Absolute Zero

Here's another week of my writing journal. I think there's something of the masochist about me for posting this document of abject failure, but for some reason, right now, I'm finding it so absurd, I can only laugh. I suppose the point is that achievement can't always be measured by counting words.

Monday, 11 August, 2008
time: 0 mins
length: 0 words
comment: Exhausted from non-stop weekend including final days of film festival, meeting of book club, full day of tutor’s conference on Saturday, and tutorial preparation on Sunday. Dragged myself into uni for tutorial at 1pm. Received feedback from supervisor on most recent writing: ‘onward!’

Tuesday, 12 August, 2008
time: 0 mins
length: 0 words
comment: How easily I seem to have lost the writing habit after the first couple of very good weeks. I lazed around all morning then dragged myself out for a haircut appointment. I need to get back on track!

Wednesday, 13 August 2008
time: 0 mins
length: 0 words
comment: Nothing done again today. The psychological effects of the Ekka holiday cannot be discounted, but still I did intend to work on my thesis. I’m a bit disappointed in myself. Did lots of washing and cleaned the bathroom, as well as about two hours transcribing interviews for one of my RA contracts. This particular interviewee speaks so quickly.

Tomorrow I will try to write first thing, which I realise was the initial recommendation, but I’m not a morning person by any stretch, so I’ve always settled into the day before attempting to write. Perhaps the change of habit will shake me up. Something has to.

Just had a thought about what might be stopping me from writing, so to speak. I really have to get into the reporting of my findings now, and I’ve still got lots of categorising to do, plus the usual worry that I should go and do the database searches again in case I’ve missed something. Even if I don’t strictly write tomorrow, I at least need to report some progress on the content analysis.

Update: After writing the above entry I wrote 660 words in my teaching journal, reflecting on the tutor day last weekend and the tutorial on Monday.


Thursday, 14 August 2008
time: 0 mins
length: 0 words
comment: I succumbed to the urge to re-do some database searches. Part of the difficulty is that I’m worried I didn’t really approach the searching in a systematic way from the beginning because two of the three the databases I’m using are so bloody unwieldy, seemingly designed for use by those who know specifically what programmes they’re looking for rather than any theme or content-based search. I have been so annoyed about this glaringly obvious oversight in the design of these databases that I managed to get an abstract together on it for the television history conference later this year. So, some good has come out of all this frustration, but sheesh what a pain in the arse it’s all been.

Anyway, so, no official words but major problem solving going on—or is that major grunt work going on? My supervisor assures me that once I have the figures writing this stuff up is a doddle. Quite looking forward to that.

Friday, 15 August 2008
time: 0 mins
length: 0 words
comment: Anticipating the day ahead here. I’ve chosen to accept an RA mission for today (cue Mission: Impossible theme music), which involves finding a book and searching through it. I figure the Mission: Impossible allusion made by D in his request was a heads up that it won’t simply be a matter of looking on his bookshelves. Still have more transcribing to do for A. Promised I’d be done with this interview by the end of the week, which I’ve decided is Sunday.

On my own work, I’ll continue with the hyper-vigilant database searching. I did find it reassuring yesterday.

To end, this is from You, the Living one of my favourite films at the film festival. Neither it, nor my other favourite, My Winnipeg made it into the Showtime Top 10 as voted by the festival's patrons. Absurd.

Anxious

I've mentioned before on this blog how much I struggle with writing. I have always found it incredibly difficult.

I have memories of being utterly paralysed when writing essays in high school. How I ever made it to university the first time around is still a mystery to me, because I completely froze in the statewide tests we took which decided the final tertiary entrance scores.

Suffice to say my fears did me no good in that first attempt at an Arts degree. I think I spent most of my late teens and early twenties in a state of fear, not just about writing, but pretty much everything. It wasn't a happy time at all.

I ended up dropping out of university and working a series of casual and temporary unskilled jobs, before I decided to have another go at tertiary education. How I ever got through my second attempt at an Arts degree is somewhat less of a mystery, but effectively I credit one incredibly supportive lecturer who was prepared to offer me extension after extension throughout the course, and still say things as encouraging as that I had assisted her understanding of the works of Julia Kristeva.

