morrisseyed

Here’s another one playing on the idea of time and the manner in which its effaced. I mentioned yesterday, you might recall, that my time this past week had been eaten up by work. Sometimes our time is swept up by activities, while at other times, time languishes (or is even left languished by) our activities. But this morning, I’m being active in my relationship with time. I’m taking control and killing time, myself. Today I’m the agent of time’s destruction. Similar to my episode with the paper shredder several months ago, this morning I am the god, the monster, and the ogre to petty time. I control it. It is in my hands to do what I want, and this morning, I choose to violently murder it by doing nothing at all except read the internet and the talk about how I am willingly, and happily, letting time die, die, die. so meta.

tomorrow morning I will switch hats from creator to lecturer. I spent much of the early week dithering about and creating various handouts and notes on how to nail down that perfect thesis statement for a class i’m conducting. i dare not use the term “teaching” because this ain’t teaching. No way. Sure, I’ve got some knowledge, and I’m happy to share it. But these next two days have gotta be as informal as it can be, for the kids’ sake, and for mine. Giving introductory classes on the importance of writing solid thesis statements and topic sentences can get dull, super fast. So there won’t be teaching. There’s going to be a sharing of secrets and nothing more. I’ll tell them how to get a solid thesis not for their own sake, but for the sake of their GPA. Results. We all want results. they want results. They want As. And I just want to make it through the day in one piece and without too many yawns on their parts. So goodbye Strunk and White, Hello essay outlines, caffeine, and internets.

Get this for an itunes mix: The Show Must Go On by Pink Floyd - possibly the worst song in my collection, followed by some 1957.

le sigh. here’s a list of stuff to consider.

1. i’ve had five nightmares in the past six nights.  this is rather odd, since i hardly remember my dreams, let alone wake up from them.  Several have involved zombies at war with other zombies, fighting for the soul (and brains) of mankind.

2. there is a mess of TaxMan paperwork still sitting on my desk.  Revenue Canada won’t go away.  I’ve been asked for the third year in a row to send in all of my paperwork because I’ve been selected for a “periodic review”.  I’m suspicious.  If Revenue Canada wants to audit me full-on, they should just do it already because i’m rather tired of these shenanigans.  Go big or go home.  As your boss says, RevCan, Fish or Cut Bait.

3. due in part (but still completely my fault) to the large mess of TaxMan paperwork sitting on my desk, i completely forgot to correspond with the Uni regarding my funding for September.  According to their timeline, my funding is now in jeopardy, so I’ll have to go to the bursar on Monday and beg for a reprieve.  It’ll all be good in the end, which is just as well, because I don’t want to explain how it is that I lost their letter in the pile of Revenue Canada correspondence, who has now sent me so many letters in the past two months that the pile is over three inches high.

4. i don’t think i’ll have time to read the Mobe and Glail today.  Sadness.

5. wouldn’t it be nice to produce real thought-provoking work on a daily basis?  oh, to be a snooty french philosopher.  i’d love to wake up in the morning, eat some toast and jam, and mumble some words that the world finds profound but in all likelihood borders closer to nonsense.

5a.  in all seriousness, if i ever became independently wealthy, i’d go find a nice comfy chair and just start thinking and writing.  and i wouldn’t stop until death becomes me.

6.Profound.  What a neat-sounding word.  Total non-sequitur: I need to go find and read Wilde’s de profundis again.  Perhaps after the 20th.

7. i love how wilde, for all his decadence (which we revere him for), was a closet catholic.  so many victorians were.

8. to turn a phrase akin to marshall mathers III: “i guess there’s a little catholic in all of us.”  har har.

9. j’aime du café.

goddamn i’m feeling tired and lethargic today.  not nearly as tired and lethargic as the manimals were in yesterday’s small humid spell that fell upon the peninsula (the cats moved so little that i could have drawn chalk outlines around their bodies), but still very much run down.  staying up somewhat late after having some drinks on henry house’s new patio with some old BA-friends could possibly be the reason.

henry house’s new patio is pretty swank.  well, not really swank, but definitely fitting for the pub and the neighbourhood.  Its colours and textures completely fit in with its surroundings, and their beer tastes just as good outside as it does inside.  I did feel kind of bad for the people whose apartments and balconies abut the space, but on the other hand, I was a little jealous of the fact that the pub is also their next door neighbour, so i suppose it all balances out in the end.

two nights ago i woke up in the midst of a dream that should be turned into a short story.  don’t worry - i won’t give details of the dream, because dreams are always fricking ridiculous until they can be put to paper.  i just wanted to announce that i love those moments that come upon us, those moments that fool us into thinking we are indeed capapable of having moments of sheer brilliance.  mind you, i am brilliant, but i don’t usually notice it until after the moment has come and gone and faded into memory.  so feeling the capability of sheer brilliance is always a bit of a mindspell and ego-boost.

it occurred to me this morning that my summer contract marking papers will likely finish at the end of july as opposed to the end of august.  this doesn’t bode well.  i’ll find ways to make due through august, but i’d much rather deal with comma splices and passive sentence constructions than retail or hospitality to pay the bills.

the pineapples and i have been having a coffee crisis these past couple months, and it’s not getting any better.  we love the coffee, and it loves us.  but we’re low on the income, so we can’t afford to buy the tastiest of tasty coffees.  Lately we’ve been begrudgingly (to lay on the adverbs) switching from one can of mass-produced/roasted beans after another, and we haven’t been able to find something that works for both of our palettes as well as our wallet.  the only solution to our dilemma, of course, is to rob a bank.