Currently dying of fever, so pretend I'm coherent, please!

[brigdh]

Today, my advisor told me that clearly my undergraduate program must be better than she'd realized, because I was so well-read and informed and insightful.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Apparently I am much better at bullshitting than I knew, you guys. Also, I suppose that'll delay the "Oh my God I have no idea what I'm doing here" post I have half-formed by at least a few days.

Comments

[chiasmus.livejournal.com]

I hope you feel better soon! ♥

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Aw, thank you!

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

That's when you look her in the eye and say, "No, it's just that I read. For pleasure, even."

Widespread literacy: it is the revolution.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

*laughs* I'm sure it helps, but I do have to wonder how much my pleasure reading would actually cross over with archaeological theory, which I never rarely read outside of courses. Though I suppose things like analyzing an argument are fairly universal.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

I have found that people who read for pleasure are generally better at articulating their thoughts, if not better at actually thinking. This often translates as informed and insightful, even if we don't feel we are because what we read for pleasure is porn.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

So the lesson we've learned here, clearly, is that porn should be taught in school. Advantages all around!

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

Porn often is taught in school. Just not the fun kind with boy-on-boy action for the entertainment and edification of women. Instead, we get the fantasies and hang-ups of dead white guys. Yay.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Rana! You have not considered the numerous advantages of being indoctrinated- I mean, exposed- to such classics of literature. What kind of people would we be if every schoolchild did not read the terrible results of loose women in The Scarlet Letter or Anna Karenina? Besides, obviously the entirely-and-almost-obsessively-all-male casts of Lord of the Flies, A Separate Peace, Catcher in the Rye, I could go on, apply to everyone's life.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

It is with a good deal of pleasure I can declare I managed to avoid The Scarlet Letter and Anna Karenina. There are advantages to the military lifestyle. Of course, there are also disadvantages, like being stuck reading that bane of my life, Great Expectations, three. frigging. times. *shudder*

What books like Lord of the Flies taught me is that the male of the species is ridiculously squeamish, which only makes me more enraged at the societal image of girls and women being "delicate" and swooning at blood. Listen, idjits, we get to see our own blood on a regular basis, often accompanied by pain the likes of which you can't even imagine without whimpering, so can it.

At least the all-maleness gave me fodder for the boy-on-boy action in my head. Except that looks like I'm blaming the patriarchy for my do-it-yourself approach to porn, and I would never do that. Not me.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Three times? *shudders* I had to read A Tale of Two Cities once, and disliked it so much that I have refused to read anything else by Dickens ever since. My classmates agreed; at the end of our senior year, our English teacher held a "Worst Book of the Past Four Years" vote, and it won.

I've never gotten the "women hate the sight of blood" thing either. Most certainly, in my experience, it's grossed out my brother and father far more than it ever bothered me. I have known females who throw fits over it, but I can't help but wonder if they're doing it only because they think it's expected; I mean, I'm sure they don't act that way each month.

The all-maleness particularly bothered me with those three because I had to read them in a row, and every one is set in an all-boys school (although at least Holden leaves his). And then we followed it up with How to Kill a Mockingbird, which has a wonderful female narrator, but one who is such a tomboy, and so focused on the males around her, that in the context it just bothered me more.

I should have used it for porn instead; A Separate Peace makes the boy-love pratically canon.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

The only Dickens I've ever liked is The Christmas Carol, which is brilliant. The man only had one good book in him, and that was it.

Every female I've ever asked about it said she trained herself to be squeamish about blood because she didn't want to get labelled as "unfeminine." For the sake of my blood pressure, I don't ask anymore.

There are seriously few books assigned in school with even a balance of female characters, never mind an all-female cast (and of course, when such a book is assigned, a big deal is made of it, whereas the all-male bulk of books pass without comment). And when there are major female characters in any of the books, they are inevitably auxiliary to the male characters, expressions of their psyches or the male authors' psyches. Which, y'know, could be one reason why my eyes tend to roll out of my head when the fanboys freak out about us "twisting the characters" and "indulging our fantasies." Yeah, guys, because it's not like you get to do that in mainstream culture. Because really? How much more mainstream culture can you get than the public school system? And hey, at least I'm not laboring under the misconception that these characters are somehow representative of real people.

Boy, I just keep getting wound up in your comments, don't I? Imma go watch some hot dancing, singing boys grope each other now. That always improves my mood. ;-)

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

This just means you're awesome, see.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, thank you. Though, you know, I still feel that it has more to do with being awesome at conning people than being genuinely awesome, but I am told everyone feels that way.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

It took me a very long time to realize that what I considered 'bullshitting' was actually 'just being very flexible very fast.'

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hee. I like thinking of it that way.