Saturday, September 09, 2006

Chiefy's last stand...

It's late, or early, depending on your point of view, I don't know, it's always 3am with me(although I've never met any of the 3am girls*). I've just finished three grad bar/rose splitt shifts and have about 2 and half days to a serious amount of writing.

My Phd supervisor's been away for a year and arrives soon, if not now (I'm back to being the Padawan**and my Obi's coming over on a star glider of some sort), me and fellow her-supervisee HH are hoping for a few days of jet-lag before she comes gunning for us, I jest, for Me, HH is a good student, and diligent. In a bittersweet stylee I'm looking forward to it, the auld supes doesn't accept any academic shoddiness, she can with a sideways look make you admit that what you wrote isn't what you really meant or what you are actually capable of. Once during my Batman chapter I was giving out about capitalism and how the desire attached to products (and what owning them would achieve) was always just out of reach of what the products actually provided and she gave me a look that immediately made me admit that this was secondary school essay idealism. Suffice to say, she knows when you're spoofing or bluffing or padding. Many supervisors may know when their students are doing this but few these days do anything about it, she actually gives a shit in an academic world when people increasingly don't.

I'm fearful though, not of getting it done, which was my fear in the past, but of not caring about arguing with people and not entering into academic networking. I'll be the cantankerous academic who is arguing with nearly everyone and never gets a job because I don't agree with nearly anyone. Ironically, I seem to get on and agree with a lot of people, just not people who are ascending the ranks of my academic discipline. Whatta ya gonna do: grin and bear it, like when I'm pulling a Kitchen Porter face (this mostly occurs when I have to do things like somehow distribute 4 separate carrot slices between three portions of veg to 'add colour'!). Perhaps like Owen Meany I have weirdly picked up skills from various points in my life that are integral to this the main thing I have to do now.


Whatever, sorry to bum ye's all out at the weekend. Things that are good: this caught some of A Decade Under the Influence (2003) on film 4, gave some more firely guff in me gut that that all culturla production doesn't have to be guff. Maybe because I was born in the 1970s, 1976 to be precise I have nostalgia for that decade, in the style of current student I *heart* the 1980s disco nights, one has nostalglia for the decade you barely conscious, you know in a primal scene stylee.

Ok Go!'s oh no! still makes me laugh, Richard Hawley's Long Black Train is great, I only liked it because it's in V for Vendetta and it's the song that comes on Stephen Rea's alarm on the moring of November 5th and he pulls another 'ah bollix' face and says 'today's your big day...are you ready? are we ready?'. Ah well, probably true of me too, i'll have a good sleep for once and get up and get too it, and all the mooks better be ready 'cause the chief'll be there ready to bring it. Gawd help us all, am sick of mincing my words, you know, I have things top say about films and such that I find pretty unpalatable, but in my experience a lot of people have agreed with them so I should listen them (and myself) and not the pedestrrain mooks that populate the academic landscape.

P.S. this post would have been longer and more well written if my 'puter wasn't spazzing out, seriously, I type something and it doesn't appear on the screen for about a minute afterwards, this keyboard better strart complying or it'll out the fucking window. Better leave it, more soon.

*Wasn't there three of the 3am girls once? what is this the Sugababes?
**I hope I don't turn into whiny Hayden Christensen

1 comment:

Bad Brute said...

Keep it up Chief. We're all rooting for you here in squaresville. We know it's not guff. Get the head down laddie - ooer!