"The three first words invented by the Anglosaxons were probably 'dear', 'stove' and 'cunt'." - Comment by my tutor in a discussion on the origin of the word cunt and whether it was used in the 1920's. She often looks at literature and language through a feminist view point, not surprising as she is a woman and I think most women do, consiously or not. It's interesting though, the etymologi of words. I know 'fitta', the swedish word for cunt, means marsh originally. 'Flicka' (girl) is an old word for cunt. Make of that what you want, I'm not going to start talking about patriarchy because I think we all know all we need to know about that!

Woody Allen is a genius. Quotes like "It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens." and "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying." are just what will make him immortal. Good idea for a birthday present for Julia: Woody Allen books and films.

Spoke to Karin on the phone tonight, for ages. Not sure why, but my friends from home & myself seem to have forgotten the phone is a pretty good means for communication. MSN is handy, sure - and free - but it's not the same. Especially not with this internet connection... I won't say which ISP we're with because they might block me or something, but I will say it's the one with the really rubbish adverts on TV.

Nearly finished the dissertation now. Only need to work on the conclusion a bit, and add a couple of appendices. Still umming and arring about whether to use the extension or not. I guess I could do with reading it through a few times more, but I'm getting to the stage where I just want it handed in. Any suggestions? I could finish it tomorrow, leave it til Tues, read through and do the last, and get it printed and bound on Weds. Urgh, I don't know.

Too tired, hope you've enjoyed!

xx

What a day. I woke up at nine, ran into bathroom, had a shower, brushed my teeth.. and banged my knee into the bath tub. Now I have a massive bruise and it hurts to walk. Boo! I then hurried (I would say 'ran' but technically that would be a lie...) to the bus, walked along the canal. With my hair still wet. Then had to wait more than five minutes for a bus, typical isn't it? The days when you think you're doing good time, you miss the bus. The days when you're stressing, you're actually on time. Is that Sod's law?

Got up to uni and had a lecture, Stylistics. Spent half of it analysing the speech act of apology in A Fish Called Wanda, which also happens to be the lecturer's favourite film. Funny guy. Funny film, I used to love it. We used to watch it all the time. These days I don't watch much film, I guess my attention span isn't good enough. Did go to the cinema the other day though, we saw The Pursuit of Happyness. It was a very good film, I really recommend it! Even if you're not a Will Smith fan you should definately go see it!

After my lecture, I went to the library and prepared for my Creative Writing seminar, took about an hour. I then went to the doctor's for a blood test. Good fun, that! Although... I remember needles hurting a lot more; am I growing up or something? Went back to the library, prepared the presentation we have to do on Monday for Stylistics. The Speech Acts of marriage in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Ernest. Good fun, that. I'm not joking. Well, I am. I then proceeded to write a covering letter for a job application before going to my seminar. Since I came home, I've written about 600 words on my dissertation (more on that later. Don't miss!), read a few articles, done some acoustic analysis, written the acknowledgements for the diss, cleaned the kitchen (well, a little bit) and now I'm sat writing this. I say sat, but I'm actually lying down. Nice nice. It IS half three in the morning, but for some reason I'm not sleepy at all. Anyway, I've had a pretty productive day and I'm very proud!

Urm.. I just managed to drop my laptop on the floor. Looks like it's working though. Eek.

The dissertation... have done about 7300 words now, only 2700 to go! And I can do most of them tomorrow I think! My only problem now is that I don't have enough phonetically trained people who have listened to my voice samples... And by phonetically trained I mean people who have done a PhD in a phonetics-ey subject... If I could get say... ten phoneticey people to do it, that would be the best thing EVER! So if you know someone... let me know:P The problem is that if I don't find enough people I'm going to have to slightly change my research questions, as well as remove a big chunk of what I've already written. It would set me back so far, not happy about that. Anyhoo. 7300!!

Hm, bored of writing now. Sorry:P

xx