Belated happy endings

Last time I posted here, I was actually still trying to figure out my life. Last time I posted here, I was looking at the very real possibility of being a perpetual student and perpetually single.

So much has happened since!

2012, and its invigorating protests, its infuriating dead ends.
The Maple spring, its dedicated, heart-bleeding liberals, and the man whom I then had no idea would change my life for the better, and hopefully for good, too.

So the quick update is this: there is someone in my life who is amazingly good for me and makes me happy. I've been making a precarious but enriching living teaching at various levels for the past three years. I'm currently working towards yet another graduate degree.

There is also a cat pretending to be a chicken in my living room.

Life ain't easy, but it's good nonetheless. I found the stability I was looking for when I moved back home.

Small mercies. Blessings counted.

On on! As I would have said, back when I was in DKR. Much has changed, much is still the same, and I'm thankful.

Busy life means I may not be able to update very often, I'm sorry. Yet here I am.

Actually! Question!

I was going to post a long update of long - I keep on forgetting to blog, actually, which is kind of embarrassing.

Then it hit me. I should ask.

Does anyone use LiveJournal, around here?

Also, is anyone still reading (or occasionally checking) this blog ?

*cough*

And as the week wears on, more is written - this is good, I hope it keeps up. I've been thinking about Nano lately, and I really hope that this year I can write more effectively than I did last year. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that I'm reading more lately, but it also has to do with wonderful prompts I've been getting from friends. This means that I have to think of daily prompts for November. In order to help motivate myself, I might even publish them here - the prompts, that is, not their results. I'm selfish about original writing.

Maybe I'll do Nano differently, this year. I started off with an outline last year and was unable to keep up with it, mostly, I think, because I didn't like my story all that much. I may, instead of an outline, give myself daily prompts that only mesh in together insofar as that they relate to the same group of original characters / universe, etc.

Where I originally wanted to write something that is non-fantasy (an old, old project of mine prompted by the desire to please Mommy Dearest), I think I probably will go for fantasy this year. This may or may not have anything to do with the fact that Mommy Dearest herself is supporting my attendance at WorldCon, WTF. She is earning my eternal adoration for this. And for everything else, but. This Is Cool.

Epic long post so that you will all forgive me

I had a horribly, monstrously busy weekend that involved two plays and a child birthday party. The latter was almost unexpected: the friend who was supposed to give me a lift had not given any sign of life until the last minute, and I had to rush out because I hate making people wait. I kind of died of adorable with the little ones, though.

The first play was fun - it was Boeing-Boeing, a farce about the down sides of polygamy, in 1960's France (which was adapted twice for the big screen, including in the US with *gasp* Jerry Lee Lewis!) The play was directed in Vaudeville style, with a local twist and some regional expressions. It was very enjoyable, aside for the bit where I was the only person laughing at the really funny jokes (wtf, audience?). I will never truly understand these people, I think.This was actually part of the Just for Laughs festival, which has been litterally on my doorstep these past two weeks. Every day, I got off work to wander into a street full of clowns and revellers. A bit surreal, but wonderful all the same.

The second play was Shakespeare's As You Like It, as directed by Repercussions. I enjoyed the fact that it was a bilingual adaptation, and adored the way it was directed. It was funny, witty, well done, and all in all very pleasant to sit through. It was also, alas, sometimes hard to hear over the popping of fireworks. You gotta admit it, life in Montreal is wonderful in the summer, even if one free activity actually gets in the way of the other.

And as I've taken to writing a lot of fan fiction lately (it's a good exercise in writing), now I must ask. Are there any curious readers, out there?

I love Virginia Woolf more than is healthy

So since there were takers, here is a list of papers, as published on Scribd. I would love any sort of feedback on them, and actually, I do have a question. Is there a trend, and if so, which one?

And yes, I love Virginia Woolf more than is healthy, I know.

ETA: HTML fail + laziness = if any of these interest you, just comment and I'll throw the URL at.

