Play It Again Sam

It's late and I'm not really sure what I'm going to be telling you guys about. I'm very confident about the Ginsberg essay, I have six days till first term is over, oh and apparently I have to take an English Proficiency Exam on...the 7th of April, which is...next tuesday. After that it's home and in all likelyhood a job of somekind. I'll have moved out of my dorm, back into my room and will be getting short stories written. This will be a summer of short stories, since I'm going to give Last Dance Revolution a rest until such a time as I can write it, probubly when I find a woman who returns my romantic interests.

Well, that honestly seems to be it. Other then that my toe started bleeding after a long walk. I have a bandaid on it now though, so it's alright. I'm a bit unnerved by this. Oh, and I may be making a speech on my life as a person of Autism in September. Maybe someone could film it and I could put it up here on my blog. I'd have youtube videos...of me.

That's all, good night everybody.

Seven Days Till Summer

If there were any great legendary bloggers I'm sure that they would blog on a regular basis. Of course, if they were great bloggers, then they would simply great and only blog once a year but it would be such good writing nobody would care. But since blogging is more of a diary format for exhibitionists then it would probubly be more of writing close to every day, or at least banging out something on a regular basis.

Well, I suppose I can use the excuse that I have been busy not doing any school work. I am however, very close to finishing the Ginsberg essay. I have six pages out of the minimal ten, and I think I could easily get to that. Maybe even nine pages if I think of what else should go in here. At the moment I doubt if I'm writing mainly about poetic speaker, but I'm sure it could be read that way.

Also, my favorite home cafe has undergone changes. I wish I had before or after pictures to show you guys, but I never bothered to do that. I checked with the lady who owns this place, whom I will call Nora Dalloway, and she said it's alright if I show you how it looks from the back...

And here's how it looks from the front, with the owner Nora Dalloway.

Nora is the person with the blurry arms. Well, a friend just walked in, so I'm checking out.

I Found the Centre of Changeling Activity in Waterloo

Hey everyone. Special shout out to Shelia who disapeared for a long time and is back now. I thought she had gone, good thing I kept the link. Notice how I stole your idea for stealing pictures Shelia.

Well, I should be doing a tone of reading, but instead I'm back at Cafe 1842, which apparently is also the place were the Waterloo Changeling the Lost LAARP meets. What do you know? I've been meaning to get in on that, and I've been working through various characters. I've settled on a version of the Changeling character I had in a latter game, since he would work better here. I did some editing, and he's turned out to be something of a Dean Moriarty type character with some turn over from reading "The Savage Detectives," by Roberto Bolano, and I changed his surname from "Ryder" to "Faraday." So I'll be playing a Changeling car thief and poet with Amnesia, Nightmares and a lost girlfriend named Lucinda who he is desperatly searching for. He's probubly going to join the Spirng Court and write the occasional poem on other members. There's a bit about some Gorilla Warfare that took place before I came in that I'd like to write about, because that sounds fun. I might put it up for you guys.

So, while I've been sitting here I've been working out a plan for the week ahead, since I need to get alot done. As of yet it is incomplete, since I need to figure out how many pages of "The Inbetween World of Vikram Lall" to read per day. I'll have to check back at home. But today I'll have to do the following (at least).

• Read "The Squatter" for English
• Read the last bit of an essay in "Leisure."
• Write a response on how affective I found the Essay Workshop
• Work on my Ginsberg Essay

I'd say also read 25-50 pages of Vikram Lall too. So far it's alright I guess. To be honest these bildugsroman type books can be a bit annoying, since I'm reading about the guys childhood. Something about it reminds me of "Midnight's Children," only it's in Kenya and there's nothing involving various a thousand and one magic children. Both the main characters are Indians though, it's just that Vassanji's book is in Kenya. The British Empire would take Indians to India to work on railroads and put something between them and the native's spears. Or something like that. Anyways, I wouldn't call this one of the best novels I've read so far. I preferred Robertson Davies, maybe because I could feel more of an emotional connection with Davies and his mind set. Shame I can't meet him because he's dead.

Constantine's Sword Continued: The World and The Holocaust

We're discussing Maus in English, so I thought that this would be a good time to continue my thoughts about Constantine's Sword, this time dealing a bit with anti-semetism as I will be speaking about the Holocaust. For readers who are not familiar with the previous post, I am setting up a link to the first post here. I don't know if that post has much to do with this, but I figured it's related to the same topics, and I might as well add it.

