tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20581010160279690272024-03-13T11:10:32.271+00:00lathophobic aphasiaTeaching, language, some rant. Opinions entirely my own.Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.comBlogger487125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-8251033444553670192020-09-15T09:51:00.000+01:002020-09-15T09:51:28.153+01:00FYI<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jAm0m9WZ0s0/X2CAL09ZIRI/AAAAAAAAEoY/J7nFMuDEjpYQKTAHYpVw5AdgBEWNIsAlgCLcBGAsYHQ/s960/Mask.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jAm0m9WZ0s0/X2CAL09ZIRI/AAAAAAAAEoY/J7nFMuDEjpYQKTAHYpVw5AdgBEWNIsAlgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Mask.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><br />I spent a fair bit of time yesterday reading about COVID 19 and thought I would present my findings. </span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">The pandemic is over and we must understand that a second wave is imminent, inevitable, unlikely and impossible. </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Life must absolutely get back to normal and we absolutely must have another lockdown.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Masks are useless and they protect you and others; indeed they can actually confer immunity, except in cases where they make you more vulnerable to infection. </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's safe - indeed it's vital for the economy - that you eat out and go to work or university, but bear in mind that doing so will make you responsible for your granny's death, so don't eat out, you selfish, irresponsible twat, and work from home if you can. </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">But it's OK if you can't. </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">The virus is afraid of certain environments (Marks and Spencer's, Tesco) and if you work there, you needn't wear a mask. </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">The virus doesn't infect people on protest marches if the march is in favour of the right cause. </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">The worst is over and also yet to come. </span></li></ul></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />You're welcome.</span></div>Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-88290286288778950122020-09-08T09:25:00.001+01:002020-09-08T09:25:29.151+01:00The Loneliness of the Long Distance Teacher<span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="319" data-original-width="425" height="235" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KsDWNZBirmk/X1c8ES4tw8I/AAAAAAAAEoM/gkBJXwROJuQbJHL4sXz8oxOj33ALu5AzgCLcBGAsYHQ/w313-h235/fault.jpg" title="Probably not." width="313" /></div><br />I've only taught four online lessons so far - October is when it really starts. They all went fairly well. It still felt rather like putting up with the water being turned off or making do with a small calor gas stove while you wait for someone to repair the hob - second best, an unavoidable temporary nuisance. But now I'm afraid that there will never be a return to face to face teaching, at least in our context. Overseas students save a fortune by doing a pre-sessional online from home, and it is going to be hard to make a case for anyone forking out to come over here for three months of face to face lessons, especially if the students are going to return to their Chinese-speaking bubbles as soon as they leave the classroom. </span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />So almost everything that made teaching pleasurable is gone, as far as I'm concerned. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">It made a frustrated ham feel less frustrated. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">It got me out of the house, forced me to be somewhat sociable, gave me loads of exercise (I don't like to see teachers plonked behind a desk at the front of the class) and very often the feeling that I'd been useful and appreciated. The improvisations and changes of direction that kept me quick-witted are much more difficult to execute. I cannot privately approach an individual who's floundering, or even see if anyone is. Now we sit at home in front of a computer and conduct </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">s</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #4d5156;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">é</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">ance after </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">s</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #4d5156;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">é</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">ance with students who are talking heads in two-inch squares on a screen. Does anyone really enjoy this or think it a reasonable swap for human contact?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qhB5mStj5kQ/X1c679YFrpI/AAAAAAAAEoA/IixyU8t-tcogMzQE5m-AA06Thv4aW7q3gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/spirit-photo--664x1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="664" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qhB5mStj5kQ/X1c679YFrpI/AAAAAAAAEoA/IixyU8t-tcogMzQE5m-AA06Thv4aW7q3gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/spirit-photo--664x1024.jpg" /></a></div><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">My four lessons were with a group of eighteen students, each sitting alone in their bedrooms in China, Korea, Thailand, Kuwait, Kurdistan, Libya, Turkey and Colombia. The Colombian lad was joining us at four in the morning - there's dedication. As students logged in before the lesson began and before I switched on my camera and mic, I heard them chatting and joking. The atmosphere they created was humorous and pretty hard-working given the frustrations inherent in being 'together alone' and I was probably the only one who was thinking how much better this would be in a physical classroom where it would be at least twice as humorous and hard-working. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Well, I'm a glass-half-empty sort and things might improve, but I don't know how. Any suggestions gratefully received.</span></div>Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-50449420589270363602020-08-22T19:22:00.002+01:002020-08-22T19:23:22.530+01:00Rodney, Rodney, why?<p> </p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UhjZo3BxZ9Y" width="560"></iframe><div><br /></div><div>I could not resist that heartfelt plea to share this video far and wide. Rodney, for shame, sir. You are a bounder and a cad.</div><div><br /></div><div>BTW, gentlemen, I understand the more attractive of the ladies is single.</div>Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-70751840758904353312020-07-24T07:45:00.007+01:002020-08-08T20:01:43.363+01:00On masks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">In England, you must now wear a mask if you wish to be admitted into a shop or supermarket. Blood donors are required to wear one throughout the procedure but presumably permitted to remove it for the compensatory cup of tea and custard creams when it is over. In Wales, on the other hand, should you turn up to donate blood wearing a mask, you will be asked to remove it. Masks are so vitally important to our survival that everyone here was given full <i>fourteen days</i> notice of the mask ruling - and thus license to continue spreading pestilence around the shops for two weeks - before being forced to desist on pain of a fine as from Friday the 24th of July. However, at no point this year have supermarket staff been required to wear masks, nor will they be, despite spending all their shifts indoors where the virus is supposedly more likely to get to you. Since March, masks have been 1) vital but everywhere unavailable, 2) useless, nay, 3) more likely to increase the rate of infection than reduce it, then suddenly 4) compulsory - except at Sainsbury's and Aldi, where the barefaced cheek (and mouth and nose) to defy the ruling will not be challenged. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">We're in good hands here. </span><br />
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><span style="color: red;">*****</span></span><br />
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><br /></span><span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">I've been buggering about with Blogger. The layout looks a bit off now as I'm trying to make it look a bit more up-to-date. I saved changes accidentally and wish I had not. This is a minor matter in the scheme of things but it pisses me off. </span></span></div>
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Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-29860160369722466532019-11-15T06:19:00.003+00:002023-05-01T11:16:38.365+01:00Happy Ending?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Fuck, what a dull life I lead. In September I decided to abstain a while from the grape, and the long evenings on alcohol-free beer made me realise how much I mute the utter boredom of my existence with booze. For how many years have I managed to persuade myself that I am much less gregarious than is in fact the case? I fell off the wagon a bit (OK, a lot) over a weekend in Glasgow - not a place where you can expect much support for your decision to go easy on the swally - and gradually reverted to type from the end of October. Here is your brain on alcohol: cut off the supply and it feels like sitting at home while bailiffs cart off all the CDs, plants, candles, cushions and knicknacks that make the place your own, leaving it featureless as dentist's waiting room.<br />
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How did you get me on to this? I was going to tell you about the 'sensual massage' I had today. My dry weeks had made me realise how much I miss the touch of men, so I found a male masseur in the nearest big town who would do me a massage with a 'happy ending', which I took to mean massage + wank, for forty quid. I booked myself in for an hour well ahead of time a) to enjoy a sense of anticipation and b) to give myself time to bottle out. I think you may need to have been fifteen years celibate to understand how much the prospect of being naked with another man can seem at once blissful and intrusive.<br />
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Well, today was the day. Cold, grey, wet - a day for staying under the duvet if ever any was. <i>I do not know this bloke</i>, I thought. Will he be alone in the house, or will he have heavies watching us on CCTV? (I was watching T2 Trainspotting at the weekend.) Sweeney Todd, John George Haigh of acid bath fame and Dennis Nielsen came to mind, the images impatiently dismissed, as serial murderers tend not to have websites disclosing their every contact detail along with photos of the inside and outside of their house. Even so, the erotic was far from my thoughts as I set off for the station in driving rain.<br />
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Adam turned out to be a sweet. quiet, gentle and welcoming young man, half Turkish, half Romanian. I shucked off my clothes and lay prone on his massage table. He shucked off his and watching his preparatory faffing with bottles of oil at the side of me I thought, 'that is the first flesh and blood cock other than my own that I've seen this many a year.' <br />
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Being touched after so many years of feeling as if I lived under a glass dome was an odd clutch of sensations. I tried to clear my mind and just give in to Adam's smooth, firm strokes, but my mind was as noisy and unruly as always: thinking about writing this up as a blog post, wanting to replace his music (aimless, plinky-plonky New Age dribble) with Chopin nocturnes, exasperation that my cock seemed so uninvolved in the proceedings. I kept flinching as zones of flesh long unvisited woke with a start. My knob stayed resolutely unmoved throughout, so the 'happy ending' was looking less and less likely, and sure enough, after massaging around my unresponsive manhood for five minutes or so, Adam announced 'I'm done.'<br />
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He didn't intend it to sound like 'this is hopeless' but I felt it that way, briefly. He wiped away the oil with a towel and I started to get dressed. He put on his t-shirt and dick aswing, moved the massage table back against the wall. Our nakedness now seemed more of the changing-room than the bedroom and I knew I'd need to hold him and caress him if I was to get a hard-on. A massage, or a massage plus wank, is a service, like a haircut, pedicure or private medical. I'll pay for that. But I won't pay a man to pretend he desires me.<br />
