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Self-Control
Monday, 18 April 2005 02:53 pm...which is, in fact, the title of an early nineteenth-century novel of more than usually rampantly melodramatic moralism. It's also what I do not possess, in any way, at all, really. I am currently typing a journal update in between setting exam questions on topics in the Internet and the erotic, good grief, and the only reason I am doing either is because I have prevailed upon my Evil Landlord to take away from me the disk for ShadowMagic and HIDE IT, because otherwise I'd be playing computer games. Which I have been doing, off and on, for three to four hours a day for the last few weeks. See above for self-control, lack of, total. It's not even as if it's the world's most earth-shattering game, even. I just seem to be in a space where it beats doing anything real.
Other real things I should be doing include, obviously, finishing this dratted book update; marking 26 student exercises the chivalric code; reading Spenser's Faerie Queene, which is, incidentally, complex, dreamlike, trippy and unabashedly erotic, and is blowing my little mind; making overhead glossaries on Internet terminology for my computer-challenged third-years who are, among other things, unfamiliar with the word "blog" and have never heard of fan fiction (which will soon change, heh); finishing a paper on Tolkien and fan culture for a symposium at the end of the month; sewing; writing; painting banners; researching heraldry; tidying my study. Talking to my cat, even, she's a bit insecure at the moment. What I actually want to be doing is playing ShadowMagic. It is causing me profound irritation and actual physical twitches that I can't. In fact, I'm having to restrain myself every minute from going and turning the Evil Landlord's study upside down, although I suspect he's wise to that one and has taken the disk to work. I am forced to conclude that this is actually an addiction, and it would probably be better for me all round if some sort of tragic, Mafia-style "accident" happened to the disk. I'm sure the post-cold-turkey traumatic depression would fade, eventually. As it is, I'm living on the hope that he'll forget to hide it one of these days after playing it himself, and I'll be able to indulge again. Cue me patiently surveying his study every morning after he's left for work. Pathetic, really.
A random Faculty bigwig wandered past my office this morning, and popped his head in to include the room in his office-space survey. Sniffing suspiciously, he said, "Damp, isn't it?" and, mindful of the possibility that he might be planning to eject me to make way for actual academics above the level of Contract Post Shoe-Scrapings, I waxed lyrical for a few minutes about the damp patches, peeling paint and strange Lovecraftian fungi which arrive each year in a sort of reverse winter migration. Grinning cheerfully, he observed (and I am not making this up), "Ah, yes, that's the kind of thing we like to provide for our temporary staff. Give them all consumption!" He then departed, whistling. I find this curiously reassuring, in so far as it's precisely the sort of thing I've always darkly suspected the Powers That Be of thinking; there's a perverse comfort in having it confirmed from the horse's mouth.
Other real things I should be doing include, obviously, finishing this dratted book update; marking 26 student exercises the chivalric code; reading Spenser's Faerie Queene, which is, incidentally, complex, dreamlike, trippy and unabashedly erotic, and is blowing my little mind; making overhead glossaries on Internet terminology for my computer-challenged third-years who are, among other things, unfamiliar with the word "blog" and have never heard of fan fiction (which will soon change, heh); finishing a paper on Tolkien and fan culture for a symposium at the end of the month; sewing; writing; painting banners; researching heraldry; tidying my study. Talking to my cat, even, she's a bit insecure at the moment. What I actually want to be doing is playing ShadowMagic. It is causing me profound irritation and actual physical twitches that I can't. In fact, I'm having to restrain myself every minute from going and turning the Evil Landlord's study upside down, although I suspect he's wise to that one and has taken the disk to work. I am forced to conclude that this is actually an addiction, and it would probably be better for me all round if some sort of tragic, Mafia-style "accident" happened to the disk. I'm sure the post-cold-turkey traumatic depression would fade, eventually. As it is, I'm living on the hope that he'll forget to hide it one of these days after playing it himself, and I'll be able to indulge again. Cue me patiently surveying his study every morning after he's left for work. Pathetic, really.
A random Faculty bigwig wandered past my office this morning, and popped his head in to include the room in his office-space survey. Sniffing suspiciously, he said, "Damp, isn't it?" and, mindful of the possibility that he might be planning to eject me to make way for actual academics above the level of Contract Post Shoe-Scrapings, I waxed lyrical for a few minutes about the damp patches, peeling paint and strange Lovecraftian fungi which arrive each year in a sort of reverse winter migration. Grinning cheerfully, he observed (and I am not making this up), "Ah, yes, that's the kind of thing we like to provide for our temporary staff. Give them all consumption!" He then departed, whistling. I find this curiously reassuring, in so far as it's precisely the sort of thing I've always darkly suspected the Powers That Be of thinking; there's a perverse comfort in having it confirmed from the horse's mouth.
