I’m gonna miss it

Well I just handed in my final paper for College Writing 2. It just hit me that I’ll never have to take another English class as long as I live if I don’t want to. Which is kinda weird. Remember how English was a requirement every single semester of high school? I’ve pretty much been taking it for as long as I can remember.

And it kinda sucks just a little bit, because I was just really starting to get into the readings. I don’t get that much exposure to the material outside of class, because it’s not one of those things I think to do in my spare time.

The one thing I probably won’t miss is the essay writing. It’s true that all the practice over the years has helped me get pretty good at cranking out decent essays at the last minute. But it did add a whole unnecessary dimension of stress to my existence that frankly I can live without.

So in honor of the end of my English-paper-writing days, I decided to write one last short essay, as a tribute to this semester of English and to English class in general.

Philosophy and The Art of Exposition
by Jared Banta

Throughout time, there have been many ideas. Many people have taken these ideas and used them to create personal philosophies. This semester, we have read about the personal philosophies of many different writers and poets. Generally, their ideas deal with the issues of aesthetics, since they each have their own unique way of tackling the problem of creating art. Although their philosophies are each very different from one another, I think that there is one thing upon which all of these writers would agree, and that is that this essay I am writing right now is dull. Very very dull. And boring. Three such writers are Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, and Robert Frost.

Even though Gertrude Stein is very quirky and seems to have a rather liberal view on what is and isn't art, she definitely would have no interest in reading this essay. In her essay What Are Master-pieces and Why Are There So Few of Them she says, "Any of you when you write you try to remember what you are about to write and you will see immediately how lifeless the writing becomes that is why expository writing is so dull because it is all remembered" (135). Her idea is that remembering makes creation impossible, and while you are creating true art, you are not using your memory during that time. Since I planned what I was going to write beforehand, I am remembering right now. That, along with the fact that this essay that I am writing is expository, serves to indicate that it is very dull according to Gertrude Stein.

While Gertrude Stein states outright that essays like this one are dull, William Carlos Williams has a more subtle way of averring its tediousness. In his autobiography, Williams sets down the theory of Objectivism, which he himself helped to fabricate and which he employed in his own poetry. "The Objectivist theory was this:" he writes, "the poem, like any other form of art, is an object, an object that in itself formally presents its case and its meaning by the very form it assumes" (264). Williams is saying that form in a piece of art is just as important as content in conveying meaning. You will note that I have employed a very standard five-paragraph format that I learned in high school. The reason that it is taught in high school is because it is a very versatile form; that is to say, you could use it to write about anything. Therefore, the form has absolutely no bearing on the overall meaning or effect of this essay. By the above quote we can draw the conclusion that Williams would certainly not consider this essay to be a work of art at all, by any stretch of the imagination. It is artless, like a boring newspaper article or boring history lecture. And man are those boring! Just like this essay.

Another writer who would certainly not enjoy this essay is Robert Frost. In his essay The Figure a Poem Makes Frost says of writing, "It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. . . . No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader" (1940). Frost's conception is that when a poem is written with a purpose, or a destination in mind, it comes off as contrived and gimmicky. Perhaps this idea can be applied to expository writing as well, because I'm looking at my outline here, and I assure you there is no delight or wisdom waiting for you at the end of this essay. Just another funnel paragraph. We can be pretty sure that Robert Frost wouldn't have any interest in this paper either.

In conclusion, according to many of the great American writers of the 20th century, this essay is not a "master-piece," or even art for that matter. In fact, it's not even worth reading probably. Gertrude Stein comes right out and says that expository writing like this essay is dull. William Carlos Williams theorizes that expression is in the form of a piece, and this essay has a very usual, very uninteresting form. Robert Frost believes that writing should be spontaneous in order not to be dull, and this essay was meticulously planned from the start.  So what is the point of writing it in the first place? The point is, so I can get a good grade in English class, because my own personal philosophy tells me that I don't want to have to take English over again. But that is just one philosophy of many. Only time will tell how it ranks among all the myriad ideas and philosophies that have come into being since the beginning.

HOLLYWOOD – Following up on the success of his blockbuster smash The Passion of the Christ, director/producer Mel Gibson confirmed Thursday that a sequel is in the works, tentatively titled Passion 2: Revenge of the Christ.

Gibson said the new film will have some pleasant surprises for fans of the original Passion.

“Naturally, I was leery of a sequel at first,” said Gibson, “but the general consensus is that there is a lot of unfinished business that needs to be resolved in a second movie.”

Gibson also mentioned that Christ will have garnered a bit of an edge since his first appearance, adding, “I don’t know about you, but if I had just been tortured and killed, I’d be pretty mad.”

