Time for a general post! Why? Because i haven't done one in quite a while. So my apps are done and out of my hands. All I can do now is pass classes, eat candy, write bizarre stories and nap. Mostly nap, I hope.
On another note, I have decided that pretty much every girl is hot in her own way. Not the most revelatory comment, but true. Despite the cuteness and hotness surrounding me, I don't feel a need to partake. I'd love a relationship, I would, but I don't really feel like putting any effort forth at this point to get myself into one. But with this unseasonably warm weather the window shopping is good.
Well now I feel like a bit of an asshole for the preceding paragraph, so I guess I'll wrap the post up.
Reading:
The Name of War -Jill Lepore
The American Revolution -Gordon Wood
Watching:
random things on netflix
South Park
Munching on:
Cookie Crisp, graham crackers and beer. Wow, that sounds lame.
Listening to:
Tegan and Sara
Alkaline Trio
Oasis
The Distillers
Opeth
Dethklok

Until Later folks

I was thinking the other day about my interests as a history major, and I came to a realization. Where once I looked on American History as depressing and not worth my time, I have become an Americanist. I used to see the hypocrisies in the rhetoric of antebellum politicians, see Manifest Destiny, see general intolerance and I'd get pissed off and read something else. Reading European history and seeing forced movements of people, i.e. the Jews being expelled from Spain in 1492, or rampant genocide or hideously and infuriatingly depressing things and I wouldn't bat an eye. It wasn't until recently that I realized the reason that American history got me riled up is simply because I'm a bloody American. I care about American history, because it shapes who we are as a nation and how we are perceived as well.
I'm not articulating this particularly well, but where I used to get upset and quit, I find the ideas that led to atrocities like Manifest Destiny and explore them. Where Europeans settled with their cultures, new cultures formed from fusions with native peoples and other European nations forming a distinctive set of American cultures from New England to Oaxaca. Yeah, I like Mexico too. But anyhoo, it's nice to have a focus that you like in the subject.

I hate literature. I do. Well, to be specific the way that literature and English are taught have ruined the experience of reading short stories or fiction. With the focus on the underlying themes and reading between the lines, people lose sight of the important question. Is it a good story? Did you enjoy it? Were the characters compelling? Was it a vacation from reality? Not what does the train on page 47 say about conservatives in this country. That's horseshit. Anyone who tells you it isn't is also horseshit. I was taking a test today in some G.E. class and all I could think was this is the most meaningless and arbitrary attempt to invent meaning and I hate it. Literature classes have ruined literature for me.
Perhaps I'm just not appreciating a sophisticated approach, but why does it have to be sophisticated? Reading used to be fun for me, I wouldn't have to think about life and racism and politics or whatever. Reading was a simple pleasure, and higher learning is trying to take that from me. It's upsetting, because I feel that education is extremely important, but I really hate it right now.
Oh, and sophisticated sounds a lot like sophistry. And this whole talk of themes is sophistry, pure and simple. I always thought sophistry was to be avoided in an intellectual setting, but I guess I was misinformed. Thanks literature class, you are skewing me towards the cheap entertainment of eating for fun, not reading. So now I'm going to just get fat and probably diabetic because of this class. Make sense? No. It's sophistry, fallacious reasoning.

Can I have a class where we just read books, don't tear every scrap of invented meaning from them until all that's left is a tattered binding?