I like to celebrate the end of studyseason by spending a couple hours re-reading my notebooks for fun.

Well puddin’,

I spent a nice long time this evening in the bathtub reading Joe Orton’s teleplay The Good and Faithful Servant. I liked it a lot, but the thing I liked most about it was that I did not at any point while reading it feel a pang of guilt that I should have been reading/studying something else.

Yes, that’s right pudding, I am DONE for the semester.

I know we’re all big fans of learning and everything, but it must be said: I’m also a big fan of sitting around eating candy canes and making my family wonder why they thought they missed me.

I get on the train bound out of the shire tomorrow afternoon, so this will be my last post of 2008.

I know, it’s madness!

In honour of the madness, I would like to share with you some selections from my class notes this semester. Some of these are direct quotes from profs you might well find yourself studying with if you come to Mount Allison. Harass me in the comments and I may even tell you who it was!

CAN YOUR HEART STAND THE SHOCKING FACTS? (Note: Some of these are not actually facts. Some are opinions, some are song lyrics that were distracting my brain, and some are just hilarious.)

-This grace is forced upon us.
-I AM THE SCARECROW MSTAKENLY BROUGHT TO LIFE WHEN THE ZOMBE APOCALYPSE CAME. (I actually wrote this twice on opposite sides of the same page, once vertical and once horizontally. I guess I must have had it earwormed pretty bad that day.)
-NETS ARE LESS FUN THAN THEY MIGHT APPEAR
-Sophocles—was old!
-THE END-->why?
-Philoctetes-->heeheehee
-she tries to make her children immortal and oops...
-(fuck I cannot spell)
-screamy curses!=horror
-it’s always spring la la la
-MADNESS!
-We’re civilized. We don’t run around drunk in the forest killing animals with our bare hands. We have theatre.
-feelthegod
-Oh THERE’S Dionysus
-it’s a staff. Looks like a pinecone on it.
-culty culty culty
-the stranger is soooooooo handsome
-they name their children after sad things so they’ll suit them later on.
-feminism was sort of invented by Charles Fourier, a dead white French dude...
-the whole process of pants
-HISTORY IS NECESSARILY ‘REVISIONIST’
-“Don’t Let Your Girlfriends Ruin Your Marriage”: Lesbian Imagery in Chatelaine Magazine
-OMG THERE’S SO MUCH LEARNING!
-Happy Birthday Benjamin!
-um let’s build a new house.
-In what context can I really dance?
-herosexuality + mole dominance.
-treatment=“pelvic massage”—masturbate!
-“A very useful and satisfactory home service.”
-we’re an enchanting place
-everyone has some power—rec’ze it + exercize it!
-hey, you’re a human being and a citizen!-->that’s friggin’ radical.
-be a co-conspirator!—change reality!
-collecting baby teeth to test Stronium 90
-YOU CAN TELL THAT I’M PLANNING PREVENGE
-being buried alive is scary shit
-OMG, queering a text is a thing
-A pair of giant statue king feet in the middle of an onion field.
-Ziggurat (shaped like a stacky cake)
-Tiamat is a sea serpent with wings and mammal claws!
-YHWH is a G-d who beats the odds!—he likes a good show
-Weiderholungswang—the compulsion to repeat.
-Do stuff you don’t think you can do and you will be rewarded with milk and honey...yum.
-Manna!=Man-hu=“What is this?”bug poo.
-That’s a lot of oral tradition!
-G-d comes to dinner!
-suspected wives have to drink icky abortion water
-Saul could have been killed while having a pee
-“a thousand women at his bidding, I suppose...that’s a lot of sex.”
-I MISPLACED IT
-they do some weird shit.
-verbs and nouns are different, bitch!
-the goddamned golden calves again
-King Asa...something something something
-BE PREPARED!
-a prostitute, obviously.
-[G o d i s v e r y b i g.]
-eat this scroll (nom nom, tastes like honey)
-it’s not nice to be exiled.
-Remosesification
-eschatological sex
-uncontrolled, impossible creatures, tearing everything apart.
-“English is a language that ambushes other languages in dark corners and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary.”
-“This she-wolf is a reward to my kinsmen”
-Maps are pretty...
-OH MOONY MOON O MOONY MOON sometimes you’re yellow and sometimes you’re orange
-“looking for the aboutness”
-Hooray for Culture
-JSTOR + Project Muse win our nerd <3s!
-“it might seem reasonable to expect that, but you would be wrong, because this is academia”
-Librarians will fuck you up!-->so will architects.
-walking monster fetus!
-heroes stick out and it’s obnoxious
-“The better you get the more you fail.”
-like fucking gods.
-COMMA SPLICES ARE FOR CHUMPS.
-the fae always get you in these glas spaces.
-asking for Arthur’s monsterness
-I’m spelling Britain wrong.
-there will be other stories later when we get in trouble again.
-“It’s not that you have a chiuaua, it’s that you keep your chiuaua in a purse.”
-we do this with text. other ppl do it w/ other things.
-Henrys always come in clumps.
-hysterical pregnancies!
-Did Anybody See The Gorilla?
-“I can’t find any words in this poem.”
-Oh Boy We Have Cultural Anxiety Too!!!
-I want more tea.
-IF YOU’RE A BAD READER, YOU’RE A BAD PERSON
-anatomy makes it weird
-birth is death but death is birth (Jesus stuff)
-he spends pages beating you up and has 20 lines to make it better.
-NOT TO AVOID IT BUT SO YOU CAN MAKE AMENDS
-off doing weird things.
-Dear Geoff Berner,
Every time a professor refers to Queen Victoria, I hear you scream. It’s very distracting.
Thank you,
<3e
-Epic Stuff
-Whales are gonna take you down to Hell.
-Pope was an angry little man.

LET THIS BE A LESSON TO YOU.

A lesson that sometimes taking notes in class is awesome because sometimes it helps you to remember awesome things that were said in class. Sometimes you don’t even remember the original awesome, and that makes it like fresh awesome all over again.

Speaking of awesome, today was the 2nd Annual Nerdfighter Project for Awesome on Youtube. FOR EXAMPLE:

If you’ve got some time on your hands, do please take a look at some of the neat-o P4A videos people have made. There are some truly excellent causes being championed in some really effective audio-visual ways by this fantastic bunch of hoodlums called “nerdfighters” that I couldn’t be prouder to call myself a member of.

More Life,
Emmet