The Library. My only friend.

People with screamy children shouldn't bring them to the library. That's the cranky 78 year old that lives inside of me, I am aware but that doesn't make my viewpoint any less valid. If your child can't be depended upon to not scream, don't bring the kid to a place were things of an academic nature are supposed to be occuring.

Key phrase: supposed to be. I'm working up to my big paper, trust. I just need to dick around for a little while longer.

Harry Potter: I am the only book-lover on the planet that doesn't love these books? I feel like I should like them a whole lot more. Especially considering the fact that people LINE UP AT MIDNIGHT TO BUY THESE BOOKS. Insane. I know I'm probably not the best person to be casting stones in the sanity/insanity department but still. I started reading the first one and I didn't finish it. I was fine with my decision. But that was a few years ago and I feel all this worldwide peer pressure to go back, try again and read the other seventeen books that this woman has written. Not seventeen? Whatever.

Le sigh. It's so hard to be a Toni.

Reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman right now. I'm beginning to suspect that all truly creative people are just short of sanity.

Buying a computer when I go home, methinks. It's either buy it now and replace the tuition money by January or live in the library throughout the fall semester. Although that option may seem appealing right now, I don't think I'm going to like it so much when I'm fighting fifteen smelly frosh. That's right, I said they were smelly. And they are. No, I don't care that I was once one of them.

All right, I'm going to dick around until 5:30 and then I absolutely have to get at least 3 pages done for this essay.

Somebody Stop Me.

Coffee beans look like this before they're processed. Weird.

Just finished a large coffee. I am both jittery and forlorn. Also, developing a worrying obsession with coffee.

Blast.

A new meal plan.

I sent my slave Jo to get me a sub, but it will be my last. I've decided on a new eating strategy. My diet will consist of coffee from the Cornerstone and the new Excel mints.

I don't want any of you to worry, I've thought this plan through, and it's NOT just some hairbrained scheme I cooked up while talking to Jo.

I'm pretty sure I'll be really hard to live with, but it's not like I'm a prize now. At least I'll be wide awake and smelling minty-fresh, a nice change from sleepy and smelling like a sweaty, dead animal.

I'll probably lose some teeth but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

I'm also going to start smoking and buy an old typewriter so I can be a frustrated writer. My hair will always be a mess and I'll be covered in cigarette butts and crumpled papers with failed attempts to be brilliant all over them.

I will be moody and mercurial and only appreciated after my death. I'll write one mildy successful novel and spend the rest of my life trying to repeat that success and tortured over the fact that I have no popular acclaim.

Jo and I will embark on a tumultuous affair and I will frequently cheat on her with Brad Pitt, Susan, Barb and Hayden Christensen.

I'll probably die in freak gasoline fight accident.

It's hot.

It's seriously hot. It was pouring when we got off of the bus and we just took a leisurely stroll to the library, getting soaked. It was the first time I'd been cool in days. I don't mind warm weather, but this is ridiculous, I can't even sit perfectly still without sweating.

When Jo and I got home last night we went into the back yard and sprayed each other down with the hose. The only solution to this heat (if you're too broke to afford air conditioning) is to be soaked as much as possible. To that end we are looking to purchase a blow up pool for the backyard where we will sit, possibly with some sort of cocktail, and be cool.

Jo's mouse, Commander Theodore Bun-Bun a.k.a. Dr. Bruce Dickenson a.k.a. Bacon, has passed away. It is the second animal death (and the second dead animal I've touched ERLACK) in our house this summer and we are placing the blame solely on the heat. In a desperate attempt to save Hammy, the most prized member of our menagerie (and the sole surviving member), we moved him into the basement. He now appears to be thriving. Thank God, 'cause there would be three VERY sad pandas if Hammy died.

Anyways, back to All Quiet on the Western Front. Really. I'm already writing my review. No, I don't even like the BBC. I certainly won't be dicking around on the internet.

Pearls of Wisdom

From Jo's lips: I like you lapsed Catholics, 'cause you're like the Fonz. Eh, thumb waggles, etc.

I love books and Why History Matters.

It's wrong, it's a little ridiculous. I'm reading five books right now because I'm a six year old and have no patience to finish one book before I pick up another. I shall list them because this is my blog and I shall be as boring as I so choose (as you've already discovered, I'm sure)

1. The Victorian Age, for one of my classes in the fall
2. The D'oh of Homer: Philosophy and the Simpsons, which I actually started in first year but I only realized just last night that I hadn't finished reading it.
3. Antony and Cleopatra- I was all cocky after watching Shakespeare in Love and Slings and Arrows. I was all, hey Shakespeare, you're not so scary, I've seen you on TV, you can't be that smart. However, reading the foreword(s) of the text, I'm a little frightened. I'm used to having a teacher or a great deal of secondary source material to hold my hand through La Shakespeare. However, I shall persevere.
4. Some biography of Tolkien that was written for children. Right around my reading comprehension level.
5.The Chronicles of Narnia, which are, as I said earlier, fantastic.

Good thing I'm not a productive member of society.

Also, I watched a lot of the O.C. this weekend.

Really good thing I'm not a productive member of society.


I was up late watching TV again. This time it was for a good cause and not the Magic Bullet (although some may think that getting 2 revolutionary food processing systems for the price of one is a good cause, I'm just saying). There was this author, Niall Ferguson, speaking on TVO about how the United States is an Empire in denial. Crapping on America? Check. Delightfully British? Check. Interesting parallels between the Roman Empire and the United States? Check. My hornies were ablaze. He made a good case for the continued presence of the US in Iraq, even if I don't necessarily agree.

So after he was done it was like 3 am or something ridiculous and I'm like, finally, I can go to bed. I was dead wrong. The program was like Big Ideas or something like that and they presented the other side of the argument, that the United States needed to get it's butt out of Iraq like whoa. Robert Fisk from The Independant (London paper) was also delightfully British and drew scary parallels between the American occupation of Iraq and the British occupation in 1918. You know how the United States thought they'd be welcomed as liberators? Well so did the British (only Iraq was under the thumb of the Turks in this period). The Brits also had a little problem with insurgency that they blamed on outside agitators. Scarily similar.

This, people, is why history matters. If anyone in charge of this debacle had ever read a book about Iraq's colonial past they might have acted a little differently. If they'd read that the Brits were there for 40 YEARS maybe they wouldn't have had the ludicrous idea that a stable democracy could be built in LESS THAN TWO YEARS.

Seriously, the British occupation was less than 100 years ago. Get a clue world.

I liked listening to Robert Fisk talk because, unlike a certain leader of the free world who shall remain unnamed, he's actually talked to some Iraqis that aren't Ahmed Chalabi. That's someone I can respect.


And there's totally a British history program every monday at 10 pm on TVO. I'm tres excited. God, I am a dork. Disown me. It doesn't matter how much booze I've drunk or pot I've smoked, I'm a geek.