wow.

evelyn lau (author of runaway: diary of a street kid) came to talk to our editing class today. she just talked about what it was like to be an author being edited, but just being in her presence was so...raw.

she published runaway when she was just 18 and listening to her speak and realizing what she's been through made me at once grateful that i never had to experience any of her hardships and sort of disappointed that i would never have the scope to be a genuinely profound writer.

i mean, i've had such a pedestrian upbringing...the brilliant creative geniuses that rise to acclaim, whether it be in writing or in art, seem to have had such hard lives -- most either psychologically disturbed or drug-addicted, or both -- and it makes me wonder if i'd need a similar kind of afliction to really understand.

evelyn lau was so articulate and seemed so warm and, well, normal. just speaking to her now, it's virtually impossible to picture her as a strung-out hooker on a vancouver street corner. it was amazing to hear her relay her experience with such linguistic perfection and then to realize that she didn't have an education past the age of 14.

that said, our editing instructor, who happened to edit runaway, actually, told us that she probably wasn't sustaining herself with just her writing and was likely getting some money from some freelance editing she was doing on the side. for some reason, i inexplicably found myself concerned for her well-being, something i don't feel i have the right to do.

wow.

i wrote the conclusion to my thesis on thursday night. i expected it to be much more cathartic an experience than it was, but i'm still glad that i've pretty much got the bulk of it done.

i asked the supervisor if it was at all realistic to expect to be able to submit my thesis before the 8 october deadline.

"it's not impossible," he says.

which means that if i elect to get no sleep and work on it every waking moment, it'll be down to the wire.

the first battery of corrections rolled in from my supervisor tonight. he's out of town, so he's got some funky-ass program that lets him scrawl notes on a PDF. he sent me the document full of barely-legible digitally rendered scribbles, but you know what? it's feedback, which is more than i've gotten in the last two weeks.

this weekend, i have to finish a paper for my text and context course, after having finally finished reading blockbusters and trade wars yesterday, a full week after i intended to be done with it. it doesn't seem like the paper should be that difficult, but for some reason, it's a bit of a time sink-hole for me right now. i aim to get it done tonight, meaning i should be up until 2 am. i also have to write a 5-page manuscript evaluation (requiring a partial re-reading of my manuscript) for my editing course and two TI sheets for the book publishing project. i'm expected to make corrections to my thesis in the meantime, something i'm not entirely sure where to fit. i'm way behind on my reading...oh...

went to dmac's for dinner tonight, though. shrimp and veggies in a green curry sauce on rice. and peanut-butter-cream pie. yum. oh yeah, and i got to see the incredibly (like, REALLY) phallic lava lamp that his parents brought him. what would his sigmund freud action figure say?

tomorrow, i go to the word on the street festival. first time i've gone, and i'm really excited about it. next saturday's sort of freaking me out, though. i'm sitting on a blogging panel for media democracy day and i have no idea what to prepare or what i should say.

i'm at my lab and the draft of my thesis is printing right now. the printer's taking its sweet time: one page every 12 seconds or so. somehow, the monstrous piece of garbage ballooned to 88 pages. maybe i inserted a few too many schematic diagrams.

anyway, i really shouldn't post if i don't have anything relevant to say. but maybe someone will post some encouraging comments about how i'll make it through this week without an aneurysm?

mpub's a lot of work, yes, but i'm still loving it. next saturday, i will be a corpse, but a happy corpse.

excellent.

others have graciously done what i wish i had but don't have time to do:

http://hate.erstwhiledelight.com/comicsans/

http://www.robinjohnson.f9.co.uk/comicsans.html

http://bancomicsans.com/home.html

now: just 300 pages to go in blockbusters.

ugh...

i still need to:
-put a real-space field plot into my thesis
-analyze the gaussian positioning simulation results
-write up the gaussian positioning simulation results
-write my conclusion
-insert my citations
-tighten up my introduction, which currently really really sucks.

i also have to finish reading (i just started yesterday) the over 400-page blockbusters and trade wars, three chapters in my prof's book, five papers on communication, culture and economics, my editing manuscript, two chapters in elements of typographic style and some pages in pocket pal by this weekend. i also have to finish my editing assignment, write up our publising imprint's mission statement, and start the review of blockbusters.