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Adam made small talk and guessed my age, missing by a decade, which was flattering even if he was perhaps being diplomatic. I paid him and we hugged before I left and it was genuinely affectionate on both sides. (I think.) Later in an email he said he had deliberately avoided touching my packing area because I had seemed so nervous and he hadn't wanted to make me feel more so. This was a kindly miscalculation, because I always did flinch when anyone touched me anywhere around the waist but my cock has always been up for grabs. (Sorry, couldn't resist that.) It also dispelled a prejudice I held about people who work in the sex industry. As well as a very good masseur, Adam is an escort, aka rent-boy, and I had always thought people who did such work were <i>ipso facto </i>well dodgy. But no: Adam was as concerned for my comfort and satisfaction as the private GP I saw for a thorough medical at the end of October, and there are organisations and people in my profession who should be avoided like high voltage.<br />
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I walked to the station from Adam's place, realising I need not have paid over a fiver in taxi fares to get there on the outward journey. I got home with a stiffy you could hang a hat on and this was simultaneously a relief and a disappointment - relief that I don't need Viagra, disappointment at the delayed reaction.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not him but not unlike him.</td></tr>
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<span style="color: red;">*****</span><br />
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A handsome young hunk who is attending my lectures arrived half an hour early and helped me to move the tables into cafeteria style. (Other lecturers seem to prefer them set out in rows as in a Victorian school room.) As I was pootling about on the computer, he asked 'sir, is it OK if I go to the toilet?' Of course it was OK - why did he need to ask, and why call me 'sir'? Later a few others arrived and a discussion of an assignment for a different module arose, the brief for which it seemed was less than transparent. 'I'll have to ask Miss' said the young man, who is six foot if he's an inch yet as innocent as a toddler. I could have hugged him. Now I'm waiting for him to call our five minute break 'play time'.</div>
Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-52546519335185532152019-09-21T17:41:00.002+01:002019-12-11T05:56:08.081+00:00'Shall I leave this here?'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For me, nothing in this sublunary world rivals the beauty of young males and after Tumblr went all <a href="https://www.eff.org/tossedout/tumblr-ban-adult-content" target="_blank">prudish and modishly censorious </a>on us last year, I nuked my ten year-old blog curating images of masculine hotness and moved to Twitter. I don't especially like Twitter. You may post there as much cock as you like, so I do. But beware: disagreement with any of the current 'woke' orthodoxies will make you unpopular and could get you suspended. On the other hand, urge people to punch 'transphobes' or to visit other forms of violence on members of any group currently deemed oppressors, (white men, white men and white men, mostly) and you will garner likes by the bucket-load, presumably with the tacit approval of the beardy Silicon Valley man-buns in control. Disagreement is censored, but incitement to violence? Like, whatever.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This morning a gay Twitterer published two black and white photos, the back and front bums of a trans man, with the question 'shall I leave this here?' We were offered what looked like a convincingly muscled and hairy male arse, then equally masculine hairy thighs and between them, a vulva and clitoris. The comments were without exception most enthusiastic, urging the Tweeter to keep the post up, many remarking salaciously on what they would love to get up to with the trans man in the photo. Given the gay male adoration of the phallus, I found this extraordinary. Some of the comments were baffling variations on 'hey, great ass and dick, dude!'</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Today's mystery object</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Dick</i>? There was no dick: there was, as I said, a vulva. Even though I have far more hands-on experience of the former than the latter, I<i> can</i> tell the difference. So in answer to the Tweeter's question, I wrote 'No, I like men.' Well, the model for the photos appears to keep tabs on the comments they attract, for within seconds I received a charming message: 'I AM a man, you stupid bitch!' and was instantly blocked from his account, one I had not intended to look at, far less follow.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">OK, he says he's a man, and if we don't want the Old Bill to call and <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/24/man-investigated-police-retweeting-transgender-limerick/" target="_blank">tick us off</a> for provoking a 'non-crime hate incident' - now <i>there's</i> a category for you to ponder - we must concur. (And no, it was not a fucking limerick, it was pure doggerel.) Thinking aloud: m<i>y</i> experience of being a man includes having a whole swath of dreary expectations about appropriate masculine behaviour dumped on me as a boy by my elders, most of which I resisted, but also inevitable, physical, exclusively male stuff such as having twanging erections, the feeling during sex that my cock is like a fifth limb reaching to touch another man, knowing the fierce joy of ejaculation, knowing how pleasurably and painfully tender testicles are, experiencing a time or two the agony of getting my foreskin caught in the zip of my jeans and having had a couple of doctors shove a finger up my arse to check my prostate. (On separate occasions, not both at once.) I didn't have to take hormones to lower my voice and develop muscles, beard and chest hair because my balls make them naturally. He has known none of these things, and never will. So if he and I are both men, what does it mean to be a man? I'll listen to anyone's thoughts on this.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It is possible, I suppose, that tweeters remarking on the hotness of that non-existent cock were doing so ironically, but I strongly suspect not. We now live in a world where people post such tweets as 'penises can be incredibly female' and a man who wears a wig and ill-chosen dresses can kick up a stink because beauticians who offer intimate waxing only for women refuse to <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9607639/trans-woman-jessica-yaniv-waxing-complaint/" target="_blank">depilate his ball sac</a>, even though it's a female ball sac, or a ball sac on a female body or whatever the hell s/he would have us have it it be. Male, female, man, woman, penis, vagina - all seem to be words that are losing their meaning, and you do well not to point this out, except pseudonymously, if you want a quiet life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A while ago I suggested to a friend that anyone who decided to update Charles Mackay's 1841 '<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madness-Crowds/dp/149036188X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3RMA0S1K7WPM8&keywords=extraordinary+popular+delusions+and+the+madness+of+crowds&qid=1569083513&s=gateway&sprefix=extraordinary+popular+delusions%2Caps%2C1375&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds'</a> would probably start right here with the gender madness of the last few years. I was right: Douglas Murray has done <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Madness-Crowds-Gender-Race-Identity/dp/1472959957/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+madness+of+crowds&qid=1569083599&s=gateway&sr=8-1" target="_blank">just that</a>. I'm on the train down home from the North and the book's waiting for me there. Entirely predictably, the Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/19/the-madness-of-crowds-review-gender-race-identity-douglas-murrayhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/19/the-madness-of-crowds-review-gender-race-identity-douglas-murray" target="_blank">reviewer</a> does not like the book. <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/books/the-madness-of-crowds-by-douglas-murray-review-a4241046.html" target="_blank">This review</a> from the London Evening Standard is more positive. Good review <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-madness-of-crowds-by-douglas-murray-review-we-need-to-talk-about-identity-politics-gkpvq72mp" target="_blank">here</a> by Lionel Shriver.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Anybody want to take up Zinnia Jones's challenge? I don't know where to start.</span><br />
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Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-35325720966273208992019-09-12T19:06:00.001+01:002019-09-15T21:13:14.193+01:00Still Here<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Well, it's been a while. This blog was ten years old earlier this month and I have been thinking it must finally be time to retire it. I update it so infrequently nowadays, unlike in the first two years when I wrote two or three posts a week. However, I have just started a full-time contract at the university where I have been a part-time, hourly paid lecturer for the last eleven years (illegal, I know, but universities are great prevaricators) and I hope there might be more to write about soon. Whether there's anybody out there still reading I don't know. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I turned sixty this year and decided it was time to get an MOT done on this old corpse. British GPs will not do you one of these. I don't visit mine very often but when I do, he relies on blood tests and possibly telepathy and X-ray vision rather than on physical examination, and I can't help worrying he might be missing something internal and complicated. <a href="https://giaklamata.blogspot.com/search?q=bucket+and+spade" target="_blank">Private well-man medicals</a> are usually pretty expensive but I managed to find a clinic in Cambridge that will do me one for £250, which seems reasonable. The insurance will pay half of that. It could be argued that 125 quid is still pretty steep just to be told you drink too much. Then again, these days I can't see how else I could get another man to feel my balls.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Before plumping for the Cambridge place, I googled around a bit. Examining the website of the Mayo Clinic in London, I found an untreated dangling participle:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">...so I sent them an e-mail:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br /><i>Dear Mayo Clinic, <br /><br />I note from your <a href="https://mch-ouc.co.uk/service/physical-exam/">website</a> that you offer a novel variation on the normal procedure for a medical examination: ''After disrobing and changing into a gown in a private examination room, the doctor will perform a comprehensive assessment of your constitution and specific organ systems.'' Please could you tell me how much it would cost to have a doctor disrobe for me? Also, as private clinics in London do not come cheap, could I suggest your website display photographs of your medical team in a state of undress, so that clients can make a more informed choice? <br /><br /><br />Kind regards, </i></span></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Ipmilat, quondam Vilges Suola </span></span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I'll let you know if they reply.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /> </span></span></div>
Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-9673286304413946252019-04-26T15:23:00.003+01:002020-08-06T21:42:29.647+01:00Holy Shit<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><br /><span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><br />An inspiration indeed! Let's make Notre Dame look almost as magnificent as <a href="http://www.essentialtravelguide.com/city-guides/shopping-guides/meadowhall-shopping-centre/">Meadowhall</a>. In that glass-covered nave, let there be built, <i>ad maiorem Dei gloriam</i>, a mall. We could have The Transfiguration cosmetics and perfumes boutique, The First Stone jewelers, the Loaves and Fishes lunch counter, The Hoc Est Corpus Meum gym and spa, real ales at The Lamp and Bushel and Il Cenacolo for fine dining. You know, I'm beginning to suspect there might be money to be made from religion.</span></span></div>
Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-813166313186995332019-03-16T13:28:00.002+00:002020-09-15T19:43:13.397+01:00Piscean Pig<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Friday March the first was my sixtieth birthday. The sun (or is it the moon?) is in Pisces and this is the Chinese Year of the Pig, as it was when I was born. My thoughts on the matter were conventional: I used to think forty was old, so how the fuck did this happen? Answer: don't get killed between the ages of 40 and 60 and it'll take care of itself. There is so much more time behind me than there is in front! This has been the case for some years now, but only last week did I fully (and glumly) look the fact in the face. I'm broke and can never retire. Then again, life with no work would quite literally bore me to death, even if I had millions stored away.<br />
