Category: morthos

One of the perils of being an academic is that writing outside of your project can become a bit of a chore. Just as I am sure most bakers don’t go home and decide that a really fun thing to do would be to make another set of break rolls the academic in me thinks ‘Give it a rest’ when a blog post comes to mind.

Typing makes Brother Morthos unhappy.

Every so often the malaise only strikes me after the first draft and, in many cases, I foolishly think that in a few days the apathy will settle and I can return to the post with a fresh mind and even fresher ideas. This has, by and large, not been the case, and now Brain Stab’s behind the scenes mechanism is littered with bits of my psyche in written form. Thus, to clear some of this stuff off my chest I’m going to post the edited highlights.

(This the internet; I have a god-given right to pollute the blogosphere with my inane thoughts. The fact you keep coming back is just further justification.)

From the ‘The first sentence sets up its own problems…’

The most harrowing event in a lecturer’s life is when a colleague sits in on a lecture. If you want to increase the tension, having a colleague sit in when you’ve only just returned to lecturing is possibly worse (although then I have to retract the statement ‘The most harrowing event…’).

From the ‘One day I’ll explain completely why I think Facism is a better idea than democracy’ file:

I have a very low tolerance for morons, as many of you will know. This could be seen as somewhat ironic; I don’t think I’m the smartest person in the world (although, yes, I do act as if I think that). Indeed, on a bell curve I would put myself just ahead of the median; my skill set is really pompous dogmatism laced with an air (from speech training) of authority. I’m not being unduly modest; I’ve taught students who will, given time, out pace me on every academic level (indeed, I think I would be failing as my duty as a teacher if that wasn’t the case). Being outside ‘The System,’ however, has made me realise that I’m not fit to engage in the ‘Real World.’ I don’t have the ability to discuss topics of everyday importance. Those topics bore me.

From the ‘I just enjoy it, dammit!’ section:

I once thought that my want to walk everywhere was somehow related to the suspicion of Scots in my father’s side of the family; I walked because walking was cost-effective. Now, however, I think I have come to the realisation that walking, to me, is a most relaxing sport even if it is down Oxford Street in the midst of January Sales.

On ‘Becoming Monsters:’

At some point in the past (I’m thinking the beginning of 2005) I went from being me to someone playing the part of me. Anyone who knows me knows that I do melodrama and only melodrama; I play either villians or fools and virtually nothing inbetween. It used to be that I was me with moments of melodrama but now I seem to be melodrama with moments of originality, and those moments are few and far between.

and:

A lot of my peers have become caricatures of themselves; the womaniser, the pedagogue, the politician; the size of the list is really only matched by the wretchedness of what we have become. No longer real people we exist in anecdotes, gripes and filibusters. We don’t live ordinary lives anymore; we can’t really do small talk.

‘Funny because the landscape has changed/Oh the hubris:’

I’m a bit of a celebrated pedagogue in my Department; the course I co-teach has become more popular with the changes my colleague and I have made, to the point that we’re going to be the cover of the University News with an accompanying major article. I’ve been asked to talk on our teaching method to various groups within the University and I’ve been contracted out to different Faculties to teach.

On Teaching:

As an pedagogue I firmly believe that we teachers are tools and this is all we should be. Our job is to be transparent; teach and be utterly replaceable. Our job is to educate and that is all we should be doing; this is what the State subsidises our existence for. This current trend to treat teachers as parents (and for teachers to actively take on the role of being a surrogate parent) is not just ill-advised but counter to the profession. Our job is to pass on information; it is not to mollycoddle or become parental figures to our charges.

‘Endorphins have a lot to answer for:’

Add energy to a stable system and you increase the chances of entropy. Imagine the remnants of a vodka and tonic (let’s fill out the picture by placing the glass, the shrivelled lemon slice and the ice-cubes in the friendly surrounds of a hardcore gig). Left to it’s own devices the ice will eventually melt, but slowly. Twirl everything around, however, and suddenly the influx of new energy will result in more water.

Music is like a swizel stick.

