I would rather have a nod from an American, than a snuff-box from an emperor. ~Lord Byron
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
Name: Sian
I paint, write, and dance. Also cook vegetarian food.
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For those of you who have asked... I'm going to begin writing the novel one minute past midnight, Eastern Standard Time. And my final decision, as of right now, is that I'll be e-mailing or mo-mailing it to the people who are brave enough to try reading it (if they've been regulars, before). So, if you would like to be added to the list, leave a comment. And, please keep in mind that what I'm sending is the first draft: national novel editing month isn't until March, so please don't expect any good spelling, until then.
And, of course, everybody who reads the rough draft has to send me their comments and edits, which I reserve the right to ignore completely, if I so choose.
Seven Hours and Twenty minutes to go...
I really am going to work on writing this novel for Nanowrimo. And I still think that you should all join me in the insanity. Can I tag everyone who reads this to have to write 50,000 words in one month with me? No? Oh, well, okay. Maybe it is asking a bit too much. Including today, I have four more days before it all starts, so, this is your fair warning. You could be on your own for a while.
I'm not trying to write the great American novel, here. In the first place, people would always debate whether it actually was American, or if my foreign influences were too strong, and in the second place, great novels always seem to have either a much lower or a much higher body count than mine, and they always have less graphic detail. How many people were flayed alive in Pride and Prejudice? In my novel? Oh, probably thousands.
I'm writing a thriller. We've been debating the exact difference between a thriller and a horror story on the forums, and I'm pretty well convinced that my book is going to be a thriller, and not a horror story. Although the movie, when they make one, will probably wind up being a horror flick. They always seem to lobotomize the crap out of the movie version.
In any event, I have a serial killer, a couple dozen victims, and a couple of blank notebooks, so I'm ready.
Really.
I am.
Okay, I have a serial killer, a couple dozen victims, a couple of blank notebooks, an outline, and a very detailed profile of each of the major characters. And the thought of another four days before I can actually start writing the thing is driving me nuts. I think I'm actually out of things that I can do, without actually starting in on writing the story. But I'm being good.
And I'm told that all I really have to do to make 50,000 words in one month is just to add a little bit, each day.
I'm just so reassured.
Because I can. Because I'm just really not in the mood to put up with whatever it is that Professor Nostrils would be spouting, if I did go to class. I'm on campus, of course. I usually am, when I skip class.
I got to class this morning, more or less at exactly the same time I do, every morning. And, for whatever reason--probably the engineers in the hallways--the door had already been closed, and I just didn't feel like walking through it. I didn't feel like hearing whatever it was that Nostrils was likely to say, if I did walk into that classroom. Not that it's him. He's abrasive every day, and we all love him for it. But today... it's just not worth it. Today, I have an A average, and another University-approved skip day left, so I'm not there. If he were one of the great and powerful didoskaloi, I would be there, smiling and listening. But, Didoskalos, he ain't, so I'm sitting here, in the computer, smiling, and frankly, missing my last Latin Prof.
And I don't happen to want to sit and listen to every one else's disasterous translations for an entire hour. I love Dr. Nostrils. He takes everything you hated about math class, and brings it to foreign language. The sitting still. The awareness that nobody else did their homework, and nobody in the entire class is remotely skilled enough to pull that off. Do you know how long an hour really is? There are two classes meeting at the same time, in the same classroom. So, naturally, Nostrils assigns two separate passages, and hopes for the best. The end result is that if Class A doesn't do their translation, Class B winds up sitting and listening to them dredge their way through it in class, and we never get around to anything remotely related to Class B. I always seem to wind up in Class B.
Just wake me up when it's over.
As a stand-up comedian, he's great. Really. He takes the teeny tiny little problems that you have, and weaves them into some incredible gags. Like the time one of the guys car was towed with his Latin translation in the passenger seat... And the truth is that once we all get off on a tangent--if you can imagine 17 INTPs in the same room, with really very little restraint--it can be a blast. Really. It's loads of fun... it's just not really a Latin class. That's sorta the thing. As a stand-up comedian, he's great. I'd buy tickets and take a friend. As a teacher... he sucks ass. As a human being... well, maybe in another couple hundred lives, he will be.
Let's see... what's the difference between "speech" and terrorism? Hmmm... how about the fact that one involves incendiary devices, and the other does not. And while there's a good possibility that my eighth grade English teacher would die of shock, if she heard some of the things I say, there really isn't much lethality to speech.