So, the Holocaust and the Nazis have been popping up pretty often in my English course, which is why I'm writing this. This is a response to a question raised by my professor. I thought it would be a good idea to do this as a blog post. Maus is pretty directly about the Holocaust, since it's the memoirs of the author's father and his father's survival in Auschwitz, but imagery of World War Two and the Holocaust has been popping up in lots of places in our readings. We've seen it in the first three poems, which were there to deal with World War One, but we've seen reference to the Holocaust and the Nazis in Leonard Cohen, Sylvia Plath, Robertson Davies and probably a few others I've forgotten. Ironically, I also read Roberto Bolano's Nazi Literature of the Americas around this time, which while being a Spanish novel or anthology can apply to this. The question that my professor raised is, why does everything seem to lead back to the Holocaust?

I've been trying to understand this myself. It's not like people kill other people, heck this is probably going on right now. But why does this particular thing have so much affect on us. You could slap on a picture of a swastika to something and automatically that thing is tainted.

To be perfectly honest, I don't have any good idea why this is. In the absence of any rational exclamation, I will go on to non rational. My guess is that the Nazis made a giant psychic wound that we have no understanding of how they did it. They may not even have conciously known that they were doing it, except for a select few but those were all shot or activly trying to do this. Because of this hole in the fabric of the universe, our conciousness is trying to process all this information. Since the Nazis were at the right time and place in history to pull this off, they have been able to do this, and we are dealing with their psychic refugee. I really don't think something like this is out of the question. Some of the Nazis, especially Himmler were into weird magick-with-a-k stuff like this. I'm not saying this is there actual plan, but maybe I'm wrong about this more, and the fact I can apply something as heighnous as a gouging out the collective unconcious of mankind is just something that comes from this. Maybe that was what the Holocaust was, and since it got more press then other mass genocides it was given more precident.

Once, as a child, I had a fantasy world I would play in and fight various fictional enemies in. One of these were alien Nazis from another demension. I didn't really understand what the Nazis were for, at least not in the big picture. I knew that they were evil, and that was all that matters. This dosen't have to do with anything in this, but I thought it would be important to bring up. It may be important to note that they were also the opposite of my good-semi elvish species the Draan. I have recently decided that once I get around to creating the Draan language, Hebrew will be a major influence.

I'm Still Alive Everyone

I'm running against my own body and sleep deprevasion. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. I have to write six more pages in my Ginsberg essay that I don't know if I can write. I know what I'm writing about, I just can't get my thoughts in order. God, I'm so tired. That's what I've been for the past few days. Tired, I feel almost Beat in the Beat Generation sense. I even had a religious experience that I'll write about sometime soon I hope. I have to run by what I've written on Monday to four other English students and I have a test on Aristotle in philosophy. Aristotle god damn, he's the scientist! Plato will have been the Platonic form of cake compared to Aristotle. All this talk about rational thought is making me sick. I don't even believe that rational thought exists.

I'm so tired of all of this. I don't know how I'll get through the end of the year. I feel like I could collapse at anytime from mental exhaustion. I feel like I'm going through my days in a daze. I'm so frustrated that I can't finish what should be such a simple essay for me. It's Allen Ginsberg god damn it. I read Howl before I even came to University. He's my favorite poet. I should have had this finished days ago, but I'm not and it dosn't look like it's going to be finished tonight.

I finished Maus, which was good. I'm supposed to have that read for Monday. At least I've got something done, I also picked up a book on Howl and dropped off a resume for a job for summer. Were, my mom and I, are thinking that this summer I'm going to forgoe any classes. The job is as a dishwasher and shouldn't be to frustrating. The place seems to be a good environment. Small, quirky. I could write a few short stories about it, even a novel. I'll read some Lawrence and Davies and Pound.

Who Reviews the Watchmen Review?

So, I just came back from the new Watchmen flick. I probubly should have seen this coming, another cheap rehash of an Alan Moore book.

Nah, I'm just kidding. The Watchmen movie is Awesome.

Well, I probubly should wait till the Awesomeness factor wears off so I can give an accurate review, but I'm a blogger so what does that matter. Most of these things have spelling mistakes anyway. Not only was it true to the spirit of Watchmen as is possible for the movie, it was also freaking awesome. The actors were good, and I especially liked the guy who played Rorschach. He did a very good job, and despite the fact Rorschach is a bit of a right-wing looney who spent way to much time looking into the abyss he is my favorite character.