jebus.

i wish i could read faster.

mmmmm...

man, my apartment smells so fuckin' good right now...

i took a 3-hour break from thesis/publishing to bake apple pies. i don't know if they taste good, but they sure look and smell sexy.

i want to take a couple to the ubyssey kids tomorrow and maybe one for the mpub crew, but i don't want to seem like i'm trying too hard. maybe i'll just leave the mpub one at home for the guests i'm expecting for the game on tuesday.

thursday's and friday's classes were superb. i love my editing instructor; she's a big bag of fun. she's given us each a manuscript -- a real manuscript -- to work on for the term, and i have no idea how she keeps track of everything. apparently, it's customary for the editors not to have any of the manuscripts bound -- they just keep stacks of paper loosely kept together with rubber bands. the sample manuscripts our instructor brought in to show us were almost pristine; the corners were a little worn, but my one-week-old thesis draft looks more dog-earred than her copy of an edited manuscript that had been read time and time again. i don't know how i'll keep my manuscript from getting scrambled, disheveled and covered with food stains.

editing book manuscripts, it appears, is a lot more aggressive than i'm used to. or perhaps editing in an industry outside of the student press is a lot more aggressive than i'm used to. it's become quite evident that descriptivism has little place in book editing, and since the timeline is a lot more drawn out for a book than for a serial, there is emphasis on a certain conservative perfection.

i can't say that all of the books i've read have conformed to this standard, but it seems we'll be expected to adhere to it, in any case.

we've also been given a short editing test, and it's pretty much the worst piece ever written! god! it's truly, truly wretched: run-ons, incomplete sentences, sentences that just end, a complete lack of logical flow, spelling errors, diction and syntax errors, convoluted structure and generally uninteresting subject matter...i guess they're trying to throw everything at us to see how we'd do. i've seen worse submissions to the physics journal, but i've never had to edit any of them, 'cause i've always had the luxury of refusing to publish if i thought an article were sufficiently bad.

...i hadn't mentioned this earlier because the outcome was still in question, but one of the students who was supposed to be in our cohort was stopped at the border when he tried to cross up to canada from the states on tuesday. he's been trying to sort it out, but now it doesn't look like they'll solve the problem in time for him to join us. now, there are only three males in 17 students. we don't know, of course, why he was detained at the border. for lack of a better theory, i'm going with coke mule.

a few things i keep forgetting to mention:

i) mpub is the antiphysics. out of 18 students, 14 are female.

ii) i met three other edmontonians in the program yesterday. eerie. but cool. they all seem like solid people.

iii) sfu, like ubc, is a corporate whore of an institution. but sfu doesn't even try to be subtle about it. forget subway-sponsored orientation sessions; at the harbour centre campus, there's a labatt lecture theatre and a royal bank computer lab, just to name a couple.

iv) because it's so heavily sponsored, though, the building is emaculate, and i feel hideously underdressed. i also feel like i'm going to gain 30 kg by the end of the term 'cause everything moves for me. there are escalators and elevators -- nobody even knows where the stairs are, and i'm pretty sure they only open out to the ground floor.

v) sweet, sweet schematic diagrams. the key to turning a dry flimsy 16-page piece of poo into an MSc thesis. i'm about 3/4 of the way there...

mpub!

i had a first extraordinary class today. in text and context, we listened to a clip from a lecture given by lawrence lessig -- i still can't decide if he's a raging hippie or a crazy libertarian -- who thinks that everything should be free and in the public domain. he's on a mission to wrestle control of intellectual property, particularly that found on the internet, away from large corporations. his argument is that the concept of copyright is stifling culture.

it's a bit extreme, and completely neglects the incentive that copyright offers authors to create new material, but it sparked some compelling discussion.

the class was unlike anything i'd been to -- a complete departure from the prototypical university lecture; it looks like the course'll be more like a CUP conference, with discussion groups and guest speakers from the industry.