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So I'm old, it's official. Senior rail pass, free prescriptions... I bought a ticket for my commute to work tomorrow with a seven quid discount, picked up my first free prescription from Boots and in total saved fifteen quid that I'd have shelled out for the same stuff only last month. But am I happy??? In a pig's arse! I flash my senior pass at the conductor as if it were a notification that I had cooties. I'll get used to it. (No fucking choice) Naturally I bought a bottle of wine with the money saved, but I'd have done that anyway. <br />
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I did have a nice birthday, though, on the first of the month. I took a train up to Glasgow where my nephew lives and was greeted at Glasgow Central by him and my sister, who'd flown up to surprise me, which was incredibly touching. Glasgow is remarkably well fed, and we had tapas on the Friday evening and a fantastic meal at <a href="https://www.motherindia.co.uk/" target="_blank">Mother India</a> on the Saturday (fish pakoras, then monkfish and king prawn with ginger and dill - brill). Bloody arse-numbing train journey (as long as a flight to Abu Dhabi, I imagine) but next time I will at least get a big chunk of money knocked off. <br />
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<b><span style="color: #cc0000;">*****</span></b><br />
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Reasons for feeling old: <a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z8Eyd8qxnzo/XIz3L2arg1I/AAAAAAAAEag/QNuiOtsngDQ7ibiN7BxpeR9Y84IbHnqzgCLcBGAs/s1600/MonolophosaurusHiRes_usl6ti.webp" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1170" data-original-width="1600" height="145" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z8Eyd8qxnzo/XIz3L2arg1I/AAAAAAAAEag/QNuiOtsngDQ7ibiN7BxpeR9Y84IbHnqzgCLcBGAs/s200/MonolophosaurusHiRes_usl6ti.webp" width="200" /></a> <br />
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1) I had a look online to see what they're offering at <a href="https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/" target="_blank">Shakespeare's Globe</a> this summer. They're giving us the <i>Henry IV</i> plays and <i>Henry V.</i> It was not a total surprise to learn that the King, Prince Hal and Falstaff will be played by women. (So far as I'm aware I am not misgendering them.) So I've decided to give the Globe a miss this year. Now, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmbsp_vDey8" target="_blank">Maxine Peake</a> was great as Hamlet, Polonius was played as Polonia in the same production, and the gravediggers were women and were very funny. Fabian in <i>Twelfth Night</i> has been Fabia, the RSC has given us a female Cymbeline and a female Duke in <i>Othello</i> and the Globe an all-male <i>Twelfth Night.</i> But an important theme of the <i>Henry IV</i> plays is the relationship between fathers and sons, you know, <i>blokes.</i> Is not Hotspur's ideal of honour, the desire that an avenged slight be publicly acknowledged, very much a male thing? And does not Falstaff's contempt for that ideal come from a man who has been fed the notion throughout his life as a nobleman, and seen how much hypocrisy lies behind it? I absolutely cannot countenance a female <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znvZ2WAa3OI&list=RDznvZ2WAa3OI&index=2" target="_blank">Falstaff</a>. Call me all the dinosaurs you like, these three plays belong in the late 16th century and the preoccupations of the main characters are preoccupations of men of that time, even if by 1598, Hotspur may have struck some of the audience members as somewhat dinosaurial. The male actor who played Ophelia at the Globe last year (to a female Hamlet) said in an <a href="https://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/news/ophelia-as-a-man-hamlet-shakespeare-globe_46579.html" target="_blank">interview</a> that 'we're kind of beyond gender now', which seems to me to be a denial of a fact basic to being a member of a sexually reproducing species on this planet. I suppose everything I've just written is contradictory and inconsistent, especially as I enjoyed Peake's Hamlet so much, but in its inconsistency it is at least on a par with the gender / race / identitarian / intersectionality tripe being pushed by Humanities Departments these days. <br />
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2) Just seen on Twitter that Stanford University is offering a <a href="https://explorecourses.stanford.edu/search?view=catalog&filter-coursestatus-Active=on&page=0&catalog=&q=FEMGEN238" target="_blank">course</a> called 'FEMGEN 238: Men's Violence Against Women in Literature: A Critical and Social Analysis', Those who take it will enjoy (?) the opportunity to 'inform and deepen [their] understanding of oppression'. Sounds like a blast! Given that course description - or maybe <i>prescription </i>would be a better way to characterise it - you can bet that diversity of viewpoints will be zealously discouraged, as this seems to be the aim of a university education in the 21st century. What you do now is take books, sculptures and paintings that people produced in time gone by and pick them over for signs of racism, sexism, misogyny, assorted <i>-phobias</i>, marginalisation of identities and all that. Do not even think of <i>actually enjoying </i>the work of art you are pulling to bits. Most of this poker-faced stuff seems to come from the United States, but I'm seeing signs of it in the place where I work. From an assignment brief I found on the windowsill of a classroom last week:<br />
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<b>Media, Gender and Identity</b></div>
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1) Which group are you going to study? [seems you can't study individuals] How are they stigmatised or marginalised in the media?<br />
2) Explain the role the media play in characterising/stereotyping the group with examples.</blockquote>So, start with a conclusion and work backwards. Much simpler than starting with a hypothesis and possibly having to decide it's not warranted. I wonder if you'd be allowed to choose men as your stigmatised demographic? I suspect we are the last demographic you can openly mock and stereotype without releasing the Critical Social Justice furies. <br />
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3) They start them early on this. My niece told me yesterday she'd had to sit through a talk given by a sixth former who argued that <i>Friends </i>is racist and transphobic, and she had detected some 'problematic' elements in Disney films as well. I don't know what these were, but there's a killjoy article <a href="https://mic.com/articles/124377/7-racist-moments-from-your-favorite-disney-movies-that-will-ruin-them-forever#.oUxILQPf4" target="_blank">here</a> that may have been one of her sources. Well, I don't teach this stuff. Maybe it's fascinating and I'm pretty sure it engenders in its students a pleasant feeling of self-righteousness and superiority. But watching films and reading books to sniff out reasons to despise them seems joyless and pointless to me.<br />
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4) A young lady photographer has put up posters around the 'uni' to recruit female models whom she will photograph 'honestly, to protest today's airbrushing culture'. Has she only just noticed that artists and photographers have been improving on nature for rather a long time? Nobody depicted on an Ancient Egyptian wall has acne or a club foot and almost every human body in Ancient Greek or Roman art is idealised. Now, this young lady can of course photograph whom she wants in whatever way she pleases, but why such drab resentfulness of physical beauty? It's magnificent, it's transient, hence poignant, 'youth's a stuff will not endure', and all that. I'm a gay man and like most gay men, I'm all for it. Here you go. O come, let us adore him.<br />
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To cheer us up (?) here's the oldest known melody in Europe. Don't kvetch, 'cos there isn't time.<br />
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Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-29802154239184770672018-12-07T09:58:00.002+00:002019-06-06T08:06:06.404+01:00Campery and Condoms in the Foreign Language Classroom<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I'm off sick today. Back, legs, feet, everything south of my waist aches like fuck. Not complaining. I can go to bed when I please, get up when I please, have a doze in the afternoon if I feel like it. I'll be going stir-crazy by Sunday but hope to feel more like getting up at 5.00 and dragging my arse to... No, I'm not going to think about that right now. I'm in bed with coffee at 9.30am, a gale is lashing the windows with rain and I don't want to be anywhere else.<br />
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I have at the moment one of the nicest groups of students ever. A group of nine Chinese, Thai and Portuguese graduates grew to twenty earlier this month, with the addition of a few new Chinese and Thais and one each from Saudi, Kuwait and India. It was lovely to see how the new arrivals were welcomed and fitted in so quickly. <i>They make life so easy!</i> You simply set an activity in motion and they run with it. It's more like switching on the telly than managing a classroom. The other day I had to do a reading text from the ineffably tedious IELTS test. It was about moribund languages and how these might be salvaged. As a starter, I proposed that each nationality should teach everyone else in their group how they say their own country, nationality and language. Whay!!! Brilliant idea!!! I might have proposed we all go out on the razz and to hell with lessons. There followed a good twenty minutes of hilarity as Chinese students tried to get their tongues round Arabic and Thai students attempted Chinese. Thai was disappointingly easy, at lest to me: the same word, <i>thai</i>, does duty for country, nationality and language.<br />
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'So, I am from <b>Thai</b>, I am man <b>Thai</b>, I'm speak <b>Thai</b>? Wossthiss?' says K, our most voluble Chinese student, in mock-serious deprecation of what strikes him as want of linguistic sophistication. I wish I had chosen some rather more complex items to see how the speakers of four-tone Mandarin might cope with six-tone Thai.<br />
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One of the Thai contingent is a very camp young man called Tom, which is one syllable out of a given name that has quite a few more to spare. Early in the course I trotted out that old chestnut 'Alibis' for the millionth time since I first adapted it for large-ish groups circa 1983. As always with this group, the levels of enthusiasm and hilarity grew as the lesson progressed and Tom whooped 'this lesson is sooooooooooooo exCIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIting!'<br />
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I can't remember how the item came up, but I had to ask Tom to explain to the class what <i>underwear</i> meant. He stood on his chair, gyrating his pelvis and stroking his packet like a stripper and purred 'is wha you weah for covah you eggs!' The same action pretty much, accompanied with pelvic thrusts, was necessary when he proposed that the most important human invention ever is condoms. Nobody knew the word. 'Is what you wear when you fuck-keeeeeeeeng, so you don't born!' <br />
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After this group I have an hour's break before I go to the (to me) detested Fred West building to teach two or three shy and silent Chinese undergrads in a room that could accommodate a performance of <i>Starlight Express</i>. I wish these few young ladies could see my graduate group and realise they need not adopt this mild and modest mien. In my classes, you can stand on your chair and gyrate your hips, shouting 'fuck-keeeeeeeeng!!!'<br />
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Well, usually. On Wednesday, Tom was on about condoms again in relation to a task that required students to recall the items they had bought over the week and classify them. I was joking about whether they were for him an impulse buy or a staple. This didn't go down too well with Ahmed from KSA. He didn't say anything but I understood from his facial expression that he found it strange that I should engage in, rather than silence, Tom's campy banter. Perhaps he was right. I don't know. I left work early because I was feeling like death. Ahmed has probably forgotten about the condoms by now.<br />
