GR's Chipco Stomp Preview

[RedBug]

Steelhead, man. Your last post? Are you serious? I hope you were laughing
when you wrote it. Otherwise, get help, my man. A-and remember, I think
it's Proverb for Paranoids #6 or 7, something about paranoids are paranoid
because they keep putting themselves in paranoid situations. You *can't*
believe that shit you were writing. Getta grip.

RedBug

On Thu, 6 Feb 1997 MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu wrote:

> 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
> 
>