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WckdWtch
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Name: Ris
Birthday: 9/6/1984
Gender: Female
Interests: vampires, pirates, dancing, dinner parties, art forgery, fiction, music, writing stuff sometimes, and being human
Expertise: the construction of Ulta-pods and sleeping in
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  Willow337
Member Since:
11/10/2003
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| I'll spare you from a detailed account of the last couple of months, suffice to say they have been somewhat busy, and I was in Australia for 2 weeks.
It's almost the end of the [my last real one as an MA student] semester, so I'm finishing up a paper on medieval feminism. My topics keep getting weirder the less applicable the class is to medieval things. I'm also trying to meet a self-imposed thesis deadline of having 1 complete draft done by the end of the semester. I just went to see the manuscript I'm working on for the first time in person, and I think I've made some good observations on which to base my last chapter. It feels like it will never be done, but I suppose I'm making progress.
The latest news is that I've been offered the opportunity to move to Paris for 3-4 months next year to do an internship with a medieval manuscript gallery there, and I have to say I'm completely enchanted with the idea. I'm still working on a way to make it financially feasible, but I think that it has to happen. It's just too good not to take it. So hopefully by this time next year "I'm poor but at least I live in Manhattan," will become "I'm really poor but at least I live in Paris."
Also finalizing a list of doctoral programs I'm applying to. I should start contacting professors soon and doing campus visits, taking the GRE, and start my actual application materials. Very exciting, I have to say. Anyway, things are happening and yay. Life feels very medieval lately, but in the good way, not in the plague-y sort of way. | | |
| I have a new blog!
It's about art, big surprise. Go read it and make interesting/funny comments!
http://artifice-art.blogspot.com | | |
| I never write in here anymore. I brought my real journal back home with me so I could write angstily over break, and I was reading some of the older entries. I used to be hilarious. I wonder if not writing very much except academic papers is making me less funny.
Anyway, break was eh, mostly due to lots of funeral-related activities and spontaneously bursting into tears at relatively unremarkable times. I did a reading at the mass, which went actually much better than I expected it to. It might be that I'm getting better at public speaking, but I actually think its whenever I have a microphone, I do better. Not sure why, but it seems to be a pattern. I got some nice presents (like my new, fabulous, fantastic, AND awesome risTouch 3000, which to everyone else would be a new ipod) and saw some movies, etc.
Which brings me to my next point. I'm compiling a list of end-of-the-world media that I'm going to use to create some sort of a "Everything I Need to Know to Survive the Endtimes I Learned from Movies" book/something I will never finish or do anything with, but what I do finish of it will hopefully be hilarious and awesome. I figure it could be one of those books that sits on the "Weird Stuff" tables on the way to the checkout at Barnes and Noble, akin to "Zombies 101," "The History of Salt," and other relatively pointless reference books. Anyway, I'm dealing with books and movies of the following categories: Horrible Humanity-Ending Infectious Illnesses, Alien Invasions, Natural Disasters and Space-Related Destruction, Humanity-Induced Destruction (nuclear war, etc.), Plague of Preternatural Creatures (Including but not limited to vampires, zombies, zombie-like vampires, etc.), Some Combination of the Aforementioned Occurrences.
