My class is up!
Category: Life
What’s a writing blog without a boring account of the blogger’s life and thoughts about marriage, children, and cats?
Random stuff I’ve been up to
The UCSB Education Abroad Program put this in their brochure.
Nonfiction — Mendengar Saya Menguam
Sumatra, Indonesia
We can’t afford color blinds on our windows, not with kids in Disney shirts waving from the roadside, young women stooped by rubber trees, old men smiling with malachite teeth. There is the International conglomerate and the poor indigenous and all that separates us are barbed-wire fences and fat bank accounts. I spend my day learning U.S. History; my nights playing soccer with a ball of teak root. Some locals drop a hornet nest near my head. I think 9/11 occurred in Kuala Lampur.
Tianjin, China
The skies are gray. There are no pigeons but deadly chemicals disguised as bread crumbs. We can’t let the pets outside – I wonder if it is because of the poison or the markets where vendors line stalls with freshly-gutted dogs. The Chinese see us less as bourgeois, more as barges. Strangers call their friends over to laugh at our large feet, our looming height. A business man wants my picture by a bull statue’s testicles. Poverty is swept behind skyscrapers and the larder of cranes. Our U.S. passports can only get us far. From there on it is knowing which barbershops cut your hair and which are brothels.
Lecheria, Venezuela
We live in rich man prison – a network of mansions connected by a network of canals. Transport includes travel-by-yacht. I’ll take the boat to the Mall, tie her up, watch a film with English subtitles. I’ll take her to open water and fish like Ernest Hemingway. We say what we want about Hugo Chavez. The taxi drivers never agree; they think they’re monitored. Nothing can stop the wanton – not the insurgents, not the kidnappers who take our neighbors, not the pirates asking for agua with pistols behind their backs, not the man collapsed in the Wendy’s drive-through with a bullet in his shoulder.
Santa Barbara, California
I’m idling incognito, an exclusive ooze, wasting away with a cynical smile. There are scars on my legs from jungle hornets, a little red book full of Mao. I think in languages I never use. I walk along landing strips and thumb airplanes and refuse to play tricks on Gimpel. I don’t belong. I don’t belong. I don’t know where this is going.
DTM
Dinosaur Time Machine, my film production company and freelance writing agency. Headquarters: Barbados (seriously). It was unsuccessful.
A letter from Barbados to my friend, Stilgard the Warren-hearted
Greetings my astute and totally manly companion,
As I sit on this quite comfortable and well-cushioned lounge chair in my villa’s mezzanine, overlooking a salmonella sea that’s almost lapping against my toes, it’s difficult to retain a humble and God-seeking perspective. Luckily, my humility is about the size of a very small planet. And again, less luck and more awesomeness, it’s difficult to lower my gaze from the sublime and write this note. But by some astrological direction, although more perhaps due to the tenebrific nature of the setting sun, which darkens my tapestry, I will peruse your person for grammatical errors. And write.
Pertaining my drinking habits (and I do say habits deliberately), there’s a Stygian sting to your condemnation. Mountebank! Marauder! You… dare I say it? Friend. I have been at the drink, indeed. However, do not fret! I am Charles Bukowski only in spirit, not through spirits. I am Lord Byron only in sexcapades. I am Sir Francis Richard Burton only in my ability to speak to animals when intoxicated.
Buffoonery aside, I do do (ha!) want to speak to you at some point. Perhaps by dint of Skype, or Facebook, or auxiliary technology. Ad interim, letters will suffice. There’s a cough of Kafka in all of this, which arouses me. I await correspondence from my chums of old. Be wary of venereal warts.
Most ungratefully,
Desmond White
We need people
This was fun.
I miss Rob Wallace.
College Class Ideas
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LITERATURE CS 15 Section 1:
“Talkin About My iGeneration”
The Millennial generation will be fully explored in this course focusing on how art & poetry is fabricated through the Internet and other media technologies. Exercises will include remixing youtube videos to create spontaneous narrative, concocting words for Urban Dictionary, and generating new memes. Every student is expected to create and utilize their own blog and twitter accounts.
