Revisiting the slaughter policy

When I was a child I thought as a child and my slaughter policy was as follows:

1. Don't kill anything cute.
2. Kill other noncute things whenever you are brave enough to do so.
3. Don't kill any spiders.

This last bit is completely Roald Dahl's fault for having James say this:

Should her looks sometimes alarm you
Then I don't think it would harm you
To repeat at least a hundred times a day:
I must never kill a spider
I must only help and guide her
[and invite her in the nursery to play]

So, okay, that's fair (apart from the last line which I have bracketed off as obvious lunacy). Spiders do helpful things, and I like helpful things. I am not necessarily afraid of spiders. I mean I do not want disgusting spider babies running all over my apartment LIKE SOME PEOPLE, but I don't see a spider and start crying and hyperventilating or anything. That's why the third item on my policy was there.

And then I became an adolescent, and grew to understand nuances of good and evil, and I revised my policy thus.

1. Don't kill anything cute.
1a. If something cute is going to die anyway you may run it over with your car as I learned when my mother had to do this to a little bird my cat was playing with.

2. Kill other noncute things only if they are in your territory. I.e., if you encounter a wasp inside, it is a villainous invader of your personal space and you can kill it because it's icky. If you encounter it outside, like an ant on a picnic, you are in its space and it legitimately has the right to crawl on you or whatever.
2a. COCKROACHES KILLED BOOKS BELONGING TO YOUR GREAT-GRANDFATHER AND EVERY ONE OF THEM MUST THEREFORE ALWAYS DIE.

3. Don't kill any spiders.
3a. However, you don't have to have them in your house. If you find one, mercifully scoop it up on a Kleenex and put it outside.

Now I am a grown-up and I have had to make changes again. Things are more complicated when you are an adult. They are. Viz:

1. Don't kill anything cute.
1a. If something cute is going to die anyway you may still run it over with your car.
1b. If you do kill something cute by accident, immediately call your Hindu friends and let them make you feel better by assuring you it's going to get reincarnated as something better.

2. Kill noncute things if they are in your territory.
2a. Or if they bite you.
2b. Or get on you.
2c. Or if you just can't stand the sight of them (this includes all cockroaches everywhere).

3. Take spiders on a case-by-case basis.
3a. Don't put them outside. If they are inside they are probably house spiders, so the house is their territory too, and putting them outside will probably kill them.
3b. So if you're inside and they're inside, and you try to ignore them and they don't take the hint and keep hopping back onto your desk and ending up on your post-it notes and finally GETTING IN YOUR HAIR AND IF A SPIDER CAN DO IT THEN SO MIGHT A COCKROACH, you can feel free to kill them.
3c. And then if you slam a pack of post-its down on them really hard and they still walk away from it, feel free to scream obscenities at them. And at Roald Dahl too because it's all his fault. And then write a stroppy blog post about it.

Dear friends and family,

This blog post is a call for help. I CANNOT STOP SWEET HEAVENLY GOD.

One of those epiphanies it would have been better to have had sooner

I was in high school before I realized that the phrase "to jew someone down" is a reference to - you know - Jews. For years and years and years (not because I am stupid! but because I didn't hear it that often and so I didn't think about it that much), I totally thought it was an onomatopoeic approximation of the sound of a power tool. You know, JJJJJJJJJEWWWWWWWWWWWWW - like, whittling something down. I thought jewing someone down meant wearing them down until they could take it no longer and gave you the price you wanted, or possibly wearing down the price with a power tool type thing. When I hear that phrase, that's still what pops into my head.

But then this one time I was talking to one of my friends at lunch about this girl in my elementary school who used to bring Fudge Rounds to school, and she would never share. We used to offer her huge portions of our own lunches in exchange, but the only trade she would accept was two (two!) of those yummy cafeteria rolls. I was telling my friend, "One time I jewed her down to - I just realized what that meant."

Then I felt guilty.

I just wanted to tell y'all that. I have a picture of a power tool in my head right now. JJJJJJEEEEEWWWWWW. Do you understand the noise I'm making? The J is a soft J like in Arabic or French.

