Today I achieved a great feat : I finished my first JC exam ahead of time, having exhausted my capacity to write and bullshit, which, contrary to popular belief, IS finite. The war literature paper was 3 hours long, and I finished 15 minutes early, twiddling my thumbs and reading the poetry in one of my anthologies to bide the time - I didn't check my paper, and suspect that I will sorely regret not having done so. However, I am physically uncapable of checking my papers during an exam because I find the piece so contemptible after being acquainted with it over the course of some hours that I cannot bear to look at it any longer.

Then, after the exam my father picked me up and we went to buy a big fat honking top of the line 42-inch plasma tv.

Life is very poetic, isn't it?

Either way, I arrived home and watched Primal Fear for the second time, if only for Edward Norton's performance and to aid my goal of becoming the world's most inefficient student. I am extremely exhausted for no apparent reason. I am glad that I will only have two more papers that I need to study for, and I am glad that my paper today was reasonable. I do so like my war literature paper, it allows us to read millions of books in order to gain a better grasp on the genre as a whole, and some of the books are brilliant. Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is startling, and I never tire of its emotional honesty, though his red herrings and other tools of deception destabilize my notion of truth and make me feel manipulated. But I cannot doubt that I wrench when reading certain parts, and there is something distinctly addictive about his manner of writing. Once the exams are over, I will endeavour to read all his other books.

For the paper today, I wrote an 8-page essay on the second question that centred on moral relativism, which is apparent the catchphrase of my academic life. Post-modernism does disturb me sometimes because... I suppose I am what I am. That is, I am utterly human, and am as desirous of absolutes and incontrovertible truths as the next person. I am unsure of whether constant upheaval and doubt is the right place to put my faith in either, at least, what little faith that I do have in my dessicated being. But perhaps that is the point of the entire philosophy - to provoke one into systematically questioning our beliefs and values, re-evaluating them so that they never become static. something we adhere to only because we've cleaved to it for so long, but something we truly, fervently believe in. I guess the real danger is in not knowing how to differentiate between that and adopting the attitude of staunch nihilism. It is murky ground that we tread on, and one must exercise caution, lest they get swallowed up in the miasma of ambiguity that such a worldview poses.