The Adventures of Tenten

The title of this chapter is misleading, as there is no adventure here. The title of this chapter is also misleading, because there was no Lecture Ten, but in the name of fluidity and structure and stupid puns I'm going to assume that 11 is 10 and 11 is the name for 12. These topics are so tedious and lacklustre that whilst reading about them I think my brain is shrinking. The backwards thinking that is required to develop some of this garbage is beyond me, and twists my mind and tires my mental capacity just trying to fathom it's vast expanse. Why anyone would ever categorise this information as "important" I can't comprehend. It even hurts to type out my disgust with the subject, a task in which I ordinarily revel. A repetition of the same, silly facts that could have been covered in less than 10 slides, let alone a lecture if we lived without all these "experts" putting their 2 to 3 cents in, any way they can. I save more than that at BPs with a Woolies voucher.

The repetition of all this crap is reminiscent of blogging to me. A bunch of reposted information, with a small twist which the author thinks is witty. None of it is interesting and none of it makes me feel like I'm learning something. I don't want you to think that I am anti-everything however, and I have rummaged up two things that I find interesting.

The first is David Mitchell's Soapbox, and this is an example:

The second is this:

When I built my first tree house, this is what I expected it to turn out like.

But back to the biscuit... the most useful aspect of these lectures, I think are the quotes. Sure they repeat each other, but if you really dislike one, or really like one for that matter, you can go look up the person and infuriate yourself even more at the stupid things they say. It's a cathartic experience for me, I think. The award for best slide goes to: The Portrayal of an Issue. I've always been a strong believer that you can make anyone agree to anything if you paint it in the right light or atleast let them look in the window of No. 12, Different View Drive.

Politics is something I generally sometimes object to, the other times I'm indifferent. Therefore I played Solipskier during the lectures and skipped the slides upon online revision, so I can't tell you much about those.

Using my last fallback option, I opened my old notebook hoping to find something... anything. I flipped through the pages as I started speaking like Max Payne in my head - it was only a matter of time. I lit up another Corinthian Chocolate Cigar and sat in the vacant chair, careful not to get to comfortable. I knew the cleaners would be on my ass as soon as I relaxed, I ran of out Max lines and began to siphon through what I wrote in the lecture.

I really can't make sense of most of it... here's a taste:
Guest speaker from UniqueUQ: is she french?
wonderfully ironic old dude
regent's treat (what is Regent's Treat? Obviously it was mentioned but I've forgotten why)
salient (a pretty cool new word I learnt)
Adolf Hitler was such an excellent self-publicist
Noam Chomsky - why do all cool guys have cool names? (it's how I know that I will never be cool, my name is far too pedestrian.

I also wrote some Media and Agenda definitions, but they're boring. I tried to remind myself about a Mitch Hedberg quote that fittingly described the ideas of the lectures, but unfortunately I only wrote "-mitch hedberg quote-" so I'll leave you with a favourite (or two) and put them in psychedelic colours and maybe chuck in some Max Payne and/or Archer quotes (the three most influential men in my life).

"I bought a $7 pen because I always lose pens and I got sick of not caring." - Mitch Hedberg


"I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it." - Mitch Hedberg

Rip: Is this a ruse?
Archer: A ruse? Hi, it's the 1930s. Can we have our words and clothes and shitty airplane back?
Rip: Let's go, kid.
Archer: Call you back, 1930s. And, hey, watch out for that Adolf Hitler. He's a bad egg.


"I walked straight in, playing it Bogart, like I'd done a hundred times before. The trick in my situation was that there was no trick, no matter what the movies tell you. No rules, no secret mantra, no road map. It wasn't about how smart or how good you were. It was chaos and luck, and anyone who thought different was a fool. All you could do was to hang on madly, as long and hard as you could." - Max Payne