Mature students; a short rant in rap.

Hmmm HMMM! Hemm hemm HEMMMMMM. I have something to say. Briefly.

 And it is not that I just wiped soy sauce on my keyboard in excitement (though it's somehow deeply satisfying having a salty T R and Y. Some sort of hilarious hypertension-themed pun in the making here). And not an apology because I am starting sentences with "and", in total awesome defiance of everything I ever learnt in intermediate school. (A summarized list of which would run; Don't give 480 eleven year olds scooters; Don't expect to study medicine if you managed to break your nose doing a cartwheel; Don't be the teacher who gets a tampon stuck in a pump bottle while trying to teach health class and horrifies 35 tiny pre-pubescents and NEVER start a sentence with the A word. Alright.)

It is about... mature students. Ohmigosh!

This morning in class; there was a mature student. This particular mature student is of the "I am taking this paper as an interest paper, have not a clue what anyone is talking about, spent the last ten minutes of discussion explaining my allergies (or cats names. I assume.) in some detail to neighbouring small, vaguely frightened, asian student BUT despite your nerdy and extensive lit review (heh heh. "lit". heh), the summary of which you have just presented to the class in 25 minutes with 82 references, I Believe That You Are Wrong Because; when I gave birth to my second child, yes the one with the congenital herpes, I didn't like bananas anymore. And my eldest did, you know. And he had had asthma since we moved from Corstophine! And that wasn't just the cat. No, the one who wasn't run over by the milk-truck driver that we later found out was my uncle's dead cousin. Off Shortland Street. Soooo.... you really should go back and re-evaluate your study hypothesis. You know?"

The one who claimed "well MY education wasn't formed on positivist principles!" And then followed that up with the winning; "some scientists believe in god. And it could affect their research".

Someone get that woman on TED. A to the sap.

So, in deference to my small, sad brain, I wrote a short rap about it.

It's a truism that sometimes years don't bring wisdom to the wise
Your lack of formal secondary schooling and gender studies research shines through vapid eyes
When you say "I don't have a background in positivism"; that's a schism
When you fight for god in epi class, it's qualitative fundamentalism.*

Enjoy. When you hear a nasal voice pipe up from the front on a monday morning when it is five minutes to eleven, possibly on the importance of emphasising the underappreciated** place of strong anecdotal evidence in the empirically-based research paradigm (oh, STRONG anecdotal? That is just fine then!) you may hum a wee bit under your breath. Or add a stanza. You know?
Grrr!

Ruby.
(moderately angrily on a Monday morning)



* there was another stanza. I, very sensibly, left it out.

** new word new word yay yay yay!

The GAME!*

Perhaps it is because I am PMSing (fuck off don’t look at me), or perhaps because I have the most ridiculous crush on a skinny, bouncy, yet resolutely uninterested barista, but I have been thinking rather a lot today about one thing that concerns us all in life, and that is, “the game”.


Now, for those of you who have been living under damp rocks for the last decade or so of popular culture (and I’d just like to add that I completely understand the feeling; I once was abandoned at a retirement village in Mosgiel for an hour), “the game” is what ensues as soon as you decide you’d quite like to have sex with someone.
Now, don’t go jumping to conclusions! This sex could be as part of an incipient relationship, out of curiosity, because you are bored, whatever. (So long as whatever means consensual! Rape is not a joke! At least, not a very good one. More a groan then a laugh, and most probably with negative consequences far outstripping any intrinsic humorous value.) Basically; sex. Got it.


STEP ONE: The first thing that happens is that you spot a person. Being quite gay, mine will be a sexy lady. Alright. Eye contact ensues. Once you have ascertained that the person of interest is aware of your existence, start some sort of fascinating conversation (fascinating = potentially subjective).


TABLE ONE: Topics to avoid:


- Socialism
- Cats
- Sperm (and reproduction in general. Unless you are old. In which   case it is probably ok)
- How good you are at things. Although this can be acceptably emphasised in subtle ways.
- Curious personal physical and/or mental medical issues. Keep an element of surprise.
- How, like, totally straight you are! The erroneousness of this statement will become quickly apparent.


STEP TWO: Now is the part where the game gets sneaky. Entrance your target with your wit and charm, leave them wanting more (or just sleep with them. But I would never do that), and then... ignore them. For a considerable period. After you feel enough time has elapsed that they know you are incredibly busy and important and probably sleeping with much hotter people than them, deign to meet up. Repeat step one.


(A flowchart seemed unnecessary in this instance. But shall perhaps be forthcoming, depending on hormones)


All I have to say is WHY! It could be so much easier if we could just read people’s minds!


Gah!


