This was the most entertaining thing that I heard today

While chatting on the phone with a person from my department - she, in a fit of utter exasperation, described her experiences in class with her professor as follows:

"It's like he has his eyes closed and he has this stick, this stick of, I dunno, interpretation or whatever, and he's swinging it this way and missing and that way and missing trying to hit at this idea and the whole class is sitting there looking at him and saying THERE IS NO PIÑATA! THERE IS NO PIÑATA!"

If you knew of whom was talking this would be 10 times funnier. Not only is it the aporia-de-piñata (which somehow I am picturing as a little festive pony made entirely of scraps of theoretical jargon [perhaps Barthes and a little Derrida]) that is so enchanting, but the dual interpretation of stick (which if you all have read Jett's blog you understand perfectly well). Since I am an English student, I can't help the dual read or the following commentary:

This has also got to be one of the most depressing reads of the grad student condition, i.e. we not only have to watch someone impotently swing a metaphorical stick at a metaphorical piñata that is not there, but note - WE DON'T EVEN GET TO PLAY, WE HAVE TO SIMPLY WATCH!

A little too bitter a picture for my current sentiments, but perhaps as the quarter moves along I will fall into the well-worn channel of black bile that flows through the department in 10th week.

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