Long-Awaited

This contains a cross-section of my life for the past eight months. I hope you like it.


18 April 2008

• "Ooo, I'll race you to the bottom!" -Tom Hutchinson
  "Physics says we'll tie!" -Jerry May
  "Actually--" -Jim Keener
  "Don't." -Jerry; on gravity
• "Jerry, no, you do not have a strong abdomen!" -Teresa Pizella, on falling out the window
• "You can say 'y' because it's ambiguous--you don't know if it's a vowel or a verb." -Jon Meck, on King's Cup
• "In my pants, I have pee'n." -Tom, on rhyming
  

7 April 2008

• "What do you include as a precursor to your manuscript?" -Dawn Lundy Martin
  "More beer?" -Chris Seymore
  

2 April 2008

• "In order to keep the Earth calm, the community must sacrifice a virgin." -Prof. Anna Nisnevich
  "Shit." -Jerry; on Stravinsky
• "When I find someone who says something interestingly stupid, I love it." -Prof. Don Bialostosky, on literary criticism
• "I don't want to be piggy-backing . . . maybe leap-frog . . ." -Chris Wilson, on critics
  

26 March 2008

• "We were walking through the peach forest . . ." -Jon
  

23 March 2008

• "Who wants to do all my work? I'll pay you in Reese's eggs." -Jessica Dailey
  

19 March 2008

• "This guy clearly has good spontaneous overflow." -Todd Saulle, on Wordsworth
  

17 March 2008

• "Here's Ireland . . . Happy St. Patrick's Day." -Anna Nisnevich, on maps
  

28 February 2008

• "She didn't know what to do, she was like, 'that's my fuckin' baby.'" -Abbie Sigmon, on elephants
• "Oh, I'm supposed to call the cops." -Abbie
• "It was cute, he came and sat right next to me." -Abbie
  "He took my seat!" -Allie Tessin; on boys.
  

13 February 2008

• "I don't know if there's anything safe to say about this poem." -Prof. Don Bialostosky, on Tintern Abbey
• "This is our Valentine's Day reading of this poem." -Don B., on lovers
• "Like a bad car accident?" -Jessica Ainsworth
  "Well, not if you're in it." -Don B.; on completely wrong ideas
• "The old mountains are closer to the beautiful than the sublime, except in those places where undergraduates fall off of cliffs while drunk." -Don B., on aesthetic philosophy
  

6 February 2008

• "Wordsworth kind of wins." -Todd, on criticism
  

23 January 2008

• "What God harms somebody else?" -Jessica Ainsworth
  "Old Testament God." -Adam Korman
  

14 January 2008

• "Your phone is possibly the slimmest, sexiest thing I have ever seen." -Margaret Krauss
  "It has sex with all the other phones." -Ben Filio
  "Slut!" -Margaret
  "Yeah, but does it call the next day?" -Ian Long
  

7 January 2008

• "Why do so many lick when sucking is clearly more satisfying?" -Nicola Pioppi
  

30 November 2007

• "There used to be a version of this I liked better that administered an electric shock." -Dr. Dick Moreland, on counter-bed-wetting tools
  

14 November 2007

• "I'll talk to you later about my feelings about Panera." -Alexandra Valint
• "I guess I'm doing that a lot today. Just flailing." -Kevin McGrath, on being called on
  

12 November 2007

• "Sexy-looking graph, here." -Moreland, on psychology research methods
  

7 November 2007

• "If I wanted you to call on me, I would raise my hand." -Marty Arnold
• "You go right ahead, Mrs. Dalloway. You go explode the world with your independence." -Alexandra, on Virginia Woolf

5 November 2007

• "I won't go into details, but a place where blood goes when you get excited." -Moreland, on involuntary behavior measures
• "Sit on that one, Lynn." -Lizzie Harris, on throwing it back.
• "I do think it makes it a less quality poem--I . . . should not say anything else about Sylvia Plath." -Lizzie
  
• "Amiri Barak says 'Kill Whitey.' I am Whitey!" -Paul Kameen, on context
  

29 October 2007

• "Who knows--anything concave . . ." -Prof. Nancy Glazener, on sexual imagery
• "What you can do with innocence is lose it." -Nancy Glazener, on Henry James
  
• "No, he wouldn't be jailed for being a Jehovah's Witness." -Paul Kameen, on Robert Lowell
• "He certainly took a lot of shit." -Lynn Emanuel, on Robert Lowell
• "Extremely extinct." -Jessi Ritz, on Sylvia Plath
  

26 October 2007

• "If you think about it for a minute, he loves that word 'motherfucker,' which is very Freudian." -Moreland, on ???
  