however, it looks like i'm going to have to do a buttload (yes, a buttload) of reading for this one course alone, and i'll have to rediscover how to write essays and term papers, something i haven't done in eons.

but i'm so excited!

and: i am a rockstar.

i never fancied myself much of a graphic designer; i knew the basic news design rules, but i never thought i had much of an artistic eye.

turns out i can design the pants off of most people in my class, with the exception of a few. i have to revel in it now, 'cause i know the learning curve for the other folks'll catch up with me frighteningly soon.

the mountain of reading and my thesis are conspiring to crush my soul, though, so i'm going to put a bit more of a dent in the old MSc.

i start school at my mpub tomorrow, and i'm quite, quite excited. so much that i have that nagging worry that i'll set my alarm clock wrong -- the whole am/pm thing -- and i'll be embarassingly late for my first day of school. i should really get to bed and try to get some rest (if i can -- my body still isn't allowing me to get a decent sleep despite my being utterly exhausted); i'm already a half an hour late for my desired bedtime. ah well. at least i'll get to bed earlier than the kids at the paper will... they have a sixteen pager, new unfamilar software (quark 6) and when i left at 10, the fonts weren't working properly and barely any of the photos were done.

today, i was supposed to head out for a picnic at the last MOMpop of the summer with HT, but i ended up flaking out and staying for lunch at home (which my sweetie didn't end up cooking until 2:30). technically, it was my breakfast, as i hadn't eaten anything beforehand, anticipating always that, oh, lunch should come soon enough.

ugh.

HT just ended up dropping off some baguettes and running off to the park alone. i met up with him and HP (!) later on and we hung out for a bit and ate gelato. a much-needed respite from my hours in front of the computer trying to get LaTeX to compile properly.

i picked up a few zines, and dmac's story was in it, but mine was not. they'd forgotten about my submission, apparently, so here is the little vignette for the zine, themed 'work less/play':

Cliff has not taken a single day off in ten years.

His dedication has earned him the proud distinction of 'employee of the
month' eight months running, a streak that started when he took on those
extra shifts on the weekend. He did come perilously close to losing the
title a couple months back when his eight-year-old daughter had a piano
recital at school and really ramped up the pressure on him to attend.

He held firm, though. "Daddy's got to work," he told her. He was being a
good provider, he justified it to himself. After all, those piano lessons
don't pay for themselves, and besides, he's diligently saving up his RRSPs
for his retirement in twenty years. When he finally retires, there'll be
plenty of time to spend with the family, which, at the moment, rarely ever
sees him. They realize, surely, that some sacrifices have to be made.

No matter - he's made his office into a home away from home, complete with
a kitchenette, with an endless supply of coffee and cereal bars, as well
as a small medicine cabinet with the latest in over-the-counter antacids
to temper his nagging ulcer.

It's all worth it, though. He doesn't have anything else to brag about,
really - he never really got into the arts all that much and he isn't
about to take time off to work on his golf game. His spotless work record
is his badge of honour.

"Ten years, eh?" his coworkers marvel at the company Christmas party.
"Wow...I could never do that."

Cliff beams with pride and rubs his wrists. The Carpal-tunnel that comes
and goes is back again.

You are a modern-day hero, Cliff. We salute you.

***

tonight, JW picked me up and set me down in a cardboard box. then he tried to haul me around in said cardboard box. i was unplussed.

on my way home, a woman saw a wounded pigeon and began to talk to it in a soothing voice. 'hey there, sweetheart. are you okay? you're not flying away... are you okay?'

if i were that pigeon, i'd be all 'no i'm not, but there's nothing you can do about it, so why don't you just leave me the hell alone?'

***

anyway, to the batcave!

or, to bed.

mathematica licks my balls.

wow.

i'm thesising to supertramp.

i never would have predicted this.

