New Department and Course Offerings!

[_Doctor Scratch]

I guess, since I really don't like to criticize other faiths, that I won't mention my life-long enthusiasm for the novels of Jane Austen. It's Scratchite dogma that I dislike her because she was a woman, and that, in fact, I disdain any art or literature by women. (My wife and I have even gone on pilgrimage to the home of the Brontë sisters, in Haworth, West Yorkshire. But to mention that might be to rub the salt of reality a bit too cruelly into the Scratchite wound.)

This doesn't come as any real surprise. During our discussions of the course content for 461, it was driven home repeatedly that we'd need to cover the token mentioning of females. (Austen and the Brontes? What a challenge to our expectations!) A parallel can be drawn here between your name-dropping of Austen and the Mopologetic mentioning of Utah's voting rights for women. Sure: you might be able to toss out one or two contradictory points, but is that enough to counteract the overall tone/mood/impression?

P.S I don't know who "Sacha Baron Coehn" is, but I find some of the work of Sacha Baron Cohen excruciatingly funny. And etc.

Like what? His acceptance speech at the Golden Globes?

[_Daniel Peterson]

But I'm paid to be a pedant. It's what I do.

Mechanical errors in senior papers inflame me. I punish verbal conjugation errors in Arabic with gusto.

And, as it happens, I have a particular fondness for Jorge Luis Borges, whom I once even had the privilege to meet.

I get a kick out of seeing Scratch's sock puppet congratulate Scratch on his brilliance and Scratch praising the other Scratch, and on and on and on.

Chorus.
And you are right.
And we are right,
And all is right, is right as right can be!
Pish-Tush & Chorus.
And all is right as right can be,
Right as right can be!
(From The Mikado, by Gilbert and Sullivan.)

What do you think of Yashar Kemal's Memed, My Hawk, Scratch One? Have you read it? Or do you read only predictable Western authors, the ones that are fashionable in your cramped, painfully-aspiring little circle of would-be sophisticates? Do you prefer Naguib Mahfouz's "Cairo Trilogy," or his Children of Gebelawi?

Which of Yusuf Idris's short stories do you prefer? Did you like him as a person? I did. A very funny man. With an astonishing ego, but actually quite nice.

I'm fond of Salma al-Khadra al-Jayyusi, too. What do you think, O hipster wannabe? What have you read by her?

[_Doctor Scratch]

Hi, Dan. Just a small, polite suggestion: if you want to try and shed your old image of the stuffy name-dropper, you might want to try---oh, I don't know---stopping with the stuffy references and name-dropping.

As for the authors you named: Oh, I don't know. I probably feel about them pretty much the same way you feel about Jessica Hagedorn, Haruki Murakami, Bharati Mukherjee, Chinua Achebe, Chang-Rae Lee and so on and so forth. Of course, you say "predictable Western authors," which makes it sound like you think "Western" is a clear and legitimate category for classifying art.... (Is Borges a "Western" author? What about Solzhenitsyn? Is Mulatu Astatqe's jazz "western"?) How hopelessly behind the times you are. It's probably better that you stick with the old-fashioned, stuffy works you're accustomed to. Leave the edgy stuff to the cool kids. So long as you tell people about all the famous luminaries you've met over the years, I'm sure you'll be a-okay, and that everyone will think that you're hip and learned.

by the way: I noticed that you didn't respond to my inquiry about what of S. B. Cohen's stuff you've seen. I'll just assume that it's only been the sanitized, network TV stuff.

[_Daniel Peterson]

How hopelessly pretentious, mindlessly hostile, and spectacularly ignorant you are, Scratch, to presume to know what I read and what I listen to.

Here's a clue: Look for my name as a reviewer on Amazon.com.

I've read Haruki Murakami (though I still prefer Endo Shusako) and Chinua Achebe. Have you read Naguib Mahfouz, Salma al-Khadra al-Jayyusi, Yashar Kemal, or Yusuf Idris, O cool, edgy, hip, non-name-dropping one?

(Among the names you, um, haven't dropped in your pathetically desperate quest to seem hip, edgy, cool, and with it, we can now list Jessica Hagedorn, Haruki Murakami, Bharati Mukherjee, Chinua Achebe, Chang-Rae Lee, Mulatu Astatqe, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Mars Volta, Bat for Lashes, John Wray, and In Bruges. There are surely more names than these that you haven't dropped, if anybody cared enough to go back and look. I remember, even, that you once didn't drop the name of the now-76-year-old Philip Roth -- Philip Roth! -- in order to illustrate your hip, youthful, edgy coolness. You launched this idiocy, Scratch. You were so pathetically eager to demonstrate your superiority. Yet it's only served to make you look a bit sad.)

