Nosferatu

Saturday night I went to the symphony to see Nosferatu, the original Dracula silent film from 1922. Except they weren't allowed to call it "Dracula," so they had to call it Nosferatu (also, they declared bankruptcy after filming so as to avoid copyright infringement fines). Apparently, the guy who played Nosferatu actually thought he was Dracula—or a vampire, at any rate—in real life, so he was naturally creepy. Maybe it's just me, but he reminds me a lot of Salad Fingers:

He even moves like Salad Fingers, exactly like.

The many names of Lapsura

[Stolen in turn from Angie]

1. YOUR SPY NAME: (middle name and current street name)
   Laurel East-of-35
   
2. YOUR MOVIE STAR NAME: (grandfather/grandmother on your dad's side, your favorite candy)
   Aenid Twizzler
   
3. YOUR RAP NAME: (first initial of first name, first three or four letters of your last name)
   M-Nel
   
4. YOUR GAMER TAG: (a favorite color, a favorite animal)
   Yellow Hummingbird
   
5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
   Laurel Regina
   
6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (first 3 letters of your last name, last 3 letters of mother's maiden name, first 3 letters of your pet's name)
   Nel Ner Cha
   
7. JEDI NAME: (middle name spelled backwards, your grandmother's maiden name spelled backwards)
   Lerual Egdirdla (or something to that effect)
   
8. PORN STAR NAME: (first pet's name, the street you grew up on)
   Treadmill East-of-35
   
9. SUPERHERO NAME: ("The", your favorite color, the automobile your mom drives)
   The Blue Sunfire
   
10. YOUR ACTION HERO NAME:(first name of a main character in the last movie you watched, last food you ate)
    Max Pie

My shiny new degree

Yesterday was convocation. Fun fact: the term "graduand" refers to someone who is in the current state of graduating, so you can only be a graduand for a couple of hours. It was pretty great: fewer graduates than usual so a shorter ceremony; all sorts of old profs and faculty and even Ralph Goodale congratulated me. But they forgot to give me one of my plaques. Most importantly of all, everyone pronounced my name correctly! For the first time ever! Before the ceremony, they had to give me special instructions and they were more concerned about double- and triple-checking pronunciation and writing out pronouncing-instructions on my name card than making sure I knew where to go.

Here's some pictures of me looking conspicuous in my blue Luther gown:

And, we're a rectangle.

This is my all-time favourite thing from Corner Gas: Lorne Calvert on the Ruby Newsday episode. Saskatchewan: hard to spell, easy to draw.

What A Wonderful World

Here's Ryan doing an excellent Yoda rendition of What A Wonderful World, complete with froofs! Yoda Choir...well Blogger won't let you click right on it, so here's the link: http://www.freewebs.com/meganmain4/WhatAWonderfulWorld.mp3
And many many thanks to Ryan for de-statickation; mp3s may be reposted in the forseeable future.

In an interesting twist of fate, Adam J. Mack won the Engineering Faculty Prize. He's my old highschool buddy that I tied with for the Governor General's Bronze Medal in grade 12. It's like we tied...again! Good job, Atom Bomb! Plus, I get "Great Distinction" tacked onto my degree.

The University never gets anything right. I mean, I tell them that I wanted to join WUSC this year (I've spent two months trying to join—nobody will help me! Maybe since I'm not a "student" or something), and that I helped people with essay writing, and that I enjoyed my science classes, and then they go and publish some crap about how I'm involved in WUSC activities and tutor physics students! I'm the one who required physics tutoring!! They could have highlighted some more impressive things than taking creative license. I bet I'll get in trouble for this. Double latte!

I forgot to mention that the other day I also ran into my Crakespeare prof, who happens to be the English Graduate Chair as well. She didn't mention anything about how I wrote "Crakespeare" instead of "Shakespeare" all the time on the final exam. Maybe she didn't notice...

Down the road to grad studies

I just had the most awesome meeting ever! It was about grad studies. I didn't know the first thing about what I could study in grad school (still pretty much don't), so I went to one of my best profs today and asked her. "Let me show you," she says, and leads me to an office where all the English theses written at the U of R are kept. Then in walks the Department Head and says "Is Megan thinking about doing grad studies?" "Yes she is. She's wondering what sort of things people do theses on." "You should do Medieval! Come talk to me if you want to. I'd be glad to supervise you!" [Well, as it happens I don't plan on doing my Master's at the U of R, but pretty awesome all the same] He continued: "Megan won the President's Medal, you know. And the Arts Prize, but that was a shoo-in." Dr. Awesome Prof does this crazy big arm-pumping "Yesss!" and then gives me a hug!

