Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

Haunted thoughts of rusty pens sheathed, That you should be mad in the darkness drifting, That the world is nothing if not yours bequeathed. Though the doldrums that kept me wreathed In scholastic cages monthly shifting, Haunted thoughts of rusty pens sheathed. I never got to write, but static noise leaked, From my pen like a random shifting , That the world is nothing if not yours bequeathed. I slowly forgot your name, barely breathed. My glamorous past kept me listing, Haunted thoughts of rusty pens sheathed. The dogs in the cages seethed, Their barks vulgar and resisting, That the world is nothing if not yours bequeathed. Oh my lover and my cheap pen creased, A tragic benediction of misused time twisting, Haunted thoughts of rusty pens sheathed, That the world is nothing if not yours bequeathed.

One good thing about reading for exams is that what I read will always be with me. I'm a strong proponent of the idea that what has been read can't be unread and what you have written can't be unwritten. While the details might get hazy - plot, themes, characters, etc. - the very act of reading a book adds to your mental catalog of literature, helping you to better understand, if not create, your own essays and writing. Each book read shapes your mental corpus and allows you to draw on the experiences of other writers. Each essay written focuses your abilities. So the more reading and writing you do, the better you will get at both and the better you will be able to analyze and comprehend what others have written and what you need to know to keep writing. This all might be a tad elementary, but a continued sharpened knowledge base coupled with life experience can go along way to keeping you in the game.

My mind floats between images on the screen, pure and pristine, and flickering print in books, studying, fretting, thoughtfully coursing through tons of material -- materiel? The list is long and twisting: Dead Elvis by Greil Marcus, The Foundations of Screenwriting by good ol' Syd Field, a horror movie podcast, (complete with cheesy trailers), Robert Bloch's Psycho , Don DeLilo's White Noise   the twisted golden age comics of Fletcher Hanks. This is all part of the process in studying for PhD exams. Throw it in a blender and hit frappe.