Don't you ever have one of those days?
You know the kind of days that I'm talking about - the days where you get up with the best intentions to get lots and lots of work done and then somehow all of the planets dis-align or the sky happens to be dreary or you can't find matching socks, or the light INEXPLICABLY KEEPS FLICKERING IN YOUR KITCHEN, or you lose your favorite pen, or the library is just too cement-constructed and spider infested or whatever - and you are totally incapable of producing any original work?
This, obviously, happened to me today. I have tried everything from Mountain Dew (also known as "liquid Chi, or Qi [as I have been informed by the scrabble master Jett]), to Doritos, to jammies and socks, to constructing a fortress of books around my computer, to rereading my notes on this paper again and again and alas alas it is all for naught.
I had to abandon the "Amber Gods" paper and take up the "Artist of the Beautiful" paper in desperation, and produced an outline at least, and converted the first couple of chunks into prose that may become part of the final paper (mmmmmm Kant and Borudieu). My only hope is that armed with this ultra-detailed outline I can attack this paper again on Sunday and get more of it written.
Whine Whine Whine. I'm just being a pain in the ass I know, so to cheer myself up and to make this blog entry something less of a disaster I will present you all with a very disturbingly named drink in connection with a very disturbing story called "Green Tea" by J.S. Lefanu.
This story, for those who have not read it (and by all means, you should be marked with some kind of teabag to be worn on the chest a-la-Hester Prynne's scarlet A, for your sin against the gothic) is all about (and I swear I'm not kidding) a man who thinks that he is being followed around by a little black monkey with glowing red eyes that tells him to do awful things like kill himself and others. Upon reading this story I really could form no other interpretation than that of particularly florid visual and aural hallucinations brought on by an acute schizophrenic episode.
But this will just not do for a gothic text and somehow this entire experience is parleyed into an analysis of western mystic traditions.
The concerned narrator / doctor states: "The seat, or rather the instrument of exterior vision, is the eye. The seat of interior vision is the nervous tissue and brain, immediately about and above the eyebrow, You remember how effectually I dissipated your pictures by the simple application of iced eau-de-cologne...cold acts powerfully as a repellant of the nervous fluid... I have not, I repeat, the slightest doubt that I should have first dimmed and ultimately sealed that inner eye which Mr. Hennings had inadvertently opened." (207)
Yes, of course - obviously the mystic third eye (in the forehead in most representations) can be closed with a simple cold compress! Why didn't we think of that before? That's it, round up all of the schizophrenics and particularly enlightened monks - we'll ice them all down and thereby preserve the scientific validity of real empirical progress!
Which brings me to my drink (again courtesy of the "Bartenders Guide to COCKTAILS & MIXED DRINKS") known as (I swear) "Monkey Gland" [can you imagine yourself going up to a bartender and asking for a "monkey gland”? I assure you that I cannot.]
2 measures gin
1 measure orange juice
1/2 measure grenadine
1/2 measure absinthe
"Shake the ingredients with plenty of ice, and strain into a large wine glass, Garnish with a slice of orange" (122)
Perhaps it is the absinthe that makes this particularly appalling and yet intriguing, as absinthe (previous to the 1990's) "contained wormwood in concentrations held responsible for corroding the brain" (53)
My personal medical opinion is that both the schizophrenic AND the doctor deserve healthy doses of this drink in it's 1930's form and a prolonged stay sweeping floors in a Buddhist colony.
You know the kind of days that I'm talking about - the days where you get up with the best intentions to get lots and lots of work done and then somehow all of the planets dis-align or the sky happens to be dreary or you can't find matching socks, or the light INEXPLICABLY KEEPS FLICKERING IN YOUR KITCHEN, or you lose your favorite pen, or the library is just too cement-constructed and spider infested or whatever - and you are totally incapable of producing any original work?
This, obviously, happened to me today. I have tried everything from Mountain Dew (also known as "liquid Chi, or Qi [as I have been informed by the scrabble master Jett]), to Doritos, to jammies and socks, to constructing a fortress of books around my computer, to rereading my notes on this paper again and again and alas alas it is all for naught.
I had to abandon the "Amber Gods" paper and take up the "Artist of the Beautiful" paper in desperation, and produced an outline at least, and converted the first couple of chunks into prose that may become part of the final paper (mmmmmm Kant and Borudieu). My only hope is that armed with this ultra-detailed outline I can attack this paper again on Sunday and get more of it written.
Whine Whine Whine. I'm just being a pain in the ass I know, so to cheer myself up and to make this blog entry something less of a disaster I will present you all with a very disturbingly named drink in connection with a very disturbing story called "Green Tea" by J.S. Lefanu.
This story, for those who have not read it (and by all means, you should be marked with some kind of teabag to be worn on the chest a-la-Hester Prynne's scarlet A, for your sin against the gothic) is all about (and I swear I'm not kidding) a man who thinks that he is being followed around by a little black monkey with glowing red eyes that tells him to do awful things like kill himself and others. Upon reading this story I really could form no other interpretation than that of particularly florid visual and aural hallucinations brought on by an acute schizophrenic episode.
But this will just not do for a gothic text and somehow this entire experience is parleyed into an analysis of western mystic traditions.
The concerned narrator / doctor states: "The seat, or rather the instrument of exterior vision, is the eye. The seat of interior vision is the nervous tissue and brain, immediately about and above the eyebrow, You remember how effectually I dissipated your pictures by the simple application of iced eau-de-cologne...cold acts powerfully as a repellant of the nervous fluid... I have not, I repeat, the slightest doubt that I should have first dimmed and ultimately sealed that inner eye which Mr. Hennings had inadvertently opened." (207)
Yes, of course - obviously the mystic third eye (in the forehead in most representations) can be closed with a simple cold compress! Why didn't we think of that before? That's it, round up all of the schizophrenics and particularly enlightened monks - we'll ice them all down and thereby preserve the scientific validity of real empirical progress!
Which brings me to my drink (again courtesy of the "Bartenders Guide to COCKTAILS & MIXED DRINKS") known as (I swear) "Monkey Gland" [can you imagine yourself going up to a bartender and asking for a "monkey gland”? I assure you that I cannot.]
2 measures gin
1 measure orange juice
1/2 measure grenadine
1/2 measure absinthe
"Shake the ingredients with plenty of ice, and strain into a large wine glass, Garnish with a slice of orange" (122)
Perhaps it is the absinthe that makes this particularly appalling and yet intriguing, as absinthe (previous to the 1990's) "contained wormwood in concentrations held responsible for corroding the brain" (53)
My personal medical opinion is that both the schizophrenic AND the doctor deserve healthy doses of this drink in it's 1930's form and a prolonged stay sweeping floors in a Buddhist colony.
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