Then she takes me back to her office and writes out all the things I need in a proposal. "These are the basic things your proposal will need, for both the SSHRC application and the grad school application. Now we'd be happy to have you here. I don't want you to see U of R as the default; we'd be very happy to have you here, but it's easy to see yourself working here because you know the faculty, you don't need to establish a reputation, and in fact" [gesturing at the wall in the general direction of the Dept Head] "it sounds like we'd probably take you without an application. But I recommend that people apply to five universities: your dream school, a fallback school, and three middling schools. Do some surfing and find out if the faculty specializes in the area you're interested in. And make sure there are more than one doing what you're interested in, in case one of them dies or gets transferred. My supervisor for my dissertation (who straddles the earth like a colossus and heals sickness with a touch of his little finger, and about whom I will not tolerate criticism) ended up doing Shakespeare because the only guy who worked in the area he was interested in was a sociopath. What do you do? Work with the crazy guy or change your field?"

:0 Turns out there's half a dozen Medieval specialists at my dream school, and one Old Icelandic/Old English fellow—I suspect a Tolkien fan!—so I'm getting pretty excited. They have a list of english graduate student webpages on their website, and it would appear that they have only three grad students...good sign? Maybe better chance for funding? More personal attention? At any rate, Dr. Awesome Prof pretty much set out what I need to do from here. Well I'll miss the SSHRC deadline this year (three weeks? no way! I don't even have a "Question"—#1 on the list of things necessary for a proposal). Now I have to make an appointment with the Dept Head about this Medieval business. I've been given to understand that I'll require Old English—which I'm more than rusty on, not having learned it quite properly in the first place—and most likely Latin—no troubles there—and maybe Old Icelandic or some such. I will definitely need to peruse some theses, and try to come up with the all-important Question.

In other news...I'm being enlisted in all sorts of rock-heaving and whatnot that I hadn't anticipated, plus there was snow on my car today. A very thin layer, but still snow, and it will only get worse. I was hoping to get some writing done, but haven't done any in weeks. The Inter-Puter has been restored, so I will hopefully be able to post drawings more regularly, pending (of course) the creation of said drawings. I'm not finding new ideas so easily. And finally, last chance to buy a llama! They're all (except for two) being hauled away in two weeks to be set free...until they are sold at the auction in which they will be set free. My throat is sore; I think I'm getting sick. But I need to go before the Parking Nazi gives me another ticket.

The day I visited Hell

I walked into work to collect my last paycheque. I opened the door to find the entire interior under construction. As I walked along some narrow planks—a makeshift bridge—I couldn't help noticing that the gaping chasm below the planks was filled with lava. In a few minutes I was in front of the CEO, who casually pressed a button on his desk. Then the trapdoor beneath my feet opened and I was falling down into the lava....

...well, luckily for me the dream didn't come true today. Days are below zero now.

:(

Points of note

I don't have much time, and I probably won't have internet access again soon, so here's a quick summary of things to note:

• Ryan and his family took me to see the Rolling Stones this weekend, which was pretty darn awesome.
  
  
• I'm done work! Will be at my parents'.....temporarily! I'm very adamant about the temporarily.
  
  
• I've posted many new drawings. Here! I know, I'm still behind.
  


• New songs as well. Here! The recording went pretty well: the pedal was behaving, the piano had recently been tuned, and I played until I got each song without mistakes so there's no splicing of uneven tempos and whatnot.
  
  
• Photos from my wanderings last weekend:
  
  
  

More posting probably Friday when I go pick up my last paycheck. Over and out.

It's Over!

Woooooooooorrrk's out! for! ever! That is, after today. I'm hoping that since I just worked two 9-hour days (or rather, one 9-hour day and one 9-1/2-hour day...boy does that tick me off) that I'll be able to leave early or at least take a lunch break (hint hint), though I'm surprisingly alert after only 3 hours of sleep last night. Yesterday was close to another explosion, but then it turned freaking awesome when a certain someone returned to SK for the weekend! Refreshment establishments generally close too early. When I start up my waffle bar/bagel barn, it will be open at almost all hours. I also had a meal for the first time in two weeks yesterday.

They make these capuccinos too syrupy.

• teleportation? Oh those entangled states.


• Oh those silly pythons. I can pop my jaw out of joint, but I still can't eat these assorted items:
  • pregnant sheep
  • gator
  • electric blanket
    

Intended Statements

Did you know that on this day in 1947, Max Planck died? I bet you didn't.

