Locked out!

Oh noes! No access to the Open Uni forums! Noooooeeeeesssss! I can't cope with that! I'm all Grrrr Arggghhh right now.

At least bedtime is good. Sean Bean is a great Principessa-put-to-sleeper! And I'm enjoying listening to the stories as well. I'm looking forward to getting a little bit of time to myself so that I can listen to The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer, read by Jack Davenport. *Flibble* Interesting dreams lay ahead!

Well, off to tend to pebbledashing Principessa. And to do some studying, I suppose, now there is no distraction from course fora.

And so it starts...

(Pic from http://www.prog99.com/Hillwalking%20in%20Scotland/2006/Ben%20Lomond%20-%20September%202006/index.html)

The self-doubt has made a fine log cabin in my head.

With acres of untamed fields and woodland of niggling questions and mountainous arguments. Wood for the trees? That's me. And each tree feels like a whomping willow, forcibly thwacking me with branches of self-deprecation, cutting deep rivulets in already low confidence. No tyre swings or fairy godmothers in sight. The sun is shining with a darkness, lining silver clouds and locking in the goodness. The fog refuses to give up its Brochen spectres, leaving me cold and lonely, warm in the knowledge of impending failure.

Yep. I am already writing myself off. (No pun intended there.) Do they do insurance deals for confidence? You know, in the case of serious self-doubt they provide you with a hire-ego while taking yours away to massage it back into self-belief?

Argh!

The unreachable 2000.

ARGH! This essay is beginning to grate now. Every word feels like it's being ripped from another dimension, biting and clawing to be left alone. I've now written just over 1800 words, but it feels like it'll never be finished. I keep combing what I have to make sure I have enough words to finish this last bit about the Early Music Revival (sorry, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, I shall have to keep Eight Songs For A Mad King to myself this time) and the windy-uppy conclusion. I was about to say I knew where I was going with the conclusion, but leaving out Max... I have to rethink.

Oh noes! Hang on, I have to free my little Principessa fish from the net! (She is currently playing in her hamster-style tent-tube with some Daleks. However, the tube has become a net that she keeps getting trapped in.)

Awww. She's so cute and funny:

Thank you Mummy, you saved me. I missed you sooo much. Can you make me a drink to make me feel better?

Just lately she has settled on a new phrase. Whenever she has food or drink that she doesn't want, the cry goes up:

But it tastes like snakes!

How does she know? I've never seen her eat a snake! Maybe Grandad told her that snakes taste like chicken. Besides for snakey-tasting stuff, she is enjoying school so far. Thankee muchly.

Back to the grindstone, anyway.

Still hard at it.

I've got just about 1000 words now. Not sure if they are good words, but it seems to be coming together. Just got to write about the military-industrial-academic complex and music counter-culture, and then wind it up with the conclusion.

Ooh, this is a good article. Makes for interesting reading, and good for getting story ideas tumbling around. It's just a pity there are no references. I'd be more inclined to use the article. And this article too.

And Michael. I've sent those CD/DVD numbers to you on Facebook mail.

Whales and dolphins, whales and dolphins, yeah!

(Pic from http://www.kidzone.ws/)

But no. Sharks and dolphins, no whales. In my dreams. Evoloved sharks and dolphins. Sharks in smoking jackets and dolphins in lab coats. Yes, I am mad.

So I had this weird dream, obviously. Above water level there was a TV station. There was some sort of Jeopardy style game show. The winners, well, they won. The losers, they were chucked into some massive vat and flushed away, where sharks waited in anticipation like dogs under a dinner table. When the losers appeared the sharks caught them, again like a dog catching scraps at the aforementioned dinner table. Some losers escaped, and found themselves at this strange, enclosed underwater complex.

