Zombies and Fig Trees
You know it has to be interesting when the title mentions the two most fascinating subjects in the known universe, right? I mean, zombies are cool. They think they're dead, but they're grossly alive. I read that somewhere. Common thought, the more mainstream variety, I suppose, holds that zombies are a kind of automaton, reconstructed from dead parts, or held in a stasis between being physically dead, and not quite allowed to die yet. It's a strange concept, when you think wholesome thoughts. I don't by the way. Let my mother tell you. I don't write wholesome. But that's too hard to think about right now, and I'm talking about zombies, not depression. Zombies don't get out much, so they're kind of apart from the world, and they don't get enough credit for intelligence. Zombies are actually quite smart. If they were half as stupid as people imagine them to be, they'd be walking down the skin care aisles at Walmart, freaking people out. No, zombies know what they look like, and they'd rather avoid the painful reactions of the too, too solid flesh around them. So. Zombies. I'll return to those guys. Really.
Fig trees are perhaps the most bizarre trees I have met in a while. Yes, I meet trees. Get over it. I talk to them, too, do you mind? Anyway, fig trees can be moved indoors, and kept as office plants. I have encountered many fig trees in this function. Most are reasonably happy, although a few of them would like pets to keep them company. The fun thing about fig trees is that they hate being moved. Really. This isn't a bright move for a potted plant. It's in a pot so it's easier to move. That's the point of putting a fig tree in a pot in the first place. Ease of movement. Yet the tree gets defensive when it's moved even a few inches, and drops all it's leaves on the office floor. Now really, Mr. Fig, what did that accomplish? Now you're still in a new place, but have no leaves. Good job. Fig trees, obviously, are nowhere near as intelligent as zombies.
You see? I didn't forget the zombies.
This blog is supposed to be about my life, as the title sort of says, and by now, you're thinking I ought to change the title to something else. Maybe Life of a Dungeon Horticulturist? I'll leave it as it is, thanks, because both zombies and fig trees play a dominant role in my life right now. That's right. Zombies too.
You see, at this moment in time, I have a lot in common with a zombie. I feel dead, but I am alive in some ghastly way I cannot comprehend. Society seems to think I ought to be dead, but then reanimated or some such, but as I read wherever it was I read it, zombies are only fooled into thinking they're dead. This class, theory, of course, is a cruel, cruel master. Where the zombie avoids public places due to its appearance, I avoid them due to lack of time to go visit them. I do not yet share physical appearance with a zombie, thank God, but I do make some of the groaning noises, and I swear my joints creak when I put my textbook aside to go to the bathroom. When I get my kitten, he will be terrified of me, unless I manage to recover before then from this terrible, mysterious condition I've developed. Here's where the fig trees enter.
No, I have not dropped all my hair. Stop worrying. Or were you worrying? Probably not. It's a bit unrealistic, I suppose. But the fig trees. I was telling you about fig trees.
I now understand, due to the services of a truly selfless fig tree, the signified/signifier signs of Saussure. You may congratulate me, or pity me, as you wish. I'm immune to both by now. You see, the following will take place during my description of the moment in which it occurred to me just what Saussure was talking about. [shakes fig tree] means that the professor has grabbed the fig tree by its little trunk and shaken it rather harshly. She afterward complained that the tree was dropping leaves all the time and she couldn't figure it out. I ought to have told her for the tree's sake, but I feared for my grade. So I didn't say a thing. Shame on me. That's a performative speech; the act of saying it makes it so. Saying "shame on you" actually inspires/creates shame where before there might not have been any at all. But I digress. I do that a lot, huh?
I was frustrated enough to talk to the professor about all the things I wasn't getting. There were three really big ones that seem to come up in class all the time. One is the signified/signifier. The theory is that a language is made up of signs, and each sign is composed of a signified (the concept in your head) and the signifier (the sound or image you hear or see). I was thinking that the thing you saw was the tree (that was the example in the book, a tree), and that the word "tree" was somehow the other one.... in short, I didn't get it. The truth is (if there is a truth, which is doubtful) that the actual tree in question isn't a part of the sign. As she so magnificently put it, and I paraphrase, "the phoneme (sound) "tree" isn't [shakes fig tree] this. The concept "tree" isn't [shakes fig tree] this. [shakes fig tree] this has nothing to do with the sign." She put it about like that, and I mean, she really rattled that tree. I saw leaves dropping as she did it. The poor thing's probably bald now. A mere zombie of what it was before I asked the question.
On the upside, I get Saussure, which is good, because the article I present tomorrow, "Writing" deals with the bastard a lot. It also deals with Marxism, which I dislike, and Lacan, who was a grade A freak. I get Marxism, and Lacan remains a mystery to me even now. My zombie brain, though more intelligent than Hollywood would have you believe, was not capable of absorbing both Saussure and Lacan in the same fifteen minutes. All I get about Lacan is that he thought the unconscious had wires going under a door, and each wire was a chain of things which were not other things. Somehow, these ... I'm not even going to try. It won't work. I've already got a headache. She canna take any more captain or she'll blow. Or however Scottie says it.