Well gosh, I can't apply to do a Master's in English without a "statement of intent." What do they want me to say? Are they expecting some sort of original contribution? I'm sure they wouldn't like a detailed explanation of my patented Crakespeareanism.

Speaking of Crakespeareanism: I've been finetuning my theory in order to submit it to a literary journal fairly soon—any guesses on how quickly it'll be rejected? But it would be so awesome to make it real! Plus, it seems to be spiralling out of my control, and I'm not quite sure how it works anymore. It's getting to be very complex, what with all its laws and required evidence and prohibitions and conditions. I think it's headed toward statistical analysis and ratios and calculations and such, but we'll see. Maybe I'll throw in some graphs. Hopefully it doesn't self-destruct. It's no longer specifically anti-Shakespeare. I mean, I don't want to say that it is, because that would just be malicious of me. Plus, I'm not really anti-Shakespeare, just anti-me-having-to-read-his-crappier-plays, and mostly anti-analyzing-his-plays. Analysis of literature...gosh I hate it. I like some of his sonnets. And I love researching the background of certain literature (like my prizewinning Beowulf essay or my Tolkien's Earendil = Lyric for Advent essay or my Essay on all primary documents pertaining to the Dry Quarry).

Two more days of work...which is about five days too many. I just might explode again this week.

PhD in Awesomeness

So, about this awesome award woot (note: the "woot" replaces periods. I think that the "stop" in telegrams should also be replaced with "woot"...or at least pronounced "woot")

At convocation I'll be receiving an Honorary Degree in Awesomeness—more commonly and officially known as the President's Medal—as well as the Faculty of Arts Prize (I hope they involve some sort of remuneration) woot

Last week I had a "photo shoot" where they took pictures of me pretending to tutor someone woot

Thanks to the profs who always give me awesome references WOOT!

I want one of those moths

Here are the exciting events of the last couple days:

Friday I woke up with a migraine, and took one of my special poison pills. Normally these make me feel awesome but this time I was terribly depressed all day and had a sort of breakdown at work. After work I kind of felt like driving in no particular direction and not stopping. So I wandered around the city for quite a long time and somehow ended up on top of Goose Island Overlook (not sure how that happened). So I walked around there for a while, and then (oh no!) could not start my car, which seemed pretty fitting. Then I wasn't quite sure what to do. Who do I call? What the heck do I do? I don't know anybody who's home right now! (my parents are away on vacation, all my friends would be at a bowling-birthday-party). Luckily Amy answered her phone and saved me, and thank god for cellphones (incidentally, I later told god exactly what I thought of him before hurling some rocks in his general direction and telling him to fuck off). Some more wandering (somehow, I found myself on the road up the hill to Goose Island Overlook again), then I ended up on my parents' farm where I spent most of the next two days doing nothing and watching Pi (because you can never watch Pi enough times), and also going on a several-hour-long walk across the fields--bad idea, it was very hot and sunny which invariably results in more headaches. Now it is the last week of work. After this week I will have very infrequent internet access, so I'll probably get very agitated quickly. Over the weekend (only 2 days without internet), I went through severe withdrawal.

I seem to have committed myself to grad studies in English, mostly because the registrar phoned me today wanting a synopsis of my future plans and I said I was going to apply for grad studies. I always feel I have to tell them I'm planning on pursuing academics further, as if they'll withhold paying my scholarships if I don't (which may very well be true, I wouldn't know). But I'm also becoming more and more interested in math and science, especially astronomy. I mean, what's with Gabriel's horn? Finite volume yet infinite surface area? Crazy. Et cetera. I have a bad habit of quitting in the midde of things and deeply doubting what I'm doing. I really don't know where to go for advice anymore.

According to this personality test, I am: introverted, irritable, observer, depressed, does not enjoy leadership, reveals little about self, dislikes large parties, does not like to stand out, sensitive, not a thrill seeker, solitude loving, likes silence, fragile, second guesses self, negative, unadventurous, fearful, weird, paranoid, phobic, dependent, cautious, avoidant, semi intellectual. Oh boy, how very positive. I ask you, weird? And "semi" intellectual? All lies, I tell you!

I know, I haven't posted the drawings like I said I would. I just didn't feel like setting up my computer and then packing it up again two days later. Next week! For sure!

• Also awesome: check out this hummingbird-bee-moth
  


• man, this internship sounds like my ideal career in English! (or, for that matter, one of the only careers in English I would want)


• Montreal overpass collapses...I hope my parents are ok


• new permanent stamps