09.23.03: Good times.

I always appreciate a link from Jay, as it always comes gift wrapped with a boost in readership. It's not that nobody reads my site, it's just . . .

OK, nobody reads my site. Except when informed by other, more content-laden sites. I have nobody to blame but myself.

This gives me a good opportunity to say publicly that I disagree with Jay's recent post concerning the ability of Fagles vs. Fitzgerald. Although I am by no means an ancient scholar, much less a linguist, I do find Fagles a better translation of Sophocles' Thebean plays (viz., Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone). Got my academic pretentia out.

I taught today. One can never understand how exhausting it actually is until one is thrown into a room with fifty undergrads, even if they have read the assignment. Most of them haven't.

Today I did a rather good job of explicating the cosmological argument from Meditation III of Rene Descartes' Mediations on First Philosophy. It took a full hour. Now I post, then I eat and soon afterwards I shall sleep.

I've been reading a lot of Hegel. This may be due to the fact that I'm currently taking a seminar on Hegel, but not entirely. It is slowly becoming more and more clear to me that Hegel did truly start a new tradition in the history of philosophy. Likewise, it is becoming less and less clear why people read anything before Hegel for any other purpose than to better understand The Phenomenology of Spirit.

Personal life is going well. The new girl is still romantically interested in me after nearly two months. I'm not used to this kind of longetivity as of late. And, the weirdest part is that we haven't fought yet. So, this is the way that it's supposed to work, eh?

09.16.03: As the phoenix rises from the ashes, so do I.

My ashes have been the unrelenting heat of summer in Tampa. It's been hot, and thus I've been nocturnal.

I have a good deal of writing to catch up on. To begin with, I have several outstanding incompletes that I plan to remedy very soon. Additionally, I am teaching a class that I have never taught before, which requires a good deal of preparation time. Somehow I still have time for the bottle and a football game here and there.

I am now much more able to write. I have acquired a muse. She brings simplicity and order to my life; I can once again see the beauty around me. More on her later.

Bummed by the deaths of John Ritter and Johnny Cash. Two geniuses who honed and practiced their respective crafts better than any of their contemporaries. No words can do justice.

Aside from all the tragedy, and all the mayhem, and all the death, and all the destruction, and all the shit the world is in . . . for the first time in a long time, everything is working out fine.