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LITERATURE CS 16 Section 2:
“Mona Lisa in the Closet”
I don’t really know what this class will be about. But it sounds awesome.
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LITERATURE CS 8 Section 1:
“A Cough of Kafka”
Using letters as a mode of writing.
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LITERATURE CS 12 Section 5:
“Censorship in Poetry: Behind the Veil”
What does crossing out a word do to a poem? Unfortunately, censorship decisions can hinge on contemporary values of morality, proper literature, and value. This course will focus on didactic theories of “thou-shalt-not write such,” including a private eye examination of famous rough drafts and their revisions due to taboo affairs.
Required Reading
- Plato’s Republic
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LITERATURE CS 5 Section 1.333:
“The Class That Jumped the Shark”
An Insider Look at troupes, cliches, story patterns, and other tricks of the trade. Although “the cliche” has recieved a negative connotation in today’s scholarship (for good reason!), the art of recycling literary themes, motifs, and patterns remains a useful tool to the useful writer. This course hates to break it to you, but tropes aren’t all bad. And knowing about them doesn’t cheapen the industry.
Required Reading
- Joseph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces
- Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat!
- TV Tropes
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LITERATURE CS 4 Section 007:
“Plastered with Plath”
Alternative Course Title: Shots to Sylvia, then More Shots!
We’ll get drunk and read our favorite female authors.
Required Reading:
- Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice
- Edna Ferber’s So Big
- Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights
- Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
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LITERATURE CS 5 AREA 51:
“Writing For Hustler Magazine”
It’s in the course title.
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LITERATURE CS 1 Section 34:
“March of the Witch Hunters”
This course will conduct an inquisitive inquiry into the magical world of witches and wizardry. First, we’ll begin with Medea, who’s nature was “more bestial than Scylla, the Tuscan monster.” Then we’ll examine St. Anthony of the Desert, the Inquisition, the New England Trials of 1690, and folk culture shamanism. Finally, our course will conduct a search for modern-day spell books and attempt its own magical productions. Is witchery trickery or heresy? Illusion or reality? We’ll find out!
Required Reading:
- Heinrich Institoris’ Malleus Maleficarum
- Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens
- Paul Huson’s Mastering Witchcraft
- Dungeons & Dragons’ Spellbook Compendium
Comic Con 2010
As I watched from afar, Gandalf stood before the entrance to Comic-Con, stuck his staff defiantly into the ground, and shouted “Thou Shalt Not Past!” The on-coming nerds passed him anyway and he dropped his head crestfallen. Later, a Jedi shouted “Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope!” before being consumed by mobs of bag-toting zombies.
“Oh heinous dodecahedron gods,” a geek exclaimed. “We’re at Comic-Con.”
Comic-Con indeed. How awesome art thou Comic-Con? Awesomer than your Mom, doth Comic-Con reply. Never have I seen so many nerds, mega-nerds, hunchbacks and nerds. To describe it as nerd mecca doesn’t do it justice. Nerdvana? The Nerdiverse? Anyone who’s anybody to anyone to anything in geekistory was accounted for this sunny San Diego weekend… even the dead guys. It was nerdageddon.
To spoil some spoilers: Joss Wheldon’s directing The Avengers (woot!), Mark Ruffalo is Hulk, and they’re still letting M. Night Shyamalan make movies…? Plus Tron 2, Die Hard 5 (with Willis), Brad Pitt in World War Z, another Haunted Mansion and another Resident Evil (meh…), Cowboys & Aliens (which I’ve been anticipating 4-forevs) and The Walking Dead as a TV Show are all in our immediate drooling future.
I wanted to visit the Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World showcase, but my comic companion, dressed as Gideon from Scott Pilgrim and flirting with all the purple-haired chicks with hammers, insisted I read the damn books first. Then I ran into Matthew Fox and Daniel Dae Kim from LOST, and the entire cast of FRINGE, and the creators of The Venture Bro’s (including Patrick “Brock Samson” Warburton), and didn’t mind missing out.
