Song practice was another tuning ordeal that took me from 7:00 to 9:30, an hour longer than it’s supposed to. I think that the new machine for the B string that Remenyi installed at the end of the summer is also faulty. The B drops almost as soon as it’s in tune and so every song sounds horrible on top of my bad playing.
A little after 10:30 I logged on for my British Literature lecture but only to do the mini quiz that accompanies it. We are able to have the quiz open while watching the lecture and so I just listened long enough by jumping forward or backward in some of the videos until I had all the answers. That took me less than an hour and I didn’t waste my time taking notes. Since there’s no exam for this course and I’ve already read all the material there was no point sacrificing any essay writing time on typing lectures.
The first quiz question was on the Milton quote that’s on the walls of the Great Hall of Hart House. It’s from a polemic he wrote called Areopagitica, written in 1644 in defence of freedom of speech and thought.
One interesting thing I caught was that Milton’s inspiration for Satan's rebellion against god was Achilles’ rebellion against King Agamemnon in Homer’s Iliad. The question was, what was both Satan's and Achilles’ motivation? It was rage.
Another question was about the theme shared by both Paradise Lost and The Faerie Queen. I didn't find it in lecture but I'm pretty sure it's "Don't trust appearances."
Another was why did Milton choose not to rhyme Paradise Lost? It was a symbolic gesture of liberty from restrictions. There was also the fact that a lot of poets that supported the Royalist side in the Civil War used rhyme and so not using rhyme was an anti-Royalist statement.
Finally what did Milton reveal about himself in the poem? When he is talking about god being light he reveals that he is blind.
For lunch I had potato chips, salsa and yogourt.
I spent a few hours from the afternoon to the evening on my British Literature essay.
For dinner I had a potato, a chicken breast and gravy while watching part six of Quatermass II.
In this story the non infected employees of the synthetic food plant have been finally convinced that there is something sinister about the facility. They converge at the gates and demand to be admitted. When the gates open to allow a truck to come in the men rush the guards and occupy the main gas pumping station. Some of them were killed by the guards but now they have weapons, including a bazooka. Quatermass joins them and explains that alien life forms are being fed and incubated in the tanks. Quatermass tells them that if they pump oxygen into the tanks it will poison the life forms. Meanwhile the infected humans who manage the plant keep trying to communicate to the men and to convince them that Quatermass has deceived them. They offer to let them investigate any part of the plant they want. Some of them, including Mr, McCleod agree to the terms and leave the pumping station. Meanwhile back at the rocket group Julia is worried about her father. Pugh decides to drive to the facility after him. After a while the oxygen stops pumping because the pipe is blocked. When they open it up they find blood. Mr. McCleod and the other men’s bodies have been used as plugs to block the oxygen flow in the pipe. On seeing this one of the men takes the bazooka and fires through the window at the dome that contains the aliens. The dome is destroyed but poison gas floods the facility. Quatermass has been wearing the uniform of one of the guards with a gas mask and so he manages to escape. Outside the gate he finds Pugh. They drive back to the rocket group. They receives a call from John Dillon, who is now infected and leading a group of infected soldiers that have taken control of Quatermass’s rocket launch site.
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