I do realise that multiple billions of dollars-worth of appalling movies, truly terrible books, and other various pieces of consumer shit of the “perhaps she just isn’t that into you?” flavour transfer hands per annum (the premise being, of course, that the “you” is the response variable in the equation (and therefore open to alteration in favour of a preferable outcome)), but we could all save ourselves 18 Jodi Picoults, 112 Vince Vaugns (spelled wrong? Don’t care), and 17,567 failed alcoholic home and away stars if we all. Just. Didn’t.


TABLE TWO: Sample conversations representing truly honest exchange of views re: having sex with each other.


- "I would love to take your clothes off!"
- "It’s mutual."



- “I’m incredibly attracted to you. However, because of the paradigm in which I have been raised I would prefer to spend several hours exchanging data before putting my hand down your pants.”
- “That is a more than acceptable proposal.”



- “Now that I have bought you a drink, would you like to have sex with me?”
- “No; your elevated loft bed reminds me of the time I was ten and jumped out of a bunk and broke my arm in four places, resulting in extreme social awkwardness in the coming school year and a rather non-aesthetically-pleasing scar.”


The world would be a less stressful place.


Ruby.


*Dedicated to cafe girl. You are cute.

Cats, pomegranates and Hell; a Nutritionist's outlook.

Humour. Pretty subjective aye?
I learnt this the hard way; at the place where all great stories start; Bargain Barn!

For all of you poor, sad people who don’t know, Bargain Barn (now called something lame with “re” in the title but alliteration is awesome so renaming will remain unremembered) is a warehousey-type building in the industrial cervix of Central Dunedin where you can buy ANYTHING!

So long as “anything” is at least 4th hand, smells a little like old man trousers in a housing unit in Porirua, and costs 50 cents.

I had a couple of hours to kill, (lies, I had homework, but you can’t do homework when you’re drunk and op-shopping! Logic!) so I headed off for a pint and a browse and OH MY FUCK I’m glad I did because I stumbled upon the most epic extreme genre of ridiculously cheap and useless shit ever! Posters!!

Now, one may ask, why would you pay for a poster when they are free for the taking at any major wall near you? Because; (a) last time I tried to use a craft knife when drunk I sliced off a small piece of finger and didn’t notice for several hours and bled on the floor of The Cook and it was unhygienic and, (b) they have CAT POSTERS!!!

The thing about cat posters is; they are awesome.

Do I like cats? Hmmm. Marginally. I will definitely pat a cat if it looks clean and requires no more than four steps of standard deviation from my intended path, but I do not like cats who put fur on me. Or look at me with judging eyes. Or spurn me when I attempt to befriend them when I am feeling friendless. But cat posters suffer from none of these disadvantages; they are not hairy, they do not ever walk away from you, and in the one I ended up buying, the featured cats are playing... with books! Like lol! It’s totally situationally ironic because, wait for it, cats don’t read!

On a marginally (so marginal) more academic note, I also bought a poster of historical good bitch Persephone eating a pomegranate. And here the worry began.

Now Persephone, as we all know, was just a wee occidental wannabe chilling in the perpetual cornfields and trickling brooks (and other vaguely positive agricultural things, possibly not so much cornfields in central Europe before 1500AD but hey! Let’s keep this imprecise) of a happy pre-ice age summer. Then she ate an antioxidant rich plant ovary (actually half, but not gonna hold that against her, they are really quite tricky to eat tidily and in my head she suffered mild ADHD and was unable to get through entire pieces of fruit in one sitting without being distracted by sexy young hoplites or Pheidippides back from a training jog to Turkey or whatever) and got sent to hell.

Happy ending (sort of) she got saved and only had to spend a couple months down there per year and so winter happened blah blah BUT THIS IS IRRELEVANT the point I am trying to make is that I bought a poster of superbabe Persephone, tagged it meme-styles with “EAT FRUIT... GO TO HELL” and hung it in the human nutrition office.

Nobody got it.

I got multiple compliments on the cats (possibly sarcasm implicit), a few about my hipster potplant cartoon but evidently NOBODY thinks classics/nutrition humour is as awesome a trend as I do.

Which brings me back to the subjectivity of humour.
Verdict; very.

Also the women at bargain barn barter. This is alliteration AND true and means I got 7 posters which included 2x cats, 1x emo asian eating candy, 1x marine life, 2x jebus, 1x pomegranate, a boot bag for boots, a straw hat, a fork, a plaid shirt, an un-plaid shirt, a belt and something else which has fallen through a hole in my memory.

Also maybe she ate a persimmon. Fuck. I don’t even think I’ve even seen a persimmon before.

Right! Now I will write my research proposal.

Ruby.