The hour badly spent

British Survey has been pretty tedious lately. Medieval literature is all "the grace of God this," "forgiveness through Christ that." What a drag. It’s started to feel like going to church, except without all the fun "God Damn America" bits (what’s your church like?). But today we covered Sonnet 135, and Wendy Matlock promised some good stuff.

"It’s always important, in a literature class, to get the sex. We’ve been neglecting that lately." Speak for yourself, Green-stripey-socks-Matlock. Without further ado:

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy ‘Will,’
And ‘Will’ to boot, and ‘Will’ in overplus;
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea all water, yet receives rain still
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in ‘Will,’ add to thy ‘Will’
One will of mine, to make thy large ‘Will’ more.
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one ‘Will.’

"He’s not sugarcoating this. He’s saying can I put my penis in your vagina," said Wendy. Uh, I mean Dr. Matlock.

I know this was supposed to be sexy, but maybe can we skip the stuff written by other dudes about their own penises? It invokes my castration complex. Kthxbai.

Leave it to an English professor to use a high-minded subject like medieval literature as an excuse to flirt with students and fixate on sex, thus guaranteeing a captive audience.

"I’m a big geek," she said, going on to prove it by explaining that she watched the special features on her Lord of the Rings DVDs, which gave her insight into armor worn by medieval knights. Hell yeah that’s hot, and that’s not all.

Today’s topic was the lais (songs performed in 13th and 14th century Europe) written by Marie de France. What are lais usually about? Matlock explained by means of what she called a bad joke: "A lai is basically a brief romance." Actually that was an excellent joke.

One lai was about Lanval, a knight in King Arthur’s court. Depressed, Lanval went off into the forest and fell in love with a magic pixie dream girl. She loved him back and blessed him with wealth. Lanval grew generous at court, and people started to like him.

Once Lanval’s status rose among his peers, Queen Guinivere went after his nuts (and failed). Matlock made kissey noises to illustrate her point.

Later we discussed Tristan and Isolde, a timeless tale illustrating the pleasure of adulterous lovers being together. Matlock was satisfied that the movie "had pretty people." (We like when teachers take backhanded swipes at subject matter).

By the end of the class, there was more material to examine, but not enough time for it. "I skipped the part about celibacy," she said. "You can read that by yourself if you’re interested."

Did she just tell us to go masturbate? We were going to do that anyway.

In today’s Collegian Sarah Burford shared a story about cocking and shooting off at a local firing range. At first I thought the article was mostly kind of bleh. But when I re-read it, I noticed it seemed eerily similar to the Jenna Haze (NSFW!) movie I’ve got open in another window, right now. I am perfectly aware that this says more about me than about Sarah Burford, but humor me:

"Whoa!"

I let out an involuntary yell as the rifle butt slammed into my shoulder [ed. note: That is HOT!]. The men around me chuckled and continued to advise my shooting skills. It was my first experience at a firing range, and I didn’t know the first thing about guns. To me, they were foreign objects, entirely too powerful and consequently, rather intimidating.

But my timidity lessened and my interest increased as the volunteers at the Fancy Creek Range instructed me on the basics of shooting.

This is where I made a major shooting range faux pas: I described a gun as "cute." No matter what a girl thinks a gun looks like, she [should] keep her comments to herself if they have anything to do with femininity.

So coy, so sexy. It’s totally obvs that it’s her first time, right? Of course you can’t tell a guy that his gun is cute. It invokes the castration complex. THEY ARE ALL BIG AND SHINY. My gun is the resplendent avatar of my virility. I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say my actual penis doesn’t suffice at all, wink wink. In terms of length and girth, nudge nudge. This is what it looks like:

 

The sensibilities of Southerners are such that because some otherwise ordinary words carry sexual double meanings, their usage is heavily stigmatized. Dr. Potts presented us with a short list of such words:

• bed
• tail
• stocking
• piece
• maiden
• bag
• cock

Donna helpfully explained that the word "rooster" became common in mainstream English because Southerners invented a word for "a chicken who roosts" so that they could avoid saying "cock."

In my notebook, I scribbled Dr. Potts is super-horny.

Anne Longmuir and the Saucy Aussie visited the Development of the English Language class to guest-lecture on — what else — having a funny accent.

Anne spoke first. Her lilt was so soothing and musical. All the pretty foreign dipthongs and glottal stops ("I speak standard Sco’ish English"). Just hearing her read "Your duties are to put the cider inside the house, walk down the path, and take a ride on the houseboat" felt like someone was strumming a harp nearby and Brave Sir Robin was about to ride through class with a shrubbery.

Saucy Aussie went next, showing appropriate respect to Anne by complimenting her on the application of quaint Scottishisms to describe her outfit.

"’Dungarees?’ What are you, like 75?"

She employed similar dipthongs, glottal stops, but some flatter vowels, and a more rapid, aggressive style than Anne’s relatively subdued Sco’ish. Many Australians are worried about the "Americanization" of their inflections. Saucy Aussie has noticed Americanisms creeping into her speech since she’s come here.

 

"I’m going native." (Get it? She’s saying she will eventually shed her restrictive Australian garb in favor of a loincloth and flower-petal bra).

Most importantly: all the phrases come out sounding quicker and more energetic. Most of the time, they’re also irreverent and pretty dirty. She feels uncomfortable going by "Dr. Saucy Aussie" because titles make you a wanker. Australian culture advocates that you "take the piss out of" wankers (Get it? She’s saying Australians enjoy getting golden showers from those of higher social standing).

With that sort of cultural understanding, phrases that are considered extremely dirty in the rest of the English-speaking world are considered more casual in Australia. "Bloody" carries more conversational heft in Britain than it does down under. Even the word "cunt" doesn’t carry the same bite that it does in the U.S. It’s often just informal and even denotes familiarity; the verbal equivalent of an elbow poke. Australians commonly even address their mates thusly: "G’day you old cunt! I haven’t seen you in ages!"

Get it? Good. I’m not even going to touch that one, no matter how badly I want to.