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Studenthood Sun, Mar 8th 2009 10:29 pm
I’ve been studying the course material for a class called “FACS” (Fine Arts Cultural Studies) and would like to give you two samples of the sorts of things I’m expected to talk about. Seriously.
Behold: L’Apres-midi d’un Faune and John Cage’s “Variations V”.
I wouldn’t ask or even recommend that any of you watch either of those to the end, but I suspect you’ll sypathize with me within only a few seconds of watching. And that’s really all I want, is sympathy. I know I have to do this, but I don’t think suffering of this magnitude should go unnoticed. I share them with you because misery loves company. And I am miserable.
Oh, and if you somehow managed to watch either of those without ever ONCE cracking a “WTF” or at least making a “WTF face”, please explain where and/or how you acquired an immunity to such high concentrations of bullshit.
On a lighter note, it’s nearly summer and I’m pretty sure I’m going to appreciate this one more than any other since… Well… Possibly ever. I’ve had a crappy time adjusting to studenthood and when that first flower blooms, I may actually shed a tear of pure, salty joy. If I can thank FACS for anything, it’s for making me so appreciate the time I get away from it.
And now, you can too. I’m sorry. And you’re welcome.
Er, some ducks? Sun, Feb 15th 2009 10:29 pm
I know very little of this photo. It was taken more than a year and a half ago, in the summer of ‘07 I think. I’m not sure why it’s adjusted the way it is, but it was starred for posting and I figured now’s as good a time as any.
I’d like to post more often, but my time’s been devoured by school and, in the rare breaks I do get, I tend to avoid doing much at all.
More on the way. One day.
Happy New Year, 2009 Sun, Jan 4th 2009 12:15 am
Happy New Year, folks. Here’s a photo of Boo in celebration.
This shot, though it is staged (your search for a real booze-drinking cat will have to continue), required nothing more than to slide the shot glass in frame. She sits with her rear on the top step of the stairs, then rests her upper half on the floor above. I planted my camera on the floor while Paul (I believe it was) slid the shot glass in front of her.
I suspect the fumes of absinthe from the glass are to thank for keeping her calm enough to take the shot with my lens so close to her; the non-sedated Boo would’ve pounced at my face as soon as I got near enough to swat. There’s another shot of her with her nose up to the glass, and you’d swear she was smiling… But this shot won.
PS: Pete, you’re welcome to turn this into a lolcat :P
Loitering Sat, Dec 27th 2008 11:54 pm
Steph left for Asia for some crazy hike up to Base Camp on Mt. Everest — among other places — and I miss her already. Now I’m so bored that when 10:00 rolls around, I need so badly to get out of the house that I wander the dark, foggy streets of Bowmanville alone with my camera. And this is the kind of crap I end up taking photos of!
Ah well. It’s a pretty shot. Shame that my girlfriend had to fly to the other side of the Earth for me to finally go out and take a photo again!
There may well be more of this to come in the next 13 days.
Kittens Are So Hot This Season Wed, Nov 5th 2008 11:05 pm
Meet Joelle, Steph’s little sister. The two came down to Bowmanville for the town’s annual “Apple Fest”, an event which I accidentally over-hyped by merely mentioning it in passing. As it turned out, the most amusing part of the entire festival wasn’t a part of it at all. We wandered into the Old Mill and hung out with the kittens that were up for adoption. This one decided it wanted to keep Joelle. Another chose Steph. A third chose to claw at my crotch which could, I guess, be interpreted as a display of affection. Yeah…
Are anyone else's feet cold? Tue, Oct 21st 2008 10:18 pm
For next week, I’ve two essays, a rough draft of a poster, a book cover, a page from said book, and eight detailed tracings due. Oh, and a mid-term exam. This is my life now, and I’m starting to question my path all over again.
Work scares me. It seems that the only jobs I enjoy doing are the ones for which I know I’m already fully qualified. Learning doesn’t scare me, but needing to learn under pressure of a deadline kind of does. Deadlines don’t scare me either, but multiple deadlines do.
Unfortunately, this is school. School isn’t a day-job. It’s a rigorous, unrelenting gauntlet that will take four years of running to get through. At this point, right now, I find myself questioning why I’d even bother. I’m competent enough to get myself into a moderately-well-paying job right now, and with the same four years’ time spent getting actual work experience, it seems almost feasible that I’d be just as well off. I’d have less debt, less stress, more money, and more freedom. I can’t seem to extinguish this fantasy.
Every day, I come home, make and devour dinner as quickly as possible, and then sit down to do homework. I do homework until I go to bed. Then I wake up and go to school to get more homework. My work doesn’t end at 5:00 PM anymore. It won’t for another four years. It’ll end anywhere from 10:00 PM to 3:00 AM and begin again at 8:30 AM sharp. For four years.
This was a choice, though. And I knew it’d be challenging. In fact, the challenge is what I’m here for. But it seems so far that the challenges are not in the actual work, but are rather in getting the work done, regardless of quality. I realise that time-management skills are going to be prerequisite to my success in this thing, but I’m wondering if I couldn’t learn them just as well by working my way up the ranks in the workplace.
Or maybe I’m jumping the gun in assuming that I could even get a job without this degree. Or rather, I may be overlooking how its absence from my résumé may well limit just how far I can work my way up in said ranks. I really have no idea, but I daydream about finding out. I miss working, and working with people. I miss free time, and inventing ways to fill it. I miss pet projects and the joys of seeing them come to life. I miss having money, or at the least the freedom to spend it. I miss being truly and thoroughly bored sometimes. I miss life before school.
I’m driven, however, by one question’s answer: Which will suck more: not going to school and wondering where I’d be if I had, or the next four years of my life as it’s planned so far? I suspect the former, even if the latter will in fact be every bit the hell I imagine.
Feel free to try to change my mind though. I’m begging you…
