Germany to finally publish 'Mein Kampf.' Millions about to fall asleep.

Looks like someone else read Mein Kampf.

Germany has spent the better part of the last 80-years trying to smother any acknowledgment of their Nazi past. This includes banning the publication of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler's roughly 600-page rant written decades before World War II.

Indeed, Germany was granted the copyright to the book after the war by Allies--and Germany chose to make sure publication never happened within its borders during that time. Copyright law states the holder of the copyright owns it for 70 years after the writer's death. Now, with the 70th anniversary of Hitler's death upon us, the copyright is set to expire--and the German Institute for Contemporary History intends to publish Mein Kampf for the first time in the country.

It won't simply be a basic republication of the book though. German law also forbids anything related to Nazism that isn't heavily annotated to be critical of the regime, propaganda, and heinous actions undertaken then. Thus, Hitler's 600-page snoozer* of a book will now be inflated to nearly 2,000 pages, filled with notes, commentaries, and annotations regarding all "lies, half-truths and vicious tirades," the institute says.

The book is estimated to cost $63.




*Buy Mein Kampf in person at a bookstore sometime. You'll never feel more awkward purchasing a book at a Barnes & Noble than you will when you slide that one across the counter to the middle-aged woman with glasses on the bridge of her nose channeling her inner librarian, as she gazes up at you briefly to make sure you aren't shady. [I was doing a school project on World War II.] Toe-curling awkwardness, where you'll want to say--loudly--"I'm not an anti-Semite! It's research! I swear!" while you start to sweat and question why you didn't just buy the damn thing online. To make matters worse, Hitler was as good of a writer as he was as a human being--which is to say horrible, horrible, horrible. If you find Ambien, Lunesta, or any other prescription medication isn't helping you sleep, that alcohol doesn't do the trick, you can take solace in the fact that you'll pass out from sheer boredom five pages into reading Mein Kampf.

This is all to say that Germany is about to unleash a wave of book-induced narcolepsy upon its people.

Cornell's president wants students to put away their electronics and get some sleep.

Cornell University president Elizabeth Garrett isn't thrilled with students sleeping less and less these days, and wants to see that trend turn around.

As she tells the Huffington Post, "I always worry about them because you deal better with things when you're rested and have a sense of balance and good judgment."

I assume everyone at Cornell must be an insomniac, because otherwise they'd have the good judgment not to go to Cornell, amiright?? (((rim-shot!)))

Studies show that people who drastically sleep less than they should tend to be more at risk for depression, risky behaviors, and memory loss. So Garrett has some advice for incoming freshman.

"Don't be constantly looking at your cell phone, or listening to things, and interact with your colleagues face to face in real time," Garrett tells HuffPo, "because you can't replicate the kinds of engagement that you have in a group of people sitting around watching each other's facial expressions."

Like the facial expression of disappointment when you realize you attend Cornell.

Alas, I assume this is what every incoming freshman at Cornell looks like:






Real time? What is real time? Is there fake time? Real time is one of those silly phrases that people use that doesn't actually mean anything--and this is coming from an individual running an Ivy League institution. She probably means in person, at that moment. Otherwise, Garrett is dipping into the human construct of what time actually is, a rationalization of existence broken into measured units. That's a philosophical debate I didn't see happening when talking about sleep.

And "listening to things"? Listening to what? Does Garrett mean an iPod? A fan in order to have white noise? Or am I staring at my couch and hoping it will talk to me? Because these are all things, but they all suggest different levels of mental health. Specificity would help so we all knew what she meant.

Randomness Corner: The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson's 'You Are the Author'

Before Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel, before Conan O'Brien and Arsenio Hall, before Jay Leno and David Letterman, there was Johnny Carson.

If you were alive between 1962 and 1992, odds are you watched Carson late at night. So did your grandmother, making it the rare television show appealing to all generations (and insomniacs).

Here, from a 1991 episode, is Carson's 'You Are the Author' segment, taking lines from audience members to create a saucy romance story.

That degree you paid for through the 1-800 number on TV is becoming less popular these days.

Remember when the University of Phoenix was still thought of as a joke? Usually there was some fair-haired, pretty young woman lounging in bed, wearing pajamas, tooling about on her laptop, telling us how she could get her degree through casual online classes. Just call today!!

Well, it seems for-profit colleges and universities (University of Phoenix, DeVry University, Vinny Boombatz's School of Higher Learning--all the usual suspects) are still jokes, and now they're sucking wind. According to the Wall Street Journal, new-student enrollment is down across the board, in some cases down by 45%.

If it wasn't sad enough that you tried to pay for a degree through a 1-800 number, it's even more pathetic when your school might tank before there's even a school reunion. (A reunion most likely held online, in a chat room, although maybe a message board if the budget is extra tight.)

All the cool kids examine coupons for bad grammar and spelling.

You know those coupons you get in your junk mail? You know, the Val-Pak envelope wedged inside the grocery store circulars telling you boneless chicken breasts are $1.99 a pound this week? Those ones. (Still confused? Ask your grandma. She and I have our fingers on the pulse of excitement.)

The coupons are offered by companies--some mom and pops, some national chains, all local--looking to promote something.

It's safe to say that something isn't promoting English skills.

1.) Randomly Capitalizing words is always An Annoying thing for an english Major to see.

2.) Ever ever?

