10 Years After

Stinkfist

The Milton Marathon reading of Paradise Lost was today. I spent my three hours between 10:00am and 1:40. I stayed a bit over 3 hours so that we could walk out during a break between books vi and vii, rather than disturbing everyone. The reading was easy. Mostly it was students in the Milton class, a few other instructors, and students in other classes stopping by for extra-credit. Several of these later didn't even read! Very strange. The very worst part of the event was the old man at the end of the table who had an unbelievable stench. I mean this guy made me want to wretch as soon as I walked near him to sit down. For the first hour I sat next to him, but as soon as an opening was available across the room we jumped on it. It was suffocating. At first I thought it was some horrid cheese that he was eating. He had something that looked like butter that he was smearing on crackers. However, as soon as I sat next to him I realized I had to cross back behind him to sign in. As I passed near him he motioned that he wanted to tell me something. I leaned in near, but not too close. It certainly didn't seem like his food. No, this God awful smell was the man himself. I felt nauseous and thought my legs would buckle- only to hear him reiterate what Michael had pointed out was written on the board.

Also, I decided to go with a joke for my last analysis in Literary Criticism. It's not knee slapping funny, but it'll be easy to use up time and do a Marxist critcism with it. At least I suspect the criticism will be easy. I plan to iron out the details of that Monday.

I tried to post this to my Intro to LInguistics bulletin board, but I think it's on the fritz right now: McJob has been added to the latest version (11th Ed.) of the Mirriam-Webster dictionary. Of course, this has upset the company.