Yuckity-yucks from the freshman writing class (3 of 3): Hierarchy.

After I made a point about how we sideline our political beliefs, concerns w/self-realization, etc., in class in order to talk about lit, I added that that didn't mean that students shouldn't not read without asking those questions, since they were better, fuller, more interesting people for having those other concerns (=a point that gets expressed by the one prof on my committee who was recently an asshole to me w/my diss, which is some sign that she isn't all bad, I try to make myself remember).

Then, to give an example of how people who think more broadly about a text might restrict themselves in class, I noted that how although I pointed out aspects of stereotypical courtier behavior in the Arabian Nights in a recent class discussion, I didn't make any other observations about it.

"And let me tell you," I was like.  "I *hate* hierarchy.  Sure, Scheherazade did the best she could by trying to be entertaining to the king with her stories in order to keep him from killing all the women of the kingdom, and in that environment she had to plead and plead and plead just to get the person with power to simply be human, but aren't we much better off in a country where people make laws and the king would be arrested for that kind of thing?  And where the riches that he made off the backs of the people would be taxed in order to provide social services for abused women?  I was thinking that all that time that we were discussing that section, but *I* never mentioned it."

Then, I added, "Because that would be counterproductive.  People have different values and class is just not the right forum for that.  Heck, you might think, 'Who loves hierarchy?', but some people *love* hierarchy.  It's like, 'Hey, I took the SAT IIs, I got a pat on the head, I ended up at the #5-ranked college in U.S. News & World Reports, hierarchy worked for me!'  You know?", I was like.

Dead silence from the kiddos.

Yuckity-yucks from the freshman writing class (2 of 3): Time pressures.

After I sidelined a student question by saying it'd be covered in a future meeting, I said, "You know, I apologize if our meetings seem rushed, but we have so much material to cover, and there's just never enough time.  I know I say 'There's not enough time a lot,' but it's really true, I hope you believe me."

Then, I was like, "I feel like that one rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.  You know, the one who's always running around everywhere.  Doesn't he say something like that?".

"I think he says 'I'm late, I'm late,'" a (female) student meekly said.

"Oh," I was like.  "In any case, the concept's the same, there's just never enough time, honestly.  And, let me tell you, that's life."

Then, I caught myself and began laughing. 

"Actually," I was like, "That's death."

At that, the nineteen year olds just looked horrified.

Yuckity-yucks from the freshman writing class (1 of 3): Pun.

I had a student named May, and she was last to present her paper thesis.

So, I said, "May, you go."

Garbled text from a friend...

...after I got a pleasant acknowledgement by email from a famous French econ prof after I wrote him w/#s from my latest expose:

That's extremely cool

- and then:

My phone wanted to type, 'that's excrement cook.'

. . .

The more I know about Mexican culture...

...the more I admire it, esp. the revolutionary strand, which seems much much closer to the surface than in American culture.

I was thinking about this a few weekends ago when I was looking at an exhibition of mid-20th c. Mexican prints that had such sharp anti-capitalist social criticisms aimed at successfully educating the masses.

On the one hand, that was only a few decades out from their revolution, and ours was so much longer ago.

On the other hand, it seems like that revolutionary spirit is an active resource in their culture, and can be meaningfully invoked a lot of times, like has recently happened with the self-defense forces in Michoacan, where people got fed up with drug traffickers and the corrupt local police and took up arms:

I find it very telling that people are calling such women "adelitas", after the women who nursed soldiers over a century ago.

That print exhibition also got me thinking, where are all the socially concerned American artists today depicting the struggles of the people like the mid-20th c. Mexican printmakers were doing?

There's more than enough subject matter with fast food and service industry workers, but to my knowledge, I see no-one doing that, the most people do is something about gender issues, apart from a handful of rockers like Springsteen who get into class issues through songs.

After the exhibition, I texted several friends my thoughts on this, and my one (Mexican) (naturalized American citizen) engineer friend from the city texted back:

Yes, you're right...  the American is a selfish society; we rarely think about other people's problems, even artists...

Interestingly, he told me once that he knew Mexico had no hope when his teacher asked his class in Mexico in high school, how many were willing to stand up to guns and die if they saw their rights being taken away, and no-one said that they would, and so she spat at them, "See, our country has no hope."

I can see where his perspective comes from - he agreed with her - but you sure as hell don't get that question in American high schools!

The only place that sort of idea every surfaces is with 2nd amendment issues by weird paranoid rightwing splinter groups...

Everyone's so laid back in my neighborhood I'm living in!

I really love it:

1) At the laundromat when I accidentally locked the keys in the restroom, the (Mexican) woman on duty just shrugged and didn't spaz out like I would have and just went about trying to jimmy the door open.

2) At the now-dead-since-it's-fall ice cream store staffed by a disaffected (skinny) (pale white) teenage girl in a black t-shirt with bleached blonde hair over purposefully dark roots, the restroom smells like pot, so you just know she was bored and was smoking up at work.

3) As I wait to make a left turn on my bike on my morning commute into work, I see this big red SUV coming the opposite direction slow down in front of me, and a (fatter) (older) (blonde) (white) woman with black sunglasses and pockmarked skin lean out the window and waggle her fingers in a "rock out!" V-sign to some passersby on the sidewalk behind me, as she yells out, "Hey, you!".

Then, she laughs pleasantly and drives off.

Bleariness from a cold results in clumsy actions:

1) In the morning as I get an egg out of the carton before going to put it in a pot to boil it, I hold it in my palm as I use that same hand's fingers to flip the carton lid down - but my fingers shift as I go to close the lid and so the egg rolls out and fall and splatters on the floor.

2) Later that same day at the laundromat, right before I leave I use the restroom, but set the key on a bathroom ledge and as I go to leave the door automatically locks behind me.

3) Right after the laundromat, as I pour boiling water into a thermos with teabags, I space out, and the water brims over and down the sides of the thermos.