the blog of Jerry Bolton
Posts tagged Undergrad
…word count
0Current Tunage: Top secret music review stuff.
One of the perks of writing is that I sometimes get to hear stuff a month or two before it’s released to the public. It’s even perkier when that stuff is exceptional, as is the case presently.
Today’s post is a brief about Word Count.
I just spent a few minutes calculating up all my Word Count totals from every paper I wrote during this final year of university (Joint Philosophy & English Literature Bachelor Degrees with Honours).
I’m working on more detailed stats for each year (as well as my years at KLBC), but until then here’s this year’s total word count for submitted work:
44,639.
Yeah, so… yeah.
Largest: 4,834 (Final Essay for Major Texts: Plato)
Shortest: 416 (Journal Entry for Post-Colonial Literature)
PS – I’m doing this for me more than you. Just thought you might find it at least minutely interesting. Maybe it gives some perspective.
…oh happy day
1Current Tunage: Celldweller – Outland
Instrumental record from Klayton (aka Celldweller), entitled “Soundtrack for the Voices in my Head vol. 1″. Very, very good.
So, who’s going to The Gospel Coalition 2009 National Conference?
Jerry and friends are going to the The Gospel Coalition 2009 National Conference.
What does that mean?
It means:
-Funtime Road Trip with 4 buddies to the Windy City aka Chicago.
-Free ESV Study Bible (woo!).
-Challenges from the likes of Piper, Driscoll, Mahaney, Harris, Keller, Carson, and many others.
-Wonderful way to cap off my joint BA’s from Trent (which will be complete as of the week prior!).
-Time of sharpening and forward vision: examining what God has in store for the weeks, months, and years to come for myself and those I am responsible for (self, wife, children, friends, family, church, people in general).
-Good, good times.
Pray for safety, wisdom, and blessing as we plan, prepare, and traverse this adventure in April… for His Glory.
…my dear machine
0Current Tunage: Sixpence None The Richer – Around
Sixpence has an EP up on Noisetrade that you can acquire for free or whatever you like. It’s quite good. The combination of Matt Slocum’s writing and Leigh Nash’s angelic warble has a tendency to inflict mind-melting style action. In other words, it’s excellent.
It seems, to me at least, that this final semester of university is a conspiracy to utterly destroy me. This week begins many weeks of long days, long sessions at the keyboard, and longing for sleep and sanity. I call it “Paper Season”, and I don’t think it has ever come so soon.
Pray that I stay afloat, cross the river, and live to build a 12-stone altar on the other side.
…disconnection imminent
2Current Tunage: Decahedron – Delete False Culture
Today, Jerry is in a Math Rock / Spazzcore mood. Decahedron and other Frodus-related projects fit the bill kindly.
I apologize for the dead air. Eight weeks of classes left, something like 8 million deadlines to meet between papers and projects and presentations. Lots of great plans formulating in the meantime – for example, in April I will be attendingThe Gospel Coalition 2009 Conference near Chicago, which I plan to attend with the strangest and most amusing batch of friends imaginable (T, N, and B). It promises to be good, good times. Other happenings of late include job applications (some governmental – imagine that), copious amounts of rocking out, and more than a little trepidation.
In the midst of it all, God is God – the Life, the Boss, the Maker, the Music, the Effervescent, the Truth, the Fighter, the King of Kings, the Shepherd, the Servant, the Master, and the only Way… home.
Recently I was reading in the Psalms, where I oft find myself in times where the simple act of trusting my God and King to be the most difficult action imaginable. I read these words, and have been pondering them in my heart since:
Psalms 139:2-6 ESV
You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me – oh, that I would be mindful of it with persistence, ponderous of it with tenacity, and act upon it with courage.
…how great thou art
3Current Tunage: Becoming the Archetype – How Great Thou Art
Jaw dropping. How on earth could it be conceived that one of the greatest old-school metal bands kicking around today might do a “cover” of an old-school hymn, the likes of which I sang in church every Sunday morning as a child? Well, it hath on earth been conceived, and it is very, very metal. Love it.
Two papers left to freedom.
Cry out: YEARRRRGGGHHH!!!
…and throw on some Becoming the Archetype. Because that’s what life is about – becoming like Him. 
…paperseasonfall08
1Current Tunage: Mars Ill – The Life And Times Of A Simple Man
Old Ironsides. Classic Mars Ill material circa 2007.
I know, I know. I’m waiting too! Lots coming down the pipelines as soon as it’s ready. How does this sound:
2 Papers (aka Essays), 1 Journal, 1 Presentation, 1 Assignment. 1 week.
This week, that is. Yeah, I thought you’d understand: I’ve been up to my neck and down on my knees.
Anyways, I was just chilling out to some traditional Mars Ill grooves, namely the 5 Year Anniversary Edition of their 2001 classic debut “Raw Material”. Essentially, it’s kind of like a best-of. See, “Raw Material” was released twice. First it was released by Sphere of Hip-Hop (back when they did a little cd-releasing, instead of just being the kings of online conscious hip hop distro and assimilation). It had a couple tracks on it, namely “Destined to Be” and “Under the Sun” (featuring Listener) that weren’t on the next (and much more common) release. Which was the Uprok Records release, which instead of the aforementioned tracks, had two new ones – “The Abolition of Manchild” and “Fade to Black” featuring Sintax the Terrific. Other than rearranging the track orders, the two releases were identical in their remaining 17 tracks, quite a few of which were instrumental.
