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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in lesslucid's LiveJournal:

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    Sunday, May 11th, 2008
    3:33 pm
    senseless butchery of the English language for fun and profit
    http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

    "Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

    I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

    Here it is in modern English:

    Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."


    George, George, it's like you're not even trying! Come now:

    Inscribed on the interior of a "propietal" apprehension of Hegelian dialectics, we discover the following paradox: for racing (or indeed, to traverse the metaphorical terrain of an undiscovered lexicon of "truth") or its macropolitical antecedents, there is no correct "form" and yet the correction of its formalisms taxes this "larger metonymy" in a Foucauldian sense. We find "swiftness" expressed in a further taxonomy of guilt but it is constantly being both under-written and re-written (in a double sense) through its re-evaluation of its particular epistemological foundations. "Swiftness" hence precedes the discovery of meaning in "race"; to extract from it a "pure" testament to the ahisoricality of our re-envisioning of that selfsame "purity" requires an intervention from the "exterior" of the system which is predicated on the same notion of "purity" being able to transcend the very systematicity on which it depends. The endeavour rejuvenates; by a re-inversion of the paradox of "accidental victory" we discover that there is an insight "maintained" through the expression of "swiftness" as it moulded in the form of the un-won race.

    And that's just the first clause - I could probably wring a whole thesis from the sentence itself...

    ...and now, back to marking. :(
    Friday, May 2nd, 2008
    4:20 pm
    long quote, some thoughts.
    OK, let me see if I can figure out how to put all this stuff under a ( cut. )
    Saturday, December 8th, 2007
    3:12 pm
    eed
    I've done everything. All the bureaucracy, all the... stuff, it's done. Well, a few tiny things left, but nothing I need to stress over. Graduation happening sometime in april next year or something.

    You know what? Freedom is just bloody awesome. :)
    Tuesday, October 16th, 2007
    1:40 pm
    pos
    I'm not supposed to know this, but of my three markers, one apparently has passed me. This greatly reduces my fear that I will get three fails.

    So... I guess an all-lowercase, un-exclamation-pointed, yay, is in order.
    Friday, June 29th, 2007
    4:59 pm
    ubm
    I thought it was probably getting a bit wearing to read updates along the lines of "nearly finished now, just a half-inch left to go", "very nearly finished now, just a quarter-inch left to go", "getting there, unusually rapid progress means a mere ninth of an inch left to the end", &c &c.

    So I decided to leave off saying anything about it until I submitted it.

    Which I did, today.

    I was given a glass paperweight. That seemed like a fair return on my investment. :)


    Of course, now I move from anxiously wondering if I'll ever submit to anxiously wondering If I'll pass, but right now at least I don't feel at all anxious. The examining and whatnot all seems to be infinitely far away... I feel free. I think I ought to do something extravagant in order to celebrate, but nothing much comes to mind. Maybe the thing is that... with the weight off my shoulders, everything, even sitting here in this silly little computer lab (where so much of the editing and whatnot happened) feels like a celebration, feels like a bit of extravagance in its own way.


    Perhaps a beer with dinner will round out the day best. :)
    Wednesday, April 18th, 2007
    11:51 am
    Tuesday, November 7th, 2006
    2:18 pm
    ery
    Perhaps every shortcut is a bad shortcut. Shortcuts to writing seem to all have certain bad things in common...
    Sunday, November 5th, 2006
    3:00 pm
    train
    Did any of you read that book when you were little with the train, that goes, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..." ?

    Was it called "The Little Train that Could"?

    Children's books are great.

    Sometimes, I like people. I wish it were more often. Also... um. Hmm. Hmmm.


    It's weird remembering pieces of my life. It sometimes seems like... the pieces don't really fit together. How on earth does it all connect up? I keep getting flashes of that last trip overseas I did. I can't believe that was two years ago now.
    Wednesday, October 18th, 2006
    12:07 pm
    ...
    Saw printed copy of full-length thesis for the first time yesterday. Really seems real now.
    Sunday, October 15th, 2006
    1:47 am
    froge
    I don't want to forget. Having a record helps me stay motivated.

    So. Today is the fifth day, technically.
    Thursday, October 12th, 2006
    2:03 am
    night
    Last night, went to see a friend, someone who's finished her PhD, with the same supervisor as me. I said, he said I could finish in 4-6 months. She said, if he said that, you can actually finish in 2 months. It's just a matter of forgetting the fine-tuning and the perfectionist bullshit, and formatting the thing so you can send it out.

    Right now, I believe her. I had a great day today. I'm nervous that this heightened sense of possibility will crash down into... something else. But right now, it seems possible. Two months. That, I can really do. In fact, I'm doing it. Put all the chapters together, in one huge document... now just need to sand it down.

    I think I have the flu, my brain is all crummy and my typing is way worse than usual. Also, I must work tomorrow and I don't want to. :(
    Tuesday, October 10th, 2006
    6:16 pm
    te
    Tiny spiders everywhere. Wish they'd stay off the keyboard, though.

    Something might have changed.
    Sunday, October 1st, 2006
    12:15 pm
    looks
    There was a song, on the B-side of "Alice's Restaurant", that I really loved when I was... well, from about the age of nine or ten, I guess, called "Chilling of the Evening". The song was never a hit, I've never heard anyone say that they like it particularly or anything, and so I guess... like many of the tens of thousands of songs written every year, and the smaller (but still enormous) number recorded, it just washed up on the shore and then washed away again...


