030408 You go back and re-read something you haven’t read since you were as punk an ass as these kids you’re babysitting for a hundred dollars a day, and you realize (besides the fact that you forget most of what you read, and besides the fact that there’s a lot of good shit you should really go back and re-read, or just read for the first time, you lazy punk ass) that a whole lot of things influenced your writing in a big way, and you didn’t even notice it when it was happening. Then again, it could be partly that the same (other) things were influencing both that old writer, and yourself. Not just a one-to-one reaction, but you recognize yourself in your literature, period. Some nodes of that huge, multi-generational fractal network do tend to stick out (or in) more in your puny brain, though. If I could spend points and just plain old get new brain stuff, I would give myself a good dose of the mathematical-geographical. It’s kind of boring being just another plain old humanist-linguist. The funny thing is, I don’t really like English that much. I mean, I like reading, and writing, and talking about reading and writing in certain circumstances, but English classes are just, honestly, not where it’s really at. I’d rather be a math whiz, or a science whiz, who is broad-minded enough to have formed legitimate opinions about English, than a freakin’ English teacher. Says Quiller-Couch: “The Tempest or Paradise Lost or The Ancient Mariner or Prometheus Unbound can be truer than any police report. Yet we know that they are truer in essence, and in significance, since they appeal to eternal verities--since they imitate the Universal--whereas the police report chronicles (faithfully, as in duty bound, even usefully in its way) events which may, nay must, be significant somehow but cannot at best be better to us than phenomena, broken ends and shards.” But, hey wow, there’s so much you can do with broken ends and shards! 032108 How I love Helvetica Condensed Bold! It’s so bookish and scrippy! Yay!