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01/10/07: Back at University again. Nothing much happening on the website front (apart from, irritatingly, all the --Fileden-- links going down in the --Downloads-- section, hopefully the site isn't gone for good), or indeed on --Abyss: Scorched Earth-- * or my --Age Of Mythology-- map (my current projects), so I'll regale you instead with the joyous tidings of my first lecture from the Towards Publication module. Certain People seem to think the badness is all in my head, so I'll present it to you, my imaginary readers, and THEN we'll see how mad I am (wibble).
First off, have you noticed that EVERY University course under the sun is described as "challenging", "rigorous", "so much stuff in such a short space of time we require every last drop of your blood wrung from your pitiful corpse to make this thing work"? OK, maybe that last bit was exaggeration. If no course is described as "fairly easy, you'll coast through as long as you did reasonably well on your A-Levels", what is the purpose of this ridiculous fear-mongering? If there's nothing to compare this stuff to, you might as well just tune it out, as it's meaningless! The people who expect to coast aren't paying attention anyway (or aren't even there - one of the professors on the introduction talk noted this. Meanwhile, the people who are going to put the effort in just feel terrorised and crushed - "I put so much effort in last year I actually became ill - now they tell me I've got to work 'much, much harder than last time'; I can't take this any more, I'm dropping out".
Even when what you're actually being asked to do is pretty easy, it's phrased in such a way that you feel like Sisyphus after a heavy snowfall (Classical allusion ahoy). In fact, I suspect that the whole purpose of the exercise is to make people feel so despondent about the whole thing that they just start uncritically swallowing the professors' ridiculous personal views (see below). Going into the Toward Publication module, we had to:
a.) Buy an absurdly overpriced set text (the Writer's Handbook 2008).
b.) Flick through it and note down magazines we might be interested or vaguely qualified to write for.
c.) Make some general notes about this.
d.) Buy a magazine.
e.) Look at the masthead and adverts and make some notes on them.
What did we get? Well, I took notes (although I'm not sure I was supposed to be writing down the jokes with little skulls in the margins indicating that I found them offensive) so I can just read you off a few entries from the first lecture:
- Durationism. Par for the course in our society, you might say, but not from a lecturer who includes herself in the category of the hated "old", and certainly not with such absurd examples. For instance, apparently her (toddler?) grandson still "bounces up" from falls, whilst she had to be admitted to hospital after coming off a (motor?) bike and "skidding 20 feet". Yes, I'm sure those two are comparable.
- We need a --Facebook-- account so we can engage in that lovely invention of the Void, "networking". Great. It's also worth noting that our University loves these pitiful life-wasting excuses for websites so much it's created its own version so it can track our every thought. Our lecturer would like us to use these "social networks" so we can, and I quote, "hunt(...) in a pack like wild dogs". What a nasty piece of work is man, etc.
- We must keep a "Market Exploration Journal" in which we will be expected to chronicle our "emotional response" to assignments. This will let us begin to learn "what kind of writer (we) are". Some further snippets from the first assignment in the same vein:
"Keep your relfective (sic.!) journal open while you do this, and make notations about how it feels to think about submitting work to the various possibilities".
"Journal your observations. How does it feel to be looking at a magazine this way? Journal your thoughts/feelings, too!".
To this barrage of emotion-based poppycock I could apparently offer only the following highly intellectual note: WTDAVESIMF. Seriously, this stuff is straight out of --Tangents-- - just replace every female noun or pronoun with the word "academics" (and try not to look too hard at --Bath Spa University's-- admission rates). Dear God.
- Hearing the words "I was wrong" is allegedly "sweeter" than hearing the words "I love you". The scary thing is, I agree with this sentiment entirely, but probably in entirely the opposite context than our lecturer used it.
- Welsh sheep jokes. Fantastic.
...
- "This is your moment to shake hands with Satan".
No. No, you did not misread the above. This was a barely-ironic comment on the module ("Toward Publication") and its commercial emphasis. Given that other members of the faculty have read us poetry containing such wonderful sentiments as "Here's to the prince of darkness ... here's to the angel of light", and recommended us --Margaret Atwood's-- "Negotiating With The Dead" (arguing that all writers ultimately draw their inspiration from Lucifer, and, in a slightly less serious section, arguing that writers should have no compunctions entering into deals with Satan because they have already sold their soul), one wonders where exactly University professors stand vis-à-vis the Dark One. One would think, if they were truly in contact with the Malign Power, he would tell them that as published authors they'd better not bring him up in my company, given that it's not been so long since I burned Margaret Atwood's misanthropic screed "Surfacing" (our set text at Frogmore 6th Form - I would provide a link but they closed shortly after I left; funny that). I smell poseurs.
To round off, I can't think of a better way to sum up this mess than to resurrect the little ditty I --penned-- after our Prose Studies lecturer recommended a book for its "great incest scenes" and openly praised social Darwinist and advocate of eugenics "dialogue" --Richard Dawkins-- . To be sung to the tune of "My Old Man's A Dustman":
"Dawkins worships Hitler,
And his eugenic friends,
All those who believe in him
Will come to sticky ends.
Oh! Fascist academics,
Promote incestuous poo,
And that's why our society
Is going down the loo".
Signing off, peace and love to the saints from the Highest, this is your brain on Dawkins, etc.
UPDATE (05/10/07): Hilariously, our new Prose Fiction lecturer also likes Richard Dawkins' --"The God Delusion"-- . Last year the subject was brought up by an eyeliner-wearing, music-video-directing, ponytailed Teuton. This year the subject was brought up by an eyebrow-pierced, ponytailed Teuton (not the same one). I win. The same lecturer also asserted that genre fiction was "limiting to the imagination" (I suppose, but who actually sits down and decides they are going to write a book in a certain genre, rather than, as I always thought, writing the bloody thing first then classifying it?), that women's role in history is "more interesting" than that of men, that only male authors torture their characters, and that this is bad and a macho dominance thing (what a fabulous lie; one of my favourite authors is KJ Parker, a female author who says in an interview she enjoys doing just that, in as many words) and that we really shouldn't bother with the course at all, as it won't make us great writers and publishers "despair" when they see "yet another" first-time author with a degree (no really, that's more or less what he said). Anyone got a lighter?
* I'm bogged down in the Morale section, trying to find a simple dynamic to force players to act aggressively when Insane units are affected by blood-lust.