Lexicon of Rhetoric

JOHN MULANEY: I normally don’t notice people. I zone out constantly. Have you ever zoned out for a few minutes? I’ve been zoned out since 2014.

AUDEINCE LAUGHS

MULANEY: I just - all day long, I wander into traffic walking like Charlie Chaplin, listening to a podcast while thinking about a different podcast. 

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

MULANEY: I can zone out anywhere - I was at the doctor’s office, he was reading me the results of a blood test, it was important I listened, and I zoned out! I was like, “nah, I’m gonna stare at the wall and think my thoughts”.

AUDIENCE MEMBER WHOOPS

MULANEY: I was like, “huh. None of the Beatles had moustaches… but then one day, all of them had moustaches.”

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

MULANEY: “That’s weird, I can’t think of a time a group has done that”. Some people in my life don’t want me to zone out as much - they want me to focus, and they want me to be in the moment, and they want me to do this by meditating. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried meditating, but I’ve been trying it. This is how you meditate, okay? You sit on the floor with your back perfectly straight, which I hate more than ISIS -

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

MULANEY: I don’t like sitting up straight! Alright?! It’s never gonna happen! If meditating was sitting hunched over on the toilet with your elbow on your knee while kind of looking at your phone, I’d be the Dalai Lama.  

AUDIENCE LAUGHS/APPLAUDS

MULANEY: I don’t like sitting up straight. So you sit up straight, and you breathe, and this helps you stay in the moment. Don’t bother! The moment is mediocre at best!

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

MULANEY: I mean, it’s fine. Let’s all try right now - let’s all be in the moment, in silence, right now. [A HALF-SECOND PAUSE] Sucked, right? Not fun at all! 

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

MULANEY: That was boring! You gotta zone out! You have an imagination! You have a movie theatre in your brain that plays fake arguments that you win.

AUDIENCE LAUGHS/APPLAUDS

MULANEY: Have you ever just been sitting there thinking about something for twenty, twenty-five minutes, and all of a sudden you’re like “oh my god, I’m driving!” and you remember? You’re like -

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

MULANEY: “I’m going seventy-five miles an hour! I have been for a while! I could’ve changed so many lives!” Sometimes, my wife - I have this wife - she’ll be like, “are you watching the road?” and I’m always like, “I am looking through the windshield.”

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

me post-tenure:

SCIENCE FICTION FILM AND TELEVISION Call for Reviews 2020!

The academic journal Science Fiction Film and Television(Liverpool University Press) is seeking reviewers of recent SF visual media (still primarily film and television, though we remain interested in expanding into video games).   Reviews typically run 1000-2000 words, or 2000-4000 words in our “review essay” format. Samples of both types of review are available upon request.   We are…

How does this love of the look, the techno-gaze, the history of mass entertainment rites compete with the other narratives of our rapidly changing technosphere? When we coo at old games, sigh wistfully at the sweet sounds of a dialup modem, and show screenshots of the internet "back in the day," what stories about postmodern life, or late capitalism survival are we telling?

What other histories are we erasing?

And how aware are we of these problematic moves when we share "You know you were an 80s kid when..."? Have we given in to our Being being defined by our consumption, or is this fond, affectionate look back a kind of resistant reading of our current culture?

Tinnitus is more a sound that’s always there regardless of where you are or what you’re doing (always the same high pitch is the most common form, though there are other types).

Tinnitus: internal damage to your cochlea, usually from over-exposure to loud sounds, triggering the constant hearing of the pitch that’s connected to the place that’s damaged.

ADHD/autism: sensory sensitivities and the inability to filter the sounds around you, causing you to hear things that others can’t even though they’re real.

Tinnitus is more a sound that’s always there regardless of where you are or what you’re doing (always the same high pitch is the most common form, though there are other types).

Tinnitus: internal damage to your cochlea, usually from over-exposure to loud sounds, triggering the constant hearing of the pitch that’s connected to the place that’s damaged.

ADHD/autism: sensory sensitivities and the inability to filter the sounds around you, causing you to hear things that others can’t even though they’re real.

So let’s say you’re in the same boat I am (this is a running theme, have you noticed?) and you’ve just got, like, SO MUCH STUFF that HAS to get done YESTERDAY or you will DIE (or fail/get fired/mope). Everything needs to be done yesterday, you’re sick, and for whatever reason you are focusing on the least important stuff first. What to do!

Take a deep breath, because this is a boot camp in prioritization.

Make a 3 by 4 grid. Make it pretty big. The line above your top row goes like this: Due YESTERDAY - due TOMORROW - due LATER. Along the side, write: Takes 5 min - Takes 30 min - Takes hours - Takes DAYS.

Divide ALL your tasks into one of these squares, based on how much work you still have to do. A thank you note for a present you received two weeks ago? That takes 5 minutes and was due YESTERDAY. Put it in that square. A five page paper that’s due tomorrow? That takes an hour/hours, place it appropriately. Tomorrow’s speech you just need to rehearse? Half an hour, due TOMORROW. Do the same for ALL of your tasks

Your priority goes like this:

5 minutes due YESTERDAY

5 minutes due TOMORROW

Half-hour due YESTERDAY

Half-hour due TOMORROW

Hours due YESTERDAY

Hours due TOMORROW

5 minutes due LATER

Half-hour due LATER

Hours due LATER

DAYS due YESTERDAY

DAYS due TOMORROW

DAYS due LATER

At this point you just go down the list in each section. If something feels especially urgent, for whatever reason - a certain professor is hounding you, you’re especially worried about that speech, whatever - you can bump that up to the top of the entire list. However, going through the list like this is what I find most efficient.

Some people do like to save the 5 minute tasks for kind of a break between longer-running tasks. If that’s what you want to try, go for it! You’re the one studying here.

So that’s how to prioritize. Now, how to actually do shit? That’s where the 20/10 method comes in. It’s simple: do stuff like a stuff-doing FIEND for 20 minutes, then take a ten minute break and do whatever you want. Repeat ad infinitum. It’s how I’ve gotten through my to do list, concussed and everything.

I’ve seen this before and not reblogged it but mainly because I personally wouldn’t be able to use this system – I’m bad at estimating how long something will take to do, and I’m also extremely bad at working under a time limit pressure even if it isn’t a limit – if it’s just “This is how long it should take to do this.” 

Skim the exam, then sort the questions into four categories with “How fast can I answer this?” and “How many points is this worth?” as the two criteria. Use your gut reaction; don’t try to work out the math, because that wastes time. 

Start with the questions that are ones you can answer quickly and are worth more points.

Then go to the ones that you can answer quickly but are not worth as many points. 

Move on to the ones that will take longer, but are still worth a lot of points.

Then, if you have time, work on the ones that take longer and are worth fewer points.

For some, the “take longer” corresponds to “I don’t remember this well”, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes we profs ask easy questions that have a lot of sub-parts because it’s hard to separate the foundational ideas (stuff you did in weeks 1-3). 

My first “question” on the intro to film exam, for example, is worth 40% of the points, takes students about 50% of the total exam time, and covers weeks 1-6 from the class--but it’s actually really, really easy and nearly everyone passes that section with a B or higher because they *know* it. 

These kinds of exams look terrifying to students because they don’t know where to start or how to prioritize the questions. And then they do poorly on the exams, and it doesn’t reflect what they really learned and it doesn’t show us profs how to adjust our teaching for the next semester. 

Unfortunately, accrediting agencies expect certain kinds of assessments for certain kinds of classes, and if you do something unique, you either have to a) hope no one requests copies of your syllabus for degree audits or b) lie like a dog on the documents and hope the students cover for you.