Mon Nov 17 20:23:28 CST 1997
Today, Prendergast visited English 302 to hawk her new B&TW 390 course for next semester. A course that's new, so she got to do what she could with it, and a course I'm already registered for.
I have my concerns ... the course content seems kinda hard to describe to myself. When Prendergast says it, it makes sense, but it just seems weird. My concern is that maybe she'll go in to "mad professor" mode and get totally weird because she's really in to the course, kinda like how I ended up as an unsuspecting and confused freshman in a Comm199 course my first semester here, where there were three students, one really weird and intimidating professor, and poor old me wondering what the heck I'm supposed to do about the entire grade being based on a 20-page research paper that I just kinda up and failed. I figure to fail a course your first semester builds some character.
As far as I can tell though, Prendergast's a good teacher who is not altogether insane.
Something that is insane though, is the paper I concocted for English 302 last night ... my god! Some poor LAS person has to read paragraphs like;
SGML itself though, is not defined in terms of any particular encoding system. Given this and the fact that Unicode is not universally supported, and in acknowledging that current practice involves the employment of different encoding schemes, the revised specification for the Hypertext Transport Protocol, HTTP/1.1, as set forth in RFC2068, calls for web servers to state what character encoding is employed in a document as an appendix to the existing HTTP/1.0 "Content-Type" description field, with US ASCII, commonly generalized as ISO-8859-1, being the default. This solves the immediate problem of a web browser knowing what character encoding scheme to employ in displaying the contents of a web page.[RFC2068]
All the paragraphs are more or less like that. The paper is 1,365 words in length currently. The project itself is supposed to be between 5 and ten pages long. Well, if I were to try to write it in comprehensible English ... well ... it could get very fucking long indeed.
Chris is ogling my typing. :)
Anyways, it might be a good, if mind-straining exercise to rewrite the language project in normal English. The requirements Hawisher put forth for the "draft" handed in today was that it be "comprehensive" - it is pretty comprehensive, it's just pedantic as hell.
I think I use more four-letter words these days.
You know, donating blood may actually reduce risks of heart-attack by reducing levels of iron, which contribute to calcium buildup in the heart or somesuch? Yeah, apparently there was this study, I read in Discover, that mentioned, among other things, that the reason that women are at such a higher risk for heart diseases after menopause is that they are no longer draining themselves of blood regularly - that's right - menstruation maybe saves lives, apart from it's more recognized role in the reproductive process of making new lives.
It made me think of something Thunderchief said about why drums are reserved for males only in Native cultures - in that the men need the drums because they are weaker. He explained that in menstruation, women had a monthly cleansing ritual which men lacked. Men had to do other stuff like beat on a drum. Seems kinda weird, but seems kind of a cool idea at the same time. Menstruation sounds like one of those interesting things a guy like me would like to experience maybe once - I'd figure any cleansing ritual which is so messy and works like clockwork, month after month for a lot of the good years of your life could get to lose some of it's charm pretty damned quick.
I think I heard once of some guys in prison who wished to exercise religious freedoms guaranteed to them by setting aside some private time for masturbation as a cleansing ritual. While the same concept seems to apply ... I dunno you know? Masturbation seems a bit self-serving, and there's something a bit more noble about blood than semen. I think I'd rather stick to a musical instrument. Besides, musical instruments impress the ladies more, as far as I know. That, and well, it's good to give blood, if they'll take yours. I was, and still am annoyed to hell when I learned that the blood folks won't let gay folk who have had sex with other members of their sex give blood, for fear of HIV. Paranoia, if you ask me. It was Drew Edwards who first revealed this nasty truth to me, and frankly, I'd trust his safe sexual practices and donated blood over that of a lot of other people. The way I see it, seems like just another excuse to contribute homophobia in to our society. Drew seemed almost pained to have to explain it to me, as if the exercise had to once again reenforce the crap he has to go through for being who he is.
