A Pixelated Mind

Make a simple word game. Success!

So I looked through a few fantasy novels the other day at my girlfriend’s place. She’s a lovely girl: beautiful, smart, funny, talented and well read. I can only assume that fantasy novels were the closest thing to crack she could get without receiving social stigma while still maintaining a habit to something that is sure to cause cancer in later life.

Seriously, what the hell is with these fucking books? It’s like the authors wanted to write a novel but sadly were born without the ability to actually formulate anything resembling coherence with reality. Or style. Or drama.

I can feel the nerd rage already (not you dear). Why? Because I’m going to single out Robert Jordan here. Mostly because I know you pock-marked greasy bastards out there who curse in elven (I’ll be DAMNED if I’m gonna give THAT a capital letter) will be all over me for saying so, but what the fuck is with this shit? He writes eleven books? ELEVEN?! Religious texts get by with less than this. What makes that uppity bastard think he can string out readers for so long. What’s he doing? Making sure every book has got thirty new characters, two new worlds, five new monsters, plus a handy recipe for dwarf sugar cookies?!

And what makes me, a prospective novelist, most pissed off is that while I (and countless others) try to develop a personal style, a narrative sense and so forth, here comes the magnificently mundane utilitarian shambling writing style of our friend Jordan. How much have I read of him? Not much, but enough to know that if I have to read another word involving a character I don’t care about, from a place I don’t care about, with friends I don’t care about, with a name that involves an apostrophe, someone gon’ die. There’s the trick, my friends: if you want to write a novel, just write! Tumble your way through page after page, introduce characters as you see fit and make sure to make all the women buxom, beautiful and totally created to fulfill deep seated male fantasies that these nerdburgers have.

Oh and look at the amazing titles! Wheel of Time! Knife of Dreams! Fires of Heaven! My word, Robert, you astound me with your brilliance (“A sarcasm detector, that’s a real useful invention” *BAM*). Perhaps I can give you some suggestions for further titles when you write Wheel of Time book number two-hundred-and-twelve-mark-one:

• Coin of Magic
• Sword of Sorcery
• Cup of Death
• Magic Item of Magic Property
• Noun of Intransitive Verb

It’s amazing that you have time to bathe when you’re working on book after book like that, and coming up with some great titles! In fact, I express doubt that you in fact do bathe, basing my beliefs on the people I’ve seen who actually actively enjoy your books and consider them some kind of literature as opposed to mindless (OHHHH ever so mindless) escapism. At least the latter can be excused as being the simple act of rebellion a brain enacts against existence itself… meanwhile the former should be rooted out like a FUCKING PARASITE BURROWING ITS WAY INTO MODERN SOCIETY AS WE KNOW IT.

The test? If you read a book that includes any of the following:

• A heroine who wears skin tight anything and slays dragons/elves/dwarves/quantity surveyors/any monster the author just made up for the sake of the next Dungeons and Dragons rule book and the subsequent retailing.
• A character who’s name is something like Squador, Qu’elic, Excreptor the Megadeathslayer.
• The type of plot that gets a member of any ‘Dark Ages Society’ hot in the pants.
• Complex metaphors on the Bush administration as thinly veiled stereotypical brutish orcs.
• The use of phrases such as ‘Flurox chortled as he spake’. Sorry, but this is a load of wank. Hot, steaming, chunky, wank.

If you note these warning signs, and find yourself justifying your reading of such literature, saying such gems as “Oh come on, Spear of Destiny is just as good as Catch-22, you just don’t appreciate it!” then don’t be surprised if the next sensation you receive is not unlike that of an orc’s slammin jammin appraisal of an elvish countenance on noonsong day.

In other words, I’ll kick you in the nuts.

P.S. My own site, http://borderwaste.blogspot.com/ is now finally being updated. So, uh, go look. Often. And rejoice you bastards!