Killing insects

I'm not talking about cockroaches. You already know all about that. I'm talking about other things. See, when I was a kid, I read James and the Giant Peach, and James said about how you should never kill a spider because they are good and helpful creatures. This has affected me hugely throughout my life. Not so much when he said nice things about centipedes. Centipedes are awful and I wish they would become extinct because they horrify me. Looking at a centipede makes me feel like I will throw up.

But spiders, right? I feel so, so guilty killing spiders. If there is a spider in my house, I mostly try to ignore it, or else trap it under a glass and take it outside. It's because of Miss Spider. She was incredibly helpful and handy to have around, when they went a-traveling on the peach, and I have only killed a few spiders in my time, and I have never felt good about it.

When it is a mosquito-hawk, I feel guilty then too. But they freak me out. I can't not kill them because I am freaked out by just knowing that they are inside my apartment. That's really not an adequate reason for taking a life, which I also know, so when I am chasing them down shrieking battle cries and brandishing my broom like a maniac, I will alternate my shrieks between "DIE YOU VILE BEAST" and "I AM SORRY THAT I HAVE TO KILL YOU BUT YOU FREAK ME OUT!"

(I doubt that this makes the mosquito hawks feel better.)

Silly things that I feel vaguely guilty about, Part V

Okay. So when I was in sixth grade, on the first day of Latin class, I met this girl. And she introduced herself, hi, I'm Mary Ellen, and we exchanged phone numbers for homework reasons, and I wrote down Mary Ellen A. and then her phone number, right? And I have small handwriting, so it looked like I had written MaryEllen as all one word, but of course I hadn't. She said "Oh my God! You spelled my name right! Nobody ever spells my name right!" and because I thought that it was two words I said "Well, yeah. I mean how else would you spell it?"

And seriously. How else would you spell it?

But it turned out she spelled it MaryEllen, with no space, and by the time she had explained this to me, I felt too embarrassed to admit that I had not, in fact, spelled her name right, and I didn't want to say that that was an insane spelling, so I just didn't say anything. Oh my God, how it has haunted me since then. Every time I thought about MaryEllen - which, okay, wasn't all that often - I was just eaten up with dismay and I have always desperately wanted to explain to someone that OF COURSE I didn't spell her insane name right the first time, HOW COULD I WHEN IT IS AN INSANE SPELLING OF A NAME THAT IS TWO NAMES?

I thought of this today because I was covering my books with contact paper, a habit I picked up in sixth grade, and it reminded me of middle school, and then of MaryEllen. Recently (within the last month or two), Bonnie mentioned MaryEllen and said "Remember in Latin class? How you spelled her name right? And then you were all How else would you spell it? GOD you were such a prissy little bitch."

I have never been so grateful for being called a prissy little bitch. I was all NO YOU HAVE MISUNDERSTOOD THAT WHOLE INTERACTION. LET ME EXPLAIN WHAT REALLY HAPPENED.

...Justification was mine on that day. I thought of that today. I am now no longer eaten alive with dismay and guilt, but I have vague guilt feelings left over, and part of me wants to call MaryEllen, wherever she is, and explain that no, I didn't spell her name right in Dr. F.'s class on that day, because nobody could spell her name right after only hearing her say it, and the reason that we didn't stay friends in high school (apart from having nothing in common) was essentially that our relationship was based from the beginning on a rotting foundation of lies and deception.

Silly things that I feel vaguely guilty about, Part IV

Yesterday I was printing out a scholarship application, and the online one was in color, so when I printed it, it was meant to come out in a darkish purple color. But because my color ink cartridge is running out, it printed out in this very pretty light green. Rendering it, sadly, unusable, because I did not feel confident that the scholarship committee's sense of whimsy would stretch to the applicants' turning in Easter-colored applications. I tossed it on the floor to put in the recycled-paper bag the next time I went into the kitchen, and carried on working.

Such a mistake. It sat on the floor in its spring-time-y green print and stared up at me reproachfully all the time I was filling out the sober black-ink application. It looked so pretty and green. I think it was saying: Am I not good enough? I thought I would please you. Why have you rejected me this way?