But the worst part “Highlight of the Convention!” was a Webcomics Lightning Round, during which Scott Kurtz (PvP), Robert Khoo (the third guy from Penny Arcade; yes, there’s a third guy), and Brad Guigar (Evil, Inc) discussed furries. I mean Webcomics. Webcomics. The Q&A focused on creative and business aspects in Webcomic design. Amidst the awesomeness, some bearded ass in Sith robes made an off-hand comment during the sesh that the crowd was only there for a subsequent LOST panel, which Scott Kurtz turned into a world of hurt for the poor Sith bastard.
Kurtz: Jack dies in the bamboo field by the freaking dog!
Stupid Darth Asshole: Yeah, but uh… my question is-
Kurtz: By the way, the Dharma Initiative? Completely FUCKING irrelevant.
Afterwards, I picked up How to Make Webcomic, had all the authors sign it (suhweet), and split. Comic-Con was MANacular, my weekend was great, and – oh, whoa, whooooa, before I sign off, I need to mention one last little diddy: Tessa Stone’s Hanna is Not a Boy’s Name. I found her paranormal comedy (what she calls “sugarcoated horror”) right before Comic-Con, was deeply entertained, then ran into her in the Webcomic Artists’ section. Let’s just say she’s totally awesome.
SBCE Proposal—The Forum, a Traditional Speakeasy
Epicurus and Plato
Plato’s Academy imagined education as serving man in one crucial way: in preparing one’s occupation to society. His systematic approach did a lot of things right. Adapting to society is generally advantageous to one’s survival, and an education that helps you learn to adapt is only logical. However, Plato was also missing one crucial aspect of social enculturation – and that’s that society needs life to exist, while life doesn’t need society at all.
Where Plato’s Academy was architecture, Epicurus’ s Garden was a landscape. Epicurus, a Greek philosopher who set up his own school outside Athens, came up with an egalitarian philosophy to counter Plato. He believed in learning for the pleasure of knowledge, not as a means to social success. Education could be both robustly intellectual and hedonistically gratifying. Post-modern attempts at re-creating Epicurus’ Garden have been remarkably successful, such as the Universite Populaire in Caen, France. Apparently the contemporary student doesn’t have to be stuck in academic rigor mortis to become stalwart intelligentsia…
The Forum, or the Proposal Stage
My proposal would be an educational forum dedicated to the Epicurean ideal context for dialogue. This forum would be a free event, open to the entire Santa Barbara proletariat (and aristocracy), and would be delivered from a performance stage far removed from the University campus. The emphasis would be on erudition through passion, and not as compulsory prerequisites to life.
The Forum would be split into two parts: a series and a final “lecture symposium.” The Series will be held every Wednesday night at 8 PM at 6504 Madrid Rd, Apt H, Isla Vista, and will discuss dialectic subject material to be determined by inquisitive participants. These meetings will open dialogue on philosophy, psychology, art, and any other subject of concrete or abstract design; backed-up by open discussion of ideas and themes. Basically, this half of The Forum will model Plato’s Academy, with problems posed and contemplated during weekly congregation.
The second part of The Forum, during the 8th week of Spring Quarter, will be a symposium, or short lecture series (for a better perspective, look at TED), given by professors, grad students, and undergraduate instructors who have something to contribute that is of great personal interest to them. I imagine the event lasting an hour, with lectures preceding an introduction to The Symposium (delivered by myself) during which I will address the debate more deeply. The Symposium lectures will be timed at about fifteen minutes each, with 5-10 minute “open mics” every three talks, during which audience members can come up on-stage and share something that they enjoy.
Examples of topics would be “neuroplasticity” and how the philosophy of psychology is being revolutionized; or Graphic Novels as Art, not a cheap entertainment; or the knack for mural-making on the sides of houses in Isla Vista. Perhaps Kink University: Fetish Fellowship, our resident Fetish club, will do a lecture on safety in sexual fetishes.
The point of The Forum will be to create a “non-academic” event dedicated to the pursuit of instruction and personal learning. We as human beings are curiously mad about the world around us – here’s our opportunity to explore the obscure, to break free from the zeals of convention and discover the avocational, to find passion through intellectual pursuit. Here is our opportunity to unite thousands of years of education systems into the peaceful cohesion of two competing Greek ideologies.
Desmond, Write 