G.E.T. Abroad

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Tuesday August 16, 2011 · 2:09 PM PDT

2011/08/16 · 14:09

Not yet she isn't.

G.E.T. stands for Guest English Teacher, and it's what I'll be called while teaching English in Korea. Exactly one year after receiving my master's in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania (I'll mention the name of my alma mater every time I get, since it's my greatest accomplishment so far -- although I'm fairly sure that most people in Korea have only heard of Harvard, Yale, Oxbridge, and maybe Brown... but Penn is a top university, too, I swear!) and a string of fruitless interviews (I blame it on the collapsing market and modern society's lack of appreciation for scholarly pursuits... and my lack of interviewing skills, but the other two surely contributed) later, I finally GOT A JOB... in South Korea! That's right, I had to go halfway around the world to find someone who will appreciate my degree and skills.

mollyclark

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Monday April 04, 2011 · 7:07 PM PDT

2011/04/04 · 19:07

A New Clear Day
The little boy and the fat man
Went out for an outing,
Picking toadstools prettier than
The flowers that were sprouting.

They ate one and... what dreams they dreamed
That hot and clouded day
Of August when the shadows gleamed.
They dreamed of a new clear day,

Of pure, fresh air and grass green lands,
And nimbuses adrifting,
Of rivulets sweet and yellow sands
That cake when they asifting.

The cracked nuts from the tall trees droop,
Ambrosial - food for gods,
And little rabbits hop and poop
Little pellets and rods.

And lo behold, when moonshine’s done,
On top the palmy gradient,
There stands the mighty many-a-ton
Beneath the sunshine radiant.

They’re clean and bright and sparkling white,
The strong and concrete masses,
So smooth and symmetrically right
The domes and hourglasses.

Perfection, truly, was beheld,
Hooray, the happy hours.
Solution, every problem felled
With cheap, unending powers.

And the sky was blue, and the hills were green
And the winds were blowing warmly,
And far off, the sea-foams swarm and teem,
Wave after wave crash, normally.

mollyclark

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Saturday March 05, 2011 · 3:47 PM PST

2011/03/05 · 15:47

but it alludes to it.
One of the cities in question is Beijing, as for the other one... take your pick between any number of cities in North Africa and the Middle East. None of which can be talked about, of course.
Oh, and we can't talk about that thing that happened on June 4th, 1989. In fact, nothing happened.

A key to the recent batch of successful protests -- social media. The lesson there is: if you let people talk, tweet, share their thoughts and frustrations, their sentiments would build off of each other, gaining passion and momentum until finally, you end up with large crowds of people so energetic and adamant that you have to do whatever they want.
The CCP knows better; they impose absolute silence, and it works.
You can't underestimate the power of censorship. No matter what "human wrongs" you commit, everything would be okay (for you). Simply stop people from talking and hearing about it; they would become blase about it. Out of earshot, out of mind.
It also helps if most of your citizens have enough to eat and, at the moment, are not personally, directly oppressed by you. Most people in China do not feel oppressed. They go about their daily lives, having enough money to buy food and property. Why would they care about concepts like "democracy" or "freedom"? Why bother with the trouble?

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"Don't dress like sluts" and my story

mollyclark

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Sunday February 27, 2011 · 6:17 PM PST

2011/02/27 · 18:17

Women can avoid being sexually assaulted by not dressing like sluts. That was the advice given by a police constable in a forum at York University.
"Slut" was a terrible word choice, of course; it basically denigrates all women who confidently express their sexuality, and it speaks very poorly of this cop's attitude towards women in general.
But aside from that, is this guy truly reprehensible? Was he suggesting that women who dress provocatively and who are then sexually assaulted had it coming? Should we turn on the righteous feminist outrage... or is that political correctness gone mad? Do we live in a world where even the mere whiff of "blaming the victim" is inexcusable and must be silenced, even if the speaker was merely presenting facts and common sense?
Then again, is there any factual substance to back up this cop's "advice"? According to one study by Utah State University, only 4.4% of reported rapes involve provocative dress or behaviour on the part of the victim. But then yet again, if there is any chance at all that a woman could reduce the chances of her victimization by taking certain precautionary measures, shouldn't she take them?

