i saw uI saw u Thurs. at Sam’s Bar & Grill. Me: blond, blue eyes, jeans, Hooters t-shirt, approached and suggested that we go to my place so you could check out my hard drive. You: pretty, petite, dark hair, reading “Underworld”, said you’d rather eat a thumbtack sandwich than go home with me. I didn’t get your number. Call me, drinks?
5099
That’s an old post of mine from 2002, later reprinted in the book “Never Threaten To Eat Your Coworkers: Best of Blogs“.
I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but, as near as I can tell, some students in a Ohio State University English class are reading Never Threaten, and have been told to comment on the “i saw u” entry. As that post’s comments have long since closed, I’m creating this one in its stead. Go nuts.
P.s. I’ve been in touch with the class instructor and verified that this is on the level, despite all appearances.
P.p.s. Uncharitable comments will be deleted. The OSU students are welcome here and I’ll thank you to treat them as guests. Update: I have given up. The “go nuts” exhortation now applies to all.
i saw u (redux)
63 thoughts to “i saw u (redux)”
Comments are closed.
I too wondered what was up with the disappearing act. Then I realized that (per Elizabeth’s admonishment), having fixed my spelling of “Technorati,” I saved the post as a draft instead publishing it. In blogging terms, is that less or more socially suicidal than failing to zip up your fly after visiting the bathroom in high school?
Nah, I’ve done that myself more than once. Social suicide is intentionally taking down a post because you can’t bear the criticisms in the comments. :)
mmmm. Porn casserole. That’s good eatin’
I’ve been noticing students and other posters alike referring to the students as “kids” and the others as “adults”. Since when is a college student not an adult? When I was in college, I was on my own financially and otherwise, and was considered an adult by myself and my family.
Danielle, you make a good point. BUT, having scrolled through the comments and visited a couple of the students’ blogs, it seems to me that SOME of the students (aka kids) are much less… mature? grown up? educated? than I remember college students to be when I attended college. This is not intended as an uncharitable comment. I am just pointing out the fact that one’s age is fairly transparent from the comment.
So, yes, the students’ comments and blog entries expose them as kids.
Ashik,
Is it possible that you have a slightly skewed memory of what it was like to be a college student or to be surrounded by them? I work on a university campus now. Please believe me when I tell you that undergraduates come in all different maturity levels. This is somewhat similar to the vastly divergent maturity levels exhibited by “adults” who, say, have their online blog turf invaded by “kids.”
We all have frames of reference for our social judgments; we all tend to think ours is the best. And why wouldn’t it be? It’s ours.
Do I think “blogs as literature” merit a whole class? Not really.
Well, I don’t either, but blogs as composition practice seems dead on to me. (It’s a composition course, not a Lit class. Back in MY day, there was no such thing as separate comp classes…and we walked uphill to school, both ways…)
A few weeks ago my local news station (Cleveland) ran a segment about protecting your child from sexual predators online. One of the “tips” was that if the person the child was talking to “slipped up” and used correct grammar in the IMs, it was to be taken as a red flag, since it was probably an adult.
And college “kids” are, in my opinion, half kindergartener and half adult. While there are exceptions, most students are ensconced in a college utopian bubble from day one. Well, at least I was lucky enough to be.
I don’t know what it’s like in the US of A but here in good ol’ Blighty there seems to be a shocking downturn in the English language. Apart from the spread of a kind of teenager’s patoi (borrowing from ghetto language used in gangsta rap [Ai’aight] and pakistani slang [“is it” – used as an affirmative response amongst other uses, it’s a bit of a catch-all] amongst our country’s youth (which will probably wear off as they get older as most teen-slang does) there is the more serious issue of poor spelling in the general public. My lecturer in computer networking holds Microsoft and CompTIA certifications and probably degree level ones as well, yet he sent an e-mail with the phrases “planned role out is May 25th” and, even worse “The E-Live scheme of work will be role by 25th May 2007”. That should be roll. One ‘r’ one ‘o’ two ‘l’s. I despair.
As far as the ‘kids’ go.
1. They don’t like being called ‘kids’ any more than you would like being called grumpy old farts. So don’t.
2. Find constructive ways of correcting spelling or don’t do it at all.
3. The same goes for explaining blog etiquette.
Don’t put them off something which could be a valuable educational resource to them.
Well, it seems that we ran off the students pretty quickly (Sorry, “pretty” is weak writing.) We chased the young bastards away, posthaste.
Yeti shows up in various media, course selections and such because of the quality of the WRITING! We ALL visit here for the quality of the WRITING! Duh! He writs gud. He spels gud. He’s funy. If I were teaching an English course, I would send my students to DY with the hope that some of these qualities would rub off on my them. Sadly, it seems that the few who commented missed this point.
So, to the students, come on back and try it again. Use your shift key and a little punctuation. Pause to think for a moment before you post something. Come up with something to say besides “…please visit my blog”.
Or the University of Florida will continue to kick your asses.
I think we’re all missing the most important part: Sam’s Bar & Grill no longer exists. Sad. Damn Eastlake!
Regarding the criticisms of spelling and grammar: some of the errors made by the students in the above comments look like ESL (English as a Second Language) errors to me. (Some just look like bad English, I admit.) We see ESL errors among the “adult” fans of DY sometimes, too.
I won’t try to send anyone to my blog because I also can’t seem to keep my post rate up to anything worth following.
Maybe this debate is dead, and I shouldn’t kick a dead horse.
But, but… you writer people… how has no one commented that the first six responses to this entry (by “students”) all took place in a five minute span, all use the same capitalization and sentence structure, and all the blogs they link to use exactly the same VOICE?
I would bet $10 that those comments were left by one crazy person with six blogs. I taught seventh grade for three years, so I am no stranger to creative punctuation and grammar–and my teacher spidey-sense says that some ONE is writing those blogs. All of them. One person.
Either it’s the professor who is crazy, he’s had the wool pulled over his eyes, or that is just the weirdest thing I have ever seen.