Nerd Guy Bry

"I need to borrow your car!"

"Wha-"

"I need to help Robin!"

"I've got work -"

Batman throws you a set of keys and points to the Batmobile. You wordlessly hand over your keys.

"Thanks!" he yells, jumping behind the wheel, "I'll return with the car or a better replacement vehicle in 12 hours!"

You drive the Batmobile to work. You realize you forgot your parking pass. No one seems to mind. No one gets much work done that shift, either.

Literary analysis isn’t about the book

It’s not even about being right

It’s about performing an investigation and presenting your case to the jury

It doesn’t matter if your defendant killed that guy or not. If you can convince the jury he didn’t, you’ve won

My regular teacher was out for the day, so the “this guy works here but nobody quite knows what he’s supposed to do” substitute was in for her. His name was Mr. Moony. I suspect, knowing more now, that Mr. Moony was the special education coordinator for gifted and talented students. But that’s all besides the point.

The only thing that mattered about Mr. Moony for this story is that every student knew you never learned anything when he was in, because he was always batshit insane. He would completely disregard plans, throw them away, and tell us to do something different.

When he came in, we had just finished reading Waiting for Godot. We were well on our way to an AP Lit exam, tired and worried, and we had a practice essay coming up based on this play. And he said, “you’re all burnt the hell out, so I’m going to write an essay for you.” We all cheered because, hell yes, a lecture day. We didn’t have to do shit. We could all tune out and stop caring.

And then he started going.

We were enraptured. This man deconstructed the two act play into a masterpiece, quoting ancient literature on theology and God, as well as personal details about the author, to reveal to us all that, actually, Waiting for Godot was the author’s roundabout way to show the anguish behind the politics of the pro-life/anti-choice movements, and the author’s criticisms of abortion.

He went on for a half hour, writing faster than we could really keep up with. By the end of his rant, we were all nodding along. At the end, he slammed his hand on the board and shouted “ABORTION” to really make his point.

“So, do you all think that’s what this story is about?”

The majority of us nodded, myself included. And this man looked at us, scrunched his face like Kermit the Fucking Frog, and went, “no the fuck it’s not. I made all that up.”

There was a beat of everyone feeling like their time was wasted. Some students very frustrated because they were trying to take notes and just realized it all was fabricated. One or two who were angry about being woken up to him shouting abortion.

And then he looked at us. “How many of you only believe it’s about abortion because that’s what I just told you to think?”

Quite a few raised their hands.

“Then I did English good.”

The rest of the time of class was spent with him teaching us various styles of analysis, though sadly my amnesia has claimed most of this part from me. I remember my belief in English being entirely shaken at this point. But at the same time, I also got what he was saying, and it opened my eyes to new things.

There is no right answer in literary analysis. There’s just answers people want to hear, or answers that are compelling, or answers that aren’t those things. The answer that Waiting for Godot was about abortion was not something all of us wanted to hear, but he made the answer sound compelling — and so we were riveted.

My next essay I wrote for that class was about the setting of the play, and how the entirety of Waiting for Godot centers on the anxieties of losing the modern family — and even modern life as we know it — to technology, and via that idea, the climate crisis.

I got a 100%. My teacher highlighted my (thankfully anonymous to the class) essay, particularly because the first sentence was “compelling,” due to my absence of proper grammar rules; I’d started it off by just saying, “trees.”

Parents denied and accused OP of trying to start trouble, perp was “well liked in the community”

Your actions having bad consequences does not grant you the right to do them without consequence. This isn’t some draconian extraordinary punishment where he’s going to be beaten to death. The negative consequence he will be facing for committing this crime is “having it known that he committed a crime.” The kid will lose his scholarship because the people who give out scholarships do not want to give one to a kid who steals shit from people.

And the kicker:

Says it all, I think.

Going to start Vagrant Story on an emulator because I have this gut feeling that once I start making actual progress on it, Square-Enix will announce a remaster. That happened when I emulated Legend of Mana.

Fun fact, the "A. J. Durai" this quote is attributed to is Arazlam Jenomis Durai, the narrator for Final Fantasy Tactics and descendant of Orran Durai from that same game. Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy Tactics take place in the same universe.

Ashley's starting gear. Ashley used to be a masculine name. Fandango is a weird name for a scimitar. The game is a strange sort-of action RPG, and it's incredibly difficult at times.

Found some better gear. Is that why Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy Tactics A2 both have a greatbow called Seventh Heaven? It's a crossbow here, though. There's a lot of pre-made weapons named after cocktails, the weirdest are probably the footman's mace named Dog's Nose and the khora named Pussyfoot.

This looks like a fun time here, you'll have to keep me posted on how it goes including the gear comparisons there that's good stuff.

As for Ashley being a masculine name, now it's a the most masculine name.

Wonder how many people don't know that's what Ash is short for.

“Whataboutism” is a Cold War propaganda tactic that the Soviet Union started using in the 1940s to avoid or shoot down criticism.

Instead of addressing people’s concerns or answering uncomfortable questions, Soviet leaders would respond with, “What about…” and then draw attention to unfavorable events in the U.S. and other parts of the Western world.

Capitalist: Communism has killed 300,000,000,000.00 in a single winter when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.

Communist: …..can’t argue with the 300,000,000,000.00 Hitler killed by blockading and attacking the Soviet Union.

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

This joke is the exact opposite.