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Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-28582838055593555802018-10-18T07:45:00.001+01:002018-10-18T07:47:35.909+01:00Free Speech Police<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-89890590247038443812018-10-06T09:30:00.002+01:002020-08-06T21:43:51.317+01:00'You perceive [s]he stirs:'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">I've been to the theatre three times this year, quite the giddy social whirl for me: I'm almost in danger of getting a life. There was the train wreck of a <a href="http://giaklamata.blogspot.com/2018/03/birthday-59.html"><i>Macbeth</i></a> at the National on my birthday in March, a competent <a href="https://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/richard-iii-shakespeares-16113"><i>Richard III </i></a>in York in June and most recently, <i>The Winter's Tale </i>at The Globe, which I saw with my niece and her man while visiting a couple of weeks back.</span><span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><br /></span>
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">I live in a small, pretty, very English, Twinings-tea-and-green-wellies market town with a centre consisting of three streets, so you can imagine what London feels like to me. I hit Kings Cross on the 26th of last month just in time for the rush hour. It took 15 minutes to get through the barriers and onto the Northern Line, where I and some 15,000 others boarded the tube to London Bridge. Imagine trying to preserve some sense of detachment, some notion of personal space, during a game of Twister. I kept my gaze downcast and avoided, as I thought, any direct physical contact with anyone else in my centimetre or so of circumambient space. 'Listen, mate, seriously, I don't want your arse in my face' snarled a beardy, aggressive little troll whom I had not noticed was sitting behind me. I thought, I've had far better faces in my arse, sunshine, and would prefer not to have my nose in this bloke's earhole, <i>but what do you want me to fucking do? </i></span><br />
<span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><br /> Eventually I got to East Dulwich where the three of us had far too much wine and a delicious lamb curry and so to bed.</span><br />
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So anyway, <i>The Winter's Tale</i>. I've got all the Globe Theatre DVDs but this was my first time there in the flesh. We had drinks in a lovely bar (The Swan) served by a very tasty young barman (don't know his name, sorry) and a had a fabulous view of bepinked sunset clouds and the buildings across the river, the Walkie Talkie, the Gherkin, the Stiffy and all those oddly shaped edifices lighting up as the sun sank. The theatre is hellishly uncomfortable, though, with bus shelter benches instead of seats and I felt forced to adopt a tight, compact posture so as not to kick the back of the woman in front of me, tip my pint over her head or lurch forward and plunge three storeys into the yard, something more suited to <i>Titus Andronicus.</i></span><br />
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">I also wanted to be closer to the stage to fully appreciate Will Keen as Leontes. He was quiet, tense, tentative, discovering something inside himself that appalled him and not knowing what to do with it or what it would do to him. Maybe the people leaning against the stage in the yard felt the tension radiate from him more strongly that I did up on the third tier. Or maybe I had the advantage and they could only see his ankles. I don't know why he was dressed as Aladdin.</span></span><br />
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Sirine Saba was brilliant as Paulina, fearless and truthful in polite, frightened, tight-arsed Sicilia, but I don't know why she had to wear a robe that looked like it had been knocked up from the matching curtains and bedspread I chose for my bedroom back in 1974 </span></span></span><span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">when I was fifteen. </span><span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">She looked much classier in the second half in black. Was this intended to show her as older and wiser, counsellor to Leontes rather than accuser? This has just occurred to me and I may be wrong. I can't otherwise explain the naffness of her costume.</span></span><br />
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">The notorious stage direction 'exit, pursued by a bear' was underwhelmingly realised: a flapping piece of cloth with a crude picture of a bear's snout and jaws on it unfurled from the flies and as Antigonus left the stage, a door frame fell over. Anyone unfamiliar with the story wouldn't have had a clue what was supposed to have happened. I've no idea how this could have been done more convincingly, but then I'm not the one getting paid to stage it.</span></span><br />
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Now in the final scene, you can't be asking: 'OK, why do Hermione and Paulina collude for 16 years to let Leontes think Hermione is dead, and how come nobody got suspicious and how the hell do they justify treating a guilt-ridden man so fucking shittily anyway? Let him stew for a year or two by all means, but then put him out of his misery.' This is not playing the game. A winter's tale was a fire-side yarn spun to beguile a long, dark evening: question it too closely and you kill it dead. In the final scene, Leontes is introduced by Paulina to what he thinks is an astonishingly lifelike statue of his adored wife who died 16 years before from the shock of his rejection of her. Imagine his emotions: he has had only his fading memories and now she seems to be standing before him again: 'Would you not deem it breathed,' he gasps, 'and that those veins did verily bear blood?' This scene, where Hermione, posing as a statue, descends from her plinth to embrace her husband and daughter after a sixteen year separation, is one that always reduces me to a gibbering wreck when I read it, and I really resented the way the actors allowed Leontes to look a bit of a fool here. His several references to the life-like appearance of the 'statue' elicited knowing giggles where I wanted gobsmacked awe, but I still had tears rolling down my face at the end, so I suppose I'll let them off. </span></span><br />
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Overall I really enjoyed the show. I'm conscious when watching productions of Shakespeare that I usually have very little to compare them with, and delivery and business I'm taking innocent delight in may well seem trite and hackneyed to someone who's seen or read the play dozens of times, but I suppose in that case I'm getting my money's worth and the more experienced playgoer isn't.</span><br />
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<span face="" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">'Tis but three days since I said I probably wouldn't update this blog again. Shows how wrong you can be.</span></span></div>
Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-77048702175799136912018-10-03T14:59:00.000+01:002019-12-16T06:51:55.183+00:00'What am I going to write about next?'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
That question has bubbled up in my brain several times a day in the ten years since I started this blog. I haven't been able to answer it for months now. I used to write about what amused, intrigued, moved or incensed me but since February this year, when I was maliciously accused of being a 'fascist' and a 'person I would not want to be taught by' for using the word 'Muslim' instead of 'Islamist' in a social media post, I've hesitated to write anything. It's my belief that the two people who lodged this complaint with HR did so because they had seen an opportunity to get at me for being gay, but of course I cannot prove this. I wrote a longish post in July about that whole tempest in a teapot, but was advised by my niece to trash it, because you never know who'll be trawling through your social media posts in search of matter they can claim to be offended by and use to try and get you fired.<br />
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So, just to make it clear, these are <i>my</i> views on the current obsessions of the permanently offended. I'm speaking entirely for myself here. That should be obvious but must now be pointed out lest it be supposed I am presuming to speak for all 30,000-odd stakeholders in the university.<br />
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If you are of <i>any</i> religious persuasion, the chances are I don't like your religion and find your apologetics ridiculous. We will have to agree to differ on this type of thing and I'm quite happy to do so.<br />
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If you disapprove, on whatever grounds, of homosexuality, feel free to say so to my face, because as a grown man I know that words cannot hurt me. British railway stations these days are defaced by a poster bearing the ridiculous slogan 'sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can <i>really</i> hurt us', suggesting that station staff might be more traumatised if a bellicose drunk called them a cunt than if he physically assaulted them. Imagine someone in a hospital bed, all bandaged, plastered and splinted, surrounded by colleagues bearing flowers and grapes, all reassuring him with the words 'at least he didn't call you a faggot.'<br />
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If you believe it's a good idea to have 24-hour hotlines at universities to allow people to anonymously report 'hate speech', I think your proposal is cretinous, censorious and dangerous, even if it did get you elected to some students' union committee. Speech is speech and voice may be given to good ideas and to bad: let's hear all ideas and counter the ones we think are bad without fear of being snitched on, called every <i>-ist</i> and <i>-phobe</i> in the book, then fired and blacklisted.<br />
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I think your skin colour and sexual orientation are very probably the least interesting things about you. Nor do I care which gender you 'identify' as. Third person pronouns are not yours to choose. If you disagree with that, make your case and I will listen, but I reserve the right to disagree <i>and to say that I do</i>.<br />
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Criticism and mockery of a <i>regime </i>are not the same thing as racism, and the fiercest critics and mockers of shitty regimes are usually to be found among the people forced to live under them. Raif Badawi is a true patriot and Muslim, yet his masters have had him banged up for the last six years for criticising the way they run things. Shame on them.<br />
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By the way, I lived in Greece for fifteen years, and spoke to people there who had lived through the seven-year fascist police state of 1967 to 1974. The Greeks then had no civil rights and no free press to report on the imprisonment, torture and disappearance of anyone brave enough to oppose the rotten jingoism and cronyism of their masters, who in 1973 put down a student protest by turning the military <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Polytechnic_uprising" target="_blank"><i>on their own citizens</i></a>. So don't be calling me a fascist: if you do, you demonstrate that you don't know or don't care what it means. Go and find out, then make sure you save the word for when you really need it.<br />
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That's all.<br />
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I don't know if I will ever update this blog again. The self-censorship imposed on one by the current climate of grievance and victimhood in education knocks all the pleasure out of writing. It was nice while it lasted.</div>
Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-55777755861089193852018-03-19T21:48:00.001+00:002019-09-18T18:36:19.980+01:00Birthday # 59<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It was my 59th birthday on the first of the month and a friend was to treat me to <i>Macbeth</i> at the National Theatre. The country was like Antarctica, trains were few and where running, jammed. I got to Kings Cross on the 28th of February on the only train of the day to make it there from Peterborough. I needed to get to my niece Danielle's place at East Dulwich, and queued to buy a ticket.<br />
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'You want a <i>ticket</i> to East Dulwich?' the bloke at the counter asked, mystified. I might have asked him for a sedan chair.<br />
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'Er, yeah...' <br />
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He explained patiently that I could 'use my debit card like an oyster.'<br />
