The Zoo over Ambuscade Street

What would Brian Boitano do?

[EDIT] And since I don't think I've pimped it out, ever, jonathancarroll has one of the most beautiful blogs I've ever read. His entries are a delight.

[EDIT2] I also realize that I haven't pimped out the Leafy Jewelry Auction of Supreme Neatness. Just don't bid against me. ^_^

There are three words that can make my day turn really, really bad almost instantly. Those words? "There's a backhoe." *twitch* And, of course, I can't find the contractor I need to find, and everyone else is insanely busy. *twitch*

I keep running into the big, big boss's office, since she has windows overlooking the scene of the crime. She hasn't been in there yet, hopefully she won't mind. *twitch*

*twitch*

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007271.html

I heart Teresa Nielsen Hayden. A lot.

Sooooo...what happens when you "opt out" of all the assigned readings for a class? Do you get an automatic 'A'? And how do you know that a reading is going to offend your "moral or religious" values without actually reading it first? But Teresa says all that and more, much better than I.

[EDIT] As always, the comment threads there make it all better. As Kat Feete says:

Well, as someone who majored in English, I'd like to nominate the following works for censorship -- excuse me, opting out:

1) The Great Gatsby. I was raised by commie pinko hippies. As such it is morally unacceptable for me to read about boring whiny rich people.

2) Paradise Lost, because Adam and Eve have sex in Eden, thus requiring a lot of teenagers to discuss sex in front of their professors. This isn't just morally unacceptable, it's unspeakably mortifying, especially when they turn out to know more about it than you do. On the same grounds we should eliminate Shakespeare, Marlowe, and anything at all written in the Restoration, particularly the poetry.

3) James Joyce. Turning my brain into tapioca veeery sloooowly over the course of umpteen million pages is definitely morally unacceptable.

4) Any author of whom I announced, upon closing the book, "Well, he was getting paid by the word." Dumas and Thackeray are prime offenders.

5) Thomas Hardy, because he made me cry and then refused to make it All Better in the end.

6) John Dunne, because really, people, only an academian could love this man, he's a misogynistic creep, and sometimes "unappreciated" happens for a reason, OK? I'm lookin' at you, Professor "Compare the Poetry of Dunne and Shakespeare", and I only said it nicer than that at the time because I needed to pass the exam.

7) Walt Whitman. BOR-ing.

8) Any large, unwieldy, and dull-looking book assigned to me at the same time that I have a Chem exam coming up.


Now, some of you down there in Arizona may be saying that this isn't what you had in mind. Well, guess what? These are MY "personal or religious beliefs". I strongly believe, as a college student, that I shouldn't have to read anything I don't want to or can't understand, especially when it's inconvenient to me to do so. This is a belief shared by many college students, one that I think you'll find passes the litmus test which currently defines religion (i.e., "belief held in the utter absence of facts to support it.") It's right up there with the belief that professors are obligated to give you a good grade no matter how late the paper was and the belief that grading for grammar is an insult to your creativity.

Up until now, of course, students have been forced to either abandon their beliefs or be martyred for them (aka "flunk out"). As a former student, I want to thank you for giving them this chance to be true to the faith and only read things they want to. I am sure none of them will ever dream of abusing the enormous latitude you have shown them merely to blow off the night's studying and get drunk on cheap beer instead.

Cheers, Arizona Senate Committee! See you in the bar!

Except I love Walt Whitman, and loath with the firey burning passion of a thousand thousand stars Hemingway, so I'd substitute him instead. *obligatory LADY Brett! ASHley impression goes here*

I heart bibliophile geeks.