Today, I had a lot of free time since the TAKS test was going on, and I was one of the few people not giving one. So, I started making a memory sheet for a student who’s going to state later this week in Literary Criticism. I decided on this memory sheet to do as I’d done in high school and attach silly examples with the definitions of terms the student needed to memorize. I mainly, of course, made fun of myself.

Anyway, I needed to blog something. I thought I’d share some of my examples.

Acronym – a word formed from the first letter of several words (think ‘acrostic’)

Radar – radio detecting and ranging

Pierce – perfection in everything [is] really clear evidenced

Adage – a wise saying

“No honey, no bees.”

“Don’t eat yellow snow.”

Aesthetics – the study of beauty.

Just think about me, of course.

Alazon – the braggart in Greek drama.

See my example for aesthetics.

Ambiguity – the definition of this word is sort of unclear to me. Sort of.

Anastrophe – word of a sentence, in their logical, normal order, are not

Yoda, think of.

Antihero – a figure in many postmodern works. The antihero’s the protagonist, but at the same time, he lacks a lot of key hero traits. He might be graceless, incompetent, dishonest, sometimes immoral.

Yeah, here’s the one where you should really picture me. Imagine me trying to be James Bond.

Archaism – Thou shouldst rememberest that thisith word refereths to out-of-date phrasage.

Catachresis – the misuse of a word. I promise you that’s what “catachresis” means.

Chivalry – all that good stuff from the knights. Fidelity to God and king, honesty (especially to women), a striving to fight for justice, a readiness to save poor damsels in distress, a willingness to open car doors and to pay for the date, etc.

Dues ex machina – something improbable that makes things turn out right

The torturer had just made his final move, turning on the Kenny G music, when two asteroids slammed through the roof, destroying the stereo and the bad guy.

Epanalepsis – The same word that begins the line is repeated as the last word in the line. The.

Hyperbole – exaggeration

I am so handsome that women have been known to immediately gouge out their eyes, wanting their last vision to be of me.

Litotes – a form of understatement where something is affirmed by stating the negative of its opposite. Get it.

“She was not unenormous.” = “She was planetary.” or “She could not fit into a rowboat.”

Malediction – A curse.

I always thought it would have been really cool had my family curse been called the “Pierce Malediction.” It’s not, though. It’s just the “Pierce Curse.” Even my curse’s name is cursed.

Maxim – Not the magazine. Stop thinking about it. (Ok, that’s probably just a guy problem.)

The same as ADAGE, AXIOM, PROVER, APHORISM.

Ockham’s Razor – “Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” In other words, the simplest answer to something should be considered the truest answer.

I’ve always really thought it would be cool for Gillette or Bic or somebody to put out a product called Ockham’s Razor. It would work well, and I would buy it.

Portmanteau – Word formed by combining two different words.

“smoke” + “fog” = “smog”

“breakfast” + “lunch” = “brunch”

“supercalifratulistik-expialidocious” + “superb” = “superbcalifratulistik-expialidocious”

Saga – Norse & Icelandic adventure stories from the middle ages.

Or normal high school life, I guess.

Seven Deadly Sins – I find it best to learn these in order of fun. You can rank them yourself.

( ) pride, ( ) envy, ( ) sloth, ( ) gluttony, ( ) wrath, ( ) avarice, and ( ) lust

Surrealism – art emphasizing the imagination as expressed in dreams and presented without conscious control.

My second favorite joke of all-time:

How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb? fish

Tetralogy – It’s a trilogy, but with one more book.

Utopia – a world sort of unlike Winters.

Things I Learned Recently

1. I can throw one heck of a prom. I’ve always hated prom. I hated it back when I had to go to it in high school, and there was nothing I dreaded more this year as a sponsor than the thought of having to put one together and attend it as a chaperone.

Things didn’t start real well. I was skeptical about the theme: “City of Lights.” After all, we were throwing the prom in the Winters High School cafeteria with about nine-foot ceilings. What kind of city can you create in there? Moreover, there wasn’t much help. Some students and a couple of parents helped out on Friday night (the actual prom was Saturday evening), but on Saturday, it was only one other sponsor and myself, for the most part. I spent about twenty-eight hours in that cafeteria over the weekend.