It wasn't until this particular lecturer asked if I was going to go onto Honours that it even occurred to me that it was a possibility for the likes of me. I did go on, first to achieve a first class Honours, then a Master's for which I made the Dean's List for Outstanding Research Higher Degrees, and now I'm in receipt of a second scholarship and completing a Research PhD.

At this point, you think even I'd believe that I could write, but still, this annoying and crippling anxiety about writing persists. My anxieties held up the progress of my Master's and the whole process seems to be repeating itself with my PhD.

One of the things I'm most fearful of is that I won't be finished before my current scholarship runs out. Actually, I've pretty much accepted that will occur, but if I'm feeling anxious now, I know how much more anxious I'll feel when I don't have that $380 a week (OMG, my rent is $270/week and only likely to go up).

In an effort to minimise the time that I'll have to be writing my PhD while trying to look for alternative sources of income, I responded to an email inviting people to join a 15 minute writing group. The idea is that you spend at least 15 minutes per day writing and keep a diary noting the time spent writing, the word count, a brief description of the writing, and any comments about the process. Because it's a group rather than an individual activity, the idea is that the individual diaries are circulated amongst the group members.

I've found reading other people's diaries, learning about the things that they struggle with when getting words on paper/screen, incredibly helpful. I've been more productive, in a substantial way, on my thesis in the past two weeks than I have for a long time. Ultimately, the grand total of my words thus far has been 2000. This does not seem much when I compare myself to what I imagine other, more effective, people write, but when I compare this progress with that I made in the previous two weeks, then I have improved by 100%.

It's this last figure that has me feeling far happier, with a greater sense of achievement, than I have experienced for a long time. Now I don't beat myself up verbally when I haven't written 1000 words a day, but I note how I managed to untangle a particularly convoluted thought process in just one hour.

Here's this past week's diary for your perusal. Aside from my anxiety, you'll probably learn more about my thesis than I think I've ever mentioned on this blog*.

Sunday, July 27, 2008
time: 30 mins
length: 500 words
description: Teaching journal
comment: Anticipating first tutorial tomorrow.

Monday, July 28, 2008
time: 30 mins
length: 550 words
description: Teaching journal
comment: Reflected on first tutorial and meeting with A about my LEX feedback. Turns out my problem isn’t communication, it’s authority and conviction.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008
time: 1 hr
length: 220 words
description: Thesis. Explanation of the evolution of another content analysis variable: Occupation
comment: As I was writing I had a thought about another category that needed to be included. While I’ve come across plenty of examples in my coding of patient characters who are either criminals or hospitalised, I’d forgotten about other employment external to the usual understanding of labour markets such as students and people looking after families. Immediately I could think of characters for whom I’ll need this category: Claire Fisher, Carmella and Meadow Soprano, Bree Van De Kamp…

Wednesday, July 30, 2008
time: Not so good at the time keeping today, maybe 2 hrs in total, accrued in 10-20 min stretches.
length: 280 words
description: Thesis. More explanation of content analysis variables, this time in relation to mental health professionals.
comment: If only I could sit still for more that 10 minutes before feeling the need to jump up and hang out the washing or some other domestic chore. I do use that time as thinking/refining time, but I’m convinced more effective writers can sit and concentrate for long stretches at a time. There I go again comparing myself to others. Note to self: ‘Stop it! Just try and think about how you’re on track for another 1000 “excellent and polished”** words’ (fingers crossed).

Have somehow managed to make useful remarks about the various hypotheses the content analysis will be testing. Quite fascinating that even in compiling the variables and trying to come up with categories that are exhaustive I’m getting a sense of the discrepancies between representations in television drama and mental health research as it is manifest in things like the US Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health and the DSM-IV. Also getting a sense of developments in representations over the history of English-speaking television simply by have to explain and revise the categories.

