felis_ultharus

So - continuing on the medieval theme - I was trying to decide which modernization of "clerkes" I like: clerks or clerics. It's for a work of fantasy-fiction that steers quite close to the coast of the real Middle Ages. I settled on cleric.

I still like that clerks and clerics were once the same thing. Any educated cleric who couldn't get ordained went into bookkeeping instead. The separation was never quite complete, either, which is why clerks do clerical work and sometimes make clerical errors - which sounds like most of Pope Benedict's career thus far, but I digress.

I'm also tickled by the fact that most of my adult-life jobs have been as a cleric. I used to be a store cleric, now I'm a data-entry/record/filing cleric. I should start describing myself as such.

But it's just nice to know that - should the Zombie Apocalypse ever descend upon the school where I work - I now possess the power to turn undead. Good thing I wear my holy symbol under my shirt.

I develop weird obsessions -- usually they don't last more than a week or so, but for awhile someting, almost always something obscure, obsesses me and I feel driven to find out all I can. The stranger and more obscure, the better.

These obsessions have been everything from Norse funeral customs, to Medieval bestiaries, to Bible translation, to lost gay language Polari. It's not always historical or literary, however. Very weird pop culture mutations get me every time.

This week, thanks to montrealais, it's baby names. And more than anything else, it's the name Raistlin.

( The final revenge of Raistlin )

It looks like we're going to have to cancel the game for tomorrow. montrealais just discovered a prior commitment, and we just can't play this next one without him there :(

( A quick note to my D&D players )

Other than that, I've been speeding a long on the final culling of my novel. And I have reached -- oh joy! -- the 17th Century in my readings for my comprehensive exams.

I have just started Ben Jonson's Volpone. I read A Defence of Poesy earlier this week, and found it surprisingly un-boring.

(It's strange reading a book discussing English literature written before Shakespeare -- it's like reding a science-fiction story that subtly hints that it takes place in a parallel universe. Sidney laments that England has produced no great playwrights.)

I also read Marlowe's Dr. Faustus this week. I love Marlowe, but seriously -- Faustus sells his soul, and uses the power to do nothing more exciting than play practical jokes and put on shows for 24 years? What a lack of imagination!

So, my room is gradually taking on the pre-move, zero-decoration-and-furniture allure of a crack addict's appartment. Except, of course, the computer wouldn't last two minutes in a crack addict's apartment.

(I have the computer propped up on boxes -- it reminds me vaguely of tireless car on cinderblocks.)

No surprises that virtually everything I own is in book form. Even factoring in the furniture I'm taking with me, and the clothes, about 75% or 80% of what I own seems to be books (and we're talking volume, not number, here). And that's only if I don't include notebooks, old journals, scrapbooks, etc.

On a D&D note, it looks like we can have it here after all -- if you guys don't mind all the boxes, that is :)

It's beginning to look like the game's going to be a no-go again. We just won't have enough players, so I thought I'd give everyone a head's up for Sunday. And next Sunday will probably be impossible :/

I'd still like to get together with people, though.

Editing is going slowly, because work has been insane. I had more hours of work this week than I've ever had at that job, and it looks the same for next week. We're testing around the clock -- last year at this time, it was so dead I was laid of for several months.

Our semi-new saleswoman works around the clock getting contracts. Our teachers are working 9 to 5, our filing cabinets are bursting with recent student tests, and everyone is frazzled. Summer has never been this busy before, from what I hear. I can only imagine what things are going to be like in September.

Otherwise, I read a short introduction/biography to Foucault today. Interesting. He's one of my least-favourite philosophers, but it helped me to find some redeeming qualities in him -- as a person, if not a philosopher.

I also discovered a few more reasons to dislike his ideas.

He was much more politically active than I thought, though, even as his ideas attacked real politicial commitment. I was also amused that he and Roland Barthes were on-again, off-again lovers -- there's a metaphor in that for the relationships of postmodernism and poststructuralism, I'm certain.

Things are a tad less crisis-y right now, and I've very slowly begun to get caught up on my friends' pages.

Again, let me know if I've missed anything vital.

The last few weeks have been hectic and sleep-starved. Two weeks ago, I prepared an exhaustive presentation on the first 200 years of the sonnet in Canada -- using mostly poets who've been long-forgotten, but were popular once.

Poets disappear in this country, like words written in sand beneath the rising tide.

Then I polished off my journal for that class, and submitted it (it came back with an A).

For my rare-book class, I was also doing research into the long-forgotten. I'm now probably the sole living expert on one of the Schoolbook Battle of 1866 -- mostly because no one else knows it even happened. Virtually all my sources were things written last century.

The battle was a major public controversy at the time, but has nearly disappeared, except for a few experts on early-Canadian publishing. Strange since it involved two figures who are actually remembered -- George Brown (a father of Confederation and founder of the Globe) and Egerton Ryerson (father of universal education and the guy Ryerson University is named for).

I have one last essay until this semester is over.

I am looking forward to the game this Saturday, though -- it's keeping me sane. And D&D will be Saturday this time, at noon. We shall have an extra guest. And foi_nefaste, get back to me as soon as you know what he's playing...? And he'll have to come up with a reason why he's on the one trade route through the world's most desolate desert. This reason must be a) imaginative, b) interesting, and/or c) funny.

My old-book teacher is batshit crazy, but I learned a lot in that class.

First, a congratulations/plug for metawidget, who is running on the GPA platform for Concordia's grad students association. Most grad students hardly have time to think about voting, much less running, for the organization so he deserves to be lauded.

Plus the fact that someone is on the slate who I know and whose politics I can trust has made me decide to vote GPA.

On a far less important note, I did one of the geekiest things I've ever done yesterday: I posted a message to one of the writers of a D&D book and asked for a clarification on something. I don't know whether to be ashamed for exuberant geekery, or stoked that I got a prompt response from him :)

I'm very pleased with my writing. It's going very well.

Well enough that I signed up for a poetry/prose reading on the 25th, at Zeke's Gallery on St-Laurent. They asked for my full name to add to their poster, so that means it's for real. The panic is already setting in. I have to get stuff polished for then. I was thinking one poetic piece and a short passage from my novel.

It'll be the first time I've read to a group larger than a classroom -- and I only did that once.

There's no D&D this weekend -- for reasons both tragic and happy. One of our members is in the hospital, and another will be celebrating her birth. We'll have a session a week Sunday (on March 19), then (for those of you planning in the long term) take the Sunday after that off (March 26).

And retrogamerbear, get in contact with me, 'kay?

Academia

So we had a rather bland discussion in my Sonnets course today. Compared to the debate about the possibility of free will and mind and self-generating somethings, the topic of homosexuality in the sonnets was rather blasé. Things are getting better -- I brought a ton of books to argue my points, but I didn't need them.

One interesting bit of tension was when our professor, in the last three minutes, suddenly announced that she didn't like the dynamic in the class, and asked us how we would change it.

She's right, of course -- the dynamic is bad. But it's not really her fault. She's put together a great course, but she got lazy students who aren't doing the work. I can't say I'm free from blame, there :/

Gaming

( 3rd-edition housewives )

Politics

( Latest details )

In more amusing political news, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian compared Taiwan's political relationship to the US with the relationship between Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar. Is Taiwan Jack or Ennis...?