gap's done lately, so I may be biased.
Coming up this week: Catch up in Geology, and there's an essay on Hard Times due Tuesday that I don't have a topic for yet. And I need to work some more on the American Studies site. No acting class, though; the professor has a rehearsal at the same time, it seems, so we're off this week. Under the circumstances, I'm not about to complain, although I like that class. Oh, which reminds me of the week's crushing disappointment, which came on Friday. See, I'd been hoping to take another art course with the guy I had for 2-D Design, two semesters back. The following semester, I'd been told that he was on sabbatical for a year, so I was waiting for the coming semester, when I figured he'd be back. But, no, it turns out that he's retired altogether. Sigh. I'd had hopes... Now I'm not sure whether to start asking around for recommendations from other students, or whether I should just forget about art and find something else to do in the fall.
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