outer-jessie's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- experiment and the Anna review Spiky. I feel a little spiky right now. Before you get the chance to yell at me, I just want to say it was a free sample, it's only a five day supply, and if it does anything crazy weird to me, I'll stop doing it. I'm taking diet pills. It's just an experiment, I promise. I don't think I have an unhealthy appetite, quite the contrary really, but what with my recent weight gain and all, it kind of came at a perfect time. I've only just started taking them today, after breakfast. So far it feels a little percocet-ish, in that I'm not sure what it's going to do to me. I can tell that it's kicked in -- it feels like my body has "sped up", although it's not doing much of anything. Please hold while I take my heart rate. Um, 93 beats per minute. Egads. But to be fair, my resting heart rate is in the 80s. Not that that's good or anything, but that's one of the reasons I've been trying to exercise more, especially cardio exercises. I went for another jog last night, after bailing on swimming. I was disappointed to see that my run around the block took me less than ten minutes. Still, ten minutes of sustained exercise is a lot for me. I suppose I'll work up my endurance as I go, maybe eventually being able to jog *over* one of the bridges at some point. I should just go for it. I'm afraid of going so far that the return trip is overwhelming, but if I do go that far, I can just walk back during my cool down. Yeah. It's still hard work for me, but if I keep at it at this rate, it ought to become easier, right? Back to the diet pills. I know they're not a terrific idea. But let's just see what happens. I broke one of my wine glasses last night. Very upsetting. I'd only used it once, and there it was shattered all over my kitchen floor. Damn me. I also got a call from a Mount Holyoke friend who I haven't talked to in ages. She just moved to the area and pop!, called me right away. That's so sweet, and yet...listen kids, I don't get phone calls very often. Thus, when called upon to chat with people, especially those I'm not thoroughly comfortable with, I sound distant and uninterested, and I really don't mean to. Others might attest to this (not that I'm not comfortable with thee, Albeche!). I hope I didn't put her off. Hey, how's about I email her right now. Done. Unexplained phenomenon: when I read through my archives, I find myself quite amusing. But when I'm writing an entry, I very nearly bore myself to tears. I'm just such a funny bunny, I don't even realize it. Shut up, you guys. Ok, I'm taking the plunge. I'm going to write that email to my research "advisor", for lack of a better word, and confess. The text will be the following: Dear Adam, Embarrassing confession forthcoming: I haven't touched the research in so long, I'm forgotten how to use the program. I'm as ashamed of me as you are, trust me. I've been (fill in boring list of commands) from (fill in name of directory) with no results. Actually, with the following result: (big boring list of results). What's going wrong? Sorry to be so ridiculous, Jessie Makes me sound like a subservient Igor ("Yes, master. Right away, master. I'm so sorry, master"), but yeah, that's the way I do business. I think I failed to review Anna Karenina after I finished it, didn't I? I finished it on the cruise, and it was a factor in all the crazy bogus stuff that went on in my head at that time. Don't read that book if you're already dwelling on doubts you have about your relationship. I'll try not to give away too much, and I hope I don't defeat that purpose by assuming you already know that Anna kills herself toward the end. Since it's a classic book, you've probably got the gist of it; sorry if that's not the case. The denouement after Anna's death left a bad taste in my mouth. The whole of what I *think* is the book's 'moral lesson' is revealed here, unless I'm misinterpreting. For one thing, it was a complete nonsequitor, having nothing to do with Anna, her family, or what happened to her at all. It was a self-indulgent substory relating to the author's own inner struggles with religion. Pshaw. What does that have to do with failed romance and the inability of a wonderful, beautiful person to throw off the shackles of society's expectations? Just a little something, and a little something I found distasteful. It isn't surprising that the novel didn't come to the conclusion that "love will conquer all", because that's not a realistic conclusion and thus not something you'd expect from Russian Realism. What I did find a little surprising, and not happily so, was the "lesson" that conformity is best, don't shake the boat, live life within the framework set forth by society and everyone will be happy and healthy. Awful. It's far from uncommon for Russian Realism to be dreary, but this assertion that these injustices in life are as they ought to be is new to me. And unwelcome. And not really understandable, because that's not how Tolstoy treated the subject for the first 800 pages of the book. It was always somewhat hopeful, which I suppose was the characters' optimism shining through. He did let the characters carry the story, with minimal narrative interference, but the characters were all colored with his opinion of them. I'm getting side-tracked. I'm trying to say that the end of the book didn't fit the rest of it, and was extremely unsatisfying. It's almost as if he was pressured to change the "moral of the story" by outside forces. I'm going to have to look up some reviews of the book. In the meantime, read the book if you get the chance, because all but the last hundred pages were really great. I may have to resort to my childhood tactic of mentally rewriting the end of books to suit my fancy. That's enough for now, I think. There's a comment from Plastron in my guestbook that I haven't responded to yet, and that'll be my next topic. More from me later, adieu. 10:15 a.m. - 2002-05-29 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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