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I hadn't a clue what he meant by this and asked for elucidation. So, for other provincial innocents: you tap your debit card on a yellow blob at ticket barriers, and are granted instant access to trains. You don't need a ticket. If you lost your debit card, presumably the finder could happily tour London at your expense for hours until you noticed it was missing.<br />
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I got to East Dulwich and waited in a cavernous, open-plan bar for Danielle to come and meet me, foolishly ordering a glass of well-chilled Pinot Noir in a glacial pub on the coldest night since the woolly mammoth died out. Then we had a home-made Thai curry for dinner and I thawed out.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #cc0000;">*****</span></b><br />
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I was far from the happy 59th Birthday Boy this March 1st. There is something stressing me out at the moment which I have to keep quiet until it's resolved and there are times when it occupies me to the exclusion of all else. (<a href="https://giaklamata.blogspot.com/2018/10/what-am-i-going-to-write-about-next.html" target="_blank">This post</a> hints at what was bugging me. The post in which I described the cause in detail had to be pulled.) So I set forth rather reluctantly for the National, wearing a T-shirt, a shirt, a pyjama top, a jumper and a heavy jacket, enabling me to roll to East Dulwich station and fetch up in the National Theatre foyer encased in a ball of ice. I explained to Lorraine the reason for my preoccupied demeanour, we drank an extortionately expensive (but palatable) glass of wine apiece, then took our seats.<br />
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This was without rival the worst production of a Shakespeare play I have ever sat through. I spent the first half wondering where the hell we were, and who all these people could possibly be. The set was a black nowhere, dominated by what looked like half a black railway bridge adorned with tall, black dish mops. All this stood before a backdrop of shattered black bin liners. Black, black and more black. Subtle, huh? Everyone wore layers of shabby combat gear except King Duncan, who looked like an Italian pimp in a red suit, black shirt and red shoes. Pretty much every UK regional accent was employed as if the National operated a quota system, some mad notion of 'diversity and inclusion'. What in this bleak nowhere was there to covet? Why were Mr and Mrs Macbeth so eager to rule over it?<br />
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Lady Macbeth read her husband's letter as the Olivier's revolve trundled her on. She appeared to be living in a bleak cell painted institution buff, full of mismatched plastic folding chairs and open suitcases spilling clothes and shoes. Other such modules appeared, each as cheerless as provincial train station waiting rooms, making a total bollocks of Duncan's line about the castle having a pleasant seat. It didn't: it was a shit hole. The Macbeths gave their dinner party in an ugly canteen with two formica- top tables and grub in billy cans. This scene did actually come to life, despite Banquo's ghost meandering round like a sleep walker, because the embarrassment created by Macbeth's behaviour and his wife's attempt to make light if it was genuinely sphincter-winking and after the departure of the guests, the fear the couple exuded was palpable. I felt it was, anyway. Lorraine was underwhelmed as we went to the bar at the interval, where a glass of wine and a stewed coffee cost eleven quid.<br />
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After the interval, Macbeth's motivation for butchering Duncan finally became clear: it was to nick his trousers.<br />
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The evening's proceedings dribbled on. In a drab room with a grubby sofa and tatty rug, Ross - here a female thane with a Yorkshire accent - broke the horrible news to Macduff of the massacre of his family. I found this quite moving: how many people in Ireland, Syria, Libya and God knows where else have received similar intelligence in such ordinary surroundings, when everything familiar suddenly drains of colour and significance... or maybe the interval wine was getting to me.<br />
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At length it was over, and we got up and stretched as if a boring meeting had finally broken up. After a journey through what looked like Siberia, I got back to East Dulwich, sank a bottle of wine, and so to bed.<br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;">*****</span><br />
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The following evening was delightful. Danielle and I had a few drinks at a cosy pub, and she treated me to dinner at a lovely Chinese restaurant, bless her. After, we drank a great deal more wine at home. The following morning she said she felt rough but texted me as I was on the train home to say she felt better and <i>had been to the gym</i>. Only then did I reflect that I'm forever 28 years her senior.<br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;">*****</span><br />
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Bonding with my niece's cat, who's as appalled at the threat to free speech on university campuses as I am.<br />
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Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-72250226285122409362017-09-04T20:18:00.000+01:002017-09-04T20:18:55.122+01:00Come Again?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's always gratifying when students spontaneously make connections between the vocabulary you presented today with words and concepts introduced in earlier lessons: shows that some people out there are really taking in items of language and weaving them together. Today we came across the idea of 'upgrading the infrastructure of a city'.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">'There was a word like that a while ago,' Coco (Chinese) said. 'What was it?'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I said I couldn't remember and asked for a clue.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">'Taking something. Taking the piss? I think yeah. Taking the piss.'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Stumped, I said I'd have to think about it. A few moments later, after rifling through her notebook, Coco showed me the phrase she'd been trying to recall:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">'...and <i>keeping pace</i> with recent developments...'</span></div>
Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-74618875013894509012017-08-30T21:36:00.002+01:002017-09-07T20:58:03.788+01:00Elina Duni Quartet<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Albanian language has held a fascination for me for some time - I'm always attracted to the obscure. When in Greece I met Albanians and told them I was learning their language, their initial reaction was usually one of suspicion, then once they realised I was not a spy or a member of the Albanian mafia, more like 'whatever for???' I don't speak Albanian well and can read it with only moderate success. I can only pick out odd words from the stream of speech unless an indulgent native speaker is prepared to slow down and repeat stuff. But as I said, it fascinates me with its mix of home-grown, Latin, Greek, Turkish and Arabic vocabulary all transformed slightly to conform to Albanian rules of sound combination. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is the wonderful Elina Duni, whom I only discovered last week, performing in Tirana a few years back. The song is </span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Ka nje mot e gjysem viti, </i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'it's been a year and a half', i.e., since we fell in love. Hope you like it.</span><br />
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Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-70420679281876587992017-05-14T17:31:00.001+01:002019-09-18T18:37:25.109+01:00A Day In The Life V<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Last month I went with a friend, Lorraine, to Stratford-upon-Avon to see <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>. Well, does you good to get out once a decade or so. Tickets for the Royal Shakespeare Theatre go fast and the B&Bs are much contended for, wherefore get ye fixed up with your earliest, ye were best: we booked in January for April 10th, which was none too soon. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We put up at the sign of the Travelodge. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The man at reception was a cheeky cockney sparrer type, tiresomely</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> bantering and chortling as he signed us in and handed us our swipe cards.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'Dashed familiar, that chappie at the desk, I thought,' I said to Lorraine as we rode the lift to our floor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'Dunno what things is coming to, truly I don't,' she replied.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The hotel was a newish building that looked like lots of places you've been in before. With its blue-grey carpeted corridors and floor-to-ceiling windows on the landings, it might have been a health centre, a university admin block or... where do I know that faint, soap-powdery smell from?... the nursing home where my dad spent the last three years of his life. Shit. Still, we would use the rooms only for showers and sleep, the beds were comfortable and you can put up with Nescafe for breakfast once in your life. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I hadn't been to Stratford for ages. I saw Glenda Jackson and Alan Howard do the Peter Brook <i>Tony and Cleo </i>in 1978. I remember in the bar at the interval overhearing a lady offer a trenchant observation on Jackson's performance: 'well, she's very good, isn't she, but she's not wearing all that Egyptian jewelry Cleopatra should wear.' In the early eighties I led at least three trips of overseas students from Cambridge every summer. In 1983 a colleague and I took a coachload of adult students to see a matinee performance of <i>Twelfth Night</i>. The students had been well-prepared by their teachers for one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On the outskirts of Stratford we decided to distribute the tickets, and </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lynette and I each took a wad to hand out. They were for </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Henry VIII</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, one of Shakespeare's least popular histories. I don't know who'd fucked up and never found out what any of the students thought about sitting in the Stratford dark for three hours on a sunny afternoon, in utter incomprehension. Or maybe I've erased it from memory.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Anyway, apart from that occasion, I always liked visiting Stratford. This time, I hardly recognised it as we walked into town. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The hotel was quite a bit further from the town centre than its publicity would have one believe, situated on a charmless dual carriageway lined with terrace houses, Subways, KFCs and other franchises with garish signage. My mental image of a small town of half-timbered houses, their gardens teeming with delphiniums, hollyhocks, lavender and phlox was <i>way</i> off beam, probably deriving from repeated visits to Anne Hathaway's cottage. The town centre was dull as beans. Everything on Henley Street was closed and had anything been open, we wouldn't have wanted anything that was on offer. Shakespeare place mats, Shakespeare pencils, Shakespeare pens, key-rings and pessaries, all manner of Shakespearey tat to be carted off to Italy, Spain, China, Japan. (I made up the bit about the pessaries.)</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not much like this at all, really.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Feeling the shakes coming on, we looked for a pub and found one which purported to be Stratford's oldest. It had a very snug snug: ten or so people felt like a dense crowd. Lorraine had a G&T, this most curiously served in a great balloon of a glass, wherein the barmaid sloshed such quantity of ice that the niggardly British pub measure of gin must needs be drowned. I had to ask her to remove some lest the gin have no effect. Is there no respect for alcoholics left? I had a pint of Guinness followed by a glass of utterly dog-rough red wine that cost seven bloody quid. At the adjacent table, an ineffably tedious old git with a deep voice and posh accent was regaling his lady companion with his views on the productions on offer at the RSC this season, all of which he appeared to have seen several times already. How did she manage to stay in her seat, smiling and nodding through this? I should have offered to punch him, and feel ungallant for not having done so. