|
| Finals week was brutal. A lot of that was my own fault with poor sleeping schedules, but extra stress from sporadically closed offices, weird demands of transcripts in sealed vials from UDenver, and plagiarism cases is just uncalled for. Feeling ill, also not cool. I need to more tightly follow the rules I learned from The Great Escape and Slaughterhouse 5 about good hygiene in the face of hardship.
I treated the week like an ongoing battle. It began at 8 AM Monday morning, and I was totally out of it. The world kept spinning around my head and time shifted faster and slower, totally throwing off Newtonian physics. Not much grading went on, and Movie Night Monday was a good distraction. Skirmishes, but no clear winner on the battlefront.
Tuesday had two finals come in. I fought until past midnight, finishing up all the Comp 2 papers. My troops made good advances.
Wednesday began and continued badly. Woke up feeling grumpy and ill, though most of the latter was done away with by a hearty breakfast and yoga (betcha didn't know I did that, didja?). Errands prepping for the Comics Final swallowed up the late morning, and the final was fun seeing a solid round of comics from students. We then watched The Dark Knight (or, they did; I was off on errands time and again) until everyone got bored and left. The rest of the day felt shot, and I retreated, playing Civ and finally watching Fantastic Planet through. It's sci-fi done in 1970s Czech-French animation and has lots of very, very weird alien architecture and biology, but the weirdness fits together so well that it doesn't stand out as weird as something like, say, Wizards.
Thursday morning started off horribly, getting finished up with a few grades and learning all the paperwork going into plagiarism. Jerk students. I was very nearly ready to cave, but a home-cooked meal up in MWC gave me enough energy to hit back very hard all evening to finish 2/3 of the Comp 1 grading. Finals week was in full retreat, but the final battle wouldn't happen until 10:30 the next morning.
Friday started early, but better, and I made it to campus to pick up the lingering finals and rewritten essays. Distractions tried to counterattack, but the battle was won. At 12:20 PM, I'd graded, posted, and turned in everything bureaucracy had to throw at me. There may be undiscovered small pockets of resistance or a rebellion, but I consider the week conquered. In celebration, I read for fun and slept for hours on the couch. Take that, Fall 2009!
In other news, I'm rethinking my racism against Artificial Intelligence. Being racist was fun and all, and I still think there are merits to the problem of government and Natural Law, but there are good robots out there. I would have agreed with that anyway, but maybe these good robots and computer systems deserve as much a chance as humans. Also, I think a lot of humans deserve less of a chance.
Whatever the case, I'm still opposed to WALL-E having the vote. | | |
| At least, that's how it felt. I'm just about burned out. Still alive, but I can't focus on productivity and have a great urge to soak in as much media as possible.
I did get a quarter of the way through the edits on Dawn, but not much farther. I'll finish once Christmas Break starts, and that will put my Fall '09 To Do list mostly finished (missing the Intersession proposals that are rescheduled to the Spring '10 To Do list and the write-ups of Travel Journals from last summer... who knows when those'll come about?). Finished a novel, applied to PhD schools, created a Ghost Tour of OU, revamped my website, backed up pictures and musics, and kept my head above water on my web comics. Not too bad for five months.
In place of more work, there was much media consumed. Movie Night turned into a double-feature with the spontaneous discovery of online Stripes (whoever told me that was the best Bill Murray movie needs to see every other Bill Murray movie), going late into the early morning. Tuesday was reading comic books such as Five Fists of Science (Mark Twain & Nikola Tesla fightin' demons... great idea and characterization, but poor pacing) and Ministry of Space (Britain dominating the Space Race, awesome sci-fi and illustrations of rocket launches... even better afterword about the potentials of space travel and how we just haven't done 'em). Wednesday I actually got with novel editing, but that gave way to dinner & movie on Thursday at the Chinese buffet leading to Angels & Demons. The bad science and history were much more palatable in the book; I spent most of the movie screaming at the screen. Friday, after watching my usual slew of Thursday night shows (Office, Community, & Always Sunny), was Dave Chapelle's Half-Baked (a few good jokes, especially the relationship between the janitor and the scientist, but so... very... slow... that you'd have to be high just to have patience with it). Saturday began as a cursed day, and I followed Chad's suggestion to hunker down until it blew over, so I worked through seasons 3, 4, and 5 of the Spider-man animated series from the '90s. Sunday was back at reading, working through Alan Moore's Top Ten (about a city where everyone has super-powers... great idea, great execution). Movie Night Monday yesterday was Perfect Blue, which may very well join the ranks of Wizards, Eraserhead, and Zorba the Greek of Weirdest Movies I've Ever Seen mostly because of it's crazy-go-nuts cinematography. Does it count as cinematography if it's animated?