And guess what?! Full sentences inside parentheses need a period, too.

3.) Do you have?

Sounds like a bad movie subtitle on a Chinese bootleg.

4.) This is just bad for their ideas of fun.


a.] ...because beach balls are always a good idea around open flames.


b.] ...because paper lanterns and tiki torches are probably going to require a call to the fire department soon, too.


c.] ...because no one wants to use your extra, spare bathing suits, no matter how many times you claim you've washed them.

Please hold while we take your webpage viewing in the order it was received.

I'm being a good lil' grad student and writing absolutely fantastic research papers as opposed to updating this blog once or twice a day.

Really, these papers are high quality stuff. The kind you read at least 10% of before you throw it out.

As a result, my time is occupied. But only for another week(ish), at which time I promise your usual blog sarcasm shall resume uninterrupted as if nothing academically noble happened in the meantime.

Know Your State College English Departments Simply Based on Their Website, Part Four: Framingham State College

State schools are plucky. Massachusetts state colleges are pluckier than most. When you're the (sort of) next door neighbor to the Harvards and M.I.T.s of the world, you need to put your best foot forward to get recognized. It's all in the presentation. So, in an attempt to learn more about our Massachusetts state college brethren, it's time to examine the English department websites of all state colleges and see what they put out there to the general public for all to learn about them.

Next Up: Framingham State College

Also known as:
"the other FSC"
"the FSC of Route 9"
"Fitchburg State College's doppelganger of lower Massachusetts"

Have you always wanted to attend an English Department with the personality of Al Gore, circa pre-2000? Then you're in luck, because Framingham State College's English Department has taken a page out of their Dragnet handbook, and offers the facts, and just the facts, ma'am.

The webpage cuts straight to the point. It has goals for the English major.

1.) Demonstrate an aesthetic appreciation of language and literature.  (They don't want to see just any sort of appreciation--just the aesthetic variety.)

2.) Interpret a range of texts in American, British, and world literature, providing those texts with appropriate historical and cultural contexts.  (Only "appropriate" contexts now. No funny business.)

3.) Demonstrate advanced analytical reading skills.  (This implies most college students have actual reading skills to begin with.)

4.) Understand a variety of critical theories, approaches, and methodologies and apply them to the interpretation of texts.   (All English majors know that critical theories are where the action's at. And that action is usually displayed by quiet sobbing.)

5.) Demonstrate substantial communication skills, including the ability to write lucid prose for specific rhetorical situations.  ("Substantial communication skills" is something Billy Mays exhibited in infomercials. Greatest English major in history then? Quite possibly.)

6.) Demonstrate advanced ability to conduct and use academic research, from locating and evaluating print and electronic sources to integrating research materials into substantial critical essays.   (I'll help with half of that statement: you can locate most research material in your school's library.)

And...that's pretty much it.

No, really. 

That's about it for the website of this FSC's English Department. You can find some courses offered in pinpoint detail--find some background on the faculty--or find some ideas of career paths with an English degree.

Some things you won't find:

1.) a link to a writing center
2.) a link to any school activities
3.) a link to any school creative journals
4.) a link to any English clubs or organizations
5.) a sense of humor.

Writers are anyone with a keyboard or a pad of paper nearby.

Someone recently asked me, "How do writers write?"

I didn't know what they were looking for, so I said, "With desperation."

Surprisingly, that wasn't what they were looking for.

But a Google search for just that very question isn't very helpful either. The search term "how do writers write" had a first return to some website called famouswhy.com. The author of the piece, Cristina Nuta, lights a firecracker under the question and gives a gripping in-depth analysis of how writers actually write. Her view (including her own typos):

"They prefer to be alone and enjoy silence. They may also work in a dark room, where the sun can hardly penetrate. Moreover, some writers have a mess in the rooms they work in, because they are surrounded my several materials, books, essays, sheets of papers and so on. But this environment does not bother them, instead it gives them inspiration. On the other hand, there are writers who prefer a light room, painted also in bright colours. They also need to have a large balcony and feel nature is taking part in their creation of an extraordinary work of art."

((zzZZzZzz))

I'm sorry. Dozed off there for a second.

Cristina more or less just said all writers are either befuddled hermits living in man-made caves overflowing with their trash, or they're blossoming hippies who smell of patchouli that live in neon yellow rooms while humming mantras to Mother Earth.

I don't know what Cristina classifies as a "writer" though. I'm sitting here at a computer screen at 2am (hooray, insomnia!) in a room with a lamp lit while the television hums away in the corner, all the while nothing is terribly out of place or messy. Oh, and the walls are painted a very toned down color. I'd call it "Cookie Crumb" (so says the Behr paint website), which is in the terrible middle ground between "cave" and "neon yellow."

Maybe I'm not a writer then. I need to work on stereotypes to fulfill what the much-insightful Cristina says I should be. I'm sure she also thinks I need to smoke two packs a day, drink a fifth of scotch, and refuse to bathe until head lice is my closest friend. That, or I need to invest in Birkenstocks and have a vase of daisies at my side while I move to some nature reserve where my only high is the smell of wild animals outside my door.

Though Cristina does tell us this nugget of typo-ridden wisdom: "A very important thing while writing is the moment of the day to write and food: for some writers the brain only works until lunchtime and food is vital to keep them going."

Pssh. Amateur writers. Let's see them write something at 2am.