Primrose Road

From Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt I Sec 2 Mem 3 Subs 5, entitled "Miseries of Scholars":

Most other trades and professions, after some seven years' apprenticeship, are enabled by their craft to live of themselves. A merchant adventures his goods at sea, and though his hazard be great, yet if one ship return of four, he likely makes a saving voyage. An husbandsman's gains are almost certain ... ; only scholars methinks are most uncertain, unrespected, subject to all casualties, and hazards. For first, not one of a many proves to be a scholar, all are not capable and docile ...: we can make mayors and officers every year, but not scholars.

Learning is not so quickly got; though they may be willing to take pains, to that end sufficiently informed, and liberally maintained by their patrons and parents, yet few can compass it ... No labour in the world like unto study. It may be their temperature will not endure it, but striving to be excellent, to know all, they lose health, wealth, wit, life, and all. Let him yet happily escape all these hazards, oreis intestinis, with a body of brass, and is now consummate and ripe, he hath profited in his studies, and proceeded with all applause: after many expenses, he is fit for preferment; where sheall he have it? he is as fa to seek it as he was (after twenty years' standing) at the first day of his coming to the university. For what course shall he take, being now capable and ready? The most parable and easy, and about which many are employed, is to teach at a school, turn lecturer or curate, and for that he shall have falconer's wages, ten pound per annum and his diet, or some small stipend, so long as he can please his patron or the parish; if they approve him not ..., serving-man like, he must go look a new master; if they do, what is his reward?

5 percent of visitors to Primrose Road in December got here via a search for "plagiarizing hilarious," which makes me think I should start a blog called "Hilarious Plagiarism" in which secondary school and college-level teachers share the most hilarious instances of plagiarism they've ever encountered.

Though I think there already is a site for that. Hmm.

When I was a child, my Catholic cousins rather innocently explained to me that the reason I didn't get presents from Santa Claus was that Santa skipped over all of the Jewish kids' houses. After that, I received one gift from "Santa" under the menorah every year because my parents feared that I would otherwise believe that Jolly Old St. Nick was anti-Semitic.

Tonight, while looking at the Norad Santa Tracker, I notice that while Santa has been to much of the North Caucasus and Middle East (including Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, and Oman), he has clearly avoided Israel. Thus, we can only conclude that Santa does indeed skip over all the Jewish kids' houses.

(Meanwhile, SigOther wonders why Santa is only stopping for three minutes at a time in Southern Hemisphere cities, where he should be sitting out in the sun and getting a tan. SigOther's goal is to someday have a Chanukah beach party in Australia; he lived in Boston during Boston's coldest winter ever and now vehemently crusades against winter.)

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all! Take good care of yourselves, kinderlekh. :)

This may constitute the New Yorkiest moment of my life: standing on the steps of the Jewish Museum in 15 degree air after a Chanukah reception hosted by the mayor, I shouted "this is Nebraska weather!" in SigOther's direction, and realized that we were standing next to Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

Bizarre.

Bing of Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes tells a story that may indeed sum up everything you need to know.

I have graded 82 out of 94 papers thus far.
After paper #82, it dawned on me that I was grading all the papers on a 20-point scale, though the syllabus and my gradebook both show that the final paper was supposed to be graded on a 30-point scale.

I've ::headkeyboard::ed so much that the "R" key is now permanently lodged in my forehead.

- The Bride Diet
- Swim With Humpback Whales
- Meet the New Santa
- Secrets of Luck Revealed ("Warning: Luck drives your life")
- Local French Meetups
- Find Theater Auditions
- Social Beer Pong League
- Partier's Survival Kit ("Warning: Not Intended for the casual partier")
- Support Bears on Patrol
- New York Foodie?
- Space for Grace
- Missions Camps ("One camper said, "In the morning we study the Bible, in the afternoon- we do the Bible.")

This week's parsha is Vayishlach, a sentimental favorite because it was the Torah portion I read at my bat mitzvah:


More Torah cartoons at www.g-dcast.com

Jacob wrestles with a stranger (some say an angel; this commentator has an interesting interpretation, though) who injures his groin; he becomes "Israel." Perhaps appropriate because although I'm an atheist, I'm fairly sure that gee-dash-dee and I have spent a good amount of time beating one another up. ;)

According to a "corollary" of Poe's Law, it is difficult if not impossible to distinguish sincerity from parody on the Internet.

I am therefore baffled by the following Lacanian reading of Shel Silverstein's "The Missing Piece", in which it's argued that "the book seems to be the perfect primer for children on the gender theories of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan."

If this turns out not to be a parody, I'm certain I'll be pwned by the author of this piece, but it really does seem to be a commentary on the "here-a-Lacanian-narrative-there-a-Lacanian-narrative" style of literary analysis ...

For those of you not following my grading progress on Facebook: 20 papers graded, 82 remaining.

Granted, final papers for Intro to Fiction (two classes in which they enrolled *everyone* who needs a last-minute 200-level humanities class to graduate) are not officially due until 2PM tomorrow, so we'll see if I actually receive all 102 papers.

Also accomplished today:
- booked wedding photographer 545 days in advance (NYC wedding planning is wacky)
- met with eight freshman comp students
- made dinner that involved green vegetables
- planned Atlantic City trip w/Mom
- planned Washington DC museum-ing trip w/SigOther

Dissertation progress:
- nope

Holiday gift purchasing progress:
- nope

Instances of copy-and-paste plagiarism spotted today:
- zero! (It's a miracle: they finally understand that I HAVE GOOGLE TOO.)