The Road to Hell...

Suffice it to say my good intentions this weekend went awry. Of all the things I planned to do out of the list of things I wrote in my last entry, I baked a cake, boxed up some books, and played WoW (but my game time has run out so I'm back to actually, you know, doing productive things).

I did, however, read Through the Looking Glass, and continued to be boggled by it. Several of my friends love Lewis Carroll, but I've never been that big a fan. It's part of the reason that I don't often some postmodern works as well--I don't do well with nonsensical. That said, there are some definite gems: "The Walrus and the Carpenter," and Alice's conversation about words with Humpty Dumpty are two.

I also read a chapter or two of Bleak House. I'm about two-thirds of the way through it (which means I still have probably 300 pages to go) and have been since May. The Boy always maintains that Dickens was a hack, and I usually argue that while yes, Dickens was a hack, so am I, and besides Dickens was at least a good hack. I don't particularly enjoy Great Expectations or Hard Times, but I love A Christmas Carol (who doesn't?) and A Tale of Two Cities has some of the most brilliant lines in English literature.

Bleak House? Well, okay, dear. I admit it. Dickens is a hack, and not always a good one.

I also started rereading Jim Butcher's Storm Front this weekend, partly because The Boy has read them all more recently than I have and keeps bringing up stuff that I forget. Very much struck by the difference between the writing of Storm Front, the first Dresden book, and Changes, the twelfth and most recent. Since the Dresden Files are written in first person, the changes are all in Harry's voice--and over twelve books, he's gotten a lot wiser, a little bit darker, little wearier, and a whole lot more determined to do what it takes to protect the people he loves.

Plans for today include:

• Finish Comp/Rhet paper. This is non-negotiable, as it's due tomorrow at noon.
• Write paragraph for the college of graduate studies outlining my summer research. Also non-negotiable, as it's due...today? $*@&#
  
• Go to library and return carrel key. Also non-negotiable, as they will blister my ass if I don't get it back.
• Office Depot. Need printer cartridge, necessary for finishing paper, as I need to print it out to proof it.
• Publix. I need food. Also non-negotiable, because I am sick and tired of eating pasta.

Well. That's certainly enough.

EReaders, critical pedagogy and no fun.

Here's an interesting article on the various e-readers available on the market--interestingly, the IPad has apps to read books from both the Kindle and the Nook stores. Also, for those interested in trying them out first, Target is going to start selling the Kindle in stores.

I've spent most of the last week not reading anything terrible interesting, mostly focusing on critical pedagogy research. I read the aforementioned Stanley Fish's Save the World on Your Own Time, read Kompel's Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction, most of Pat Bizzell's Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness, and of course, the book that started it all, Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Still not convinced that this is a good method. It presupposes that Marxist/leftist ideology is correct without investigating the dominant discourses behind it (oddly enough), it was meant for liberating the oppressed in Third World countries, and is often abused in practice (I speak from experience as one of the abused). It also seems strange to me to be using it in the American classroom, where to some extent, oppression really isn't an issue. I'm not saying that dominant discourses aren't being reproduced, etc. I'm saying that the very fact that our students live in the United States--and the fact that somehow or another, they are attending an institution of higher learning--

Well, I don't know what I'm saying. I'm still trying to work all this out in a way that's not going to sound like a right-wing diatribe, because that's not what I'm going for. Despite the fact that my fiance claims I'm a closet conservative, I think I'm closer to being a moderate. But I don't like the assumption that seems to be pervading a lot of this that conservatives are wholly reactionary and are committed to a dominant discourse that disenfranchises others. I don't think that's the goal of conservatives at all. And of course, anything I come up with is going to be drastically oversimplifying the situation. All this is simply my take on it, and I'm not even real sure of that.

So, like I said, no fun. Also, I'm now wondering, how long can pizza stay in the fridge? cause I just took a bite of mine and it's kinda nasty. *frowns*