In which I am a cynic.

[pearwaldorf]

Alas, I cannot tell pdx_edu people to take any of Ridwan's classes anymore, because, he is leaving in January. *insert animated sad face smiley here* But he's more than likely got some gig teaching poli sci (which is fucking hilarious, if you know him, given the contempt he has for the codgers in the poli sci department here) at the South African equivalent of West Point. After he's gotten fucked over by this administration, it's good that he's going that's going to appreciate him. He really is a wonderful lecturer, and the class has a mercifully small amount of freshmen. I am quite surprised, as most of the class seems to be relatively articulate and knows for the most part what the fuck they're talking about, but this. one. girl. Gah. Ridwan teased her, asking if she was born in Portland, and *I* laughed, at least. She just exudes this aura of shiny liberal optimism that only the young born and bred in hippie familes (or who rebel against ridiculously conservative parents) have. Which is fine, but optimism without grounding in reality just fecking annoys me.

I suppose I could be charitable and say that it is because her hope for humankind and all that shiny goopy shit threatens my coolly ironic detached cynical world view, which is quite possibly true, but she actually posited that if people started buying American-made goods the economy and general situation in the United States might recover. And I pointed out that even if you could produce goods in America anymore, given the flight of all of our manufacturing infrastructure, the costs would be too prohibitive to expect anybody to sell at Wal-Mart, or whatever. Then she said, "But you don't have to buy things at Wal-Mart." AAARGH! Stupid liberal children, please realize that not everybody has a choice about where to shop, whether it is because of Wal-Mart's predatory pricing practices that allow it to drive every other higher-priced/mom and pop store out of business, or simply by being the only place in town to get groceries as well as everything else required for living (as Paris Hilton found out), and adjust your goddamn arguments accordingly. *insert rant about shit-ass American educational system here*

Comments

[lubaya.livejournal.com]

Oh, shit -- I've spent a good amount of time scheming on how to take a class from Ridwan winter term. I guess I don't have to figure that out anymore... which makes me very sad. I will really miss him. It's going to be interesting to see how he does living back in R.S.A. after living here for 20 years.

Le sigh.

What class are you taking, anyway?

[sonatine.livejournal.com]

I think he's really looking forward to it. It totally freaks me out that he's been living in the U.S. of A for about as long as I've been ALIVE.

Also, do you still need those books for the Honors College. I have a couple of the dead Greek playwright ones, and heavily highlighted copies of Making Sex and Leviathan and the Air Pump.

[lubaya.livejournal.com]

It appears I'm already getting a copy of Leviathan that's basically unopened from someone else for $10. I think I'm going to work on Giordano Bruno instead of Making Sex... so it sounds like I might be all set for this term. Did you have dead Greek playwrights in later quarters of the 199 course? If so, I'd definitely pay ya for those.

[sonatine.livejournal.com]

Yes, we did. I have the Oresteia, and I think I have a copy of the Warner translation of Medea somewhere. I forget if you need Sophocles, but that's Cody's, and I'm sure he'd let you borrow it. No need to pay, they're really not worth much anyways.

How are you liking the classes so far? I hope they're much more compatible with you than they were for me.

[lubaya.livejournal.com]

At this point I find Hon 199 to be horribly boring. We're starting our writing groups this week, and I'm really looking forward to that. Wheeler's lectures are totally unsatisfying to me, and I don't feel I'm learning all that much - because his technique, as I'm sure you know, is to take a text and compare and contrast it to all these other texts and histories that we would have no way of knowing about in our freshman year in college. He pulls out all these names and books that mean nothing to me because we haven't read them and he doesn't give them much context. Alas, I shall see how I feel at the end of the year.