Academia is fun

I have spent the majority of my day doing academic-based work. Things that were on my "to do" list this morning:

• submit to SCMLA conference

This has been more difficult than it should have been. The deadline (naturally) is tomorrow. So as I went through the files on my computer to locate the paper and proposal I was planning to submit, I realized that both of them were easily found. Unfortunately, it seems that they only copies I have are very rough, unfinished versions. So the majority of the afternoon has been spent copying the hard copy to my computer so that I can email it to the section chair. They will either accept a paper or an abstract, and I really don't feel like writing an abstract today. So I'll probably send it in this format. I'm hoping for a little feedback before I submit, but I'm not holding my breath.

• Write my Shakespeare mid-term

This is not going to be a good time. Despite the greatness of his works, writing about language and wordplay during spring break is a real fucking downer. But it must be done, and I would rather get it out of the way today. I will probably start this evening; hopefully, I'll be finished before I go to bed, though it will likely be at an ungodly hour.

• Write a CV to distribute to professors

Even though I received several examples of CVs at a recent grad student meeting, I managed to leave them there. Whether this was an intentional disregard on my part or mere forgetfulness, I can't honestly say. Anyway, I'm left scrounging the internet to find a good example of an academic CV so that I can get mine completed in order to qualify for scholarships

• Finish Jean Toomer's Cane

I've got one more story to read at the end of the book, and my overall opinion is mixed. It's certainly more palatable than Stein but it's not Hemingway. I've got the Norton critical edition, but if anyone thinks I'm going to waste time reading that crap during spring break then you need to get your fucking head examined. I'll leave that to my good pal Spiderman. He'll be all over that shit. I'm hoping to read something fun this week, too, but it appears unlikely with everything else I've got on my plate.

I've got books to return to the library before the week ends. Plus, it's my anniversary tomorrow, so I'll have to shine my shoes and take the old lady out or something. But probably not. Kids have a way of preventing any type of going out activity, anniversary or not. As a matter of fact, my neighbor just offered me two tickets to the Dallas Stars, but with no one to watch the tots, I had to turn them down.

All of this Jesi talk lately has caused me to remember something about my first novel (the one which has not, nor likely will ever be, written). On the cover, I want to have the devil and Jesus holding hands, and holding each other, while they are staring in each other's eyes in a very homoerotic kind of way. Not that I think that the Good Lords Jesi are gay (or the devil for that matter), but it's how I've always symbolized this love/hate between good and evil. The way they both need each other to help distinguish their own characteristics. After all, if there were no good, then how could we determine evil, and vice-versa? Also, it seems like one hell of a way to visualize the internal struggle between what what we want to do and what we should do, what we really want and what we are allowed. Plus, it kinda makes me giggle. A-train-- I think I'll commission you for this project, right after you finish my portrait ala Jonz.

Some good quotes about religion and Satan on the internet:
Despite everything that seems obvious about human nature, it took the species a surprisingly long time to come up with someone to blame for its own failings.Satan is a modern concept, as concepts go, dating back only to about the 3rd century B.C., when humanity woke up and realized that:

a) The only way to understand people who disagree with you is to characterize them as unmitigated evil, and
b) When people who formerly agreed with you begin disagreeing with you, clearly some supernatural force must be at work. In the Old Testament, God curses humanity and the Earth itself for all time punish Adam and Eve for taking night classes in dualistic morality. He obliterates entire cities for their liberal views about sexual orientation and transforms onlookers into salt. He crams a boat full of people and critters, then kills the entire remainder of the world in a flood, forcing the survivors to repopulate the world through incest. He dumps his chosen people in the desert for 40 years, then gets pissed off when they try to vote him out in favor of a gold cow. In short, God is specifically identified as being the cause of bad things that happen to people.