It's been good recuperation, which should be enough to get through grading final papers. I need to not push myself so hard next semester.
Classes also went through the week, though quieter. Comics had evals and we watched the live-action and the cartoon Tick to compare adaptations for different audiences. Comp II watched The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See, a look into cost management and global warming (now "climate change" as global warming has proven not as true as they'd like), and worked it into proposals. Wednesday and Friday, I went off topic to the Greatest Proposal, the Meaning of Life. I gave them a run-through of my logic flow chart and then the story of Will Rogers (the moral of which is: seize opportunities, even if it's a trip to Alaska, because it's awesome). Comp I, meanwhile, watched Stranger than Fiction, which is still good even the twelfth and thirteenth times through. Friday we examined it as a narration, and I did a huge off-the-cuff lecture on how it touches the old archetype of storytelling with seeking the Mentor, performing the Tasks, and appealing to the Higher Power. Not a bad way to end a semester's worth of classes. | | |
| Thanksgiving Break was a much-needed breather before hitting the last few weeks of classes. The first Monday was spent wrapped in PJs, writing up the last bits of application work. It doesn't really count as work if you're in your PJs. Eveningtime, we hit Movie Night Monday especially hard with a big gang and Stephen King's The Mist. I'd been told skeptical things, but it was in fact very awesome, especially with the crew. We all laughed hysterically at our MST3king and then screamed hysterically at the scary bits.
Tuesday, I headed undercover to campus to get a couple of copies of my transcript and do some further workings. It's weird to be on campus with my tape-covered backpack, hat, and jeans. At least it's not homework. With work done, I dropped by Triangle house for some leftovers and a lot of playing the card game Chrononauts for a review on Blogcritics. We ended up playing it through five times. Then I slipped down to check out the D&D guys and their hilarious antics getting ambushed in the night.
Things quieted down the next few days of break as people scattered toward home. We didn't do our family Thanksgiving until Saturday, so I hung around Norman getting some writing done on the Halloween game, writing plenty of comics to try to catch up, and watching the Macy's parade. Friday night, I headed home in a long, late-night drive. Things were even quieter in the country, at least until Saturday when a flurry of eating and family descended on the Farm. Mmmm. After a big lunch dinner and plenty of lying around to digest, we headed out to the annual Thanksgiving wood chopping. The wood pile filled up, then we even cut out a few limbs from the Ozark tree by the windmill with James swinging a chainsaw fifteen feet up, roped to the windmill. I climbed up in the tree and quickly got stuck with the same stomach-freezing agoraphobia that happened every time I climbed it. Never will learn, will I?
Sunday was back to Norman, and it was a long drive accented by a growing cold. When I back finally, I crashed on the couch and stared vaguely, watching the Venture Brothers until I finished the series. Nothing drowns out an illness better than TV. That, and cold medicine.
The medicine made classes the next day interesting. Quite a bit of it was a blur, accented by in depth discussions of vampires, long talks about Swift's A Modest Proposal, and, of course, plenty of Simpsons references. I was still in a fog with Movie Night being sillier than average. Drugs, apparently, are not the answer.
More movies followed Tuesday and Wednesday. First, Mae and I "helped" Preston with his "homework" of watching films, over which he has to write some essays. We watched Chinatown as well as some Jeeves & Wooster (but just for fun). The following night was Mae's NY Farewell Party, where, among other entertainments, we played the game where you put a card on your forehead and try to guess which famous person you are. It ended up being giant piles more fun than even Inglourious Basterds made it seem. Thursday, too, was fraught with media watching a cartoonist interview in Comics (along with The Cat Piano). Rob Roy followed in the evening, and it was very great with Highlanders and, according to some, the greatest sword fight ever choreographed. A bit much on the nookie, but its discussions of personal honor more than made up for it.
Friday morning, I dropped my toast, and it landed butter-side up. That's definitely the first step to an interesting day. Classes in Comp II changed lesson plans immediately as we fell to doing an open discussion of paper topics (and, of course, because of faulty technology). Comp I was also interesting as I asked Brother Jed the campus preacher to drop by. He's much more reasonable of a fellow when he's not screaming at people. He gave a rendition of how he got into the act. The second class didn't have him, though I did go completely ballistic over a guy texting and relating it only to his lost points rather than the significance of respect. It turned into an interesting discussion about generational mores, also to how my profile is a statistical match for serial killers. Hm. After a day like that, I crashed, even missing out on a free Union movie. Wowzers.