This is actually a sequel to a book review I did years ago:

J. K. Rowling’s sequel to ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Penis’ is the first truly lacklustre entry in her increasingly bizarre series of a boy and his magic wang. After the necrophilia of ‘…the Goblet of Fuck’ and NAMBLA machinations of ‘…the Order of the Penis’ ‘…the Half-Baked Prince’ simply fails to entice. Harry once again returns to Hogwarts, this time after an enjoyable threesome with Ron and Hermione in the country, only to find the perfidious Several ‘Dicks’ Snape teaching Harry’s favoured subject. Harry’s new Potions teacher, a dandy and ne’erdowell, gifts the young student with a karma sutra of love potions that Harry ends up using on students and staff alike, leading to fairly predictable merriment.

Much was made of Dumbledore revealing himself fully to Harry over the course of the book; the love scenes are clumsily written and this reader feels that the Dumbledore-Voldemort relationship that appears in flashbacks was unnecessary and hastily done (although it does show that Dumbledore has a things for orphans; make of that what you will).

From the ‘Have you worked out that I don’t like Objectivists’ folder:

I’m not fond of Libertarians in general, although I do respect some (read: few) of their intuitions. The Randians, however, get no sympathy from me whatsoever. I’m not sure that they mean to act as religious zealots (indeed, I would imagine that they would be horrified by the suggestion) but Objectivists, with their character worship of Ayn Rand, one of the last century’s dullest writers, would most resemble a Roman Catholic’s devotion to the Pope… except that Catholic’s, by and large, ignore the Popes for the out-moded fuddy-duddies that they tend to be.

Still, blind devotion to an author doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person. I don’t dislike goths due to their insistence that Anne Rice is worth reading. I pity them, just as I pity anyone who decides to read a Poppy Z. Brite novel (the short stories are another matter entirely). No, it’s the insistence that Rand’s philosophy has real world relevance. Well, that and the claim that Rand’s aphoristic style is philosophy.

Let me put this into perspective. Philosophy is a dialectical discipline in which we trade and develop ideas. One of our chief virtues is the ability to be wrong and admit to that fact. Objectivism, however, is a dogmatic belief system best analogised with a Jack Chick tract. I don’t whether Objectivists think that it is immoral to show dissent from the official view or whether their intellectual poverty is so great that they have to toe the party line, but such strict adherence to a distinctly impoverished ideology isn’t philosophy. I suspect that what appeal Objectivism has is psychological; if you think being a prick is a good thing then Objectivism gives you nice variety of shallow reasons to do so.

On London:

London; named after the Georgian’s third favourite sexual postion, is a city. Not just a city, but a city with people in it, and what a people they are. From the local cobbler (who usually happens to be your landlord) to the halal butcher (whose son probably supplies Class Bs to your landlord), London is exactly just unlike any other part of England. For one thing, it’s not actually English. Although a large part of the population is indeed native Anglo-Saxon an almost equal number of people are Johnny Foreigners just like me. We swamp London; we work behind the counters, we serve the coffee and do all the jobs that the English won’t touch. We are London’s cleaners, its servicers and its prison inmates.

and:

But don’t think that London is just malacious Cockney racism; there is a dark and insidious side to this town as well.

From the ‘Actually, this more accurately describes Londoners’ category:

I don’t know if you know the English. They had an Empire at some time and apparently a lot of our cultural identity came from them. They also have a tendency to start conversations with ‘I’m not a racist, but…’ which, as you know, means that the next statement is likely to be a gross over-generalisation (exactly like this one).

Hmm… Edited highlights; more like concentrated banality.

A best friend of mine used to come into Uni almost every day in his bathgown. As he lived in Grafton it was just naturally assumed that he got up, showered and then wrapped up warm in his gown before attending class. A few years back I started a tradition in my flat of putting on my gown as soon as I enter the house; my argument was that it was a) comfortable and b) it stopped the cat’s hair from infiltrating my clothes.

Flash forward to the now. My current employment (well, one of the many employment situations I find myself in) finds me living in the bowels of the Ivory Pagoda, down where the students lurk. I’m not particularly adverse to students; I do teach them after all, but I’ve never taught them in my bathgown and have no real interest in doing so (although a colleague is still looking for a legitimate reason to be able to remove his trousers in class). In return for my sartorial splendour I expect students to, well, dress nicely when they are being taught. I’m not asking them to indulge my current fetish of denim miniskirts (gray, preferably) and polo shirts but rather to maintain a level of civilised dress that doesn’t mean wearing your pyjamas.

Which I am seeing an awful lot of at the moment.

