NIGHTMARE

[lapsedmodernist]

In addition to all the other Horror of my comps-experience (like the fact that the library database was down for two and a half days and I couldn't find any of the articles I needed, and finally burst crying into my advisor's office today begging him for a copy of the Taussig attack/Wolf response pair of articles from Critique of Anthropology, a Marxist publication because Marxists can't publish like normal people in normal journals, no, they have to have their own sectarian publications that are all rogue and non-archived for the first fifteen years of their existence), this new computer only has one busted word processing program that has nothing to do with Word or Apple, but is called TextEdit. While of a higher caliber than your standard notepad on account of having spell-check and a creepy "speech" function which slowly reads what you just wrote back to you in a robot voice that sounds like it's going through that adolescent "breaking" phase except that it's robofemale, this program is pure evil because there are no pages. No matter how long you type, it is one, never-ending, continuous, infinite page. Page 1 ad infinitum. I think this, more than anything else makes me feel like I am in a nightmare, because it's such a nightmare trope, in fact I feel like I've had nightmares like this. No matter how much you write, it's one page. This is the most demoralizing, sadistic psych-ops tactic that could be perpetrated on a graduate student. It's a fate worse than Sisyphus. I can't tell how much I've typed at all. I kept typing and typing last night, I guesstimated I was at around five pages, I went to school today and copy/pasted it into a normal word documet, it was 18 pages. My exam has to be 10 pages. I hate everything.

Comments

[thomas-rain.livejournal.com]

I recommend 3 Lynchburg Lemonade's per bad rap song in a loud club. If that doesn't make you feel like letting loose, I don't know what will.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I feel like letting loose, I just can't! My youth is wasted!

[twotoedsloth.livejournal.com]

Tips for cutting down on length
1. Take out all the adjectives
2. Find all the words and phrases like "signifying practice". Substitute shorter words like "thnigie". If you get a teaching job after this, you will probably have to do this all the time anyway.
3. Go to the NY wine place on Wooster and Broome. Get a nice wine flight for 5 bucks. Whine to the nice bar person. Eat some of their chocolate.
4. Your youth ended when you got into grad school. Relax and enjoy the gray hairs.