Also, I want to make special refrence to the series of tableaus at the beginning of the movie. It did a really good job of mixing scenes from the Watchmen universe and the affect it hade on history. Scenes included Dr. Manhattan meeting with JFK, a shot of JFK being shot that pans out to the Comedian hiding behind a fence (not in the book, but possible), Andy Warhol showing his latest work "Nite Owl II" with Capote, and a reworking of that picture of the sailor kissing the nurse after WWII, only it's Silhouette who's doing the kissing and she's a woman. That must have caused some scuffle in the alternate history press. Best use of "The Times They Are A Changing," in a movie.

So, Watchmen. Good movie. Not the usual superhero movie, so parents don't take your kids. The characters are fetishists, sociopathic or largelly removed from the majority of the human race to the extent that they (he) is naked for most of the movie and moves of to Mars and builds a giant floating glass thing with his mind. Also, there is sex which is also a bit kinky considering that before hand the participants were in latex costumes. So, Watchmen good movie but it ain't Spiderman. It's much, much better in my opinion.

Hipsters and the Death of Cool

I'm back home. Thought I'd blog, since I haven't blogged since the thing on Constantine's Sword. I've got nothing else to say about that movie for now, but I figure I should get back to it at somepoint.

I read an article on the Adbusters website. It's about hipsters, who are apparently the closest thing my generation has to a counter-culture. Problem is, they are completely devoid of any of the aspects that pervious generations hade. There are no sparkling dynamos, no mad men dreaming of spiritual fulfillment, it's more of long partying, modern decadence and "alternative fashion." The article left me with feelings of apocalyptic dread, which usually happens after I read Adbusters.

Of course, now I must ask the question. Am I a hipster? I don't think I'm a hipster, but I'm living in a time when hipster has appropriated the term of cool. To be honest, I think the idea of cool is dead. Nothing is cool anymore, because everything is trying to be cool. Which brings me to the fact that apparently, advertisers are reading my blog to determine if I am cool, and remarket what they find. This is troublesome. I do not want my apperance to become that of coolness.

Thankfully, I have decided that I am going to do the reverse of coolness. I am going to get something that look's like a Monk's robe and walk around in that. If they're is anything that isn't cool, it's a monk. No offence to monks though, but you guys really don't match up to what is generally considered cool. Therefore you should take that as a compliment. Therefore, I am going to be a coolness aestetic. I will see if I can talk my mom into getting me a large monk's robe, which I will walk around in. Mind you, it won't be an actual monk's robe, just one that will look kind of like a monk's robe. I'm pretty sure wearing an actual Monk's robe consitutes pretending to be a priest. Are monk's priests? Well, I'm going to probubly end up wearing monkish robes.

Constantine's Sword: Thoughts

I kind of wonder what this movie has to say about my faith. I don't talk about my faith a lot, or my relationship with God. I admit we don't talk much, I don't know if that is a bad thing. The last time I can remember writing to God was when I wrote a poem about the fears I had about not being a good writer. I think that is a perfectly acceptable thing to ask God. You don't see many great Satanic novelists.

Anyways, I'm woolgathering. I just watched a movie called Constantine's Sword, which is largely about the history of Anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church, but also talked a lot about the life of James Carroll, who wrote the book on which this movie was based and is also the main character if you have those in documentaries, and Evangelism in America. The Evangelism ties nicely into the Anti-Semitism, because it talked a lot about Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ movie and a MegaChurch in Colorado Springs that was Evangelising to the Air Force. There was a scene where a pastor that acted kind of like some pop musician did some prayer service for a bunch of kids that had very militaristic overtones. This made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

Anyways, I've been thinking about my identity as a Christian. As much as I don't like to show it, I'm a Christian more then anything, but I feel at odds with mainstream Chirtianity. As far as I'm concerned, Chirstianity sold out to The Man and I feel a great deal of contempt for that, especially after watching this movie. The treatment of the Jews alone by the Church, and the fact that most Christian leaders have done little or nothing to apologize makes me want to tear the first cross from whatever wall or necklace it's on, and stamp it into the dust.

Anyway, know I bring up my issue. How does this movie affect me? I'm pretty sure that it does affect me, even though I could concievably hide behind my Mennonite sect. Odds are, while Mennonites are largelly free of starting any wars (at least none that I know off), they did stand by for wars and a couple may have been anti-semites. But to be honest, while I am a Christian, I don't think of myself as a pracitsing Mennonite.

