You're good. It's chiefly your eyes and the throb in your voice when you say things like...
...wow.
At the beginning of the month, I could see the dust clouds the wildebeests were raising in the distance behind me. After the first week, the wildebeest were thundering just behind me. The following week, they caught up to me, but I was still able to keep pace. Then, about a week ago, like poor Simba, I was engulfed and only now has the stampede passed leaving me mangled, broken and wrung out in the wake of the storm.
But I'm still breathing. Which is nice.
The LSAT's are a non-issue, meaning the worst of law school applications has happened. Still, the applications are a work in progress.
Not a week later, I had the opportunity to swing through Charm City for Bouchercon 2008, my first con ever, which is deserving of its own post. Highlights include watching David Simon drive by while I'm returning from the ATM machine, talking shop and Balkans with Dan Fesperman then getting him to sign my books, seeing J.A. Konrath's tattoos after the ridiculously funny beer panel, and prostrating myself before the magazine editor who published my first short story ever.
Society stuff reaches its apex upon my return and perhaps it is this, coupled with the stress of my academic obligations (the joint B.A./M.A. + realizing that my senior thesis has already been written. By someone else.) precipitated an aggravation of my cardiac arrhythmia, putting me in the hospital for a week, during which I got guess how much work done, which did little to ease my stress level but did wonders for my life planning.
Instead of teaching urban youth, I might just fly out to L.A. for a year and write screenplays that'll never get produced. I could use the change of scenery.
The time in the hospital was an odyssey in the truest sense of the word, and I had the privilege to meet some of the salt of the earth. Not so much a redefining of my understanding of human experience, but more an insertion of nuances. I saw some truly extraordinary things, some of which may find its way into a story when time has given me the wisdom that comes with distance.
Meanwhile, I've been wrestling with my final project, which was originally an examination of European Community policy towards illicit trade in the Balkans and why it was security-biased as opposed to taking on a more economic orientation. And the more I dig in, the more problems arise and the more questions I have to spend more time answering. How do I know security-biased policy is less effective than economically-biased policy when the latter has yet to be tried? Plus, if we're looking at the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina for instance, there are a number of things explaining its stymied progress towards EU accession (if we're using that as a sort of benchmark of progress arising out of Yugoslavia's dissolution). It could be the fact that Dayton split the country in a way that actually concretized a lot of its problems as opposed to addressing them and working towards eliminating them. But I digress...
I have been digging deeper into the theoretical literature regarding Prisoner's Dilemma and various political economic frameworks that have been thrust upon party interactions in this sort of setting, and I think I'm close to discovering the innovation of my paper. Most Prisoner's Dilemma activity has been examined on only one level. It's always been criminal-criminal or state-state or actor-actor or whatever. And it was always looked at along the lines of the joining principle whether it was the profession of drug smuggler or whether it was the existence of a state apparatus. But an interesting thing about the Balkan conflicts were that while these nations were firing at each other, they were also busy arming each other. Arms flowing from Serbia to Bosnia and Croatia, supplies going in the other direction, just to cite one generation situational example.
But this is probably really boring. Anyway, it's opened up some new avenues of inquiry for me and promises to make the next meeting with my essay adviser an animated one.
In other news, I'm falling further in love with my Detective Fiction class. Earlier tonight, we watched a 16mm screening of Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, and the first thing I realized was why so many people are fawning over Mad Men's Jon Hamm, the actor who plays the enigmatic protagonist Don Draper. He's the 21st century Bogart. The resemblance, though faint at times, is absolutely uncanny.
Also, I'm still now a day or two after still in the thrall of this latest episode of The Shield. In two words: holy shit.
And then I open my inbox to find an email from a friend I hadn't been in touch with since fourth grade. Joyful serendipity.
And suddenly, the kinks and aches I'd expected after being trampled by a stampede of wildebeests have vanished.
At the beginning of the month, I could see the dust clouds the wildebeests were raising in the distance behind me. After the first week, the wildebeest were thundering just behind me. The following week, they caught up to me, but I was still able to keep pace. Then, about a week ago, like poor Simba, I was engulfed and only now has the stampede passed leaving me mangled, broken and wrung out in the wake of the storm.
But I'm still breathing. Which is nice.
The LSAT's are a non-issue, meaning the worst of law school applications has happened. Still, the applications are a work in progress.
Not a week later, I had the opportunity to swing through Charm City for Bouchercon 2008, my first con ever, which is deserving of its own post. Highlights include watching David Simon drive by while I'm returning from the ATM machine, talking shop and Balkans with Dan Fesperman then getting him to sign my books, seeing J.A. Konrath's tattoos after the ridiculously funny beer panel, and prostrating myself before the magazine editor who published my first short story ever.
Society stuff reaches its apex upon my return and perhaps it is this, coupled with the stress of my academic obligations (the joint B.A./M.A. + realizing that my senior thesis has already been written. By someone else.) precipitated an aggravation of my cardiac arrhythmia, putting me in the hospital for a week, during which I got guess how much work done, which did little to ease my stress level but did wonders for my life planning.
Instead of teaching urban youth, I might just fly out to L.A. for a year and write screenplays that'll never get produced. I could use the change of scenery.
The time in the hospital was an odyssey in the truest sense of the word, and I had the privilege to meet some of the salt of the earth. Not so much a redefining of my understanding of human experience, but more an insertion of nuances. I saw some truly extraordinary things, some of which may find its way into a story when time has given me the wisdom that comes with distance.
Meanwhile, I've been wrestling with my final project, which was originally an examination of European Community policy towards illicit trade in the Balkans and why it was security-biased as opposed to taking on a more economic orientation. And the more I dig in, the more problems arise and the more questions I have to spend more time answering. How do I know security-biased policy is less effective than economically-biased policy when the latter has yet to be tried? Plus, if we're looking at the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina for instance, there are a number of things explaining its stymied progress towards EU accession (if we're using that as a sort of benchmark of progress arising out of Yugoslavia's dissolution). It could be the fact that Dayton split the country in a way that actually concretized a lot of its problems as opposed to addressing them and working towards eliminating them. But I digress...
I have been digging deeper into the theoretical literature regarding Prisoner's Dilemma and various political economic frameworks that have been thrust upon party interactions in this sort of setting, and I think I'm close to discovering the innovation of my paper. Most Prisoner's Dilemma activity has been examined on only one level. It's always been criminal-criminal or state-state or actor-actor or whatever. And it was always looked at along the lines of the joining principle whether it was the profession of drug smuggler or whether it was the existence of a state apparatus. But an interesting thing about the Balkan conflicts were that while these nations were firing at each other, they were also busy arming each other. Arms flowing from Serbia to Bosnia and Croatia, supplies going in the other direction, just to cite one generation situational example.
But this is probably really boring. Anyway, it's opened up some new avenues of inquiry for me and promises to make the next meeting with my essay adviser an animated one.
In other news, I'm falling further in love with my Detective Fiction class. Earlier tonight, we watched a 16mm screening of Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, and the first thing I realized was why so many people are fawning over Mad Men's Jon Hamm, the actor who plays the enigmatic protagonist Don Draper. He's the 21st century Bogart. The resemblance, though faint at times, is absolutely uncanny.
Also, I'm still now a day or two after still in the thrall of this latest episode of The Shield. In two words: holy shit.
And then I open my inbox to find an email from a friend I hadn't been in touch with since fourth grade. Joyful serendipity.
And suddenly, the kinks and aches I'd expected after being trampled by a stampede of wildebeests have vanished.