GR's Chipco Stomp Preview

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Oh, no, he won't stay away from me!
I really hate to do this, but, clever reader that I am, I quickly intuit Steely's latest textual
 strategy, which is no longer to confront me directly but simply to assassinate me at every 
turn of his newly re-energized asinine posts.  A-and threatening to *tell all* in some
 Professorgate type article he's planning for the prestigious LA Weekly!  Outrageous.  To
 spare the list any more suffering, I hope this is the last time I will mention him in a
 public post.  Steely, I would like to deal with this personally until, if ever, it is resolved.
  Will you meet me on that?  After I write this, I will post you. But for the record, I have to
 clear up some of the incredible fictionalizing of my identity publically flowing forth from
 the silvery and perhaps liquid imagination of this person who thinks he's a fish.

I am a lecturer at UCLA Writing Programs.  I am not even in the English department,
 much less a professor, much less Harold Bloom.  I am untenured, because lecturers do
 not get tenure.  Neither do we get sabbaticals, which I have never had in more than a
 decade of university teaching.  We are *teaching* as opposed to research faculty, and. at a
 place like UCLA, y'  all can easily guess where that puts us on the academic totem pole. I
 am union (AFT), and I don't belong to the MLA.  Lecturers at UCLA have been decimated
 by five years of corporate-style downsizing.  My department (which, note, isn't *really* a 
department, since it consists only of untenured, non-Academic Senate lecturers) has lost 
more than a third of its faculty in that time.  These people were my friends, and dedicated 
teachers all.  Most are scrambling now to piece together part-time work, an even more
 disheartening proposition. Meanwhile class sizes increase, the undergraduate curriculum
 is *trimmed* (mostly in the arts and humanities, expendable *soft* subjects) and
 affirmative action is rolled back.We are for real in the trenches of teaching.  Please excuse
 me listers, I am very upset right now.  This jackanapes is smearing mud on the central
 ethical concern of my professional life, and the outragous gap between Steely's smug and
 idiotic assertions and the reality I live with daily is really hard to bear right now.  Are you
 listening, St. Clair?--Don't babble at me about my teaching without facts.  You ought to be
 turning your investigative *gifts* on to the real tragedies of higher education, instead of
 obsessing on your own inadequacies.

Again, with so many ridiculous errors, I have to go on a bit:

>Following Mascaro's unfortunate remarks on his loathing of children and
>students raised by overbearing parents such as myself (one would think such
>a cruel twist of fate would engender sympathy not derision), one can
>predict that in a university controlled by Mascaro-ites in addition to SAT
>scores, high school portfolios, and assists-to-turnover ratios one might
>have to submit to genetic testing, psychological profiles, urine samples,
>Halcyon tablets, et al.

I defy you to show a note of contempt or derision towards the students I described.  My
 feeling for them is deep empathy and concern, as it is for all of my students.  Talk about 
reversing meaning!  I despise standardized testing.  I think AP classes and exams are a
 scam.  So are MCAT and LSAT prep classes and the whole ETS enterprise generally.  I
 appeal to other teachers on this list to confirm the type of student I described.  The rest of
 that nonsense, Steely, is  just more detritus of your own repressed anxieties.  Honestly,
 sometimes you sound insane, dude.

>(Interesting side note: Mascaro, the bedizened Pynchon scholar, claims that
>one of his favorite passages in GR is Proverbs for Paranoid's Number 5,
>which he quotes as follows: "The immorality of the masters is in inverse
>proportion to the  innocence of the slaves, (wording prob'ly a little
>off)."
>
>A little off?
>
>First, this is not Proverb 5, it's Proverb 2. Second, it reads as Pynch
>wrote it: "The innocence of the *creatures* is in inverse proportion to the
>immorality of the *Master*." The entire construction of the sentence (and
>thus its meaning) is reversed.

Nonsense, again.  Thank you for correcting my faulty memory, but the two sentences are
 obviously logically equivalent.  (I like that *thus* Steely, really shows a steellike grasp of
 language.  We all realize that reversing words reverses meaning:  *It is raining in Spain* 
means the exact opposite of *In Spain it is raining*.  Boy, y-you shoulda been the
 professor!) 

>And it's creatures, not slaves. BIG difference to us working class stiffs,

Given that the master is clearly labeled *Master* please tell me in what relationship to the
 Master  you would imagine those *creatures* to be.  And *working class stiff* my foot.
  How many working class stiffs own cute little Powerbooks with portable modems?  I
 know I can't afford one.  You hypocrite child of the upper classes.

Again I apologize to the list for taking up so much time.  Anybody with advice on how to
 deal with this I will listen.

john m