Lots of rooms and corridors. The rooms were all plush, with all mod cons and any creature comforts you could think of. In these rooms, lots of peeps. There was only one problem. There were sharks inside. Sharks that could walk on their tail-fins, and use their pectoral fins as hands and arms. They would walk to a room, and just as a trained squirrel would do, pressed a button, the door would slide open, and the shark would snatch a person from the room. This happened a few times in the rooms that the dream me happened to be in. I became really annoyed by this, so found an interconnecting door. When the buzzer went on the door the shark was opening, I went through into the other room, quietly opened the door to the corridor, and attacked the shark from behind. (Here is where dreamtime goes anti-physics!) I grab the shark by his throat, and start screaming that I was fed up of him eating my friends. I walked down the corridor, shark by the throat, until we reached a set of double doors. Through the double doors we go, into a laboratory run by dolphins in lab coats and spectacles. I throw the shark at them, shouting that they can have him back because I was really pee'd off with him. The dolphins were mightly happy at the return of thier lab pet!

Then I woke up.

So yeah. I think I must have a fevered brain. Or maybe, after reading the Timothy Leary turn on-tune in-drop out stuff last night my brain decided that sharks and dolphins are to be my religion. Who knows. It must have been the repercussions of the "Death. Life. Structure" thing in the source reading. Must have been changed to Dolphins. Lab. Shark.

Well, off to continue reading the music unit, as the religion stuff is clearly playing with my head! (Though the music is doing my nut, too. Listening to "The Dangling Conversation", I am sure that the second "Are the borders of our lives" - as it is written in the lyric in the block book - is more "Are the warders of our lives" when you listen to it. It would make more sense to the song.)

Mostly back on form!

So I can now concentrate fully on the 60s. My essay mark is back (well predicted, Michael) and I feel so much better. 84%! Woohoo! I feel quite happy with the comments, just need to work out the integrative bit now. Which I shall. *Determined* I just hope that TMA09 hasn't scuppered my chances of passing this course.

The only thing now is, I'm wondering if I should do a language and literature degree. Hmmm. I know that there is a children's literature course starting in 2009 sometime (U300, I think), and I would very much like to try it, but I'm definitely not going to try it without doing some form of literature course at level 2 first. So, that would now mean doing A210 and U211 once the creative writing course has finished.

Now, on to toying with the idea of transfering my Blogger blog onto a Wordpress blog... Choices, choices.

Cloverfield

I have finally had the chance to see Cloverfield. Well, I was dubious, as it had been dubbed the Blair Witch meets Godzilla (I hated Blair Witch, it bored me stupid). I can see why, but there was much more to hold the attention in Cloverfield . Unlike BW, I did find that ball of anxiety in my chest during the tunnels and exploding friend scenes. However, I didn't think it was amazing. That may have been due to watching it on TV. I can see how the tension could have been built watching it on the big screen. But, I did enjoy it. Not got more to say on it than that.

On the subject of films though, one of my favourite films happened to be on yesterday. What was the film? The Princess Bride. I love it! I have never read the book - a flaw on my part - but I am worried that if I read the book the shiny of the film might be marred. Now, this isn't like me. I would rather read a book than take a film based on the book at face value. The Princess Bride is a different matter though. I love that film so much, I can watch it over and over again, that I don't want to read the book in case it does affect my enjoyment of the film. See, I might have enjoyed Eragon if I hadn't read the book, but the glaring omissions in that film just made me angry. So, I don't know if I will ever get to reading William Goldman's book.

As for returns of essays... I'm still waiting. *Sigh* I'm finding it hard to concentrate on the 60s when I don't know how I fared on the last essay. However, I am slowly trudging through the science section. I think I am quite certain that I will tackle science in the next essay, and possibly music and history, though having done okay with the art sections... We'll see. I think doing the history part is a given, just because to tackle periodisation you can hardly ignore it.

And to finish; the best swordfight (or fencing duel, I'm not sure!) in film!

Crazy baby, little monkey.

Hmm, that sounds like some weird and wonderful parody of a martial arts film in the same vein as Crouching Tiger...

So, I am trudging through the 60s block with my brains dribbling out of my ears. As much as I like old Arthur's writing style, I do think he suffered a little with verbal diarrhoea. His repetitive, driving points home affirmations are not what bothers me, it's all the "in so far"'s and other little phrases of the sort that pepper each chapter. That is what is driving me up the wall! I can't wait for this block to be over!

This, however, is both relevant and brilliant!



And I can't wait for the creative writing course to start. I can feel my Combat Foxes (otherwise known as The Muse) cavorting around in my head, finding interesting phrases and inserting them into interesting situations. I think there is a new story, though an old idea, doing aerobics to get my attention. I am still pondering on whether I should write part of the whole idea as a short story though. Maybe I will, and use it as one of the TMAs. So I shall let it gestate some more.

