Kick-Ass Title Goes Here

I finished a twenty-four page paper today for my Intro to Old Testament Class. My topic: a Lacanian reading of Lamentations! Believe me, it was every bit as fun to write as it sounds.

Oddly, I never even did a Lacanian reading of anything while I was at TTU. Then, teaching this semester, I happened onto a tangent during a discussion one day where I was basically spouting off a bunch of Freudian nonsense. My students, I'm sure, didn't really know what I was saying at that point, but they did look interested--at least I was talking about sex. Anyway, that sparked an interest in Lacan for me this semester, and I followed it up, I guess. I think it worked; my theology professor seemed interested at least. He made me explain my paper to the whole class, who didn't know quite what I was talking about but seemed interested because at least I was talking about sex...

The thing about the whole writing process this time, though, was that I didn't much enjoy writing it. Truly. While I was a TTU, I complained a lot about writing three (or more) term papers at a time, and it was miserable at times. Still though, it was sort of fun to be staying up all night for weeks in my office with some friends, huddled around the electric heater, eating pizza that had been sitting out on the file cabinet for three days (probably feeding the giant flies), and extracting weird papers from by weird brain that seemed like crap at the time (both my mind and the papers) but that are really pretty good, I now see (well, not so much the mind...so it goes). Anyway, if you're going to write a paper about workings of the unconscious in Lamentations or about the epistemological anxieties evident in the epidimiological literature of the Colonial America or about T.S. Eliot's appropration of Yahweistic poetry in 'The Waste Land' or some other insane topic, that is the way to do it.

Any time I get back from a stay away from my apartment, I'm always a little anxious about the apartment will smell. You see, it often stinks here because, you see, I'm a slob at times, especially during that time when the semester has really gotten to going and I am spending all of my time writing papers or grading them. But I've tried to time to at least throw out the trash. Having now arrived at my apartment after spending about a week in Menard, I am now proud to announce that my apartment smells like an apartment. A non-smelly one.

Let's see...a blog post....I sort of remember how to do one of those I think....

We've been doing poetry in my class. My idea teaching poetry is that the students are scared of it and they don't like it, and if I'm supposed to be introducing them to poetry, I have to make it seem less scarey and at least seem to be almost enjoyable. So, I've spent a lot of time just reading poetry to them and with them, and I have them doing an assignment where they get to just read a ton of poetry that they choose and collect it in a little volume (and only analyze it a little bit).

I also had them read poetry this week. They had to choose a 20+ line poem, and read it to the class. It went really well overall. Some of them even seemed to enjoy it. They read all kinds of things: Frost, John Clare, Shel Silverstein, John Donne, Psalms (which were really well-done), and a couple of things they had written themselves. One of the best readings was by a student who read "I'm Gettin' Nutt'n for Christmas" (his theme for the other project is Christmas poems), and it stuck out from the others and was hilarious.

One fellow, however, skipped the poetry reading day, and so he was supposed to make it up Monday. He got up in front of the class with his poem printed up. Instead of the twenty or so lines everyone else had, though, he had a five page poem. The poem: "Old MacDonald Had a Farm." I would have been quite fine with this; I told them they could read anything that could be construed as a poem. I didn't care, so long as they read it. The guy got up, and was obviously embarassed at his choice, though, and he asked me if he had to read the entire five-pages of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm."

I acted like I hadn't heard the question. It seemed somewhat obvious to me that it would be ok to cut off "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" somewhere after the twenty line point, without going through five pages of different animals.

He didn't quite make it to twenty lines though. One-and-a-half lines in, the embarassment overcame him, and he sat down. He's going to read something else next time, right after we finish nap-time.