Ah, I'm tired. It's late. I'm going to bed. I'll write more tomorrow.

The Importance of Finding A Waterloo Cafe

I've decided that today will be a day where I finally look into finding a cafe to frequent in Waterloo. The criteria for finding a cafe in Waterloo is simple, that it should provide cheaper services then Revel back home. I think that the one I am at curently, Cafe 1842, may be a good provider of this.

I don't really know why finding a cafe is important to me. I think it is part of my image as a writer, that I should hang out in cafes. I don't know if this is all writers, or just a certain kind of writer, but I feel that I am the kind of writer who should hang out in cafes. As such, there is a certain level of involvement in finding a cafe that one should frequent. I think Hemingway wrote a bit about that in "A Moveable Feast". I need to read that sometime.

The use of cafes is psychological though. I fear that it may have something to do with subliminal aspects of how a writer should act. I'm still consuming, I have bought a small hot chocolate, since my mother says that if I go into a cafe then I should buy something gull darn it. Well, I bought a hot chocolate, so that factor is taken care off. Still, is it a bad thing that I am consuming in the name that I look like a writer when I don't write enough? What is writing enough? Three pages of prose? One poem a day? I wrote a poem recently and while I'm here I'm going to type it up and send it around, see what everyone thinks. I'll probubly even manage something while I'm here. And mom, dad if your reading, don't worry. I do plan on doing stuff for English. I'm going to do a write up for Rebel Angels, and an outline for the Ginsberg essay.

Rethinking Mage Campaign (i.e. doing it in general)

I'm starting my Mage campaign and I'm starting to wonder if I should fold it know before it gets any worse. I don't know if I can fully run the game I want to run with the people I have available to me. I feel that if I were to properly do this, I would need to spend much longer thinking up what will happen in what building, what I want to use to represent what is going on and what it all means. I'm looking at running this game as a work of Art.

I can't do that with the people I'm using.

I honestly don't think that I'm on the same page with these guys. They don't act the way I think a Mage should act. Maybe I'm being to controlling, but the feel of the campaign is completely off. One of the guys is middle management and he's going to be staying middle management. I mean, what kind of sick bastard would continue to be middle management after having what amounted to a religious experience? I'm probubly going to fold in the entire idea of this campaign, wait until I can find someone who actually think the way I believe a mage should think, and then do this game. Screw middle-management types. No real supernatural being of any kind would work in middle management.

On My Growing Interest in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance

Reading Week has come to a close. By tomorrow I will be back in the arms of my Alma Matre. Things are quickly coming to a head, as I have an essay to write and a philosophy test in the near future. I've decided that I am not a philosopher, or at least that the Ancient Greeks are not my area of expertise. I find most of Plato's writing to be dull and that they carry on for more then is necessary. When I read The Republic, I get bored and loose track of the conversation and when I read the summary I disagree with various points. This will probably be the last philosophy course I take.

It's time to take my major soon. I'm not really sure what it is I should choose. I'm pretty sure that it's going to be a mix of English Literature and Religious Studies, but I've been thinking about looking into Medieval Studies. Specifically the bits right before or after the Renaissance. I don't know if I could take that more, but I think I'm more concerned with God then Man. Also, I'm getting a growing interest in the subject of the Middle Ages from all the books I'm reading. Stuff like A Confederacy of Dunces and The Rebel Angels, which deals a lot with Medieval Scholarship. I'd like to look deeply into the literature of this period, maybe even make it part of my thesis. Since I'm also interested in magic, as in the occult-hermetic practises, I'm probubly going to be looking in to see stuff about alchemy and kabbalah. Alchemy and Kabbalah are also appearing to be growing interests of mine, and I hope can learn something of them while I'm at University.

On Reading Howl for Carl Solomon

I'm reading Howl again. I'm only starting to realize what a great poem this is. I've read it so much this year I'm beginning to see what a huge poem it is. I've just finished reading it again, and it was like passing through somewhere I've been before and seeing things I didn't notice before and it's like "Oh, I don't remember you." Mind you, Howl is generally about madness and a soulless materialist society that leaves no room for dreamers such as Ginsberg so it's not exactly a friendly reunion, but the sheer immensity of Ginsberg's vision is intimidating.

