"nothing left inside this old cathedral / just these sad, lonely spires"
2 Comments Published by H on 05 July 2006 at 1:07 PM.
My week has been plagued with thoughts of this stupid re-sit essay. In a rather typical fashion, this hasn't sent me flying to the keyboard in an effort to pound out 4000 words post haste, rather it has inspired me to take procrastination to new heights. (Even by my own standards.)
Saturday marked a return to work for me. Le sigh. I had planned to make a start on my essay after getting home from a hard four hours of tidying up a few shelves and reading all the back copies of Sneak magazine. However, this plan was thwarted once I arrived home, flopped on my bed trashy historical novel in hand. (I seem to be going through a thing for historical fictionalised accounts of the Tudor monarchy at the moment. Ooh, Henry VIII was a cad and a bounder wasn't he? A bit like Prince Harry but with 10% more beheading!*) Once I finished The Constant Princess the procrastination didn't stop there. I've raced my way through four episodes of Lost (mmm castaway goodness. New favourite character ever: Mr. Eko. Anyone who inspires the lines, "You're not going to hit me with your Jesus stick are you??" deserves a place in my All Time Top Five.)
On Sunday, firmly in the spirit of catching up on my television-watching, I dug out my Doctor Who tape and spent a happy three hours watching The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit (Whedonalert: shades of Firefly, especially in the score and the design of the ship) and the seemingly much maligned Love & Monsters (a.k.a. the one with Peter Kay in it. Whedonalert: shades of the Buffy episode, Storyteller). Other quick thoughts on Doctor Who thus far: the smugness of the Doctor and Rose are grating (even if it is just to set up a fall); enough with the Doctor ranting on joyfully about humans; less ex-Casualty cast members please; more Hustle cast members making cameos; yay for old-school claustrophobic sci-fi and yay for meta-commentary on fan culture.
Anyway, all this procrastination resulted in me deciding that rather than attempt to construct a new essay from scraps of the old one, I would just lop off the introduction and conclusion and hastily scrawl appropriate replacement passages to make the essay fit the question. My laziness has plumbed new depths when I don't even care about academic achievement anymore (although it's hard to care when you know you're going to be capped at 40%.) So, after waking up at the fair hour of 12pm today, I tacked on a ill-thought out, barely coherent conclusion (liberally peppered with lofty meaningless phrases such as "social constructions" and "feminine ideal") and went to hand it in. A whole 24 hours before the deadline. I think that's a record. Which, incredibly, means that I'm officially finished and in a matter of weeks I'll know my degree classification and will have to venture into the slightly mucky world of work. (Unless I meet a wealthy toupee-wearing gentleman and become a kept woman. Maybe I'm confusing my life with an episode of Dallas.)
Anyway, this is all another way to say that I haven't been doing much with my life (apart from melting into a sticky puddle whenever I'm not strategically placed in front of a fan or the air-conditioning vents in my car). Full thoughts on Doctor Who and the leather-clad extravaganza that was X-Men 3: The Last Stand. I also seem to have completely reneged on my vehement declaration that I wasn't going to see Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest as the trailer thoroughly charmed me. I fear that as much as with the first one, I will find myself disappointed. However, Orange Wednesdays are there to be abused with summer popcorn blockbusters featuring credible-actors-saving-up-for-loft-conversions. Off to bed (because that's where the fan is. Also rather annoyingly where the mosquitos are.) Bonne nuit!
* Thank you. My head will be displayed on a spike outside Tower Bridge all week. Try the veal!
Yay for completed essays. I hope you managed exactly the right amount of work for 40%. No point in doing anything good in that situation. Top Jackie action in Love and Monsters; I'm trying to work out if the numerous strong older female characters are evidence of an alleged gay sensibility, or simply because middle-aged actresses are cheaper than their male counterparts. I've decided to not discuss baking until I actually pull my finger out (of the cherry pot) and do some; far too much laziness here. I'm sure you'd make an excellent kept woman, baking muffins and reading historical novels all day, all very Madame Bovary [he guesses]. Maybe you could use a penis enlarger on souffles.
I am indeed asleep while reading your latest comment. I've not heard (or at least, not paid attention to) The Feeling's Rosé (their songs tend to pass me by rather), but unless there's a non-ironic song about Campari and Soda, Rosé probably wins some sort of prize (the Feeling aren't ironic, they mean every 1970s reference, don't they?). Elt's Rocket Man should have been in my science fiction top ten, but somehow I forgot it (curses); it's the Elton John song I liked even back when I was too cool to like Mr John. I was reduced to using the wire bit from an oven tray (which had never been used for roast meat, thankfully) to cool the cake, WHICH I MADE woo! Photos forthcoming. Anyway, have fun inflating cloth penises, and souffles are made with small cylinders of compressed gas. And magic fairy eggs.