Just now I wrote a nice lengthy excuse to get out of jury duty. Something about how Jesus said don’t judge other people blah blah. It’s all very complicated, and I’m sure you aren’t after hearing the details. Lord knows, I hope the people at the court don’t want to hear the details. Hence why I peppered my excuse with lengthy Bible passages all cunningly formulated to reduce whoever reads it with a big case of the ‘rolling eyes’ and a hefty dose of ‘tearing up the excuse in a huff after striking my name from the registry’.

So civil disobedience isn’t dead. But now sitting in the afterglow of the excuse of a religion I don’t really follow any more (I have a love hate thing going on: God hates me, but I love his creation [women]) I will now put forward ways YOU TOO can get out of jury duty when the time comes.

• Make up your OWN RELIGION. Now this is more of a weekend excuse, if you have time. I recommend starting off your excuse with something along the lines of “L Ron Hubbard was a douche” and then move on to point out that he totally misrepresented Xenu and that Cruise and Travolta aren’t THAT dumb anyway. Make your religion as farfetched as possible, as the people in the courthouse LOVE a surprise more than a fat kid loves cake (ah, 50 Cent, you’re a veritable Yates).
• Claim you’re a secret agent. The secret (ha! Wordplay! Move over 50!) here is to make your excuse esoteric and metaphorical. Stuff like “I’m afraid I’ll be in Geneva in the morning, and who knows when I’ll be back. Maybe never if they ever find me.” Also remember not to sign your name, if this is your tack, and date the paper in binary (cause binary is cool, right?). Your address should confuse the issue further. ‘Behind you!’ is the perfect example of a secret agent’s address. Bonus points if you actually manage to be behind them when they open the letter.
• Write your excuse in a rambling, self-serving manner, kind of like what Hemmingway would write. If he didn’t have talent, I mean. Narrative structures be damned! Just sit down and start scribbling. Think more like Hunter S. Thompson than you ever have before (no, I’m NOT condoning drug use. Just recommending it). Start off your excuse with a bold first line that actually shocks the reader. “I dismembered the remains of the Christmas turkey sometime around noon on a winter squabble. Fleep!” Move on from there, outlining why, indeed, you ARE the Lizard King… oh and you shouldn’t do jury duty, I guess.
• Draw a picture of a famous celebrity instead of an actual excuse. Especially Arnold Schwarzenegger. In a weird style. Saying shut the fuck up. I don’t care what you say, this is ART.

So there you have a quick example of how to exercise your civic right to be a lazy ass. Seriously tho, fuck the judiciary. Oooh, how political of me!

So you’re over 21? Well, for the sake of this document, I will assume you’re way over 21. We’re talking 21 being ‘oh back then!’ So lets say you’re actually mature.

Actually, fuck it, you’re old. OLD.

OLD.

And so you’ve decided ‘what the hey, I’m bored with my life, I think I’ll get a degree’. Sure I may or may not say something like ‘shouldn’t you have thought of that back when Roosevelt was still in power?’ This shouldn’t deter you. I’m merely ‘having my fun’. And by that I mean, GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY UNIVERSITY, YOU OLD FUCKS.

Appearance.

There are many factors at work here. Firstly, if you are an aging female, make sure you wear tank tops and the like, which are body snug. Nothing us virile students like more than seeing sagging breasts! Just ask around, and if you take each incongruous look as a positive sign, you’ll see just how popular your fashion statement is! Also, make sure you don’t (I repeat- DO NOT) shave your armpits. We’re all very into the bohemian look.

For the men, remember that ladies are ‘into’ ‘grunge’ ‘now’. Meaning it’s ‘cool’ (in your language- it is ‘pip pip’ and possibly ‘the cats pyjamas’) to wear clothing that makes you look like Kurt Kobain (he was a singer). Sure it makes you look like Kobain POST suicide, but who’s counting? Also, don’t shave your face regularly, just let it sit in a state of half completion. The women on campus are sure to dig your patches of clean shaves intermittently interrupted by tufts of hair. Speaking of hair- don’t wash it, whatever you do! Oh and no deodorant! Remember what I said about bohemian looks? They go for bohemian smells as well!