It made me too sad. I had to get up right then and put it in the recycling, and it's been haunting me ever since.

Silly things that I feel vaguely guilty about, Part III

I'm writing a paper for my Victorians class on Jenna Starborn, a frighteningly awful sci-fi adaptation of Jane Eyre, and how the author unhumanizes Berthe. Whose name is Beatrice. Officially I'm glad that Sharon Shinn, the author, went with changing all the names, but she did it in a kind of lame way, and –

Well, that's neither here nor there. I feel guilty because I refuse to read Wide Sargasso Sea. I know it's no big deal, and I can read what I want, but still whenever I think about Wide Sargasso Sea I want to write a note to Jean Rhys who doesn't give a shit, to let her know that I'm sure her book is splendid and I hope she doesn't take it personally that I refuse to read it. I wouldn't feel guilty if I just didn't happen to ever get around to reading Wide Sargasso Sea, but because I know it's there and I'm actively not reading it out of selfish motives, I feel guilty. Basically I don't want to read it because I don't want anyone to spoil Jane Eyre for me. This is very not postcolonialist of me. I feel like a bad feminist. Not because I in any way admit any possible flaw in Jane Eyre, because I for sure do not, ever, nothing, nope, not a bit, perfect book that I love forever; but because I am actually refusing to read a book that might damage my deep and abiding love for Mr. Rochester by giving me the other woman's perspective. It's the booky equivalent of putting my fingers in my ears and going Lalalalalalalalalala.

(I now have the Flash Girls song stuck in my head.)

To countermand this guilt, I am going to read The Madwoman in the Attic, which will in no way damage my deep love for Mr. Rochester on account of its being all academic and not fictiony and it can't make me ever think about Berthe as – what's the Sargasso Sea heroine called? Antoinette? Anyway, I think this will kill the guilt. Maybe.

SWEET

I scored a free paperback of Street of the Five Moons. Which is handy considering The Laughter of Dead Kings is (as previously mentioned) being released later this year. Now there will be much rereading of also Silhouette in Scarlet and Trojan Gold (in which John hums the "Damn the girl!" song) and Night Train to Memphis. Woohoo!

P.S. I was going to say nothing about this, but I feel too guilty lying by omission. Basically the truth is that I swiped it from a shelf in the library that I thought had free books but it turns out you're meant to read them and give them back. So not so much with the free books to keep forever as I had initially supposed. However, I do not wish to give it back because I wish to keep it and write my name inside it and cover it with contact paper. So I know I said it was free, but the truth is that I'm paying for it IN GUILT. I have compromised with my conscience by agreeing to replace it with some other book of my own that I do not want. I'm sure there must be some book at my house that belongs to me that I do not want.

OMG SIZZLING GYPSIES

Or, I didn’t know the third Libba Bray book was out already!

Actually, ultimately, I am not that huge a fan of these books; they are just a guilty pleasure: entertaining but I can’t remember a single character’s name except Gemma. I can’t even remember the sexy gypsy boy’s name, just that Gemma was having Totally Shocking Dreams about him the likes of which no nice Victorian girl would repeat to a biographer. So basically I am not going to live or die by what happens in The Sweet Far Thing (not sure about this title), but I will be chagrined if the sexy gypsy and Gemma don’t hook up in the end.

Er, I am not shallow. I do not require happy tidy romantic endings to all of my books. I was really, really glad that I Capture the Castle ended the way it did. I was! And the same for I’m sure many other books and films where the two characters who were having sexual tension did not get together and live happily ever after, but I’m just having a hard time thinking of them right now. All I can think of is things that caused me chagrin, like how Tashi went insane after the end of The Color Purple and Adam had an affair. (Poo.)

Well, this steaming rollercoaster of a novel with some sizzling gypsies thrown in will have to wait, because my library isn’t letting us put holds on it yet on account of its being so new. Perhaps I will pay a visit to Bongs & Noodles and read it there. Which is what I also have been vaguely wanting to do about the last of another YA series I don't think is that great, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, because I just want to know what happens.