Thursday, 31 July, 2008
time: Stuffed up the time keeping again. About an hour or so?
length: 230 words
description: Continuing with thesis.
comment: So much for the multi-tasking aspirations I started with. It’s all I can do to think about my thesis at the moment. It should be my priority anyway, the other two things are months away. Turns out I don’t have a meeting with my supervisor until next Friday, so I’ll have even more evidence of working, which can only be a good thing. Note: I’m on track for another 1000 words on my thesis this week. Also note: the Film Festival is starting and I couldn’t resist the incredibly discounted film student passes I was offered. Will be interested to see how I balance this extra-curricular activity with my writing goals.

Friday, 1 August 2008
time: 1 hr
length: 260 words
description: Thesis. Up to talking about ‘Site of Intervention/Treatment’
comment: Saw two films at BIFF today, but managed to get myself up to around the 1000 word mark for the working week before I went out. Progress is steady and in the right direction.

Aware that this diary is perhaps a little, nay, a lot, more wordy that everyone else’s. Trying to strike a balance between being overly confessional, yet making it meaningful for me as a tool of reflection.

* Don't pinch my ideas. Please. Although I don't suppose I can stop you.
** Direct quote from supervisor in feedback on previous 4000 words submitted

Nerdettes FC

Despite my recent Rockin’ Girl Blogger award from Lucy Pigpuppet,



I think the final nail in the coffin of my hipster status was hammered all the way in yesterday.

What precipitated this death knell was the revelation that John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia has discovered YouTube.



For a moment there, I thought I was cooler than our conservative, track-suit wearing, sexagenarian leader since, as you know, I embraced YouTube, fully, over a week ago now. (And, as perhaps you don’t know, my tracksuit is black velours).

But then I realised that John Howard has posted a video on YouTube. He has his own channel, while I’m still using YouTube to access digitised BBC dramas from 1994!

Oh, well, I can’t truthfully say I wasn’t aware that my cutting edge status on the internet had never been forged beyond a sort of blunt rock.

I’m the kind of person who is still inordinately excited at having access to the OED online*.

And because I think these people might be excited by that fact too—and I just love their blogs—these are the recipients of my own Rockin’ Girl Blogger awards:

Ariel from Jabberwocky

Clare from Keeper of the Snails

Molly from My Madeleine (I've never actually had a conversation, online or otherwise, with Molly. Hope she doesn't think I'm stalking her. Still, there were no rules specified about have to 'know' the Rockin' Girl Blogger in question).

Oanh from Halfway Between Ca Mau and Sai Gon

Sophie from Sophie Cunningham

---

* Words looked up on the OED this past week include:

integument, n. That with which anything is covered, enclosed, or clothed; a covering, investment, coating. a. In general sense. (Now usually either fig. from, or with humorous allusion to, next sense.)

iatrogenic, a. Induced unintentionally by a physician through his diagnosis, manner, or treatment; of or pertaining to the induction of (mental or bodily) disorders, symptoms, etc., in this way.

Manichaean, n. and a. B. adj. Of, relating to, or characteristic of Manichaeism or its adherents; (more generally) of or relating to dualism, dualistic.

psephology The study of public elections, and statistical analysis of trends in voting; loosely, the prediction of electoral results.

veridical, a. 2. spec. in Psychol. Of hallucinations, phantasms, etc.: Coincident with, corresponding to, or representing real events or persons.

mystagogy, n. Initiation into mysteries, or instruction preparatory to this; the practices or teachings of a mystagogue.
Occas. derogatory although now often replaced by MYSTAGOGUERY n. in such contexts.

Signs Of The Times

Apropos of Laura’s post this weekend at Larvatus Prodeo where she asked if anyone had seen any crimes against grammar in the great world of advertising, I thought I’d share this picture that I took with my camera phone earlier this week.


Okay, it’s not advertising or even a grammatical faux pas, but this Post-It Note was on a lift door in a University building housing the offices of Humanities and Social Science scholars. Is it deliberate? At first I thought not, then I thought because of the context it had to be, now I can’t decide.

At any rate, I was wondering whether, with a few judicious insertions of some punctuation and an extra letter, it might become the universal sign for signalling that you’re taking a rest from blogging?:

Out; Off Other[s].

