the chemical symbol for antinomy is bs
Class this morning treated an essay about Emily Dickinson that prompted me, while reading it last night, to remark to J., "This is the worst piece of critical writing I've ever seen." In the spirit of collegiality I softened that opinion for discussion, but I still seemed to be against the general drift of the group and I wound up feeling like a reactionary. This isn't the first time that this has happened. I am a grumpy 1950s critic already, I guess, but there honestly are a lot of silly arguments out there.
On the bright side, I got from Nik a zip file with many mp3s of fun German music, on the power-pop to industrial continuum, that he picked up in Leipzig this summer. At the moment I'm into Die Ärzte (The Doctors), "die beste Band der Welt!" and the weird electro-folk of Die Toten Hosen (The Dead Pants). " My helpful big dictionary says that "toten Hosen sein" is to "be a washout" or "be a dump."