The subject of my essay is going to be poetic speaker in Allen Ginsberg's poetry. This is interesting because the poetic speaker is, at least on the literary level, Allen Ginsberg. This appears to be something very common with the Beats, especially Kerouac. I just realized that I told you all about this. Oh well, that's about all that's happened in my life, at least dealing with my essay.

CONTINUATION

I just realized that I have more to talk about. While reading Howl again I realized, along with how immense Howl is, how little time we spent looking at it in class. I mean, it basically a class and a half and I didn't really wholley agree with my professor's interpretation, which was that Howl was something to do with the oppression of youth. Well, it is, but that's not how I would put it. Yes, this deals with the oppression of the young by the old, but there is also the aspect of a spiritual void. I need to check if Howl was written after Ginsberg's Blake vision, because Allen Ginsberg's status as a modern prophet is something I'd like to explore.

Reading the Hump Week Time It Is

I thought I had all my homework, then my Mom reminded me I have a major English essay that I should start on. So, at somepoint I'm going to settle down and bang out an outline. I'm really hoping I can do something on the poetic speaker in the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, since the poems of Ginsberg are a) an interest of mine and b) come from a very personal place in Ginsberg so it would be interesting to examine the nature of the poetic speaker in Howl and America, which are the Ginsberg poems that I read in this class, and also before this class. If I had the chance, I'd write a comparison with poetic speaker and narrator in Kerouac and Burroughs as well. I'm thinking that personal experience is a very important factor in the works of the Beats. This is pretty odvious with Kerouac and Ginsberg, as they're work is based on their lives. This is also applicable to Burroughs, but for the most part Burroughs uses more symbolic aspects then Kerouac and Ginsberg. Burroughs also wrote about personal experiences in some things in Interzone, like the time he cut of his little finger to impress a guy but in the story it was a girl.

Other then the fact I should have completed much more work then I have at the moment, things are going pretty well. I'm sleeping int till 11, I'm hanging out at my favorite cafe and it looks like poetry nights are starting up again here sometime. Things are pretty good. I'm also working on a short story, that I have a really good feeling about. I've looked into various publishing houses and plan on sending out Godot is Dead to somewhere soon. I'm also thinking about sending out my poetry to the New Quarterly. Things are looking well.

I'm also starting to wonder if Kerouac didn't have something when he was going on about spontaneous writing. Now, I'm not going to start applying this to my novels, but I think that maybe writing stream-of-conciousness poetry may be something to try out. I'll look into applying stream of conciousness poetry in my work and show you the results. As a beginning writer I should be experimenting with as many methods as possible.

Naos is a Jewitch!

You find the craziest things on Wikipedia. For instance, while fiddling around there I found out about jewitchery. It's Neo-paganism...for Jews! I know I havn't told you this, but I just want to say I love Jews. I love their religion, I love the sound of Hebrew, I love the fact that a Jew is similtaniously is a religious practise and an ethnicity which as a Mennonite I can relate too. If I had the balls, I'd become a Jews. Unfortunatly, I have tasted the sweet, sweet taste of bacon and I do not think I can give that up. But still, I have decided that Naos is going to be Jewish, hence the last name Ben-David.

Off course, Naos is not a conventional Jews. For one thing, he is also heavily tattooed so he can't be buried in a Jewish cemetary. Also, for awhile I decided that his mother was not a practising Jew, but a sort of neopagan. However, with the discovery of Jewitchery, I can reconcile Naos' Jewish identity with his pagan upbringing. Thank you Wikipedia for your help.

English Mid-Term

I'm tired. I want to go home. I want to sleep in a descent bed and not think about University for a week. It turns out I won't have to worry about it for a weekend however, and even then I still have to read the Republic. But the Republic is nothing I worry about, it's my English mid-term. I'm holding on to the end of the perverbial stick and all I want to do is to go to sleep for a few hours without the damn Ipod going of at 7:50 every day.

So in other news, I'm back to Aspie Diaries. I like that name better then Notes from the Bunker. This blog is going to be Aspie Diaries for years and years. When I have written the first four novels, then this will still be The Aspie Diaries.

And that's basically it. Aspie Diaries again, and tired and want to go home.

600!

