"Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity." - Nick Diamos

***

"young lesbians can't be trusted. they all turn straight in JC"


"I hate being the one to have to compile projects because I'm the only one in there who has a competant grasp of english."

Most competant (sic) indeed.

"u dunno pain till u've to compile a grp report with 2 or 3 viet gals in ur team
i actually gave up editting, submitted their rubbish, and got a B- <S
but it was either that or my sanity"

***

One of the two wretched texts I'm cracking my head trying to close read and do an essay on:

Where brain, body, and world collide (Daedalus, Spring 1998 by Clark, Andy)


On Close Reading:

Me: yeah comparative essay sucks

Someone: hahah i know
ive been there

Me: they should just scrap the writing module
or rework it so it's really about writing and critical thinking
rather than [what] it is currently

Someone: hahaha
well one can always hope

Me: yeah right
that'll mean they lose their job

close reading is useful
but to make it the focus of the whole module?!

... it shows you the current state of the humanities in academia
attacking windmills like Don Quixote - blowing up easily resolvable problems and contriving problems
having your head in the clouds while the world moves on below you

Someone: oh yes
sounds too familiar


Someone else: if by close reading, you mean analyzing the arguments of two different people and seeing where they break down, there's nothing wrong with that at all

Me: texts are only so long. no one will bother to insert in countless qualifications and elaborations
if you want to find problems you'll be able to find them if you dig deep enough, and blow them up when normal people would happily resolve, harmonise or rationalise them

Someone else: 'The complication for the motive can simply be that applying the theory to a particular ad unlocks the hidden meaning of the ad, or else demonstrates the sleeper effect, or whatever.'

Me: hidden meaning!
ooh. have you seen any black helicopters?

Analyse arguments - I do that all the time
so it's not that I don't like doing that

if you have to do close reading to find hidden meaning to an ad, then there's something wrong
ad makers don't insert hidden meanings for close readers to find
they insert explicit meanings for target audiences to absorb

I doubt ad makers are so free as to insert hidden meanings for people like you to dissect

Someone else: too bad. i feel sorry for you.
back to my paper.

Me: back to essay

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ABC - Learn the alphabet in a very unique way.
I first linked this in May 2003, then it was down for a long time. Miraculously, it has now reappeared!