There is no (60s) spoon!

(Pic from www.ew.com)

So, I was reading some of the 60s stuff last night, mostly the bits about periodisation, and whether the 60s can be identified as a specific period of history. One of the exercises was to read an excerpt from a book about 60s counter-culture, see below. Now, apart from actually mentioning the word 'matrix', it almost reads like some sort of deconstruction of 'The Matrix'.

[...] But from my own point of view, the counter culture, far more than merely ‘meriting’ attention, desperately requires it, since I am at a loss to know where, besides among these dissenting young people and their heirs of the next few generations, the radical discontent and innovation can be found that might transform this disoriented civilization of ours into something a human being can identify as home. They are the matrix in which an alternative, but still excessively fragile future is taking shape. Granted that alternative comes dressed in a garish motley, its costume borrowed from many and exotic sources – from depth psychiatry, from the mellowed remnants of left-wing ideology, from the oriental religions, from Romantic Weltschmerz [agony over the state of the world], from anarchist social theory, from Dada and American Indian lore, and, I suppose, the perennial wisdom. Still it looks to me like all we have to hold against the final consolidation of a technocratic totalitarianism in which we shall find ourselves ingeniously adapted to an existence wholly estranged from everything that has ever made the life of man an interesting adventure.

If the resistance of the counter culture fails, I think there will be nothing in store for us but what anti-utopians like Huxley and Orwell have forecast – though I have no doubt that these dismal despotisms will be far more stable and effective than their prophets have foreseen. [...]

From Theodore Roszak, Preface to The Making of a Counter Culture (1970 edition)

I love the matrix line - "They are the matrix in which an alternative, but still excessively fragile future is taking shape." I really like the idea that the counter-culture is the matrix, rather than the society that the counter-culture is opposed. It makes me wonder if the Wachowski brothers had read this passage, because it really does fill your mind with fantastical ideas!

I think I must be going mad! This is what happens when you study in the dead of night... Things become something else! 'There is no counter-culture!'

Holy heck! She scribbled shite!

Sorry for the bad language, but hmph! I think I may have failed the whole course. I have just finished TMA09, and boy, does my head hurt. I decided to go with art history and poetry, simply because I had forgotten to take my Ipod with me so I couldn't do the music, and the philosophy question scared the hell out of me! I am hoping that the art has saved me, as I feel more at ease with that than anything else. I think I could have managed the music well, but ah well, stupid me for not having the music piece with me. The poetry... well, the less said about that the better. I must have written the biggest load of poo ever! I will have my fingers crossed for months now while I wait for the results (I think the results come out in December). Wow, do I feel sick right now.

You know, I don't think I'm cut out to do an arts/humanities degree. Nevertheless, onwards with the 60s block. Not tonight, though!

Procrastination over.

TMA07 has gone.

Now it's sent, I shall stop thinking about it. (Or so the theory goes... I've just had to make sure of a word definition. Luckily, I was correct in my usage. Phew!)

Why do I crucify myself?

Wow! It's been so long since I've listened to Tori Amos, let alone the album Little Earthquakes. I'd forgotten how good it was. I'd forgotten all the memories that comes with it too. Wow! All I can think of now is the start of a poem that I began years ago, that might now need looking at and rewriting because I really liked the first two lines:

Orcs and elves and Tori Amos
Let's not talk now about my demons

Yep, I still like those lines. Reading them back now, though, and remembering back to the time I wrote them, it's almost like I lay myself on a slab to be dissected. Eek! I'm sure there was another line in there somewhere that went something like:

Pysychology, Endocrinology
I'll know you inside out.

Slightly sinister, me thinks!

Hold on... just listening to Silent All These Years... Fantastic! That song still takes my breath away.



So, today is another day of combing the essay. I did a little yesterday, ended up more or less rewriting the conclusion, just to include why the two pieces are still relevant today, taking into account the masculine/feminine attributes and comparing them to modern day cultures. Hmmm, I hope it sounds okay. I've just got to make the rest read fluidly now. Maybe I should put some more references in. Not line references, I have enough of those, but references as to where I got the info for the rest of it. Wish I wouldn't panic so much!

