Thanks to Chi Alpha's ads in the school paper supporting Intelligent Design, I have found a new way to write articles. It liberates the argument, so to speak. So, you read skim indeterminantly browse a critical article, one based in fact, and cite it. Then you pair a brief array of observations with some unfair extrapolation and then affix that God created us. Why, I've been doing this paper-writing thing wrong the whole time!

Here's an attempt of mine.

Women: Magical Trickters

A new reading of Le Morte Darthur reveals that Arthurian women were enchantresses who would urge world events along. Through their magical ways, the virtue of the chivalric order was properly displayed. Research suggests that they enchanted in two different ways; either directly using magic, or indirectly through love. In this sense, Guenevere, Morgan, and Nyneve accomplish the same purposes by different means. Of course he could not show the full extent of their power within the constraints of the chronicle. He knew more than he wrote. Thus this is a small demonstration of how Malory realized women are bewitchers and probably shoot laser beams out of their eyes while atop a unicorn that definitely evolved from a zebra and rhinoceros mating.

Heng, Geraldine. “Enchanted Ground: The Feminine Subtext in Malory.” Le Morte Darthur. Ed.

Stephen H.A. Shepherd. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004. 835-849.

The bowling alley took a chunk out of my ball!

Chunk is defined as a volume of the ball, roughly pyramidic, about 1 x 2 x .75 inches.

It was during practice. I was trying to keep my hand the way I had it last week, that enabled me to do so well. About a third of the time, it would stray toward the gutter. Nothing wrong with that, normally it works itself out as I get a good rhythm going, and by the time we started, I would've been fine.

So I let go. Immediately I know it's off. It hits the gutter, reaches near to the end, and then flips out, bangs against the pinsetter, and falls. My heart sank, and I brooded over the ball return. It arrived, and I picked it up, looking it over minutely. Then I realized what one of my hands was feeling. A chunk... I turned it around. Beneath the surface, the material appeared glassy, consistent in color to the rest... it would've been beautiful, if it were a rock or anything but a bowling ball. My ball. The one Dad got me not three months ago.

I can still bowl with it, but it's sort of like having a car without a trunk lid. It's technically possible, but do you have the heart to drive it, unless you absolutely need to? It doesn't look right, and because you know what it's missing, it doesn't feel right either.

I bowled three games, did good in one, terrible in one, and mediocre in one, in reverse order. The UC is good for spare practice, where the ball doesn't matter that much, but... this is yet another reason why next fall I will probably be bowling elsewhere.

Curt did alright. We won 1.5 games. The other two teammates didn't show up. They typically come late, which irritates my punctuality or better rule, where we have to make excuses for them, asking to wait just 5 minutes. They're obliging of course, but we shouldn't always have to do that. They aren't coming from class or dinner...

Otherwise, my day was quite good.

Among other things, we read an excerpt from a feminist who tries to compare the experience of marginalized groups with that of a cyborg. A cyborg, she says, is a figure without an origin, an initial unity. Made up of constituent parts after the fact, of tools that are already around, they nevertheless gain a wholeness without an appeal to an initial origin. In the same way, marginalized workers come from outside a structure, without any origin within it, and learn to exist.

I follow it, I think, but I wonder what she sees as a cyborg. I must be missing the necessary literature on them. I think that using a cyborg here is very hard. They are humans enhanced by machinery in some way. I don't see, beyond that experience of put-togetherness, how they relate. Then again, that's why it's a metaphor.

There's Ed from Full Metal Alchemist, who has a robotic arm and leg, "automail" that he had to receive after losing the limbs from a failed attempt at alchemically reviving his mom (he used them to save his younger brother and instill him in a suit of armor). Ziggurat 8 (Ziggy) from Xenosaga sold his body upon his death to be brought back to life as a cyborg, and he forms connections with an organically engineered girl to become a father-figure to her. In Dune, the repeatedly recreated ghola Duncan Idaho gains a realization of his place and finally finds love and escapes the machinations of those Tleilaxu that keep creating him. There's Darth Vader, who despite being entrapped in robotic parts and consumed by his anger, eventually comes to reconciliation and redemption by his son. There's Robocop, the Six Million Dollar Man, not to mention the many men and women who need replacement limbs and mechanical aids to help them perform rudimentary functions in daily life. Asimov wrote a short story about people choosing to get metallic limbs for the idea of it, even after organic prosthetic limbs were possible.