It might be that the University of Auckland is currently suffering from exams. Our students, worried about their futures, aren’t really thinking about what clothes they have slung on as they hurry in. Still, seeing someone in a complete pink tracksuit with matching overcoat makes me think that there is design, not worry, at the heart of this visual problem.

I have what I consider to be a healthy disrepect for students. It is my job to educate them and this I do. I will organise aegrotats and compassionate considerations for them, I will set up alternate test days and even write supplementary exam questions all to make sure that they get the best possible education and assessment from me. During breaks in class I will talk to them; if they accost me on the street after a course has finished I will even pretend to remember who they are and use my cold reading skills to make it look as if I did pay attention to them in those aforementioned breaks.

I just don’t actually care for them. Nor do I think I should. Teachers are cogs in the machine; we take input, produce output and repeat until we are broken. Students have lives before us and will have lives after us; why get in the way of that process? Teachers, at best, pause time for an individual. We live our lives doing the same thing over and over again, with occassional new material thrown in to ensure that our administrating cousins think we’re still with the pedagogical programme.

This is not to say that I haven’t had proteges. I just don’t like them to be dependent on me.

And, if they are going to be in my line of sight, I want them properly dressed. I don’t care that they have exams, or that they come from weird middle-class families with blood disorders. I don’t even care that they are the proxy patron of the Vice Chancellor. I expect them to dress like normal people.

In gray denim miniskirts and polo shirts.

Including the men.

Those of you who remember watching ‘The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin’ (Jack, I’m staring at you) will know that Reggie was always exactly thirteen minutes late to work, mostly due to signal failures. Having become a regular Tube user (I have the blackened fingernails to prove it) I’ve come to appreciate just how fine a service British Rail provides.

Case in point: Cardiff Bus Service.

Generally bad. Bus drivers don’t seem to want you as a customer so tell you to go to another ‘more appropiate’ stop, which turns out not only to go in another direction entirely but is also at the opposite end of the terminal to the next bus you will be directed to. Drivers also promise to tell you when to get off; they are lying and then deny all knowledge of that conversation when you get to the end of the route.

Venezia Vaporetto: When you board the waterbus you are guaranteed of getting to your chosen location at a speed somewhat slower than crawling, although for some destinations (like Murano and La Guidecca) swimming there is your only other option. However, getting on the boat is difficult, if not because queuing is a foreign idea to the average Italian then because the boats are generally crowded with passengers. Passengers who you have seen go past on the very same boat, unable to get off due to the crowding that denies you ingresso.

Roma Metro: The underground suffers from the same problems as the Venezia Vaporetto. The buses suffer from overly friendly men who either want to frisk your pockets or just want to feel your bum. Still, the most disturbing example of the latter was in the Vatican Post Office. He wasn’t even a priest!

Lake District Bus Service: The bus you want will break down just before picking you up. The replacement bus will take you to your intended stop. Your intended stop will turn out to be seven miles away from where you want to go. You will never see another bus again in the three hours of walking in the rain that follows.

Parigi Metro: Do not speak English to any attendants. They will deliberately send you off in the wrong direction, laughing silently as you trundle off, luggage in hand, towards some darkened pit of Paris. Bizarrely enough, they will be Japanese.

So, the Underground. It may have rotating line failures that are timed perfectly with my needing to get to Stansted Airport but its still a cut above the rest of human civilisation when it comes to efficency and speed.

Josh usually posts this stuff, but here’s some sage advice from the Kung Fu Monkey.

But let’s not get distracted. Point is — questionable hook-ups. We, as ordinary citizens, all know how we get out of this: you stop returning the crazy person’s calls. We promise never to bring it up when drinking. Several years from now, when everything’s scabbed over the two of us can joke about our mutual lapses in judgement while sharing a fine Rolling Rock beverage.

Don’t return their calls on Tuesday. It’ll suck for a while, and they may bomb Iran to get your attention, and you’ll get lots of screaming and crying about how they’re the only ones who love you and can protect you from Osama and the gays, but you dig in, man up, come over and watch a few baseball games,and ride it out. You’ll probably have to hang tough through 2008, when they have that fake rehab “No baby, I’m okay now, come with me to group” bullshit going on. Don’t fall for it. Cra. zy.