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We wandered over to the theatre where heaps more Shakespearoid tat was on offer (L:'Who the hell </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">wants</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> this stuff?') and took our very good seats in the stalls. The production was a good one if a little on the tame side. (One </span><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/julius-caesar-antony-cleopatra-royal-shakespeare-theatre-review/" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">reviewer</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> characterised it as 'all dressed up with nowhere to go.') I couldn't make my mind up about Josette Simon as Cleopatra. Why, alone among the Egyptians, did she employ an unidentifiable foreign accent? Why the odd inflections and swoops in her delivery? Why was she so like Eartha Kitt? I prefer, overall, Eve Best in the Globe production of 2014, which I have on DVD. Her Cleopatra is like a nice Rodean girl gone Alternative, and she handles the dynamics of the Globe space beautifully.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Back in Stratford, in the final scene just after she gets the old immortal longings in her, and between becoming fire and air and giving her other elements to baser life, Cleopatra was briefly naked. In his review on Tripadvisor, an American visitor thought this was a bit near: 'well, I guess they do it to pack in the punters'. I'm sure they do. No doubt every straight male in the auditorium had booked in advance and made the pilgrimage to Stratford merely to cop that five-second leer at Josette Simon's tits and snatch in the last five minutes of a three-hour performance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I don't know how well fed the citizens of Stratford-upon-Avon are; there might be some fantastic spots to eat, but why, in a town where several hundred hungry visitors are emerging from the theatre at half past ten every evening, is only <i>one</i> bloody restaurant open? We had booked our table weeks in advance at the only establishment willing to feed you after ten in the evening, this an OK but unremarkable curry house. The alternative would have been to go back to the hotel where they could do us a microwaved spud with baked beans, so to hell with that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'Well,' said Lorraine as we drove home, 'was that a worthwhile expedition or not?' </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Overall, I think it was. At least we know that if there's a next time, we'll do a matinee and be able to choose a better place for dinner. W</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">e'll take our own wine rather than pay the Royal Shakespeare Theatre's absurd prices for interval drinks. And most importantly, w</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">e will </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">not </i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">stay in a hotel that reminds me of my dad's nursing home. </span><br />
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Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-85150003114916408632017-05-04T13:39:00.000+01:002017-05-04T14:56:37.741+01:00Toilet Paper<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/618243/">Manchester Metropolitan University</a>'s Department of Toilet Studies and Intersectional Plumbing Research Unit find that school toilets are ableist, sexist, westist, adultist, classist, white supremacist and heteronormative. Smash school toilets with the iron fists of the peasant masses.</span><br />
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Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-92160432551366500312017-04-28T20:12:00.001+01:002021-08-31T20:19:00.499+01:00La Semana Pasada<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I've been teaching Spanish teenagers this past week. This was for want of other work, not the desire to educate the young generation; others are far better qualified to do this than I am. The colleague with whom I shared the classes is the mother of teenage kids and knows what tends to enthuse fourteen year-olds, how to react to their rapid alternation of reasonable and obnoxious, and how to impose discipline when necessary. The two lovely Spanish group leaders were likewise of maternal generation. They obviously love the kids and the kids love them back. Me, I felt a bit out of it. I last taught teens in 2005, did so reluctantly and never felt good at it. My classroom persona developed for a grown-up audience. He's quick-witted and funny, knows a little bit about a lot of things, and is able to combine these things to create an illusion of greater expertise on this and that than is actually the case. He asks the question 'why?' more often than any six year-old and I see him sometimes as a sort of budget Socrates but more often as P.T. Barnum. It would take longer than a week for me to learn to see through fourteen year-old eyes, and the course finished today.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yesterday I had the kids preparing poster presentations about London, in anticipation of their visit on Saturday. They had downloaded and printed photos of all the usual tourist sights, researched online and written short texts about them, and in a small room full of pens, scissors, Pritt sticks, stacks of discarded sandwich wrappers and plastic bottles, eleven kids were assiduously cutting out their pictures and texts to make posters. On You Tube they played </span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">ad nauseam </i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the irritatingly catchy aural bubblegum hereto appended</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, joining in the chorus:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Tenor:</b> Shimmy shimmy yay, shimmy yay, shimmy ya </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b style="font-weight: bold;">Omnes</b><b>: </b><i>Swalla-la-la</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'Steve, what is mean 'swalla'?'</span><br />
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<span class="__web-inspector-hide-shortcut__" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'I believe we are being invited to consider the act of fellatio, interrogating and problematising the fellator / fellatee power imbalance in relationship to the ejaculate.' </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'OK. Jew can giff me a pen?'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This kiddie-pop they would alternate with patriotic military music and funereal <i>Semana Santa</i> marches. </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Standing amid this mess and racket, I felt I was slumming it until I saw how carefully most of the kids were making their posters, and what pains they took to design them well. I had asked the two Spanish group leaders to come in at the end of the lesson to give the posters a wider audience than just me, and the kids' pride in their work and need of our approval was palpable. I stopped feeling like a baby-sitter and realised I </span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">had</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> been an educator after all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Not all of the time, though. José </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">is boisterous, noisy, disruptive and unfocused. He was a pain in the arse for much of the week, alternating manic clowning with loud complaining: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'Steve, theece compyooder iss a <i>SHEET</i>! Nothin is gwork! (slamming keyboard with open hand) See? </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>¡</i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Joder!</i>'* </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The other kids thought he was a hoot, ('</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">teacher, this is very crazy boy!') which encouraged him to be more like himself than ever, and half an hour before lunch he'd be bouncing off the walls. On Tuesday I tried working closely with him, sequencing and scaffolding and all that stuff, trying gently to bring him to heel a bit. I didn't manage it very well. At one point he shot out of his seat as if released by a spring, leapt across the room and tipped Elena out of her chair, his motivation presumably that it struck him as a wizard wheeze at the time. When the hilarity this occasioned subsided, he was once again playing to the gallery as I was trying to set up an activity and finally I fucking lost it. I roared </span><b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">'SHUT UP!!!' </b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">at a decibel level that would have been audible three doors down the street. Well, it seemed to work. He apologised, calmed down, stopped pulling Aisha's plaits, and we proceeded relatively peacefully for the rest of the lesson. I thought, sod the caring and sharing: let's reintroduce matutinal five mile runs, cold showers, fagging, detention and the tawse.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The group leaders contacted <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">José's</span> mother to inform her that he was driving us nuts and could she please advise. This is how we learned that he had been diagnosed with ADHD and had not been taking his medication. There was some odd back-story to this, a matter of his having been told that the pills were vitamins and he didn't think it necessary to take them. Or something. Anyway, his mother said she would call him every morning to tell him to take his tablets. On Thursday he was a different kid, calm and biddable, or a least as calm and biddable as most fourteen year-old boys get. The teacher who was responsible for the social programme told me today that the effects of the medication were clearly wearing off by early evening. I am grateful that I was not expected to join the group for dinner at Pizza Express.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I worry a lot about teaching (boy, do I worry) and spend a lot of time preparing for MA sessions and EAP classes. This past week was no less worrying, because I find teenagers so unpredictable. Something will seem to be going swimmingly, then one kid will suddenly turn sulky and down tools and the lesson will start to go down the shitter. Things I thought would work well would be glumly received and stuff I was afraid would bore them to death would fly. This morning at break my colleague said of </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">José 'I think he's only taken half a pill this morning', and my heart sank: what was I going to <i>do</i> for ninety minutes with a group already in end-of-term mode and </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">José like a wasp in a matchbox?</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Friday is market day here, with three streets of stalls. I cobbled together a swift task sheet: what vegetables and fruit can you see? Find one you don't know the word for and ask the owner what it is. Find a stall that sells Spanish produce: does the owner speak Spanish? Ask the bloke who sells samosas where he's from, (Pakistan) and what's in a samosa. Interview some people: do they come here every week? Do they live locally or drive in specially? </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>¡Vamonos! </i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It was the best 'lesson' of the week. The sun shone, the five kids talked happily to stall owners and passers by, had a natter in Spanish with the bloke who sells Spanish produce, and</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Aisha, who is of Moroccan heritage, was pleased to learn that the samosa seller was a 'muscle man' just as she is. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The stall holders were all very good-humoured and the elderly people the kids button-holed were kind as grandparents. Everyone was thoroughly delighted with the whole thing. I should probably - no, certainly - have completed some lengthy form detailing every possible problem a teenager might encounter in broad daylight in a pedestrianised area of a small market town well-peopled mostly by pensioners, and what plans I had to troubleshoot and fire-fight, but sod it, I didn't, and we survived. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'Teacher! Selfie!'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'Teacher, write, please!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I posed for photos, wrote valedictory messages in notebooks, and left 'em laughing when I went. Now, just as souls are said to desire reincarnation, I feel the desire to go back and do it again, properly this time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">* Spanish for 'fuck!'. You probably deduced this from context.</span></div>