On the 5 year anniversary, they have all four of the above tracks. They also removed the beloved “Sphere of Hip Hop, Part 2″, but added “Sphere of Hip Hop, Part 3″ to fill the void (you can only fit so much on a disc). Further adding to the fray, they’ve added two versions of a song that was lost in Dust’s basement closet, entitled “Flipside” – represented with two beats, one by Playdough, one by Dave Kelly.
The only interesting catch? Everything but the “new” tracks is instrumental. Which is fine, because freaks like me have all the other songs already anyways.
I’m reminiscing about the 20-01 folks, and the ‘niscin is good.
…get away, so i can sleep in late
0Current Tunage: He Is Legend – Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
New He Is Legend demos make me happy this early, early morning.
I may, for the first time in years, be on an early-mornings sleep schedule. We’ve been up at ~5:30-7am every morning this week and I’m actually starting to adjust – which is nice. It’ll make the school year much more potable (I write sessays best in the aye-emm).
Anyhow, I’m settled in here. I’ve been listening to sintax.the.terrific’s album “Curb Appeal” this week a lot in preparation for reviewing it (hopefully later today). I’ve been doing orientation shifts at my new placement with work here in Durham, and that’s been very enjoyable. Steph is well, and is doing a fantastic job with her teaching again this year (perhaps even better since she has no wedding to plan this year… and it’s not her first year in this school now!).
My courseload this year is still in limbo – I keep being informed that courses I’m registered for have changed their schedules etc. which has prevented me from getting a solid read on what my year looks like. Particularly, it’s difficult because I don’t want to have to go to Peterborough any more than absolutely necessary.
That’s it for now. I’m still trying to hit my stride in new routines, and once I do I plan to write daily. Until then it’s going to be hit-and-miss.
…if you fail to see a problem (which i find hard to believe)
0Current Tunage: mewithoutYou – Leaf
“Gorgeosities”, sayeth me.
Today I’ve been thinking about the future, and by future I don’t mean the next month and the immensely vital time following it… but rather the more intangible, distant, cathartic-type future. My courses are booked for the coming school year, and with that done I’m thinking about the year after. Thinking about what I’d like to do with myself… thinking about more school or no more school, about the written word and law and speech and study… thinking about relocations, redefinitions, and rediscoveries.
Usually the sheer, staggering, limitless potential represented by the future does little but paralyse and/or smother my thinking. I think I need to spend some time, some prayer – getting used to this new future. I think I know what’s turned it from a dangerous unknown to a pleasant potential, too.
I’ll leave it at that for now – leave it at big words with few letters…
…hull crush depth
1Current Tunage: Frodus – Chiriacho Summit
“…and we washed our weapons in the sea” is definitely my favourite disc of things put together by any Shelby Cinca related work.
I’m trying hard to keep up with myself.
Not that I’ve been “busy”, more just changing gears.
I have one exam left now and then it’s work, work, work… wedding. Something like that. I always have difficulty switching into and out of “school mode” – it almost feels unnatural not to have anything scholastic to procrastinate over.
That being said, there’s lots to be done. I have a wedding website to polish to a glistening, moist shine which might reflect glories untold. The hard part, as always, is really getting started. Beyond that, there’s invitations to finish up and get out (and with them a guest list to finalize), a few meetings to solidify very important particulars (ie. food, photos, etc), and one more session of counselling in May. This final item brings with it a return to the books, as we’ve been too swamped to really dig into them for the better part of two months – me with finishing up school (papers galore) and Steph with being sick. We’ll get caught up, though. We “always” do.
It’s hard to talk about “always” when the timespan from which you make that joyous and farsighted proclamation amounts to less than a year…
Anywho, I’ve been nursing a few healthy obsessions lately. I call them “healthy” because they provoke me (not unlike a Gadfly) to movement and stability. The first is an obsession with Thrice’s new pair of EP’s – Air & Earth. The second is an obsession with Mark Driscoll’s series on the book of Ruth. The final is an obsession with driving to Pickerjax – a simple, one hour trip which always brings a sunshiney feast-for-the-heart.
I’ve also been listening compulsively to Frodus for the last couple days.
…inertia exhausted
11Current Tunage: Brand New – (Fork And Knife)
Yummy new single from yummy band.
I’m sorry. I really need to learn to not promise incoming posts… it rarely seems to actually materialize. I have two weeks of class left and four papers which, together, conspire to destroy my soul. Among them is a paper doing a critical theory reading on Pedro the Lion’s “Control” record, which should be quite fun – dare I say. Also some other random riffraff. I’ll get them done but in the meantime they own me, quite literally.
I have clever thoughts to share, just no time – such is the realities when you’re no longer single, it seems. I just don’t have the kind of urinate-in-the-wind free time I used to have. Not that I… EVER… urinated in the wind. But just in case I ever did, my point remains.
I guess to sum up, I was just planning to talk about how often it seems we find the thing we desire most when we least expect to find it. That, and how integral “breaking up with my wife” a year ago was in ultimately bringing me to her. My challenge to you, dedicated reader, is to go back and read THAT POST and draw the conjectures yourself. I’m sorry I can’t be more help right now. Sleep calls.