my bitches are better than your bitches

i am officially done with classes for the week already.  score.

although it will not always be this way.  normally i’ll have a thursday afternoon seminar called professional methodologies, during which a young and dynamic professor attempts to scare the shit out of me by describing the horrors of working in academia.  at least that’s my prediction.  in actuality it will probably be a venue in which we all discuss “the university” and very abstract and snobbish terms.  i’m game.

things seem to be going relatively well so far.  i’ve done more reading in the last three days than i did all summer, which gives me a twisted sense of accomplishment.  the victims:  sense and sensibility by jane austen and waverley by sir walter scott.  commence rant on waverley here:

i have determined sir walter scott to be the british equivalent of f. scott fitzgerald (all you great gatsby fanatics cool your jets…  i’m thinking of this side of paradise, the only other fitzgerald book i’ve read and one that i despised).  the similarity resides in the fact that both enjoy writing about rich white guys doing the things rich white guys enjoy.  obscenely abusing those advantages granted to them by wealth.  drinking port.  exhorting the glories of their “hunting bitches” and insisting that aforesaid bitches are far more skilled than the black pointers of their equally snooty neighbor.

granted, i am not even close to informed enough about the greater works of f. scott or the content of waverley after pg. 60 to make my argument anywhere close to valid.  but this is my LJ and i can make bad assumptions if i want to.  a fellow student claims that waverley will, in time, entertain me with “much swashbuckling,” so my opinion may change.

the good thing about the seminar that requires waverley (19th c. brit fiction) is that:

(a)  we’re studying the novels not so much for the content than to discuss the culture of the british publishing industry and the development of a literate society, which should prove interesting, and;

(b)  every week a student designated as the “cookie monster” must bring cookies.  while this practice makes my mother wonder whether i have moved on to kindergarten or grad school, i definitely approve.  i approve so much, actually, that i volunteered to be next week’s cookie monster.  i plan on making chocolate chip cookies with hershey kisses stuck in the middle.  or, if i’m feeling less ambitious, scraping “nabisco” off a few dozen oreos.

well, off i go to struggle with sir scott.  cross your fingers for some swashbuckling.

three ways rice university differs from american university:
1.  “coming out day” does not coincide with parents’ weekend
2.  at rice, saturday afternoon finds undergraduates at the library, not on the quad.  wtf?
3.  washington, dc = center of political activity while houston = center of the freakin’ sun