Work, the Passions, a Baby Bunny

Here's a picture of an adorable baby bunny, stolen off of some dude's flickr site.

My adviser's best-known work is his massive biography of the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier. Among other things, Fourier believed he had "discovered" a kind of science of human passion, the internal drives for gratification and pleasure at the base of human behavior. Fourier created plans for elaborate communities ("Phalanxes") in which the activities everyone undertook in their daily lives would correspond exactly to their natural drives. In short, work would be experienced as pleasure, and everyone would be happy.

Right now, I could use more of a coincidence between labor and pleasure. I've had the worst lazy-ass academic block of my meager career for the last three weeks or so. In the past, I haven't been more or less of a procrastinator than anyone else, but of late, it's been painful. I just can't get myself to finish the lectures for my summer classes in a timely manner, nor to keep plugging away for more than a few paragraphs on my dissertation. I just want to go home and play video games until it's time to make dinner.

I await the return of my academic muse. I name him Clortho, Keymaster of Gozer, and I need his help.