She could have explored how a cyborg does not have to be different, on the level of practice, from any other person, save in capability. They too can form families, bonds, and though they are enhanced or enabled by their equipment, that need not imply a difference in social response, a difference in mental capability. It can, but it need not. So, in creating a cyborg, are we adorning the person from before, or creating a new person? She would have the latter occur. That's where the metaphor breaks down, because she doesn't account for why cyborgs become cyborgs. Is there no continuity between parts and whole? Why is the idea of unity or origin denied to a cyborg, when in many cases they can yet find it for themselves, and many people who aren't cyborgs spend all their lives trying to find it?

I think she uses them as a metaphor too flippantly, and though what they illustrate is important, it's gotten through ill means.

Another long time. I'd really intended to post more, I promise. Just sometimes there isn't much to say.

I'm frazzled by this Restoration Literature paper, but a little less so. The deadline's been moved back, which will give me the time for a comfortable revision, rather than the frantic "OMG I KNOW THERE'RE MISTAKES SOMEWHERE!" frantic flipping through that I would otherwise be doing. I'm writing on Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock. I like the poem, and getting to study all of the religious allusions is actually very fun. I'm just having trouble making it into a closed argument. There's so much I want to say, and not all of it has anything to do with other things. ^^;;; And so until, well, yesterday, I'd kept researching and researching. And researching. Now I'm hewing down the argument from that. Let's hope it's a chocolate sculpture, and not the cheap kind.

And laundry. I'm doing laundry now. Wee. ^_~ And writing my paper in the spaces between loads. Every sentence is excruciating, and I find myself rewriting it a few times. A few times I've even deleted whole paragraphs and started over. I'd rather just finish it and work it all out, but I'm too worried that if I do that, I'll simply decide to erase it all and start over, that if I get it somewhat right now, the revisions will be less. Perfectionist, you might say. Darn skippy.

But other than that, I think I'm doing okay. Just worrying about a hundred other small things, like tests and post-graduation stuff and the like. Things that have their time and place, which isn't now, but soon.

No viper-tongued satire today.

At least not intentionally.

Well, today was an unusual today. First, I didn't have any classes formally. Emergence of the Modern American Woman was cancelled so we could take the time watch a film in the library focusing on the black woman's role in the voting rights movement in Mississippi during the 50s and 60s. Compelling, compelling film. There was only one other person in there, and she left about 10 minutes before it ended. I was particularly moved by the example of Fannie Lou Hamer, with an 8th grade education, was an empassioned advocate for civil rights, the voice that LBJ couldn't shut up during the 1964 DNC. She was beaten by the police for her resistance, but advocated love and understanding despite that, to her followers who were understandably angry. She understood that, as far as rights go, they aren't won by righteous anger, but peaceful resistance and an unbending conviction in truths deemed to be paramount. It was... affecting.

Then there was my advising. Well, it's been an adventure. It's tough to get a hold of my advisor (Dr. I) because ... well, I'm really not sure why. He said he'd be around from 11 to 12. After picking up my advising folder and having a delightful run-in with Dr. H, where she actually remembered me, even if that has something to do with my sending her an email about her class, "Women Writers in Britain," as I want to petition it for a pre-1800 literature course, because the focus of this section is from 13th to 17th century... run-on sentence, but anyway, I went up there, and no Dr. Ikard. So I sat down and read. (She said she thought that would work, and to remind her in the fall. Woo!) Anyway, at about 11:50, here he comes. Apparently he was having lunch, but he knew my name, and we got down to business. DARS report, yes, yes, you're on top of it... any questions? He told me prices for summer school and advice for graduate school, and all of this prompted me to some other ponderings afterward.

I'm seriously not sure if I want to go on with the math major. (I already have enough for a minor.) I like it, but if I'm going to graduate school in English, then such study is superfluous. My time would be better spent taking an extra English class or two, leaving time to apply for grad school. Maybe I could also take some more French or some Old English, Medieval Studies, shore up the interests I have and turn them into some real capital. It may sound like I've already decided. Maybe I have, and I'm just letting the realization catch up to me. I love math. In its own. I just feel like I could do more in English, and that there is more of an interchange between my personal and academic life there. Ever since I turned down Math honors, that's become increasingly apparent. Not that math wouldn't be fulfilling, but I've got one life, and I choose like Robert Frost would... by intuition, by inclination, when no such difference might by first perception exist.

Well, and that's not all.

No.

My car got vandalized.