(Just looked it up on Wikipedia – the Way, the Truth, and the Light, verily I say unto ye – thereby saving myself the time at Bongs & Noodles, and apparently what happens is sex. Sex, sex, sex. I don’t think these girls are the role models they should be. I am shocked, shocked, at their behavior, and I don’t think the author should be propagating nasty myths like about young girls not even in their twenties having extramarital sex. Unless they are Victorian girls with massive crushes on sexy gypsy boys.)

I feel so guilty

I feel so guilty. There aren't even any words to describe how guilty I feel. Just, oh my God, monumentally horrifically guilty. I'm the meanest person in the whole world. I'm so, so, so mean. I'm mean, mean, mean, and I deserve all the unpleasant karma that's coming my way. I'm going to be one of those tragic bookstore people that are so tragic I can't stand to look at them.

This is true. Actually can't stand to look at them. I can hardly bear to write about them, that's how much they distress me. Whenever I go into a bookstore and see those people sitting at book tables looking sad and hopeful, tremendous waves of dismay wash over me and little embarrassment insects go crawling up my spine, and even though I want to go talk to them and make their lives more bearable, I just can't because it's too awful – either that's my future, or else it's not which means I will never write a book at all. Let alone get to the tragic book-signing phase.

(Seriously, writing that, I am getting creepy-crawly feelings.)

Anyway, I started another blog just for myself, to write what I think about books, so that I won't forget later in life, and so that I can always have a list online of books I want to read, in case I am ever anywhere else where my Big Book List isn't. Very easy access. And yay. And that's all I was thinking. So when I was reviewing things I was just being silly and cranky, because my personal book reviewing blog could not possibly be important enough for anyone to ever find, and I said a lot of mean things about Melusine (which, I'm sorry, I didn't like at all, even though I swear to God I wanted to), and oh God, the author has a blog, and she linked to me. And said, Jenny didn't like Melusine.

Which I didn't.

But I didn't mean to make her feel bad.

So you might have thought that the link I posted a while ago, to Anansi Boys on BBC4, was some particular and specific one-time event that I knew about due to my deep and abiding love for Neil Gaiman. That I knew it was there because I love Neil Gaiman and I keep track of his doings. Actually not the case. Actually I was totally surprised to find it there.

I am addicted - like, seriously, you have no idea how addicted - to BBC4 radio plays. If I could inject them into my veins I would do it, that is how much I need my BBC4 radio plays fix. Every day I go to the BBC4 radio plays page and I scope out the plays that have been going on. In my Anansi Boys post, I was acting all blasé about it like, Oh, hey, this Anansi Boys adaptation has just reminded me about a largely forgotten-by-me medium, which has a sort of old-fashioned charm that I don't really think about much on a day-to-day basis.

Such a lie. I need my BBC4 radio plays. I've been lying to everyone and I've been lying to myself, assuring myself that it's all part of my useful project to become good at placing British accents*, and I just can't keep it inside anymore. The first step is admitting your addiction**, so here I go.

The truth is that BBC4 radio plays are not part of my project to become good at placing British accents, although they are helpful in that regard, when I can discover where the actors are from which isn't always. The truth is that I am addicted to BBC4 radio plays.

I will give you an example, since I'm guessing you didn't listen to Anansi Boys although you should have because Neil Gaiman is a genius and I believe I recall him saying that radio plays are his preferred medium and Anansi Boys is done most gorgeously by Lenny Henry reading Fat Charlie and Spider. For the past six weeks (I just found out because, fool! fool! fool!, I never checked the "Classic Serial" section which yes, I hate myself for), they have been serializing a radio play of Dr. Zhivago and I have been missing out on it, damn it. With Ian McDarmid. (Emperor Palpatine.) See, if I had been a vigilant radio play junkie, this serious crisis could have been averted. Meanwhile they have been doing a serial radio play of Dr. Zhivago. Serially. On the radio. And we all could have been listening to it. I only know about it at all because the Saturday play this past week, Beast at Bay, was all about Boris Pasternak and the publication of Dr. Zhivago, and the announcer guy was all, To go along with our Classic Serial of Dr Zhivago, and I was really sad about it. Although Beast at Bay, it was le awesome.

