ceylonbreakfast

Update: I'm in Paris! I'm here until Oct. 2, improving my bootleg French.

The wind howled as she sailed intrepidly over the sharp tips of the bluebooks, a #2 Bic mechanical pencil her only defense against the flapping of their inky pages. An insipid comment about Frost assailed her, and though she leapt away, it left a red gash on her thigh. Around her she could hear the crashes of incorrect scansions, the intentional fallacy, and unsubstantiated claims. Missing textual citations rippled the air, as trite phrases about imagination and reality in Stevens showered from above, leaving her wounded and gasping for breath.

"DO YOU SURRENDER?? DO YOU SURRENDER??," she heard above the din. Another egregious misreading exploded to her left, narrowly missing her and sending her sprawling on the deck.

For a moment, all she could see was the pitch and roll of bluebooks, the spike and loop of messy handwriting, and the black, black cloud of smoke that belched forth with each deadly split infinitive.

"DO YOU SURRENDER??"

The bluebooks whirled around her, gaps in logic filling the thick air.

She stood up, pencil in hand.

"DO YOU SURRENDER??"

Taking a deep breath, she drew on all her strength to face the heavy storm of unarticulated warrants and aimless paragraphs. Defiantly, she yelled,

"I HAVE NOT YET BEGUN TO GRADE!"

One of my fantasies is to work in an anonymous office and sneak out once a week for clandestine sessions of polyphony.

Actually, I have done this.

American Literature

• Mark Strand
• Ron Silliman
• Jean Toomer's Cane
• The Nineteenth Century:
  • Poe's "The Poetic Principle"
  • Poe's "The Philosophy of Composition"
  • William Wells Brown's Clotel; or, The President's Daughter
  • Charles Brockden Brown
  • Wieland; or, The Transformation
  • The Last of the Mohicans

African-American Studies

• Jean Toomer's Cane
• William Wells Brown's Clotel; or, The President's Daughter
• David Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World

Idiosyncrasies

• Vergangenheitsbewaltigung
• Which Springer-Verlag Graduate Text in Mathematics are you?
• what all the kids are reading
• The Sacred Harp
• Generative metrical theory
• Lluis Domenech i Montaner

To upvote later, when I have more votes:

• Modern science and Romantic discontent
• perfect number
• The obsession with "natural" things
• Freakonomics
• literary criticism
• Why Self-Lamination is impractical
• A business card left for my daughter, the waitress