Then one day — one day soon, I promise — you find you’ve gone and gotten your party back from the crazy people, and you and I can go back to arguing about mimimum wage and universal health care and tax rates on millionaires like civilized countries do.

Most keen observers will have noticed that Jack and I have wildly different philosophies on how we should treat students. I imagine that Jack is the matronly Aunt Fanny whilst I am the rakish Uncle Quentin (and boy, am I getting sick and tired of being kidnapped by those pesky foreign nationals). Which is probably neither here nor there, but it’s all come to a head today.

For today I am marking exam scripts.

I am not a kind marker; if I’m vacillating between giving a script a B+ or an A- I go for the lower grade. If I’m vacillating then obviously the answer wasn’t good enough to get that higher grade. I do think I am a fair marker and I know I’m a consistent one; if one type of answer gets a 17 from me then anything highly similar will also get a 17. In my first semester of marking I quickly developed the ability to not note whose script I am marking because, despite my non-caring exterior, I know an awful lot about the academic and personal situations of my students. These things can sway you, so it’s best not to take them into account; if a student’s circumstances should be taken into consideration when you’re marking then the appropriate channels must be gone through (and believe me, asking someone for proof of a death in the family in re an aegrotat is not fun).

I’ve always thought that the worse aspect of teaching is the assessment system. Essay’s are a bad form of assessment as they don’t test recall and exams/tests are a bad form of assessment because they only test short term recall. Open book tests seem to rest upon the abiliy of a student to use an index and take-home assignments often test the ability of a student to form social groups where one student can copy another. Many of these skills are useful but they don’t tend to reveal to the teacher that anything that they have taught the student has really sunk in. Frankly, I suspect that the only form of assessment I would be happy with would be ringing up a former student out of the blue and asking them random questions.

“So, Jerome, good to hear that your Mother is doing well. Which reminds me, what is the distinction between a lawlike statement and a law of nature again?”

Still, all this being said, I like exam marking. It’s relatively quick (the answers are succinct), you tend to see whether the student can string together a coherent argument and you don’t have to write all that many comments in the script (unlike, say, essays, in which I can write speils longer than the work I am marking).

Exams are, I suppose, as close as I can get to my preferred assessment system. The students don’t know what the questions are before they enter the examination room and they have mere minutes to contemplate and answer them. Okay, they’ve probably memorised whatever notes they took, but a good exam question requires them to link two separate ideas into one glorious whole. When I read the answer of a student who has got it the mark it will receive is obvious, and that is a good feeling.

Still, I’d prefer to be able to entrap students.

“Hey, Luce, didn’t expect to find you working here. Before you remove any more pieces of clothing, riddle me this: is Mackie’s notion of the INUS condition a more or less sophisticated version of Lewis on Causation? Oh, and I’ve got to say I’m liking those breasts.”

They say that one of the first sign of brain cancer is detecting scents that aren’t there. For example, at the moment I can smell the lolly jar from my grandmother’s house. She’s been dead for about five years and the lolly jar is probably festering away beneath the landfill that used to be the Devonport Tip. I don’t even think they make the brand of toffees my Granny used to stock. Yet, despite the fact that I am seated at a computer in Auckland’s largest library I can smell the lolly jar.

It’s a very comforting feeling.

Scent play a large role in my psyche. Like some other humans I can small pheromones. I know the exact scent that attracts me to people (which seems to be given off my certain damaged pyschological individuals) and the scent that is fear and/or uncertainty makes people ripe targets for my own special brand of psychological domination.

Smells, in general, however, are important in re my memory. I’m not sure why I think this but I trust my memory of smells and sounds much more than my visual memory. I have certain memories I know are false such as a conversation with a friend whilst walking down a particular garden path (which didn’t exist by the time I met the friend in question). Smells, however, and to a lesser extent, sounds (not coversations, mind), seem much more durable as memories, less open to corruption. My sense of taste seems similar; I can remember quite vividly the first taste I ever had of a fresh tomato. I hated it. Even now I can recall the taste and, whilst I was in the UK, I tested that memory. Perfect fidelity (giving or taking the slight variations you would expect).

So, when that smell of the lolly jar, or the peculiar scent that you get off the recently deceased, appears without warning I feel oddly comforted because these things signify memories, and even if they are memories I would rather not experience at least the sensation has simultude.