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Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-27394513419148826332017-04-22T11:51:00.001+01:002017-04-22T19:44:40.909+01:00Varia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I got a letter today from Spec Savers informing me that my eye-test is long overdue. They're right, but I can't afford new specs until summer. I found myself at Leeds station the other day idly wondering why it said 'heartburn' on the departure board. On closer inspection I worked out that it said 'northern'.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #cc0000;">*****</span></b></div>
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Extraordinary title here for an article by (who'd a thunk it?) a 'femme woman of color'. I thought at first 'Chatroulette' must be a French or Belgian town, or maybe a Parisian <i>arrondissement</i>: might be worth going there to expect a few penises. It's actually a web site. (<i>chat</i> +<i> roulette</i> - sometimes us educated types are too clever for our own good.) All the usual preoccupations are here: race, gender, sexuality, along with all the familiar jargon - autoethnography, embodied self, marginalized communities. I'm beginning to think that Women's / Gender Studies articles are generated by algorithms rather than by sentient beings.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #990000;">*****</span></b></div>
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Midnight yesterday was the deadline for my MA students' dissertation proposals. I looked on the University's VLE this morning to check that all were safely gathered in. Three were late and one was showing 80% similarity to something submitted to a university in the US. I felt a familiar rolling sensation in my guts and it took two hours to talk myself out of thinking this was all my fault. Teaching doth make paranoiacs of us all. </div>
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Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-77158828876759280112017-03-11T13:53:00.000+00:002017-03-11T16:56:27.038+00:00Ask, and ask often.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This video <i>Feminism for Bros</i> lasts less than two minutes but I defy anyone to watch it through to the end without cringing in embarrassment. It's sphincter-winking stuff. <a href="http://time.com/3222176/campus-rape-the-problem-with-yes-means-yes/">Consent in sex</a>, it tells us, must be explicit and elicited for every move, especially if you're male. Note, though, that the woman recklessly touches the man's chest without requesting prior permission, <i>then </i>asks 'do you like that?' He does not remonstrate but, you know, did he really want that and did she really respect his autonomy here? Not every touch and grope from either party is explicitly sanctioned by the other, so the ambiguity is pretty chilling. It's a good job the video finishes where it does. Imagine if it went on a bit longer, and after the two of them have had further intervention from their campus Consent Counselor: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'Can I introduce my penis into your vagina?' (Be explicit about what goes where.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'Yes.'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'May I make an initial pelvic thrust?'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'I guess.'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'I did not feel that consent was explicit enough there. Let me pose the question again. May I make an initial pelvic thrust to push my...'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'Yeah, I <i>know</i> what you meant. Go ahead.'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'There. Can I make another? '</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'Huh?'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'That'd be two in total so far.'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'Yeah, look, just do it, right?'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'I have to say at this juncture that I have concerns about your tone. Of voice, I mean. Is it OK if I...'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'Dude, is this a fuck or a Q and A? Just fuckin do it, already.'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'You wanna watch a movie instead?'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Even if every sexual encounter proceeded in this stultifying manner, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">in the event of an accusation of assault, how </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">would anyone demonstrate that consent had or had not been given? Nobody could, as anyone can lie. We are no further forward, then. Next step I suppose will be to make it mandatory to video all sexual encounters, and the chillingly-named </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopto" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Panopto</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> software, now found in most lecture theatres, could be installed in all student bedrooms. Meanwhile go </span><a href="http://ccvillage.buffalo.edu/Village/WC/wsc/outlines_and_handouts/sexual_assault/wcsexassout.html" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">here</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">where Jeff E. Brooks-Harris & Christine A. Quemue of the University of Hawaii have prepared a seminar on how not to rape someone. Not only is consent fun, you can <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/08/12/430378518/curbing-sexual-assault-becomes-big-business-on-campus">make a few bob out of promoting it</a>.</span></div>
Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-61324926179851125612017-03-05T10:33:00.002+00:002017-03-05T16:47:58.640+00:00Mad Metaphors #3<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Slightly confused here. '<i>Women</i> of <i>all genders</i>' - isn't that exclusionary in SJW terms? I mean, what about biological females who menstruate but don't identify as women - or men, or<a href="http://gawker.com/5940947/from-otherkin-to-transethnicity-your-field-guide-to-the-weird-world-of-tumblr-identity-politics"> human</a>? And wasn't the pink triangle a gay male symbol back in the days before we were adjudged to be too close in privilege to straight men to be in the running for the Oppression Olympics?</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mad Metaphor <a href="http://giaklamata.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/clunky-metaphor.html">#1</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mad Metaphor <a href="http://giaklamata.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=mad+metaphors+2">#2</a></span></div>
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Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-24323527551595536712017-02-18T11:45:00.000+00:002017-04-04T08:49:10.113+01:00Deep Joy in the Peerimost Reviewal of Academic Articloaders<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Back in November I marked a literature review from an MA candidate. This was a short, not terribly important practice exercise for the real thing and carried only a small percentage of the total marks for the module. I could make no sense of it and gave it 0%. A colleague suggested this might be too crushing for a first assignment: could I not whack it up to 10%? I suppose the candidate had sat down and at least tried to organise the material, however inappropriately, so I agreed. Here is a sample of her style: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Natural order hypothesis is imperfect because of methodological consideration. In my point of view, lack of collegiality and the personal nature of suffered via the years are noticeable and prove that there is something close than the traditional argue with to the leader. The grammar was the basic knowledge of the language. There are six factors to decide whether the theory is right or not suitable. He scored more because of his clarity and simplicity in the tongue. This method is extremely susceptible on the grounds of scientific insufficiency. It is recycled theory ideas. The second language acquisition theory is more delegate of the intuition and personal understanding of pre-systematic times.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The writer continues in the same vein for another 950 words or so. English is not her mother tongue, but that doesn't seem to me to be the problem. The language is eccentric but not wildly inaccurate. Vocabulary choice is a bit off sometimes, the writer hitting upon the next word along rather than the one she's aiming for, but individual sentences are mostly well-formed. Trouble is, they seem only vaguely connected to one another. The real problem is that she doesn't know what she's talking about and is simply flanneling. Readers cannot be expected to pore over essays for hours, attempting to construe what writers may or may not be trying to say, so sod it, give it zero. Oh, OK then, if you insist, give it ten.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today, I found <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1532708616673658">this</a> online:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Critical thinking and critique in new materialist perspectives is all without and diffractive: POST/modern/structural/human/humusist/anthropocene and PANpsychic/semiotic. They are therefore nondebunking and deauthorized immanent critique practices as the/an art of formal negation, curating and dosage opening for new and clinical practices, and quality is seen as tendencies at the origin of forces regardless of the complex that derives from them. They are working/s and writing/s with and beyond the subject: Inner outer always eroding but creative dimensions of life only relationally super-, supra-positioned until something comes to matter, makes happen, and/or decision making. Learning, action, and change beyond assumptions and post-accountability thus fiction as method and school of thought: Method is/as a bridge to philosophy and here my profession entrance. I call it material eco/edu/criticism. It is of a minor type. It is a bi/lingual criticism beyond representation, stumbling between major neoliberal and minor mine languages as in major and minor literatures (<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1532708616673658#">Deleuze, 1986</a>) “restoring life to primary life” (p. 108). I ultimately argue for applying philosophy and inter-intrasemiotic thinking to foster and build educational cultures of innovation conceptually, methodologically, and theoretically, social innovation and social enterprise.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That is the first paragraph of a <i>peer-reviewed article</i>. I didn't manage to read it through, so I can only tell you that in the two paragraphs that dribble on from this one, the writer makes my MA candidate's effort look like an essay by Bertrand Russell. This woman's peers <i>actually read</i> it and <i>actually</i> <i>approved</i> it for publication. 'This is good stuff,' they must've said. 'Maybe a tad too cohesive: take a few verbs out, drop a few subject pronouns, maybe muddy the relationship between thoughts here and there to reduce the coherence factor a tad and it'll be right as ninepence.' And there it is: a grey wall of poker-faced drivel, seriously offered up for our serious consideration.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So maybe I was too harsh on my MA candidate's mini lit review. Should I encourage her to submit it to the ELTJ? </span><br />
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<span style="color: red; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>*****</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Next up for the MA group is the dissertation proposal. To prepare them for this, I gave them two proposals from previous years, names and other identifying features removed. One of the proposals was carefully thought out and excellently presented, and the other was umm... neither of those things. The writer kept repeating the same small set of threadbare ideas, and kept referring to whiteboards and board pens as 'teaching methods', which pissed me off big time. The candidates were given a set of assessment criteria, read both proposals, then in groups assessed away.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I suppose people who are themselves being continually assessed are often disposed to evaluate their peers' work harshly: they set out with a kind of 'gotcha' mentality. It was dismaying, as I circulated, to hear them shitting all over the first proposal (the good one) and then bigging up the crummy one on the reasonable assumption that I must have chosen a good one and a bad one and then probably given them the bad one first.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So yeah. Maybe that peer reviewed article is actually a model of clarity and it's just my prejudices getting in the way.</span><br />