As it turned out, though, I sort of enjoyed putting the prom together, especially since I did more than my fair share of the work, and it actually looked pretty cool, and I was proud of it in the end (much more-so than the prom I’d helped put together in high school). If you ever need to throw a prom, you could do worse than call me.

2. I’m getting better at handling my forgetfulness. Sort of.

My brother-in-law’s birthday was last week sometime. I’d thought of it well ahead of time and had bought a very fitting card for him. (On the outside: “I’m so looking forward to your birthday…” Inside: “I think I might fart.” Maybe not the most clever thing, but I’m pretty sure he’ll enjoy it.) I’d also planned what I was going to buy; I just needed to get to Abilene or somewhere to buy it.

Then, though, I lost the card, and I didn’t want to send the gift to be mailed off without that great card, but I had only gotten to Abilene once since buying the card and hadn’t remembered to buy the great gift anyway. So anyway, I searched for eleven days and finally found the card. I went to Abilene, especially for the gift, and bought it. Then, I just had to mail it.

Luckily, Mom and Dad came through town. I knew that I would probably lose it or forget to mail it or something, so I just gave the card to Mom to mail. You see, I’m getting better at managing this forgetfulness stuff.

3. Even though I am constantly made fun of for being the most liberal faculty member at the school (or the most openly liberal, I guess), I realized today that I am, in some ways, the most conservative person around.

I was standing around with some teachers, discussing the developing science and technology curriculum for the state and the school. It had been suggested, somewhat vaguely, that the technology and science teachers speak to the students about the ethics of certain recent scientific advances, including, evidently, the growth human body parts on mice.

Once the topic came up, though, somebody in the room yelled out, “Ethics!!! What are ethics? Everyone has their own ethics. Nobody should tell anyone anything about ethics around here. Everyone can make up their ethics for themselves.”

Several other people in the room echoed in with exactly the same sentiment. Ethics are abstract and nebulous, an indeterminate and impenetrable mystery. We should just let things go.

Now, I don’t know much about growing body parts on mice. I’m not real sure that that’s ever going to be a real issue in WHS science labs. Boy, I was bothered, though, that I was in a room packed with conservatives, and I was the only one trying to argue that ethics exist and matter and are somewhat knowable and that ethical inquiry, even if it’s abstract, is worthwhile and should be taught.

Yep, the world had turned upside down in there. I thought that we liberals were supposed to be the wishy-washy relativists, the cynics. Not always, at least.

Arch Enemy #7 - Lou Dobbs

Lou Dobbs annoys me.

Partly, it's his politics. I think he goes way too far on the immigration issue, approaching fairly closely to bigotry as he tries to blame illegal immigrants for America's economic woes. And I think he's too much of a cynic (not just a skeptic) when it comes to politicians. Plus, he's one of those journalists who proves himself ignorant any time a religious topic comes up.

Still, that's not the main reason he's on the list. There are plenty of people with whom I disagree more vociferously on politics who will never make this list.

No, what bothers me is his makeup. This guy has a really, really large face, and he wears more makeup on it than anyone else on tv. Just look someday. He's worse than Mimi on the Drew Carey show. And she, at least, was trying to look like a clown.

I'm not a big fan of makeup on women. Believe me, I'd especially not like to see it anymore on Lou Dobbs.

I have this student who is cool but also (and he would admit it) a little eccentric.

Anyway, he walked up to me the other day and asked in a tremendously nervous voice, and in all seriousness, “Mr. Pierce, is it really true what the students are all saying that the person you take to your junior prom is probably going to be the person you marry.”

He was a little scared of his date.

I told him, “No. In fact, I think the chances are probably not very good of that happening, especially if you’d rather it not happen.”

He walked out of the room, visibly relieved, and this other teacher who happened to be on the other side of the room yelled, “Oh, thank God that’s not true!!!” And we cracked up laughing.

I was thinking about it later, though, about the scene. And it was still funny, but it’s also a little funny how easy it is to get caught thinking in that same way as my student.

I know I do it. It’s just so hard sometimes to see beyond the present moment, to see—through imagination—that the way things are right now necessarily is not how things will be.

That was something I needed to be reminded this week. I've got to take a longer view.