I’m Bored and Don’t Know What to Write

…so, yeah, the title says it all. Sitting in a computer lab between classes, having finished all your assignments…You’d think that’d be at least fairly entertaining. I mean, I have the entire internet at my fingertips! If you think that, you obviously seriously underestimate the amount of time I spend online. There are days when I have to physically restrain myself from typing in a domain that I know nothing’s changed on because I’m so tired of what I was already doing (reddit).

And then there are also those days that I’m just bored of everything. I don’t think that this is one of those days, cuz I think I’m still looking forward to certain things today, and I certainly don’t want to be in class, which has to count for something…right? At least it’s not one of those days that I get bored of my music. Those are awful, awful days. Why? you may be asking. Why is it so horrible? Well, my answer is this: I always have music on. I cannot work in silence, I cannot sleep in silence, I cannot daydream in silence. I stop being able to think if I can’t have some sort of noise going on. I don’t usually sleep with some sort of music going (a fan is enough for that), but that doesn’t work during the day. My mind is too active to hear it and ignore it, if that makes sense. It just completely tunes it out, which ruins the purpose of having some sort of noise in the background. Some may suggest using the TV as background noise. Well…have you heard some of those commercials? (or some of those TV shows??) I do this on occasion, but it usually just ends with me turning the TV off because I’m pissed off at whatever show/commercial is playing right then (it happens most often with Cartoon Network, surprisingly).

Thankfully, today, music is good. I even have a plan B if my usual Pandora station of metal-mixed-with-musicals doesn’t do it for me (Lotte Kestner, for those wondering- Thanks Rob! ..if you even read this). 

And I have managed to write a sizable blog post about my inability to do anything without sound. Good enough for now, I guess. Hopefully I’ll write something not quite as boring tonight. Depends on whether or not Dr. Professor is on form today. =P

College Classes are the Best and the Worst

Today was one of my two English-class-heavy days per week (two survey classes don’t seem like a lot on paper, but when you factor in reading and journals…). The first class every day is a very good class, but it’s usually fairly uneventful; it’s not boring, but it’s not exciting either.

My second class, on the other hand, is a complete lottery as to what you’re getting each time. Sometimes it’s ridiculously boring, like one would expect a survey class about early modern literature would be. Those are the days I struggle to stay awake in class, as procrastinating perfectionists/sleep and caffeine deprived students are wont to do. Other days, something seems to possess Dr. Professor (obviously not his real name) and class has a tendency to get very weird and very interesting, or at least attention-getting. Today was one of the latter.

Today we were discussing the literary history of sex, eroticism, and concupiscence. Now, for those of you who aren’t in this class, that’s going to be confusing, so I’ll go over it quickly. We’re talking three main categories of literature through three main ideological time periods: Sex = (moderner) Early Modern; Erotic = Humanism; Concupiscence = Medieval (Christian). The three words are describing the act of sexual intercourse: Sex is the objective observation of the physical act, it’s merely an event; Erotic is about goodness and ethics, both partners must be aiming to give the other pleasure and love; Concupiscence is the sinful act of unmarried/non-reproductive intercourse, pleasure on Earth is sinful and evil. Got it? So, anyway, in a more in depth discussion of concupiscence and others (since Dr. Professor is awful about just telling us things- did I mention this is all about a group project due two weeks after he assigned it?), Dr. Professor decided to pull out (heh) one of his sex analogies. His favorite, and the one he used today, was the “Am I in the hall?” example. He was explaining how definitions were arbitrary when it came to intercourse, such as what truly was intercourse? Answer: the penis going into the vagina. Okay, simple enough, right? No, cuz when are you actually in? …yeah, this is English, not health class here. So he illustrated by opening the door and being in various positions in/out of the classroom. Of course, the angels we are, my classmates and I are laughing hysterically. I could only think “hotdog down a hallway” for the rest of that analogy. Then there was talking about how sex is the objective observation of the act and could you do that if you were involved in said act? Another of his favorite things to do when referring to how modern people react is to tell you to picture an employee of the DMV doing that. So of course, I got a ridiculous picture in my head of the most bored and unexcited DMV employee dealing with a passionate partner…and because I laughed, I got called to attention for noticing the incongruity, and I hate being in the spotlight. >.< The funniest bit, to me, was when we were discussing, in depth, the concupiscence in Chapter 4 of The Book of Margery Kempe. We were, of course, discussing the time this one hot dude came up to her in church and said, “‘Sup? We should bang,” and then left. And how she totally fell for it and then finally showed up at his door saying, “Yeah, let’s bang,” and now he’s all, “Uh-uh, sister, I’d rather be chopped up and eaten than have anything to do with your skanky whore self. Peace.” Now, our group was discussing this when Dr. Professor came by and he specifically asked me what I thought, since I had been talking about it at that point. Of course, I say that the dickhead was being a real jerk. I mean, it’s bad enough to reject someone. It’s worse when you started it. It’s even worse when you more or less call her a whore and say you’d rather be ravaged by cannibals than be with her. But that’s not how the Christians would see it, so that’s what he wanted me to explore. To do this, he started acting it out….with my friend and group member, MC. Poor, poor MC. I’m not sure anything has ever been quite as creepy as having a middle-aged professor you think is quite possibly gay sidling up to you to proposition you, very much in your space. Anyway, I, of course, found it rather funny, though I also felt bad for my now-scarred friend.

And that’s just one installment of “Sexual Analogies and Interpretations” presented by the Dr. Professor Theatre Company.