After an afternoon

All of a sudden I'm busy. Out of the blue it seems my funds have taken on a life of their own. I'm getting adjustments every fifteen minutes from my manager, it's nuts. Maybe it's just because it's a short week, maybe it's just because hyper-manager is back, maybe it's just because I'm a little distracted this week, so my funds only seem to be more active than they usually are. Whatever the case, I'm busier than normal.

The iPod is now hooked up to my desktop, I am currently trying an experiment with the iPod to see if I can charge it while simultaneously running it on the computer. If so that's a good thing. I rode to work today without music because I had inadvertently left the iPod running last night. If it charges succesfully here at work, then that mean's I'll never have to go more than one leg of my commute without tunes. Which brings me to an unrelated topic. Pip, in Great Expectations, has a vocabulary altogether too prolific. In the opening chapters we have no trouble at all believing that Pip is an uneducated peasant; his descriptions are coarse and limited. However, it seems that as soon as he learns of his beneficiary he begins to sound more educated, as if learning comes automatically with wealth. Indeed, even before he leaves his villiage to travel to London the storytelling is flooded with big, giant words, words with which even I am only passingly familiar, how could a poor blacksmith's apprectice who can only write his own name know so many words, and how to use them appropriately? You may argue that the story is being told from the perspective of Pip-grown up, that he is applying his learning to tell the story of his childhood. That may, in fact, be the case, in which case I argue poor storytelling. Shouldn't the author try to put us in the place of the subject of the story? Speaking like an orphaned peasant with no education in the first chapters does that, we feel empathy, maybe pity for Pip, but then, to switch over to the educated vernacular as soon as he dressed in a new set of clothes we are suddenly set apart. Perhaps this is Dickens' intention, that money and education do in fact go hand in hand, that Pip may not actually be educated, but the existence of a fortune is a sufficient substitute. If so I'd like someone to verify that. Because that can work as a storytelling device, and if that is the case I shall pay more attention to exactly where and when the narrator narrates with which style.

-Tom
recommended download:
Fountains Of Wayne, It Must Be Summer