Oh those Jesuits

A graffito scrawled high up on the inside of a bathroom door in a little used lavatory at the lowest level of Donnely Science: "Never go through life without an ambition"

I do not think it means what you think it means, or does it?

"Common sense isn't, but deliberate obfuscation isn't even less."

Involability of the Body

When the health assistant at the school was instructing us how to use an epipen on a student having a reaction, I knew it was a demo needle; as in there was no actual needle, just the shell. I knew she wasn't jabbing me with anything. I also knew that it was completely unintentional that she chose to use me as her example student because I specifically mentioned my lack of knowledge had a direct correlation with my fear of needles. It was proximity, not maliciousness. She was going through the same motions she had done every demonstration for every field trip meeting every year. There was nothing overtly aggressive about it. If anything it was lethargic, a meaningless motion repeated ad nauseum into which went little thought.

None of this, of course, was of any help when she held the tube of impending doom in her hand like a knife and jabbed it, as slowly as she did, which was actually very slowly, at my thigh. So when I say I jumped a foot in the air and nearly fell of the desk I was sitting upon, I say so with the full understanding that it was a purely instinctual reaction into which no person in that room could have until that moment given a thought to.

And yet, despite having been bitten rather recently, that was the scariest moment I've ever had in any school... ever.

Many might call that cowardice, but I have decided to view it as an adherence to the ancient notion of male inviolability of the body. According to her, many men, even the toughest men I might know, actually have a huge fear of needles. According to my model this makes complete sense, since only the toughest men would feel such a strong reaction to a violation of the body's integrity, and thus the tears of fear and the adrenaline that pumped through my system like a dam bursting after great floods are only further signs of my masculinity.

And now I know how to use an epipen!

Poem of the Every Few Days?

It is a little over a week since my last (and first) post about this, yet I have been going full hog on these poems. "Ode to the West Wind" is not what I would call "performance ready", but it is definitely memorized. I have some awkward pauses here and there when I am really over-thinking the words and what comes next, but I've found that by focusing on the meter the words flow naturally. Still, I need to be able to start everywhere.

However, I have also memorized (though I admit it's short[ish]) "Ozymandias" and would consider that "recitation ready" and I am quite a good way through "Porphyria's Lover", by Browning. It's a rather dark, Gothic poem so I didn't want to memorize it during the school year (in case I dropped my cheat sheet out of my pocket), but I figure having a "spring break" time limit would help motivate me to memorize it as quickly as possible. At this rate it's looking like a poem a week is very doable for me, though I have to worry a lot about size.

"Ode to the West Wind" was very difficult and it's still not very clean because it takes so much longer to run through any time I want to practice it. I don't like a lot of smaller poems, and my migration to "Porphyria's Lover"-length poems, which is shorter than "Ode" but longer than the rest, is about where I feel comfortable, but I don't know if it is as utilitarian. The difficulty is exponential, not linear, and people are not likely to want to hear a longer poem. The shorter ones have been moderately well-received because they are said and then done, and some have some fun couplets that I can whip out for the situation ("My Name is Ozymandias King of Kings / Look on my works ye might and despair") without having to recite the full poem (one reason why I'm doing this). There is also a considerable benefit to quantity over quality (length, not goodness), because people don't want to hear the same poem over and over (or twice, most of the time). In this case I really shouldn't be memorizing longer ones.

But then I stop and realize nobody's listening to me. This is possibly the third most narcissistic undertaking I have ever initiated; I'm just going to memorize whatever I like and be done with it.

After "Porphyria's Lover" I think I'll begin memorizing as much of the "Odyssey" as I can.

I can start my own list of "funny test answers"

"How can a person have a trait in their genes but not express (show) it?"

Answer: Daily Double

"If one of there (sic) parents sleeps with a lot of people."

In a completely unrelated incident another student gave an all-too-appropriate response to this answer.

"Oh, there's a whole new bar and it's lower than ever, and I'm gonna make it look good when I go sailing over it."

Semicolonoscopy (ie: takin' a look at the semicolon)

The semicolon is a spectacular bit of punctuation invited by the Italian printer Aldus Manutius, who also invented italics. Unfortunately, while italics are easy to use (for titles, when you want to show that you're saying the word in a loud/strained voice but feel that all caps makes you look childish, or when something is in lingua alia), people are afraid of the semicolon. It's probably the fault of Microsoft Office, since that stupid little paperclip suggests it at the most bizarre times and everybody finds it easiest to just ignore the semicolon rules and never use them.

Wikipedia has a great article on semicolons that breaks down its various uses, but I'm not quite sure I personally am comfortable with all of them. Using it for sentences which are also separated by an adverbial word/phrase (like their "however" example) seems unnecessary to me; without the "however" the sentence becomes "I like to eat crocodiles; I don't like to be eaten by them." With "however" included (which was included before the second clause and separated by a comma), the second sentence stands on its own, opposing the original. The clause "I don't like to be eaten by them" doesn't really stand on its own; it has no emotive force. It relies on the previous sentence for its impact, and as such a semicolon would link it to the original without putting it in opposition to it; it is a subordinate clause that happens to be a full sentence.

This idea of "subordinate clauses that are full sentences" is one I haven't run into anywhere, but I will also admit I haven't looked very hard. However, it's useful to me because it's something we do, verbally, all the time. Think about some time you've said something and then, without using a linking adverb or coordinating conjunction, you've tacked something on the end. "You are going to regret this; you don't know it yet." If you wanted it to be concessive, you would conjoin those with "but", or if you wanted it to be a threat throw in a good 'ol "and"; both of these words are logical conjunctions with meanings of their own more than just generically conjoining sentences, and that is the beauty of the semicolon!

The semicolon is a pause; it provides for a generic, almost completely emotion-free conjunction between a sentence and some other clause. "And", "but", "or", and all those other conjunctions rely on some synchronocity between the two clauses; if they were logical statements the truth value would depend on both, or at least both would have to be addressed (see what I did there?). With a semicolon, the second sentence is a clarifier, a way to add a little extra to your previous thought without creating any truth-value attachments or associations. In short:

1. You have just said something that needs a little clarification
2. The best way to add this little extra "something" would be with a full clause
3. It has no reciprocity with the previous statement; maybe it is even a little redundant, but it has no concessive or additive value, and thus no need for a conjuction or connecting adverb; it's only there to clarify the previous sentence.

In this case, a semicolon is your best friend; it's like a period that saves you a trip to the "shift" key. If you still aren't sure about it, just think about it as you speak throughout the day; you will be surprised by the number of times a semicolon would apply, and please don't take my increasing abuse of semicolons as the article developed as a model of appropriate semicolonization. I really, really have just been waiting this entire article to make that pun.

Fun fact: semicolons may also be used as a serial comma for lists of lists. Thank you, Wikipedia, because that is awesome and I will now go out of my way to make lists of lists to use this newfound knowledge.

"Semicolon." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 1 April 2010. Web. 3 April 2004.