There may be a moral grey area. For example, I would never write a post, or a book entitled 101 things the September 11th hijackers did wrong, because I have no desire to share this information with the stupid. I do have a few thoughts on the subject, of course, but then, who doesn't?
If you're in High School, right now, you've spent most, if not all, of the sentient end of your youth in a post-9/11 world. A world which panicked, once, and passed a wide spectrum of laws that it will be trying to un-do for a very long time. I grew up in a different world. One of the guys from my school designed--and built, sans core--a bomb for his physics class, and at the end discovered that he wasn't entirely sure how the guidance should work. So naturally, he wrote a letter to the DOD. "I am a high school student in..." And they helped him.
I had a teacher who explained how to cook Marijuanna into brownies, and a rifle in your gun rack in the school parking lot wasn't always a hanging offense.
People are more careful, now about the things they write, and the things they say, but they shouldn't have to be.
Why should "Toss a peice of cellophane in the gas tank" be "conspiracy" while "And then Amy put a peice of cellophane in the gas tank, and ran away," is fiction? Both sentences hold the same peice of information.
There are laws. There always have been. Libel, and terroristic threats and conspiracy, oh my!
And yes, freedom of speech does include explaining exactly how and why you'd like the local metropolis leveled. Leveling it should be a crime. Talking about it should not. There are any number of thrillers that plan these things in detail. There's at least one best selling author, who in a more innocent time, wrote spy novels which were so complete that you could use them as a blue print, and another, who described the destruction of a major American building by terrorist piloted aircraft... in 1974. Not to mention a number of authors whose research is so complete that you can catch a bus on the scheduals used in their books. Speech is not the problem. Speech is the warning system.
Let's face facts, the bad ass isn't the guy screaming about how he'd like to kick someone's face in; the bad ass is the guy standing there, smiling back at him.
I went to the grand orientation at the new job, and it was incredible. In fact, I think I may have actually died and gone to Heaven. They fed me. They gave me free books--seriously, I came home with a stack of books the likes of which I vaguely remember from pre college poverty days. And, they paid me. So, yes, there's a good chance that in some unnoticed corner of the library, my corpse is crumbling into dust, a blissful smile on my now dessicated face. It doesn't matter. I have books. Pretty, shiny books.
The last few days, it seems like every time I turn on the TV, there's some idiot out there, who has made an entire news story out of "Of course, I believe in Freedom of Speech... here's what I want you to say."
In Toledo, we have Nazis being beaten up. Now, usually, this is the kind of thing that I'd buy a season ticket for, but, since I'm feeling especially patriotic, today, I guess I'll just sit here and believe in Free Speech. Yes, even for assholes. The thing about Nazis is that they always seem to pick the place where they're guaranteed national headlines. They marched through a Jewish neighborhood in Chicago, a while back, and now--if the pictures can be trusted--a largely Afro-Carribean neighborhood in Toledo. They never march through an all-white farm neighborhood. They go where the cameras will follow. Now, a few of them have had their eyes blacked and their noses pinked, and they're playing the martyr card. So, I would like to suggest the following, if you happen to be "chosen" for one of these marches.
1. Be sure you have your "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" sign posted very clearly. Refuse them service.
2. Pull down the shades, stay inside, and ignore them.
3. In the event that anyone tries to interview you for the news, the appropriate response to any question about Nazis, KKK, or Mormons is: Nazis? What Nazis? We don't have any Nazis here.
There. You haven't beaten anybody up for disagreeing with you, and you haven't encouraged the mainstream press.
We have Freedom of Speech, here. The real kind, where they don't ban anything. And I like it.
In Europe, they ban all sorts of things--swastikas, nazi paraphenalia, now the hammer and sickle--and what do they have? A notable resurgence of neo-nazi activity, and governmental intitiatives to make French children learn German. Ha! Might as well just wait.
In the good ol' US of A, we have Freedom of speech, and as a result, 9.5 out of ten people you see wearing the swastika are gay men playing dress-up with their partners.
I appreciate the irony.
Then, whichever horrid little news magazine it was I was watching, last night, did a story on the White-Supremist version of Hansen. The general premise being that these kids don't know what they're singing about, and is it right to let them go on singing about it, anyway... with a large dose of "are we quite sure this isn't child abuse, can't we take these kids away?" implied.
This is not child abuse: the children were clearly surrounded by people who protect them and dote on them, and were clean and well-cared for. Of course, they're going to get into a load of shit, after they graduate from home-school, and play "meet the real world," but by then, they won't actually be children.
