Animala is back...

Luckily, I was wearing pants.

Anyway, a good day in the trenches, I mean, except for the bizarre and contradictory letters that emanate from the semi-sentient assholes I work for. Un-fucking-fathomable. How these people manage not to drown in their soup is a true mystery. I have, along with the other instructors, decided that probably the safest thing to do is bitch about their flighty incompetence before and after each class. For instance, today I got a memo saying that not only did I need to somehow work in an extra one-minute speech to be completed by all students for presentation on the last day of classes (oh, and that it had to basically be laudatory of the summer program), but that I had to pick two "diverse" students to emcee the entire mastubatory event. I have a meeting tomorrow, and I am the one to protest. Seriously, I wanted to just pick to white guys up there. I mean, that has nothing to do with substance of the program. Just picking minorities "because." Fuck you, I don't do spin.

So, no, I take it back. Shit day at work. My students, however, are doing swimmingly. They seemed to be jazzed about their upcoming writing assignments. They are doing "feature writing" and I decided to have them work in close coordination with one another to develop a topic in 4 essays, one for each person in the group. And they tended to pick things near and dear to my heart: conspiracy theories and cults appeared, as did a local haunted house (Lemp Mansion) and exorcisms (history, theology, skepticism and one that happened in St. Louis).

The one that bugs me is the group who is writing about homosexuality (sub-groups: the theology [yikes], the traditional American family [yikes]...etc). The four of them share their religion, and I told them that they were walking through a minefield, that they needed to remain respectful, and that they should probably keep in mind this podcast, which I had been keeping on my little podthingy, waiting for a chance to use it, somehow. I let them know that I take the research and expertise of 3 tenured university professors very, very seriously, even if they are wrong (which I don't think they are in this case).

Anyway, enough of the plugging the American History Guys, which is available for podcast download at only the finest servers.

Back to my complaining. I am worried about my students being used to promote the program that they are in. I find this disingenuous and more than a little propagandistic. If I am ordered to, I can find a way to play ball, I think. Since the students need to write about what they valued most about the program, I will use the opportunity to teach the classic Roman encomium + twittering (we did twitter-length reviews of songs earlier--great concision exercise!). I mean encomium in the 5th sense of the Wikipedia entry: "prologue, birth and upbringing, acts of the person's life, comparisons used to praise the subject, and an epilogue." The subject? Me. I mean, if you want my students to fake praise, fine. Be ye warned, it will be glaringly fake.

Ok, that would probably never happen. But, hell, wouldn't it be great? 40 students lining up, one after another, praising me. Fantastic! Every narcissist's dream!

Also, it would completely creep out every last parent who was forced to hear a commercial about how great we are. Heheh. Don't mess with me!!!!

Ah, for fun.

HJ