The foes of my body are legion, and far more vicious than my sins

Well, that's it. My first year at Columbia is officially finished. This is good. I won't indulge in a sentimental retrospective because, well, I don't want to. It's over and done with and that's all there is to say. More interestingly, I celebrated the end of the year by seeing Los Campesinos! at the Music Hall of Williamsburg with Adam and James. They were excellent, so accomplished and confident given how young they are. Although their singer does bear a disturbing resemblance to Wayne Rooney...Last night I went to see Iron Man which was equally excellent, and much needed mental relief after a quite horrendous day. Despite my reservations after seeing the trailer, Robert Downey Jr. was completely convincing and the special effects were also excellent. It was, unsurprisingly, remarkably orientalist, but still lots of fun. And, even better, Loews had a HUGE poster for The Dark Knight. July 18th. I cannot wait.

A 20% off sale (off of everything! Even remainder books! Even second-hand books!) at Labyrinth Books has been wreaking havoc with my finances over the past two days. But I can't be blamed...I live on top of the shop! Amongst other things, I acquired a ludicrously large German dictionary; a book of German grammar; a biography of Michael Oakeshott which, to quote my old supervisor Jon Parkin, "isn't very good, but something is better than nothing;" a very nice and interesting old edition of a history of ethics by (Prince) Kropotkin; Knut Hamsun's Hunger (recommended by Mark Anderson, my Kafka teacher, and Tom); Ted Hughes's Collected Poems (because people all over England failed to return my copies of the individual collections before I left for NY - you are all thieves); and various other bits and pieces.

Now I have a few days off before beginning my Summer extravanganza of German. For the next three months I will be eating, sleeping, and breathing the German language until, finally, I become a hardened translation machine, more German than man. I'll also be starting my job for Professor Ira Katznelson around the same time, researching the history of C13th toleration in England.

Finally, yesterday I found out that next semester I will be TA-ing (teaching, for those back home) for Professor Volker Berghahn's course 'The European Catastrophe, 1914-1945'. This pleases me greatly. I can't wait to begin teaching, especially for such an esteemed historian.

Songs for the Deaf: 'Numbskull' - Ash; 'Far Away' - Cut Copy (again); 'The Weight' - The Band.

Quote of the Day: the real quote of the day was said to me and Adam by a random guy down near the Christopher Street 1 stop on Wednesday night, but it's rather unrepeatable. Instead, here's a happy nugget I dug up researching my undergraduate dissertation: "In the final analysis, the joy that beauty brings in its train when it arrives upon the scene is not equal to the sorrow it evokes when it departs." - Petrarch, 'On the Remedies of Good or Bad Fortune', Dialogue 2.

10 points for anyone who can place the quotation which forms the title of this post. Clue? It's from a 1980s novel by the most talented British writer of his generation. But, oh! how he squanders his talent!