11 posts tagged “school”
Dispatches from the life of Brad:
- Who's the jerk who put Eating Disorder Awareness Week and Hunger Awareness Week at the same time?
- Last night I got a phone call from Texas saying that some stuff I ordered online had been blocked because it was an "overseas" transaction. Shades of Britney Spears, but at least the dude was funny. "Y'all are gonna hafta call yer bank up an' tell `em ya rilly, rilly want it."
- My trivia team is quickly becoming its own worst enemy. About half of the points we lose are because we manage to talk each other out of correct answers.
- Sometimes I think Powell wants me to teach his class for him, or he's misread me as the kind of browner who gets off on hijacking a class. We were discussing grammatical cases in his class today, and he had me explaining eight of them in a row. At least now I know that I've been pronouncing ablative wrong.
- Am I a bad denizen of Waterloo for never having had visited the much-ballyhooed RIM Park? I just got down there today for an employment fair put on by Guelph, WLU, and UW (tragically advertised as the RIM Job Fair. Somebody wasn't thinking very hard when they named that one). Sadly, the trip turned out to be kinda pointless; most of the jobs there were either menial things no better than my current job, technical jobs I don't have the skills for, or teaching-English-in-Korea gigs (yes, I love language, but I HATE children, and teaching children I couldn't even understand seems like a downhill move). There were supposed to be a lot of sweet government jobs up for grabs, but apparently the gross weather kept DFAIT and CSIS from making the trek down from Ottawa. Sigh.
- My new favourite would-be saviour of humanity is the woman who was sitting outside a crowded LCBO (the government-run booze store, for all you non-Canucks) shouting "ALCOHOLISM! ALCOHOLISM!" at all the beer-laden students.
- Chocolate banana cake is officially the greatest thing ever. I want to Facebook-stalk the girl responsible simply to try to get a recipe.
- The hot new euphemism is "having the sex," with accompanying, completely-non-representative hand gestures.
- In a loud-enough party living room, "Imogen Heap" sounds just like "Ichabod Crane."
- Stacey's house is entirely decorated in mint green. It's kinda eerie.
- You know you're hanging around with an interesting batch of people when the inevitable game of "Never Have I Ever" is plagued by people being unable to think of things they haven't done.
Today I did something I haven't done in a very long time: I wrote a poem. Aleks of Ontarion/Artz Haüs fame gave me an entry form for the Guelph Creative Writing Society's poetry contest, and apparently my muse was in town today. I might post it later, but I figure that whichever poor CWS judge winds up with it should probably serve as the king's taster before I accidentally slaughter you folks with my dreadful rhymes.
I've been writing a lot in general, actually, though most of it is homework. Whatever strange magic is making the words come out so easily, here's hoping it sticks around for the next four months (where the hell was it last semester?).
Also: for some reason, I randomly and dearly miss fencing right now. It's not a violent impulse; I don't want to maim or kill anybody, but I would be thrilled beyond belief if some random fellow on Winegard Walk challenged me to a duel and we could flail about with plastic longswords for a while. Oh, to live some where sensible like Peru where duelling is legal as long as both parties have filled out their organ donor cards (not even kidding).
A month without blogging. Good heavens. I don't know what turned me off from Vox/Livejournal for so long (I suspect a nasty case of seasonal-affective winter blues, given how haggard I'd been for most of December), but I think I'm back now.
What was December? An uphill battle, mostly. Exams, full-time holiday frenzy at Steve-ist Chapters (the beatings will continue until morale improves!), what might have been a few too many nights on the town, and this weird sense of crushing holiday apathy. Christmas was kinda weird too, with half my family now quite unhealthy. My parents' house is comically wheelchair-unfriendly.
Other tidbits from December:
- II'm still trying to decide what to do with my Christmas cheque. My current temptation? A bass guitar.
- I'm officially sour on Van Gogh's Ear after some jerk tried to pick a fight with me. At least the bouncers saw the altercation and escorted him out before he actually started swinging.
- Movies you should see: "The Darjeeling Limited" (not even Owen Wilson can drag down the hilarity), "The Ten" (easily the most surreal movie I've ever seen, but also damn funny)
- Movies you might want to reconsider: "The Golden Compass" (gorgeous, but it majorly fucks with the plot), "Die Elementärteilchen" (a German adaptation of a very bizarre Québécois novel, and poorly paced to boot)
- My new mug says "Decaf is for sissies."
- I'm now on friendly speaking terms with people who once wouldn't even acknowledge my presence on campus. Three cheers for reconciliation!
And finally, to finish this bloated month-long roundup, the mandatory overview of the semester's courses:
- ENGL*3080, The History of the English Language: With my plans to go to grad school for linguistics, I feel like I can't really miss this one. Mote and Dan both spoke very highly of Dr. Powell, and they seem to be right. He's super-young for a prof, and edgier than anything. He takes great pride in making fun of students and being wildly politically correct, and he seems to know his shit. Definitely worth the sign-in waiver rigamarole.
- GERM*3530, Deutsch im Beruf: Season Six of the Waldemar Scholtes show. It's now assumed that I'm fluent in German (holyfuckingshitnotquite), and we're focusing on practical things like the intricacies of German politesse.
- FREN*4900, Applied French Linguistics: Another rematch with a venerable languages prof, this time the always-hilarious Dr. Thomas, king of the vaguely-creepy French scholars. The material looks neat, and I still seem to be on his good side.
- SOAN*4320, Transition from School to Work: Why this weird little soul-searching course exists, I don't know, but it looks quite interesting, and the prof, one Dr. Ujimoto, is this hilarious retired Japanese dude who I wish I'd met a bit sooner in my career.
