blather

[heystasa]

What is with the phrase "head shrinking" when talking about psychologists/psychiatrists? Where does that come from?


Things, non-chronologically:

1) Today sat Literature and Cinema exam. Am now very tired. Wrote on Rope (Hitchcock, amazing, one of my favourite texts of the semester), but not well and didn't finish, and Brazil (Terry Gilliam, dystopia. I appreciated but wasn't hugely subjectively thrilled with it), really well, and at length. Go figure. But, overall feel good about it. Thus ends Literature and Cinema.

2) On Sunday, submitted National and Transnational Cinemas essay. 3000 words on Beau Travail (French, Claire Denis - with whom I am now quite enamored - set amongst the French Foreign Legion in Djibouti. Male insecurities, repressions, and longings, war training that operates like dance. Beautiful. Dennis Lavant dancing. I love this film) and community. Wouldn't end. So hard. Think it ended up coherent, slightly. Theories of community are complicated. Was made extra hard by sick (see 3). Thus ends National and Transnational Cinemas.

3) Am recovering from a fierce cold. Now have only cough, blocked nose, and slight sore throat. This is good. Is progress.

4) Was at home all last week. Was good. Needed that. My nephews are smiling and laughing now, and stare at me a lot. They throw up constantly and underwent three bib changes each over a two and half hour period. One of them, the chubbier one, clasps his hands together like a villain plotting. Dad calls them darlin' and fusses over them. He always wanted more kids, he's such a sap for babies.

5) Tomorrow will commence writing of Film Music essay. Due on Saturday. Worse-organised course of the semester. Wording of the question I have chosen reflects this. 3000 words on South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut* as a modern musical, which can do, plus something else about it, but will have to email to find out what. Vague not helpful, damn lecturers.

6) Then, can slow down. Ahhh. Have Film Music exam next Friday, so if get essay done have week to study and therefore peace.

7) WHO THE HELL ASSIGNS BOTH AN EXAM AND A MAJOR ESSAY, A WEEK APART, AFTER TWO ESSAYS ALREADY DURING SEMESTER??? I, what, WHY? The point of an essay due during stuvac or exam period is that the students use the time they'd have spent studying for an exam on writing an essay. We need stuvac to study. How hard is it for lecturers to get that their subject is not he only one their students are enrolled in? Wanky, tossy, stupid, dense, badly organised, pretentious, boofheads.

AAAAAnd. They still haven't given us a Unit of Study evaluation survey. It's a new course, I have legitimate feedback and criticisms. One of them whispers his lectures. The other is a bit of a melvin, which is fine, and a bit of a tosser, which is annoying, but acceptable. BUT. He posted his lecture slides, not as a PDF, not in Powerpoint, not even in Word, but as single image files. Twenty very large images, with very  little text on each, and with full black backgrounds. I have no idea why he thought that would work. Did he think of the ink? I mean, what?


However, I am looking forward to trying to sound academic while discussing Satan singing about wanting to take over the world so that he can go on gay cruises.

Comments

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

It's an extrapolation from the noun 'shrink', for a psychologist or psychiatrist. I'm not sure where THAT comes from, but you have access to the OED, you could look it up! And tell me the etymology and the earliest references and things!

[sjazzmreow.livejournal.com]

I would have thought the verb would have come before the noun. Oh, I didn't think of the OED! Hmm. *looks it up* It seems to be connected to headhunters, the ones who make shrunken heads. Huh. No wonder it kinda bothers me. XP

Seems like the exact origins are lost to the mists of time, but this guy (http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-shr1.htm) presents the idea that it came into popular use in Hollywood, and might relate to shrinking the inflated egos of movies stars - which is kinda cool - or that both headhunters and psychs mess with your head in mysterious ways (we really don't though), and there's a bit of a link between head-shrinking tribal rituals and being asked about your mother and your childhood (which we don't do so much now).

Oh, and it entered the venacular through being used in Rebel Without A Cause! That is cool. Rebel came out in 55, and the only earlier source the OED has is from 1950 (1950 Time 27 Nov. 19 Anyone who had predicted that he would end up as the rootin'-tootin' idol of U.S. children would have been led instantly off to a headshrinker.) I love the endless influence of Rebel Without A Cause.

[areyoustrange.livejournal.com]

You're writing on the South Park movie?! That is brill/hilarious. Please please please report back with findings.

[sjazzmreow.livejournal.com]

I know right?! *salutes* Will do (possibly with caps and sound bites, if I can get them).

[phrasemuffin.livejournal.com]

Fairchild doesn't know how to use his microphone (if he bothers with one) and Hindson is in all the musical newspapers because he's actually fantastic dontyaknow and may therefore be a little snobby. Plus he's 33/4 now so he's old (or just a really awful time signature). Also, it'll be Fairchild's fault that things are unorganised - Matthew is flexible within reason, but Charles is just spacey sometimes.

PS Take the image files into paint or photoshop or something and invert the colour scheme. Makes black backgrounds white. Win.

[sjazzmreow.livejournal.com]

I'd already managed something with the slides, but still I don't get why he'd do it in the first place; it's a lot of effort to fix them and not everyone would even know how. It's not just me, right? It really does make no sense? Hindson's adorable sometimes, but, yeah. But stiff. And he covered the score music side of things, and did it in very fancy music terms, which is less acsesible to me, and probably adds to the impression of a bit of hoity toityness, but he's quite nice face-to-face.

Chas is a great lecturer, and has worn a mic everytime, but he doesn't seem to get that you need to speak loud enough for your voice to actually reach it for it to do any good. How has no one ever told him, I wonder?