Seriously, the MPAA is Not That Strict

This rating was based on the use of the words “crap” (7 times,) “kill” (2 times) and “gun” (1 time.) You could find worse on children’s television.

The Thin Line between a Postmodern Joke and a Stupid Waste of Time

Let us say, hypothetically, that I was to set up one (1) phony Myspace profile a day including a throw-away email address for one hundred days and link them all. This would take roughly ten minutes a day as long as I was methodical about linking all accounts regularly and would yield one hundred new accounts in about three months.  Suddenly, there are one hundred “people” floating about in cyberspace in their own little perfectly squared community. No one could call it spam, as no advertisement would be involved and it would only include certain profiles.

In addition, let us imagine that two or three other people did the same thing at the same time. Two or three hundred fake accounts, all of them linked by nothing but an in-joke and a few real people. Could the accounts even legitimately be called fake? After all, what is a Myspace account but a list of information of what the individual decides he or she wants to be known to the public? If an online account is not a “true” reflection of a real person, would one hundred separate accounts created by one person be any less real? Just asking. I haven’t started doing it yet.

I Managed to Make it into Graduate School

Yet somehow I still think that there is a conspiracy to make me feel like a moron. My registration time is less than an hour away, and I still have not figured out how to use the university’s website. Whenever I try to find information on how to register for a class, the page directs me to another page that in turn directs me back to the page that I was just viewing. People who design university websites are either not very friendly or they are the kind of people who know what they are doing but are completely unable to explain it to normal human beings. If anxiety over my impending poverty does not make me go insane, registration will.

To compound matters, I receive about five hundred emails a day through my school account, most of which are full of intra-departmental jargon intended only for the initiated. For the love of God, people: spell out your acronyms. I have no idea what an MGRBX25 is, and unless I truly am a moron I doubt that other newbies know as well.

This morning I received an email inviting me to a mandatory meeting for future Teaching Assistants. Although I will not be a Teaching Assistant this coming quarter, the email let me know that new students are welcome. Everyone who RSVPs will receive some sort of mock essay to grade on their own and should bring some sort of syllabus they wrote to the meeting. Does this include me? I am too embarassed to even ask the question. I suppose I could just invent one.

Class: English 187: The Image of the Ankle in the English Romantic Ballad

Nope, not gonna happen. As for grading the mock paper, here are my rules:

1. Use of the word paradigm will result in an F
2. “Doing” “this” “all” “the” “time” “will” “result” “in” “an” “F”
3. Using a French phrase when an English phrase would work will result in an F
4. Using five syllables when only one is necessary will result in an F
5. Using five words when only one is necessary will result in an F
6. Wikipedia does not count as a scholarly source
7. Jacques Derrida should not be either, but I have no choice in the matter
8. However, writing like Derrida will result in an F
9. Those who receive an F will be publicly flogged

I think I’ll make a great TA.

I Am Almost Free

Pretty soon the old TypePad weblog will be gone, and I will be much happier. Don’t get me wrong: for a tech moron like myself, it is a great service, and if I had disposable cash I would have kept it up. As it is, though, if I am going to actually pay for a service I want it to yield something. A whole bunch of regular readers would have been reason enough, but I came very late into the game and therefore cannot expect to get that kind of traffic. I’m happy with five or so readers, but I do not have to pay for that kind of readership when I can do it for free. So, unless WordPress goes belly-up I can keep this relatively cheap hobby moving without trying to get attention. What a nice feeling.

Anyway, I’ll try to make this one a lot less schizo than the last one, since I have no one to please and am no longer looking for extra traffic to justify an online existence. This also has the added benefit of not feeling guilty about not writing, since I am not watching my money peter away every day that I choose not to post. I have no mission statement yet, but expect a lot less politics, a lot more jabbering and a lot less linking to people I do not know. At the moment, this is just the ravings of a soon-to-be-unemployed soon-to-be- graduate student who likes to write sometimes without using MLA format.

By the way, thanks -c. You’re awesome.