Loose Cans

YOU'RE OFF TO NEVER NEVER LAND!!!

Yes! OH YES! WOO HOO!

Nineteen-eighteen...clap clap clapclapclap...Nineteen-eighteen...clap clap clapclapclap...YES!

I am really getting sick of having to clean out my inbox on Yahoo all the time, which is always hovering around 95% full or so. Hence, I am requesting that all email now be sent to the TCD address, ashworts@tcd.ie. It has a 60mb capacity instead of a wussy little 4mb, and will save me headaches. I'll still check Finnevico, but would rather that ashworts, despite the unpleasant nature of the name, become the primary address. Peace out.

Well, that was somewhat interesting. I'd do that again. I found myself just spouting off the top of my head, as I am ever so wont to do, about the utter irrelevance, pointlessness, and redundance of the argument of the speaker I was rebutting. I felt so at home. I said something like, "To begin with, I would like to dismiss entirely every point made by the previous speaker as completely irrelevant," and went from there. I thought I had crashed and burned because I was miserably underprepared and disorganized. All six of us made it to the next round, so there was no suspense there. Then, as I was leaving, one of the judges came up to me and said You did extremely well. I said You must be joking; he said No really you earned very high marks. He said You have remarkable composure and speaking skills. I told him last minute panic will do that to you.

No word yet on whether or not I convinced myself that what I was saying had any validity to it; for now I'll settle for fooling the judges.

I think that made my day. Tomorrow, I get to do a subject I actually know about: This house supports the legalization of mary wanna. And this time I know for sure that I support the motion.

It is disappointing to note that there is virtually no kind bud to be found in this country. That's because they can't grow it, and therefore have to import it and cut it with tobacco and occasionally dogshit, a la Cheech and Chong. Anyway I never thought I would see so little drug use on a campus. I'm frankly appalled.

Just lovely. I just found out that in ten minutes I have to go participate in a debate I did not sign up for, on a subject I hadn't researched and am fairly ambivalent about. In short, I have to go argue for the smoking ban set to hit Ireland on Jan 1 . Which I think I can do, seeing as I'll likely be the only one from a city which already has a ban, and plus there's what flatmate Ben said when I asked him what he would do when the ban went into effect: "Probably quit."

He he. I'm set.

As it turned out, the Montaigne thing wasn't a huge deal. Not reading it, I mean. Yesterday was the lecture, which, in accordance with Montaignard principles, was not a lecture at all. Instead it was done all Socratic and shit. Because to simply lecture on Montaigne's theory of education would be in such direct contradiction of his principles, which dictate that lectures, are, in a word, useless, that the sheer nuclear force of irony in the room would literally cause every atom to reflexively split itself in confusion. Which Jared, if he would so deign to post a comment on yon blog, can tell you would probably not help with acne.

Not reading it not withstanding it, I managed to deliver what could almost be called an oration on the viability of Montaigne's system and its predication on the internalization of ideas. Because Judgement and Morality, M.'s two big "intents" of education, depend entirely on the extent to which knowledge has been transmuted into wisdom, which is to say, to what extent it has been internalized. And of course the most reliable, efficient, and clean way of ensuring the internalization of ideas is to lead students to formulate those ideas themselves, instead of impressing them on them. The latter on the former, I mean. Because knowledge acquired through lecture, through impression, is like dermographia. You know how when you wake up in the morning the pleats in the pillow leaves creases in your cheek? And you know how those impressions fade away over the course of the morning? Yeah. Lectures. I fail to see the point.

But we knew this already. The only point of my saying this was that people where bitching that Michel hadn't set up a system, that it was unpragmatic, unrealistic. Which is of course hourse poup. In any case, I was told afterward that it was quite an impressive rant, and that I should be a politician. My response I'll leave up to your wild wooly imaginations.

I report this not to vaunt myself (it's sort of an inconsequential point; the only line I was proud of was "Montaigne was rather the Benjamin Spock of education," which the professor found pleasingly novel), but only to note that I have noticed the reemergence of contention amongst the students, which is very heartening. The old familiar intellectual pugilism is back. Or it's creeping back. Having had only four classes together, my tutorial group are already at one another's throats. Yesterday, I was shocked to find myself very vocally and emphatically defending the merit and optimism of Pride and Prejudice--against which some of you know my, well, prejudice--against Maggie, the middle-aged Irish woman, who was calling it a "horror story." I won't go into detail again because I've bored you enough, but I have to say that I was shocked to find myself believing what I was saying about the love and affection Austen had for Elizabeth Bennett. Though I, and everyone, maintain that Mrs. Bennett is a shoddy character who Austen was either too lazy or too jaded to draw in anything but caricature.