Horrible Humanity-Ending Infectious Illnesses (often cross-referenced with Plague of Preternatural Creatures):
I Am Legend (book and movie)
World War Z (book)
28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later
Omega Man
The Andromeda Strain (also sort of alien?) (book and movie)
Blindness (book and movie)
The Stand (book, Stephen King)
The Last Man (book,Mary Shelley, 1826)
Earth Abides (book, George Stewart, 1949)
Emergence (book, David Palmer)
Oryx and Crake (book, Margaret Atwood, cr: post-apocalyptic plague scenario)
Outbreak
Alien Invasions:
Independence Day
Day the Earth Stood Still
When Worlds Collide
War of the Worlds (book and movie versions)
Day of the Triffids (also a book, but the movie's better)
Invasion of the Body-Snatchers
Natural Disasters and Non-Alien Space-Related Destruction:
The Day After Tomorrow
The Core
Deep Impact
Armageddon
Lucifer's Hammer (book, Larry Niven)
2012 (upcoming)
Dante's Peak
Asteroid
Humanity-Induced Destruction (often categorized as "Post-Apocalyptic" and including dystopic situations):
The Road (book and upcoming movie)
The Pesthouse (book, Jim Crace)
Planet of the Apes
Mad Max (Mad Max 2: Road Warrior, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome)
Reign of Fire
Children of Men
12 Monkeys
Soylent Green (overpopulation)
A Boy and His Dog (book and movie)
The Postman
On the Beach
A Canticle for Leibowitz (book, Walter Miller)
After London (book, Richard Jefferies, 1885)
Star Mans Son (book, Andre Norton, 1952)
Waterworld
Dr. Strangelove
Delicatessen (post-apocalyptic cannibalism, sort of)
Escape from New York
The Quiet Earth
Red Dawn
Plague of Preternatural Creatures:
The Birds (I'm a little unsure of where to put this one, actually)
Night of the Living Dead
Living Dead (book, Stephen King)
Day of the Dead
Dawn of the Dead
The Matrix Trilogy (are machines creatures? cr: post-apocalyptic)
Cloverfield (only 1 creature, cr: alien invasions)
Cell (book, Stephen King)
Shaun of the Dead
I'm a little torn on whether to include stuff like Resident Evil or Terminator. And there's a LOT of bad apocalypse/infection fiction out there that maybe should be left out, and overtly religious stuff like the Left Behind books (and movie), even though the Book of Revelation is awesome and will be included as literature somewhere along the way. Anyway, this is just what I've seen/read and could think of, so please SUGGEST MORE END OF THE WORLD STUFF FOR ME TO READ/WATCH. Oh, and for those of you who intend on being prepared for the apocalypse, http://survivetheapocalypse.wordpress.com/ is pretty great.
ALSO, it's Armageddon Week on the History Channel starting today until the 11th. Stuff about 2012 predictions and other such prophetic business. http://www.history.com/content/armageddon | | |
| ALMOST DONE.
I have to give a presentation (bleh.) about a BS subject (strictly aesthetic color use in medieval manuscripts) that I sort of made up tomorrow. I think it should go over fairly well, if I don't bore everyone to death in the process. I forget sometimes that not everyone lurves medieval things as much as I do, especially modernist abstract expression-ey MFA students. I also have to take a final, but it's about medieval things and doesn't require public speaking, so it should be OK. Then I'm done with school for the semester (and in turn required to begin Serious Work on my thesis).
I'm taking one more class while thesis-ing in the spring semester, it's called Feminists and Feminism in Art and Art History. I've heard good things about the prof, and will hopefully be less lecture and more discussion. It's actually the last content course I have to do for my MA, so theoretically I'll be totally done with everything by this time next year. Whoa.
In non-school news, I've been baking like crazy for Christmas, and I've managed to fill every single tupperware container in the kitchen, and oh no, I'm nowhere NEAR done yet. Flying home to the IL on the evening of the 22nd, and I'm looking forward to seeing home people and eating chain restaurant food. Specifically, as usual, Caribou, Noodles & Co., and Chili's. And Panera. Especially because 2 of those 4 have free wi-fi. ;) | | |
| Fantastic Thanksgiving weekend. Good food, sleeping in, shopping at outlet stores, etc. The deal of the weekend was my $1.40 gloves from Wal-Mart. It's no wonder that place is doing well since the economy imploded. 56 cent pot pies and $2.50 contact solution?! We could all live like kings in the suburbs. But then we'd have to live in the suburbs, so I guess that's the trade-off.
Alone at work again today, boring boring boring boring boring.
I have stuff to do after work almost every day this week, which mean gym-time gets cut, which is dumb. I hate to miss my awesome spin class with the fabulously gay instructor. He's big into motivational techniques and "self words" like "amazing, "unstoppable," and "outrageous." I would go to the class just to be entertained by him.
Only 3 weeks until Christmas break now, which is pretty awesome, but I have so much to finish between now and then it still seems pretty far away. Yawn. I want to go home and sleep for like, 4 days. | | |
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