Below are the 8 most recent journal entries recorded in Travis Q. Currit's LiveJournal:

Friday, January 6th, 2006
3:17 pm	Donc voilà j'ai rien fait pendant presque une heure. Peut-etre que j'ai qqch à faire mais c'est probable que non. Ah merde voilà quelqu'un avec qui je suis obligé de parler... merde alors... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
2:32 pm	Murmurs Aujourd'hui je me suis mis à pleurer dans la salle d'ordinateurs à la fac. C'était pour rien, j'ai vu quelque photos d'Utah et tout de suite c'était la déluge. (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 5th, 2006
11:56 pm	En rentrant Voilà, c'est moi. En france, enfin, après quelques semaines en Suède. Lille, residence Robespierre, tous les mêmes trucs comme si je ne suis jamais parti. Encore un semestre d'essayer de faire qqch de productive dans cette ville de merde. Mais non, c'est pas vraiment juste ca, c'est pas tout de la merde même s'il y en a beaucoup. C'est seulement que, fin, tout ce que je voulais faire avant de partir, tout ce que je m'imaginais que je ferais en france, que j'apprendrais ou que j'aimerais, la personne que je deviendrais, l'extase constante que je me sentirais, tout ca, je ne le fait pas. Je vis, j'apprends, mais pas comme je ne pensais. Et donc je dois essayer de me retrouver, de refaire mes idées de ce que je veux. Ca fait longtemps que j'ai abandonné des quètes idéalistes pour trouver quelque réalité mystique de la vie; j'ai accepté le mondain, c'est assez pour moi. Donc c'est pas vraiment la crise d'identité qui m'inquiète, c'est que j'ai peur que je perde du temps ici, que si je suis qqn d'autre, si cette route c'est pas ce que je veux, c'est déjà trop tard de changer, je peux rien faire d'autre, je suis un batarde foutu dans une vie mal-décidée. Bref, enfin c'est évident que ces problèmes sont pas spécifique à la France; c'est juste qu'ici la France c'est le bouc émissaire pour tous les problèmes de la vie. Mais en réalité c'est presque certain je me sentirais les memes choses si j'etais n'importe ou d'autre. La france, je te pardonne. -TQC (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 30th, 2004
12:31 am	Correction on the last post: I was addicted to SimCity 4, not the Sims. I am not _that_ pathetic. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
12:30 am	Here is the outline of somthing I thought about in the shower today. The topic arises because this weekend I became addicted to the computer game "The Sims." It was painful, pointless, boring waste of time and yet I couldn't stop and devoted probably 20 hours to it in total over the break. Human beings seem strangely prone to addiction. Not just addiction of the chemical, heroin-junky kind, but all sorts of addictions to all sorts of random things: video games, gambling, soap operas, sex, almost anything can become the subject of an obsessive fetish, a compulsive desire which overwhelms reason and creates an illogical devotion. People will spend hours upon hours doing activities that are not only pointless and sometimes destructive but often also not in the least bit entertaining or pleasurable. For some reason, or biology, phsychology, or culture must set us up to form these fixations. My theory is that they are cultural. I trace the developement of this addiction-proneness to the dawn of civilization and the beginnings of specializations of trades. Here, mindless addiction had distinct advantages: the man that was unreasonably devoted to spending hours making pots or molding carpentry provided a valuable service to the community. His addiciton would allow him to develop skill and specialisation that could only come from hours of practice that would bore a non-addict silly. Soon he would become a Master and pass his skills onto the next generation; his trade would become his life, the defining trait for himself and his progeny (witness Miller, Smith, etc. as familial names.) The Renaissance Man marks the first break from this culture of addiciton. Suddenly it was necessary for a person to become adept not only in all trades but in all areas of life, to become a "well-rounded" person with no room for time wasting addictions. This ideal is one of homogeony; if all were renaissance men all would more or less have the same skill sets, and the same identities. Thus this ideal also causes existential shock and self introspection as suddenly the identification of one by trade is no longer possible. Of course, not everyone was ever supposed to be a Renaissance Man, only the priveleged aristocracy. But fast forward to modern late capitalistic society and you'll see a wierd perversion of realization of this ideal has taken a hold on the vast majority of the populace. The unskilled workers of the Industrial Revolution and the generic office workers of the 21st century all have freed themselves from any specific skill sets, from any productive social task to identify oneself with and become addicted to. And thus witness the modern rise of addictions, the pointless, random, destructive addictions of people desparately serching to fill a need inscribed in our cultural consciousnesses over 10,000 years of civilization which is no longer being met in the former fashion. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 27th, 2004
10:20 pm	In Principio Allright. I'm going to start using this "LiveJournal" thing as a tool to improve my writing abilities. My main goal is to improve my academic writing skillz so as to make class assignments go better and future career hopes a bit brighter. Mainly for class, tho, as I figure if I can keep my head in the writing mode all the time they wont be such painful extractions each time I have an assignment. So my goal is 1/2 hour per day, no exceptions. Aiming for the 100-250 words range, but more the time and consistency than content. Like I said, trying to keep the head in the game. And for the tone I will try to keep it as god awfully dry and academic as I can as that's what I'm practicing (third-person, thesis and conclusions and omniscient scholar voice and whatnot) although I will allow more casual entries if the choice is that or nothing. Always the main goal being quotidienne posting, with nary a break. I apologize to any who blunder their way here; this probably isn't the most exciting site, it won't give any hints to my inner psyche or have jokes or shocking pictures, but if you read on anyways you might find some interesting ideas. And if you do, feel free to give it a post. Also feel free to post and say I suck if you feel so inclined. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 23rd, 2003
10:33 am	Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori I found this line in Horace's odes striking because I remember reading a poem with that as the title. The poem was written shortly after World War I and describes the horrific deaths of the soldiers in that war. It is interesting to compare its description of war as hell and death as horrible with Horace's description of war as grand and honorable, and death in battle the greatest way to go. The Modern methods of warfare have certainly lent man a different opinion on the glories of battle. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 17th, 2003
12:56 pm	Greek Drama and Modern Film: Twins Upon first reading the introduction to Oidipous at Colonus which described Greek drama, I thought that it seemed like a very rigid, unnatural form of theater with many strange conventions and rules (like having only 3 actors on at a time, a dancing chorus by the stage, large painted masks over the characters, etc etc) that would to me seem stifling. However, I thought about some of the things we talked about in my film class, and how unrealistic many of the things we just accept in a film are. For example, in movies we hardly ever see ceilings in rooms, even though we should based off of the camera angle, because open sets are easier to light. The lighting itself is usually coming from quite different angles than it would naturally. The very act of editing and moving instantaneously between shots from different camera angles and perspectives is untrue to life and unrealistic. In short, watching and enjoying a film requires us to be familiar with the meanings and uses of many unnatural conventions and just accept them. Even the act of watching a series of photographs flipping by at 24 frames per second and seeing that as mvement requires a certain suspension of disbelief. With this in mind, I think it will be easier to enjoy and digest the long, formal rhyming speeches, masks, limited characters, and other conventions that could get in the way. (Comment on this)