Probably the most poorly structured blog entry on the whole Internet
This weekend has been a bit rubbish, but necessarily so. An early night on Friday, following my exam-induced exhaustion, then all day Saturday spent boning up on Tax, followed by today spent doing question practice. I'm making progress; most of the mistakes I'm making are stupid, avoidable ones, which I think means that I have the knowledge I need, I just need practice in how to apply it. Of course, once I've mastered tax, I have three other modules to nail, but I'm not thinking about that; besides, one of those is Business Strategy which, as I've previously indicated, is one of the world's great dosses.
For reasons which are, perhaps, obvious, I've not been reading much lately. There's a book group meeting at work tomorrow discussing Things Fall Apart, which I've barely even started (and which, thus far, appears to mostly be about yams- I remember reading about yams as a kid in one of the Doctor Doolittle books, and thinking that they sounded unimaginably exotic. The main character of Things Fall Apart appears to hold similar views, as the acquisition of yams comprises his main goal in life. Perhaps Chinua Achebe has read the Doctor Doolittle books; then again, as he apparently wrote a famous tirade condemning Heart of Darkness for its racism, he's unlikely to have sympathised with the character of Prince Bumpo, the African prince who demands that Doctor Doolittle make him a potion to turn his skin white. Prince Bumpo later moved to England with the good doctor, and applied himself to the study of science; better, but patronising all the same. What's that? Close the parentheses? Oh, all right.) I'm sure I'll finish it eventually as, yams apart, it's an excellent book.
The title, if you'll permit me another uninteresting digression, is a quote from the excellent WB Yeats poem "The Second Coming" ("Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world"), which also contains one of my favourite lines of any poem: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity". A statement for our times, indeed. The Second Coming is also notable for being quoted in its entirety by Mohinder at the end of episode one of Heroes Season Three; why Mohinder feels the need for this is, as ever, anyone's guess. As if to prove that these things come in threes, the poem also cropped up in Wednesday evening's Eggheads; the Eggheads were asked to identify the author of the above couplet, and thought it was T.S. Eliot ("Not mystical enough for Yeats", as if every line of every poem the guy ever wrote was infused with fairy dust. Besides, Eliot is plenty mystical.), resulting in the contestant winning. As I knew the answer was Yeats, I got to feel rather pleased with myself until later in the evening when, at a pub quiz, Matt and I did very, very poorly indeed (sample question: "In the 1980s sitcom Bread, what was the first name of the vicar who officiated at Aveline's wedding?").
So that's what I've been doing. For dinner tonight, I shall fry a bit of trout with dill and eat with new potatoes, watercress, rocket, and probably a bit of broccoli, then I shall study tax until bedtime, with occasional breaks to play Scrabble, eat pie from Budgens and maybe go to the toilet. Then eight hours of deep and dreamless, then back to the office, then more study in the evening. Heigh ho.
For reasons which are, perhaps, obvious, I've not been reading much lately. There's a book group meeting at work tomorrow discussing Things Fall Apart, which I've barely even started (and which, thus far, appears to mostly be about yams- I remember reading about yams as a kid in one of the Doctor Doolittle books, and thinking that they sounded unimaginably exotic. The main character of Things Fall Apart appears to hold similar views, as the acquisition of yams comprises his main goal in life. Perhaps Chinua Achebe has read the Doctor Doolittle books; then again, as he apparently wrote a famous tirade condemning Heart of Darkness for its racism, he's unlikely to have sympathised with the character of Prince Bumpo, the African prince who demands that Doctor Doolittle make him a potion to turn his skin white. Prince Bumpo later moved to England with the good doctor, and applied himself to the study of science; better, but patronising all the same. What's that? Close the parentheses? Oh, all right.) I'm sure I'll finish it eventually as, yams apart, it's an excellent book.
The title, if you'll permit me another uninteresting digression, is a quote from the excellent WB Yeats poem "The Second Coming" ("Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world"), which also contains one of my favourite lines of any poem: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity". A statement for our times, indeed. The Second Coming is also notable for being quoted in its entirety by Mohinder at the end of episode one of Heroes Season Three; why Mohinder feels the need for this is, as ever, anyone's guess. As if to prove that these things come in threes, the poem also cropped up in Wednesday evening's Eggheads; the Eggheads were asked to identify the author of the above couplet, and thought it was T.S. Eliot ("Not mystical enough for Yeats", as if every line of every poem the guy ever wrote was infused with fairy dust. Besides, Eliot is plenty mystical.), resulting in the contestant winning. As I knew the answer was Yeats, I got to feel rather pleased with myself until later in the evening when, at a pub quiz, Matt and I did very, very poorly indeed (sample question: "In the 1980s sitcom Bread, what was the first name of the vicar who officiated at Aveline's wedding?").
So that's what I've been doing. For dinner tonight, I shall fry a bit of trout with dill and eat with new potatoes, watercress, rocket, and probably a bit of broccoli, then I shall study tax until bedtime, with occasional breaks to play Scrabble, eat pie from Budgens and maybe go to the toilet. Then eight hours of deep and dreamless, then back to the office, then more study in the evening. Heigh ho.