Strange Hankerin's
For some reason, my entire day has been spent wishing I could watch Predator. I'm not sure what caused this desire on my part. I mean, the movie was good and all, but it's basically just a horror-action flick and one viewing should be enough. I suppose there might be some Beowulf references there, but politics aside, I don't see Arnie as Beowulf. Conan, maybe, but not Beowulf.
I have actually accomplished tasks today, so the film-lust was/is not incapacitating. I did dishes. A lot of dishes. Then I made a pizza. And did more dishes. I now have chopped peppers and carrots in the freezer, half a pizza for tomorrow, and more clean dishes than I had when I first moved in.
It's kind of odd, but after reading a "scholarly" article on Shakes, I find that I am now more impressed with down to earth language than with flowery, Dickensesque diction. I admire authors who can convey their ideas with a simplicity and sensitivity that does not alienate the reader. I mean really. Reading this article, all I thought was that the authors sure were full of themselves. Pretension and self-promotion got in the way of knowledge shared. It was as though the authors needed to establish themselves as deserving to be read, and chose to do this by adopting unnaturally (I hope) long sentences and name-dropping as their MO. I was so put off by this that I had to go back and re-read to get the meat of the article. There wasn't much.
Why is academia like this at times? Are we really so afraid of being accessible? Are our ideas so trivial that we have to hide them in our writing so that our readers, having worked so hard to discover our meaning, assume that meaning to be ... well ... meaningful? If the idea could realistically take up three pages, then write three pages. There's no need to puff it up. Seriously, I wonder sometimes if we aren't all at least a little afraid of seeming inadequate. I know I feel it at times, and I couldn't be alone in that. But why the need to fake adequacy by inflating language? Why purposely make an idea inaccessible? What really do we gain except so-called class separation and elitism? And are these two "ideals" worth losing potential colleagues? How many students are turned away from academia not because of lack of skills or talents, but for refusing to play the game?
Well there, unfortunately, was my entire quotient of meaningful thought for today. Sad, huh? I cooked, washed dishes, chopped veggies up and cooked, did more dishes, and put up with pretension. I'm going to do some Gazelle work with Trigun for company, and see if I can muster up the courage to present anime to my class of fellow grad students. There's that fear of being belittled by colleagues. I can hear it now. "Anime? As in foreign cartoons with porno boobs in every shot and crudely drawn 'humor' scenes abounding? Really, 'Mira, where's your actual film? The scholarly one." I hang my head in shame. All I can do to counter is point out the validity of anime as an art form and hope I don't get interrupted by laughter. Maybe I should choose a different one, with some historical references. RuroKen would do maybe, or a feature instead of a series. We'll see. Maybe by watching some more Trigun I'll boost my daring a bit.
Love and Peace
I have actually accomplished tasks today, so the film-lust was/is not incapacitating. I did dishes. A lot of dishes. Then I made a pizza. And did more dishes. I now have chopped peppers and carrots in the freezer, half a pizza for tomorrow, and more clean dishes than I had when I first moved in.
It's kind of odd, but after reading a "scholarly" article on Shakes, I find that I am now more impressed with down to earth language than with flowery, Dickensesque diction. I admire authors who can convey their ideas with a simplicity and sensitivity that does not alienate the reader. I mean really. Reading this article, all I thought was that the authors sure were full of themselves. Pretension and self-promotion got in the way of knowledge shared. It was as though the authors needed to establish themselves as deserving to be read, and chose to do this by adopting unnaturally (I hope) long sentences and name-dropping as their MO. I was so put off by this that I had to go back and re-read to get the meat of the article. There wasn't much.
Why is academia like this at times? Are we really so afraid of being accessible? Are our ideas so trivial that we have to hide them in our writing so that our readers, having worked so hard to discover our meaning, assume that meaning to be ... well ... meaningful? If the idea could realistically take up three pages, then write three pages. There's no need to puff it up. Seriously, I wonder sometimes if we aren't all at least a little afraid of seeming inadequate. I know I feel it at times, and I couldn't be alone in that. But why the need to fake adequacy by inflating language? Why purposely make an idea inaccessible? What really do we gain except so-called class separation and elitism? And are these two "ideals" worth losing potential colleagues? How many students are turned away from academia not because of lack of skills or talents, but for refusing to play the game?
Well there, unfortunately, was my entire quotient of meaningful thought for today. Sad, huh? I cooked, washed dishes, chopped veggies up and cooked, did more dishes, and put up with pretension. I'm going to do some Gazelle work with Trigun for company, and see if I can muster up the courage to present anime to my class of fellow grad students. There's that fear of being belittled by colleagues. I can hear it now. "Anime? As in foreign cartoons with porno boobs in every shot and crudely drawn 'humor' scenes abounding? Really, 'Mira, where's your actual film? The scholarly one." I hang my head in shame. All I can do to counter is point out the validity of anime as an art form and hope I don't get interrupted by laughter. Maybe I should choose a different one, with some historical references. RuroKen would do maybe, or a feature instead of a series. We'll see. Maybe by watching some more Trigun I'll boost my daring a bit.
Love and Peace
posted by Rehkmira @ 20:34
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