As I recall this all started when Laura (happy belated birthday, Laura!) was complaining about some people near us who were going on and on about English accents in a really annoying way, and she said, "Oh my GOD. Listen to the BBC and GET OVER IT." And I was like, Yes! You're a genius! The BBC! Which is how I got put on to this radio play business that now controls my life.

BBC Radio 4 - Radio Plays

Yeah. Go on. Try it. First one's free.

*I have a project underway that will help me become good at placing British accents. Every time I see a British actor on TV or in films I promptly look them up to discover where they are from (or where they were raised). I am already not terrible at it - obviously I was in England for a year, so I can more or less place accents to north, east, and midlands, with a reasonable degree of success. Bonnie says this can never work because people do fake accents sometimes for movies and also because a lot of people ditch their home accents and become properly well-spoken and posh when they go to swanky schools. But I am not stupid, and obviously if I hear someone with a posh accent and look them up and discover they are from Liverpool or someplace, then I will be well aware that they are just speaking Standard The Queen's English and not English with a Liverpool overlay.
**I mean, of course, the first step to getting everyone else addicted.

Something for me to remember

Much as I may like some book, it is never a good idea for me to write a paper about it. It is much, much harder to writer papers about things I adore than things I don't care much about. This is because if it's something I love, I want to Do Justice to it, you know, explore the speculative themes (what was I on about?) to their fullest extent and convey briefly not only my fondness for it but also its extreme and perfect brilliance. However, under time constraints and in stressful circumstances as now, it is exceedingly difficult to do this. Which basically means I end up procrastinating for a really long time trying to think of what I can say that will be sufficiently brilliant for the book about which I am writing.

Bad idea. Very bad idea. Must stick to things that aren't very good but aren't loathsome, like Member of the Wedding and Oscar Wilde's sonnets. Then when I pull the entire thing out of my ass and leave out bits that don't support my thesis (oh my God, I could never ever be an academic), I won't feel guilty.

In other news, I am writing a paper on The Charioteer. Pooh.

Semi-annual conversation between myself and my conscience

Me: This damn professor! I've just been so fed up with this professor for so long! I am so glad that it is time for evaluations! I have been longing to say all these things about this professor, and now at last I can do it!

Conscience: Sure! Yeah! Go for it! Honesty. Just remember, what you say can have a grave and serious impact.

Me: Uh-huh. Yup. Got it.

Conscience: Can get them fired. I'm just saying.

Me: Oh yeah. Huh.

Conscience: Imagine this for just a second. You write this evaluation, completely skewering the professor, and it's satisfying for you, and you go home and forget about it. Meanwhile, your professor has this evaluation permanently on his/her record. S/he gets fired.

Me: Cut it out with the pronouns. In this case it's a he.

Conscience: Sure. You're the boss. He. So he goes home, probably walking because he can't afford to pay for a hansom cab.

Me: What the hell century are you in?

Conscience: Car! I meant car. Can't afford a car. He goes home, holes in his trousers, to his family of nine, who are all languishing away in a tiny hovel, huddled around the fire to keep warm, singing songs to cheer the lonely hours as they wait for their beloved father to return. He has to break the news to them. No more money. Tiny Tim won't be able to have the surgery he needs to fix his injured little legs. They won't even have money for firewood. I mean, um, for utilities payments. Doesn't this very realistic scenario bother you at all? ARE YOU MADE OF STONE?

Other bit of conscience: So you're saying she should sacrifice her convictions because it might have negative consequences on this guy?

Me: Yeah! Yeah! Convictions! I have my principles, you know!

Conscience: Oh, sure. Sacrifice the nine hungry children to your principles. Will that make you happy, to know that you can feel good about yourself and your principles, while those kids starve to death?

Me: Well, I--

Conscience: I'm just saying.

Me: Hey, um, other bit of conscience, back me up.

Other bit of conscience: .....

Me: Ummm. Other bit of conscience?

*crickets*

Me, desperately: Principles, I say!

