I had written something angsty about struggling with my current assignment  but someone who shall remain nameless closed my browser before I hit the publish butter and all was lost.  Never mind it was just a critical apprication of Homer’s The Odyssey in 500 words or less – I swear I’ve accidentally enrolled at the Reader’s Digest University or something.  The fastidious and fickle faculty favour the 500 words or less approach these days it seems.  The last ‘briefing note’ (not quite sure when  essays became ‘briefing notes’) I completed was to answer the question ‘What is World History?

Yeah that one was fun.  I should post it up here for shits and giggles and you can all pick it to bits.  Was totally flying blind on that one and had NO idea what they were wanting from us.  Received my graded ‘briefing note’ back on Wednesday and was rather surprised to be given a Distinction for it.  However, when I read back over it – I discovered that I don’t even remember writing one iota of it.  The content was familiar but the actual paper itself seemed unrecognizable to me.  So that was probably either because my subconscious had blocked out the entire horrific experience (due to the psychologically traumatic nature of the damn question) or because my medications and generally pain muddled brain is messing with me again… which I admit seems more likely.

But I digress… back to Homer and the damn 500 word limit.  How can you write about an epic saga in 500 words – let alone THE epic saga.  I reckon if you did a word tally of every sentence in the poem that mentioned ‘the rosy fingered dawn’ you’d get more than 500 words.  I’ve done a rough draft in dot points trying to be as concise as possible and I’m already 700 words on the page and it’s not even in proper sentences yet.  Shame the assessment criteria doesn’t say anything about how much you get penalized for applying generous artistic license to the ‘limit’.

Anyway, in amongst the gnashing of teeth this afternoon I found this link to this Odysseus Nostos – little stick man anime thing of The Odyssey for anyone whose not read it…  though in truth it’s probably more amusing if you have.
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Yes, I’m still out here am still alive but I seem to be always busy… Busy.  Busy.  Busy.
Busy and tired… and pained…  Busy and tired and pained…

The ‘tired’ and the ‘pained’ bit are irrevocalbly intertwined I think – which basically means on that front that I have very little to say that isn’t a recontextualization of my regular litany of complaints relating to my physically phucked up traitorous body.  The ‘busy’ bit unfortunately reads like catalogue of dramas… most of which I’m happy to report are not mine but I am positively too exhausted to list here.

Other than that – I’m back at Uni… which is both refreshing and alarming.

‘Refreshing’ because I have somewhere to go for a change that isn’t to a quack and am filling my head with something other than pain and drug induced apathy/ennui and hopelessness. 

‘Alarming’ beacuse I realize just how self indulgent and delusional our young people are.  Yes I am that annoying mature student that eveyone loves to hate for contnuing to monopolize the tutors so that the sessions always go for the full hour (gotta get good bang for you buck you know).   But all the toddlers want to run off and play instead of milking their tutorials for useful information that might help them pass their exams.

If I had a ratty hair style, was prepared to put on makeup everyday, dug up some old 80s yuk retro clothes and got me a Macbook and then waste breath complaining about the cost of drinks in the commons… then I’d fit right in.  Oh, but I’d have to unlearn about 75% of my vocabulary and replace all of it with the word ‘like’.  Which I don’t see happening in a hurry.

I’m doing three courses at the moment and hoping I can stick it through to the end.  Sitting in the lectures for too long has been giving me plenty of headaches to contend with unfortuanately so back to relying on the drugs more.

I’m studying English literature in a class entitled ‘Reading Fiction’ which is about reading books someone else chose, convincing yourself they were enjoyable and then ripping them into itty bitty unrecognizable bits of narrative, characterization and plot nonsense etc…  We’ve been doing Albert Camu’s – The Outsider which is fabulous.  I’m thinking of doing a psychological diagnosis on what the hell is wrong with the protagonist… I’m convinced he’s sociopathic.

I’m also doing the pretentiously labelled ‘Great Books A’ (am assuming there’s a ‘B’ out there somewhere for next year) where we’re studying various works of ‘fiction’ as pertaining to the theme of ‘The Journey’… so we’re looking at Homer’s The Odyssey (obviously), the Genesis as contained in the King James bible (hehehe… fiction!), Beowulf, Shakespeare’s The Tempest and the one I’m really not looking forward to – Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (yeurk… doesn’t interest me at all).  This class is kinda fun, but it’a also like watching the toddlers trying to find the meaning of life in "Where’s the Green Sheep?"   These kids can google the living hell out of anything and can vomit out relative speils on everything… but try to engage them in further discourse and they’ve got nothing to back up what they managed to remember in the ten minutes they Wikkied the books for.

And last but not least I’ve adventurously signed up for ‘World History’… which is a bit like trying to absorb everything ever printed by the Oxford University Press that pertains to any and all historical endeavour in relation to human interactions and influence as they ertain to population congregation or division, ideology, politics, religion, scientific knowledge, customs, secualr law, architectural achievelments, traditions, trade, war, taxation, pestilence, empirical experience and Nasty Kings, Caliphs and Emperors 101 with an edgy sort of ‘Eddie Izzard speed archeology’ feel about it.   I already did my first assignment ‘briefing note’ on this one… was up until stupid o’clock last night trying to answer the question "What is World History?"…. in 500 words or less!  

Umm… could we be a little less specific please? I’m much more comfortable working with broader concepts.  Fuck.  I said to the tutor that I was really struggling to address the topic given how broad and encompassing it is… I told him if he wanted 2500 words on the use of religious iconograpghy in opus anglicanum embroidery of the 13th century then sure I can do that…. but only 500?  To attempt to sum up the entire history of the world?  Fuck off.   It’ll be interesting to see how I went with that   :S

So given that I was up until 0330 last night and was then rudely awoken (I’m told) by the Gyprock guys delivering crap at 0650… I should probably get off the PC and go to bed…. so g’night

Oh and I bought myself a motorbike today.