So....

Hey, remember when I said that, for better or for worse, I'm leaving school?

Yeah, no. That pile of failure and misery sort of compounded, resulting in me having to take two 6-week summer courses.

One of them I'm doing online for FSU, even though I'm currently home in Coral Springs. It's called Peoples of the World, and it's basically a class in ethnography, which, while interesting, isn't totally my thing. I'm kind of excited to read Chagnon's "Yanomamo" book though. The other class I'm doing is at FAU (as a ~transient student~) called Gender and Culture. And by Gender and Culture, they really mean Crash Course in Feminist Anthropology. I don't know why, but feminist theory and I don't tend to mix well. I'm all for the equality of the genders, but I feel that in feminist theory, while it does some good, I feel like a whole shit ton of information is ignored--the same goes for feminist literary criticism (sometimes I use it in papers when I don't feel like doing any actual thinking). I don't have anything against members of the feminist movement, I just find feminist analysis to be kind of lacking and not very holistic.
But what do I know? I don't even have my Bachelor's. (Yet.)

Because of these classes, I'm once again not going to blog much until they're out of the way. I still have to unpack the contents of basically half a college apartment into my itty bitty room and make it all fit, as well.

There is something I do want to talk about though. I'm reading a book called The Child Thief by Brom. It's a sort of gothic, twisted version of the Peter Pan story. I'm going to reserve full judgment until I actually finish the book, since I never like when people criticize something without experiencing all of it, but I'm getting the impression it's trying just a little too hard to be edgy, and it's starting to annoy me. The prose is...okay. I can tell this guy's not actually a professional writer--and he's not. Brom is actually an artist. A really cool one, at that. He has one big illustration for each chapter, and color illustrations of some main characters in the middle. It's gorgeous art. But I can tell it's an artist writing this book, not a writer. There's also not much in terms of subtlety when it comes to moral messages--the whole HUMANZ ARE TEH EV0L AND ONLY CHILDRENZ HAVE TEH MAJIKS AND TREES ARE PEOPLE deal. Loooots of that. Man is the enemy in this book, and I really dislike that there seems to be no ambiguity in the matter. Or...there is, but the book doesn't seem to want to acknowledge it...like...I'm seeing major faults with the morality of Peter and the lost boys--or Devils, as they're called in the book--but the story itself seems not to notice. I don't know. Again, I'll withhold my final opinion until I've actually finished the thing.

And don't get me wrong, I am enjoying the book. On the surface it's entertaining and imaginative the concept itself is really intriguing. It's a bit on the depressing and dark side, and I found myself reading Princess Bride last night to cheer myself up, but that sort of comes with the territory. I am told there are certain twists in the story, and I can't wait to read them. I have to get it finished by this weekend, anyway, as the girl I borrowed it from is coming to town then.

Anyhow. I have an assignment for Peoples of the World due tomorrow, so I should probably get on that while I'm still stuck at FAU's library.