The over all tone of the news program scares me.
You can't take children away from their parents because you don't agree with what the children (or the parents) are saying. Can you imagine the impact that would have on Freedom of Speech? Or, if your imagination happens to be bad, let's try your memory. Do you remember the impact that it did have?do you remember the laws against "indoctrination" in the old, Communist block? The idea that children could not be allowed to practice religion? That if you're under eighteen, you couldn't possibly have an opinion of your own.
The cost of Freedom of Speech is that some children are going to wind up spouting garbage they learned from their parents.
And it's worth it.
It's worth every penny to stay off a slope that allows the government to use children for leverage to silence parents. In any circumstances.
The government should never, never, never, be allowed to say to anyone, "If you say that, we're going to take your children and put them in foster care."
And even more importantly, the government should never, ever be allowed to say to a single one of its citizens, you're too--young/old/black/white/Jewish/Christian/Liberal/Conservative/fill-in-the-blank--to have a valid opinion,so, please shut up, now.
The constitution doesn't say, "say what you want, so long as you fit the following profile."
I support the right of a twelve year old girl to say what she wants. To believe what she wants. Whether that happens to be Democrat, Republican, or Nazi. 100%. She has the right to say it. The government does not have the jurisdiction to interfere. Not this government.
No, not even if 95% of the voters want to take the children and the other 5% want to jail the parents, too.
I also support her right to change her mind, later. Even if her parents happen to disagree.
She can say John F. Kennedy committed suicide, for all I care, and I will still support and defend her right to say it.
Because that's what freedom of speech is: the right to say the unpopular, the absurd, the hyper-political, the non-sequitur, or punny and still be a full Citizen.
I finally found the perfect job to fit in around the classes that I'm taking. I'm going to be selling books at the local book store. By "the", what I mean is "the only one really worth going to." I start on Sunday, and they're having an orientation catered by an Italian restaurant. Anyplace named "Mama--something Italian's" couldn't possibly be bad. And, I get a massive discount on books--about thirty percent. So, there goes one weight off my shoulders. Actually interviewed and got the job this morning. And this time, I made it back to campus in time to take the Latin class.
His name was Dominick--that guy. The one from two years ago. The one whose name I couldn't remember. I just thought of it. Strange that I didn't remember that... But then, when I first moved here, it seemed like every single, solitary, guy in the whole world was named Dominick. I think I met about half a dozen of them within the first week or so. Shortened it to Dom... Weird. I was in an RPG, once, where my character's name was... And the first couple of IRL Doms I met, I think I just sorta snickered.
I am having one of those days where, if everything had gone according to plan, it probably would have worked. Unfortunately, starting immediately after I woke up, things didn't go according to plan.
The plan: get up early, go fill out some applications, get back on the bus and rush off just in time to check my e-mail and get to class. Yeah. Right.
I'm looking for that perfect "doesn't matter if it sucks--I'm still in school" job. So, I went to apply at one of my favorite bakeries in one of my favorite shopping centers. Not really expensive, but upscale enough to expect a literate clientelle. Actually, one of the places the local nanowrimo writers are thinking of meeting at. So, I got there, filled out my application, went to look at some of the other places in the area, only to be told that we apply for them on line. Not that anybody was mean to me, or anything, but if I had known that I was only going to be able to apply for one place, I would have gone to school first.
So, naturally, that took just enough time that I missed the last bus that could have gotten me to class on time, so here I am, sitting in the computer lab, NOT conjugating any Latin verbs. Can't really say that I'm crushed, but it would be nice to actually be there. If he asks why I wasn't there, on Friday, I'm going to tell him that he told me to review subjunctives. I was reviewing subjunctives.
Why not?
So, I'm running around undercaffinated and under prepared for virtually everything I had planned today.
I got an A! I got an A! Still no gold star--Nostrils insists that he doesn't give out gold stars, but I'm still hopeful. So, it seems that I'm fairly close to the top of my class. The girl who sits next to me wound up going out for some celebratory shopping. Has to spend the money she put aside for theraputic shopping, somehow. I think I'm probably going to wind up collapsing on the sofa with a Cherry Coke, when I get home. Maybe watch a couple of old movies. Something utterly brainless and charming, just because I finally have a day when I don't have to think. To top it all off, there's no translation for next time, so tomorrow is a real, live day off.