23 October 2007

• "Maybe she got stiffed on a tip before me, or, here's an important one, maybe I'm a bastard." -Moreland, on fundamental attribution error
  

22 October 2007

• "I am the flower of America." -Lynn Emanuel, on Robert Lowell
  

19 October 2007

• "I don't drive Harley Davidsons, but I've read about them." -Moreland
  

17 October 2007

• "In this one, the doors of Hell open up." -Kevin McGrath, on Mickey's Christmas Carol
• "And his grave is bigger than everyone else's, so maybe that means something." -Kevin
  "Maybe he's taller than everyone else." -Alexandra; on Scrooge
• "If you're mean and you don't share, you'll go to hell." -Samantha Lane, on Dickens' morals
• "It's like testosterone in my face, burning!" -Jason Pippi
  "Why would you spray it in your face?" -Katie
  "Don't judge me." -Pippi; on cologne
  

16 October 2007

• "As long as we remember, I think it'll come to fruition." -Katie
  "You mean, fro-ition?" -Erin Offord; on Jim Keener's hair
  

15 October 2007

• "Is that a child? Is that Jiminy Cricket?" -Blaire Zeiders, on representations
• "I'm not a good herbologist." -Blaire
• "It's much longer than that." -Alexandra, on 1,001 Arabian Nights
• "Oh, it's a ghost, it's glittery . . . and, it's a chair." -Alexandra, on the fantastic
• "They're meta-puppets; they're aware of their status as puppets." -Benjy Blanco
• "This is not about you. Halloween is not about you." -Camiele White, on sharing candy
• "You can easily read these poems who were written by New Criticisms themselves." -Dawn Larkins, on diction
• "But if men want to talk about masculinity, it's like, no thank you, we have enough of that." -Peter
  

10 October 2007

• "An ode is not a tap-dance routine." -Alexandra
  

9 October 2007

• "Euphemisms are nicer sounding words." -Prof. Natalie Operstein, on 'shitter'
  

8 October 2007

• "Masturbation in the schools." -Prof. Marah Gubar, on Victorian prudism
• "Even unborn babies in the womb had evil lusts and appetites." -Marah, on Original Sin
• "If you ever have contact with a very newborn baby, they are kind of gross and amoeba-like." -Marah
• "Because of the time period and who it was written by . . ." -Chris Seymore
  "God." -Lizzie Harris
• "Like, I'm standing here and The Waste Land is coming towards me." -Lynn Emanuel, on overwhelming
• "Cause her number make sense. They're boring." -Jessi Ritz, on H.D.
• "It's homework, bra. Not classwork." -Camiele
• "I listened to Eric Clapton in a very small room in the 70s, and my hearing is not so . . ." -Lynn
  

7 October 2007

• "No false babies!" -Erin
  "Can you call nib on a false baby?" -Jerry; on arbitrary rules
• "You and Jimmy can hang out." -Katie
  "We'll boil some dough." -Jon; on the drinking age
• "That's so bad for you! . . . Probably." -Katie, on eye tricks
• "Take your shirt off first." -Erin, on Jimmy scaring people

5 October 2007

• "It's Kevin Bacon day." -Moreland
  

3 October 2007

• "Maybe I associate food too much with happiness." -Mia McFadden
• "I'm cool with that." -Mia, on dying for love

1 October 2007

• "I guess there's a lot of sex in here." -Prof. Steve Carr, on Lectures in Literature
• "Is she getting into her PJs? No way!" -Steve Carr, on Christabel
  

27 September 2007

• "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit. Remember that, with O.J. Simpson? . . . I shouldn't have said that." -Prof. Mariolina Salvatori
  

26 September 2007

• "Okay, night is the time to party . . . okay, hello fairies." -Alexandra, on Milton
• "Who was a really sexy villain?" -Katie
  "Richard Nixon?" -Alex Batoff
  "Weird, dude." -Jay Deocampo
• "What would you have if you were rich?" -Alexandra
  "A menagerie." -Jay
  

24 September 2007

• "I don't have kids, so I'm an evolutionary failure." -Moreland, on behavioral genetics
  

19 September 2007

• "I mean, 13- to 16-year-olds fall in love and then go all emo and kill themselves." -Samantha Lane, on Shakespeare
  

17 September 2007

• "So imagine teasing her about not getting any sex. How long would you have lasted?" -Prof. John Twyning, on Queen Elizabeth I
• "Why can't we kill Hermia?" -John Twyning, on A Midsummer Night's Dream
• "Imagine you've got a little baby there, 'Oh, what should we call 'im? Let's call 'im Northrop.'" -John Twyning, on 19th century names
• "Mustn't have Oberon overheating. Play goes to hell if you have that." -John Twyning, on Marah Gubar
• "I just love saying love-juice." -John Twyning, on A Midsummer Night's Dream
• "Why not, if it can alter my soul, why not give it a shot?" -Mike Potochny, on T.S. Eliot
• "Oh, he says he does? I say a lot of things too I don't mean." -Jessi Ritz, on T.S. Eliot
  