The film could see a release as early as 2006.

EXT.  THE STREETS OF JERUSALEM - NIGHT

It is raining heavily.

A lone ROMAN SOLDIER patrols the deserted street, moving in and out of long, eerie shadows.

As he moves past one such shadow, a DARK FIGURE emerges behind him, and comes silently to stand in the middle of the street.

The SOLDIER, sensing the presence, pauses and turns to face the FIGURE.

SOLDIER
You... you're that JESUS!

The FIGURE, now identified as JESUS CHRIST, takes a step forward, and his face is revealed by a strategically placed beam of light. He wears black robes, dark sunglasses, and an expression that tells us he is on a mission.

SOLDIER
But... you're dead. We drove a spear through your heart. I watched you die!

JESUS
You're right. You did watch me die.
(steps forward again)
But you're also wrong. I'm not dead.

SOLDIER
What are you?
(he finally gives over to fear)
Some kind of DEMON SPAWN?!

With that, JESUS whips a huge mace out from under his robes, and brutally decapitates the soldier.

When the weapon finally comes to rest beside him, we pull in for a close-up on JESUS as he says:

JESUS
I am THE CHRIST.

JESUS melts back into the shadows as we pull up and back to show the lifeless, headless body of the soldier lying "face" down and copious blood flowing down the street with the rain water ...

[Ed. Of course the dialogue will all be translated into the appropriate languages]

No, your lunch is fine! April Fools Muthafukka! Oh yeah, I got you good.

You should have seen the look on your face. You were all, “Oh my God!” and you were all thinking about what you were going to do for lunch now that you didn’t have one. Haha it was so funny!!

Seriously though, I ran over your dog and/or grandmother.

You know me, being human and all, I’m always looking for better, easier, and faster ways of doing things. Like with this web site, I’m always on the lookout for ways to make updating and customizing it easier.

And boy did I find a big time saver. There’s a program called dadadodomax which is based on Jamie Zawinski’s dadadodo tool, which basically analyzes text and then generates new text that’s kinda based on the analyzed text. For more information on how this works check out the websites, they can explain it better than I can.

Chris first alerted me to this a year ago, and even at the time I saw how it could be very useful. Unfortunately I had to wait around until someone made this Macintosh port of it so I could use it to generate text based on my own writing. Now that it’s finally available, I figure that since everything I write is based on the same five or six hackneyed phrases, I don’t have to keep writing up these little blurbs anymore! I can just feed all the existing text from this blog into the program, and then updates only take seconds rather than precious, precious minutes! And no one will ever know the difference! Hmm, I bet I could even use this on my English papers and such… excellent….

I read it (is a surprise).  I dunno, we’ll see know said not the only to. What can do day of bliss.  Also each and seemingly insignificant as I’m exaggerating.  Which the forces of website up with so what is to allow these times in an order three years I you had gotten used to made a Big Show literary works in this essay not come out the advent of these surprises, to couple of stuff which the public acclaim to me for now but what you came from I can make as could be no laces; taught through it.

The strange and you and trying to go back to say, I ask you know about; how liberal their own although much for us; to a good one, of idleness and still use the emergence chance to do unto you.

Pretty much as much like this week, and he’s been trying and trying to do on; typewriters representation of no new and consider in some way to my own and take find a lot. It’s a rather glad I the toilet paper is to be even lived. And that I every good. The package.

For my wintr vakashun, I flew home to Colerado.

I met Charly the dog. He wanted to HAVE SEX with me. Just then Chris saved the day. Chris is a hero of our generation.

For Chrismas I got a camra. I took some pictures.

Then we went to Wiskonsen. I saw my family. I saw my Granny. She is sick. She told me stories about her life. Then we were happy.

But then we had to go. We were sad.

I went to Matt’s howse for New Year’s Eve. Hooray it is 2004! There were lots of people there. But not Andres.

Then I went to bed. I slept for 3 days. I was woke up by a strange noise.

Then I went to Matt’s cabin in the mountens. We played games. I lost.

I ate at good restrants. I watched good movies. I lookd at some pictures. Chris and Darren came over and we ate pizza and watched foot ball. Then we had a intelecshuel conversashun.

Then it was time to say goodby. I ate dinner with my old family to say goodby.

Finaly I came to Bosten again. It was very cold. I died.

The End

*yawn* Welp… another weekend, another record snowfall. It’s the third such “historic” storm I’ve endured so far in 2003, and I’m starting to get bored with the whole concept.