So, today, we went over the sight reading portion of the test--which took most of the hour. And I didn't have a copy of the original Latin, because I had already taken my copy home and thrown it at my roommate, back when I was trying to convince myself that my previous Latin professor wasn't at home hanging himself out of sheer humiliation.
The catalogue for next semester is out, and the next segment of Latin is going to be later in the afternoon than this was, so I'll wind up having longer mornings.
I just have to post another link before I go home. It took me ten minutes to stop rolling on the floor laughing long enough to type the link, and for the record, yes, there's still a perverse grin plastered all over my face. There are T-shirts to go with this stuff, and recipes: I think they must make more off the T-shirts than off the Hu-Fu, because the only flavored tofu I'm going to pay twenty bucks for is when they come up with a convincing Chocolate flavor.
I would also like to see a breakdown between the number of calories in Hu-Fu and the number in real human flesh, as well as comparisons of other nutritional values. The consumer should be informed, ya know?
When I first went vegetarian, I had a friend who would comment, "I didn't become a vegetarian so that I could eat fake meat." Six or seven years later, I agree with him whole-heartedly. I only eat fake meat when I'm in a real rush (and out of peanut butter and jelly... and cardboard.) But I might make an exception for this stuff. It may actually be the absolute pinnacle of fake-meat products.
In any event, I can think of a certain movie coming out next year that will absolutely require a Hu-Fu party.
Can't you? ;)
I've started working on the background for the novel I'm allegedly going to write next month. The research, the outline, the character's histories and backgrounds. Don't worry. I'm not breaking any rules; I can do as much as I want, but I can't put any of it directly into the finished project.
I've decided to write a thriller. 50,000 thrilling words in one month... A monumentally stupid idea, but what can I say? I need a cheap distraction.
And as usual, I'm having an impossible time choosing names for these imaginary people. At least, the important ones. I came up with seven names for seven corpses in about fifteen minutes, but name the serial killer? Impossible. Also, having trouble coming up with the protagonist's name. After all, a dead body is a page and a half, a murderer is forever. I'm sure that eventually, I have to name them. This would be one of the reasons that I should never, ever, have children. Children last a lot longer than a month, and I can't even name someone who doesn't exist, and who I only have to deal with for a month.
I'm working on an outline. It's a Write a Novel in a Month outline, which more or less involves dividing the story into 30 parts so that I can focus on just one part of it each day of the month. I think I've come up with about four plot points. So, just twenty six of them to go.
The difference between a thriller and a mystery, though is very clear in my mind. A thriller begins where the mystery quits being a mystery. Once you know who's doing the killing, you can either arrest him and call it the end, or you can let him wander around for thirty days and call it a novel.
I just finished my Latin Midterm. It wasn't as horrorifying as I expected, but it wasn't exactly a walk in the park. I think the worst part of it is the fact that nobody finished early, and nobody said a damn word through the whole thing. There's something unnatural about hearing people who mostly just run their mouths being utterly silent.
So, after I finished that, I checked my voice mail (yes, for once, I actually remembered to turn my phone off) and discovered that I haven't got the job I interviewed for earlier this week. Which means I still have to find something to fill in all the little gaps in my schedule. And pay all the little gaps in my budget.
I'm really not good at the job searching thing. I never really feel all that comfortable in interviews. I always feel like I got the job when I walk out, and then I never do. What I really need is something little--not very time consuming, or at least, something that only consumes the time I have. It always seems a little bit hard to find things that will fit into my schedule. And if they don't allow me to keep working on getting into graduate school, why on earth would I take that job instead of using the degree that I already have and making a reasonable amount of money?
I have a minor in religion. Really. I do. The usual response to that statement is either, "Oh, what church do you belong to?" or "You want to be a minister/nun/highpriestessofallthats(un)holy?" And, I did take my fair share of Judeo-Christian history courses. But the majority of my research focused on cults. And I don't mean the warm, fuzzy kind of cult where you declare the PepsiGuy to be the Great Harbinger of All Good and Evil and then spend a lot of time giggling with your friends. I mean the kind of cult that people disappear in. The kind of cult with major legal defense resources.
More than that, I had (or have, depending on your point of view) my own special subset of cults. I watched quasi-fraternal, and thelemic cults. Chances are that if you're not in one, you haven't heard of Thelema, but it's a central point of a lot of the scarier groups, and some of the not quite as scary groups.
I'm a cult watcher. Recreational. What can I say? It beats the crap out of Days of Our Lives.
