It's true. I am really, truly teh suck at blogging these days. (And yes, Mom and Dad, "I am teh suck" is a strange, grammatically-correct-to-the-people-who-use-it phrase to which you have not yet been exposed. Well, until now. Right.) There is just so much going on right now that it's crazy. Cra-a-a-a-zy.

A couple of quick bring-you-up-to-speed things before I hoof it to my 2:30 class...

The monitors are still broken. My third display is still conked out. This is distressing because the monitor is fine, the connectors are fine, but the motherboard isn't delivering enough power (we think) to drive three displays, which feels like a very expensive and time-consuming repair. Ewww.

Last week, Cartoon Network; this week, Square Enix. So MIT is bringing in a high muckymuck from Square Enix this week, which is awesome. Square Enix is the company behind Final Fantasy, my favorite RPG franchise ever, and making a connection with someone there is going to be quite cool. I can't wait to meet this guy.

Also: the Director of the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences really enjoyed Corpse Bride. Another amazing MIT moment – last Thursday night Ivan, Sam, Sam's wife and I got to see Tim Burton's Corpse Bride with the director of The Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences, which is essentially the Academy of People Who Make Movies Using Videogames. Think Red vs. Blue and you got it. He was a very cool guy – he'd come to give a presentation about machinima and afterwards, at the reception, we went up to him and said, "Hey, we're going to go see Corpse Bride – wanna go?" and he said "Sure!" So we dropped his bag of computers off at the Marriott in Kendall Square (which is where all visiting MIT people seem to stay) and headed down to the Lowes Cineplex on Boston Common, which is now one of my favorite theaters ever. We had a great conversation on the train about obscure animators and graphic design. I love it here.

Serenity rules. Go see it now! If you haven't seen it yet, Joss Whedon's new film is amazing. Even the guys in our party who had never seen an ep of Firefly agreed that it was better than Star Wars. Someone in a review recently likened it to what it would have been like if Han Solo hadn't met up with Luke Skywalker and had instead had a movie about the adventures of the Millennium Falcon, and that's kind of right. Only better. And funnier. And sadder. It. Was. Great. Go see it, now!

Man, what else?

Jeez, I'm not sure. I have a piece by Barthes which I really need to read for my next class, which is all about the death of the author, and I feel it necessary to stand up for all authors everywhere and cry, "I'm not dead yet!" Ah, Barthes and Foucault. Bastards.

MIT is also doing weird things to my mood. Yesterday before Serenity was very, very bad because I was feeling excruciatingly overwhelmed by the workload, but today it's quite a bit better. I'm also eating more/worse here, which is bad, because I'd honestly expected to be losing weight while here, but instead I have resorted to a steady diet of energy-boosting junk food to keep the engines burning at weird hours and doing weird things. I'd also forgotten how much I liked to munch on snacks while reading, so having this mountain of theory cascading down on my poor widdle head right in at the onset of Halloween candy season is the apocalypse. Damn you, mallowcreme pumpkins! Damn you to hell!

But, anyway, I'm still happy and excited. Exhausted, and getting somewhat more so every day, but still happy and excited. Life is good, it's just crazy.

Oh, and Murakami, the author of Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, is coming this week, as is Stephen Berlin Johnson, the author of Everything Bad is Good for You and other such things. Oh, and I have a major media project due on Thursday. If it works half as well as I'm hoping it will, there will be Neat Stuff appearing at geoffreylong.com later this week. I'll post again here when/if it goes up. Wish me luck!