Catching Up

You may use this blog as an indicator. The less I write the more real work I have to do. That's why I didn't say hi for ten days.

   After Harrison Ford (still a beautiful song you should listen to!) I came home--back from our trip to New York--at around 4a.m. Took another hour to come up with a somewhat thoughtful summation on that David Foster Wallace essay I had to read for this day's Pop/High Culture class. Sleep until 9 or so, then off to the library around 10, get some other readings done, print the summation. Go to class. Then Editing and Publishing, then Literary Theory. From this point onwards, the days were basically filled with class work, especially for my literary magazine, The Transatlanticist. Had to read and reread the submissions, edit them--some barely, some heavily--and format them all in one document which was probably the most annoying part. Reading texts and cooperating with the authors to turn good manuscripts into great essays and stories, that's time-consuming, and it is work, to be sure, but it is fun! I like working close on the text, in the text. All the notes and corrections in Word, Did you really want to say that? Because that's what it sounds like. Maybe rephrase? or This sentence is too long, too convoluted. or simply This doesn't make sense. It is some sort of translation, of refining, of digging for meaning, scrubbing for clarity, polishing for elegance. But the formatting, the layout? Fun if you figure out how to do the things you want to, but the software I had at my disposal, it doesn't allow for too much creativity, at least not on the level that I am familiar with it. And I tried a lot. The cover design was even more strenuous. I am not a graphic designer, and I didn't have one close at hand here, so I manipulated the maps that Julia had created for the front and back covers. Played around with the contrast, brightness, and colors, oh and resizing them, dpi and stuff, because it didn't fit the online cover creator I had to use to create the mag. Then added the title. Once, twice, thrice, 15 times because something was wrong again and again. Anyway, The Transatlanticist's first (probably only, 'cause this is a cruel world) issue has been sent to the printer this Wednesday after at least one night with too little sleep. Supposed to be here on Tuesday. More than just a tad excited, to be honest.

   Easter was great. We invited all of our friends over and had some very very very (I mean very very very) good food. Fruit salad, mixed vegetable salad, mac & cheese, nachos and home made dips, and so on. Made some Radler (3/4 beer, 1/4 sprite; we also introduced the concept in the bars around here) and started a fire after sunset. It was a genuinely good afternoon and night. One of those days you keep looking back on for months afterwards. Also, with a timing unmatched since the day that Jim Morrison met Ray Manzarek, fellow ASL student and BA+ alumnus Richard came to visit us from Detroit exactly on that Sunday. He spent three days in town and we went out a lot with Nat, Geeg, Sophia, Sam, and some others. Sam took the two of us for an early bike ride around Athens on Wednesday morning at 7:30. Not even 5 minutes outside of town, I felt quite a bit in rural Appalachia already. Crooked old shacks, abandoned cabins, rusty trailers. Some beautiful countryside as well, nice views upon Athens, and this dog without a leash that chased and scared us a good deal, but then was really afraid and just stood there. 

   And then my take home final was due for Literary Theory. Explain some concepts by Butler, Cixous, Foucault, Irigaray, Freud, and others. Then three two-page analyses of Drown, My Life in Pink, and What's Cooking?. Very short, not much you can do on two pages. But that's fine. Anyway, very very unfortunately, we did not go into postmodernism. At all. Might have to go back into that on my own. Might have some time in the summer.

   On Wednesday, we gave our final GLC presentations at the Edison Biotech Institute of Ohio University, located at the Ridges. Wasn't too bad; I think all of us did a better job than at the German Center for Research and Innovation in Manhattan, which was already pretty okay. Got very good responses, anyway. So I'm glad we're done with that, and I'm glad it was good. That same evening, GLC dinner. Good pizza at Jacky O's. Got our certificates and, on top of that, our professor (a philosopher and biker) gave me a book titled Harley Davidson and Philosophy: Full Throttle Aristotle. I was really surprised about that, and still am very thankful. Spent some time at the Smiling Skull Saloon afterwards and then went back to Jacky O's to meet the roomies and homies.

 

   Yesterday, I was pretty much lying in the sun all day. Our friend Rosa was visiting, and we saw that those guys across the street were messing around with this little white bird that couldn't really fly. So she went over there and talked to them. Turns out they bought the little parakeet to play with for a couple of hours and then intended to just release it in a bush or something. Yes. I know. Poor guy has clipped wings (apparently, that's what they do so pet birds can't fly away. Horrible), so there's no chance he would have survived. Rosa had asked if she could take it home with her later so they wouldn't just leave it out to die, and they agreed, or didn't really care, for that matter. Found a box and some branches and turned that into a little home for the bird, and brought it over. In the end, I think she couldn't take the bird home for some reason, but she made sure that the guys would keep it in their house for the night, and I don't know where things'll go from there...

   All school work I have left for next week is one exam and one paper, both in Pop/High Culture. So I will try to write more regularly again. Tell you about my upcoming summer internship and other stuff.