You can split my infinitive any day of the week, baby

I have no idea how I made it through an English degree without The Elements of Style. I had to buy a 600 page canadian grammar guide in my first year, and I only opened it once. I got The Elements of Style for 50 cents at a rummage sale, and in only 70 pages, it has changed the way I think about the English language.

The best part is how delightfully bitchy William Strunk, Jr. can be when it comes to the minutiae of sentence construction. For example, during his discussion of the difference between like and as (page 42 in my battered 1959 edition):

Like has always been widely misused by the illiterate; lately it has been taken up by the knowing and the well-informed, who find it catchy, or liberating, and who use it as though they were slumming. If every word or device that achieved currency were immediately authenticated, simply on the grounds of popularity, the language would be as chaotic as a ball game with no foul lines.

And that's not even getting into the section on style. I feel safe in assuming Strunk would have hated blog culture and the weird mishmash language it has spawned; but what would he think of this?

Summertime, Summertime

Reading Paulo Coelho while unemployed and in the midst of a degree-related breakdown is not a good idea. At least its just Veronika Decides to Die, and not the Alchemist. I'd rather be reading an extended allegory about the nature of insanity than an extended allegory about the purpose of life.

Man, that is some heavy shit. I fail at summer reading.

So anyway, my stupid reading choices are making me think think think about, like, life and stuff. Coming off of The Corrections and going straight into another dissection of social values is making my unemployment unbearable. To the extent that the economic system has come to define aspects of my social world, my unemployment has made me more like crizazy Veronika than I would like to believe.

Fuck, do you see what cultural studies has done to me?!? Thank god I only have one more semester of school until sweet, sweet freedom/poverty. Once I don't have to dissect theory anymore, I can start aplying my neuroses to the aspects of my life that can be immediately damaged by them, the way God intended.

What sucks even more is that my lack of funds has compelled me to enter the Ayn Rand essay contest in September, which means I am going to have to spend at least a few weeks cozying up to the objectivist hell that is Atlas Shrugged.

I need some serious beach reading, ASAP.

_________________

In searching for a link for Veronika Decides to Die, I stumbled accross the IMDB page for the upcoming film adaptation staring Sarah Michelle "Buffy" Gellar as the comtemplative heroine. I have subsequently spent the last few minutes puking in my mouth.

But I'll still end up seeing the movie when it comes out.

Deep in thought.

Is entering writing contest a legitimate summer job?

Its pretty much all I've got to work with right now, so I'm going to say yes, yes it is.