Tomorrow’s page of Secret Government Robots is not going to be done on time. I figure I’ll put it up in the Saturday slot. It’s still two in the one week, so it isn’t like I’m falling desperately behind. I didn’t want to be missing days now that I’ve started another storyline, but it isn’t too bad. I’ll still be hitting my arbitrary weekly amount, just on a different day, right?

It’s just that I’ve got these two essays due tomorrow and they are stealing my time. And one of them is going to be crappy anyway. Oh well. In a few weeks I’ll be at the Christmas break portion of the year and I’ll have time to get the whole current SecGov story done in one go, I hope.

Here’s a story:

Theodore Blintler didn’t even know he was being followed by robots. Sure, he heard a strange buzzing now and then, or the sound of clinking metal, but he had pretty bad eyesight, so he never noticed the seven robots that were about ten feet behind him everywhere he went. Theodore Blintler worked in a horse raincoat factory as a horse raincoat designer. Theodore had designed the most popular, best-selling horse raincoat of the last three decades. Theodoe was kind of famous in the horse raincoat industry. This is why the robots were following him. The owners of a failing cow raincoat factory had somehow come up with the money to build seven robots and had them follow Theodore Blintler around, hoping to copy his success for themselves. This all came to a head one day when Theodore was eating a terrible, terrible lunch in a diner across the street from the horse raincoat factory. The robots had been leaning against the door, pressing their ears against it, straining to hear any animal raincoat-related mutterings Theordore might emit, when the door collapsed inward and all seven of the robots tumbled into the diner with a crash. Theodore, startled by the noise, choked on a bit of burnt egg and died. The robots were embarassed and the cow raincoat factory went out of business. Nobody would ever know, but Theodore had been planning a shooting spree at his office with intent to kill dozens. Unfortunately, one of the people Theodore would have killed was a serial murderer who went on to kill dozens of other people. One of the victims of the serial killer had been building a bomb that he planned to blow up a school. The moral? Someone get some raincoats for the cows!

Anyway, there’s a story. Memorize it and tell it to your children.

In other news, I got an A-minus on a History essay and an A on a English essay this week. That is pretty different from the kind of marks I was getting at my previous attempt at school. This proves that procrastination is not gonna hurt me because, man, I been procratinatin’ all the live-long day with these essays. And now I don’t have to stop procrastinatin’! Hooray!

I just feel that I need to spread the word that the translation of Hesiod’s Works and Days that I am using for my mythology class at one point refers to the god Hephaestus as “famous old Gimpy” and I find this hilarious. Sure it is mildly amusing because making fun of someone who is crippled is always funny (this is fact, you can not dispute this ever), but what amuses me more about it is the familiarity of the term. If some text had referred to Athena as “famous old Brainy” or Hercules as “famous old Muscles” I would find it nearly as amusing, I think.

Still, Google tells me that the phrase is barely used in the Internet, so I guess nobody has latched onto this one phrase as much as I have. Everybody but me is a joyless moron (this is fact, you can not dispute this ever).

A Science Lesson From Kip:

Little known fact. Mexico is only place to exist on every planet in very universe in all megaverses. That is why Mexicans are also called aliens.

This Has Been A Science Lesson From Kip

So what did PDR learn in school this week? Well, mostly he has learned how popular scarves are with the ladies these days. Scarfgirls everyplace.

Also, I’ve actually spoken to other students and their attitudes make me sad. “The only thing that matters is that I pass this assignment,” they say. They are concerned about their marks more than they are the material. That’s the exact thing I hate about the way the school system works, isn’t it? What a country.

Anyway, I guess I’m getting the hang of writing essays. It’s all about pretending, really. I may not have anything to say about this article I’m reviewing, but if I pretend I do, I guess that’s good enough. After all, all that matters is that I hand it in and get my grades.

Take my Gilgamesh essay: When I read the Epic of Gilgamesh a few years back I saw Gil’s failure to acheive his dream of immortality as a kind of unhappy ending. Sure, he wised up and accepted it, but in the end he died, so that was that. But during the course of this class I’ve been introduced to another interpretation, that through his suffering, Gilgamesh did manage to acheive a kind of immortality in the form of being remembered through story. Neat, said PDR. But y’know what, I find my original interpretation easier to write about, so I’m now actively arguing against the thing I found so neat. Why? Because what I think doesn’t matter. The marks are what matter, so I guess I’ll go with the essay I can probably do better. An essay I already considered meaningless because other people have discussed the topic better than I could is now also not representative of my actual thoughts on the subject. That’s school writing for ya!

