Yes, I'm still up. No, I haven't touched my essay. However, I have done quite a lot of reading on and around the topic of the essay ('the normative connection between sex, gender and identity'). So much reading, in fact, that I believe I may have successfully washed away in the tide of other peoples' ideas whatever opinion of my own may have been sedimenting in my mind. I found an interesting article on Slavoj Zizek, however. At this stage, I don't know all that much about the guy - he's a post-Marxist/Lacanian cultural studies type, for what it's worth - but this article on him is interesting. Read it here. Zizek seems to do a lot of travel - lecturing and the like - and the article makes the point that his being so adept with cultural observation (illustrating "the sameness between political parties on an American electoral ballot by comparing the choice to that between Equal and Sweet'n Low, or between Letterman and Leno") may have a direct correlation with the number of "insomniac nights" he spends, absorbing American culture through late-night TV in hotel rooms. I see resonances here with my own situation... too much time alone with the computer and the TV, attempting to formulate observations. In fact... why am I sharing this monologue on needing to get out more with my computer screen? And the internet? This is crazy. If it wasn't 4:26am, I'd go for a walk. Unfortunately, it is, so I'll continue to carry out web searches on the more obscure parts of (post)modern culture, yearning for the day when all this work is out of the way and I can get drunk in the sunshine... Ho hum.