Monday 28 September 2009

Unsolicited Rambling

There are a number of things I ought to be doing right now instead of writing a blog entry for which I have not prepared one wit. However, I do not feel like doing any of those things.

To begin, xkcd:

That has no context and I have nothing to say about it, except that obviously it appealed to me on some level.

Next, I will say that yesterday I had planned on posting something entitled "Bored, Scared, and Lonely," and the post itself would have followed suit. Basically, in church yesterday morning I came to the realization that I need to come to terms with the fact that I'm in Fort McMurray now, and will be for at least a year. I need to apply to schools, yes, but I cannot continue to mope over the fact that I used to be surrounded by friends and I used to have lots of spare time and I used to be doing something I maybe enjoyed if it weren't for the pressure. Rather, I must either come to accept that I have no friends and less spare time and a job that isn't 100% perfect in all ways, or I must make friends and manage my time better and find ways to get enjoyment out of my job anyway. I must stop living in the past. I have graduated from Queen's, and am not enrolling again any time soon. It's time to accept that and move on. I need to find a place to volunteer or something. (More on that later.)

Now I shall inform you that it is autumn in Fort McMurray. It was cold today; many of the trees have turned; leaves have fallen; occasionally the ground is hoary in the mornings. Brrrrr. The other day, though, I could smell fall on the air. I don't often smell things on the air in Fort Mac (other than oil or sulphur). It was nice.

In this paragraph, I will voice my desire to see Jessica's Body. By this I mean the quote horror unquote movie starring a cannibalistic Megan Fox; I am sure, though, that most people who say "I want to see Jessica's Body" are aware that they are simultaneously (truely or falsely) expressing a desire to see Megan Fox' body. For the most part I think it would be "truely". I think it (the movie) looks funny; some reviews say it is witty, having been written by the scriptwriter for Juno. Other reviews are rather more interested, as I already mentioned, in the titular (pun fully intended) torso.

At this point, I shall entertain myself, and hopefully you, dear reader, with an idea I had: I would like to go into a large museum, like the RAM, and mentally pick out an artifact in a display case. The case must be somewhere fairly well attended and the artifact must be of a category that I could conceivably own, like a pair of glasses or a cup or a spoon or a walking stick. I would stand with my back to the case, doing my best not to block view of the artifact, and then loudly ask people around me if they have seen my glasses (or cup or spoon or walking stick). I would say I just had it with me, and then I would describe the object in the display. I'd like to see how people would react.

Penultimately, I shall admit that I am still reading Anatomy of Criticism. I am enjoying it, at least as far as literary theory goes. I need to write it down schematically, though; Frye has far too vast and segmented a conception of literature for me to keep it all straight in my mind. I could easily enough chart it out, though. I find his project interesting and most of what he says probable, though the odd thing stikes me as at the wrong angle. His formalism appeals to me, and I can at last get a sense of what a high school teacher called "Archetypal Criticism" without either being overly reductive or without appealing to a Jungian conception of archetypes, which I find unlikely and useless. I have learned a lot, and now I must try not to worry about it too much as I produce writing of my own. As of late, though, I am less thoroughly engaged with it. I do not stay up nearly as late into the night reading it. I have a number of other books lined up, too: On Writing, Tess of the d'Ubervilles, Heart of Darkness, The Sun Also Rises (annoyingly saturated with marginalia by a previous reader), and an assortment of trash-lit I still haven't gotten around too. Oh, and more Faerie Queene. And other things, surely.

And lastly, I shall hold forth on the observation that I am playing a lot of Minesweeper lately, and am noticeably improving. For instance, I often know what to do with a bank of ones and twos, even if there is no corner.

That is all for now. What a strange and incoherent post. My apologies.

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