Lecture behaviour.

Lectures are there for everyone, a university will tell you. We all have the same right to learn, and should be afforded the same opportunities.

Poppycock, as you would say.

When the professor enters the room, feel free to walk straight up to him/her and ask him/her a quest/ion. Don’t worry about the rest of us, as we’re all commies or hippies anyway, and are probably all on drugs (you know the ones? The drugs you guys all took before we were born? But they were okay then, yeah? Because it was common and everyone did it? Yeah those drugs.) hence we don’t actually matter. Due to the fact you’ve entered the class and are unclear on an issue, by all means waylay the lecturer.

During the lecture, make sure to shush everyone around you. Reasons to shush these people can range from the mundane (chatting) to the creative (the noise of someone behind you shifting their weight from one buttock to the other). Oh, as an added bonus to the people sitting behind you, if you have tricep flab, be sure to allow it to wobble freely and openly as you nervously jot down notes about whatever the hell course you’ve paid money to be in.

Also feel free to interject during the lecture at any time. Something like ‘HUH’ is especially effective in impressing the entire room full of students. Another useful phrase can be ‘SLOW DOWN’, since if you’re having trouble getting all the notes you need, obviously everyone else is too. If they’re not, though, who cares? YOU paid for the fucking class, right?

Tutorial participation.

This is your chance to shine. Every tutorial is, for the lack of a better metaphor, a shrine to the worship of YOU. YOU are the oldest person in the room, so, it follows, that you will be the out and out smartest. Some people will naysay this, and bring up such feeble counter examples as:

• ‘You paid to get into this class’
• ‘You were a goddamn SECRETARY for forty years’
• ‘You watch Fox News to be INFORMED!’
• ‘Just die already’

All these should be ignored. Yell loudly over other students. Make humming noises as the tutor speaks, showing everybody in the room that you understand. God forbid anyone might think of you as stupid in a class YOU PAID FOR since you PAID GOOD MONEY TO BE HERE and WILL DAMN WELL GET VALUE OUT OF EVERY FUCKING CENT. Belabour every damn point the lecturer raises. Attack the textbook’s viewpoint constantly, without logical reasons either! ‘It doesn’t sit right’ is good enough for YOU, so everyone else should goddamn agree.

Also attack fellow classmates when they point out flaws in your argument. A lot of people seem to believe university should be a place where you learn new things and new ways of viewing the world. NOT TRUE. University is there to remind YOU of what you already knew. Confirmation! Any viewpoint that contradicts your own should, therefore, be viewed as wrong and tossed to the dogs. Remember once again: university is your ticket to knowledge. Well, I mean, university is a ticket for OTHERS to get to YOUR knowledge.

Failure and your own stupidity.

When you fail your exams or essays, remember, it’s not YOUR fault that you don’t understand the central problems of the texts you’ve been set or the methods conveyed to you. It’s simply the university’s fault for setting such ambiguous and pointless readings that don’t correspond with your own view at ALL. Feel free to kick up a stink in class over your marks, especially if you DIDN’T fail but also didn’t grade as highly as you wanted.

If you ever get shot down in debate, do NOT EVER CONCEDE DEFEAT. To you, defeat should be clawed out of your pit bull like grip as you hang on to what you KNOW is the case. If you believe postmodernism is a piece of crap system that didn’t teach nothin’ to nobody, you should stick to this view. When someone brings up the point that postmodernistic thinking has brought us such notions as multiculturalism, feel free to spit venom at the student, stating that, in essence, you’ve been around a long damn time and know a good thing when I’s sees it! Postmodernism is all pointless exaggerated artworks. If an art major attacks this view, call him a fag (or, the female variant, a ‘lesbo’) and walk out.

You’re always right.

Here is a list of short, bullet point tips for you academics out there who wish to impart your obviously extensive knowledge to those people out there in the world.