Saturday was a Questing Day. After watching some weird, weird TBN cartoon about rebels in AD 70, I headed to Atomik Pop to meet up with cartoonist Rob Vollmar (who'll be dropping by comics class next semester). I picked up a few comics, then ran into Preston, who joined me in pursuit of a copy of Stranger than Fiction, which we found at Hastings, though pursuits of entertainment led on to Barnes & Noble and, of course, the annual trip to Toys R Us. Quests triumphant, we dropped by OU Improv's final show of the semester, which was definitely hilarious. Mr. Bibbles and the Otter Hunters will live forever in jokey memory.
Sunday brought James and Sarah down to Norman, toting their old green couch, which then became my new green couch. We moved it in and used up one of my Rib Crib dinners from the auction for lunch. I spent most of the afternoon cleaning up and rearranging.
To break in the new-to-me couch, I read the comic Fables until I fell asleep. Mm, couch naps. Good comic, too. Not so great on execution, but the world-creation is awesome. | | |
| 'bout two weeks anyway... what've I done?
Week before last was a bit of a breather. Worked up enough comics not to have to panic the rest of the month (though almost three weeks behind for December). Read a comic book collection (Y - The Last Man, about a lone guy after a plague wiped out all male mammals). Dropped in on a screenwriting seminar, catching the last half about the business of screenwriting (lots of potential in freelancing, actually), and it was most informative, even if I did have to put dinner off to 8 o'clock. Went through some good days and some bad, all the while slipping closer and closer to the edge of blissful insanity.
Weekend last I headed home to be a Judge at an academic meet (though there was a cancellation, and I ended up being a Reader). It was very strange being on the other side, asking the questions at the big table rather than ringing in at the buzzer. The morning was early (8 AM for going over the questions... blekk), but I got free lunch at the concession stand (giant pretzels!). It turned out fun overall, though I wouldn't try to make a career out of it. I was getting a bit too into it at one point, and my judge compatriot had to give me a stern talkin'-to to settle me down. Whoops.
The rest of the weekend at home was quiet, what with the TV and DVD player being taken down. Instead, I read through a collection of Mark Twain short stories. The Dog's Tale was so moving that I was whimpering too hard to sleep, so I read a jokey story about burglar alarms to calm to down.
Back in Norman and back in classes Monday, I took up papers from every class. After goofing off Movie Night Monday then Tuesday Too, I threw myself into grading. Wednesday I graded through one class, but by 9 PM was at the point where I couldn't even hold my head up. I slumped into bed and stayed there for 12 hours, feeling more fatigued than my usual exhausted. It might've been a bug, but I slayed it with ample sleep and loads of vitamin C. Thursday night, I was back into grading (after running amok on campus geocaching), and I wrapped up after midnight. I didn't finish until 3:27 PM Friday, three minutes before my last two classes. Everyone had voted to take the Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving break off. I think I was more ecstatic to leave campus Friday than any of the students.
Irony struck, of course, on the first day of the break with getting up early to go over to Preston's for a game creation convention. He dreamed of a card game called "Save the Whales" balancing environmentalism and big business with much satirical punches at both, and Aaron and I joined in on design. We got through two of the four decks and hammered out rules for the rest, of course taking a break to visit The Diner. Mmm. We broke late in the afternoon for naps and showers, then headed up to Bricktown for an evening at Tapwerks (so very awesome ambiance, even if the sports game was too loud... the Juju Beans upstairs were awesome, too, except their sound system was unfortunately imbalanced). Bricktown's really spruced up, and I was much agog at such splendor in li'l ole Oklahoma.
I, too, was impressed by exceedingly thick fog last night that made all of the streetlights look like glowing torches and the sky seemed aflame from the glow of the stadium.
Anyway, speaking of games, I've taken up reviews again at Blogcritics, this time focusing on card games. Chad and I talked about a time travel card game, which turns out has already been made. This week, I covered Martian Fluxx, the redo of Fluxx for Martian invaders. Awesome.
In addition, been watchin' loads of films: Moon (about a guy all alone on a lunar mining three-year contract, and he's starting to go crazy), Zombie Land (finally watched! Definitely awesome through the first 2/3, then they get to the "oh, we're bonding" garbage where zombies don't even show up on screen for so long you think it's just a whining movie... also, they weren't zombies, they were Infected), Inglorious Basterds (so, so disappointed... it had tons of great elements, but I was hoping for so much more... four-hour-long DVD director's cut someday?), Namesake (traded Mae Josie & the Pussycats for it; very well acted tale of Bengali coming to America... I was a little upset by their portrayal of the juxtaposition of cultures, mostly because they're probably right about slovenly American mores), Train Man (excellent Japanese movie of a nerd saving a girl on a train and wants to ask her out, but doesn't know how, so he turns to the Internt... ah, nerdiness), Star Trek IV (speaking of nerdiness... hilarious movie), and on and on.
