Thursday, August 11, 2005

School

Starting to think about school... and the fact that maybe I should be doing some reading to prepare myself. I can't get my textbooks yet, though, so I can't read them. I do have a tiny book about Derrida sitting behind my toilet that I occasionally glance through. I'm thinking I should maybe read some Saussure... father of modern linguistics and all that. I just don't know if we will actually be doing any Saussure because... I don't have my textbooks yet. Maybe we will just study his ideas without attributing them to S. Maybe we won't even read his work in translation--maybe we will just read a slightly more understandable treatment of his ideas. Then again, maybe we will be expected to read all of his major works in the original French.

What brought all this on? Well, besides the fact that there are about three more weeks to go before classes start, I am reading the latest Umberto Eco. And, as always happens when I read the great Eco, I am feeling very, very dumb. All of his characters speak, like, fifteen languages and are amazingly intelligent. It makes me think of how dim I felt when I was in Europe. Sometimes it felt that everyone around me was fluent in at least three different languages. TO live in Europe and only speak one language? Impossible! Inconceivable! Highly unlikely! I feel like a great, ponderous ape in comparison with these lithe, quick monkeys. Unfair, but completely my fault.

So.

There is a church in Salisbury that has a sign which reads: We are saved, you are not.

I have been saved. By the Flying spaghetti Monster. I have been touched by his noodly appendage.

4 Comments:

At 11:03 PM, Blogger STAG said...

Ahhh. Becoming a Pasta-farian hmmmm? You can recognize us by our dreadlocks, designed intentionally to look like spagetti noodles.

 
At 6:03 PM, Blogger STAG said...

Oh look Dierde, your very own comment spam!

 
At 7:04 PM, Blogger Ovonia Red said...

Yeah, I feel so... violated. Actually, I have been getting a lot of the Nigerian scam e-mails... in French! I have no idea how that started. I wish there were a no-email list for Nigerian scams...

DJ

 
At 9:21 AM, Blogger STAG said...

You might check out 419 eaters.com. A group of people who waste the Nigerian's time and internet dollars.

I howled at the fellow who got the scam artist to pose with a loaf of bread on head and a bottle of wine in his ear.

 

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