Is that the fat lady I hear?

(Pic from www.edward-norton.org/)

No, the pic is not a representation of how I feel, though it is more than likey what my brain looks like after writing that essay. That said, I have finished. Done, done, done. 1537 words of pure, unadulterated rubbish. After a full day of working, many long words thrown in to make me sound intelligent, words like dichotomy and socio-verbal. Words I would never use in everyday life. God, I'd probably sound like Edward Norton (have you ever listened to his commentary or what ever the extra is on Fight Club?)! But it is done. I am just hesitant to send the damn thing off now. I'll leave that until tomorrow, I think. Give my brain a rest and a give the spawn of the devil essay a final read through tomorrow.

I think I should go and spend some time with Principessa now. Poor thing. I've almost completely ignored her today just so I could get this essay out of the way. At least she has me to herself over the next few days, now I don't have anything to fret about! Yay! Playtime with Principessa!

Would it help if I went to the dentist?

Because writing this damned essay is like pulling teeth! Saying that, I've got just over another 300 words to write, but in that I've got to get suitable conclusions to end the separate sections, a decent tie in section to bring it all together, and an all round conclusion just to finish it all off. Hmmm, seems a bit of an uphill struggle. Oh, bum! Oh, and I forgot to mention, I haven't quite finished writing the central body of the Don Juan section. I think I am about done with Medea.

Oh well. Hopefully I'll be done with this by the weekend. Not that anything special is happening at the weekend. I should be so lucky. But, if I can be done with it by then, I can do some revision for block one and read up on the Rousseau philosophy and the David/Friedrich art history, and maybe aim to get TMA09 done and dusted before the 60s block. It would make me feel so much better.

But for now, I need to stop a Principessa from bouncing the bed through the ceiling....

Reliving lost days...

Yay! But oops! I fell to the perils of Ebay, once again, but I have finally got a copy of Chronicle Of The Black Sword by Hawkwind! Raaaawwwwwkkkk! Chuffed to little mintballs I am. I've been meaning to get the album for ages as I only had a copy on cassette, and it's one of those albums that gets under your skin. The only problem now is, I want to go and dig our my Elric books and read them all over again. Maybe Stormbringer is trying to eat my soul!

What makes me smile even more as I listen to the album again is that Principessa is rocking out with me. She has already decided that Jerry Cornelius's Needle Gun is her favourite song.



She is making me giggle so much by pogo-ing about singing 'It's gonna make you run, needle, needle, needle, needle gun!" 'Tis a happy day.

'Tis a doubly happy day as I have also got myself a copy of Brian Lumley's book 'A Coven Of Vampires'. Woohoo! More little mintballs in the happy offing!

Right. Well. Happy day, but need to try and get the Medea/Don Juan essay written, and get ready for the surveyor and occupational therapist visit. They are hopefully going to the extension business started. Finally.

Just a little out of sorts...

Brain? (Or as my fingers demanded me to type - barin.) What is that? I have lost the ability to access mine. I think it may just need a wooden leg, or at least some matchsticks to prop it up, such a flaccid, useless thing it seems to be lately! Yes, I am still fighting the combat foxes in my head, the ones stuffing up my brain's bunghole, stopping the free flowing of the River of Idea and Creativity. Poop. But at least I had a relaxing evening last night - well, as relaxing as it can be watching MotoGP qualies. *Yawn.* But a can of beer and an hour out to watch Bonekickers (not sure about Bonekickers yet, the jury is out at the minute. Will watch again next week, must make an informed decision!) made all the difference. I will get back to the essay tomorrow.

So, my slackness forced me to slack off blogging yesterday, so no mention of the Dr. Horrible episode. Yes, act three went up yesterday. It's still available to watch, but will be gone by tomorrow. Pity. I really enjoyed it. Made me long for more Buffy, I tell ya! I still feel robbed that Angel only had five seasons. Stupid TV networks!

Anyway. I'm going to post this. And thanks Skips for pointing me to it. Cat lovers of the world, unite! Cats are far too evil to be cute, but they manage it somehow...

I feel like a quote out of context...