...

ugh...

i was intending on sleeping in this morning -- i really was.

got to bed at 2 am, not because of some wild s&m party with php-laced mdma, but because i'd been working on my thesis all day. my wrists are even beginning to get sore, something that happens when i've been at the keyboard and track pad a little too long.

problem is, i didn't really add any actual content yesterday; i was mostly just fighting with LaTeX to get the formatting right and spending hours trying to learn what the fuck i'm supposed to do to get adobe illustrator to give me an equivalent of i can get in ms-paint in a matter of seconds. i love LaTeX nerds who insist that it's the best typesetting software EVER and anyone who uses anything else is beneath them. truth is, LaTeX is a pain in the ass, as i expected it would be. yesterday was a continuous cycle of debugging and compiling, re-debugging and re-compiling. i honestly think that although i'd have to format my list of figures, table of contents and bibliography manually, i'd be mostly done all of this formatting garbage if i were working with quark.

like anything that the physics computer 'purists' insist is the superior alternative (e.g. UNIX) LaTeX has all of these unintuitive obscure commands that take special packages i have to find on convoluted download sites that are among the most poorly organized website i've ever visited.

anyway, seems my body will not let me sleep until i get the lion's share of this monstrosity done. doesn't really bode well...

i think i might write my acknowledgements today: i would like to thank the administrators of the corporate whore of an institution, ubc, my cranky supervisor and my lab's stifling social environment for jointly conspiring to make these past two years of my life both unenlightening and painfully disillusioning.

mh.

back to work. at least i have the lovin' spoonful to keep me company: did you ever have to make up your mind? pick up on one and leave the other behind. it's not often easy, and not often kind. did you ever have to make up your mind?

i sure have. sweet lady physics will no longer be getting my love...in fact, i've been cheating on her for some time now.

toilet seats.

the topic came up when i noticed that dmac, who is still squatting at our apartment -- and, incidentally, is one of the most considerate house guests we've ever had -- appeared to be quite, well, what north american society would prescribe to be 'well trained' in the art of putting the toilet seat down. apparently, though he lived in a household of three males and one female, the habit of putting the seat down is now so engrained, it's automatic.

my sweetie, on the other hand, has no such inclination, though also having grown up in a household of three males and a single female. it's a coin toss whether i'll find the seat up or down when i walk into our bathroom.

courtesy or etiquette, it seems, dictates that a man should always put the seat down after he's done taking a leak. i've never been a huge believer in this, just because i think it's just as fair for a woman to have to put the seat down if she needs it down as it is for a man to put it up if he needs it up.

so why has this seat issue been made into the stuff of crappy sitcoms? why is the down position considered the default, anyway? is it because women always need it down, and men sometimes need it down; therefore, it should be down most of the time?

yeah, there had been times of grogginess early on when i'd wandered into the bathroom and sat down, expecting there to be a seat and instead finding my ass treated to an ice-cold ceramic bowl...which is why now, i always check if there's a seat before i sit. i figured it much easier to train myself to check rather than train someone else (i guess it'd be my dad at that point) to put the seat down.

point is, i have absolutely no idea why people make such a big deal out of this. men never ask for directions. men don't replenish the toilet paper. men never put the toilet seat down.

well, women never put the seat back up.

***

you, reading this. yeah, you. weigh in on this, would ya? i haven't gotten comments in a long time, even with what i considered quasi-compelling content (and requests for help, you fuckers). hence, i offer drivel in the hopes of evoking some responses.

oh! two more days until freedom!

well, it will be more than that, since i've got at least 1/3 of my thesis to write yet. but friday is the last day that i believe i'm expected to be in the lab. i'll probably have to go in to gussy up diagrams and what not, and there are a few simulations that i'm still expected to run...seems my work will become my hobby and my hobby my work.

uh.

i'm never going to finish my thesis, am i?

the supervisor gave me some of the most useless feedback regarding what i've written so far. 'well, it's well-written. and nothing is sounding off any alarm bells. but you've got some blanks to fill in, of course.'

hm. of course.

no specifics about one section not being thorough enough or another section missing relevant information. no comments on how my diagrams should look. no feedback on the structure of the thesis and which sections should be rearranged. yeesh. i'm glad i don't care about this thing; otherwise, i might just be concerned at how profoundly in the dark i am.

the one thing that worries me just a bit is my tuition situation. since i'm not officially finished, i'll have to pay tuition this term. no job. two tuitions. better start cutting back on those high-priced escorts.