Panic button

I needed to do this for weeks. There's been a two-foot-high stack of papers giving me the evil eye in its dusty corner, waiting for me to remember that I've a thesis to write...last week, I set the seemingly unlofty goal of roughing out a lit review section before doing my fieldwork. Today, I was feeling pretty good. I'd come up with a skeletal but helpful outline of the thesis itself, so I decided to set out on my review task. Then, I realized that I have several problems with this modest proposal:

1. I haven't had time to touch any of these papers since Christmas break.
2. Apparently, over Christmas break, I only read one third of them.
3. I do not remember a single freaking fact from any of that third.
4. The papers appear to be from a variety of theoretical, disciplinary and topical backgrounds. Putting them together into a coherent review will be akin to creating a full puzzle out of those half-full boxes in doctor's waiting rooms, after that tyrannical three-year-old in the corner chair ate the last corner piece.
5. Suddenly, I realize I don't even know what my thesis is really about. At all.
6. I'm either too bored, too terrified, or too amazed by my own screwed-ness to begin sorting out this problem.

Also, Myspace has taken over my life. Slice your ethernet cables to ribbons before you go on that site.

Furthermore, somehow, I'm supposed to come up with interview questions for my contacts based in part on the gaps in the literature I theoretically should have found by now.

Did I mention I leave in two weeks? TWO WEEKS???

I have made it a point not to swear on this site. However, there's only one thing that could possibly summarize my emotions at this point in time: Holyfreakinghellandfuck.

I have no rental car. I have no hotel. No interview questions, no tape recorder, no interviews scheduled (all pending, supposedly), no game plan, no bug spray, no encephalitis vaccinations because there aren't any for this f'ing strain, no time, no clue, NO SANITY!!! Oh yeah, and no socks. The laundry, it sort of fell off my to-do list. At least I managed to singe a semi-respectable frittata this afternoon. I should have done the honorable thing and brained myself with the pan afterwards.