I woke up in a bad mood today. There's no particular reason for it, really. I have nothing but good, exciting things on the horizon. I had a great day and night yesterday. I don't have much homework to finish up this morning, and life is generally pretty good. What's the deal?

The reason why I was having so much trouble starting the introduction for my Augustine article was that I was supposed to start with a paragraph about Derrida, Strauss, and Plato.

Duh.

Bad: My favourite place to sit and read in the Moody library is being converted into something I HATE that has no place in the library (not among the stacks, at least): A GROUP WORK AREA! UGH! I can't believe they've taken something good and replaced it with something bad.

Good: Amazingly, as I prepare for my Greek final (tomorrow, if you can imagine), I am finding that I have somehow managed to memorize many paradigms and charts without even trying! Sweet!

If Vivien or I die today before 5p.m. the last things we will have said to each other will be:

"Don't forget to put the cream away."
"O.k."

I can't believe that I have class and work tomorrow.

Man.

At some point in the last few years, that's what I wrote at the top of one of the pages of Book X of Plato's Republic. I came across it this afternoon as I distractedly tried to crap out eight intelligible pages for my seminar tomorrow. I was assigned the last class because the professor wanted me to say something interesting and exciting (and, doubtless, provocative) by way of a wrap-up. That still might happen, you know. I've got a couple of neat ideas, I think, but my heart is not in writing a Republic paper... it's too strange of a convergence. When I wrote what I wrote at the top of that page way back when, I doubtless meant that the contents of the page--which talks about the immortality of the soul and begins the 'Myth of Er'--was 'heavy' in the figurative sense.

A little after finding that note from my past self to me, I went to the bathroom. On the way back to my desk, I stopped to check my email, facebook, etc. I got a facebook message from Megan Young, giving me the latest update on Mark's condition. The news was not good. In her words: "Mark is gone." Whether or not his body keeps living is, I suppose, a different matter---and the less important one. The deeper metaphysical questions about what it precisely means to have 'you' gone but your body still there don't really elude me, so much as I feel a little too much metaphysical exhaustion myself to address them. At the end of her message, Megan told me that she was feeling "lonely and heavy." And for the first time since all of this started, I just felt an uncomplicated sadness. Really far away. I had another message from Michelle Wilband and she said: "I just wish we could all be together right now." Of course, there's a lot there. Did she wish that it could be three or four years ago and we could all be together at James Dunn Hall putting off papers and drinking Tim's? Probably, to an extent. We're all over the place, now.

We were all very good friends, and we shared some big things together. And, in a sense, it's the impossibility of us "all being together" ever again that is making this so hard for me. This wasn't supposed to happen this way. We were all going to go off for a few years and become professors, and then come back and work together. And it would be just like it was before. Nobody ever came out and said that, but I know we all thought it.

I had a new email, too. My friend David Ramsey and his wife Katie had a baby boy, and they sent pictures. "He decided to come out on his own," despite putting his mother through 12 unproductive hours of induced-labour the day before. Beautiful little space alien. Healthy. At 9lbs, he, too, was a little heavier than expected.

Life and death in your inbox: it all leaves one feeling a little over-wrought.

1. I truly am sweatier than the average person.
2. I fidget constantly, and destroy all kitchen table chairs I sit on.
3. I usually only listen to Sufjan Stevens: everything else seems ugly and contrived in comparison.
4. I learned how to tie a tie in January 2008.
5. My mother and I are actually quite close: it's a little bit weird.

Go to urbandictionary. com, and type in your answer to each question in the search box. Once you get the definition, copy and paste it under your answer.

1. Your name?
-- Ah yes, "Matthew"

"a name that describe some one as a smoking hot gift from god, also known as the tax collector in the bible and also as a disciple"

2. Nickname?
-- The Judge
n. slang for male genitalia.


3. Relationship status?
-- newlywed
A starting hand in Texas Hold em' of King-Queen

4. You describe your best friend as?
-- charming
a unique skill possesed by a priveleged (or not priveledged few). charming is accomplished by sitting on your back with your legs spread in the air. you then proceed to expel gas (see fart). once you have farted, you use your butt muscles to suck the air back in and continue to repeat for as long a possible. thus, once your location has been succesfully filled with ass gas, you have completed your charming.

[the urban dictionary seems to be pretty spot on with this one]

5. What should you be doing?
-- Studying
Doing anything other than studying.

[win!]

6. Favorite Food?
-- Curry
1) A reference to a female of Indian descent.

2) A reference to the genitalia of an Indian female.


ex: Check out Sajani! That curry bitch is HOT.

or

Dude, your girl Taj is fine, but she seems uptight. Has she given up the curry yet?

7. Home State/Province?
-- New Brunswick
Annoyingly long stretch of road when travelling from Maine to your final vacation destination of Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island.

9. One word to describe yourself?
-- tired

Getting run over by an automobile and having a large treadmark left across your body.
[heh]

10. Your best friend:
-- Stuart

Hilariously, it suggests:

debauchery:

a wild gathering involving excessive drinking and promiscuity

ex: The debauchery on Lansdowne was only followed by more on Stuart Street when Steve Porter came to beantown to celebrate his new CD release tour PORTERHOUSE!!!

