Oh No! Lit Class

Mary Soon Lee, from Elemental Haiku: Poems to Honor the Periodic Table, Three Lines at a Time

My cartoon for this weekend’s @guardian books

Saint Paul Public Library, I am begging you to make this real

my dad sent me this today and I'm so jealous

"HB 777 not only would fine libraries and librarians, but it would possibly require hard labor by those found guilty. Read that again: librarians would be sentenced to hard labor for daring to join their largest professional organization.

The bill would also potentially kill one of the largest graduate school programs in the state of Louisiana, Louisiana State University’s Masters of Library and Information Science program. Like all Master of Library and Information Science programs, it is accredited by the ALA and goes through a rigorous process to ensure that the curriculum is up-to-date and aligned with best practices in libraries.

Even if the bill is limited “only” to the use of tax money to support membership or attendance/enrollment in ALA-sponsored professional development, take a moment to look into whether or not police, fire, or other public entities are subject to similar legislation in Louisiana or elsewhere. You probably know the answer–and you probably won’t be surprised that one of the few institutional benefits offered to library workers is such membership.

If you haven’t been paying attention until now or you’ve thought these fears when laid out over the last several years were hyperbole and this is your wakeup call, there’s no time like the present to get to work advocating on behalf of your library. If you live in Louisiana, contact your representatives as soon as possible (here’s a very easy way to do that!). You can also reach out to Kellee Dickerson by phone at (225) 380-4232 and email hse064@legis.la.gov.

Then, reach out to your own libraries and offer your support, either by showing up at board meetings and/or running for those board positions when vacancies occur. Go borrow books from the library and get your writing hands going with letters to your local papers.

EveryLibrary also has a petition you can sign related to HB777."

Please take the time to sign the petition, spread the word, and support your local library.

kitten i have to be honest your misunderstanding of what 'death of the author' actually means is getting embarassing and mommy would prefer if you posted less or maybe attended some classes on literary analysis

kitten i think you might be stupid

“Unfortunate! Anyway,”

gerard dubois' moby dick sells me on the cosmic horror whale

a collection

Damn, he went to work

something ive noticed while reading dantes inferno is that there seems to be a lot of italians in hell

Need y’all to know that in the 1970’s a letter to the editor was published in Daily Telegraph where the author offhandedly used the phrase “Tolkien-like gloom” to describe an area with barren trees and JRRT himself wrote back an incensed rebuttal at the use of his name in a context that suggested anything negative about trees.

“I feel that it is unfair to use my name as an adjective qualifying ‘gloom’, especially in a context dealing with trees. In all my works I take the part of trees as against all their enemies”

He was like how dare you sir I am the biggest tree fan out there

A tree tried to eat the hobbits. Tom Bombadil had to save them. There's Mirkwood, "The Forest of Great Fear." I'm on the side of the writer of the letter to the editor.

Because Tolkien is Tolkien, he actually directly defended the actions of all his forests and trees in this same letter I’m referencing

@businesstiramisu !!!!

This is the best thing in the entire world. Here is a transcript:

Beautiful place because trees are loved From Prof. J.R.R. TOLKIEN SIR—with reference to your leader of June 29, I feel that it is unfair to use my name as an adjective qualifying “gloom,” especially in a context dealing with trees. In all my works I take the part of trees as against all their enemies. Lothlorien is beautiful because there the trees were loved; elsewhere forests are represented as awakening to consciousness of themselves. The Old Forest was hostile to two-legged creatures because of the memory of many injuries. Fangorn Forest was old and beautiful, but at the time of the story tense with hostility because it was threatened by a machine-loving enemy. Mirkwood had fallen under the domination of a Power that hated all living things, but it was restored to beauty and became Greenwood the Great before the end of the story. It would be unfair to compare the Forestry Commission with Sauron because, as you observe, it is capable of repentance; but nothing it has done that is stupid compares with the destruction, torture and murder of trees perpetrated by private individuals and minor official bodies. This savage sound of the electric saw is never silent wherever trees are still found growing. J.R.R. TOLKIEN Merton College, Oxford

@monstrousgourmandizingcats

"Old Man Willow did nothing wrong" is not the Tolkien take I expected today, but I'm here for it.

me and the mutuals talking about motifs and symbolism

it rules to be a transgender writer because writing trans themes is easy as fuck. it's easy as fuck dude. trans themes basically write themselves. change is the fundamental motor of storytelling. guess what else is all about change bitch

Reading Frankenstein and we got to the part where "the creature" is created - always a good time bc Victor's immediate response to seeing his work come to fruition is "Oh. ..............Gross." and then he takes a nap.

Then of course when the creature wakes him up he flips out and runs away, which my students were Not Pleased With. (Because of Walton's desperate desire for a friend at the beginning of the book, many students have spent the first few chapters under the misapprehension that Victor is making himself a friend, quote, "Build-a-Bear Style" and finding out how badly he's quote, "mistreating his baby boy" is very upsetting for them).

So then in a fugue state "Vicky Frank" (another nickname from my students) just HAPPENS UPON his BFF Clerval, who is so very happy to see him, and Victor switches instantly into host mode:

Student1: YEAH MAN, I DON'T KNOW WHY HE WOULDN'T BE WHERE YOU LEFT HIM, HE IS A LITERAL 8 FOOT TALL CHILD

Student2: He didn't even babyproof his HOUSE! D:

But the part I wanted to talk about is actually this moment that I'd never noticed before, after VFrank gets Clerval inside his (miraculously) monster-free house, IS THIS:

I'M SORRY??????

HEY VICTOR??????

THE WHAT???????

When a student copies an essay online instead of writing it and then painstakingly changes every word to a synonym until the text no longer makes any sense...

call that the Ship of Thesaurus

Any educator who doesn't feel this on a visceral level has never had to experience the psychic pain of reading the phrase "Unused York City."

A lecturer at Middlesex University in 2014, Chris Sadler, coined the term "Rogetism" for these. Perhaps the best:

Source.

I'm trying to hide my plagiarism but the clapping of my sinister buttocks keeps alerting the lecturer