Is today the day?

I complain so much about all my hardships, and look at me sitting here on a laptop that I could afford to buy with my own money, in an apartment that I could afford to rent for a whole year (with a little help from my friends), on a couch given to me freely by a kindly amigo.

In front of my computer desk and my bookshelf full of books, next to the five guitars of my household, two dynamic recording microphones, mic stand, basically a whole little home recording studio.  I have never gone hungry for more than a day or two.  I have a job... well, sort of.  It's dwindling away, and that's one of the things I complain about.

But I'm in America.  I have a family who is mostly alive and well.  I have no friends with terminal illnesses, and I myself don't appear to have one (though you never know, I guess).

Yet somehow I manage to fully convince myself that the situation that I am in is just so entirely stressful that I can't go on doing the daily tasks of living.

Sometimes I don't shower for two weeks.  This is partially because I can't find the time, and partially because I can't afford the quarters to do a load of towels in the laundry and I am NOT drying myself with those mold covered mildewy things that have been lying around my apartment for months.  And I am NOT taking a cash advance so the whole nearly $2000 balance on my credit card can get its interest rate hiked by over five percent.  Not for a shower, not for anything.  Especially since my credit limit is $2000, and then I would start getting overlimit fees on the interest.

I complain about being poor, but if I bothered to manage my money properly I wouldn't be poor at all.  I would be living at home with my bitch of a grandmother (who is alive and well, provides food and shelter and clothes, does the washing, pays for cable tv and internet...) and I would not be able to go out to dinner with my boyfriend (despite being able to afford dinner, we wouldn't be able to afford the airfare, hotels, etc etc etc).  Well I still can't, but we can make dinner at home.

I live in a place where I can get food stamps and I am in just the right situation where I qualify to receive them.

Really I need to just get the hell over feeling sorry for myself and get to work.

But I think I've convinced myself too strongly that I can't.

Gave up on that English nonsense.  Still have more, as per always, but oh well.

Done with the emo show, I hope.  Anyway, working on looking up sources as I am way behind on my outlining-and-writing process.

I am a little sad that I bought all of those notecards and the notecard box and all those coloured sharpie pens for nothing.  Well, at least I use the sharpie pens in Math class (teacher does things colour-coded, so I like to do so as well).

Anyway I'm catching upppppp.  Hopefully.  We'll see.  Maybe it won't actually ruin my life, eh?

Still loooooove my books and my topic.  Advisor can go to hell, though.  I guess I still have to go see her tomorrow.  Not seeing a purpose to this whole mentor thing.  Don't like it.  Would rather have mentor be someone I actually like and who gives emotional support and/or is actually helpful in any way.

So, yeah, that's about it for today.

All Honors work is on hold until I finish my English bullshit.

More news to come after I am done wading in animal feces.

Okay, I realize that I'm definitely at least 3 times as intelligent/perceptive as the average student in the average community college humanities class, but come ON.  This can't possibly annoy them any less than it annoys me.

How am I supposed to write an essay on something that we've already discussed to death?  What's more, the only resources I'm allowed to cite in the essay are CLASS DISCUSSIONS.  Seriously?  This is just so completely redundant that I am going to vomit all over myself.  Or maybe that's because of the raw meat I had for breakfast... I really should have cooked that X_X

Anyway, I'm complaining about it here because I need to pretend that someone in the academic community will read it.

I can't believe the extent to which this busywork has me stressing out about everything in my life -- granted, most of the other things in my life get me stressing out about themselves, so I didn't need much of a push in that arena, however... I'm pretty much completely paralyzed with fear of not getting a perfect set of 4.0's on these three essays -- two of which are complete bullshit anyway.

I have one paragraph.  It's an introductory paragraph, and as such it introduces all the points I have to talk about in the entire essay.  I just can't bring myself to give a shit about trolling through transcripts of old class discussions and repeating and regurgitating and redunding (is that a word? I will make it one) to even write full paragraphs about the things.

Seriously, my introductory paragraph pretty much explains it all.  Yup, here's what we talked about.  Got it?  Good.  The only person reading the damned thing is going to be the teacher anyway -- she already knows this shit and I can't imagine how in the hell she would enjoy this any more than I do.

This assignment is making me seriously consider faking my own death to avoid having to pay back my financial aid, and disappearing from America.

Also, I think I have an ulcer.

On the bright side, I might get to cite myself in my research project?  I guess.  Maybe.  Who knows. What the hell.

Mehhhhhhhh.

I don't like writing papers.

=/

I'm so tired that it has gone beyond tired and now I am actually dead but I'm not dead because I'm undead but because I am undead I am in the right mode to zombie this anomalous project in its own special way into existence and yet here I am not dreaming my creation into life nor even anything except becoming more and more confused, exhausted, but tense and unrelaxed, yet unproductive, unable.

Run on, run on, run on, until you realize that it's only a treadmill.

So I finished One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest the other day.  I've been reading the critical reviews in the back of the book (yay!!! for critical editions!  There are like 200 pages of essays, reviews, articles, and analyses in the back of the book by a multitude of authors -- sources, sources, sources).

I'm thinking I'm going to alter my outline to include more philosophical/religious/spiritual reception of the books, and less direct literary criticism -- while literary criticism can be greatly helpful, it can often be hyperanalytical of the form, rather than the content, of the work.

