Question: is being really, really good at your profession enough if you don't have the other spheres of human existence in good balance or at the very least present?

Answer: I don't know.  But it doesn't look good.

Went to Dr. Bruce's office hours yesterday to get the info on what I need to be doing for what is actually a minor, not any kind of "certificate" at all (But you can't minor in something that's not an undergrad major, so we call it a certificate anyway).  Aside from at least two of the classes not existing at all, at least not next semester, there's a lot of other stuff I have to do as well.  Although I'll skip all the profanity and general bad humor that attended my course searches for electives that apply to this, I'll get straight to the horror.

Twenty-four credit hours for this thing.  I am so dead.  In a good way.

My Chaucer class disgraced itself collectively today.  It's sort of a weekly (sometimes biweekly) thing, but it doesn't cease to baffle and vex Kelly, Michael and me.  Today, Professor Robertson brought up the postscript at the end of the Ellesmere Cook's Tale (It doesn't appear in the Hengwrt, despite the scribe being the same, which is...problematic for us tweedy bookish types), which states, "Of this tale, Chaucer maketh no more."  She asked why this might be significant, and in a desperate bid to look smart and keep her from yelling at us, people started venturing the most insane, half-brained theories imaginable.  Some were sound, but really, really abstract, which means nil after she's said it's not theoretical.  We kill a good 5 minutes on this before I cough up, "It authenticates the tale," which was apparently the correct answer.  Now I'm doomed, she will make me answer things left and right and I have only myself to blame.  Though why no one else thought of it despite being English majors and having been present for a similar explanation involving the Retraction is beyond me.  I probably sound arrogant, but this is infuriating.  To put it simply, it's not that I'm that smart (necessarily), it's that they're that aggressively stupid. 

On the bright side, Kelly and I got a chance to talk about the freakin' awesome concert we went to last night.  It was Minus the Bear, The Photo Atlas (formerly just Atlas), These Arms Are Snakes, and Big Business.  Basically the same show I saw at Cervantes a month ago, just swap out Big Business for Thunderbirds Are Now!  Que triste, since Big Business is pretty lousy, although the drummer is quite good.  Anyway, The Photo Atlas did the best show I've seen to date, These Arms Are Snakes were as weird and theatrical as ever, Big Business was...mercifully short, and Minus the Bear did what Kelly termed, "the tightest show [he'd] ever seen."  Seriously, it was worth getting home at 2 with a 9:30 class.  When they came out for the encore, the whole crowd went ballistic.  I paused to reflect at this show that I am indeed strange-- Friday night, I went to a dignified and proper lecture series, then came home for drinks and fun times, then found myself at an indie-rock show on Monday.  Truly, I am a taxidermy of cultures.  And with that nice visual, I'm out.

I have realized yet again that I need to actually speak French more often.  I understand it quite well indeed, but I have this pernicious habit of answering in English.  Since I don't really want to take a language class again during my postsecondary education, I need to acquit myself well on the proficiency test.  It's not that I mind having to learn another language, it's just that I'd rather spend grad school doing other things; plus, I already know another language and am proficient enough in it that I could improve it if dropped into a French-speaking place in a short amount of time indeed.  So...it is time to cease my slacking and up my foreign language quotient.  This should be fun, although I'm bastard enough to really enjoy it when I can make fun of other people around me without their knowledge, which presupposes someone else will have any idea what I'm talking about.  Since everyone here speaks Spanish, I despair.

Between that whole thing and this music I'm listening to-- Rabih Abou-Khalil's "Grateful Parting" from Yara-- I kind of keep thinking of vampires.  Damn you, Anne Rice the kitsch-mistress, damn you!  Well, damn Tilda Swinton too, for her disconcerting first gender switch in Orlando.  That's what the music is making me think of, as well as Paul Cobb and his excellent paper..  I think I was born in the wrong time, although that does make me wonder if I'd have loved it the way I do without the perspective several hundred intervening years has so graciously provided.  On that note, this is excellent music for reading and editing if one has a book-lined office and must do these things in the middle of the summer.  The director in my head has quite the little short film going; never a dull moment in this brain, rest assured.