To-Due List:

Tuesday, November 20th: Presentation on Ghettostocracy - African-Canadian Lit
Friday, November 23rd: Bibliographical description exercise - Bibliography
Tuesday, November 27th: Presentation on final project - Touch of Evil
Friday, November 30th: CCA grant proposal
Monday, December 3rd: Presentation on Death in Venice - Opera
Monday, December 10th: Final research paper (max. 15 pages) - Opera
Monday, December 10th: Editorial exercise - Bibliography
Monday, December 10th: Critical reflection paper - Bibliography
Friday, December 14th: Final project - Touch of Evil
Monday, January 7th: Final research paper (max. 14 pages) - African-Canadian Lit

It makes me feel a bit better laying it all out like that. I've been feeling a little overwhelmed tonight.

After Opera class I walked home from Keele station and watched a making-of featurette on The Sound of Music while eating dinner. I almost finished my film readings, taking a break to crack open Scrubs Season 6. Lots of material on castration anxiety, fetishistic scopophilia and the female lack (in the readings, not on Scrubs). Tomorrow I'll be working on all things Thomas Mann.

I'm missing Ottawa today. Winter is coming. I love those deep winter nights when the sky is pitch black and the streets are lit up with lamps reflecting off freshly fallen snow. The world is enveloped in near silence as no one is out braving the roads. You breathe in and the air is so cold it forms a taste in the back of your throat and hurls itself down into your lungs. You take a step and the ground tightens. The feeling overcomes you that miles away there is something running in your direction, but it will never catch up, and you will never look it in the eye. There is only the quiet and the clouds that exit your mouth and hang for a moment before disappearing completely.

I watched a bit of a sermon on television this morning given by Joel Osten, who my dad is apparently into nowadays. Televangelists have always interested me in a perverse way, ever since I researched some for an essay I wrote on Chaucer's Pardoner. This pastor Osten's church is an old arena in Houston that draws over 40,000 people a week. Barbara Walters called him one of the ten most interesting people of last year, between Jolie/Pitt and Jay-Z. I read a couple of news articles on him, and apparently his deal is that he doesn't talk about sin or the afterlife really at all. He describes himself as more of a motivational speaker, and though he does quote the Bible and such during his sermons, it's to illustrate the point that God wants us to be happy on earth. A lot of other preachers deride Osten, calling his sermons "Christian Lite" because he doesn't mention eternal life in Christ and the possibility of damnation.

I like that positivity vibe, but TV preachers make me uneasy. It's obvious this guy is rich and out to sell books and what have you. The whole idea of God equalling financial abundance reeks of Christian capitalist propaganda. Whether or not Osten really believes what he's saying is up to anyone. It does make me wonder about the thinness of that line between living positively and living religiously. There might be a lot of people out there who have adopted regimens to give them the mental, emotional and spritual strength to get through each day. Is that really any different from a recognized faith?

I think a lot of folks just want to be told that everything's going to be okay. If you're fortunate enough, your parents are there to reassure you for those first few years. After that some of us have to pay for that reassurance.

I watched some of the Ottawa Remembrance Day footage on CBC and it made me homesick. I also watched The Sound of Music (MAN I love that flick) and had dinner before getting on a bus for Toronto. I despise taking the bus. Nothing makes me testier than waiting with a crowd to board a bus, city or otherwise. I give the glare of death to people who cut in line or shift to get closer to the curb. In Peterborough it's even worse because the lineups are never clear and the terminal never makes announcements about where and when to board. Honestly, it's one of the very few things that gets me really pissed off - the lack of order and courtesy in a bus queue. I really should be driving a car.

On my return I did a few readings and sent in some presentation info to Professor Columpar for the class blog. Tomorrow I have Opera class, in which I've lost a lot of interest in general. I have a feeling I'll be logging a lot of hours in the library over the next little while.