ritas kleine welt

this poetry community makes me do things that usually lay away hidden safely for matters of public safety. but since i have no more reputation to lose among the participants in the poetry seminar, i may as well start going on the rampege here. so follow along to some craziness that better be handed a straightjacket before the semester is out.

antisemitism, for example. i had always thought that we are finally beyond that. but then the pope goes about condemning himself and his church by walking into this open saw mill of public relations. benedict and his cardinals are supposed to be wise men who are fighting for a better world. but all of a sudden, they seem to have lost touch with reality even more than they had already in the past decades. how on earth could they claim to reach out to judaism but at the same time rehabilitate a cardinal who has denied the shoa more than once?!? the term 'hypocracy' springs to mind. or are they simply delusional?!?

einstein was right when he said, 'there are two things in existance that are infinite. the universe and man's stupidity. but i am not sure about the universe.'

the past two evenings i have süent correcting term papers. it is quite a dull work and i find myself always swinging back and forth between, 'in dubio pro reo!' or, 'WTF?!?' at least the students were so friendly to provide the occassional diversion/entertainment in the form of misspelled words or simple creativity in aiming pretty hard -- but shooting way beyond the goal.

in one of the questions, i asked the students to name three rebellions/riots in 19th century wales. one student was very creativly rummaging through her brain and trying to remember really, really hard. well... according to her the Rebeccas were a train company ('Rebecca Rail') that was not, as commonly assumed, against the building of toll gates. instead, they asked to mind the gap ('against tall gaps'). and the Merthyr Rising was not at all about the promotion of male suffrage, but wanted to introduce the absentee ballot ('mail suffrage').

if this keeps up, i shall have a broad collection of 'best of Kulturstudienklausur' by sunday evening.

ps. another goodie: england is a celtic nation, every celt a catholic and welsh slavery was abolished in 1833.

obama is not even sworn in that bush, #41, puts forth his younger son, jeb, to become #45. as if #43 hadn't done enough damage already, now the family wants to seal the package? first have #44 clean up the mess of the elder bush-son -- and have him followed by another 'dirty, commie liberal friend of terrorists'.

of course at this time it's just a playing with ideas. but this is when you start your presidential race: right before the new one has been sworn in. i really shouldn't have watched that amount of west wing. it makes one rather paranoid when it comes to things like that...

as if "norman the conquerer" was not already bad enough, one of my students, a so called expert (from an expert group that has only read half of the texts, but let's not get into that or else i'd blow my top well before i had my morning coffee) now probably thinks that being of Norman descent and adhering to the Mormon faith is one and the same.

quote from a seminar handout: "the Morman leader Duke
William". typos are one thing. they are my best friends actually. but this ::points to the dissenter:: is just being lazy!

it's going to be a very difficult seminar today, methinks.