Coming Out

I haven't written on this blog for multiple years, but I want to come out completely and say that I was abused as a child. Physically, verbally, and emotionally. This abuse continued well into my adult years. I've been afraid and hiding this fact from myself for all of my life. I blamed it on myself. I thought that I was bad and deserved their behavior. I doubted myself. Maybe I made it up? Maybe what they did wasn't so bad? I have felt empty, ashamed, and alone all of my life. That day ends today. I've been working on myself actively for two years now, and I want to state to the world that I was abused as a child, and I am no longer afraid to admit the truth.

I hate Jude the Obscure

I haven't had this much difficulty writing an English paper since Junior year in high school and that's because I was asked to write an essay on a book that I haven't read. I've never not wanted to write a paper so much in my life. I squandered an entire week and now I am going to turn in shit because the class is shit and the book is shit.

In more positive news

The furnace keeps farting

Fuck you Thomas Hardy, Sarah Grand, and CCNY for making me read this shit

If I read Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure and Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins when I first moved to the United States, I shall have never picked up another book in my life. This would be the end to my English education and I shall have never kindled a fire to read and write books of my own.

I hate this fucking class and everybody in it. The fact that they (the professor and the students) enjoy this class-the discussions, the readings, and the assignments-is an indication of their stupidity and their inability to learn anything worthwhile. To think, I must read both of these books in detail and dissect every sentence in order to write this stupid paper. Nothing is worse than to be forced to read shitty things in detail.

There are two types of literary study today. One is literary in nature. We start with the details in the book, making connections and links to ideas, history, art, and industry. If the literary course is historical in nature, we are given a brief review of that history and see how each book or writing explicates or differs from that history in terms of content, language, format, and style. It is all compassing, but it starts with the book as the starting ground of discussion.

If you have a bad professor, like I do, you will not start from the details in the book. The professor will spit out two "major concepts" and all the conversation will stay in the general arena. You will agree or disagree and that's it. The discussion does not have room to grown beyond those major concepts because it is being bracketed.

The other camouflages itself as a literature class, but does not essentially talk about the book at all. I don't know what to call this other study, but it comprises of reading in Middle English (not intending to learn or finding more insight about the Middle Ages or novels from the Middle Ages, but do it because it is fun) or locating all the British castles referenced in a piece of fiction. These classes are often obsessed with learning the motivations or experiences of the authors without assigning any autobiography, essays, or criticisms. One simply reads a book and then talk about how the author might have "felt." These are not literature classes. These are foreign language classes (Middle English or Elvish) or Fictionalized Reality courses (trace the locations in Dubliners). Sometimes they are not courses at all, like the one where you read a book and attempt to discover how a writer felt without any first person reference. I hate these classes. These classes veil themselves inside undergraduate and graduate English programs and in my opinion, threaten the legitimacy of literary study. Not only that, I don't learn anything from these courses. I know nothing about the book. All I have is what someone "felt" or a map of Dublin marked with asterisks. What education does one take from this? How did this come to pass? What program approved this course and its professor?

Probably going to eat my way through this death.

Knishes should be served with gravy. A knish is essentially a giant ball of mashes potatoes. Why not serve it with a side of gravy? Whoever decided that knishes should be served with mustard?