SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). Mistakes happen to everyone, but what sets you apart is that you will cash in on the experience. Take detailed notes of where you’re at. You’ll soon be far beyond this place — never to return except in memory.

Depending on how you take this, it could be very threatening.

I’ve read excerpts of prominent feminst critics(ala lit crit class) and I have had no problem with what they say. This discussion is prompted by excerpts of things on Renee’s blog, and by a conversation out in Pacifica.

There had been something brought up in criticism of Joseph Campbell about the ‘politics’ of myth: gender, race, etc. and one of my classmates(who is a rabble rouser like myself(though probably 30 years older)) brought it up and said we should discuss it. This was outside of class, and I politely said “No thank you, I don’t want to get into that”, she was disappointed and asked me why. It took until the third day to be able to understand why.

I hate soapboxes. And I hate people ON soapboxes.

So swiftly do many an intelligent conversation devolve into a harranguing speech on the evils of white men that I do not wish to step into any debate where these issues are brought up. I just don’t have any patience for things that are said during them that have little or no back up in reality. Also, I have a problem with these discussion’s overuse of buzzwords that are loaded with more emotional baggage than Santa’s sleigh is with toys(and coal for me). And let us not speak of the overgeneralizations that are often clung to in these discussions…the effect of this is that counterexamples are immediately dismissed.

There can be no rational discussion when this happens. And in a college atmosphere, it happens too often. I would love to sit and chat with my Native American students about issues(and I have) that affect them, and rarely has this ever turned into overblown rhetoric as happens in the media or elsewhere. I would love to sit down and speak with different minorities and have an intelligent discussion on what has happened to/around them during their lives. Minorities wishing to discuss issues are difficult to come across, however, due to the northern minnesota racial makeup. And please don’t get me started with anti-christians, they’re TOO prevalent and they take the art of insipid discussion up to the point of fundamentalists.

And I’ll be honest: I’d love to sit down with a feminist and talk about issues. But that is near impossible in the current climate of higher education, esp. with most undergrad feminists of this day and age. These aren’t the traditional feminists…no more so than the marxists of today are like the traditional marxists…these are the people who have taken the ideas of those who had them and, rather like the fundamentalists, instead of thinking them through, arguing with them, and toying with them, believe that they are set in stone because they agree with them.

That makes it difficult for discussion.

But, I’ll be completely honest, that person out in Pacifica, who actually is probably much older than the 30 years above me, is a blast to discuss things with. I’ll tell you why I think so: she will listen, she will come up with ideas opposite, she will allow things but not others, and she never brings out the ‘guns’ so to speak, of the quotable feminists. Nothing stops discussion like attributing quotes to someone and then not allowing argument.

Unfortunately, in an undergrad setting, being an angry feminist(or minority-ist) or anti-christian is en vogue, and rationality is difficult to gain.

Then again I’m the white male, so this is probably me just exercising my control and excusing myself from the ‘argument’.

So I’m going to relax tonight, play video games, drink mead and beer, while listening to the symphonies(and perhaps Fidelio) cranked up as loud as possible.

I wanna be like Beethoven.

Ode to THIS, suckas!

but I finally locked the keys inside my office.

at least it happened when it was daytime, because if it would have happened later, I would have had to call security. That’d have been embarrassing.

and that’s Grad Assistant blogs, not georgia blogs.

but, anyway, Tiffany is at Jones Soda where she’s poemin’ stuff, and Amber is at Blood and Literature where there seems to be a severe lack of the one, and an overabundance of the other.

now…are there ANY other GA blogs that I have not been notified about?