- SOC*4300, Alternative Social Possibilities: I'm pretty sure that my first visit to this class was my last. The prof seems well-meaning enough, but comes across as an elbow-patched old-guard tyrant of the first degree, and I'm not too keen on writing a gigantic paper, with a partner, on a topic mostly of his choosing, for 70% of the term. I'll miss laughing at that accent, though. He sounds exactly like Davy Jones from the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies.
- SOC*4310, Advanced Topics in Canadian Society: Basically the same course as above, except with Ujimoto and not an undead pirate captain who might rip my face off with his tentacles.
Things that are happening over here lately:
- I have a gigantic musical crush on Steve Wilson from Porcupine Tree.
- I have a two-papers-a-day habit as I search for relevant thesis information. Thank goodness that I don't have to do much with the Dead White Guys. The downside to that, of course, is that there's a lot of shitty, self-serving modern academia to wade through.
- I'm reading the new Doug Coupland and having lots of fun so far. The whole real-life-corporation-as-setting gimmick is kinda strange, but I think I'm mostly jealous that it's a Staples and not Chapters-Indigo being spoofed. Somebody's got to write a big-bookstore satire, dammit, and I'm too busy to do it myself.
- Despite our most obtuse pop culture references to date and better-than-ever pre-game banter, our bar trivia team has yet to win a round this year. Damn.
- The semester is already almost a quarter done. Good heavens.
Three days in, I'm pretty damn confident that this is going to be a good semester.
German certainly isn't the class I was expecting, mainly because the singing and dancing one-man show we call Waldemar has apparently fallen ill. Thus we have Herr Doktor Müller and Frau Doktor Meyer taking turns substituting. Both seem pretty cool so far, thankfully, but we're still doing beginning-of-semester review.
Comparative Stylistics with Dr. Thomas rocks too. He's the same manic, creepy old Frenchman I loved in first year, and I can thankfully follow his lightning-speed heavy accent. I only worry that he's going to follow through on his legend and shank us all on the assignments.
Bakker's semiotics seminar is hilarious and interesting. He's in his usual habit of flying all over the place and covering fifty topics at once, but I'm sure it'll fall together eventually. It usually does.
The only uncertain element: my thesis. Bakker is definitely on board as my advisor, but bureaucracy seems to be moving at its usual glacial pace. Considering that it needs to be a paper the size of a bus by April, I really want to get cracking on this.
So, in one hour, I'll be writing my Critical Thinking final. This, I predict, should be pretty straightforward, even if I almost went to the wrong room (MACN117 is almost MACK117, right? Right?). My head is abuzz with premises and pareidolia and reductios ad absurdam, and I feel oddly well-prepared for it all. Let us hope that I'm not jinxing myself.
Also in the news: even though I'm reasonably confident that the Bell people are shysters, they can't be worse than Vonage, and I have switched over to greener (blue-and-yellower?) pastures. I have a cell phone, folks. May it not become the lifeline-like accessory that so many allow theirs to be.
...three times in the past two days I have related life experiences to The Princess Bride. This should stop.
Things that amuse me right now:
- I'm working on my first big Critical Thinking assignment, and utterly determined to make all of my examples have something to do with food. Subjective claim=cheese is tasty.
- After rifling through my dad's pile of costume bits, I've decided that I'm going to be one of these dudes for Harry Potter Night. Oh, the things I do for my job.
- Let it be known that Fallout is one damn fine computer game.
- My neighbour has invited me to come over and play his drumkit anytime. ROCK.
- Roy and Jude's Massive Used Book Sale™ was quite the sweet little operation. I already own copies of a lot of the best stuff they had, but I also stocked up on Philip K. Dick, Kafka, and Huxley.
- The look Roy's dad gave him when he said "Brad bought my Dick!" was priceless.
I should add: the grocery store only sells it in giant bottles the size of a magnum of wine. You should see the size of my Cock.
Life is otherwise quite good. This weekend was mostly made up of shifts at the bookstore, with a brief break for a tipsy birthday celebration for one of the Starbucks girls. Dr. Marcone stopped by again for an event promoting his new book, and of course had another few pounds (i.e. a few thousand dollars' worth) of Kopi Luwak to serve to the crowd. Coffee should not taste like beer and peanuts, I've decided, but consider what it's been through.
And I got Muse tickets! KJ and I are going to see them play Arrow Hall (which I hear isn't the best venue, but neither was the Docks, and it was still a good show) on August 1. If they don't play "Citizen Erased" or "City of Delusion" this time, I might have to go up there and kick Matt Bellamy's puny, bright-red-girl-pant-wearing ass. Threats on the great musician's well-being aside, I'm very excited for this show, and I should definitely stop finding good concerts to go to this summer, or my wallet might never forgive me.
For the rest of today: catch up on my Critical Thinking homework (premises and conclusions and fallacies, oh my!), continue to master the Cyrillic alphabet (Отъебись!), and cook up a batch of Thai curry with plenty of Cock (as if I need to run that joke any farther into the ground).
Oh, and just to join in the fandom bukkake over this latest announcement: *splooge*
So yeah. I'm a bad, bad blogger. Life hasn't felt very post-worthy lately.
There are new things, though! My summer course (Critical Thinking) has started, I have a summer bus pass, and the beginning of Summer Concert Mayhem has begun. It looks like I'll be seeing Tool in July, Dream Theater in August, and probably one or two others. Rumour has it that Muse and/or Queens of the Stone Age might be cruising through sometime before the summer is out, too. Rock on.
Also: three cheers for getting back into touch with old friends. I've been flinging e-mails with long-lost folks everywhere from the Sault to Hamilton's mental hospital. Who says summer is lonely?
