Nihilism in a nutshell

Strange is the world
Why should men / Receive life in this world?
Men's lives are as meaningless / As the lives of insects
The terrible folly / Of such suffering
A man lives but / As briefly as a flower / Destined all too soon / To decay into the stink of flesh
Humanity strives / All its days / To sear its own flesh / In the flames of base desire / Exposing itself/ To Fate's Five Calamities / Heaping karma upon karma
All that awaits Man / At the end / Of his travails / Is the stench of rotting flesh / That will yet blossom into flower / Its foul odor rendered / Into sweet perfume /
Oh, fascinating / The life of Man / Oh, fascinating

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Ok... so that's depressing. According to the ugly old witch thing in Throne of Blood, that's what the meaning of life is: nothingness. Sound nihilistic?

ni·hil·ism [nahy-uh-liz-uhm], noun

1. total rejection of established laws and institutions.
2. anarchy, terrorism, or other revolutionary activity.
3. total and absolute destructiveness, especially toward the world at large and including oneself: the power-mad nihilism that marked Hitler's last years.
4. Philosophy
1. an extreme form of skepticism: the denial of all real existence or the possibility of an objective basis for truth.
2. nothingness or nonexistence.

(via Dictionary.com.)

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Hearing Reading that quote from the movie made me think a little about nihilism and about my favorite image I've ever seen regarding it. Take a second to study it to get a good, visual representation about what it's all about.

I'd be willing to toss some points to anyone who does a writeup about their feelings about nihilism, this picture, etc. Just saying.

Last BritLit homework before the break: Grading your PBL groups

It's been a long time, but I think we're finally ready to debut our awesome Middle Ages PBL poster. Once I get a look at it all together and finally look at all your pieces (which I've nearly done), I'll give you your points, which will (hopefully) be worth a solid letter grade. Included in that grade, though, should be some sort of self-evaluation, how you think your group worked.

Therefore, please, by next Sunday (11/27), for both the A-Day and B-Day classes, please do this group member review once for each member of your group. It looks long, but it's pretty easy, and just multiple choices. This IS anonymous, so don't try to make a group member who hasn't helped you out into a helpful person.

Put Shakespeare into action: insult your friends with Elizabethan invective

invective [in-VEK-tiv] — noun

1. vehement or violent denunciation, censure, or reproach.
2. a railing accusation; vituperation.
3. an insulting or abusive word or expression.

Reason #432 that life was better in the time of Shakespeare than today: instead of naughty curse words (like @#$% or &@%#$* or whatever you kids are saying nowadays), people used to use invective to curse out their enemies. Neatorama, one of my favorite blogs, recently shared a cheat sheet on how to blast someone, Shakespeare-style. Feel free to create your own epic invective and refer to your friends as such for the rest of the day, and post your favorite combination in the comments.



I'm a huge fan of loggerheaded beef-witted strumpet, for what it's worth.

Are you predisposed to be an Alpha (or Omega)?

Here he comes to save the daaaaaay!

Today, I was catching up on some blogs I follow, and I found this little article that English II students might be interested in:

Two mice meet in a narrow plastic tube that's not wide enough for both of them... One of them must give way. In their earlier encounter, the first mouse exerted its dominance by forcing [the second mouse] to reverse down the tube. This time, things are different; the second mouse pulls rank and the first one backs down... By injecting a single gene into one part of its brain, [Fei] Wang turned the subordinate animal into a dominant one... By manipulating this signalling, he could push mice up or down the social ladder. With an extra dose of GluR4, the mice gained social standing. When they confronted other mice in a cramped plastic tube, they were more likely to force their rivals to retreat, even if they had previously given way. With their new rank, they were also more likely to court female mice with high-pitched ultrasonic songs.

So it sounds like being an alpha or omega animal is a characteristic of which you might be genetically predisposed. What do you think of that? If you had the choice to have an experimental gene like that injected into you so you could become more alpha-like, would you?