thursday, friday, new year - part i

[post divided retroactively]

thursday:

bus drumming has become a habit: reading with good music in the background, i find my feet tapping and my free hand rapping on my leg and i don't care. and i'm not alone; i love seeing other people doing the same :)

i walked into campus with a really cute girl from our class, and our discussion was apparently so riveting that she followed me back out of the class to continue it while i went for coffee. as we got to the machines the cute girl that i'd sat next to the day before (and mentioned) walked past, and stopped to inform me that she'd had a really interesting dream about me... apparently we'd been arguing a lot. all i could do was be flattered, and apologize :P

---the italian lecturer: i spent the lession wishing he'd picked a different profession. what he does to poetry is unforgivable, and i dislike (intensely) the fact that we're to learn *his* point of view, even if there are a plethora of more plausible possibilities. he did redeem himself a little, though. *if* i score 100 on the final exam then i won't have to hand in a work for extra credit. if i don't, it will essentially be a topic of my choosing that can cover the entire history we've studied.

that's mighty generous.

a stray quote from his class: "it was a major major major major shift". reminded me of a certain character from catch 22 :P

i have begun conspiring to put together a study group beginning this week: we have less than a month to go before the final, and half of us haven't a clue what's potting. this course is heavy.

---i went for coffee with a couple of the girls, and as we left the building a guy walked past hurriedly. i *knew* i recognized him from somewhere, but without context i just couldn't place him! i spent the next few minutes driving myself nuts trying to figure it out...

a couple of weeks ago my appointment to see a skin doctor was cancelled on the day. on thursday, my new appointment (for tomorrow) was also cancelled. i called up to say that it was beginning to seem personal, and discovered, quite by accident, that both appointments had been for the wrong doctor.

fantastic.

i had lunch with pg and taught her basic binary arithmetic, then got my exam timetable so that i could figure out when to go snowboarding. tomorrow, we begin to arrange.

second class: i was thinking of watchmen's alien, and trying to figure out how to connect everyone through the massive threat of... humans. i was reading haraway - a cyborg manifesto and thinking about our future, laughing at our lecturer for his claim to be "living perfectly" and thinking about how that unhealthy mindset contributed to all of my polygraph trauma that transformed my reserve duty role to that of an expensive warden (i have no idea what my reserve duty will really be like :P).

after class, metaphor and i found the new anime class and performed a sound check (with only a minor altercation with the lecturer; all she had to do was say "i'm early, and i'm teaching". passive-aggressive is stupid, we couldn't know she secretly wanted to get started).

botchman picked me up on his bike, took me home through crazy traffic to switch bags, and then we continued on to the climbing wall. we hit the wall hard, and i was extremely satisfied afterwards. i think my hearing might have been a bit damaged by all the teenagers *screaming* at each other...

that guy from earlier? he works at the wall! what a crazy coincidence!

botchman gave me a ride to campus, and i arrived *just* in time for the anime evening. we had a whole bunch of new people - things seem to be rolling! ^_^
botchman went back to pick up scrapper, but they took far too long and missed metaphor's presentation on evangelion and why there are so many versions of it. it was an interesting talk, and absolutely brilliant watching it on a big screen.

metaphor asked us to introduce ourselves, and when it came to me i simple said "i like to break things by doing them the way they're supposed to be done". it's a fairly accurate explanation of most of my behaviour :P

---i was irritated by the flash boss - halfway through the movie he called me, and i ignored him. then he called me again and i scrambled outside to answer.
"is this an emergency?"
"no, no - "
"then can i call you back? i'm in the middle of something."
"oh, i just called to tell you that your program's not working. i've sent you an email."

if he'd just have let me call him back, i would've enjoyed the rest of the movie that much more. a little patience goes a long way and in both directions.

---after the movie we had time left over to watch something else, and i'd fortunately remembered to pack my discs on the way to campus in the morning. unfortunately, i'd left my schoolbag at home when i switched it for the climbing wall... :S

botchman and i went to play frisbee at rabin square, and it was good frisbee. what an excellent evening - wall, anime *and* frisbee!

---when i arrived home the first thing i encountered in the online arena was a debate over whether marilyn manson is more artistic than shakespeare. after reading a few interesting arguments, i put mine in:
okay - i've just been studying literature theory and i have what really is the only answer: you can argue and discuss all you want, there's no way to differentiate between any two accepted artists by "how artistic" they are.

the current academic consensus would probably swing the way of manson though, purely on the basis that he forces us to re-evaluate the things we think familiar far more intensely than shakespeare did, but then shakespeare was severely limited by his environment.
(and no, it doesn't matter if shakespeare was one man or many :P)

[edit: boy, was i ever wrong!]

it's always relative to the current condition of whatever society you're referring to. shakespeare was pretty damn roguish in his day, and although (as was stated above) his stuff wasn't original his perspectives and his crossovers (see "the merchant of venice") were seriously inspired and nobody can touch his verse. nobody.

technically, i'd go with shakespeare. provocatively (as in thought and emotional response) i'd have to go with manson. there's nothing like a debate that totally depends on perception: isn't it wonderful that all of us live in such different realities, as do/did our artists?

oh, and [thread owner]: shakespeare was held in VERY high esteem. may i suggest that you obtain a copy of "the norton anthology of english literature"? it's quite educational, especially the bits between the excerpts :)

pg and i watched hunter x hunter, and then it was long past time for bed.

[continued...]