Stupid homework. Even my yellow superhero goggles aren’t making this fun. Computer keeps crashing when I try to edit video and talk on IM and check email and write papers at the same time. Solution? Don’t write papers.

A skunk went off outside my window. The l’il bastard reeked something fierce.

Hey, this is fun:

…colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class nonidentity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets is each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness… – Jack Kerouac

One paper down. One to go. Just once I would like to go to bed smiling. This is fucking dumb.

The language here is getting out of hand as well.

Sorry about this. It’s a beautiful day, but these things just shoot outta nowhere. Soon I will sequence my rants on Academia so you can choke them all down. It will be a book, and no one will buy it.

Another day of casting my lines wide into the world of pundits and warbloggers. While reading out loud a line from the Tim Blair interview (the site actually looks like poop but Tim is a riot. I feel a bit self conscious that it’s posted at Right Wing News… I never thought of myself that way…) I got a stern request that I shut my mouth in Editing class. The discipline felt kind of good, taking me back to the days of second grade with Mrs. Whatshername. I was always drawing pictures while she was teaching, and she got some foul pleasure from throwing away my work with the claim I wasn’t paying attention.

It’s not that I don’t care what my professors are talking about, it’s just that the stuff I’m finding on my own is much more interesting. I’m distracted by my own thoughts and my personal quest for knowledge, and I will only follow college so far as I see fit. We have a give and take relationship, but I refuse to always stoop to her level to find a common ground for communication. Come to Butthead. College should work for me, not the other way around.

I get the impression from UMD that if I push hard enough at a classroom wall it will topple in a cloud of dust, exposing the greasy gears and other crude inner-workings of High Academics. It feels like everything was dumped out of a pail and is held together with paste and toothpicks. Assignments are meaningless, discussions are hollow, the kids are ‘cool’, clocks are wrong, paperwork is fierce and my email has been sabotaged. Where’s the knowledge, the information, the grit? Why must so much of my time be wasted in class when everything great that I accomplish happens outside, often independent, of school?

One time back in the day, I was talking so much the teacher threw me out in the hall for an hour. I missed the entire neat art project with charcoal. She obviously knew how to push my buttons, but I had her number as well. One day she asked me, “Are we having a bad day?” and I replied, “I don’t know, are we?”

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are many good things going on at UMD. Guests like Steven Smith of American Radio Works and Brad Nelson from the Ripsaw newspaper. Philosophical symposiums. Student organizations. UMDStudents.com (sometimes). A sexy library. I’m all for the community aspect of college. It gives you the opportunity to rub elbows with peers and professionals and a framework (degree program) in which to organize and sequence these encounters. Chances are you couldn’t get the same experience by paying yourself $8,000 a year and sitting at a computer five days a week. The discipline that college requires makes it remarkably efficient at transferring information and maturing the mind, but it would be inaccurate to say college is without serious flaws. In college’s need to efficiently teach the greatest number of students it does a poor job of tailoring its program to the dynamic, self-motivated individual.

I know things, and I don’t enjoy the feeling that I know things. It puts me on the outside, at the fringe. This can be fun I suppose, but the occasional visitor to the Edge would be nice. I want to feel like there are entire spheres of knowledge that I have not begun to pierce. Challenge me, knock me on the head with technical jargon! Sugarcoating is for children. I like my tea bitter. Gives me all the more reason to drink it.

Today in philosophy class, Speaker Bruce mentioned (and quickly explained) IEEE/1394 when talking about digital video. Now, when you are presented with new information you have one of two options. You can curl up in a little stupid ball and whimper that the world is so damn complicated that you’ll never understand anything so there’s no point in trying. Or. You can listen and file away the information with the belief that it may come in handy at some point. Everyone in class gasped at IEEE/1394, giggled at the impossibility of such knowledge and took a nap as Bruce explained it in detail (it’s the cable standard for video capture, also known by Apple’s term FireWire and Sony’s iLink). And yet even with their disinclination to actually learn something about the technology involved in editing video, the kids still expect to be spooned help in putting their films together. Some of these people have been in college three years and they still don’t know how to wipe their ass.

Once my second grade teacher held me after class when everyone else had gone to lunch. I got a ten minute speech on how I should be respectful when people are talking, how I should pay attention, how I should not talk out of turn. Finally at the end she asked me if I had anything to say:

“I didn’t know you had braces.”

I went to lunch.

Waiting for one of my three Geek Prom dates to return from a Russia meeting I got antsy, and dashed off to prom alone. Walking to the NorShore I ran into some people hanging around outside that were well-dressed… did the cool people crash prom? Nay, it was just a wedding, and I got my picture taken with the mother-of-the-bride, or someone of equal repute in that social circle.

I was wearing my awful blue and blue and yellow polyester suit, an orange polyester shirt, a Crazy Eddie t-shirt, Scooby Doo boxers on the outside, a climbing harness, bowling shoes, yellow-tinted goggles with a big mustache nose, and my newspaper pope hat. She was wearing a shiny white dress.

Inside the NorShore was stuffed full of hundreds of geeks. Words fail. There were nosebleeds, afro wigs, suspenders, hiked pants, taped glasses and a Klingon. Two of my three dates showed up shortly, garbed in wonderful geekiness.

The competition was fierce, but I managed to be runner-up for Geek King (which means I got to be on stage and dance with the Queen and everything!!!!!!). I’m happy with that. The true Geek King ends up with all sorts of responsibilities like parades and grocery store grand openings, and this way I get to bask in the reflective fame and not do squat.

I’m still waiting for the call from Leno. It will come.

Vinny and the Stardusters were weird. The bass player was wearing a flasher trenchcoat, and given their photo over at GeekProm.com I wouldn’t be surprised if he had nothing on underneath. The drummer stripped while playing a drum solo and fell over, taking the snare with him. The other band members played the drums for him until he recovered. They played the song Shove it up Your Fat Ass You Stupid Fucking Bitch at least three times, and sang about delightful topics like genital warts and accidentally killing someone by burying them in the backyard. I liked it, and so did the other flailing geeks.

Then a small group of geeks did the first-annual Geek Streak through the crowded upstairs bar and down into the main theater. Channel 6 managed to get some footage at tail-end. Felony charges will be distributed by mail.

8:37 PM

Instead of homework I’ve spent a generous part of today scanning the blogging world. I like having some sort of idea what’s going on in the world, so when people spout idiocy about foreign policy I can make a reasonable attempt to set them straight.

It’s also fun to watch the bumbling juggernaut of Academia try to churn out its own laughable analyses of world issues. I see Vietnam and ‘quagmire’ used as legitimate rationale to alter America’s actions, and I just smile. Anyone using those words has been shredded by warbloggers and left to rot in the sun. But the School does not follow blogs, no, so they do not know. They don’t know that the issues have already been effectively processed online, so the School starts from the ground and stays wallowing in the mud with its own faulty convictions. They are not aware of the foul bile that now rises up in my throat at the utterance of the “endless cycle of violence.”

Why, oh why can we all not just get along? It’s beyond that, now. We could have ousted Saddam ten years ago when he didn’t have nuclear weapons, we could oust Saddam now when he may have nuclear weapons, or we can oust him in ten years when he will surely have nuclear weapons.

In journalism class we read the newspaper, but the newspaper isn’t where things are happening anymore. The turnaround for news and the following analysis is so slow it’s almost nonexistent.

Kind of like Cromlech, in that respect.

Meh.