So I've been scoring essay exams at ACT for a while now, which isn't the point here but okay so anyway the women's bathroom all right. Someone left four sheets of paper in there which turned out to be a vile, anti-Semitic screed writting by a total crackpot. It was dated that day, the 17th of November, so someone printed it off that morning and then left it in the bathroom. Something about "the occult colonializing the Western world" and stuff about the Illuminati and so on. I didn't read it carefully, I just saw a citation from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and I stuffed it into my purse before anyone came out of the stalls. I took it because it was bizarre, but also because I didn't want it to get any farther.
The monotony of essay scoring is sometimes broken by the occasional really bad or really good essay, but most are mediocre. It is depressing how many people are completely unable to demonstrate any capacity for critical thinking (I AGREE WITH ALL THE AUTHORS AND EVERYTHING THAT WAS SAID) and it is frustrating to me how many people's limited understanding of common terms makes them believe absurd things, like that only language counts as "communication," or that "literature" existed BEFORE "technology," which would blow the shit out of my fucking mind if people were writing sonnets before, say, the advent of stone choppers from the earliest human tool industries. Also, you can't have literature without technology first because writing implements are a kind of technology but you know whatever. Whatever!
Speaking of literature, I am reading Jane Eyre right now and am about 60 pages in. I'm enjoying it so far, it is miserable and cruel and I will see what happens when she starts with the governessing and the Mr. Rochesters and all that jazz.
I improvised a yummy chicken dish for myself. I made my basic meat rub I like to make: brown sugar, curry powder, chili powder, ginger, the merest pinch of cayenne, etc, but this time with more hotness and less sweetness, and let a chicken breast sit in it. I cut a pocket in the breast, stuffed it with cheddar cheese (the only cheese I had), crumbled more cheese on top, put a pat of butter over the mess, and baked it gathered up in a tinfoil bowl for a little over twenty minutes. It came out gooey and I liked it because it was spicy but also had the bit of bite that cheddar has.
Also, last night I had a dream where people were getting their heads cut off and frozen, and that Eli Wilkinson wanted to do it. And then there was a bright purple parrot and someone called it the Ku Klux Klan, and I said, "Aw, that's not nice, don't do that to that little bird!"
Even in my dreams I hold fast to my policy about not calling animals the Ku Klux Klan. They aren't!
Also, it turns out vodka isn't terrible. It turns out you shouldn't bother with the cheaper stuff.
Continue...
