The Misspent Life

Sweet Release

Aaaaaaahhhh.  That is the sound of me being done for the semester.  Early this morning I sent in my last final of the year.  It was quite an endeavor getting everything out.  For some reason most of my classes give us very little to do during the entire semester and cram everything into the last few weeks.  Since you don't get your writting topics in advance there is little one can do to prepare for the onslaught.  But, it is finished.  A year in the bag, four more to go.  I promised you some additional thoughts on this first year a while back and I have not forgotten.  I've got a few days here in the Misspent homeland and then I will be AWOL for a week or two while I am in an internets free zone (i.e., Wisconsin where we don't have any way for me to get on the internets).

Wrapping Up

Only a few more days and I am done for the year.  I've still got 15 pages to write, and haven't done much of anything worthwhile today, and am flying back to the homeland on Saturday morning, which means I've got to have a very busy day if I am to be anything other than unpleasant this weekend.  The problem is that I was planning to be up late on Tuesday evening, so I drank a lot of coffee. It seems I drank too much.  It wasn't long before I was writhing around with belly pains.  I keep forgetting that I no longer can afford to make good coffee at home, so have to content myself with drinking what amounts to water filtered through roachbits and dirt.  This doesn't go down as well.  Well, ever since them I have felt bad.  I had a paper to do for yesterday and unfortunately it did not go well given my state.  I had trouble concentrating for anything other than ten minutes at a time.  So the paper makes little sense, doesn't have a good structure, and is poorly argued and supported.  There goes that grade.  But I forced myself to go to a social event at a professor's house last night, which ended up OK.  I've got to get to bed so I can actually do something on Friday.  Will I ever be glad to finish.

Party Time!

Who would have guessed!  The airlines aren't all evil after all.  They very nicely agreed that it would be fine for me to drop my commuter flight from DC to NYC on the 30th and that I could fly directly out of NYC late that evening.  So this means I can come up to NYC on the 29th and spend some quality time with The Cardinals, Fiendish Lout, Mr. Cusack, and Mr. Seal that evening and for most of the next day!  Honestly, I didn't expect the airline to be so accommodating given their usual position of customer disservice.

Even More Music News

Great sadness here in the Misspent hovel.  Katharine did not do very well tonight.  I fear she is out.  She should not worry, however.  I will be glad to take her into my care and comfort her if she were to be dismissed tomorrow night.  Elloitt did really well tonight.  I still can't stand Taylor, although his second song was pretty good.  I seem to hate the Taylor that everyone loves.

More Music News

Snow Patrol has a new CD out today.  It is pretty good.

(I don't know why I am spending so much money given the fact that I cashed my last paycheck until September.)

Music News

You may be wondering if I have any music news to share with you.  I do, in fact.  Thanks for wondering.

First, Sufjan Stevens did not get a women in his band pregnant.  That was an internet rumor.  When I first heard it, from a Christian friend, I thought it entirely possible since it is NYC and hipsters.  Also, as one of our dearly departed friends once said, "I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up a heretic."

Second, Sufjan is coming out with a new CD soon, called "Avalanche."  For those of you who are in the know, Avalanche is a special track on the LP release of his album, Come On Feel the Illinoise.  Avalanche will feature about thirty tracks that were recorded for the Illinoise album but where cut.  I am looking forward to it.

Third, you should all go out and find a CD by Max Raabe und das Palast Orchester.  This is especially true for those of you who like good music.  Fantastische Musik!

Almost Done

Friends, I am almost done with the school year.  A few more papers to go, but the majority of the pages now done.  Ten pages for Wednesday and fifteen for next Monday and I will be a free man.  I will be spending some time in the Misspent Hometown and then returning to The District for a few idle weeks of summertime leisure.  I will then be off to Berlin. 

Unfortunately, I will be missing the giant party for Andrew Cusack that is being organized by The Cardinals and They Who Shall Not Be Named and which may be attended by some of the internet's most special bloggers.  I will be the in the area on the special date, but unfortunately I will be sitting in the Newark Airport.  I would try to change my ticket since my flight out is not until nearly 10pm, and simply take the bus up to the Big Apple a day or two early and party for half the day and then leave directly from NY, but the airlines are not very friendly with those kind of things even though I am flying business class.

Go Tony!

The Misspent family is very happy about Tony Snow becoming the next White House Press Secretary.  We had the opportunity to say hi to Tony last summer in Chicago.

Chicken

I watched Chicken Little tonight.  It was pretty good.  I saw that Disney (pbut) are coming out with a movie called The Wild which looks to be very similar to that fetid piece of CGI crap Madagascar, of which you will remember I have a poor opinion.  I would not put Chicken Little on the same par as Monsters, Inc or The Incredible, but it is vastly better than anything I've ever seen by Dreamworks Animation.  Just looking at the trailer for The Wild, the quality of the animation is more complex by far than Madagascar.  If one has watched a modest amount of television over the past few weeks one would no doubt have seen the preview for the new Dreamworks film Over the Hedge.  One of the reviewer quotes claims that it is the best animated movie since Shrek.  I f***ing HATE Shrek.  But is this "film" really better than The Incredible?  Really?  Dreamworks' stories and characters are simple, bland, predictable, and hackneyed.  The animation is simplistic and plastic.  The films put out by Disney and Pixar, on the other hand, have interesting plots and interesting characters.  The animation is so much more complex.  There are so many details in the characters and so much style in the backgrounds.  There are always little things going on the backgrounds that you can notice if you pay attention.  PEOPLE, LISTEN TO ME: SHREK SUCKS OGRE BALLS.

What Have I Become?

As the school year is winding to a close and I work feverishly to finish up my remaining papers, I thought it would be a good time to begin to compose some retrospective posts.  I thought this was a good time because I am having trouble falling asleep.  It is quite warm in my apartment and I can't seem to get the air conditioning to work.

Is it possible that I have become less intellectually curious since I've started grad school?  It certainly seems like it.  I probably watch the same amount of TV as I did before, except it is now spread out during the week (one of the benefits of not travelling every week, all week).  I ask the question because I have sitting on my table a stack of magazines several months thick that have gone unread.  I'm not talking of magazines I've stopped reading yet for some reason still get even though I haven't renewed them in a long time (The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs), I'm talking about magazines that I want to read.  I used to relish digging into the latest New Criterion, now I'm finding myself letting it sit on the table for months.  Just over a year ago I was curling up each night with books by Strauss, et al.  Now I just veg.

I'm not as interested as I once was in talking about "big things," either.  Perhaps it is because I have little opportunity to do so, what with all the changes that have gone on in the past year in this little blog world.  People leaving us, etc.

I think it might be fatigue.  I'm reading much more than I was before, but it isn't stuff that I necessarily want to be reading.  This takes some of the fun out of it and lessens my ability to ponder the things I want to ponder and drains me of the stamina necessary to dig into the texts I want to.  Hopefully this will pass as I finish up my coursework.  But I still can't shake the feeling that I have become numbed by graduate school--that it has drained me of my intellectual sharpness.  A quick review of the posts here on this "blog" would only confirm that.  I can count on one hand the number of "interesting" "posts" I've put up here.  The ratio of crap TV to substance is about 100:1.

Next time, I will talk about living in DC.  My third installment will be about regrets.