Conscience: Well, of course you must do as you see fit. I can't do anything to prevent you. Just whatever you decide. On you go.

Me, crushed and defeated: I hate you.

Silly things that I feel vaguely guilty about, Part II

I got back to my flat today, and the hall light was on, even though the light switch on my side of the hall was in the OFF position. Of course all this means is that Marie turned on the hall light this morning using the light switch on her side, as she is perfectly entitled to do. But I wanted to turn the hall light off, so as not to waste energy, since I didn't need the hall light to be on, except that I could not use my switch because if I did then my light switch would go to the ON position even though the hall light would be OFF. So I used Marie's switch instead, and now it's her switch that's wrong, and mine that's right.

This seems selfish, like if I were a truly good flatmate, I wouldn't mess with her switch, and would be content to let her switch be the accurate one. But then mine would be inaccurate. Inaccurate! I hate for my light switch to be inaccurate! Why doesn't anyone ever install light switches that have the capacity to be right at the same time? Why does one of them always have to be mistaken? Why? Why?

Silly things that I feel vaguely guilty about

Just now I was driving around hunting for a spot, and I knew that it was ten o'clock on a weekday, and it would not be very likely that I would get much of a spot, if any spot at all, and I would probably have to drive very far away and park in a sketchy place that I could not walk to at night even if I were so inclined (which I am not). And I was feeling cheery, and it was a nice day, so I started to sing "Morning Has Broken", which is one of the nicest hymns (I just wrote "humns". I am Winnie the Religious Pooh.) I know, and then I was already singing church songs, so I sang a few more, and then AMAZINGLY a spot was there. Really close to my flat. Improbably close to my flat. Not sketchy at all. Eminently walkeable-to in the dark night-time. Miraculously close to my flat and convenient.

Okay, I know this is not a big call-the-Pope miracle, but it felt like one because of the closeness to my flat and the coincidental timing with the church-song singing, and now I feel like I was giving God a hint by singing church songs: "Um, well, I'm not going to bother You by asking You for a spot, but I'll just be here, Ya know, driving around, looking for a spot, singing songs to praise Your name. Don't mind me."

But I swear, I wasn't doing that! I swear! I'm not trying to manipulate God! I mean, I wouldn't! How totally hellbound would I be then?

I now return ye to yer regularly scheduled pirate day talking, matey. ARRRRR.

Oh my God, I think I may have just driven a little toad to accidental suicide

Oh God. I feel so guilty. I think I may have just accidentally murdered a little toad. A dear little toad that never did nobody no harm. (That is a triple negative and therefore completely acceptable.)

See, I was walking back from the SU bar after having a birthday drink. (Hey, it's my birthday!) And I saw a little toad in the middle of the walkway, and it was just so cute that I knelt down to look at it, and I realized that if I left it to its own little toady devices it might get stepped on by a person who was walking in the walkway and failed to notice the toad. Because the toad, while very cute, blended in with the pavement a bit anyway, and plus it was getting darker and in the darkness it was even more thoroughly camoflaged. Which led to this truly horrific vision of some girl in spiky heels stepping on the dear little toad and impaling it because she didn't see it, and then the little toad would be dead, and she would feel incredibly guilty for impaling it with her spiky heel, the dear little toad that never did anything to her.

I thought, therefore, that I would save the little toad by convincing him to hop hoppily to the side of the walkway, where he would be as safe and sound as a, as a terribly safe and terribly sound thing. Something awfully safe and awfully sound. I took extreme care to urge the little toad to the side of the walkway, prodding him ever so gently with my toes until he hopped towards the edge of the walkway, where he would be saved from the terrible spiky-heel death I envisioned for him (poor little toad). Which led to a bunch of people giving me a funny look because I was poking a little toad with my foot and urging him on out loud.

But I'm so foolish! I didn't even realize it until the toad had already hopped really far to that side of the walkway, but the thing is that the side of the walkway towards which I was urging him ended in a FATAL DROP. I freaked out and nearly burst into tears, and I tried to convince the toad to hop the other way instead, but it wouldn't! It wouldn't hop back the way it had come! It was only willing to hop along the length of the walkway in a straight line forward, where it was still in peril of hopping off the end of the walkway!