Borrowed from subnivean


COMPS TOMORROW!

It seems like cowboy boots are just barely not a plausible, attractive, final solution.

Right.


Well, back to work.

Tuesday (today, technically) is the busiest day of the week for me. I have class from 12:30-6:30pm, and then I usually have RCIA (tomorrow, however, it's canceled). Now, obviously, I'm usually up a little bit late on Monday night trying to get everything done. Tonight, however, I finished at around 12:45, and after dozing on the futon for a little while, I was left with the choice of (a) going to bed or (b)staying up and screwing around online. Clearly, I chose the latter--which I regret already--but it was almost worth it insofar as I stumbled upon some entries I wrote at around this time in my senior year at STU. In one of those entries, I was reminded of the somewhat hilarious fact that I used to receive free product samples in the mail. By far, the strangest of these was the time I was sent a number of cheese products (on ice, clearly) in the mail. I shit you not. It was not without trepidation that I consumed said product; yet, unless their adverse effect on my health is still forthcoming, I have heretofore escaped unscathed.

And now I can say that I have eaten free cheese that I've gotten in the mail. So who says risks aren't worth it some times. Had I listened to Stu, I would never have eaten the free mail-cheese, and would never have stayed up so late, sitting here and thinking about it. To think, I would actually be well-rested and alert for my full day of seminars tomorrow.

I could sure use some free mail cheese samples right now.

I think that it was Thomas Jefferson who said: "Mail cheese is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." As usual, Mr. Jefferson, I agree.

NPR aired a piece I heard replayed a while ago on the ivory-billed woodpecker, recently rediscovered (resurrected?) in Brinkley, Arkansas. Obviously, this is the kind of thing that Sujan Stevens needs to be brought in to write a song about. Anyway, it's a good NPR spot that picks up all of NPR's biggest themes: the working class, poor small towns in America, nature, and singer-songwriters.

I've also recently joined a facebook group that posits (something along the lines of): "I'd let Canada be annexed if Sujan would do a CD about it." I'm only half-kidding, too.

So what's the point? Well, I love Sufjan Stevens, first. Second, I think that Sufjan, despite vowing to never to a CD about Texas (which seems a silly thing for him to say), should do a song about Waco, TX. First of all, it has had two large disasters nearly destroy it in the last fifty years, and yet, here it is, nonetheless. It's a study in contrast: I once heard somebody say that it has no middle class, and that hardly seems like an exaggeration. Indeed, there are absolutely beautiful mansions on Austin Avenue, and as soon as you get past North 21st street, the veneer comes off, and house that has one rich white family will now house 5 brown ones. The university, of course, contributes to this polarization. The only thing that seems to be the same is that they are all religious. The white people at the beautiful First Waco Baptist, and the Brown ones at the (literally named) Church Under the Bridge; the white Catholics at stately St. Louis, or (strangely beautiful) brown and Spanish St. Francis. They're the only people who could live in this place that always seems on the brink of extinction.

On that note, they've found the largest mammoth site ever in Waco, too. Seems like it's always seemed a little catastrophic. Sufjan! What are you waiting for?

In Attic Greek the word "pragma" (which we still have in 'pragmatic') means 'business,' 'affairs,' and 'matters.' It also means 'troubling.'

As usual, I agree.

The library is on Dinanotice until they come up with at least one of the five ILLs I requested last week.

I think I'll update soon, but I'm overcome with how much there is to say!

The wait staff is generally rude, and every time I go there I throw up afterwards. Really! I think there's something funky in their draft lines.
Using the power of grade 7 science, I shall scientifically prove this for once and for all:

HYPOTHESIS: There is something funky in the draft lines at the Snooty Fox
METHODS: Next time I go, I'm drinking bottled beer.
MATERIALS: Money, bottles of beer
CONCLUSION: TBA

The end: back to Texas tomorrow.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2007/12/17/upm-closes.html

Well, Merry Christmas Miramichi! This is pretty terrible news. Poor....everyone. :(

Another successful term! This was a tough one, and I'm glad it's over. I learned an awful lot---I think I learned more about myself than about anything else this time around.

In any event, we're flying from Dallas to Boston tomorrow. Wish us luck! I hope we don't get storm-stranded or get into any airplane-related trouble

"Don't just read the Sparks' notes! Read Dante! It's so good! It  could change your life for sure!

I am now working on my last paper. I am not going to finish it for when it is due, sadly. I hope Dr. Clinton is forgiving. 

My trusty Rockports--the same pair I have had since my third year of university, and currently my only non-Birkenstock or jogging footwear option--have a squeak. A *fucking* squeak that might drive me crazy. See, I've had these shoes for a really long time because not only are they actually kind of nice, but they're very comfortable as far as shows go. They have this Reebok DMX move-the-air-between-the-balls-of-your-feet-and-your-heels technology, and I am forty to seventy percent certain that I popped one of them...somehow...at some point. But just enogh for it to make this insipid squeak with every landing of my left foot. For goodness' sake.