    ...but I listened to it again the other day and found I still loved it. There's a line in there, one of those lines that sort of... you could find in any love-song, you think, you know, the random mishmash of accumulated love-song cliches that form the lyrics of most love songs. But... to my ear, anyway, or heart, maybe I should say, it says something more than just... um. It goes:

    "Now to leave before I understand just what it is
    I know I'm leaving"

    ...and it seems to be full of that... I don't know. Something. That contradiction between what happens when you love someone and want to give yourself up fully to them, and the... fear of how much you might be giving up, the cowardly non-knowing of your own love so as not to be caught in the full depth of those overwhelming currents. Because of course, he says "before I understand", but this is because he already does understand, or half-knows... hmmm. But unlike most songs about "rats" or whatever, this isn't a condemnation or an attack on the cowardice of this kind of desertion. It's actually a... celebration of that kind of imperfect love for being, in spite of all the heartbreak it causes, love, still. The love that ruins your life is still love, and you wouldn't give it up for the sake of an unruined but loveless life. Well, that's how I take it, anyway.
    Friday, September 29th, 2006
    1:32 am
    legend
    Saw supervisor today. Things seem alright. Chapter, miraculously, is nearly there.

    I should say - in a moment of weakness I begged [info]mrkgnao to help me with it, and she agreed! Well... I shouldn't have asked, you were excessively kind to accept, but... you're off the hook now, so, you know, you can discard that terrifying 20-page monster. ;) But thankyou!
    Wednesday, September 27th, 2006
    2:07 pm
    take
    Fry: "Wow, way to tell that guy off! Now what's your secret escape plan?"
    Leela: "Uh...I guess to sit here and wait for death."

    -

    At the current rate of progress, I will take as long to finish chapter 11 as I did to finish the previous ten all put together. Or I could sit and wait for death.

    -

    I feel like... I don't know. I don't want to start writing anything that's going to take longer than five minutes to write because if I do, I'll get interrupted halfway through, feel frustrated about it, finish off my thoughts with some... hastily thrown-together summary and then stew about it. I hate interruptions. Especially the phone. Some fucker called up today, when I asked if it was a marketing call he told me it was an "information" call.

    I suppose, technically, lies are a form of information.

    Living in Katoomba was great. Some day when I'm magnificently wealthy, I'll go live in one of those cliff-edge houses. With no phone line. And a robot butler.
    Sunday, September 24th, 2006
    2:56 am
    mass
    I have a great indigestible mass of words sitting in a .doc file. I want to somehow gently massage them, a little cut here and a little addition there, and have this undignified blob turn into a clear, meaningful, structured chapter.

    But it's not going to happen.


    I really want it to, though.



    Do it for me? Please?

    :'(
    Tuesday, September 19th, 2006
    1:52 am
    fear and trembling
    I just watched on SBS a film called "Fear and Trembling". Details hither:

    http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fear_and_trembling/

    Anyway, just wanted to say, I found it to be awesome - funny, moving, profound, thought-provoking... also, did I mention it's funny? I love this film. I recommend it unreservedly to everyone. And if you don't like it, I'll beat you up.
    Monday, September 18th, 2006
    1:06 am
    dear
    Dear Self,

    Just so you can look back on this and see that you've been around this one before.

    Guess what? You can choose to repress your emotions. It's something you learned to do pretty early, and you're pretty good at it. But you don't like living the way you live when the lid is closed. So you try to open the lid a little bit. But you can't control what happens once the lid is open. Some of the things that come out - laughter, spontaneous affection, love, generosity - are straightforwardly good things. And some of the things that come out are mixed blessings - when the lid is closed, you don't say the things that make you cringe later in remembrance, but then, often somehow having said those things works out for the best. But some of the things that come out are downright frightening. There's a reason you keep pushing the lid back down. And there's a reason you keep opening it up again. You've been changing you mind about this for so long now, that it seems unlikely you'll ever make it up firmly one way or the other. Maybe the thing to do is just keep changing, without getting too stressed about it. Who knows?

    Love, Old Self.
    Saturday, September 16th, 2006
    3:37 am
    lamb
    Today I feel like a sacrificial lamb. How do you say to someone, yes, I owe you something, but no, not that much?

    It'd be a lot easier if it was "I OWE YOU NOTHING!!! NOTHING!!!" with melodramatic flourishes &c.

    I think I may be going through some kind of crisis of faith. Questioning not just myself and the thesis, but also, the whole idea of academia. I think I liked it better when I knew less about it. In general, my preference is for things that I like better as I know more about them.


    Also, I feel like some kind of self-indulgent hypochondriac every time I think about playing the PKD card, even though I've never actually done it, but, dammnit, shouldn't I, as an official object of pity, be beyond being guilt-tripped at this point? It would seem I'm not. But shouldn't I be?

    My future had better have some candy in it.
    Wednesday, September 6th, 2006
    3:12 pm
    grrr
    Damn, damn, I'm 30 tomorrow, fuck.

    Hmm.

    It's a lovely day. Early spring and all that. Maybe I should just try to enjoy it.

    Thesis is coming along decently. I'm really going to finish it, one of these days.
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