Hardees advertises too much. Like every commercial break of the three or four shows that I watch down here with any regularity are punctuated by two-dimensional cows, or even more disgustingly, this guy who coats himself in plastic so he can eat a double chili-burger. First of all, that double chili-burger just seems so horrible that I get heartburn just thinking about it. Second, I don't see the virtue in overly-hyping any innovations which brings the consumption of livestock to a new height of raw, ugly ... grossness! I mean, it's fucking dead cow with extra chili on it - it's not even well-delivered dead cow at that. I mean, if we're going to go through all the trouble of raising animals, feeding them food we could more efficiently just eat ourselves, and them slaughter and eat them, we could at least present them in some dignified manner. I mean ... a processed meat patty, prolly mixed up with weird bits of sawdust and stuff, smothered in some kind of low-grade chili, and slopping around all-over the place, just seems like a terrible, terrible way to treat animals.
I mean, eating animals is an expensive proposition. If we're going to do it, we should have some style and class about it, you know?
But then, I am a sucker for Vienna Beef hot dogs, or brats boiled in beer ... of course, I think if I were ever to be eaten, being made into a sausage which was then cooked in beer seems like an end I could deal with - I mean, brats are damned good ... yeah .. I mean, I could go for being a brat. I would, however, be very upset were my carcass to end up at Hardees.
And the last time i was at Hardees, several years ago, the place was greasy, the food was mediocre, and I just wasn't impressed at all. What would speak to me more was if they started showing fewer, more low-key commercials, which said that they were going to focus on quality food, nice service, and a good value - feel good stuff as opposed to the obnoxious "come to Hardees and kill yourself" commercials that are overplayed to the point that I truly hate Hardees. Grrr!
Kat's in the lab, quietly surveying this guy that one of her friends is interested in. I'm not here to spill details, but just to revel in the fact that in fact, girls stalk boys too. They even use ph to do it. It heartens me. We're all stalkers, deep down.
So I read tomorrow's article for 381. kind of depressing. It's about a discussion group that was featured in some class setting where everyone was afraid to talk about race and stuff ... stuff about minorities being overly-regarded as victimized, and us white folk being wary of acknowledging our own involvement in racism, and the contradictions presented to a working-class person by the proposition that perhaps equal opportunity in realizing the American dream is not in fact available to all ... the article focused on how these folks avoided the topic, in terms of how they conduct conversation.
There was a Toles cartoon I saw in the DI today. It had four panels ... the first was the world without Columbus in 1492 - people just looking at the Ocean, figuring it too big to cross ... the 1860s without Lincoln - the pundits saying that Slavery just couldn't be ended, the economic institution was just too far enmeshed in the American economy. World War II without Churchill - Britain could never survive a war with Germany, and then the present day, pundits wrangling over how we could never reduce greenhouse emissions.
Good message. Could be applied to a lot of things. We need a leader that aint afraid to speak his mind. Why do you think that Ross Perot, psychotic that he is, was so popular? he spoke his mind ... Bill Clinton? George Bush? they score points for asserting themselves. It seems though, the only way they think they can safely assert themselves is to drop bombs on somebody. "I have a position - it's that Saddam Hussein is a bad man."
Someday, dannyman's a gonna run for president. I think if I win I'd probably get assassinated by someone I pissed off along the way. America needs a leader who isn't afraid to piss somebody off ... preferably somebody related to the establishment - a corporation, several corporations - fucking Microsoft! Yeah, they need to piss 'em off, stick it to 'em, and get away with it. And they'll prolly get shot too, because all the propaganda against this leader will run amok and some crazy American with a Gun is gonna take it upon themselves to take care of business.
Seems though, like a good way to die. While I myself am not so interested in getting killed young, one might suppose that martyrdom is not a bad way to go.
Of course, they only shoot you if you're successful. If you fail, you're a laughingstock who lost the propaganda war.
And slick Willy - he wants to look out for his own.
What the fuck are you talking about dannyman?
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