1st day of class rundown

first day of school report:

the teacher for my poli sci research design and analysis class is, um, "lively". i put it this way to one of the 2nd year grad students in my seminar and he mimicked a cocaine sniffer. indeed. freely cursing and yet devoted to social justice, he reminded me of myself...if I were older and on crack. he said he only wears loud hawaiian shirts and his test for what to wear is that if his daughters would have cringed, then he wears it. hmm...reminds me of a certain high school teacher who wore pants that were purple on one side and black on the other...like a court jester, but whom we all dearly loved. our prof is quite funny, actually, but no one but me laughs at his jokes. i cant tell if it's because people are scared of him or if it's because he just isnt funny and i've adopted the asian technique of laughing during awkward silences. he freely dissed historians and journalists --multiple times i must add, at which i laughed uproariously b/c its so rare for people to completely write off whole disciplines!--as pansies who won't take a stand and think critically about information or offer opinions. he was like "political scientists don't read the news, we think it's all garbage" and he completely destroyed asian learning methods. he was like "passive learning is a complete waste of your life." also, he kept referencing times he had gotten drunk with famous scholars whose works we should have been familiar with (read the slight panic in my notes as i realize how much i don't know about political science) and said that once he got drunk with some guy and they did a james joyce night and read parts of finnegan's wake. my notes at this point read "what an Effing nerd!!" i was thinking about how i should make a video called "geeks gone wild" in which we tape academics getting drunk and then mock them..or market it to universities. unfortunately a finnegan's wake reading is about as scandalous as c-span. "holy crap, don't look now, but that guy--he's reciting Proust backward! he must be really shitfaced!" oh my gosh, i just started snoring at my keyboard at the thought. of course, i find that "rebel geek without a cause" thing very endearing. he's fabulous. he also encouraged everyone to get drunk in tijuana, which i'm sure went over well with the russian mormon girl who was sitting next to me.

we had a blonde southern guy with a heavy accent in class who was dressed like a jolly green pimp. and we have two military guys who are really verbose. our assignment for next week is to count something--do cursory, fun research to get in the habit of collecting data--you know, how many people wash their hands after they use the bathroom or how many cars parked in faculty parking actually have fac pkg stickers, etc. one military man said he had heard a study he'd like to replicate on the radio in which women said they would rather be a "10" and their man be less whereas men said they woudl rather have their women be "10"s and themselves be less. the girl across from me rolled her eyes really obviously at his royal heinousness, which i appreciated. men are always finding ways to excuse themselves from superficial pressures and simultaneously to freely put them onto women with the excuse that women are like that anyway. way to free yourselves from raising your daughters better and treating your wives right, guys. way to goooooooo.

my russian professor for post communist governments is an athletic, intense, and yet, goodnatured man (the US has beaten the constant frown of his people out of him, apparently), and has assigned us homework that i believe includes everything written since 1900 about russia and its politics. i am thinking of constructing a bed in love library. he was wearing the same zip off shorts, which are part of hiking pants, that i wore in montana. he strode about the room very purposely in his shorts. he left the room at one point and one of the 2nd year grad students said "wow, he's cute...come on, you know you were all thinking it, even the guys." she was right: i had thought that. i had also thought that one of my classmates looks like a girl who sleeps with professors, but i decided not to vocalize it.

i enrolled in a speed reading class offered by sdsu and everyone i talk to seems really interested in it. we got a mass mailing and i thought it was a good idea. and after seeing the russky's reading list, i'm pretty Effing happy i did.

well, i think i shall go read something about vladimir putin now. i have reading assignments by marx and lenin this week, too. i expect to be inciting riots at factories by the weekend.