No Clock

I don’t remember the exact quote, but I remember reading somewhere in The Prince that stupid men are more dangerous and harder to deal with than evil men because you generally cannot predict how fools will act.

Machiavelli was right.

Friday morning I met with my English TA Boon, for a prescheduled conference on a paper I’m writing. Boon, who likes to wear navy blue turtlenecks, was to confer with all 20 or so of his students individually and had us sign up for appointed timeslots the week before.

My meeting was set for 10 am, and I got there around five after. Pretty good for a Friday morning. Of course when I did arrive, he made me wait another few minutes for his prior conference to end because he was running late that morning.

No problem. I pulled out a book and didn’t notice til afterwards that he didn’t call me in until 10:25 or so.

When I did get called into his office (an airy room with about five undecorated computer desks, and visible ceiling rafters), we set up camp at a desk towards the back.

Here is the gist of our meeting:

10:27- Boon sits down and pours what appears to be green tea from his thermos.

10:28- Boon shuffles through a messy pile of papers on the edge of his desk.

10:31- Boon finds my paper. I notice is totally unmarked.

10:33- After glancing at the thesis statement and shuffling a couple pages Boon tells me I have a “well-organized paper with a sound thesis statement.” I say, “thanks, it practically wrote itself.”

10:34- Boon thumbs through the pages, asks some innocent questions, brings up some points. I respond with my usual charm, employing my powerful vocabulary to impress Boon.

10:38- After more boring academic discussion, Boon decides that my thesis is “obvious” and that the whole paper is “really very weak.”

10:39- I ask Boon if he had even read my paper before the conference and if he would like to reschedule.

10:40- Boon is silent and avoids eye contact.

10:41- Boon says meekly that he glanced at it and rescheduling will not be necessary.

10:42- I roll my eyes subtly, and nod my head.

10:42- Boon continues to disparage my paper.

10:44- I call Boon out. Noting that at the beginning of the meeting he told me how good of a paper I wrote and how much he liked the structure.

10:45- Boon says I must be thinking of a different conference we had or delusional.

10:46- I tell Boon I am not delusional. Because at my last conference, he told me from the beginning how much my paper sucked, and noted that we were sitting a different desk.

10:47- Boon stares at me in disbelief. I try to make piercing eye contact, as though laser death beams were shooting out of my pupils.

10:48- Boon goes back to disparaging my paper.

10:50- I leave without saying thank you or goodbye, and slam his office door.

Needless to say, everything about that alleged conference was wrong. I don’t have a problem with getting tough criticism, especially on a first draft, and even when it isn’t warranted. But I do have a problem with absolute incompetence on the part of my teachers.

Everything Boon did in those 20 minutes was absolutely, indefensively, moronic. First he didn’t know where my paper was. Then he took it out completely unedited. Then, before addressing me he began to read it. HE WAS READING THE PAPER RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. My gosh, he could have just asked for a couple minutes before he called me in and said he had to make a phone call. He could have read the paper then, and not looked like such an idiot.

That really irks me. It costs a lot of money to go to college, and I expect at the very least, for my teachers to do the minimum. I understand that some professors are full of shit, and I understand that some professors are full of themselves. But even the worst ones I’ve had have at least maintained a semblance of class. This guy on the other hand, is a fucking TA. He doesn’t have the right to blow his students off like that. It’s greedy and it is utterly incompetent. And personally, I care too much about my own future and my own education and my own life to accept that kind of shit from a douchebag who only wears turtlenecks.

But with all that said, it is even worse that he didn’t have the balls or the presence of mind to react in a way that would indicate at least the semblance of dignity and aptitude.

When I called him out for not having read the paper, he couldn’t even manage a respectable lie. If you are going to lie to a student, at least do so boldly and stand by it. But no, all I got was a weak half-assed lie. I would have had more respect for the guy if he just agreed to reschedule when I asked him to. Sure, he tried to turn it on me by saying I was wrong, but he didn’t even do it with conviction. It was just some sad attempt to maintain the upper hand in a bullshit teacher-student relationship.

And now, here I am, trying to touch up this paper for him, but finding myself (surprisingly) without a single iota of motivation. First is the fact that I don’t care about the class anymore (it sucked enough before the might grade me poorly because I so recklessly damaged his fragile, pseudo-intellectual ego.

If the guy was evil and smart I could hold it over him, I could use the fact he didn’t read my first draft as leverage and get myself a big fat A. But he isn’t evil; if he was he would have lied better at the conference.

So what’s the strategy? Do I suck it up and shove a killer paper up his ass, or do I just BS it and accept the bad grade I am likely to receive anyways? Let me know.

To end things on a good, balanced note here, I will share with you another quote from Machiavelli. This one I do remember.

“It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.”

The Arctic Circle (BBM)— Last night an international team of geologists aboard a Russian Icebreaker discovered something that even their most advanced scientific theories could not account for.

At 7:13 PM local time, Canadian scientist Cliff Rogers called his colleagues up above deck to point out a large glacier that bears a striking resemblance to former United States Vice President Al Gore.

“That glacier has been melting at an increased rate over the last few decades, but nobody and I mean nobody could have foreseen this happening,” said American researcher Henry Freidman. “The thing looks just like Al Gore.”