I have reached a point where I can predict the behaviors of "my" cults.
The point where I can recognize the signs when one of "my" cults has been being naughty.
It's an utterly worthless skill. And, quite possibly, one of the most depressing hobbies in the history of hobbying. There really is a lot to be said for going out horse riding, or crochet.
Today is Wednesday. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Five days. When I quit blogging, Friday night, the counter was at 3,052. Today, it's at 3074. No, these people aren't all Americans. A suicide bomber just killed thirty Iraqis. Well, I have thoughts on how to stop suicide bombers, but since there isn't an agency in the world that has the balls to actually carry them out, I'm just going to keep pointing at the problem. The problem is that people keep strapping explosives to their bodies and blowing themselves and others up. Didn't they get the memo that thiscould be hazardous to your health?
3052
There's something about the Terrorist Attack Counter I put up a few days ago that really makes me think about what's going on in the world. I think that something is the fact that it changes every time I look at my blog, and that every single one of those numbers represents a DEADLY terrorist attack. Someone died, they're dead. That's what we're fighting over. It's been about a week, maybe a week and a half, and I've seen the thing go up twenty attacks worth or so. I think I'll start blogs with the number from time to time.
I put up a poll, asking about my headline. Please vote, before you read on.
The word incense means to make very angry. It comes from the Latin to burn. The word insense--spelled intentionally, thank you-- means to educate or instruct. From... **gasp** Old English-- prefix IN + the word sense as in common. Or, these days, not-so-common. This is a pun. Not, I'll admit, the highest form of humor.
Next... out of some especially masochistic impulse, I signed up for the National Novel Writing Month competition. The goal is to write 50,000 words in a month (about 175 pages, according to them. I'll probably use very small words.) I think all of you should sign up to suffer with me. If I do post any of it, it's likely to be on a private blog, because I don't want to spend that much time and effort doing something that would be totally unmarketable, but you're all invited, if you want.
Most of my regular readers can skip this, but there's a very obvious difference between a young man going to college (during the Vietnam era) to get a degree to help him in a (successful) political career, and a young man going to college to jerk off and ultimately wind up teaching unhappily for the rest of his life. Even if you don't agree with his politics, you have to agree that there's a significant difference in motivation and outcome between George Bush and Professor Nostrils. If you have a bitter, conservative professor who would clearly rather sit home and peel the skin off his arms than come to class, by all means, name him. I'm always looking for new academics to load into my catapult.
And as always, if you can't tell when I'm joking, I'm sure as hell not going to tell you. Thank Gd that a Democracy deteriorates into a benevolent oligarchy.
My state doesn't have a place on its voter registration form to check Republican or Democrat. Therefore, I am neither. In the past, I have lived in states where I've checked boxes. I usually check them in the pattern of a bunny rabbit.
If you happen to be one of the people who knows which boxes, be good, or I'll send your wife a nut-cracker and no nuts.
There's certainly no doubt that Gay marriage is going to be an issue in campaigns and on ballots for a while. Before you all jump down my throat, let me say that I'm a firm believer in equal protection under the law. I always have been.
As all mathematicians know, there are usually at least two ways of solving any given equation. The one which liberals prefer is to add. The conservatives, not being mathematicians, are quite comfortable with an unbalanced equation.
I would like to point out that the question isn't really whether marriage rights should be extended to gays, lesbians, bi, tri, poly and trans sexuals (please comment, if I've forgotten anyone.) The question is whether marriage remains a viable option in the twenty first century, at all.
Even a heterosexual, missionary-only-please fundamentalist can't guarantee a life-long relationship. The average marriage lasts only eight years! More than half of all marriages end in divorce, despite a contract which clearly stipulates permanence and his and hers matching dentures glasses. The contract is unenforceable!
This leads to the financial viability of the institution; following a divorce, the credit ratings of both parties are often destroyed, their assets eaten up by attorney's fees, alimony, and childsupport. During the course of the marriage, itself, the partners pay higher taxes (the marriage penalty) and in old age, their retirement income will be far less than two unmarried persons making the same income. These problems are compounded by repeated marriages and divorces.
After the divorce, each of the partners moves on to other relationships, further dividing their assets. The practice of "serial monogamy" is perverse and an affront to the very values these people claim to support.