The word sounds like a bunch of barbarians rushed from the northern plains, crossed the Danube, and proceeded to burn the upholstery, poke holes in the tires, and bash out the windows so they could take the clear crystal shards away as religious tokens.

Actually, some hooligans just went through my garage and scribbled on the windows with the stuff people normally write "MY SONS IN REGIONALS #8 WOO!"

And again actually, the process I came to realize this was rather interesting.

1 PM - After lunch, leaving my dorm... hmm? Vandalized cars in X Parking Garage? Well, I'll go check it after dinner, I'm going to study.

5 PM - Well, I think I've studied enough. Now time to play a game.

5:30 PM - Parents calling? Hm? What? The Police called about analyzing my car? No, I know what they mean. Yes, I'm on my way to check it out.

5:45 PM - *checking car for any other damage* Hello? Police? Yeah, you called about my painted windshield and I was ... yes... (my car type)... ah, silver... what? Okay.

6 PM - They show up and ask me for all kinds of identification. Driver's license, registration... hmm, do I have this? Oh, yeah, there it is. Haha, glad I put that in there 9 months ago. Silly me. Whew.

6:05 PM - Yeah, I guess they do that all the time. Yeah, it is college. (Answer a few questions.) Thank you officer!

6:10 PM - Hi, mom, dad, you can stop calling me. It was just this and that. Yes, checked that. Alright. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, bye!

6:15 PM - *scarfscarfscarf dinner*

I'm just glad nothing worse happened.

Though really, vandalism has me somewhat upset. I mean, not to my car, it was easy to wipe away. I mean in general. In bathroom stalls... that doesn't bother me too much. There have been some doing it on the Humanities building though, and when it's that visible, and that public... and that troublesome to remove, then it bothers me. And when it is of no substance at all ("Hay Hay"), then it's just that much worse. "Hey Groucho, Read Your Marks" is kinda cute, because it's in chalk and could easily be removed, and because... haha, pun. But this is in spray paint and is really rather obnoxious. Snooty intellectualism nonwithstanding.

I just think it's silly and disrespectful to scribble on what is someone else's (or worse, to scribble on what is EVERYONE else's, when there's no easy way to remove it). And my car is not a place I want things to be scribbled, unless it's by me, and then there'll be a darn good reason. (POETRY!)

Brief Treatise on the Proper Foolish Man

Brief because I have somewhere to be in fifteen minutes.

*ahem* Man is an animal that has been proclaimed and studied dominantly throughout the discourses of thought and time. His traits have often been assumed, lampooned, lambasted, alternately praised, degraded, or simply shrugged to. Man, whose distinction biologically is a Y chromosome, yet seeks to establish alternate ways of classifying himself. What is that creature, man, whose disregard for "softer" concerns should be celebrated over any other quality? Here are a few traits he should exemplify.

First, no scented soaps. None of this Dove this or strawberry that. If it doesn't smell at least neutral, and perhaps repugnant, then it isn't strong enough to clean whatever's on your hands, which must be bad if you're condescending enough to think that your hands could possibly be tainted. A little dirt, some sulfuric acid, bah! All small concerns. However, for those with a little sense of propriety (required to run in such a devilish world as ours), we must at least resolve to clean our hands by the water we make, so potent as to render rashes on the more sensitive. (Remember, a rash isn't a rash if you don't acknowledge it.)

Then, no soft chivalry. No halfway courtesy. Nay, if we shall serve the lavished ravished objects of our affection, we may as well do it properly. Don't open the door for her, carry her over the threshold, nay, hurl her end over end like a caber, and catch her at the other end! Don't give empty platitudes and professions of love, but follow Beowulf's example - go into the water, swim a long way, and take out everything bigger than you, leaving a swath of ocean favorable for sea traffic! And when the Coast Guard is tracking you with their fierce boats and orange uniforms, tell them the truth - you did it for her. And for your manly ego. Which brings us to the third point.

Due to our manly ego being... manly, it needs an opposite to reinforce this. Thus we thrust ourselves on what we deem to be the opposite sex (and a roundhouse kick to the face for anyone who insists otherwise)! Yet, because in our restraint we cannot express our feelings as we first might be inclined (lest we incur immorality), we will instead emphasize our heterosexuality by every means possible. Rip out chest hair, beat each other up, even wear pink and refer to our manfriends in feminine terms, all with an overwrought context that shows, by our earnestness, how queer we are not!