Why Manatees?

If you ever get the urge to write a paper on manatees, stop and think again. Though they are undeniably hillarious, and researching them will be a pleasure as you surround yourself with facts about, and pictures of, one of the stupidest animals on the planet, it isn't worth it. Once the research is done there is nothing to say and you will be stuck. Much like me right now.

This is the kind of thing that looking back on you think, "Why didn't my friends stop me? Do they love me at all, or much like my attitude towards manatees, is my stupidity simply amusing to them?"

Now back to writing on the big fat lumps that wander around the ocean killing themselves...

Singing in the Halls and Other Temporary Forms of Freedom

I was sitting in class today and someone walked by the door singing down the halls of Sutherland. Later, while I was sitting in the same class, a different person walked by singing and then proceeded down the stairs and out the door, still singing. That got me thinking about some of the things that happen at college that you never experience in later life.

Here at Biola there are a lot of people who come from other countries. Because of the missionary culture here, many of the students wander around in clothes from all over the world. You can walk from your room to your class and see 3 or 4 different cultures walking by. Add in the Star Wars club, and not only do you have different cultures, but people dressed from different planets as well. This doesn't seem like it is related to the singing in the halls, but it is.

Singing in the halls and African tribal costumes are something you only see at college. Someday, all these people are going to graduate and be thrown into the work force. No one ever hears people singing in the halls as they shuffle through paper work. No one ever dresses in elfin costume to go imput numbers into a computer or try someone at court.

Why does this happen? Why do people stop expressing themselves in adulthood in the same way they do at college? Life is so much more unusual here. When was the last time that you were sitting at home watching TV, and all the men in your neighborhood started jogging around in their boxers, chanting in formation? It happened to me last week.

The one exception to this decline of unusual personal expression as we get older is the sport nut. Sports nuts manage to wear only clothes that express ther undying passion for their team, scream and yell at TV sets, bartenders, or other sports nuts, sing fight songs at the slightest provocation, and generally make a fool of themselves, and no one bats an eye. It is really quite remarkable how unusual their behavior can be before it makes anyone notice. I never thought I would say this, but maybe your next door neighbor who painted his office in his team colors, redecorated his garage in order to host his buddies for games, and only wants to talk to you about his team, has something important that you don't.

The Short End of the Familial Stick...

My sister, who happens to be a Freshman at Pt. Loma, is finishing up finals tomorrow and going home to hang out with my other sister all week...

The aforementioned other sister has our lovely home to herself until Afton gets home to party with her...

My parents are staying of the coast of Lake Como in Italy for the next ten days...

And I am sitting here in LA, going to freaking work and trying to frantically turn out assignments and keep my head above water until the month is out.

Just a friendly reminder that life isn't fair.

Oh for June to come...

Homework Journals and Other Useless Forms of Academic Drudegery

Sometimes we must ask ourselves, "Who decided that (fill in the blank) was a good idea?"

The time has come to ask this very important question about the English department staple, the reading journal. For those of you who have been blessed with an academic career devoid of these atrocities, I shall explain. The reading journal is typically a one to two page affair. After reading a given assignment, the student must write a reading journal to prove to her professor that she did in fact read, and understand, the assignment. At least that is what the professors think they are proving.

In fact, the reading journal does nothing but teach a student to lie, cheat, and skim their way out of the extra time it takes to read the assignment and write the journal. Though one will have read the entire assignment before attempting the journal, one will soon find that does not qualify them to write a page and a half on it. In fact, after two semesters of writing journals, it becomes more of a weird, twisted game, than anything resembling real homework. What once was a legitimate reading experience, becomes a treasure hunt for random quotations that can fill the empty space between you and your page quota and make your professor believe that you are a serious student with real views and opinions on phsychoanalytic theory or Percey Shelley, or Virginia Wolf, and so on.

What I cannot understand is that today's English students become tomorrow's English professors. The English professors must know what it was like to be shackeled to a useless form of intellectual pretense, and yet no one stops it. We must ask ourselves what holds us to the reading journal, and those of you who will become university professors, you must vow to end this form of oppression now. Grow up and make me proud.

My Flavorite Too

Totally like whatever, you know?

In case you hadn't noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you're saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?


Declarative sentences -- so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don't think I'm uncool just because I've noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It's like what I've heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I'm just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?


What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally...
I mean absolutely... You know?
That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like...
whatever!


And so actually our disarticulation... ness
is just a clever sort of... thing
to disguise the fact that we've become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since...
you know, a long, long time ago!


I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

-Taylor Mali

An Unsubstantiated Claim

Today I was studying with those who I thought were my friends. In the middle of a brilliant paper on the political, feminist, and modern interpretations of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, I found this inserted into my work:

Cate was a young girl with a very sad drinking problem. She liked to drink vodka, tequila, whiskey, gin, rum, bourbon, and moonshine. One day, she died, and since she hung around with sketchy people, everyone at the funeral was drunk and no one cried. And that is why you shouldn’t drink. The end.

I don't know where they got this. I'm not dead...

P.S. I only hang out with them, so I guess I am not the only one indicted.

Unaffiliated

A few days ago I had an interesting discussion in a class. Dr. Pickett spends most of the class psychoanalysing his students or the authors we read, and Thursday was no different. The discussion centered around identity, and what makes us us. My Dad instilled in me a skeptical view of people who try to "find themselves" or discover who they really are by throwing of the shakles of their daily life, relationships and work. These are the things that, for better or worse, make us who we are, and getting rid of them will not free you, you will merely replace them with a new version of the same.

That got me thinking. Maybe the search for identity is really pointless. You are something, so why the need to be defined? Why should I care if people think of me as an intellectual, or a teacher, or a weirdo, or a homeschooler? I either am those things or I am not, and I'm probably some of all of it. The need to be defined by one aspect of your personality, your work, your school, or your significant other seems to come out of an insecurity with being a bizarre conglomeration. Well we are all bizarre.

I want to remain unaffiliated.