We're doing our poetry unit in Introductory Literature class right now. I've always hated poetry. I hate reading it, I hate writing it and I hate thinking about it. The biggest reason I hate it, is that I can't ever derive any kind of meaning out of it unless it's really obvious. I can breeze through Faulkner, McCarthy, Nabakov, Pynchon and many other complex writers, but I can't really ever get anything out of poetry I read. It's meaningless to me. I want to know why this is. We read a poem by Sylvia Plath called 'Mushrooms,' and it didn't mean anything to me at all. My teacher just asked "Why did Updike choose to use this particular rhyme scheme?" Hell if I know! I couldn't figure out that the poem was about a piano until the class came to a consensus on that. There's just no hope for the last third of this class.
I just read a short story by Flannery O'Connor called The Life You Save May Be Your Own. I really liked that title, so that's why I named this blog entry what I did. She's a really good writer of short stories. I've yet to read either of her novels, but they're on my list. It's a shame she died so young. Anyway, I've been wanting to write about something that has been bothering me for quite some time. In order to do that, I feel that I must offer some insight into my personality: I love baseball. I love watching baseball, I love talking about baseball and I love playing baseball. If you don't love watching baseball, or talking about it, that's fine. I don't enjoy watching basketball or hockey, but plenty of people do. However, some non-sports oriented people seem to have this mindset that sports are pointless and a complete waste of time to watch. Even on this forum, people have expressed that sentiment to me. People constantly tell me that I should go out and play baseball instead of watching it. However, I don't have the option to go out and play baseball with the very best players, so it's fun to watch those people. Watching the raw energy in games is incredible. Sitting down to a game between two teams with a fierce rivalry, and watching them play a solid ballgame is quite exciting. Additionally, it's no more a waste of time than anything else we do to pass the time. I have a friend that thinks watching professional sports is a gigantic waste of time, but somehow thinks that spending an hour or two a day on YouTube watching pointless videos isn't. If you don't find yourself entertained by baseball, then don't watch it. I don't find myself entertained by fantasy or the majority of science fiction writing, so I don't read it. But don't consolidate professional sports into a box and look down on people who enjoy them. It's silly. There's no less merit to sports than to writing, just as there's no more merit to sports than to writing. It's all the same. I can't think of any way to end this blog entry, so here's a photograph of Katie Couric with a strange look on her face:
Every Sunday, people who work for the University of Idaho Argonaut have to go to a staff meeting. On weeks when classes are cancelled on Monday due to a holiday, the meeting is moved to that Monday instead of Sunday. So, today I went to one of the staff meetings. Everything was going fine, until.. Something happened. Someone started talking to me. We were having a fairly dull conversation, until I noticed what he was wearing on his feet: As soon as I saw those shoes, I lost all respect for this person. Anything that he said to me from that point forward meant nothing to me, as I tuned it out. I believe I walked away from him as soon as he made the point he was trying to make, without even saying anything back to him. Why? Just look at those shoes. Here's another picture of them in case you need further evidence as to why I walked away. Just look at them. Look. How can you respect someone who wears shoes in that style? How? What on Earth would possess you to wear something like that? I saw this guy the other day, who was wearing black jeans, a black shirt, and a black leather jacket. I'm sure that he felt like Johnny-Cool-Guy, but he happened to be wearing a pair of those shoes in black. As soon as I saw that, Paris Hilton became cooler than that guy in my book. I'm sorry if you think those shoes are nice, because they're not. I'm sure that I'm not alone in thinking that those shoes are the most hideous thing you could subject your feet to. Please. If you have a pair, just stop it. Stop it before they destroy your soul.
