I love my classes sometimes.

I had forgotten just how much Valentine talks. I read the majority of the Norton essays on the text and had notes on several; had talking points but no real outline or anything. I say 5 sentences about the Ian Watt essay and solitude and mythicization and he goes off on that and madness and we get into the fact that there's no sex in Robinson Crusoe and how that's contrary to reality and sex in the Navy and how that's a big issue now with allowing women in the Navy and doesn't anyone know what he's talking about which gets us into a discussion about American media and the European interpretation thereof and i reference Christopher Rick's remarks last night and after a half an hour it's back to me. I talk about Flynn's essay on cannibalism and Crusoe's anxiety about savagery and he starts talking again and we talk about cannibalism and taboo and in relation to good/bad, (un)clean eating i mention Peter's vision, and another time i discuss cannibalism and Alice mentions Stranger in a Strange Land before i can (even though that isn't where i was taking my rationale from). Then it's 5 minutes before class ends and he asks if i have anything else to say before we leave and i mention Damrosch's essay and his idea, first, that Robinson Crusoe is a novel that got away from its author, and then about solitude and how Crusoe can't sin without other people around so the anxiety created by the arrival of the cannibals (aside from the previously discussed anxieties that brings up). I actually had a lot more i could have talked about about savagery and religion and solitude as well as the other theme of labor and God and selfhood. I think i'm going to do my paper on labor, Puritanism, Weber, solitude, selfhood, Robinson Crusoe both because i've already read and taken notes on so many of the essays and because Protestantism is a big interest of mine. He "suggested" about a dozen works for us to read on George Eliot, which is a bit of a laugh because that's for Tuesday and we all have another class which is finishing up next week. If Trinity has the essays he wants us to read i will certainly read them (though it sounded like they were lengthy and dense) but then he was talking about the various "standard life of"s that are out there and hello, i am not reading a biography of George Eliot over the weekend.

Too lengthy for the bulleted list format.

I am not going to Stonehenge because it is over £20 and approximately 3 hours from London (not counting the reasonable time and fare involved in Oxford to London). I want to see the all-female Richard III at the Globe, though, so i need to call tomorrow and see if i can get a £5 admission (standing, not sitting, but for £5 i am totally okay with that) for Saturday. I'll go in after breakfast, go to the National Gallery, maybe some other stuff (Pride Parade starts around noon so perhaps i can contrive to be in the area and see some of that just 'cause, ya know, i'm there), and come back that night. Mandy and Karen are going into London tomorrow and then a friend of theirs is coming on Saturday. Early next week i need to pin Mandy down on a date to go to Sussex.

S2 is the new cool thing, so i thought i was one of the few who didn't like it, but then anniesj said, "I'm one of the few people who doesn't mind the S2 style." Interpretation of popularity is all in the company you keep, i suppose (which is really true of everything) and which reminds me that i am usually so glad i am not really "in fandom." I check in after episodes (usually) and usually manage to hear fun con info (and casting information whether i want it or not) and i manage to avoid all the kerfuffles except sort of driving by them so to speak. I wish i were in the loop as to where to find good fanfic, but i don't think there exists such a loop; one just has to have friends who can recc good stuff (or spend way too much time searching the web).

I dislike AIMexpress. It is better than no AIM, though. No one ever IMs me, but tonight i put that as my away message and Rebecca IMed me almost immediately. Yay. :)

The Canada kids leave tomorrow. Also with the yay. They have their fancy farewell dinner tonight, so after regular dinner they were all outside the dining hall taking pictures of each other and they kept encroaching on us (me and the people i was hanging out with) even though we kept moving away from them, so we eventually went to the Lodge to chill.

Big influx of tourists today. (Have i mentioned how i often feel like we're in a zoo, on display. One time i was leaving and this tour guide was at the gate saying "And on our right, Trinity College" and i felt like implied was "Also on our right, a Trinity College student.") They look into Mandy and Karen's room because they're on the ground floor. One of these days one of them is going to pull out a camera and take a picture of one of the tourists. They were joking with Dave about all this and suggestions included putting a sign on the window that says "Not a Tourist Attraction" (followed by the suggestion to put a sign on the other window saying "Please Look in My Window") and offering to take a picture of a tourist with one of us "authentic Trinity students" and then saying "That'll be 2 pounds."

Dinner conversation tonight was phallic imagery in 19th-century women's literature.
How did you guess i was sitting with Smithies?