Nah. But COME ON. This is supposed to be pseudo college level work. And how many of you have read Aristotle (or Plato or Socrates) and found yourself re-reading the same passage 10 times? It's a veritable rite of passage.

I mean. Let's be honest. I haven't read the whole thing. I've read critiques of it (literary criticism is so much more efficient, says the girl who watched Barcelona and Metropolitan one too many times) and I'll use those for tomorrow. But seriously? Stop complaining and just suck it up.

I actually did tell one of my students to just man up and take his lumps today.

Ah, AP English. Billy Budd put every student in my class asleep while trying to read it for an assignment. It was like the ghost of Herman Melville jumped each of us with chloroform that night.

It's a veritable rite of passage.

Yup. I remember creepy Prof ? (I totally have forgotten his name, but not seersucker suits and the smell of stale tobacco and sweat and mint ACK makes me want to gag now) and Plato, Socrates and Aristotle. I read it aloud in various non-native accents to stay awake and remember it. But what do I recall most? The smell and the horror that a student actually had sex with that guy. He was creepy to begin with, plus his fortune came from "found" WW2 treasure in Austria. Seriously sketchy.

For me, it wasn't the Poetics; it was "In Defence of Poesy." Argh. Although it did enable me to discourse semiintelligently on "tabula rasa" and the themporary suspension of disbelief when I got into my 2nd year 17th C. Lit course with my toughest teacher evah, grad school or no.

Edit: And why I put tabula rasa in quotations, I do not know -- I blame it on cough syrup (oh, that it were codiene-based! sigh) -- but the mispelling of temporary I blame entirely (albeit subconsciously) on JR Ward.

omg y'all I have to do the gas company thing in person and the closest office to my work is 30 min by train and they are only open 8:30 - 5, M-F. HATE!!

So you have to make an hour long RT in order to activate something you have had for 6 years and also to make 6 years of back payments for something that wasn't your responsibility?

Really, msbelle, I don't get you and your first-world diamond shoe probs. What's the issue?

Billy Budd didn't put me to sleep, because of the amount of time I spent imagining strangling Billy Budd. Note to authors: If everyone wants your character dead, when you finally kill him, all readers feel is relief.

if I foam at the mouth when I go see them it's not gonna go well for me, right? I hate being in the position of no power. My righteous indignation is not going to help me one bit. everyone, sing with me

I hate Winnipeg everything.

Hee. I have always found Melville highly unpalatable, myself.

Although nothing matches the unreasonable yet still fiery hate-torch I have carried for Ernest-Fucking-Momma-MAde-Me-Wear-Dresses-And-I-Overcompensated-in-Too-Many-Ways-Hemingway.

oh, man, I realized at late o'clock that I had a bunch of old pics on my hard drive that I hadn't uploaded to flickr and thanks to you people OF COURSE I had to do it right away.

I have to fix the rotation on a bunch of them but here is one of my faves:

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