Argh! This TMA is doing my head in! But on the upside, this is post 250! Woohoo! And act 2 of Dr. Horrible's Song-Along Blog is up for viewing.

Back to normal programming. I am slowly being driven up the oil-slicked wall with this TMA. Every time I think I have found a foothold I am unceremoniously dropped from a great height. The Medea section seems to be coming together, but the Don Juan bit is eluding me at the minute, even though I know I have all the info that I need to write it. Fudgecakes! I may be going slightly mad.

So, for a quick music lesson...

TMA avoidance.

This is what this is. I am so frustrated with the whole thing, it's driving me up the bloody wall.

So, what do I have to do in this latest essay? I have to contrast the traditional attributes of masculinity and femininity in two of four specified texts. I've already said that I have chosen Don Juan and Medea here, but working the essay around them is proving more elusive than the Scarlet Pimpernel. I know what I want to say, and what parts of the 'texts' I want to use, but cohesion is non-existent! I am floundering, plain and simple. It is so frustrating because both of the 'texts' are goldmines for essay material. Maybe that's the problem, maybe I'm trying to incorporate too much. I think I will need more thinking time.

On other stuff... The things Principessa has me doing! Today she had me try to teach her how to play bowling and tennis on Wii Sports. It was both funny and frustrating at the same time. Principessa has developed the art of selective hearing extremely well, so trying to show her or explain to her what to do is a very hard job. But, saying that, she did strike out in bowling at one point. 'Twas very impressive! Another thing she has me do is put socks over her bedtime bottle (sooo much less hassle than a cup at bedtime) so that the milk or orange juice doesn't freeze her hands. Oh, if a drink is too cold she throws it on the floor. That is me, not a happy Mummy! A sock makes it all better, and her socks fit the bottle perfectly!

Anyways, enough of my rambling. Time to try and get more of this essay done. 500 words down (ish), another 1000 to go....

What a secret blunder!

*Eeks* I received the secret 'exam' paper today. Well, the envelope contains the very last assignments for the A103 course. But...problem. The ever so secret pages have been sealed into the return envelope, instead of the top secret instructive envelope that should contain the exam paper and the return envelope. If any of that makes sense! So, I'm just keeping an eye out at the A103 forum to see what is to be done. Ho hum!

As for the current essay TMA07 plan... I've not started yet. I've taken a day or so out to finally get around to reading Wide Sargasso Sea. Holy heck! it's depressing. Just got a few more pages to read before I'm done. And I shall breath a sigh of relief. I thought I had better read it, just to make sure that it would not be a text I could use for the essay. I can tell you, it's a big, fat no! It's an interesting take on the Bertha character from Jane Eyre, Rochester's first wife. But it drains the life out of you faster than the death drain in Guitar Hero 3. So, it is definitely Don Juan and Medea for my two texts. Time to finish the Medea block work, methinks, and gather my thoughts about the Don!

Wimbledon, Day 10.

(Picture from www.bbc.co.uk/sport)

Again with the ah wells. Zheng Jie did not manage to overpower Serena, and Elena Dementieva did not manage to overpower Venus, so it's a Williams sisters final. Ho hum.

Arnaud Clement and Rainer Schuettler battled through a 5 hour long, rain delayed match.
Schuettler won 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (8-6), 6-7 (7-9), 8-6. He has to play Nadal today. Here is the line-up for the men's semi-finals:

Roger Federer (SUI) 1st seed vs. Marat Safin (RUS)
Rafael Nadal (ESP) 2nd seed vs. Rainer Schuettler (GER)

In the girl's singles, Laura Robson is doing fantastically well. After dispatching the 1st seed in the first round, she took out the number 9 seed yesterday to make it into the semi-finals. She looks like she's going to make a very handy tennis player.

So much for me doing any study last night. Principessa fell asleep just before 5pm, woke up at around 8pm, and didn't go back to sleep until 1am. Knackered, I am. I would so like Principessa to go to bed at 8pm and wake up at 7-8 am. I could handle that! But no. She usually goes to sleep between 9-11pm, then wakes up any time from 7.30-9-30am. That means I stay up until 1am to study. Oh so tired... But if I get a degree out of it, then it'll be worth it!