This week in solar sail news…

[ Currently: Working ]
A new solar-sail concept: A spinning web of electrically-charged wires. Coolness.

Quick catchup: We just had Golden Week here in Japan, which means a whole bunch of national holidays in a row, giving me and most other people a week off work. Whee! However, that just meant I had more time to be doing my part-time job, which is good for paying off my astonishing mortgage, but not good for my perpetually-thwarted desire to be a lazy good-for-nothing. I’m actually glad to be back at Kyushu University, as it’s more relaxing in a way than being on vacation.

The other problem with Golden Week is, it comes just 3 weeks into the new school year. We haven’t had time to feel like we need a vacation yet, and we know there’s not another national holiday until the semester is practically over in mid-July. Weeks and weeks with no variation loom before us. The Fall semester, with one or two national holidays every month to break up the monotony, is much better.

A bit over a week ago, I finished writing a paper titled "Searching for Utopia in Melville’s Novels of Polynesia–Part I: Typee and Omoo." I submitted it to the Journal of the Kyushu American Literature Society, which has a 10-page limit on articles, thus the "Part I." Part II will be Mardi, which is longer than the other two combined. As it is, I gave Omoo pretty short shrift there, but it’s a pretty boring novel compared to Typee anyway. I’ll be presenting that paper at the KALS Conference this Saturday, so I’m fiddling with it, tweaking it for speech-hood. I need to make a handout, too.

On top of that, I’m revising the paper I presented last year, "Babbalanja’s Rhetorical Masks in Melville’s Mardi." Part of it treats demonic possession as a rhetorical technique, which I think would’ve given Aristotle some pause. I got confused about the journal deadline and failed to submit it in time last year, so instead I’m planning to submit it to the national American Literature Society of Japan journal. If it gets accepted, that’ll be the highest-level journal I’ve been published in so far. Next goal: International! Maybe Leviathan. I’ve always wanted to be published in a journal that makes me think of Farscape.

Do we have a rimshot emoticon, to put after bad jokes?

superdave