06 October 2006
pessimism of the general will, optimism of the general intellect
Week Two is over! Getting up at the gimcrack of dawn to make the 9 o clock lectures (with adequate time for photocopying), or even to write the 9 o clock lectures was beginning to take its toll yesterday, as people's faces and the background started going all gestalt and little black fuzzy animals began to emerge from the corners of the room. I don't think, even at my most debauched and benderish (a previous life now, sigh), that I have ever, ever been so exhausted. Still, eight hours proper sleep and the cycling through of the 15,000 dreams that I missed during the week later, and all is well again...
I think I have managed to convince my colleagues that I am both a) intellectually 'serious' and, more importantly b) pleasant to work with. It was possibly a mistake at colleaguey dinner last night to expound my anti-cinema theories and explain exactly why I thought the last Almodovar film was hideous misogynistic, reactionary tosh. But, er, I was very tired, and only wine could paper over the cracks in the bottomless pit of my sleep...drink, pig, ergh, pig, no pig! sleep, pig....
The students are wonderful and interested. And they talk to each other in seminars! And laugh at my jokes! And only three people have made the 'you....a lecturer?!' comment since I've been there (two members of staff and a mature student). Mind you, a couple more weeks of this, and any residual scintilla of youth will have been eradicated in my cold undying commitment to academia, and 5am showers. I can take the picture out of the attic and sell it to connoisseurs of the macabre.
Ironically enough, I have been roped into joining a centre for gender and sex or feminism or something studies. 'What are your particular interests?' the nice woman running the first meeting asked me. 'Er, well, I don't really work on feminism or gender. But, er, I have written a bit about pornography and er, female friendship.' It was the only thing I can think of. This is why I will be giving a paper on vintage pornography next semester to a group of people who will (hopefully) afterwards kill and eat me in some femme-hazing ritual. Oh dear. I suggested I could show some, but the response was not altogether encouraging. Perhaps I'll stick to freeze-frames on power-point. What's a power-point?