Looks like it wasn’t enough for our friends down at Guinness to stir up impressionable, insane people to try and break their own “Spaghetti Nasal Ejection” and “Eye Milk-Squirting” records, but now they had to entice Nature to get in on the act as well. It’s true, every time you think that maybe Nature has fallen out of the public eye for good, you turn on the news, and there she is, trying some crazy half-baked stunt to get herself some more sweet, sweet attention that all these crazy publicity junkies crave so much.

And the worst part is that the sensationalist media, looking for some way to keep their y-generation ADD audiences from becoming distracted by the other shiny objects in the room can’t wait to jump all over her latest scheme. All the news teasers say, “Nature’s at it again!” and “Another record for nature!” And people actually watch this tripe. Ugh it’s so frustrating.

Oh well, within the next couple of years I imagine Nature will have gone the way of so many other flash-in-the-pan novelty acts. When she hits middle age everyone will have forgotten about her little “Blizzards of 2003″ and she’ll just be another fat, jobless bimbo eating chips in front of the TV. Probably watching the next “big thing” and pining for her bygone days of fame and fortune.

Anyway, enjoy your 15 minutes, Nature, because they’re almost up. I just hope whoever takes your place in the mainstream isn’t as much of a sensationalist attention whore as you are. Although I’m sure they will be even worse.

I weep for the future.

Man, I’m starting to feel like my writing skills are becoming something to frown at. I got back a history paper today that I got a B on. Usually I don’t get B’s on my papers, but this time the professor gave me one because he thought it was a topic that I could have done more with. It was really hard to write a good paper on the topic he gave us, though, because there were two really contradicting ideas that he wanted us to write the paper about. I couldn’t write a very coherent paper including both of those ideas, so I guess I pretty much just chose one idea to base my paper on. I’ll probably go see the prof during his office hours this week so I can try to figure out exactly what it was he was looking for.

Well, at least good grammar is something I can still pride myself on.

If you’re reading this blog entry, you are obligated to click the “Comments” link down below and leave a comment. I think you’ll find that it’s not too difficult, and actually can be quite a rewarding experience!

If you’re not reading this blog entry, then I can make scathing remarks about you and you probably won’t care. Well I suppose you might, if you had read it previously, and then at some point you remembered what I had said about people that weren’t reading this blog entry, and since you fit into that category at that particular time you realized that the comments applied to you. And then the next time I talked to you you would say, “Jared, you made me cry.” And then I would feel bad.

Unless, of course they were tears of joy. Then I wouldn’t feel so bad.

Unless I hated you. Then I’d probably be more irritated than anything else.

Unless you had a cold, cold heart, and feeling joy caused you great physical pain. Then I would cackle with delight!

Unless you were a masochist, and you enjoyed it. How irksome.

Unless you were publicly chastised for your deviant sexual behavior. In which case I would revel in your humiliation.

Unless it turned out that a majority of Americans support masochism, and you used your newfound public acclaim to run for political office and you won. Then I would shake my fist at the ceiling and curse.

Unless that public office was titled “Head Dick,” and didn’t come with any real executive power, but the only duty was to be the subject of public ridicule and mordacious political commentaries. That would be funny.

Unless somehow by being such a good sport you managed to have a strange relationship with the public, where you were loathsome but somehow also endearing, and so you got invited to lots of parties and fundraisers, and turned out to be quite popular. Then I would throw my hat onto the ground and stomp on it in frustration.

Unless you gained a reputation among your new “friends” that at these parties you had a tendency to pretend you knew a lot about things that you actually didn’t know thing one about, and so you came across as being kind of stupid and they made fun of you a lot behind your back. That would be oh so sweet.

Unless you never found out that they didn’t like you, because ignorance is bliss. Then my plot would be foiled.

Unless you were SO ignorant that you couldn’t tie your own shoe. This would bring me great satisfaction.

Unless you had those weird basketball shoes with no laces. Then I would scream and rip my hair out of my scalp.

Unless these shoes were extremely uncomfortable and gave you big, painful, unsightly corns on your feet. That would be awesome.

Unless you went to see a really hot pediatrist, and you ended up sleeping with him/her. That would piss me off!

Unless the pediatrist gave you a scorching case of herpes. Then I would be happy.

Unless what really happened was, you were supposed to go out with the pediatrist, but your twin brother/sister answered the door, and then decided to pretend they were you and went and banged the pediatrist and contracted herpes, and you saw it as poetic justice for having stolen your date away from you. This would aggravate me to no end!

Unless I hated your twin brother/sister even more than I hated you. Then it would be ok I guess.

… But I digress. Leave comments!