Reports of My Untimely Demise...

... Probably don't exist, but it's nice to think that someone, somewhere - perhaps some deranged and forever unknown devotee of cynical film review and cultural skepticism lurking out there in this troubled and convulsing series of tubes - has noticed a certain plunging towards flatline drop-off in my posting regularity. Perhaps I need more fiber, or at least fiber's internet equivalent. (You see, in this metaphor, mixed and vexed as it is, posting on a blog and pooping are essentially equivalent activites.)

I am not without excuse for this update shortage. Oh no. I have many excuses in fact. Good ones. Graduate studies in English have commenced, once again at that institute of dubious credibility, the University of Saskatchewan. I now descend even further into the stygian corners of academia, taking on not only the role of bewildered pilgrim, stumbling and fumbling about and occasionally stopping to shout out some curse against the prevailing powers-that-be who keep, ridiculously and with increasing futility, trying to tell me that things like postmodernism and theory are important... but also, apparently, and now when did this happen, the role of guide, of some Virgil-esque (-ish?) agent of academic mercy, sent of help shuffle freshmen students across the seething currents of Acheron and file them away in some departmental bolge, all while avoiding the chomping, slobbering advances of that insatiable beast Cerberus, who in this by now incomprehensible metaphor doesn't really represent anything at all, except maybe my own irrational need to render university as if it where some Dantean punishment. Anyway, in case you didn't catch all that, I'm now leading a first-year English lit tutorial. That, and my own studies, keep me busy.

Also, and I have no half-cooked metaphor to describe this, sorry, I am still writing The Execution. It has become, uh well... distracting. Which is a downgrade. Before, it was consuming. But even so, when I should be reading, I'm writing. And when I should be writing, I'm writing, but not, see, what I'm supposed to be writing, which is essays and seminar presentations and other necessary but, you know, really intrusive things like that. However, I remain pleased with the results. This whole thing has been a remarkable experience. I really had no idea what I was setting out on when I started. It has already surpassed all the personal goals I set for myself. Work on the novel has dramatically slowed with my reentry into the academy, but it remains my primary focus. I might regret that later. You know, when professors start glaring at me that projects are due. But much, much later, when I'm published and celebrated and really filthy rich, it will all have been worth it.

And in whatever time remains, I indulge in grandiose and narcissistic fantasy. With all that, I'm swamped!

So in the next little while, as I attempt to find anything approaching a working knowledge of the English language in freshmen papers; struggle to prove that I myself possess such knowledge, however limited, in my own writing, academic or otherwise; and as I once again consider the merit of complete withdrawal from human civilization - I don't know, up on a mountain somewhere, or in the middle of the desert, perhaps surrounded by landmines, or at least a moat - I may not update the old blog all that much.