Well, it's finally here. Post 600. It's been little over four years since I started this blog and my how far I've come. Here I am in University, a published short story that has meet with high praise (though only through people I know), and already I have a small circle of friends. Yep, things are looking good for Dylan.
Other then that, things are getting pretty heated. I have two tests this week, one in Religious Studies and one in English. The date of a Religious Studies test is as of yet unanoced because that's how my current RS teacher roles, but I'm pretty sure that today is the next test. After that I have a free week which will be spent mostly with reading Plato's "The Republic," which will be followed by a test on Tuesday about what we learned. I'm hoping to do much better on this test then the last Philosophy test I took. I got a 9.5 out of 21 on that one. Not pretty good, but I've been screwing around and winter isn't my good season. Mind you, I could just have been screwing around and overplaying this whole winter thing.
Other then that things are looking good. I have alot of confidence in the next tests. I'm feeling much more confident now that I've got a note taker in most classes. I have yet to get that done in Religious Studies mind you, but I think we're really close on that. Besides, Philosophy is the one I'm really worried about. It looks to be my hardest class this term, mostly because I'm not as interested in it as say Religions of the East, or 20th century English Literature 1945-present. I'm glad that I took the Philosophy and Religions of the East course mind you, because at the moment I'm seeing a few comparisons between Buddhism and Plato's The Republics, especially Plato's Metaphor of the Cave. I don't know if I'll take any more philosophy classes after this. Maybe the one on Existentalism and the one on Philosophy in literature, but other then that I'm going to stick with good old Religious Studies and Literature.

And to finish, please note the completely legitimate waking hour of 7:16 PM.

2, or Night Blogging Shouldn't Become to Much of A Problem

Sorry about the lack of postage recently, but I've been lazy. Anonymous, I read your comment and was touched. I hope your protests against the Chrurch of Scientology are going well.

Well, Thursdays as always are busy for me. Religious Studies, Philosophy, WoD and Social Activism. I'm really starting to loose interest in the WoD game. Mages are really annoying when you arn't playing one or another supernatural creature, especially when your character is your standard garden variety occultists, in which case they think your really pathetic. I wish we could go up against something like vampires, or werewolves for a change.

Also, I'm starting to think Hunter is my least favorite version of WoD rules. There's just something about being on the bottom end of the supernatural pecking order that dosn't help my enjoyment of fantasy. For awhile I've been thinking about setting up a Mage game, just because I've seen how the other people in my RPG group play Mage, and it just seems so, I don't know, not how I would do Mage. I think there is really room for really cool and weird stuff in Mage: The Awakening, like turn it into an Alejandro Jodorowsky movie. The thing is, I'm probubly going to be the only person that would get all the weird stuff. Consider the following...

NPC1: Welcome to the Consilium.

PC: Why is there a camel?

NPC1: Pardon?

PC: A camel, you have a camel beside reception.

NPC1: Yes. Yes, we do.

PC: Why is there a camel?

NPC1: (blank stare) Why shouldn't there be a camel? Are you feeling alright?

NPC2: It's alright, they've just awakened. They don't realize the Universe basically runs on symbolism.
NPC1: Oh, God. That's right. Takes me back to when I thought seeing a naked woman with a snake in each hand was impressive. My, how far we've
come.

So, yeah that would basically be my Mage campaign. Mind you, I'd work in a whole bunch of stuff about the Eternal Battle in the Supernal Realm and fighting the Seers of the Throne and stuff like that, but I'd do it in as esoteric a way as possible, because something in Mage: The Awakening tells me that that is the way Mage is supposed to be played.

In the University Department, I have a week to finish an essay on Arranged Marriage among Hindus in Canada. I've done little in the way of research, but I do have two sources, one of which is what appears to be a book bent on describing South-Asian Arranged Marriage in as complete a detail as humanly possible. I'm hoping my Mom and I can look over this tomorrow when I go home. By then I should have a thesis and the first paragraph done. It would also be nice if I could get the final paragraph done so I have some idea of where it will be going.

One of these days I also plan on sitting down and watching "El Topo" again. I can't remember when was the last time I saw it exactly, but I figure I should watch it again sometime. Probubly over Reading Week. It would be a personal thing, as this movie only really appeals to me. My sister Delila has some strange bias against Surrealism for some reason, she prefers Futurism which I find boring, mechanical and full of Facists. Surrealism has the potential to be more fun, even if Andre Breton was a bit of a dick.

Sorry, mix up, 3...

It's late, I know but I'm not in a good state. I feel overwhelned. Winter is always a bad time for me, I break apart easily. I'm skipping class tomorrow because I can't stand leaving this place. I can't stand the place I'm in right now. Sometimes I feel like this very building is working against me. I've socialized more then I ever have in my life and it's wearing me down. I'm falling behind in my schoolwork. This blog is all I'm writing and it's hardly what I would consider good literature.