I had to leave it eventually. I didn't want to see it kill itself. It hopped to the side of the walkway, and so it was not in imminent peril of death, and I hope it had the good sense to avoid hopping off the edge of the precipice, but I didn't stick around to see. Poor little toad. It was so cute. I loved it so. I wanted to be friends, but it feared me. I hope it didn't accidentally hop off the edge and die after I left.

The System

Here is my new system. Every day of the week will be assigned to a particular task. On that day of the week I will do no other task, so that when I finish the assigned task I will be done for the day and I can read cheerful books and watch cheerful flims and TV shows without feeling any guilt whatsoever. If I do not do the assigned task on the day allotted to it, the task will not get done at all and I will have to pay the miserable consequences.

Sunday will be my American Literature reading day. I will read my American literature book or poems and prepare a presentation if one has been assigned to me for that week. (This is going to be a miserable day because from here on out there are no good authors for us to read, except Sylvia Plath. And she is only one author, and it is only one week, and the other weeks have things like Beloved and Native Son and Light in August, God help me.)

Monday will be my day for working on papers. Today, for instance, I have begun doing research for my Early Modern Culture paper. You can see already that the system is foolproof and absolutely prevents procrastination. While I type this, a PDF file is downloading that will be extremely useful for this paper. (Okay, the PDF file finished while I was typing the title of the post. But if it were much slower it would still be downloading.)

Tuesday will be my day for working on my dissertation proposal. This means reading lots of books about sodomy and the Victorians. Tuesday will be a lovely day, except for the American literature class that takes place on that day, since as I have noted nothing good will come of American Lit class from now until ever again.

Wednesday will be devoted to Early Modern Culture and Symbolic Imagination. As neither of these tasks can be expected to take a full day or even a half day (I can knock them out in a few hours), I will also permit myself to work on papers or my dissertation proposal on this day. Additionally, if I have an extremely long book to read for my sociology and literature and history class, I may begin to read it on Wednesday. (See below.)

Thursday will be the day to read my book for my sociology and literature and history class. This week I am being tortured with Robinson Crusoe. The only copy the library possesses is 383 pages long, which leads the reader to imagine that it will not be that bad, 383 pages, it’s longish but not unbearable and everything is going to be fine. But see, that’s just a trick to lure you into a false sense of security, and then you open the book and BAM they hit you with the smallest and most depressing typeface ever. A very regular-width pen covers three lines when you lay it down on the book. Three lines! Apart from how long this makes the book that I have to read for Friday, this also means that I will probably be blind by Friday.

Friday, as anyone who has spoken to me on a Friday this term knows, is the day on which I have SIX HOURS of classes. One, two, three, four, five, SIX. That is most of my courseload right there. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were six different classes, or even four different classes; but it is three classes, which means that each class is two hours long. Two hours is much too long for a born and bred Catholic girl to spend in any one place at a time. I can just about manage an hour and a half, but when the classes start to be two whole hours long, my brain goes AWOL. Sometimes (as this past Friday) it invents exciting and useful Systems for Life, but sometimes it just totally craps out and starts making my hands write “my eyes are falling shut” and transliterate poems in the Arabic alphabet in the middle of note-taking sentences. One of the pages from last term has three hymns so transliterated rather than useful notes about Coleridge. Anyway, since I have six miserable hours of wretched classes on Friday (from 10 to 12 and then from 2 to 6), I’ve given myself Friday off. Friday is the day on which I will read books that I feel like reading. I just read Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, and although the ending was a bit of a let-down, I enjoyed it very much.

Saturday is the day to do my Top Secret Research. If I told you more about this, I’d have to kill you, so we’ll just leave it at that.

(I’m not crazy, I’m methodical.)

Now, back to the Witch of Edmonton, which mainly inoffensive play I will grow to loathe and despise in the weeks to come. Let me say while I am still sane on the subject that I never liked it that much to start with.

THIS IS A GENIUS SYSTEM. You may admire my brilliance at your leisure.