Well, today’s a day to…

Well, today's a day to catch up on my reading. So far, I've read the one American Studies essay, and now have a passel of lit. crit. essays to go. Here's the list:

• Sundquist, "Melville, Delany, and New World Slavery"
• Marx & Engels, from The German Ideology
• Marx, from A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
• Eagleton, "Ineluctable Options"
• Althusser, "Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatus"
• Althusser, "A Letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre"
• Zizek, from The Sublime Object of Ideology
• Adorno, "Culture Criticism and Society"
• Horkheimer, "Traditional and Critical Theory"
• Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society"
• Butler, "Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of Postmodernism"
• Mouffe, from The Return of the Political

In theory, I should have those read for tomorrow. In practical terms, we're enough behind that we're unlikely to get past the Zizek in tomorrow's discussion. So I'm planning to get to that point; if I'm motivated to read further, great. If not, no big deal. But I really hope I make it through the Zizek -- the last couple of weeks I've had several classes when I wasn't caught up with the reading, and they're just intensely frustrating, made worse by knowing I've brought this misery on my own head.

I also need to write a little piece for nonfiction class tonight, and submit a proposal for my final lit paper, and prep to teach memoir tomorrow, and finish marking up their stories. It's gonna be a long day, as I wander from desk to bed to kitchen (while waiting for tea to brew) to papasan in sunroom to dining table to rocking chair...

Noon. Sundquist, check. Marx, Engels and Marx again, check. Best new word: "enserfed" -- very cool term. Most surprising word to encounter in Marx: "muck", referring to a vast array of processes. Most common reading location: papasan. Background music, Holst's The Planets, in honor of the recent Leonids that I blissfully slept through, and providing a most appropriately dramatic background to Marx.

2:00. If you want to know what I think about all this ideology stuff, read Terry Eagleton. It was such a relief reading someone saying what I thought -- and saying it clearly and logically, with illuminating examples. If all critical theorists wrote like this, I would read a lot more critical theory for fun. The only sadness is that I know my professor is going to demolish Eagleton (and by extension, me) in class tomorrow. You may expect me to have at least a minor, and possibly major, existential crisis over Thanksgiving break.

In addition to reading dutifully, I did goof off some; I went over to my Amazon wishlist and updated with books, music, techno-toys, etc. I even added the laptop that it'd be very nice if my parents got my for Xmas, if they're feeling flush (which they may be, now that they've just finished putting their last daughter through college). Fingers crossed. The one I have is adorable, but is getting rather full, in various ways. I also added some Visor stuff (did I mention that I managed to spill orange juice on my Visor over this last visit? It still works, but the screen seems a bit messed up now. :-( Much sadness. I also ruined my copy of Melville's Benito Cereno). I would've added a modem card for my Visor, but what I really want is something that will let me hook up my Visor to my Samsung cell phone, so that I can check e-mail in airports and other such places where I can't just hook up my laptop to a normal phone line. And I couldn't find any such thing for the Visor. Does it not exist? Am I just a dork? I don't really want to sign up for a new service plan, either; I want to use my existing Spring PCS minutes. Is this really too much to ask?

In any case, it was fun to shop. I love Christmas. :-)

(Btw, did one of you send me an Ondaatje book for my birthday? It arrived late-ish at David's, and I picked it up the last time I was out there, but now I can't find it (it's probably *somewhere* in my apartment), so I don't remember a) which one it was or b) who it was from. Please drop me a line if it was you, so I can thank you properly...)

Back to theory, my darlings. And while I'm reading that, you really ought to be reading this week's new Strange Horizons. :-)