I’m bogged down in dissertation-land this month, trying to finish a chapter before I start teaching in mid-July.
Things I have been doing lately, in addition to writing my dissertation:
- Pondering the confluence of events that leads pets to get sick immediately before one’s partner leaves on a scheduled trip.
- Washing a lot of bedding. See previous point.
- Watching season 1 of Leverage and pondering the caper plot. It’s a silly, fun show with a ridiculously sentimental frame story, but it’s also surprisingly ambitious — a caper a week?
- Preparing teaching materials for my fiction workshop, including a basic website. (Not totally complete yet.) Wondering why Drupal is so much more annoying than WordPress.
Links to recommend:
- Alexander Chee’s great series of posts on MFA programs: when an MFA degree is a good idea, how he chose his own program, etc. Start with this post — the others are linked from it, including this brief FAQ about MFA programs, which is worth a look.
- This NPR story on a neurologist who studies the brains of psychopaths — and who found his own brain scans somewhat unnerving. (Not dissimilar, in a sense, to the book by Jessica Stern that I mentioned last week, in which she connects her own traumatic history to her study of terrorism.)
- The formation of a new continental rift valley in Africa.
- Tuscany via Henry James.
- Ernesto Neto’s installation at the Hayward Gallery at the Saatchi in London. A friend posted photos on Facebook; just beautiful.
- The sweetest story of a marriage I’ve read for a while.
I looked at the photo of the installation and went ‘Whoah! It’s just like inside Moya on Farscape!’
Isn’t it amazing? And the fabric looks like it would be interesting to touch, too.