Gore has spent the last two years campaigning worldwide with a PowerPoint presentation to address global warming. His journey and his message were brought to film in the well-received documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

And although Gore could not be reached for comment, his office put out a press release confirming that Gore has heard about the glacier and that the former presidential candidate does indeed see the irony of a melting glacier that bears his resemblance-Gore’s slideshow includes ominous images and forecasts based on the consequences of melting arctic glaciers.

But there are people who find this phenomenon more than just ironic. In fact, some environmentalists are proclaiming it a miracle, a sign instructing Gore to run for president in 2008.

“If this, doesn’t tell Al Gore to run for president, I don’t know what does man,” said Berkeley, California based activist Colin Hamilton. “All the things he said are happening, and they’re happening in his image. Now only he can stop it.”

And some preservationists are taking their loyalty a step further by making their way North to see the glacier for themselves and pay homage.

“You can expect a caravan of hybrid cars stretching from here to the Hudson Bay,” said Laura Klugman, president of the Prius Drivers USA. “This is a very special day. Al Gore showing up on that iceberg is vindication for every jerk who called our cars pretentious.”

Al Gore’s is not the first celebrity face to appear someplace unexpected. Religious figures including The Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, and Elvis Presley regularly appear on trees, walls, sandwiches, and in various other places. Gore however, is the first known living celebrity to find himself in such a situation.

For that and other reasons, cynics and pundits have called the Gore Glacier “fabricated,” “a strange coincidence,” and “irrelevant.”

But Friedman, the American researcher from the icebreaker maintains the glacier’s reality.

It’s definitely him,” Friedman said. “Kind of like a Mt. Rushmore except made out of ice and with just one face on it. If Al Gore were standing next to it there would be no doubt. And I don’t mean Senator Al Gore or VP Al Gore or weird beard Al Gore either. I mean the Al Gore of today: Inconvenient Truth Gore.”

Over the next few weeks I will be writing a series of blogs about independence in life on various levels. I will be writing in different genres and styles about independence in art, institutional life (work and school for example), social interaction, and starting with today, politics. So here is the beginning of my independence series. Political Affiliations:

It’s election season right now, a time for cable news punditry, Colbert pun-mastery, and startlingly cheap political attack ads. It is also a time when I feel special and important and catered to.

Not because I’m handsome and charming and intelligent, nor merely because I am a registered voter. I feel important because I get to determine who wins next Tuesday.

Democrats and Republicans get lots of press sure. And they do get to throw the only viable candidates out there (other than Kinky Friedman in Texas apparently), but it is not the members of those particular parties that determine elections.

Rather it’s the swing vote. The independents. The ones who can’t be counted on to vote elephant or donkey in any particular election. And damnit, I love it. I love every single thing about voting independent. And also, excuse the generalizations below, but I’m sure if you actually bothered to research them you’d find everything I say accurate in one sense or another.

I’m not writing this to bash parties. I’m not going to recycle some catchphrase about how the Republicans and Democrats are just two seeds from the same evil flower. And I don’t plan on spitting out some garbage on the two-party system and how exclusionary and corrupt it is. Somebody smarter and more interested can write about that. All I want to write about is how empowering it is to vote as an independent.

Political analysts from Pat Buchanan to James Carville tend to agree that elections are won and lost by the independent voters. Candidates from both the right and left find themselves running towards the middle to attract the swing voters who find themselves loyal to issues and values over party identities.

In a presidential election for example, a party nominee can almost always count on the large bulk of his party’s support. There is rarely a feasible third party option that disgruntled Democrats or Republicans take seriously and are willing to back at the risk of not voting for the candidate who actually has a shot.

This means that barring insane or unforgivable behavior, major party candidates enter general elections with a solid base whose only real purpose as elections approach is to be hit up over and over again for money. Money that is used for those shitty TV commercials intended to lure independent voters.

(Also wouldn’t you’d think the DCCC could come up with something better than what crappy trade schools like ITT tech are putting out there? I’d rather telecommute to graphic arts school than vote for some of these candidates)

Back on point. What you end up with is money from the Democratic and Republican party bases funneled into selling candidates to people outside of those bases. All this attention is going to the middle. The swing voters.

So from a practical perspective, why on earth would anybody choose NOT to be part of that independent group getting all the attention and determining election winners? Party membership just seems silly.

People can talk about their feelings. About loyalty and determination and the strength of a united front, but they are forgetting the simple fact that everybody thinks differently on every issue.

I love the freedom that comes with applying my views (which change frequently) to each individual race every election cycle. The issues at stake and the quality of the candidates determine who I vote for, not a letter next to their name on the ballot. It makes sense to vote based on rational analysis rather than blind party allegiance.

When I vote one way or another, it’s just voting for the person I think best serves my country, state, or community. But when a Democrat or Republican crosses party lines, it’s made out to be this big deal. Why should it be? Why can’t it just be a person doing what they think is right?

There is no informed political thought without independence because without independence there is no thought at all. Just mindless vote-wasting.

Maybe your views aren’t as “moderate” as mine, so the party-free lifestyle does not come off as thrilling as I make it out to be. But whatever your views are, keep in mind that they are your own, not some party chairman’s. They deserve to be counted and applied individually whenever possible, not wasted on party-line voting.

The End. And sorry for the rambling manner in which that was written.