[BRIEF NOTE] A Kate Earworm

Even before last December about the probability of a new Kate Bush album soon, and finally, I've been tormented by an earworm, Kate Bush's "Constellation of the Heart" from the 1993 The Red Shoes. It's the chorus that keeps repeating over and over in my head, in particular.

We take all the telescopes
And we turn them inside out
And we point them away from the big sky
Put your eye right up to the glass, now
And here we'll find the constellation of the heart

I like that difficult album, and I like this emotive song, but enough is enough. How do you get rid of earworms?

[ACADEMIC] Preparations for Submissions

Bet no one counted on seeing that tag again. So far as I can tell from a quick Google, I last used it back in May.

One thing that I never did while a student enrolled at an institution of higher education was try to submit a work of mine to a journal for publication, or to a conference for presentation. This wasn't because I was incapable of composing a work worthy of submission, since I know that I write and research rather nicely, and I know that the results can be rather good. How else to explain the fact that, as of April 2003, my Honours English essay earned me the highest mark ever assigned to anyone who completed that program at UPEI? Rather, it was an excessive timidity that presented itself to me (or that I presented to myself) as a desire to avoid pride.

I've finished my formal participation in academia, at least for the time being. Who knows what I'll be doing in two years time? Despite that lapse in my formal membership, I think that I still have things to contribute; and, the results from my post to the toronto community have been quite encouraging.

I'll shortly finish preparing the analytical chapters of my Honours English thesis for web publication at Athabasca University's Canadian Writers Web Pages. I've also selected what I think are my strongest papers from my undergraduate years for possible future upgrading and preparation for publication and/or presentation. I might try to recruit the help of readers, or I might not. Things are still up in the air.

We'll see how this goes.

[QUIZ] Via charlemagne77

( What Stupid LiveJournal Quiz Am I? )

[META] Who should I read on Livejournal?

What the subject line says. Myself, I'm always up for (reading) new blogs.

[BRIEF NOTE] Boy, Meet Wolf; Wolf, Boy

In his 17-minute speech, Mr Bush used the word freedom 27 times, implicitly defending the war in Iraq. And far from settling on a more modest and pragmatic foreign policy, he set his Administration enormously challenging goals. "The great objective of ending tyranny is the concentrated work of generations," he said. "The difficulty of the task is no excuse for avoiding it."

- from Michael Gawenda's article "Bush rings liberty bell, with force", published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 22 January 2005

I find Bush's claims to be promoting freedom to be unbelievable, at best. I wonder if this is because Bush et al use the word "freedom" and its cognates ("liberty," say) so frequently as to empty them of any sort of discernable meaning. When Bush says "freedom," all I hear is void.

It would be a pity if Bush really was trying to promote freedom and his use of language discouraged people from believing he was at all sincere.