In addition, the dissolution of marriages, child custody hearings, and vast quantities of civil protection orders which must be dealt with clog up the court system, causing inefficiency and undue expense. If all the civil matters which currently function under the aegis of "marriage" were replaced with contracts, they would reduce the expense and paperwork tremendously, both by being, in themselves, more permanent than marriage, and by being more permanently binding. Remember: no one ever ran away to Las Vegas to do a horizontal merger with stock options without a blood test.
Given the lack of success in limited trials, it is obvious that marriage will be a dismal failure in the general population. The institution is one of religion and tradition, and should be governed only by the Church, Synagogue, or Coven of the couple's choice. All governmental endorsement of marriage should be slowly phased out.
1. I love spicy food. When everybody else is reaching for their water, I'm usually complaining that too much cayenne pepper makes things bitter.
2. I was a science geek in High School, and yes, I still have the "God Said...(quantum mechanics for light) T-shirt to prove it.
3. The thing I miss most about California is hiking in the Marin Headlands.
4. My favorite smell in the world is wet concrete in the summer.
5. I'm an old fashioned Universalist--I don't believe in hell.
6. I can make an Origami frog
7. I think everyone should try a mocha with half a shot of Rasberry at least once.
8. I'm a wintergreen Altoids person.
9. I grew up on Peanut Butter and Apricot Jelly Sandwiches.
10. What I really want is a motorcycle.
11. I love naughty children the best. (Shh... don't tell.)
12. My pre-school teacher used to take us to pick blackberries at her parents' place.
13. When I was a kid, I had a hampster I never bothered to name.
14. If I have to shop at a chain bookstore, I'll just write my own damn books.
15. I'm a peanut M&M's person. Any person who believes there are more than two M&M personality types is too young to argue with.
16. I was pissed off when my last Sociology professor wouldn't give me any extra credit for starting my own cult.
17. I should wear more hats.
18. I can't spell, and I don't care.
19. I like the way raw phyllo dough feels on my tongue.
20. I want my own kiln.
Okay. Done.
Look at me! I'm getting comments from beyond the grave, and just in time for Halloween, too. I should be political more often. I'm really not entirely sure what to comment on, first. The fact that we're obviously signing someone else's name to our comments? That's kinda interesting. An inferiority complex, perhaps? The cut-and paste-itude of the comment? The fact that a search for the name they "borrowed" only turned up one website? The fact that it was virtually verbatim what you see in the comment to my previous post? Hmmm... so many excellent choices.
I don't care if you want to keep your identity to yourself.
Especially if you happen to be so incredibly bad at doing so.
If you want to be anonymous, just be anonymous. It takes less effort.
And if you must sign your anonymous comments, the prefered form is:
I hate you and wish you would die.
Love,
Sparky, the Wonder Squirrel.
What is it that makes professors think that just because I'm paying to take their class that I want to hear their politics day in and day out? What I'd really like to know is exactly how he thinks that his opinions on politics of 2005 relate to Republican Rome? Bronze Age Greece? Any part of the Mediterranean prior to Alexander the Great? Actually, the general premise is that Rome under Sulla was led by corrupt leaders and the United States is led by Conservatives. Then he names the particular conservatives that he-- as a liberal--considers to be corrupt.
So, here I am, venting my political frustrations to my non-captive audience.
This isn't the first liberal professor I've ever had. I think we can all agree that the Vietnam War ensured that there would be far more liberals on campus than conservatives for at least a generation. After all, isn't that the prefered draft dodge of upper class, educated liberals? Go to college and don't serve your country. I'm sure a lot of people got through post-doctoral training on the draft dodge plan.
The truth is that the colleges and universities of the world--like politics, in general-- are cyclical, and we happen to be seeing the end of the liberal part of the cycle. Higher education has reached its liberal saturation point, and there's just nowhere to cram one more liberal. We have reached the point that in order to find a new or exciting opinion, idea, or belief structure, it has to be conservative. There are already too many professors pushing the happy beatnick bohemian intellectual brand. We've heard it before. We've heard it repeatedly. We're sick of paying for it. The early adaptors--the liberals who originally thought this stuff up, the ones who may, or may not have had good reasons for it--are now retiring, and dying off, and they have been for at least a couple of decades.
What we have left in the Universities are the posers, the late-comers, the liberals who got to the party a decade late because they heard there was some good weed. Listen to your aging-progressivist granny: doesn't it sound like she's describing a great party, when she talks about her protesting, liberal youth? Dude, you can get stoned without paying three hundred bucks a credit hour to do it.
The pendulum is swinging back the other way.
