Quotes From the Throes of Finals IV

Alternatively titled ‘Irn Bru II: Scottishness in a Soft Drink’

While reading Jeffrey Karnicky’s essay ‘Irvine Welsh’s Novel Subjectivities’, I came across this quote:

Simon Frith, an English professor living in Scotland, writes that “whenever I discuss Scottishness with Scottish students the consensus is that the only good indicator of a Scot is a Scottish accent.”

This is not true. An additional indicator of Scottishness is whether or not you like Irn Bru. I have had Scottish friends aver that they have to like Irn Bru because they are Scottish. Because this sounds too much like a contract between a nation and a major franchise, I would suggest that liking the bubbly-gum, cough medicine-tasting drink is encoded into their genetic makeup.

From the Book that was Near-Impossible to Find

"As though his tears had flooded it his mind was filled with knowledge and he knew that his life was kin to all the life around him, even to the beasts that grazed in the fields, and to the very fields themselves. Live was the flowering of a single land, and love of country was of virtue but stark necessity. Patriotism and the waving of flags was an empty pride, but love of one's own country, of the little acres of one's birth, was the navel-string to life. His life, as the life about him, was the vigour of his own blood, and life could not be whole save in its own place. Now he knew why, in far parts of the world, he had often felt the unreality of all he saw and descried a foolish artifice in his own business there. The far parts of the world were fine roving for pirates who had a secrete island whither they might bring back their booty, but to roam the world without a haven or a home was to be lost as a star that fell to nothingness through the ordered ranks of heaven. Now he knew why, in late months, time had passed so simply and untroubled. This soil was his own flesh and time passed over him and it like a stream that ran in one bed. Here indeed he was immortal, for death would but take him back to his other self,and this other self was so lovely a thing, in its cloak of snow, in the bright hues of spring, in the dyes of the westering sun, that to lie in it was surely beatitude."

- Magnus Merriman, Eric Linklater

My Expectations Are Always Waaay Too High

I was in Blackwell's today, which is the gargantuan corporate equivalent to Barnes and Noble, and I was buying a book for class. Well, two books: Kidnapped and Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson. They come in a single-volume work, so it's kinda like getting two for one, no?

While I was queuing (Did you see that? British word used!), my eye alighted on an all-too familiar book, Jon Connelly's The Book of Lost Things. As the astute follower already knows, I have already read it, and although my eager child's imagination readily devoured the back cover and then the whole book, it was not satisfying in the way I had expected it to be. I wanted the characters to move with such grace that they left a trail of glowing dust in their wake, the writing to be so eloquent that I want to throw myself off the top of the cliff like the poet-bard in Martin's painting The Bard below, due to sheer ecstasy of spirit.

You may doubt that such a character can ever produce a result like that. I may be exaggerating a smidgeon, but Mara from Mara Daughter of the Nile was like that for me. She sparkled, and not in a vampire-like way. Think of Philip Pullman's golden dust from His Dark Materials Trilogy combined with Tinkerbell's pixie dust, and then add some of the glowing scenery from David Cameron's Avatar, a few 4th of July sparklers for good measure, and then you begin to get close to what I have in my head.

Connelly's book held such promise, but in the end it fell apart for me. It was still beautiful, but it did not sustain the expectations I had for it.

Aside from Connelly's book on the table, I saw another: The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart. Listen to its title in your head, say the name aloud. Cuckoo-clocks catch me; I remember a friend of mine in a high school creative writing class wrote a poem about cuckoo-clocks, and she capitalised on the rich consonants of the word. Cuckoo-clocks evoke, for me, a world that is slightly askance, Lewis Carroll-like, full of imagination and childhood.

We'll see what this book has in store for me. That is, if I ever get around to reading it this semester...

On Discovering an Intriguing Blog

I did not know until about five minutes ago that my cousin has a blog, I'd Rather be at Hogwarts. Because I am unaware of how one highlights a series of words and makes it a link to another site, I'll post the link here:

http://jeffersoncampbell.tumblr.com/

My one criticism is that there is no easy way to comment on anything. With the discovery of this blog and recently finishing "Julie and Julia," I decided to write a blog post. It will be for my own vindication, as methinks no one will stumble across this and be interested apart from a few friends and family members, but isn't that the purpose of a blog?

In response to "I'd Rather be at Hogwarts'" post on the 23rd of December:


And in response to a post on the 22nd of December: I was the person that tipped Jefferson off about the Hello Kitty gumball dispenser, thanks much.

And his videos do not work for my computer. That is all. On that, anyway.

I've recently been trying to rework a manuscript of mine, and it's somewhere in the vicinity of 25,000 words. I have new respect for the individuals who participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) over the month of November, writing 50,000 words. With a semblance of a plot. Kudos, guys, ku-dos. It's exhausting.

Word of the day - advesperate.

On recently finishing "The Hunger Games:" I was amused. Got it as a Christmas gift, devoured it in about a day, caved and bought the sequel "Catching Fire" today. Simultaneously, I'm trying to read "Dracula," as well. The epistolary form of writing annoys me; I think I prefer contemporary writing styles, but I'm not sure. There are so many time periods to choose from...