Le maudit Mo D.

open your heart to my liberal art

This morning, I was in the shower, scrubbing myself clean. I've had to concede that natural deodorant does not provide the odor-fighting protection I need during a hot, humid Austin summer, and that I smell like a plate of Armenian cured meats if I don't use the toxic stuff. Although I had the water running and was focused on stripping my body of funky smells, I could still hear Bob in the other room laughing his ass off.

"You've got to read this online comic!" he exclaimed. His enthusiasm indicated that staggering brilliance awaited me at xkcd dot com, and that my life would be irrevocably altered by the myriad blessings I would receive via this masterful work of comic art that Bob had unearthed and deigned to share with me.

So I wrapped myself in a towel and sat down at my computer, first checking nytimes.com to see if any interesting celebrities had died in the last hour.

"Have you looked at it yet?" Bob prodded. I was placing unnecessary minutes between me and this unparalleled genius! I clicked over to xkcd.

I did not laugh. I guess if you were a science major in college and still enjoy feeling smug and superior to those of us who chose liberal arts degrees, this comic is pants-shittingly hilarious. But if you, like me, were and are forever a liberal arts person, its just tired and played. Clearly, the joke is on me, paying all that money for a degree that doesn't parlay itself nicely to a 9-5 job. While I'm the first to admit that writing novels all day is not as beneficial to humanity as, say, nursing or police work, and is indeed selfishly motivated and provides negative financial remuneration for my trouble, I do not concede that doing what makes me happy is so completely worthless as to deserve mockery.

If Bob had taken more literature and history courses during his college days, he would know that American colleges were not intended to provide job training for middle-class workers. It was intended to educate clergy and the sons (and later daughters, thank you Mary L./Sophia S./Matthew V./Henry F.D.) of elite families who would go on to work in professions such as law, academia, medicine, government, and yes, the sciences. A hundred years ago, you didn't get into Harvard based on merit. You got in because your father went there, or your father's boss wrote you a recommendation, or or because your family could pay full freight and could make generous donations to its capital fund. This still happens to a certain extent (just take a look at the POTUS). Certainly I am not advocating that higher education remain available only to the upper classes; however, when I was told that the type of college education I had chosen was not designed to put my butt in a specific professional seat, I accepted that and knew that with the Ladycollege's unparalleled bad-ass alumnae network, I would never be completely unemployable.

I thought about putting an ad up on Craigslist to find fellow liberal artistes who want to sit around drinking coffee having wanky conversations about literary criticism, particularly about Infinite Jest, since that IJ reading group never really got off the ground and I feel that in order to earn my stripes as a modern literature wankster, I need to complete this tome tout de suite. However, my motivations for doing such a thing felt like cheating, for some reason, if seeking what you lack in your marriage outside the marriage is indeed cheating, even if no sex is involved.

Also, I must say that I will never join TX Exes or give the school one thin dime based on UT's culturally-motivated avoidance of the word alumni. Latin is too fancy for these people? Okay, fine, I'm keeping my fancy money for myself then, thanks.

Posted by Zerd at July 18, 2008 05:57 PM