Title: Northumbria: Illustrating Political Impact on the English Language
Length (including works cited): 5 pages
Thesis statement: Regionalisms cannot be dissociated from their topographic referents - such is the nature of a dialect, that the explanation for its existence is directly connected to the history of the lands where it is spoken, in which lies the mode of creation or preservation of a given regionalism, such as Northumbrian Middle English in the fourteenth century.
Cited author (one of them): John de Trevisa

Title: Being Sublime, the Poet’s Contradiction
Length (including works cited): 4 pages, plus a 3 page-long annex.
Thesis statement: The purpose of this essay will be to discuss her usage of the words sublime and sublimity throughout her novel Mrs. Dalloway and to explore how it can be linked to the Freudian concept of sublimation through the transitional figure of the Chiefly Poet, one of the definitions of “sublime” in the Oxford English Dictionary (“Sublime”).
Cited author (one of them): Virginia Woolf, Charles Baudelaire

Title: Virginia Woolf and Herbert Marcuse: discussing sublimation in Mrs. Dalloway
Length (including works cited): 8 pages
Thesis statement: My approach will be to examine Marcuse’s exposition on the matter of neurosis and happiness, and how his application of psychoanalysis to the social phenomena can be applied to the characters of Mrs. Dalloway.
Cited author (one of them): Virginia Woolf


Title: Defining Feminism in Woman at Point Zero and Persepolis
Length (including works cited): 11 pages, including one page of translated quotes from French.
Thesis statement: Despite being worlds apart, both Satrapi and El-Saadawi share a doctrine of what we will call mystic feminism, that is, a vision of the feminine condition which is rooted in the quest for individual actualization, rather than on the mobilization of the masses.
Cited author (one of them): Marjane Satrapi


Title: Bilingualism and Loan Words: Factors of Evolution
Length (including works cited): 5 pages
Thesis statement: The purpose of this essay will be to examine the process by which words were borrowed from French into the English language, and to attempt to determine what part the Norman Conquest and the ensuing necessity to use French in England played in it.
Cited author (one of them): Charles Laurence Barber

Title: Constructivism in Angels in America
Length (including works cited): 7 pages
Thesis statement: Our purpose will be to discuss how Kushner’s compelling play illustrates Foucault’s theories of social constructivism and counters essentialism.
Cited author (one of them): Tony Kushner


Title: Bartleby the Scrivener, the Myth of Liberty
Length (including works cited): 6 pages
Thesis statement: Liberty is, in nineteenth century America, as well as in the budding French republic, a growing concern amongst the thinkers of the era. It is with this in mind that I will review the figure of Bartleby, another allegory (or statue) of Liberty, immobile and objectified, yet failing to convey his essential truth, defeated by law.
Cited author (one of them): Herman Melville

Why does he get more worms than I do…

I really, really, really, really need to get this gisting done (though my kind of gisting is much less glamorous than that one - as a side note, I never finished that book. But). It probably won't take more than a day, but currently, I'm really late in my schedule, and it has to somehow be made better. So. Gisting it is. *siiigh*

A quick note about a million things.

On my way to the college where I work for the summer, I walk every day by a church where the homeless come for breakfast and the bare necessities of life. It breaks my heart a little, and at the same time, I'm glad those things exist. At the same time, I'm acutely aware that there are not enough of these services. I don’t know why I feel the need to bring it up – perhaps it’s because I feel like I should do something. I’m not sure what and even less how, yet.


Also, I keep on forgetting to mention this, but I got accepted into the Arthurian Honors Seminar in the fall. *bounces* I’ve rarely been as excited about studying as since I went back to locking myself up with classics and writing essays. I really have no regrets, I’ll confess. This is so much more up my alley than law school.

Which brings me to a question, flist. Is anyone interested in reading some of my papers? I don't mind spreading the joy pain if there are takers. As a side note, I wouldn't offer to show any papers that didn't get excellent grades. If anyone is interested, I'll pull up a list of what's available.


And now about aSoIaF. I’m still reading, and still enjoying, though I’ve taken the weirdest habit: now I read POV chapter by POV chapter. *facepalm* So if anyone out there wants to know where I’m at, I just finished Dany’s POV, and I’m on to Jon’s. In late news, thus:


1) I enjoyed very much the descriptions of Qarth.

2) I think I sort of ship Dany and Jorah, and it makes me feel guilty.

3) My current loved characters are Dolorous Edd and Craster. What’s with me and impolite old men?


“The dead are likely dull fellows, full of tedious complaints – the ground’s too cold, my gravestone should be larger, why does he get more worms than I do…”

- Dolorous Edd, A Clash of Kings (.205)


BEST QUOTATION, EVER.

The cavalry is always late

No time for a long comment - at any rate, I'm pleased with the castin of Sean Bean as Ned Stark, and !

Here is an amusing article about it. The wank about the synopsis amuses me particularly.

And to complete GRRM's post (some pics were missing), here are:

Jack Gleeson as Joff (picture taken from Batman Begins).



Harry Lloyd as Viserys (taken from Child Hood)


... and now that I've seen this I'm going to have to burn a couple hardly won CAD, in a few weeks. BECAUSE WHEN PEOPLE LIKE GRRM AND NEIL GAIMAN COME TO YOUR HOMETOWN...

That's what you do. Yup.