I celebrated my birthday at the beach this year. My friends surprised me with matching temporary tattoos of my face, along with a towel also of my face. Silly, dumb fun. š
TIL about the CSS cap unit, which is equal to the current font's capital letter height.
Today is my 38th birthday. Feeling a lot of gratitude.
I started playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night again, and I'm getting my ass kicked. I don't remember losing this much this quickly my first time around, but that was years ago, so maybe I've forgotten it all. š¹ļø
Thereās something about seeing a loose VHS on the ground that makes me want to take a shower.
Silence-d no More
Well, Hofstra is upon us once again, and as everyone starts settling back into classes, dorms, and binge drinking (or starts for the first time, for all you wild and crazy freshmen), I thought it prudent to take pause and reflect upon the hard work of our dedicated professors who each and every day educate the next generation. And by this I mean make fun of them. For grade related reasons, I wonāt target any one person or persons, but rather focus on general trends.
Have you ever had an English professor? Good, then youāll know what Iām talking about. To them, over analyzing a book comes as naturally as it doesnāt to anyone else. What, may I ask is the point of a story that requires a PhD to fully understand? A statistically elitist point, thatās what.
Recently I was asked to read The Sound And The Fury, by William Faulkner. There seems to be a law of physics stating that all college English professors love assigning incredibly dense and confusing books in which all the characters think extremely deep thoughts such as āmy life sucksā, āeverybodyās life sucksā and āyou suckā. The Sound and the Fury was particularly confusing: half narrative, half stream of conscious, and no way to tell the difference between the two. Luckily chapters had handy dates, which firmly grounded the reader in a specific time. However inside the chapters there would be random time jumps in the middle of sentences. Thankfully these were indicated by italicsā¦but not always. Sometimes, you just had to guess.
Yet all the mind-bending motifs, metaphors, stylistic choices, etc. paid off in the end, as Faulkner had succeeded in conveying the deep message underpinning the entire book, a message that resonates deep in the core of all who read it. If you lean your ear close to the page, you can almost hear Faulkner saying, āIām better than you.ā So to entertain myself while reading, I routinely wouldnāt.
Another quirk of some English professors is that they assign students their own book (You all know who you are, and with any luck, you donāt know who I amā¦or perhaps you think my name is Silence Doless). More than being simply unethical, itās downright awkward. Picture this: youāre sitting in class and out of nowhere your professor starts illustrating a point with something he or she wrote. What if you donāt think the professorās stuff is any good? You obviously canāt just say that (unless you happen to be writing this columnā¦professor blank, I donāt like your work). Now youāre screwed into two options the rest of the semester. You could,
- Not talk and lower your participation grade, or
- Lie and say the professorās book is so good that one day it will replace the Bible in popularity.
There is also a third option involving air freshener, thumbtacks, and a live cougar, but few among us posses the iron will necessary to carry it through. And so I say we fight back. Long enough have students suffered under the pretentious weight of college English professors. Ladies and gentlemen, itās time we took a stand! As for me, Iāll be finishing The Sound And The Fury.
In addition to my blog turning 15 years old this month, I noticed that I've had my drupal.org profile for even longer. My connection with Drupal has only grown with time. š§
It always tickles me whenever I see someone smoking while riding a bike.
Itās roof movie season.
Maybe the most beige thing Iāve ever cooked. Stir fry a la Utz.
Targeting the ven diagram of magic the gathering players and people who want to know about local musicians.
Spotted on a Carrol Gardens lamp post.