• "One time, we were on the subway in Philadelphia and my friend Kayla was wearing a red bandanna cause she's like a lesbian . . ." -Adele Meyer, on gangs
• "No porn . . . unless it's like arty porn, and then maybe." -Elana Schlenker, on submissions
  

13 September 2007

• "Get ready ladies, this is a microcosm of the world everywhere. . . . Little Ben Filios everywhere will be crying." -Adele Meyer, on ratios
• "You can never oversaturate a market. Look at Fitty." -Kevin Irish, on promo
• "'I heard there's free beer.' 'That was last week, old man.' 'Aw, fuck. Let me know next time.'" -Kevin and Ben Filio, on free beer
  

12 September 2007

• "I think I'm sexy, I'm racy, and I'm sporty, and the car shows it." -Moreland, on self-consistency
• "It'd be rude if someone came up and knocked on my window and said, 'I don't think you're very sporty.'" -Moreland
• "And I said, 'That's because we're in a different thyme zone.' And she kind of laughed politely, but she didn't think it was very funny." -Moreland
• "I sometimes think, how far away from that am I?" -Moreland, on crazy bums
  
• "J/K, God." -Jay, on Margery Kempe
• "Luke Skywalker went to my high school." -Alexandra
• "She liked that, didn't she." -Elaina, on Margery Kempe's trysts with God
• "She thought she was so much better than everyone else because God wanted to have sex with her or whatever." -Dylan Heimbrock, on Margery Kempe
  

11 September 2007

• "Go to Internet, click on Venice . . ." -Prof. Mariolina Salvatori
  

10 September 2007

• "Had he said, 'anyone can be a poet,' I'd have said, 'eff that, what am I paying 12-grand a year for?" -Lizzie, on John Stuart Mill
  

6 September 2007

• "For instance, mUka means flower, and, um, mukA means torture." -Prof. Natalie Operstein, on Russian
• "For example, these are two Russian words. This one means shelter. This one means blood." -Natalie O.
  

5 September 2007

• "Maybe it says more about me than him, but that wouldn't have deterred me." -Moreland, on communists and sex
• "When I talked about it in here, I didn't see any women go, 'Yeah, yeah, that's me.'" -Moreland, on penis envy
• "I wasn't sure if he wanted to be the corset, or if he wanted to wear the corset." -Marty, on John Donne
• "You don't say, 'May I kiss you, please?', you say 'Let me kiss you. Baby.'" -Jay

4 September 2007

• "If you protect it forever, then no one will see its shine. That's my metaphor for children." -Jon, on Jerry's backpack

27 August 2007

• "Are people mostly sincere and kind, or are they generally assholes? Anyone who's worked a job dealing with the general public is likely to come to the asshole conclusion." -Moreland
  

undated

• "He's a two and I'm, like a nine point eight . . . five." -Ross Rader, on other people I could hang out with.
• "Wal-Mart Senior Center . . . bring your family in to be taken care of, you know . . . But secretly it's a sweatshop!" -Pippi
  "Jason!" -Katie
  "Call it Arts & Crafts and they'll never know!" -Pippi
  
• "This didn't tell me anything! It's like a horoscope!" -Kevin Irish, on a pamphlet
• "Before I was studying, I was in a, uh, focus group." -Kevin Irish, on beer
• "I wish I were a bear." -Ian
  "I wish you were, too. Then I could say, 'I know a bear.'" -Kevin Irish
• "There was a kid who was born without eyes." -Ross
  "That's not a nice story!" -Katie; on deception
  
• "It's not 200 proof; you can't drink 200 proof." -Alex Moore
  "Yes, you can." -Jim Keener
  "No you can't--the body rejects--" -Alex
  "Jimmy, did you eat a fish and not tell anyone?" -Jerry
• "Why does everything you do sound like an RV trip from hell?" -Calista Nasser, on Meck family life
• "You're an idiot--you get none." -Cara O'Shea, on Jimmy and hot sauce
• "Wait, who is it in the bikini?" -Erin
  "Maura...you know, his fiancee?" -Teresa
  "Yeah, I thought you said 'your mom'." -Erin; on Phil Boggs
• "This camera doesn't pick up rednecks." -Jon
  "Oh, redneck reducer!" -Erin; on Phil Boggs
  
• "I just bit my lip chewing gum--can you be any stupider?" -Katie
  "Yeah, you can. If you broke your leg chewing gum, then I'd think you're really stupid." -Midge Smithburg
• "We have CMU, that's kind of like Chinatown." -Nicola
• "We don't want Pitt News, a.k.a. the Palestinians, to edge in." -Margaret
• "Don't hire me at I suck dot com." -Elana