Adventures in Analogies

Being pleased instead of upset when mistaken for younger than you are : growing up :: feeling creeping horror rather than pride/elation when you realize your paper is going to be much too long : becoming a grad student

Sigh.
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Two-year anniversary in the Kingdom today (this account - I'm pushing a decade in total). Two years of wasting dramatic amounts of time and a not-insignificant couple hundred bucks or so in pursuit of cultural references, line-drawing aesthetics and completionist joy.

Worth it. Totally worth it.

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Text I just received from Kyle: im going to start telling people i live on the kanye westside so it sounds cooler

Writing is slow today - can you tell? I'm not sure why...out of practice probably, which always sends me relapsing into bad habits. How can it take so much time to write a totally reasonable 25 pages of answer when I already know exactly what I want to say?? It's so irritating.

Time to read me some inspirational Elbow quotes (helpfully listed on a sticky on the inside cover that I drew up last time I was having this issue), make a plan of attack, drink some more of this smoothie for energy and rally up.
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11:20pm. I'm calling it. I don't feel like I have nearly enough pages to show for my day, but I do have some - 6 to be precise, plus a solid pre-version of maybe 2/3 of the next one. I'm starting to see where I'll have to make cuts and where I need to allow time for more significant reshaping of material from my initial draft. I'm also getting a sense of where I'll be spending my limited strong-claim capital and where I'll be dressing up lit review in new clothing.

Wow I'm cracked out and tired and hungry and verging on incapable of recalling basic vocabulary. I need to step awayyyyyy from the keyboard - or at least the act of typing words, especially ones related to my draft.

I scream, you scream

Theorizing about whether or not the ice cream truck in my neighborhood sells drugs and if so how and what kind has recently become kind of a significant preoccupation with me lately. [Edit 6/14: This is like the worst sentence I've written in awhile. I was going to edit it but decided to leave it because it's almost humorous in its badness.] For those of you who've never seen this thing, this is less idle a speculation than it would be with most ice cream trucks. For one thing, this thing is *ancient.* I think significant portions of it are actually made of wood, it's so jury-rigged and generally all-around ghetto. In other words, it doesn't so much look like this:

As like this:

 Now imagine that baby but a model about 20 years older, painted a sickly light blue/grey with some kind of paint that's demonstrably not intended for automobiles, with "ice cream" hastily stenciled on both sides and the roof. That's more or less what we're talking about here. But I haven't come to the best part, the clincher that makes theorizing about its potential secondary wares so inescapable: roughly 3/5 of the time, it's playing Christmas carols.

The weirdness that brings is upped even further by the fact that I first heard it come around this year in like, late February or early March - some time in there when it was clearly and fully still winter. But also clearly and fully not Christmas either. Let me tell you, when you're 3/4 through a Wisconsin winter and nearly insane for some sign of spring's approach, there is nothing more surreal than seeing that symbol of golden summer afternoons, an ice cream truck, amble past while loudly playing "O Come All Ye Faithful." Now that it's the ice cream truck's natural season, it's been coming around more frequently - but still playing carols at least half the time, if not slightly more. I'm also not sure I've ever seen anyone buy from it (though I'm sure they must).

All of which adds up to it being impossible not to imagine this baby peddling drugs. And like, more than just a little pot - it's so bedraggled and worn-looking, so kind of half-assing its efforts to appeal to children (presumably, were it a legit ice cream sales venue, its target audience), so bereft of the lazy yet heartwarming colorful sloppiness of a stonermobile, that it's got to be something darker - more along the lines of meth. (Though admittedly that might be the 25-odd episodes of Breaking Bad I've watched in the past 5 days.)

My current operating theory is that it plays Christmas music to signal that it's open for non-ice cream related business. Because honestly - why else would you play Christmas music from your ice cream truck in May when you could be playing "Camptown Races" or "Farmer in the Dell" or any number of other chimey staccato renditions of classic non-seasonally themed favorites? Shit's got to be some kind of code.

In other news, prelims reading begins full-time in 6 days. God save me. Maybe I should look into buying some of that ice cream meth.

Priorities

I'm watching the first episode of The Walking Dead (itself a commentary on my priorities) and amidst the zombies, mayhem, shoot-outs etc I find myself most in awe of how incredibly warm and pleasant the weather there looks. That seems like the most unrealistic thing.

Epiphany comes but twice a year

Today I had one of those awesome moments of clarity that allow me to pretend for 10 months of the year that I secretly enjoy the end of the semester. I still have 17-20 pages to write, but I can see the entire path now, all the way to the end. I know where I'm going. It came late this term, but damn it still feels good.

I also discovered that Mike's syllabus requests a "20 to 30" page paper rather than 25 pages, as everyone's somehow come to believe. This was a joyous discovery, and led directly to the aforementioned flash of insight.

I will finish. There will be a life after this semester. It sounds stupid, but it's like driving in a lot of fog - everything feels less oppressively endless if you can see where you're headed.