I need to sleep now. If I can I'll write back tomorrow.

2...

I promissed myself that I'd get to 600 posts by the end of this month and by golly I plan on keeping that promise.

Education is kicking in and I'm not sure that I've got myself in proper gear. I just took a test in Philosophy and I'm pretty sure I didn't do that good. While it is still my first year I'm not going to decide that University isn't right for me just yet. Since a staight job isn't what I'm looking for I don't think dropping out of University will be my best chance, at least not yet when my body of work is around three short stories, four or five poems and the half-written first draft of a novel. Once I get my novel done and read as much as I can from the magnificent collection that is the Dana Porter Library, then I'll consider dropping out. Since there is quite a collection at Dana Porter and the speed of progress is going at the speed of human right's progress in China then I'm probubly going to graduate around that time.

In my extra corricular activities, I am working on developing what I am referring to as "The Salon." Basically me and two other people I mentioned, who I am also not going to name because I don't have there consent, will be meeting together to start a Salon. What this is, I do not yet now, but it connects to my Beat Generation Fantasies in some way. What will be a new look at art and the world is what I'm hoping for, or failing that at least getting as many artistic minds together as possible. Were were all going to meet is up for grabs at the moment.

I've been considering writing an Art Manifesto for sometime. This is a problem for me because,

1. I haven't yet worked out my theory of Art
2. Once I write "rules" for my Art then I am at risk of becoming stale.

The idea of becoming an "experimental" writer is a bit interesting, but I'm probubly not an experimental writer. I may experiment with genre and narrative form, but I doubt that makes me an experimental writer. I am going to play with narrative (multiple narrators, fictional biography, combining novel and TV serial styles), but these have already been done. I'm also not sure I want to be a Postmodernist, because as I have written before, Postmodernism needs to be replaced with something before it grows stale, if it hasn't already.

Recently I watched a documentary about Alan Moore, one of my favorite living writers. In it, he mentioned the Alchemical maxim or doctrine of SOLVE ET COAGULA, which means to take apart and then put back together. Alan Moore linked SOLVE, the taking apart of, with Deconstructionism and Postmodernism, and replied that COAGULA, putting it back together and said that he believes people should be doing that more. This could be the replacement to Postmodernism, this Coagula. I should try this, but the problem is I'm not really sure that I know where all the pieces have gone, or what I should build in the place of what's been Deconstructed. Maybe I should deconstruct my own literature and then put it back together again.

3...

Thursday was my WoD game, which as some of you may know I'm trying to play as a pacifistic character as possible. So far it's pretty good, though admittedly most of the time my character, Ezekiel Talbot, has been in the hospital for being mauled by a walking corpse. (He isn't saying zombie because he's an occultist and as far as he's concerned, zombies are poor possessed people from Haiti who are relatively harmless). So far the only real damage he has done to anything is himself because he failed a resolve check when entering the area of Death, and thus had to try killing himself in some kind of way. Since he doesn't carry any weapons it was pretty easy. After my character tried to crash the car the other characters decided to keep an eye on me. I'm thinking about giving my character advances in Psychology and making him the back-up exorcist for the group's Priest character.

On another note, I have returned to my hometown for what is basically a day. It's nice to be home, because my favorite cafe is home as well as a decent bed and shower. I actually feel clean after taking a shower at home, where at Conrad Grebel my skin just feels funny. And a tempurpedic mattress beats the old hard thing back at Waterloo any day of the week, especially Fridays and Saturdays when I actually use it.

But this weekend is not just about fun and games, I have much work to complete. For instance I've got a test in Philosophy on Tuesday. I need to look over everything I learned to prepare. This may be a bit difficult, as I haven't really paid as much attention in Philosophy, and it's hard to take notes because the teacher goes really fast. I haven't got note takers yet, but once I get all the forms filled out I'll have one.

Notes are really hard for me to take in class because when I finish them, the teacher has long gone on from that and I'm still on something that was said long ago and I've missed something really important. My way of interpreting information is like a quine line and when teachers try to give me information and I write down I can't do it. The information trips up on itself and I need to just listen. That's why note takers are so important to my education. Mom says that one day I'm going to need to stop using note takers, but I don't know if that will be possible.