I can't think of a title because these things do not relate in any way.

Okay, quick rant.  And then I swear I won't complain anymore.

I am taking comp II this semester, and I think the class has one little flaw.  This flaw being - all we write are literary analysis papers.  Themes, themes, themes.  Theme in this, theme in that, how this contributes to the theme, how this does blah blah blah.  It's rather dull.  Right now we're just reading poems and short stories and writing dumb papers about symbolism - is it totally unreasonable of me to wish we were, I don't know, reading great examples of persuasive essays and then writing our own?  Doing different things?  Maybe that isn't what you do in comp II.  I didn't actually take comp I (transferring does have its benefits), so I really have no idea.

I use too many commas.

Anyways.  Back to the real world.

Okay blog, yes or no - would not school be infinitely more enjoyable if we all carried those leather book bags English schoolchildren had in the olden days?

Like this, for instance. 

Just a thought.  I mean, I know I'd be happier. 

Also, I think I'm a vegetarian.  It's taken me a while to realize this, though in retrospect there was a good trail of evidence that certainly pointed to the conclusion.

EVIDENCE

1.  I almost never eat meat.  I haven't had ham since 2006.  Steak since who knows when.  I've eaten chicken three times in the past six months.  Giving it up hasn't been a problem at all. 

2. Handling the meat at work grosses me out. It's slimy.  And even though Denny tells me that the juice in the bottom of the roast beef bag is not blood I still think it looks like blood. 

3. Thinking that the thing on my plate was an animal grosses me out.  The meat I eat cannot resemble an animal or part of an animal.  Even boneless, skinless chicken breasts are a stretch.  Usually, it has to be in a burrito or shaped like a dinosaur to be edible. 

4.  Also, animals are not clean.  I recently stopped drinking milk (Rice Dream, baby) because thinking "this came out of a cow" and the memories from a traumatic childhood trip to a dairy farm are too much for me.  Chickens are gross and they fight and peck each other with their dirty beaks.  Cows smell.  Pigs are pigs.

  

5. Even though I know most animals raised for human consumption probably live on some satanic farm in a tiny metal cage I still occasionally feel sorry that they had to die so I could eat them when black bean soup would have done just as well.

6. And, though this may not count as evidence it certainly motivates me to forgo meat - meat is expensive and I am cheap.  I do not want to pay eight dollars a styrofoam carton so I can make hamburger patties.  I can't do it.  I have a hard time buying food as it is (you always have to go get more! it's never done!) and I hate to pay that much money for something that's here today, eaten tomorrow.   I plan to grow as much of my food as possible when I live by myself.  Miserliness drives me to vegetarianism. 

Later:

My gosh.  I just went on a poetry forum/critiquing site (Eratosphere) to see what was like - jeez.  People talk about how there are too many uses of the letter w in a piece, or say that they think the enjambment is weak here, or recommend that the writer should change "limbs withering like weeds" to "limbs like weeds" because it's stronger.  Man.  And I'm happy if I can stick the right amount of syllables in and make it rhyme.  Jeez.

And you know what else?  I'm reading a book called The Ode Less Traveled by Stephen Fry (yes, that Stephen Fry.  He's a wonderful writer), and thus far it's been about writing in iambic pentameter - and my gosh.  I... it's simply amazing.  I knew what iambic pentameter was - I did not know a thing about trochees and spondaic and pyrrhic substitutions and weak endings.  It left me stammering.  I had no idea how very, very controlled great poets are; they're like mathematicians manipulating every tiny little aspect of a line to their advantage.  Incredible.  Pop in a spondee here to make the eighth syllable stand out more, then do a sort of call and response pattern with weak endings here and there.  No problemo.  Easy peasy. 

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.


Keats, of course.