I'm pleasantly surprised. I've decided to hole myself away for the holidays and do some desperately-needed thesis work. I have devised anal little schedules for myself, and instituted a strict regime of breaks (I seem to only be able to do work if I know that I will be stopping work very shortly). Anyway, I just wanted to report that I am actually having fun reading dense academic texts. I am shocked! I associate work with pain: I have not a drop of the Protestant work ethic within my Catholic veins. But the last 45 minutes flew by, I was so immersed.

Perhaps this is what happens when the cloud of guilt lifts? i.e. When I am not trying to write an essay that is 3 months overdue?

Although I imagine that the actual writing process will have more resemblance to a horrid, drawn out 3 month labour, assisted less by numbing pain killers than sharp instruments...

Whee!

"Brechtian Faux-Lesbian Russian Pop Film Announced"

In other news, I have a hangover.

I have just made a dubious analogy between Hegel's negativity and Saussure's account of meaning as being negatively-defined in a take home exam (1500 words on 9 pages of Hegel! Aah!) that is due tomorrow / later today.

I hope this is the last time I will ever have to trot out this 'point for all occasions'. It is a pat little thing that I figured out for a third-year essay I wrote in 2004. Admittedly, I did rather a lot of work on that essay. But since then, I have wheeled it out without thinking or trying to make any new observations in approximately one billion essays, class presentations and class discussions. It makes its appearance like Mick Jagger on stage: same tricks, same moves, no alteration, no originality. Just an energetic routine.

In other news, it is very late, I feel very strange, and my life has otherwise been consumed by Facebook.