a metastable, programmatic, perfect descriptive machine
Monday, 21 February 2005 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtHelp! I've been reading Baudrillard...
Good lord, I worked today. Have killed intro chapter. Annoyingly, I discovered that introducing a new, exciting, necessary argument halfway through the chapter in fact invalidated a lot of what I subsequently said, so I had to rewrite it. It's probably better now. I tell myself, ferociously. I still need to (cringe) track down Bruno Bettelheim in the library, productive of much aargh because he's a pretentious psychological critic who I do not grok. Also much aargh because it entails going up to campus, now seething with students and tragically bereft of free parking. Ah, termtime.
Also found time to finish reading the new Robin McKinley I bought last week - Spindle's End. Basically a novelisation of the Sleeping Beauty legend. She's maturing a great deal as a writer - Beauty, her first fairy tale novel, was cute and fluffy, but this, while having cute and fluffy bits (talking with animals, mostly), was quite interesting on the subject of narrative predestination and how damaging it can be. Not quite as savage as Deerskin was, but that's a much darker fairy tale (incest and rape). The gratifying thing being, of course, that reading McKinley also counts as work, since I spend a paragraph or so analysing her in The Dread Thesis, and what I've said is no longer valid, given how much she's matured. Sigh. *adds to list of revisions still needing to be made*.
Did I mention I've been reading Baudrillard? I've been reading Baudrillard. I have a headache.
Good lord, I worked today. Have killed intro chapter. Annoyingly, I discovered that introducing a new, exciting, necessary argument halfway through the chapter in fact invalidated a lot of what I subsequently said, so I had to rewrite it. It's probably better now. I tell myself, ferociously. I still need to (cringe) track down Bruno Bettelheim in the library, productive of much aargh because he's a pretentious psychological critic who I do not grok. Also much aargh because it entails going up to campus, now seething with students and tragically bereft of free parking. Ah, termtime.
Also found time to finish reading the new Robin McKinley I bought last week - Spindle's End. Basically a novelisation of the Sleeping Beauty legend. She's maturing a great deal as a writer - Beauty, her first fairy tale novel, was cute and fluffy, but this, while having cute and fluffy bits (talking with animals, mostly), was quite interesting on the subject of narrative predestination and how damaging it can be. Not quite as savage as Deerskin was, but that's a much darker fairy tale (incest and rape). The gratifying thing being, of course, that reading McKinley also counts as work, since I spend a paragraph or so analysing her in The Dread Thesis, and what I've said is no longer valid, given how much she's matured. Sigh. *adds to list of revisions still needing to be made*.
Did I mention I've been reading Baudrillard? I've been reading Baudrillard. I have a headache.
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Noooooo!
Date: Monday, 21 February 2005 07:13 pm (UTC)Re: Noooooo!
Date: Tuesday, 22 February 2005 04:28 pm (UTC)*hits self over head with volume of semiotics*
I will try to cut down on my possibly excessive reading. I rejected two whole critical works today, dismissing them in an airy paragraph as being irrelevant, in the teeth of my examiner's obvious proclivities. Does that count?
Thank you for the rainy thoughts, it is, in fact, cooler today. You need to pick clouds with more moral fibre, no actual rain is surviving the trip.
Courage!
Date: Tuesday, 22 February 2005 03:07 pm (UTC)Here's hoping your Baudrillard-inspired headache goes away. Did I use that apostrophe correctly?
Re: Courage!
Date: Tuesday, 22 February 2005 04:20 pm (UTC)Since there was no apostrophe anywhere in your comment, and, in fact, no grammatical cause for one, I am forced to admit that you did, in fact, use correctly the apostrophe which you did not, in fact, use.
*beats self over head with lesser semiotic critics*
Re: Courage!
Date: Tuesday, 22 February 2005 04:33 pm (UTC)Even the tube is cold at the moment. The snow has thinned a little, but the mercury is still hovering around zero.
Re: Courage!
Date: Tuesday, 22 February 2005 04:39 pm (UTC)Yes, it's a happy little apostrophe of perfect correctness. *awards bumpy a gold star* In fact, awards bumpy the new Iain Banks I incautiously left you, assuming with foolish hopefulness that you'd be coming back to Cape Town. Call it a Christmas present ;>.
send me snow! seeeeeeeend meeeeeeee snoooooooooooow! I am jealousjealousjealous.
Re: Courage!
Date: Tuesday, 22 February 2005 05:07 pm (UTC)No, I'll return it in due course, because I will be visiting SA in a few months. Earning filthy lucre in large amounts = globetrotting! First South Africa, then Russia, then Khazakstan!
Re: Courage!
Date: Tuesday, 22 February 2005 11:18 pm (UTC)Re: Courage!
Date: Tuesday, 22 February 2005 11:30 pm (UTC)Re: Courage!
Date: Wednesday, 23 February 2005 08:54 am (UTC)Re: Courage!
Date: Wednesday, 23 February 2005 12:25 pm (UTC)But I tell you what, maybe after tomorrow, when it's mostly done snowing, I'll send some of the of-late snow clouds. As being richer in moral fibre than regular rainclouds. The snow would never make it to CT anyway.
robynn