Saturday, September 17, 2005

Wake me up when September ends...

Wow. Almost two weeks without posting. Usually I don't update this thing because there's nothing going on...but now I don't update because there's too much going on.

Work is good. Sometimes it seems like too much--as I've probably already mentioned, on one Monday and one Friday these past two weeks I've had to go straight from class to work, which means that I wake up at 8, go to class from 9-12, and then work from 12-6 with a thirty minute break somewhere around 2:30. Thus, when I get back to the room, I've been going pretty much non-stop for 10 hours. Sometimes this scares me; other times I'm too busy to worry.
Overall, though--I love being a salesman. I got the same genes my grandma and my brother Jamie have. I like talking to people and sometimes my interest and, well, enthusiasm-bordering-on-obsession is contagious and they end up buying things. (Yesterday I got a man named Cavers very interested in his Douglas heritage, and he bought a tie and a booklet on the clan history.) It's funny to think how unrelated this is to Chemistry, how far a cry it is from what I would have expected from myself.

School is going pretty well. I had my first P-Chem test this Wednesday and while I don't think I aced it there was nothing on it that I didn't recognize. I don't want to speculate on my grades or read the answer key (at least, not until I get my graded test back) because I hate second-guessing myself. Conclusion: The P-Chem test is over. I will NOT fret about it.

...

I'm a horrible liar.

Anyways. Got an Instrumental Analysis test coming up too. Plus I have two poems to write for my workshop. One free choice, the other an assigned topic. This week's topic: surrealism. Oh boy. I bet that's going to open up the door on a whole bunch of crappy poetry that people are going to pass off as surrealist merely because it has lots of strange imagery and lines about melting clocks and the persistance of memory.
Which reminds me. I have to work on my poetry journal. If anyone has any ideas for things I could write that would resemble an astute analysis of Wallace Stevens' "The Emperor of Ice Cream," let me know.

4 Comments:

Blogger Baron Bodissey said...

"The Emperor of Ice Cream" is a metaphor for humanity's struggle and search for an identity in the 20th century. The essential narrative of the ice-cream maker and his concupiscent curds encapsulates the derivative consciousness inherent in modern alienated culture.

Isolating the emperor as a significant symbol of the deconstruction of the power relationship that typifies late post-industrial culture shows that Stevens was prescient in his understanding of post-modern antinomian sensibilities.

12:04 AM  
Blogger Gryffilion said...

The scary thing, Baron, is that I'd probably get lauded for such insightful and articulate understanding of Wallace's writing.

Merely because calling me out on the wonderful BS you postulated would prove that she didn't know what the hell he was talking about either. Professors hate to lose their veil of omniscience.

1:21 AM  
Blogger Dymphna said...

wake me up when September ends..

Wouldn't have known your allusion but Jinnji had the whole thing on her blog recently.

Go over to Gates and see the post that I dedicated to you. It's the one titled "The Caliph of Ice Cream" -- you'll enjoy it.

The Baron's BS on this thread is wonderful. He's busy now writing an Islamic parody of the poem. He's putting it in as an update of the Caliph post.

BTW, I had to google the poem in order to make a link to it and came across scads of "analysis" -- emphasis on the first two syllables of that word. You might wanna look them up for yourself, just so you can be glib.

8:12 PM  
Blogger Gryffilion said...

Update: I used a good portion of the Baron's "analysis" as the journal entry for EoIC in my poetry class. Let's see if the prof. notices and/or cares.

3:01 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home