Another Essay

I figured I should post today to keep up the illusion that I post every week. This illusion is mostly for myself, since a forced essay-writing every week will probably make the difference between me saying something Incredibly Profound and not, because in one case I will be in the habit of writing and in the other I will not.

Speaking of essay writing, I have to write an essay for English class on Any Thing I Want. This is a more difficult task than it may at first seem, because I have added an additional clause to make the essay about Any Thing I Want that will Get a Good Grade. I then concluded that if I submitted anything I have ever written for my online journal it would not Get a Good Grade, either because it is too offensive or too deep or of a style assuming the Wrong type of arrogance. I did the lattermost in my most recent essay: I developed some brilliant points of analysis on Jane Eyre, but stated in conclusion that the essay had no point, the Wrong type of arrogance. I got a C minus. Though apparently this mix of literary genius and dogmatism is so beast that the Community of High School English Teachers has no way to deal with it, since after a conversation with the teacher and a remark she returned my essay as an A with the footnote, "I must have been tired when I first read it."

The Right type of arrogance, of course, would be to suppose that Jane Eyre is an excellent work worthy of an arbitrarily large amount of attention. This Right type of arrogance is the type encouraged, for instance, by Christianity in selflessness.

More on the Right type of arrogance: the Remembrance Day assembly. That is the annual time when we focus on verbs like "remember" and "sacrifice" and occasionally "death" and imagine that strong emotions are elicited by these verbs. I suspect that only a few people in the room had actually known war, and could relate to what our eloquent speakers were talking about (Jack Xu's yuppie Asian accent was perfect for the occasion). Everybody else was left pretending to understand what the speakers were pretending to understand which was that something Very Very Solemn and Important was being talked about. Everybody was Too Insecure to question this façade so it was kept up very well through the whole assembly, except possibly during the minute of silence when it was cut short after fifteen seconds by a faltering trumpet.

Back to the essay: I figured I would have to come up with an essay topic and format from scratch. I also concluded that general art and morality were out of the question, since it would presuppose acceptance of Moral Relativism. I suppose I could write an essay about Moral Relativism, but to establish something in one-thousand words as true that is intuitively obvious requires an ability in sophistry which I do not possess. My lack of ability is not a deficiency, like it is not a deficiency I lack the ability to have masochistic sex while slitting my wrists. (This bad metaphor is a case-in-point.)

If I wanted to have a conclusion this is where I would mention what essay topic I chose. But in this essay it is the means, not the end.