Thursday, March 12, 2009

This Week in Stupefaction

One of the classes that I'm taking this semester involves an investigation into what exactly a "novel" is, through a survey of English literature from the 18th century forwards, hinging mostly on careful readings of several Victorian novels. Long story short, the novel is an easily problematized genre (of course, all literature is pretty easily problematized, to the point of being rather thoroughly disinteresting (this fact being what will hopefully keep me from duping myself into thinking that getting a Ph.D. in Lit is a good idea)). But, as I was on my way, once again, to the other campus at my University, I overheard a conversation on the shuttle bus which seemed to greatly inform the whole genre controversy:

Female Student 1: ...no, if you like Twilight you'll love this...
Female Student 2: Oh yeah?
FS 1: Yeah. It's crazy though--at Barnes & Noble it's shelved with Sci-Fi, but at Borders it's under Horror, but really it's more of a Romance.

So there are differences between the two big box book retailers. Good to know, good to know.

Also, while I'm (b)logging my various eaves droppings, while waiting for the aforementioned bus, I noticed a scraggly ultra-pale kid talking on his cell phone to a friend. He was wearing a Star Wars hat and a Star Wars t-shirt, and was describing what sounded like a pretty crazy hike he took in some nature reserve. He was talking loud enough that I don't think I was really eavesdropping; he seemed almost to be shouting in order to announce to the entire courtyard that he done what he was describing. Which remained more or less normal (except that the kid was way too dorky to have actually have been in a nature reserve), until he said "and then I finally just jumped off the cliff! I landed and totally couldn't move! and there were, like, these two guardian tigers walking right towards me! I know dude, I know..."

Aha! I knew it! The kid had been describing one of his dorky online role-playing games! He then went on to describe how he got the shit kicked out of him by some fairy nymph that was only level 40 but was getting like 13K hit points off him with every blow. Which is to say, the only thing worse than a dork is a loud dork.

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