Okay, so this little jaunt back to school and poverty of mine is largely an attempt to make myself a better writer. I’m in it for an English degree, I guess, probably going to Creative Writing focus when that is allowed. I’ve only got one straight-up English class this semester, so let’s see how that’s going:

That one course is “Writing For University Students”. I have never been able to find much interest in reading essays. I’ve come right out and said that if a writer can’t make their point by telling a story, I don’t feel like reading it. There’s no harm in that. Nobody cares if you read essays, really. Except when you’re in university. Now I have to read them, and what’s worse, I’m also expected to compose essays that, unlike this one, are not merely screeds written on the spot and never given a second draft. Basically, I’m expected to know how to make an essay that doesn’t suck. I front-loaded my university revival with the “Writing For University Students” course for that specific reason. Apart from the credit, the sole reason I’m in this class is that I recognized my problem here and wanted to do something about it.

Almost everything I know about writing at this point is self-taught. I was barely interested in assembling the skeleton of an education I got in high school, so I didn’t retain much. I had to get my knowledge on the streets, son. Or, y’know, through books and the Internet and whatever. But I kinda felt like I had peaked there. I needed help. I needed someone to teach me. I don’t feel like I am being taught that in this class. This, like my worst experiences with school, is one of those times when I feel like the class is more interested in testing me than teaching me. We’re told what’ll be on the next test, then we’re expected to read up and do the test and we’re told how much we don’t know. We’re given an assignment to write an essay, and then we’re doing that essay and getting marked on how many things we did wrong. I get marks telling me I don’t know stuff and I’m like “Yeah, I know, that’s why I’m here,” but by then the test is over, the essay is written, and I’ve got a mark telling me that I’m an idiot.*

I’m not saying that they’re doing a bad job at running the class. The professor** and the TAs seem, from what I can tell, to be doing a good job at running the exact kind of class I don’t want or like or even understand. I can learn on my own on my own. Why the chunk would I be going there just to be told what to look up somewhere else? Some students probably thrive in this kind of environment. Probably. But I sure don’t. I want some help.

The class does have a weekly extra help thing set up, though, but that just bothers me more. They were smart enough to schedule these sessions at a time of day when no other English classes are being taught on campus, so obviously we students will be free to attend. Except we need more than just English classes to get our degrees. I enjoy Astronomy and I am enjoying my Astronomy class, but here’s the thing: I wouldn’t be taking it if I didn’t need a science credit. But I do, so I am. And that class, that non-English Department class, falls in the exact time period our extra help sessions are held. Fancy that. And anyway, surely Writing for University Students is a course that will not solely benefit English students. I expect almost everyone could use that course, many of them probably having classes in the same extra help window.

The school does offer some kind of writing workshop, of which I fully intend to take advantage. But now I’ll be there to get help on the class I’m taking to get that exact help. If I’d skipped out on that class altogether I’d have half the workload I have now and I could use the workshop help to get better at the essays I need to do for other classes. As it stands now the English class is doing nothing more than filling my time with more assignments, tests, and pressure, competing with the very essays in other classes that I wanted to improve.

The point of this sloppily-written, non-edited, non-Academic-level PDR-brand rant is just this: This is the only English class I’m really in so far (actually, now that I stop and think about it, Mythology probably counts toward that too, but whatever), and it is my least favorite class. This is not a good sign.

* I’ve actually done well on the tests and assignments in this class so far, but I know what’s coming. I’ve been through it before.

** I will never be comfortable saying “prof”. It is not a thing PDR can do. I once tried referring to one of my actual cousins as “Cuz” and it just wouldn’t happen. This is a similar situation.

PS – Completely unrelated, but in a History lecture the other day, the professor, speaking of the origins of the Spanish Inquisition said “nobody was expecting it” in complete deadpan. He didn’t acknowledge making the joke, or stop and wait to see if people got it. He just dropped it and moved on. I fully approved of that.