We had to drop a book. I fought like hell against Villette, not wishing to read another mother fucking Bronte book, but eventually lost to the Return of the Soldier and the Fox. One of which I'd read, and the other wanted to read. Oh, well. At least now I'm licensed to complain. You know what? Let's start right now: 4.25 million goddamn books (we're a copyright library, which means we have a copy of every book published in the UK) and not a single fucking copy of Villette on the shelves. I had to put out the call to Santry (the big depository up north of Dublin) AGAIN; hopefully it'll be in by today. It's such a cool library, the Ussher (the Lecky and Berkeley are not so pleasant, being extensions of the arts bloc, which looks like a misshapen concrete bunker. Though no one would shed any tears if it were hit with a bunkerbuster), 8 floors or something, but they only keep about 20% of their collection on the shelves at any given time. Which is incredibly irritating.

I was supposed to have my tutorial on Montaigne now, actually, but it was canceled, so now I'm sitting here with another 3 hours to kill before the RomRev lecture. Maybe I'll try to get to the garda station again; last night didn't work out because they didn't say they shut down the visa windows at 5. I mean 17h. Have to get used to that.

On the plus side, I got to go home and watch three episodes of The Family Guy and then the Royal Tenenbaums, only the second time I'd seen it, on my friend Sadie's laptop. She's a very good friend of mine, from Alaska, doing greek and classical civilizations for no apparent reason, but she would have fit in perfectly at HM, if for no other reason than the conviction--often vindicated--that she is simply vastly more intelligent than everyone she meets. We get along very well. I don't know how the hell she got in here, though. Her SAT's were "worse than Dubya's" (this always gets an awed whistle), and she dropped out of high school. Maybe it's because she likes Camus.

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Oh lord. Just checked my email and found one other reason to be pissed off at the fucking library. I've had Francis Bacon's essays out for a WEEK and already they're telling me the fines are piling up. I don't believe this.

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Fun! The first LitSoc meeting is tonight at the Stag's Head. I love that every club meeting here takes place at a pub and involves (mostly) free beer. Tonight's fare is to be supplied by the Dublin brewing company, who I know to produce two lovely brews called D'Arcy Dublin Stout and Revolution Ale. I have a bottle on my windowsill, right next to Titania, my mascot, the little steel woman who once upon a time shot flames from her right tit. It was truly a time of mourning when she lost that inner spark.

Can you BELIEVE that this fucking computer room, a university computer room, has NO PRINTER PAPER?! That have to bring your own PAPER from HOME?!?! Do you FUCKING believe this?

So here I sit, reading Montaigne in the original French online because it's easier than reading the grotesque translation I found via google. Fuck TWICE.

Because this is possibly the most brilliant comic strip I have ever read.

I have furthermore decided that it will be worth it to spend the extra €30 for gear-shifting capabilities on my bike, because I'm realizing that it's rather essential to be able to actually accelerate when trying to avoid buses. We were watching a bit of Mercury Rising on the telly yesterday, don't ask why, and there's a moment where the kid is wandering down the railroad tracks, and of course a train is coming, and Bruce Willis leaps across the tracks, grabs the kid at the last second, and falls between the tracks. At that precise moment, another train's coming the other way. So he scrunches down over the kid as these very big very fast trains slam past them on either side, and I was yelling, "I KNOW JUST HOW YOU FEEL!"

Just had me first tutorial, Romanticism 'n' Revolution. Perfectly pleasant, we just sort of sat around and gabbed. It's taught by a T.A., which is not a problem as she's a very Irish-looking redhead, the sort you would be daft or blind to complain about being taught by. There are seven in the class. Three mature students, which is to say adults, Chris, Maggie, and Something, who are the only Irish students in the class. There are two one-year internationals, ERASMUS students, one from Belgium, Famke, and one from Hamburg, Eva. Both third years. Then there's a girl from San Francisco whom I doubt to be a first year, but in any case she's in for the long haul. Then little me. Who was oh so very proud when the class was silenced after he answered the question, what's your favorite book, by dropping the U-bomb.

They seem quite lovely, all of them. Quick, too. I think I'm with the same people for nearly all my tutorials, which is a nice idea. So what if I don't meet any Irish students at all?

But then you have to consider that I wasn't the only one. She was sort of a Kenpo nut, and we were all screwing around in Jago's room, which is large enough, but when you have eight people in there, it's a little tighter. And so we were all roughhousing and we were all enjoying ourselves very much la la la then out of nowhere this fist catches me really, really hard in the face. I mean, she had some left. Shit. My face just exploded. I really wanted to hit back, too, but I was sort of afraid of what she might do to me. This evening also feature Jago and myself kicking each other taekwondo-style in the courtyard outside his living room. I was not wearing a shirt. Don't ask why. And Jago's a big motherfucker. Rugby player. If it makes me feel any better, though, she absolutely whupped Jago, too. She went batshit on us. Blood on his face. Of course, then they grabbed each other and made out violently, as sparring partners are, apparently, prone to do. It was a very strange night.

And no, Mom, she didn't hit me in the mouth. Right up under the left eye.