YOU HAVE 5 HOURS TO MAKE CORRECTIONS OR SUGGESTIONS

[Nephew Twiddleton]

   You know, Professor Clark (can I call you Tony? That's how you always sign your emails, and I suppose that we're close enough in age that it doesn't matter), it's impossible for me to give you a proper, academic response to Sonny's Blues. I'll at least give you this as a hook, though. There are a number of reasons why I can't do it, other than in this format.

   The first thing is, this is my first semester back in college in about three years. In the meantime, and largely, even before, I've largely wasted my time. I am 31 years old, unmarried, underemployed, undereducated, underpaid and undersatisfied. But I haven't been nearly as bad as Mike. No, in the meantime I got involved with this group of memetic subversives that have been around since the beatnik days. So, I'm used to ranting. I'm ranting to you right now, for a grade. Even if you give me a high F, at least it's better than zero.

   It's hard to tell what's under the surface sometimes, Tony, but sometimes the surface is all that you can go with. For instance, I walked into class sleep-deprived, after a show, unshowered, with my girlfriend's bass (note, I always wanted to be a bassist but ended up a guitarist, and I met her because she was and is my bassist in other contexts. Go figure). You asked about my guitar. I told you it was a bass. But the thing is, you were correct. I am primarily a guitarist. I always happened to be a guitarist and always happened to be someone who wanted to play bass. I never chose to be a guitarist. Anyway, what instrument I played at said gig is irrelevant. The guitar and the bass give me different types of satisfaction. And anyway, Mike was the guitarist. I was going to be the bassist and the singer. Mike was going to play guitar. You (at least) seemed to assume, that I was a musician, and that my topic here would take a largely musical tone. You were wrong and right, simultaneously.

   Here's the funny thing about Sonny's Blues, Tony. The two most obvious themes are music and heroin. And after that, the idea that you are obligated to your relative in some way. Now, I didn't want to address music, or heroin. Those two are two obvious. What the hell else do I have? I do one and shun the other. The man who has perhaps been closer to me than any other,  has... Been let out. For a couple of hours. It was torture on Mary, because Mary had her own, very legitimate reasons, to be beyond ambivalent. Mary is my favorite cousin now. Mary and I understand each other, more than I and her brother Mike do. When she didn't come to the funeral, I understood.




   ....Mike and I were always going to be together. Forever. Mike and I were Mike and Kevin, Kevin and Mike. Mike is my maternal cousin. Mike and I were going to go places. We were going to be rock stars. I was going to play bass and sing. He was going to play guitar. He started taking heroin young. And I wish I never read this story.

   Mike's in rehab now, and I don't mind telling you that I'm crying my fucking eyes out. And I'm crying because he chose to go there. Finally. The worst part was though, he has limited visitation. He's now becoming aware of how divorced he is from us. Nana's death was... I hope it doesn't bother him. I'm going to leave you off soon, Tony, because I hate Sonny's Blue's and never want to talk about it again if I can help it. It's all a little too close to home, except for the Black Harlem thing. I feel like I have to side with someone, either Sonny or the Narrator, and I can't. I can't understand the "Gonna shoot up because music hurts" musician thing (Load of bollocks by the way. If it hurts anything other than your fingers or other people, you need to stop playing immediately). I can't understand the, "well what are you going to do with your life thing." I can't understand people who give up.

   But most importantly I can't understand Mike. Not because I don't get him. I don't get his choices. I don't get why you would ever want to shoot shit into you via needle. On the other hand, I am a smoker. Mike and I are both hard leftists. We're both musicians with similar tastes. But he's the whole reason why music means nothing to me in this paper, even though music, to me, is food.

   The last time I saw Mike in person, is when my now ex-girlfriend was trying to boot him out and he kept adding vodka to his coffee. That was a long time ago. I hope to see Mike at his... completely different self in about a year. Perhaps, after he gets dental insurance, because, well, because, he made his, otherwise pacifist and physically weaker, cousin want to beat the shit out of him.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I think a few lines got accidentally deleted in there.

Grumble.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Disregard. There are few things in the world that make me irredeemably angry than the very things I describe here.

I'm going to take the F on this assignment and tell the professor why I am choosing to do so.

Also i hope Mike gets better.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Good luck with it, Twid. It seems sound to me.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Good luck with it, Twid. It seems sound to me.

It's just one of those random bollocks assignments where you're like:

All in a go. You can't right a paper from that mindset.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

You can't right a paper from that mindset.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

You can't right a paper from that mindset.

It was a dumbass but still apropos spelling error, Net.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

It's a good response. I can see why you'd rather take an F than get wrapped up in the assignment. I think the professor will too.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

You can't right a paper from that mindset.

It was a dumbass but still apropos spelling error, Net.

I thought the error was kind of awesome.

Also, the last thing you would get is an F if you give your professor the original post.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I ended emailing him a nutshell thing, admitting that it was a nutshell thing, but I might submit this too, based on feedback.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Twid, if there's anything I've learned about bullshit papers, it's that if you sit down and hammer out a load of bullshit, if you're a halfway decent writer (and you are more than that) you'll get an A. Don't get too invested, it's essentially makework, and if you could see the largely illiterate nonsense your classmates are turning in you wouldn't worry about it so much.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

if you could see the largely illiterate nonsense your classmates are turning in you wouldn't worry about it so much.

This is a TRUTH.

[Don Coyote]

id send that in twid. I did something like that in my bullshit studio foundations class.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I ended up sleeping in anyway because I hit the turn off alarm instead of snooze. So, When I meet up with him, I'll clean it up a bit, and pass it in. Thank you, btw.

[Aucoq]

Twid, if there's anything I've learned about bullshit papers, it's that if you sit down and hammer out a load of bullshit, if you're a halfway decent writer (and you are more than that) you'll get an A. Don't get too invested, it's essentially makework, and if you could see the largely illiterate nonsense your classmates are turning in you wouldn't worry about it so much.

I couldn't agree more with Nigel here.  I once had to write an essay for a test in response to a question I didn't know the answer to.  I literally started off the essay with the sentence "I have no idea what the answer is, but I'm going to take a shot in the dark anyways."  And then I went on to write a very detailed essay describing what I thought the correct answer was.  It turns out I was technically wrong.  But my answer was within the ballpark of the correct answer, and my professor saw the effort I put into the essay, so he counted it as correct anyways.

You guys are probably like me and end up being your own worst enemy when it comes to worrying about whether something is good enough or not or if you're giving the teacher exactly what he/she asked for.  Like Nigel said though, what other people turn in is sometimes so scary that it'd turn your hair white.  So if you turn in an essay you put some real effort into, even if it's pure bullshit, professors (at least here) will usually recognize and reward your effort even if it's not exactly what they're looking for.  More often than not my papers come back with the "that's a really... interesting... perspective" comment written on them.  When I get that comment I know I didn't give the teacher what she asked for or my view was so crazy that he/she had no idea how I reached that conclusion.  But I always get an A on them because I at least put effort into my papers, even if I am writing with my brain turned off.