Corny

The student ministers held a bonfire/burn things/eat things/chat with people get-together at their house last night, so Pezzers and I went. (Dinner was beyond awful and we were all about free food to fill our tummies.) The house we were at is surrounded by cornfields (typical Kenyon), which we went into. Unfortunately, it was planted rather close together, so we didn't go very far for fear of doing too much damage to the stalks. Well, that and rampant Signs flashbacks, too... ;) But the sky, as seen from within corn that's a foot or so taller than you, looks exceptionally cool. Really, it was neat. And what we thought was a cloud lit by the light from campus was actually the moon rising over the hill that Kenyon is on--that was really, really awesome to see. We would've taken a picture, except none of us have special cameras with long exposures. :( We also saw the Milky Way--something I've never seen in Nashville--and Mars, as usual. Of course, Mars has been big and bright for the past few weeks.

Then we ended up in Whitney's room watching the Spanish Inquisition ep of the Flying Circus. Yay Kenster. Hehehe. The Life of Brian is showing tonight, so we're definitely gonna go see that. Hee.

Summer reading list from hell

Picked up the reading list for my senior comps today. *shudder* Kenyon tries to be English in every way possible, so we have senior comps as a holdover from the whole giant final exam thing that many British universities apparently put their students through. For English majors, it consists of two parts: a 9-12 page critical essay (or creative project if you take two or more CW classes) due at the beginning of the second semester and a two-part exam based on the reading list they come out with in the fall of your sophomore year, which takes place the Saturday after spring break. So yes, I have two years to read all these things, and there isn't all that many, but uuuuugh.

Beowulf
A Midsummer Night's Dream (read it, but long ago--it's quite possibly my least-favorite Shakespeare play, and I don't really care for Shakespeare in general)
Paradise Lost (*shudder*)
Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock and "The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" (Pope's okay, I guess)
Jane Austen's Persuasion
Godawful amounts of William Blake (Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew....I despise Blake)
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas (Huh?)
Audre Lorde, Zami, A New Spelling of My Name (Huh?)
Various George Herbert poems (reading some for poetry this year)
Various Eavan Boland poems (reading much for Irish Lit. this year)

Meh. Not really looking forward to, oh, most of that...

Night o' fun

Saw Life of Brian at Snowden tonight with Ellen, Peter, and various other people I didn't really know, but who may or may not have been affiliated with the Canterbury club, which sponsored the event. Hee. I'd seen the first ten or fifteen minutes before, but never the whole thing--had no idea that "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" came from that movie.

Then Peter, Allyson, Valerie, Marta, Steve and I ended up in Allyson and Valerie's room for the next two hours singing while Peter played the keyboard. We did everything from showtunes (Phantom, Cats, Rent, Ragtime...) to pop to new age, goggling all the while that Peter was able to play everything by ear.

I love that I have a large group of friends, including the people mentioned above and many others, who will actually end up doing something like that on a Saturday night instead of going to parties down south. I love that most, if not all, of us plan to get some work done tonight as well--Saturday night. I love that I have a bunch of dorks like myself to hang out with. :)

That said, off to Act Two of The Playboy of the Western World.