• Don’t be afraid to reference yourself. This may seem… hmm what’s the word? Oh yeah, arrogant. But remember- you are obviously the world’s foremost expert on whichever subject you are writing on. Hell, if you weren’t, why would you be writing the book you’re now writing?! So feel free to reference yourself at every opportunity, as this will encourage the student to buy this other book in order to learn from you. God bless you. Hell, your students should be fucking bowing to you by now.
• Make up words. Whenever you don’t feel you can express yourself effectively in your native tongue (especially if that native tongue is ‘Ox’ in which case, you’re probably a large bovine mammal and should probably disregard the remainder of this article) feel free to make some up! You’re a philosopher and there’s no word you can think of that incorporates ‘existence’ with ‘apathy’ make something up like ‘apa-existentialism’ or ‘exi-apathy’. You’re well on your way to a Pulitzer every time you show your wordsmith…iness.
• Don’t bother extrapolating on difficult issues. As you are obviously super smart, hence why you’re an academic, you obviously shouldn’t lower your years of extensive knowledge and research to such a base level as that of an ‘undergraduate’. You just stated something bloody simple such as ‘The existence of the telegraph wire during the 19^th century helped provide the Russian West with a nihilistic perma-apa-existentialist quasi world view that permeated the Jakarta parliament’ you shouldn’t waste time explaining how this happened. Or why. You’re not here to do the work for them you know. You’re here to write a damn book, especially one that’ll make your peers slap you on the back as you walk down the corridor. Expect compliments like ‘Heh pulled one on them yet again, eh, you sly dog?!’ You can’t buy this kind of entertainment, you know.
• Foreign words require no translation or explanation. Nothing says ‘I am FUCKING smart’ like Latin. Obviously anyone who reads your book should’ve at least had training in, oh, say, three languages. One of these will obviously be Latin. Duh. So feel free to bandy about phrases like ‘Ab ovo’ or ‘ex hypothesi’ or, my personal favourite (for its absolute ambiguity) ‘Si vos utriusque ut reddo is , vos es tristis. Quod devia.’ Also, German is good to throw around, since you’ll look cultured and well read. Freud was German too! And so was Marx… I think. Oh and Peter Sellers! Wait… well he looks foreign, which probably means he knew German, yeah?
• Make sentences as unwieldy as possible. Quotable sentences are for chumps should be your mantra. Sentences should be littered with thoughts that, for one reason or another, in this world at this present time, in relation to existentialist ontology, as we define it in the Penguin Philosophical Dictionary, assuming this world exists as we know it, which is something Descartes may argue against, as would a Solipsist, are totally unconnected. Remember, commas are your friends. Them and ellipsis… which are often best left for fiction works, especially dialogue… full stops are also for chumps!
• Make your titles as pretentious as possible. This applies especially to art theory and philosophy in particular. Who wants to read something like ‘Impressionism Revealed’? The discerning reader will much rather pick up and read something more high brow, such as ‘Impressionism: Postmodern Interpretations of Recontextualised Works by Sculpters of Oil’! That’s a title you couldn’t just hang your hat on, but you could probably get it really drunk and take it to bed too. That’s how good that is.
• End all chapters with a question that totally discredits the rest of the chapter you have just written. Readers like to be surprised, yeah? So it logically ipso facto follows that you cant get much more surprised than when you give them the news that they just wasted about fifty minutes of their life reading stupid interpretations on hamster mating rituals in rural Guava or whatever the fuck it is you’re interested in. A good example of this could be if you were arguing for the inclusion of the thesis that McArthur was a great general during WWII (World War TWO- not to be confused with I considering II was not only twice the numerals, it also had people like Tom Hanks fighting in it) and you end your chapter with the thought that although McArthur was a military genius, as according to his paper boy in Ohio (or wherever he lived, I can’t write the book for you!) he was flawed on many levels, and his leadership failed on many occasions, so there is a case to be made that he doesn’t deserve such accolades. The groans of utter frustration you’ll hear will be music to your academic ears I’m sure.

Obviously there are more clever tricks to be put forward, but for now, these will suffice. Remember: clear writing is BAD writing. Kind of like clear mud.

Which is just dirt and water, really.