growl

I actually don't think the universe wants me to finish this book. I've come to the conclusion that all this coy, tentative poking at Angela Carter is doomed: the thing needs a complete rewrite from the ground up, on account of how it's crap. This new schedule with lots of hours in my office doing curriculum advice should, in theory, actually give me lots of time to do this, since plaintive students only trickle in occasionally. Unfortunately the computer in my office is slow enough to make an appreciable difference to the writing process, as I keep having my train of thought disrupted while the damned thing catches up with my typing. That's quite apart from its new, charming habit of crashing repeatedly for a couple of hours, and then abruptly all being fine so that the helpdesk people can't find anything wrong. Six crashes yesterday morning, losing several fine examples of stylistic tweakage. I beat my head against the wall and scream imprecations about buggy windoze installs. Working at home also not so good at the moment, as the Army of Reconstruction appears to be painting things, the pungent aroma resulting from which gives my continually lurking headache exactly the excuse it needs to leap once more into the breach. Sigh.

While my life is currently defined by Finishing The Book, more accurately it's defined by Not Finishing The Book, an uncomfortable dualism which is mounting a two-pronged attack on my general all-round usefulness. I'm putting lots of time into the Book, but it's not being very productive, which means that not only is my time all taken up, but my energy levels are lowered by a sense of general hopelessness and I'm futzing around being useless at teaching as well. Today was enlivened by the discovery that my Wednesday afternoon seminar is in fact a Thursday afternoon seminar (I was going by the web page when I should have been going by the noticeboards), and that the library has taken all my short loan material off as I haven't updated the copyright clearance requests (I thought I had longer). Teaching, unlike book writing, I know I can do, but currently it's not so you'd notice, really.

So, grump. Sorry to grump at you, but what else is bloggery for, if not to unload? Feel free to witter bracing equivalents of swift kicks to the pants.

On a more positive note, Making Light linked to this rather excellent analysis of why war doesn't actually work. Now with Souf Effrican examples and added Ghandi. Also, the new Student Life CD includes a track by Rodrigo y Gabriela, who play ridiculously fast Spanish acoustic guitar with its roots in heavy metal. Now I want to hear them cover Metallica. The incongruity charms me.

Now I shall go and eat ice cream, because it suddenly occurs to me, for no adequately defined reason, that it might help.

Bunny Threat Level: still low, but inching upwards with snail-like verve.