In much better spirits since my last post: there's nothing like writing a zombie story in which a stand-in antagonist gets their face ripped off. Husbandly's response was "go zombies", so that should tell you all you need to know about that particular nemesis. Actually writing it was a bit ick, because killing anyone off is fairly disgusting, yet at the same time, I finally had a flow going. I wasn't too concerned about anything other than the word count (it was a uni assignment), and the thing I'm taking a break from sketching out today doesn't currently have one. Yay. Mostly it was just fun. With more than one character to be all anxious about.
Today I should be, guess what, asleep, but why bother? I'll have a bit of a kip this afternoon, that will do. I don't have anything to do for uni until next Monday, then I'm back into two subjects all over again. I don't really want to do two subjects at once - it's draining - but I also don't want to be doing this degree until I'm ready for retirement. No thanks.
And here I have nothing much else to say. I finished reading the Earthsea Quartet, by Ursula Le Guin with much more alacrity than I expected. A Wizard of Earthsea, while good, didn't leave me enthused. Serves me right, that snap judgement, because I loved the other three. I've also gone mad online book shopping, so I have a whole pile of books wending their way to me soon. Including The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. We had a chapter as a reading for a lecture on memes, and I was pleasantly surprised at Dawkins' style. Unlike reading one of my textbooks, which I won't name here, but wow, was it dry. When I put my review up on goodreads, I got a slightly unpleasant surprise reading other people's reviews. Another reviewer considered the text as facile as it included mention of memes, a subject "not of sufficient academic rigour". Eheu.
I find that bizarre. If you're talking about internet memes, which are basically jokes and/or observations, I'd agree, but memes encompass cultural units: how to eat, how to cook, what to cook*, clothing, and much more besides. Maybe I'm being a bit too egalitarian (I certainly am about what constitutes "literature"), but I don't see the point in being particularly snobbish about (relatively) new ideas.
*I guarantee, if you're the cook in your household, there will be some things you do because you learnt to do it that way, and clearly I'm eating my lunch as I type this. The best story I ever heard was about three generations of women who would cut one corner off their legs of lamb before roasting. Going back to Grandma it was discovered that she did it because her roasting pan was a bit small. Her daughter and grand-daughter did because that's what she did.
Anyway, I want to get back to my planning, and my lunch, so this is me, signing orf.
Have a lovely day. May all of your antagonists have their faces metaphorically ripped off.
