The Calamity of Calamities

...otherwise known as the march of winter. *shakes his fist at the gods of nature, envisioning himself as Basil Fawtly -- sad and lonely, manic and depressive....very thin and angry*

(Hence follows a rather circuitous path until my eventual discussion of writing.)

As I think of it, quite like Basil, I too want to smash something with a small tree. No master chef has screwed my orders of duck and no gay French chef is drunkenly macking on my Spanish monkey. However, bludgeoning a nice sapling might go well to putting a smile on my face. Not that I don't have a smile on my face as it is, but we all want more happiness and tarnation if a beaten tree wouldn't serve that great purpose.

Do you ever get depressed that there are only 12 epidsodes of "Fawlty Towers" -- upset that the comedic genius of some snarky (for you, hippy) Brit will never find laughter again in a hotel? Yeah, me too.

I feel the desire to post, yet I am seriously lacking in the realm of "what in the hey to talk about." So....anywho.

How great is Hugh Laurie?! Yeah, he would be cool to talk about when I am not in the depths of food laden not-caringness. Or something. I think I'll try to make myself more empathetic to the cares of this world and my own mind by working on some probability homework. And yet, I think it was that homework that actually put me in such a mood. Rancour worthy!

Also rancour worthy is a discussion I had yesterday with an English professor who is helping me massage a paper on Ophelia into an item worthy of publishing or conferencing. I have my doubts, both concerning the merits of the paper and the time I have to give to such an endeavor. Yet, he's enthusiastic and cute when he gets excited, so I'll try and do what I can. However, talk about cutting me down yesterday. I revised the paper for him and after the weekend he called me in with the command to "scratch it and start over." Fan-freakin'-tastic! Not only that but he told me the paper was a rather bad undergraduate paper. Shucks there matey, it's the same paper you gave me an A on last semester. Actually, I've always believed the paper sucks mightily and was ever so surprised when he marked me well on it. So that didn't both me too much.
In fact, the whole "smackdown" didn't bother me, other than I really don't have the time to invest in the revision. My writing, or myself and thus my writing, reaches very few people. So when I get the chance to hear someone critique my writing, I'm truly happy for the opportunity. Everyone says I write well and generally no one looks at me funny when I tell them I want to write fiction in another life (I take that as a good sign, do not delude me!). And yet, I don't want to rest on being the "good" writer in class. I want to hear the bad things -- how wordy and vociferous I can be; how much I can belabor a point when I'm interested in it; or how, when I don't have anything to say, I can say so very little. Who the hell becomes a good writer if they're always good, never failing to meet expectations? (Probably exactly that person, but let's roll with such an assumption.) Suffice to say, it is a pleasure to have professors (along with my parents, Editors for Life - not to be outdone by Elisabeth of course, but she's the newbie)...rip into my writing. I want to be told I have to push myself. And over the course of the past 2 years I have been given great advice.
Through my essay to the Cambridge scholarship I learned just how negative effusive use of the forms of "to be" can be. It was through my rather existential investigation of "Six Characters in Search of an Author" and various other grammar papers for the same professor that I learned resting on even the most imaginary of laurels really hurts the creative, intellectual spirit. And even though I failed to get published, my Heart of Darkness paper very much instilled the need to tightly edit -- my sentences can wander; while such may be cool for fiction, to get a logical point across....so not cool! While I certainly don't apply all the things I have learned, the very fact I had to learn has been instrumental to how I write, or how I approach writing. So often writing existed just as a way to communicate with myself, now I get the chance to test how well I can express myself to others.

So I look forward to this experience, which falls in line behind many others. Even though it is scary. Even though I have been and surely will be frustrated with the lack of time I can give. The opportunity is fantastic, I get to learn how to write! Though such might sound rather naive, it is my hope. I write so that I can write better in the future. I know that writing as a career or even a hobby may exist solely in my mind. But, it's almost the one thing I'm doing that I really want to do. So I'll rock it as long as I can. Rock it like John Elway, 4th Down and 10, 15 yards to the endzone, Broncos down by 6. You know.