So there you have it. I'm a zombie, or might as well be. There's a dying fig tree of wisdom in the professor's office, and it needs a kitten to keep it company in its last days on this earth before the ship comes to take it away to a place where there is no need for leaves, and there will be no more tears. Then I guess I'll take the kitten.
So I have changed my alarm clock to 7AM. This is a bad thing, since I rarely finish anything before midnight, and I go to bed and stare at my ceiling fan for an hour or so before I can fall asleep. I now get...someone do the math... X hours of sleep a night. I spend my mornings reading for the workshop class, my afternoons in class, my evenings reading for theory, and the few remaining hours worrying about all the things I'm not doing which I should be doing. And I'm starting to feel weaker again. I need to take things easier, and not do so much, maybe get more sleep, eat three meals a day, all those things... but I can't yet. I have two more weeks to go. I can make it. I'll fully recover from mono when I have time to, dammit. Until then, it can just leave me alone. I have a huge paper, a project, two little papers, and a presentation and a half left. (The half I have done is the planning. I get to present tomorrow, and should be sleeping now, but I couldn't, because I hadn't blogged today, and I just can't not post an entry, since I have about two readers, and while two isn't much it's all I have, and I'd rather not let them down because then I'll have one reader, or no readers, and that would be even worse than not having a kitten.)
I feel dead. But I am, in some ghastly way, very much alive. The theory class has destroyed my mind, while keeping the flesh intact, but the absence of a mind is beginning to take its toll on the flesh. Speaking of absence, Lacan has another thing he's famous for. Something that somehow forms a great joke when you reverse it, and that's supposed to help me remember it, but strangely, I have forgotten it at the moment. Oh well.
Just remember, there is no big T truth (that would be Truth); we are born wanting our Mommies, but we can never have our Mommies, and will therefore go forever consumed with heart-shattering desire and lack; our culture has planted its ideology so deeply in our brains that we instinctively agree to be mindless proletariats in the cogs of a giant bourgeois machine; we therefore shy away from and instinctively ignore anything that goes contrary to the brainwashing of our ideology; all discourse leads to further falsehoods; the more we talk about a thing, the closer we get to the Truth (if there is one, which is unlikely), but we can never get to it, even if there is one, which is unlikely, because it's like the half-life of a whatchamacallit; there are no jobs for people with PhDs, and the people with power will just trade us around in adjunct positions, never offering us tenure, because we make valuable fodder who try to please the masters in order to get tenure, but since we're sheep and not goats, this is all okay and we're supposed to like it. Is it any wonder I need a kitten? This class is so uplifting. I feel light and my spirit rests easy when I leave the school during rush hour every day, after walking across campus to the parking lot for losers who don't live there.
I'm going to go stare at my fan. Good morning, all. End.
Fig trees are perhaps the most bizarre trees I have met in a while. Yes, I meet trees. Get over it. I talk to them, too, do you mind? Anyway, fig trees can be moved indoors, and kept as office plants. I have encountered many fig trees in this function. Most are reasonably happy, although a few of them would like pets to keep them company. The fun thing about fig trees is that they hate being moved. Really. This isn't a bright move for a potted plant. It's in a pot so it's easier to move. That's the point of putting a fig tree in a pot in the first place. Ease of movement. Yet the tree gets defensive when it's moved even a few inches, and drops all it's leaves on the office floor. Now really, Mr. Fig, what did that accomplish? Now you're still in a new place, but have no leaves. Good job. Fig trees, obviously, are nowhere near as intelligent as zombies.
You see? I didn't forget the zombies.
This blog is supposed to be about my life, as the title sort of says, and by now, you're thinking I ought to change the title to something else. Maybe Life of a Dungeon Horticulturist? I'll leave it as it is, thanks, because both zombies and fig trees play a dominant role in my life right now. That's right. Zombies too.
You see, at this moment in time, I have a lot in common with a zombie. I feel dead, but I am alive in some ghastly way I cannot comprehend. Society seems to think I ought to be dead, but then reanimated or some such, but as I read wherever it was I read it, zombies are only fooled into thinking they're dead. This class, theory, of course, is a cruel, cruel master. Where the zombie avoids public places due to its appearance, I avoid them due to lack of time to go visit them. I do not yet share physical appearance with a zombie, thank God, but I do make some of the groaning noises, and I swear my joints creak when I put my textbook aside to go to the bathroom. When I get my kitten, he will be terrified of me, unless I manage to recover before then from this terrible, mysterious condition I've developed. Here's where the fig trees enter.
No, I have not dropped all my hair. Stop worrying. Or were you worrying? Probably not. It's a bit unrealistic, I suppose. But the fig trees. I was telling you about fig trees.
