About today, which was not a bad day by any means. Syntax was back to be being frustrating, but in a more wholesome way. Kari repeated several times that an alternative analysis (the one that I would have been arguing for in my homework if I was thinking a lot more clearly) to the one we adopted is in many ways a preferable one. I wanted to ask her if Chomsky gave a good reason for not adopting it, but the line was too long. I am resolved to read some of the original Chomsky to further frustrate myself/find out whether my opinion changes, and Elena has agreed to go in for it with me. Add to my growing winter break reading list (to be distinguished from my ongoing general purpose reading list, which hasn't changed much since the beginning of the semester). She came home with me for a nice lunch (I had a reuben, she granola) and discussion of the Times and such, Joel showed up with Joe in tow to play him some EC. He's particularly enamored of an acoustic demo version of "Blame it on Cain." Somehow Elvis turned into Keith Jarrett before much longer. I went and played "Lipstick Vogue" for Joel. We started a listening party for "This Year's Model" (I advised him to expose himself to each album in chronological order, and he seems to have absorbed MAIT quite quickly). He liked the Beat, but fell asleep around the start of side two. I turned the record off and joined him.

When I woke up an hour and a half later I wasn't much less tired, but I was able to get through 50+ pages of Pyncho in about an hour and a quarter. Like Ben said, nothing happened, but it was fun reading. Interesting discussion of history, a great extended "analepse" about a Mechanickal Duck (which I think Tiffany clapped her hands about back at the TMBG show). I wrote here, then stopped procrastinating and made sweet potato pancakes for Joel and me (I wanted to make vegan carbonara, but we don't have any pasta, so it will have to wait until next week.) They came out okay, a little more bland than usual for some reason. Cleaned up and read a bit more, or did I? no, I just spent more time on computers, and looked at the history reading some (de Tocqueville), listened to Strummer and the New Deal. Went to tango, where everyone except Lindsey and myself was a newcomer (five of them). We couldn't figure out where everyone else was. So they were just doing the basic stuff all over again. I stayed for an hour, and then decided to waste my time in Brigid-Ali-Elizabeth's room instead (there has to be a better way to refer to it). B and A were engrossed in (complaining about) their programming on brown screens, Eva Holman was studying Bill Watterson. She is even goofier than her sister, if that's possible. It came out that she concocted the bit of nonsense preserved in BlogBack a few entries ago. I talked to Ester about it when I got home, she says that she, Sorelle, Elizabeth, and others(?) were all reading this together once, although it looks like Eva's comment predates that. So I guess more of that contingent read this than I knew about. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I mean, it's fine (especially if they stop being so anonymous about it), but it just makes me think a little bit again about what's going on here. It doesn't cheapen anything, I decide. It's just stuff.

Ester left for Vermont, and I finally got to work on the focus paper, which was quite fun to write, and two pages single-spaced (probably supposed to be double, oh well). I didn't have space to fit in a comparison with a passage from Gravity's Rainbow. Got really excited about it and decided to just post to the listserv about it. Possible paper topic, it's a really rich area - history, innocence, power, self-reference, children's lore. Maybe this book stuff isn't so bad. Okay. It's late, even if I do get to sleep as much as I want starting tomorrow afternoon.

emasculate me with your biology