The hour badly spent

I’ve felt brain dead all week. Perhaps it was the changing weather? Perhaps I shouldn’t have started the week with Modernist poetry.

"I’m gonna memorize Prufrock," I said. Smallville rolled her eyes. I saw that coming. So did Prufrock.

And I have known the eyes already, known them all–
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

I’ve also been reading White Teeth, and I fear Zadie Smith’s “manic” prose has made mince meat of my brain.

Monday I missed an article deadline and an assignment deadline in playwriting, which set the tone for the rest of my classes. So it goes. I skipped class Tuesday and didn’t have class Wednesday. I returned to White Teeth. I’d read it for fun years ago, but this time, ugh. Not til I had marked up half the book did I remember that my copy was actually borrowed from Cherry. As a woman of integrity, she has most likely stayed true to her promise not to read The Hour Badly Spent any more, so I might be in the clear, but if not, uhh, sorry about that. I don’t know what I did Tuesday or Wednesday, so it couldn’t have been anything special. Both days, perhaps, interchangeable?

For I have known them all already, known them all:–
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

Except not quite. There is, in fact, so much to do, pages to read, calories to burn, lessons to learn, paragraphs to write, concepts to master, and never nearly enough coffee spoons to measure it all.

The afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

A life of leisure. A guy hanging around with nothing to do, no deadlines, no steps to retrace; not even a job, no need to work that hustle, no-place to be in fifteen minutes. I had a colloquium to deliver. Would there be time, would there be time? Thursday nights, English 635’s class discussions focus on racial and gender oppression, which is just as important as it is tedious. This week was no exception, since many main characters are Jamaican & south Asian. After the break I quietly whipped out the laptop. Jimbo - one-third of our discussion fellowship - hadn’t shown up that night, but he IMed me from home.

The Opera Ghost: sup, yo. are you guys on break, or out of class?
The Hour Badly Spent: just got back from break. we’re on 1 last q
The Hour Badly Spent: this is actually not so bad
The Opera Ghost: what? oh questions?
The Hour Badly Spent: yeah
The Opera Ghost: im sick, btw.
The Hour Badly Spent: we heard :-)
The Hour Badly Spent: flu?
The Opera Ghost: yea.
The Opera Ghost: sad thing is my roommates are still trying to drag me out tonight.
The Opera Ghost: i think i may die if that happens.
The Hour Badly Spent: just bundle up and travel in a palanquin
The Opera Ghost: lol
The Opera Ghost: with a big wooden jug of brandy around my neck
The Hour Badly Spent: if u make me laugh karin [westman] might be pissed
The Opera Ghost: lol sorry
The Hour Badly Spent: ok, got it outta my system. must. stop. thinking of you as friar tuck.
The Opera Ghost: LOL

Whatever; it was funny. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

Then Karin snapped me back to the there-and-now, asking us about the genetically engineered Futuremouse© that brings White Teeth to its climax. Something occurred to me.

"Did anyone else see this as a nod to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?" Karin asked me to expound on the connection.

Mice are not, as is commonly assumed on Earth, small white squeaking animals who spend a lot of time being experimented on.
In fact, they are the protrusions into our dimension of hyper-intellegent pan-dimensional beings. These beings are in fact responsible for the creation of the Earth.

Indeed.

The K-State campus now boasts a much larger and more diverse student body than ever before, writes Tim Schrag in today’s Collegian.

“All of us at K-State are thrilled that we have a record enrollment of 23,520 students,” President Jon Wefald said, “and we are also delighted that K-State has a record number of students of color and international students as well.”

The total for minority students includes record highs for black and Hispanic students, and international student enrollment has increased, including 431 students from China.

And according to Duane Nellis, provost and senior vice president:

“There is tremendous value in getting to know students from different cultures,” Nellis said. “These friendships not only enhance an individual’s personal experiences, but also help students understand other cultures. This is vital in an increasingly global society.”

Oh boy! They are just going to LRRVE it here! Grant Jones, PhD history student, gives them a neighborly welcome in a letter to the editor.

One encounters the buzzword “diversity” at K-State ad nauseum. The source of the incessant demands for “diversity” is the doctrine of multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism is the product of moral agnosticism, cultural relativism and ethnic determinism.

This doctrine holds that one should never judge Western/American culture superior to any other. Its purpose is to obliterate distinctions between values and non-values.

For example, the value of individualism is considered equal to the non-value of tribalism. The multicultural doctrine makes no distinction between chosen values such as reason, individualism, personal liberty and non-chosen physical attributes, including race.

I wasn’t sure WTF he meant by tribalism so I looked it up: cultural and ethnic identity. Why is that a "non-value?" Does it really extinguish the value of the rugged individual, or does it respect her and value her role in society? And why not use the phrase "spirit of community?" Could it be that Grant Jones wants to link multiculturalism to the image of bands of nomadic African hunters? How close do you think he actually came to typing the word "niggers" when he wrote his letter?

The epithet “Eurocentric” conflates race and culture.

I was under the impression that, historically speaking, the two were somewhat linked. Being a PhD student of history, Grant Jones would know for sure, and apparently he’s found that there isn’t, probably by not studying very much history at all.

“Diversity” elevates unchosen attributes to greater importance than values based on merit, personal achievement and moral character. “Diversity” also requires individuals to primarily define themselves based on these unchosen criteria.

"Diversity" also "requires" that you take your head out of your ass and recognize that values based on merit, personal achievement and moral charactor are not exclusive to Western Civilization. Taking your head out of your ass is difficult for people with rectum-sized comfort zones; you’ll find a lot of that in Kansas!

The agenda is to Balkanize [ed. note: good grief!] the United States.

Twenty years ago Jesse Jackson led Stanford students in an anti-intellectual chant: “Hey, ho, Western Civ has got to go.” Jackson’s nihilistic premise is the basis for both “diversity” and “multiculturalism.”

A history student might want to frame Jackson’s awesome comment in historical context; since Grant Jones hasn’t learned how to do that after 6 years of secondary education, I’ll give it a go:

Jackson grew up attending segregated grade schools in the South, witnessed the assassination of civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and has travelled all over the world as a spokesman for civil rights issues. Western Civ is bound with a history of unjust oppression of women and brown people, and his "anti-intellectual chant" was speaking to that part of Western Civilization.

Either Grant Jones willfully ignored this crucial aspect of the history of Western Civ just to make a specious point, or the topic just never came up in his K-State history classes. Neither would surprise me.

Anyway, my fellow brown folks: people like Grant Jones — couching their small minds behind big words — are the Whites your parents always warned you about. As long as you avoid the blowhards “studying” history and political "science," and instead just focus on the beauty of the landscapes and the fun weather and dating cute white chicks, you might end up liking it here. And if you enjoy Jamaican food, the Little Grill is somewhere around here. Check it out!

[Source: K-State Collegian, Letter to the Editor]