MAH 460R: Understanding Der [sic] Zauberflote as a "Degenerate" Text. This course looks at Mozart's The Magic Flute (Der [sic] Zauberflote) from the Mopologetic point of view, helping students to understand why this rates as the most "anti-Mormon" in the composer's canon. In particular, discussions and analyses will cover the Masonic motifs littered throughout the libretto, with emphasis on their ties to Mormonism. Due to spurious readings of anti-Mormon liturature, permission must be obtained by the MAH department head to enroll in this course.

By the way, I wonder whether this mythical course at the Scratches' make-believe university will use, as a text, the very real BYU Studies 43/3, which was edited by Jack Welch (the founder of FARMS) and which was entirely devoted to Mozart's Die Zauberflöte -- please note the umlauts and the feminine article; Scratch Junior's masculine der is an elementary error -- with essays by a number of excellent scholars (including Dr. John Gee, on the opera's Egyptian elements).

[_Gadianton Plumber]

I can just see Danny's fingers flyin' all over the keyboard on Wiki. HE knows what's up.

[_Daniel Peterson]

That's right. Somebody with a doctorate from a department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures surely wouldn't be able to name Naguib Mahfouz, Yashar Kemal, Salma al-Jayyusi, or his own teacher, Yusuf Idris, without the help of Wikipedia!

Or so it would seem, at any rate, to a semi-literate with a chip on his shoulder.

[_Calculus Crusader]

I can just see Danny's fingers flyin' all over the keyboard on Wiki. HE knows what's up.

Quit while you're behind.

[_Gadianton Plumber]

That's right. Somebody with a doctorate from a department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures surely wouldn't be able to name Naguib Mahfouz, Yashar Kemal, Salma al-Jayyusi, or his own teacher, Yusuf Idris, without the help of Wikipedia!

Or so it would seem, at any rate, to a semi-literate with a chip on his shoulder.

I was referring to all those hip young thangs, where would you be without the big W?

[_Daniel Peterson]

I was referring to all those hip young thangs, where would you be without the big W?

Pretty much where you are without a point or a clue.

Doing just fine.

[_Doctor Scratch]

How hopelessly pretentious, mindlessly hostile, and spectacularly ignorant you are, Scratch, to presume to know what I read and what I listen to.

Here's a clue: Look for my name as a reviewer on Amazon.com.

I've read Haruki Murakami (though I still prefer Endo Shusako) and Chinua Achebe. Have you read Naguib Mahfouz, Salma al-Khadra al-Jayyusi, Yashar Kemal, or Yusuf Idris, O cool, edgy, hip, non-name-dropping one?

Hey: calm down, Dr. Peterson. There's no need to get upset. If I hurt your feelings, please let me know, and I'll apologize.

(Among the names you, um, haven't dropped in your pathetically desperate quest to seem hip, edgy, cool, and with it, we can now list Jessica Hagedorn, Haruki Murakami, Bharati Mukherjee, Chinua Achebe, Chang-Rae Lee, Mulatu Astatqe, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Mars Volta, Bat for Lashes, John Wray, and In Bruges. There are surely more names than these that you haven't dropped, if anybody cared enough to go back and look. I remember, even, that you once didn't drop the name of the now-76-year-old Philip Roth -- Philip Roth! -- in order to illustrate your hip, youthful, edgy coolness. You launched this idiocy, Scratch. You were so pathetically eager to demonstrate your superiority. Yet it's only served to make you look a bit sad.)

You're right. I feel awfully sad. I should have followed your example, and mentioned all the famous people I've met and hung out with over the years. Once, when I was in high school, I brought an autographed photo of Philip Jose Farmer to school, and the cool kids stole it from me and ripped it up, and then they broke my horn-rimmed glasses. That's something I've never forgotten. While I'm here expounding upon things, I think I'll share that I often like to end my evenings with a post-prandial brandy snifter-full of warm milk. I like to sit back, with my feet propped up on my ottoman, while I indulge in the ultimate guilty pleasure: Bye, Bye Birdie, which I listen to on my old Victrola. See: I am hip! I do like to have fun! How dare you insinuate that I'm a square!