After you've taken just so many classes where the syllabus might as well read, "Toe the Party Line and Get An A," you begin to get angry. Once you've sat through "Revisionist History 101," and suffered through the "Diversity Requirement" at your school, you get sick of paying for the priveledge. Three Hundred Bucks a credit to sing "Hail the Flapping Armpit Hair?" Three Hundred Bucks a credit to take "Diversity 101" and learn not to hit?
Yeah. That coulda gone on forever and ever.
First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
In plain old English, that means that I can say whatever the fuck I want.
And now, I'm going to.
If you don't happen to live in a country where you have the same rights--no matter where that happens to be in this world--well, sucks to be you, don't it?
The United States is a democracy. The catch is, in order to participate in this democracy, you have to be American. When I go into the ballot booth, I don't ask myself what's good for Turkey, Iran, France, or Brazil. I ask what's good for America. What's good for me, and what's good for my family and our children. I don't tell people in France which hole to jump into, when Germany invades, and I hate it when some idiot from another hemisphere tries to tell me how to vote. If you don't happen to be American, you don't get a vote. Don't try to influence mine.
And if you do try to influence my vote, if you choose to use phrases like "rethink your country", don't be too surprised if I respond negatively. Rethink my country? Why don't you rethink yours? Which part of the world are you from, anyway? The part whose ass we kicked, or the part whose ass we saved?
Allow my government to roam abroad? They're not roaming, babe. I'm the one who said "sick 'em."
On September Eleventh, two thousand, nine hundred eighty-six people were murdered, on American soil. That's Five Hundred Fifteen more than were killed at Pearl Harbor, and most of them were civilians. Ordinary people going about their day to day lives. People who had never fired a gun in their lives, certainly never fired one at another human being. They were just people type people.
After Pearl Harbor, we joined the Allies in World War II. There were 405,399 American Casualties. No one questions whether World War II was a just war. Why? Was it because that was in a time when people stood up for themselves? Was it because most of Europe--even neutrals like Switzerland--had been actively involved in hiding concentration camps for years? Was it because of film footage of murdered Jews stacked like cordwood?
Maybe it was because it didn't take quite as much abstract reasoning to figure out that Hitler was a menace to you, your children, and your families as it takes to figure out that when you give in to terrorists, the demands just keep getting bigger: they don't go away.
Once again, I'm in the basement of the University's library, mailing in my distance learning stuff at the last possible moment. I actually paid some attention to word limits this time, and it wound up taking longer than I really expected. It's ten thirty, almost, and I'm way more tired than I ought to be. I think it has to do with trying to be diplomatic and positive, and cheerful all at the same time for too long.
I am not a social poet. I really don't particularly need or want massive quantities of feedback, and reading all the different things that people had said about my poem for their selective discussion this week exhausted me. Nothing left. Not that they said anything too horrible--actually, they didn't really say anything bad, at all. I almost never drag my poetry out into the light of day, unless someone I trust is bugging me to do something with it, or on the rare occasion that I feel like I ought to be a social poet. The feeling usually wears off, and then I usually wind up spending the rest of the semester regretting that I registered for the class in the first place.
If the mood ever strikes me again, please remind me that I'm not a social poet. I am an anti-social poet. I should be scribbling my heart out in small, easily concealed volumes, not posting them on class forum net. I should burn at least 90% of them, and then leave what's left to my stunned survivors, who had no clue that I was even literate, while I was alive. That's what an anti-social poet does.
Tonight, though, the class I'm really regretting registering for is the history class. It's one of those revisionist history, progressivist bull shit courses that we all have to suffer through from time to time. The professors questions are usually something along the line of "here's a point in history. If we had turned left instead of right at Poughkipsee, we'd be a whole lot closer to pacifism/communism/one-payer health care, wouldn't that be cool?" Today, we were writing about the very naughty Greeks who divided humanity from nature, thus leading directly to the atom bomb. (Yeah, I didn't get it either, but I'm really good at smiling and nodding.) I said that I'd be more than glad to die a horrible, fiery death, blinked into oblivion by the bomb in exchange for any single line of Dante. Do you think that's the wrong answer?
I considered the possibility of suggesting that if you consider Sylvia Plath to be poetic, artistic, or beautiful, you must consider the bomb to be even more so, the penultimate creation of a suicidal society, but I decided that probably was the wrong answer, all by my very own self.
Randis on I'm really beginning...
alohalani on I'm really beginning...
today
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