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why the death of a child matters more

mollyclark

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Saturday January 15, 2011 · 2:41 PM PST

2011/01/15 · 14:41

It shouldn't, but the media has made nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green stand out from the rest of the victims of the Tucson shooting. We hear all about this straight A student, the young dancer and gymnast and charity worker who was interested in politics and, who knows, could have some day been our congresswoman, or more. We cry and mourn for all the lost potentials.
Little, in comparison, is heard of the others who were killed.
The death of a child, especially one from a good, middle class family, is more shocking, more moving, than the death of any adult who's not a public figure. This the current way of our society. We make children sacrosanct, project into them all that's good and innocent and optimistic -- all that we are not. This tendency motivated the making of "Faces of Hope" -- the paperback collection of photos of babies born on 9/11, of which Christina was one. It was as though by looking at pictures of these cute, innocent children, we could shed a tear while nodding to ourselves: yes, everything will be okay.

mollyclark

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Monday January 10, 2011 · 8:05 AM PST

2011/01/10 · 08:05

In the poem below, I make an unwarranted connection between the bird deaths and the deaths of bumblebees. There is also a hint of a conspiracy theory and a suggestion that overpopulation and urbanization is somehow behind all of these deaths. Although I don't personally endorse that theory, I would also find it difficult to believe that these incidents have no human causes. My radical (or is it?) environmentalist side says that mass animal deaths nowadays can almost always be traced to some kind of negligent human action, probably by some large, avaricious corporation... but I only let that side of me speak through mediocre poetry, where ambiguity cloaks objectionable opinions.
And oh yeah, there have also been mass die-offs of sea-life recently, but I neglected to mention those, since they don't fit as neatly into the play upon the phrase used to explain sexual intercourse to a child.

mollyclark

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Friday December 24, 2010 · 6:38 AM PST

2010/12/24 · 06:38

It's hard to tackle that one, because how can you fairly divide people into subtypes and to account for everyone? Let's just look at some of the biggest issues that seem to currently surround our holiday season -- our religious diversity, multi-culturalism, religion v. secularism, the commercialization of christmas, etc. So, I've taken the liberty to divide the general population into some prominent camps that view the holidays contrastingly based on those issues mentioned above. And I hope, by doing so, to add some perspective into our strained celebrations.
Through a crappy attempt at poetry!
This is a sestina -- a poem involving six six-line stanzas, each containing the same set of end-words that appear at a different order each time. I wrote it in free metre, modified two of the end-words (wonder[] and again[st]) and also omitted the customary tercet at the end. I know. I'm a real rebel against tradition.

mollyclark

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Wednesday December 22, 2010 · 1:05 PM PST

2010/12/22 · 13:05

Yesterday, I read an article in the NY Times that seeks to weigh the cost v. returns of going to an elite college. One passage spoke very true to me.

[the authors of this study] concluded that 'job satisfaction decreases slightly as college selectivity moves up.' One hypothesis... was that the expectations of elite college graduates — especially when it came to earnings — might have been higher, and thus more subject to disappointment, than the expectations of those who graduated from less competitive colleges.

And that's not even considering the elite college graduates who can't get jobs at all. Like the starry-eyed young people with degrees in one of the less-than-practical areas - Literature, Philosophy, Classics - who then decide (for whatever reason) not to pursue a Ph.D. in their esoteric majors. Yours truly is in that category. I wrote a self-parodying sonnet about my plight. I do stuff like that.

RSS

G.E.T. Abroad

A New Clear Day -- There's a bad pun in there.

A Tale of Two Cities (no, not the novel)

"Don't dress like sluts" and my story

why the death of a child matters more

the birds and the bees

What the holidays mean to different people

Having attained an Ivy League Degree