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<span style="color: red; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>*****</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Pour faire un poème dadaïste</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />Prenez un journal <br />Prenez des ciseaux <br />Choisissez dans ce journal un article ayant la longueur que vous comptez donner à votre poème. <br />Découpez l'article <br />Découpez ensuite avec soin chacun des mots qui forment cet article et mettez-le dans un sac. <br />Agitez doucement <br />Sortez ensuite chaque coupure l'une après l'autre dans l'ordre où elles ont quitté le sac. <br />Copiez consciencieusement. <br />Le poème vous ressemblera. <br />Et vous voilà "un écrivain infiniment original et d'une sensibilité charmante, encore qu'incomprise du vulgaire"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Tristan Tzara, 1920.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>How to make a dadaist poem</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Take a newspaper</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Take some scissors</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Choose from the newspaper an article of the length you intend your poem to be</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Cut up the article</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Then carefully cut out the words that make up the article and put them in a bag.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Shake gently</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Next take out each cutting, one after another in the order they come out of the bag.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Copy them conscientiously.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The poem will resemble you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And there you are: 'an infinitely original writer, of charming sensibility, though unappreciated by the vulgar herd'.</span></div>
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Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-71732119010489707262016-12-20T12:20:00.002+00:002019-09-24T06:47:57.206+01:00Oh, The Humanities.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A while ago I came across the Twitter account <a href="https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview">New Real Peer Review</a>, whose curator supplies abstracts of, and links to, recondite journal articles by academics in the fields of gender studies, queer studies, women's studies, postmodernism, deconstructionism, post-deconstructionism, post-post-deconstructionism, and what-not. It seems that if you want to make your mark in these disciplines, you must search out areas of experience hitherto innocent of concerns of sexuality and ethnicity and any other identity you can pinpoint, and try to open them up to such considerations whether the subject matter resists them or not. Black disabled lesbians and Scrabble? As yet up for grabs. Marginalised gender identities in the BBC shipping forecast? I'm coming to that. How about sex and accountancy? Accountancy <i>has</i> to be a real weenie-shrinker, right? Spreadsheets don't get most people horny, so accountants probably save up their lust for the evenings and weekends, like almost everybody else. Well,<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104523541500060X"> here</a> we are told that: 'There is a paucity of research on sexuality within accounting studies in general, and next to nothing on lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans* (LGBT) sexualities in particular'. (Rumens, 2015) Bet you'd never thought of that - <i>proving the author's point!</i> At the Little CHEF (Centre for Hammering English into Foreigners) 99% of our Chinese students study business and accountancy related subjects, so this paper could make for illuminating reading on next year's pre-sessional courses. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Picture the reaction.</span><br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-q9TbkjxGmb4/WFkP6_14KQI/AAAAAAAAEOc/8Voxv4LpwPIy9GzM3qx0MR8K_OKACv9aQCLcB/s1600/buddha-statues-500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-q9TbkjxGmb4/WFkP6_14KQI/AAAAAAAAEOc/8Voxv4LpwPIy9GzM3qx0MR8K_OKACv9aQCLcB/s320/buddha-statues-500.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The other week a young French lady asked me to help her write a commentary on </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Wife of Bath's Tale. </i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">(I do language, not content, you must understand.) </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">She told me that she was expected to set the tale in its Mediaeval context and then ponder whether or not Chaucer had written a feminist piece. This struck me as dumb: how can you set the piece in its Mediaeval context and then claim it as feminist piece 500 years before feminism? I'm not saying Chaucer wasn't a feminist <i>avant la lettre -</i> I know fuck all about literature, after all. However, it does seem you get points from your lecturers if you can lasso a bit of feminism together with pretty much anything else. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But what speak we of mere undergrads when we have an example here direct from the top floor? </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Harvard's Dr Jennifer C. Nash has opened up </span><a href="http://glq.dukejournals.org/content/20/4/439.abstract" style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">black women's arseholes</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> for us to look into. 'I place my work in conversation with other anal theorists, showing how my investment in black anality both builds on and departs from existing scholarship' (Nash, 2014). I didn't know you could be an anal theorist. 'So, what do <i>you</i> do, then?' No doubt breaks the ice at parties. Anyway, Nash</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> reckons that black women's sexuality is regarded as 'toxic' (buzz word) and 'wasteful', hence it's connection with the ring-piece. How likely is it that many people think of black women's sexuality as 'toxic' and 'wasteful', or agree with Nash's assertion that black women are generally seen as 'grotesque' and 'unfeminine' when so many black women are so beautiful? But this is another key to keeping your job in gender studies: bang on at mendacious length about how oppressed and marginalised you are, even if you are a professor or student at an Ivy League University and thus one of the most privileged and self-determining people in the history of the planet.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Another thing you must do is make your abstracts as inscrutable as you possibly can:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">''This essay undertakes a critique of recent trends
in affect theory from the standpoint of the “human motor”: a trope that
presupposes a thermodynamic psychophysiology distended between energy
conservation and entropy. In the course of reanimating thermodynamic motifs in
Marx's labor power metabolics and Freud's trauma energetics, the essay broaches
entropics as a poetics of depletion that offsets affect theories promoting
open-system metaphors. Open-system affect theory sometimes amalgamates
emancipatory post-humanist gestures inherited from Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guattari with neuroscientific terms. In the course of “liberating” affect from
subject-oriented topoi, this “liberation-scientistic” admixture expropriates
organic matter's degeneration over time. An “entropical” perspective also
challenges Antonio Negri's Spinozaist affect conceived as a capacitating power
that encounters... ''(<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1065124">Ball,2015</a>)</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">OK, that'll do. You get the idea. Or more likely, that dispiriting verbal sludge make it impossible to descry <i>any </i>ideas, thus defeating the object of writing a fucking abstract. Now, we can take the piss out of this tosh as much as we like, but we need to consider too that people are paid to produce and teach it, and students pay to learn it. Can someone tell me what conceivable intellectual worth this pretentious horseshit could have? What benefit do this writer's students derive from being taught by someone that cranks out such <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">minge</span>-dribble for a living? And what can they do with the knowledge other than perpetuate the insanity? (For some background to this article, go <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1065106?src=recsys&journalCode=cang20">here</a>, where the journal editors manage to illuminate matters hardly at all.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Anyway, reading the abstracts on <i>New Real Peer Review</i> inspired me to write one of my own, and I'm considering submitting it as a proposal to some upcoming conference, my own small <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair">Sokal-style hoax</a>. It's no more or less barmy and pointless than these papers presented at the <a href="http://pcaaca.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2016-pcaaca-program-with-schedule.pdf">American Culture Association National Conference</a> in Seattle earlier this year: </span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sensual Folds, Textured Erotics: Centering the fat queer man’s belly as site of sexual pleasure. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Grunge Feminism: the subversive hypertextuality of the queered voice performed through the body.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Boys are from Mars, Girls are from Venus, I’ve got a Yum Yum, Mom has a Penis: Gender-blind voice casting and butch desire in <i>Bob’s Burgers.</i></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">OK, this is mine: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>Sailing By: Intertextualities and Intersexualities in the BBC Shipping Forecast. </b></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></b><b style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">ABSTRACT</b></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Using non-interventionist externalities as a heuristic, this paper explores queered, quasi-queered and non-queered maritime spaces in an attempt to deconstruct and problematise issues of self-positioning and othering that stem from the placing and subsequent re-positioning of marginalised identities within sea areas. Practices of emancipatory gender negotiation and renegotiation embodied within existing socio-linguistic paradigms are critiqued and found insufficient to account for deviations from - and challenges to - hegemonic discourses of masculinity and / or ‘masculinities’ as reflected in gendered nomenclatorial systems, e.g., 'rising quickly' or 'falling more slowly'. We call for a more critical interrogation of the aforementioned praxes and narratives and </span>argue for more nuanced, imbricated and critical connections between mimesis and affect, with a view to destabilizing hetero-normative articulations of subjectivity, and positioning a meta-stable externality as a paradigm for anti- (or non-) normative shipping inclusivity.</span></div>
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Key words: <i>queer, maritime, sea, gender negotiation, to, for, a, heteronormativity, and. </i></div>
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Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2058101016027969027.post-80849377853454172052016-11-20T18:53:00.002+00:002016-12-02T05:49:50.169+00:00Developing a civilisation calls for grit and spunk.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A group of students from China and Thailand are discussing the inventions and discoveries that have contributed the most to the development of civilisation and the quality of modern life. Among anaesthesia, refrigeration, the compass, etc., they include semen. 'Yes, semen has very big influence on civilisation,' they agree.<br />
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Chinese and Thai speakers have a strong tendency to place stress on the first syllable of a word and to simplify consonant clusters, so after the discussion I have to drill:<br />
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<i><u>SE</u></i>men Oo</div>
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ce<i><u>MEN<b>T</b></u></i> oO</div>
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It makes a difference, folks.</div>
Ipmilathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11370120491927658242noreply@blogger.com4