***
Speaking of judicious changes to signage.

Do you remember my post about the glorious artwork on the old Ice Works at Paddington in Brisbane? The building has long been knocked down and work has begun on some ‘exclusive’ apartments. Here’s the banner that currently graces the fence to the building site:


The positioning of the sun in this photo is fortuitous, because I couldn’t see the picture I was taking at all, but it seems appropriate to me that ‘all’ includes the sun.

Anyway, if I were more of a risk-taking social activist, rather than of the arm-chair variety, I would have gone out and bought myself a can of spray paint and inscribed the following on the banner:


As you can see, in keeping with the manner of arm-chair activists everywhere, I’ve used Paint, a Microsoft program to communicate my disapproval of the sentiment expressed by the developers.

I don’t know that I want to live so close to people who feel entitled to demand ‘everything’. There’s so much that’s wrong with this attitude, I can’t begin. Well, maybe I can: we live in a world of finite resources people; this kind of in your face consumption is socially irresponsible; why don’t developers devote more of their resources to ‘inclusive’ housing, especially in these times of exorbitant rents?

All I can say to the future owners is that I hope you demand top-of-the-range sound proofing and security too, because living down from Caxton Street and across the road from Suncorp Stadium, amid the detritus left every weekend and after every football game by the alcohol fuelled mobs is not going to be quite the experience that the marketing promises.

***
Here’s a far more pleasing example of bill posting:


I found this example of stencil art on Melbourne Street at South Bank whilst walking between the Cultural Centre Bus Station and past the Convention Centre; it was on the same side as The Fox Hotel.

Prunes

When I was in primary school and still young enough to think that parents knew everything, I was convinced that prunes were not plums before they became prunes. I thought this because my father had told me that, ‘Prunes are prunes’. At the time this seemed like some great existential revelation (although of course I did not know of existentialism then), a sort of Being and Nothingness of the fruit universe. He used to travel for his work and he told me that he had seen how prunes grew. In my head, I imagined that prunes grew in the way that grapes did, in trestled vineyards, and pickers would come along, hands clad in canvas gloves, and pluck the shrivelled but still moist fruits from their stems.

Impressed with this new information I stored it in my mind, only to discover that I had occasion to retrieve it far sooner than I might have expected. As part of a worksheet exercise in class one day, there was a question that asked ‘What is a prune?’ Before learning from my father about the Zen of prunes, I too would have answered, ‘a dried plum’. Equipped with this new counter-intuitive knowledge, however, I insisted that, ‘Prunes are prunes’, and nothing would dissuade me from my conviction.

The teacher tried very hard to convince me, even going so far as to show me a concise dictionary entry which stated that a prune was indeed ‘a dried plum’. At that point I conceded—outwardly, at least. On the way home from school, I continued the discussion with my friend. I said that I wasn’t entirely persuaded by the teacher’s proof because it was clear for anyone to see that prune pits were quite a different shape to those of plums: prune pits were more oval and had sharp pointed ends, while plum pits were round.

Much to my chagrin, my friend didn't agree with me. I forget the exact details of her argument but she was more adamant than I was about the genealogy of the prune. I recall eventually admitting that perhaps prunes were dried plums, but wondered if she would concede that they weren’t the same variety of plum that we were familiar with in the fresh form? She never really did acknowledge my observation, and stubbornly insisted that I admit that prunes were dried plums without any mitigating details.

Since then, I hadn’t really thought of The Prune Incident, but I was reminded of it recently when I began buying trays of sugar plums from my favourite green grocer. I’d never tried this variety of plum before, but at $3.99 for 750g, they seemed worth trying.


After I ate the first one and saw the oblong shaped pit with pointy ends, I wondered if at last I had encountered the variety of plum that was the precursor of the prune as I knew it. I haven’t checked any sources, but I’m convinced the sugar plum is the prune plum.


Not only is the pit the right shape, but the shape and size of this plum are more similar to the dried prune than the large round variety of plum that was a treat every summer when I was growing up.