We also finished the Drawing Board, meaning it was time to photograph, wipe clean, and start over.
Monday started Thanksgiving holiday proper, and I've done my best to stay in my PJs all day. Granted, I did hash out my applications but for a few trivialities, so it was productive, but Productivity in Pajamas doesn't count.
| | |
| ...the first week of November.
It started with a road trip to Stillwater where Preston & I picked up some furniture and kitchenware that James & Sarah were being rid of. Apparently getting married means an end to random, mismatched bits of the bachelor pad. Madness.
The trip ended up being 8 1/2 hours and fraught with side-adventures. We stopped off at Chad 'n Janica's to pick up a trailer and hung around longer than intended eating baked pumpkin seeds from the leftover guts of jack o' lanterns. (Later that day, a jack o' lantern would throw up on me... I was moving it off a step when it bent too far forward and water dumped out its mouth.) The drive up and back were filled with discussions of movies, thoughts, and enormous microwave cannons used possibly to explode tornadoes before they form (actually, I think they would make it much, much worse).
After a tour of James' shed (massive, and awesomely outdoorsy), we moved out the infinitely heavy fold-out couch that once sat in my grandparents' den. Everything went over fairly well until the bed popped out and one of the feet punched through the wall. Ouch. Well, fixable. After all the moves, we capped the trip with dinner at Eskimo Joe's, which is definitely a must for touring Stillwater.
Classes over the week raced by interestingly. Comp II classes voted differently when to watch V for Vendetta, so I'm juggling assignments. Monday covered the legalization of organ sales (they're for it... also for legalization of prostitution. Hm.). Wednesday covered downloading of media (much more split, but we had a good discussion of getting across what's legal and not). Friday, as something of a joke, I asked, "What do you want to learn about today?" They said ghosts, so I told ghost stories for 40 minutes. Then we did the review assignment we were supposed to.
Comp I, meanwhile, hacked its way through persuasion. The rhetorical triangle is really handy stuff. Monday I had 'em try to convince me to cancel class on the Monday before Thanksgiving (I'm convinced), Wednesday and Friday were more practical analyses of commercials and a long discussion of logical fallacies. Logical Fallacy Day is the best day.
Comics took a different turn. Tuesday, I gave my first ever exam. Turned out really awesome, actually. Exams are much more fun to grade than papers. Thursday, we started up the comic-writing part of the semester. We talked about stories on and on. I should totally teach a creative writing course.
Nighttimes were shut down for heavy grading between Monday and Friday. Media between ran with finishing the first six volumes of Cerebus (weird stuff... underground comix are bizarre indeed, and the aardvark makes it all the more bizarre). Then I watched through the Adult Swim show Superjail! (ugh, so violent...) and finally watched RocknRolla (good times... not quite as good as Snatch, but as good as Lock Stock...).
Monday was Movie Night at Laura's with some chili mac and The Messengers (a shockingly good Lifetime film about spooks in North Dakota). Friday was Comedy Fight Night (student comedians... well, some good lines at least), strolling through the library for atlases, and District 9. I'm still torn about the movie. Pros: awesome story, great use of fake (and real) news clips, lots of aliens. Cons: sloppy ending. Glad I saw it, though.
The rest of the weekend was filled to the brim, so much so I had to squeeze in a nap Saturday afternoon between events. Early on, I headed to the Red Dirt Book Festival in Shawnee, listening to a long lecture about the editorial process of Harlequin (much wider range of fiction than I ever believed... I may have to send off some stuff here, soon). It was a good long chat with writers and such, and I mooched a lot of fresh pineapple. That night was a trip up to Edmond for a blind date, most of which was traded shock at how few people of our generation had seen Marx Brothers films. Truly, this is a Dark Age...
Sunday after church, I headed up to Midwest City for my grandmother's 90th birthday party (I recognize so few of my cousins now... so many marriages and kids poppin' out everywhere when I wasn't looking), then spent the evening at Chad's trading game ideas and watching him play some BioShock. That looks like a great game, something I'll have to tackle myself someday.
There's so much media I want to take in, but I just can't seem to do it. Maybe instead of backpacking, I should just sit on the couch and watch five films a day. Hm, I don't like where this train of thought is going... | | |
|