I now understand, due to the services of a truly selfless fig tree, the signified/signifier signs of Saussure. You may congratulate me, or pity me, as you wish. I'm immune to both by now. You see, the following will take place during my description of the moment in which it occurred to me just what Saussure was talking about. [shakes fig tree] means that the professor has grabbed the fig tree by its little trunk and shaken it rather harshly. She afterward complained that the tree was dropping leaves all the time and she couldn't figure it out. I ought to have told her for the tree's sake, but I feared for my grade. So I didn't say a thing. Shame on me. That's a performative speech; the act of saying it makes it so. Saying "shame on you" actually inspires/creates shame where before there might not have been any at all. But I digress. I do that a lot, huh?
I was frustrated enough to talk to the professor about all the things I wasn't getting. There were three really big ones that seem to come up in class all the time. One is the signified/signifier. The theory is that a language is made up of signs, and each sign is composed of a signified (the concept in your head) and the signifier (the sound or image you hear or see). I was thinking that the thing you saw was the tree (that was the example in the book, a tree), and that the word "tree" was somehow the other one.... in short, I didn't get it. The truth is (if there is a truth, which is doubtful) that the actual tree in question isn't a part of the sign. As she so magnificently put it, and I paraphrase, "the phoneme (sound) "tree" isn't [shakes fig tree] this. The concept "tree" isn't [shakes fig tree] this. [shakes fig tree] this has nothing to do with the sign." She put it about like that, and I mean, she really rattled that tree. I saw leaves dropping as she did it. The poor thing's probably bald now. A mere zombie of what it was before I asked the question.
On the upside, I get Saussure, which is good, because the article I present tomorrow, "Writing" deals with the bastard a lot. It also deals with Marxism, which I dislike, and Lacan, who was a grade A freak. I get Marxism, and Lacan remains a mystery to me even now. My zombie brain, though more intelligent than Hollywood would have you believe, was not capable of absorbing both Saussure and Lacan in the same fifteen minutes. All I get about Lacan is that he thought the unconscious had wires going under a door, and each wire was a chain of things which were not other things. Somehow, these ... I'm not even going to try. It won't work. I've already got a headache. She canna take any more captain or she'll blow. Or however Scottie says it.
So there you have it. I'm a zombie, or might as well be. There's a dying fig tree of wisdom in the professor's office, and it needs a kitten to keep it company in its last days on this earth before the ship comes to take it away to a place where there is no need for leaves, and there will be no more tears. Then I guess I'll take the kitten.
So I have changed my alarm clock to 7AM. This is a bad thing, since I rarely finish anything before midnight, and I go to bed and stare at my ceiling fan for an hour or so before I can fall asleep. I now get...someone do the math... X hours of sleep a night. I spend my mornings reading for the workshop class, my afternoons in class, my evenings reading for theory, and the few remaining hours worrying about all the things I'm not doing which I should be doing. And I'm starting to feel weaker again. I need to take things easier, and not do so much, maybe get more sleep, eat three meals a day, all those things... but I can't yet. I have two more weeks to go. I can make it. I'll fully recover from mono when I have time to, dammit. Until then, it can just leave me alone. I have a huge paper, a project, two little papers, and a presentation and a half left. (The half I have done is the planning. I get to present tomorrow, and should be sleeping now, but I couldn't, because I hadn't blogged today, and I just can't not post an entry, since I have about two readers, and while two isn't much it's all I have, and I'd rather not let them down because then I'll have one reader, or no readers, and that would be even worse than not having a kitten.)
I feel dead. But I am, in some ghastly way, very much alive. The theory class has destroyed my mind, while keeping the flesh intact, but the absence of a mind is beginning to take its toll on the flesh. Speaking of absence, Lacan has another thing he's famous for. Something that somehow forms a great joke when you reverse it, and that's supposed to help me remember it, but strangely, I have forgotten it at the moment. Oh well.
Just remember, there is no big T truth (that would be Truth); we are born wanting our Mommies, but we can never have our Mommies, and will therefore go forever consumed with heart-shattering desire and lack; our culture has planted its ideology so deeply in our brains that we instinctively agree to be mindless proletariats in the cogs of a giant bourgeois machine; we therefore shy away from and instinctively ignore anything that goes contrary to the brainwashing of our ideology; all discourse leads to further falsehoods; the more we talk about a thing, the closer we get to the Truth (if there is one, which is unlikely), but we can never get to it, even if there is one, which is unlikely, because it's like the half-life of a whatchamacallit; there are no jobs for people with PhDs, and the people with power will just trade us around in adjunct positions, never offering us tenure, because we make valuable fodder who try to please the masters in order to get tenure, but since we're sheep and not goats, this is all okay and we're supposed to like it. Is it any wonder I need a kitten? This class is so uplifting. I feel light and my spirit rests easy when I leave the school during rush hour every day, after walking across campus to the parking lot for losers who don't live there.
I'm going to go stare at my fan. Good morning, all. End.
posted by Rehkmira @ 00:26
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