Just looking up ‘prune’ in another dictionary now, I see one of the definitions is:

prune³ proon, n a plum (obs); a dried plum; a plum suitable for drying (US)

Is it worth mentioning that prune can also mean ‘a dud teacher pilot (airmen’s slang); [and] a despised or silly “friend” person (colloq)’?

Erté and Byron

Moonlight (Erté 1984)

***

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that 's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

(Lord Byron 1814)

Seryously

Has anyone else seen thys poster yn the foyer of cynemas lately? I take yt as a sygn of the forthcomyng Apocalypse:



Edyt: Sorry, that should be 'Y take yt as ...'

98 Reasons For Blogging: 7

7. From the "Higher Education" section of The Australian:

The Oxford Street exodus

October 18, 2006

OXFORD Street is the homosexual heart of Sydney. Mardi Gras marches down it, gay clubs and shops have sprung up along it; it's a metaphor for the visible gay community.

I fear I'm slipping into pedantry here, or I would if Brad wasn't just plain wrong. What he describes is a metonym, not a metaphor. He should have said 'Oxford Street is metonymic of the gay community in Sydney', meaning it is one part of the gay community that is read as representative of the whole of the gay community. The gay community cannot take on the qualities of the gay community--which is the signifying process of a metaphor, by way of comparison--because it already is the gay community.

I don't know where to begin with the 'visible' bit. If the metonym had been named correctly then 'visible' would render the sentence a tautology since a part cannot stand for another part of the same thing. This whole first paragraph is nonsensical.

98 Reasons For Blogging: 3 - 6

3. While checking whether I had misspelled ‘impeccable’ in a comment I had already submitted to Laura’s blog, I noticed the word before ‘impeccable’ in The Chambers Dictionary aka ‘The official reference dictionary for Scrabble®’ is ‘impearl’. I learned that it meant ‘to decorate with, or as if with, pearls; to make pearl-like’, which seemed quite lovely. Then I turned my attention to the word before ‘impearl’, which is ‘impeach’. Alas, ‘impeach’ does not mean “to make peach-like”. It would be incorrect to say, “I am going to impeach this cake”, something which would be decidedly good to eat the outcome of, I think. If it meant to ‘decorate with peaches’, that is.

4. ‘Sunday on the Porch’ is a tradition that has been instituted by a friend while she has been house-sitting for three months in a spacious and renovated old Queenslander house. Yesterday was the last ‘Sunday on the Porch’. I wish I had taken my camera so I could show you some pictures of the very fine time we have on such occasions, but I was too busy collecting prawns and Riesling from the shops when my lift arrived, so I ran back down the hill and didn’t go back into my flat. I suppose I could have wielded my camera phone, but then I was too busy consuming at least a week’s ration of chocolate in one sitting. And laughing. And just talking about everything and nothing.

5. I don’t know what went on with Australian Idol last night. Big mistake letting the kids mangle contemporary music with a swing band make-over. That’s not a criticism of swing, more a sense of mystification about why they just wouldn’t just stick with music written especially for all that brass. Maybe the producers got sick of all those excuses along the lines of ‘I don’t know any swing/jazz songs’ and ‘This isn’t my comfort zone’. Oh wait, I think I counted at least five instances of the latter excuse. Will someone audition some musicians for this show please? You know, those people who are curious about genres of music that pre-exist the 1960s.

Now I have to reveal that, last night with the magic of video recording, I much preferred the other singing contest going on in this country at the moment, Operatunity Oz, in which contestants vie to sing in an Opera Australia production of Rigoletto and their very own recording with ABC Classic. Last night we found out that David Parkin, the bass, IT guy won the competition. I am very pleased by this.


When he sang in those low, low tones I swear my body vibrated the entire time. Excellent that Emily Burke is getting an ‘operatunity’ as well.


Here’s a joke from Richard Gill, the conductor of Opera Australia:

Q: How many sopranos does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Ten. One to change the bulb, nine to say they could have done it so much better.

6. ‘You may think that ‘cause you’re so much older than me, you know more about the world. Well, in some cases, that may be. But I read magazines. I watch TV. I know how people are supposed to treat each other’.

--From Northern Exposure: Shelley to Holling, after he abandons her at the altar.