I'm still very into morality, and what makes a person "moral" or "good" or a "hero" in the face of human frailty and the imperfection and error of human society and its ways.

I think I want to analyze in the texts who is the hero and who (or what) is the bad guy.  In Frankenstein, the bad guy and the hero are blurred, and we can't tell whether either main character is a hero -- though certainly it is the scientist himself who possesses the tragic flaw.

I'm also interested in looking into the role of sex, and of basically our lizard-brains, in these novels.  Both have themes of the fear of women, fear of sex and of emotional powerlessness and power.  Both have themes of insurmountable barriers, of the struggle between what one should do and what one desires to do; between which road is moral and which leads to survival.

Perhaps the only true tragic flaw in these human stories is morality -- the very trait that makes our fallen heroes so admirable.

So, I still have to turn in my honors contract.  But I found my second book!  I'm up through part 1 of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  It is good.  I think for my other book I might do Wicked, but I'm not sure.  I haven't read it, so I don't know how well it fits in with the other two.

I found a critical edition of Cuckoo's Nest, so I can use a lot of the critiques and essays and analyses and reviews and stuff as resources, as well as the wealth of the author's own essays, interviews, and comments which are included in this edition -- have I mentioned I LOVE Half Price Books?

I also got Watership Down, which I want to read, but I'm not sure if it works for my topic (on account of I haven't read it yet).

Speaking of which, I've pretty much settled on the modern tragedy, rather than just any sad story.  Gotta have main-character death.  I never knew the main character could die at the end until I saw Titanic!  It freaked me out!!  Like, I assumed that he'd climb up on the piano or whatever they were floating on, because it was plenty big for the both of them.  Or that he would be like, "Hey, Rose, I'm really cold, can we swap for a minute or maybe cuddle?"  I still don't think that should have ended quite that way.

Anyway I hate tragedies, and they piss me off, which I think works for this because that means they get to me emotionally.  And that means they can hold my attention!  There are very few things that can hold my attention: politics (but only insofar as discussing them, not enough to do research), crossword puzzles (I feel super good when I win), solitaire (same deal), Blizzard Games (much prettier than real life), sad stories, and gripping stories, and beautiful songs (but even they get boring after however many listens).

Those things are all things that piss me off and frustrate the hell out of me, at least from time to time, but are also amazingly gratifying in their own ways.

Sympathy for the Devil might be a subtitle of my paper thingy.  All of my books seem geared toward really liking this tragic character who you know is a menace to society and you know they die in the end, but you just really like them.

I've got semolina flour in the pores on the backs of my hands, and I've been scratching at them until they got raw and bleeding, and the damn grains of flour still won't come out of my pores even though the blood will, and it just isn't fair.

At least I have REM's greatest hits to keep me company =)  It's good reading music.

So yesterday I had a frenzy of excitement in narrowing and advancing my topic of study.  I busted out the index cards for the first time (after dealing with mounds upon mounds of wasteful packaging), spent a few minutes deciding what colours to use for my notes, and got my arse in gear.  It's nice that I'm also continuously getting things done for my English class (Gothic Literature!) while working on the honors project.  I'm excited about this fact, especially as I am currently working on 23 credits (this is very exhausting; do not attempt it; I am only doing it because I had to take two incompletes last quarter or I would die and now I'm dyyyying!!)

Anyway, I am spending today sitting at the place where I work, because I left my laptop charger here on Sunday night.  Plus they have free wifi and not a huge amount of distractions (except pizza! I love pizza).  So, here I am, focused and learning, rereading the first text of my adventure.  I have a to-do list for this week:

- Finish stuff from last quarter (eheheh...)

- Turn in my new Honors Contract, with my official mentor (instead of my friend, who volunteered to help me out because I was entirely unprepared).

- Take official notes directly from the text of Frankenstein.

- Procure a copy of the 1831 horribly-revised edition of the same title.

- Scribble in it and take notes on that as well.

- Find and procure copies of two other novels in the same vein.

- Scribbles and notetaking, again!!

- Look up critiques and commentaries and analyses of each of the books, in turn.

- Ask questions of my mentor regarding the author's style and whatnot, and any other questions relating to Englishy-topics.

- Eat pizza (I think I might do this first!)

I made huge progress last night, and even improvised my entire outline in the span of like 5 minutes when I had been planning on going to bed.  I guess I wasn't as tired and spent as I thought. My greatest worries right now are the multitude of things to turn in from last quarter (I have a presentation folder for my portfolio, just nothing to put in it! And I'm supposed to have it by tomorrow AGH AGH AGH), and the money involved in buying books.  I'm also a little worried that I won't find enough sources, or will find too many sources, and that I won't be as concise and succinct as I possibly should be.  The other issue I am having is that I don't know what a literature review is, and I'm supposed to be writing one.  Apparently I'm not supposed to write my own opinions in it, but I assume it can't be purely quotes?  I dunno.

Well, that's my blog for today; I think I will go satisfy my stomach such that it will stop distracting me, and then get back to research.  Hmm, Amazon.com might have some used copies of stuff, and maybe even useful suggestions...

PS. This is so fucking ugly. I hate these word-processor formatting things. I chose this website because it lets me edit the fucking html. But now I can't! I can't get rid of their stupid fucking paragraph formatting and it's so UGLY! I HATE IT.  I will move to a new location post-haste.

Damnit.