They don't teach you this kinda stuff in that fancy Princeton Review prep course...

Comments (2)

1. 

   Add To My Trusted Moggers
   Smooth Hegemon says I'm here to allay your fears and swear that I have put those days behind me, I have paid my debt to society, and I'm standing *next to* T. Szasz so how could I also _be_ him? Hey! Has anyone here seen _The Prestige_? No? Splendid....film. You must go and view it sometime. Ok, so we've got not only the creator of the course, Mr. Szasz, and my own solemn promise as the CEO of his parent company DOROYLTAN (Don't Just Rest On Your Laruels - Take a Nap!, LLC) and you _still_ aren't willing to part with your three easy installments of $29.99? No sweat. Let's go to the empirical data and let the Szasz explain it all himself: Hey there boys and girls! Ready to be blown away by my unrepresentative sample? Yeeehaw! First, a satified customer's assignment for the spring semester, 2004. Assignment: Write an essay on modern Montenegro. The original title: "Nationalism as a Means to Increase Credibility: Bucking the Serbian Stigma." Yawn. I give it a B, tops. Mostly because if I were grading it I'd already have one essay completed. New and improved orange-scented title!!!!: "How King Nikita the First Totally Schooled the Hapsburgs From Beyond the Grave With the Help of Chuck Norris and the Modern Nation State" Money in the bank! B-list content, A+ use of slang in a pretentious and awkward way! The professor or TA will think you're so brilliant you've evolved beyond formal English! Or they'll think it's awesome that you've utilized the inexplicable resurgence of Chuck Norris with amazing agility. An even better example of how the patented MOGtitler3000 slices and dices: A twenty-five page yawn-fest on the father of the anti-psychology movement and how he has managed to implode his own argument over the past thirty years? Oh buggers! Tammy, I want to know who changed those cue cards and I want you to set them on fire! Pardon my digression...Where was I? Oh yes, the amazing abilities of my self-patented system. This one is a doozey. Original title: Szasz's Myth of Mental Illness: An Examination of The Long-Term Viability of The Myth of Mental Illness Clever? A fair effort, my friend, echanging a "the" for my surname. But let's take a page out of John Stuart Mill, wipe our arses with it, and get back to the task at hand. If you're going to take me to task, you'll want to suss out your competition. I mean, won't your face be red when your paltry little sentence fragments butt heads with the following titles in your _own_ endnotes: _Liberation by Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry_ _Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America_ _Bertrand Russell, C.S. Lewis, and the Existential Identity Thief_ _A Lexicon of Lunacy_ _The Insanity Defense is, Well, Insane_ Take notes, you will have to surrender a fee to take the test. The first two are total solids. A paradox followed up by two subjects so unrelated that sitting them next to one another doesn't create any literary device at all. And a made-up system of governance _plus_ the liberal use of inappropriate suffixes? Timeless. The pearl necklace of titles. The last three are a bit more nuanced. I really shouldn't reveal the secrets of these little beauties. You really need the advanced version of this course to master the technique of name dropping, trading twenty dollar words, and using colloquial language in a formal setting, but you've got a nice face. Free of charge. So what do we do with _your_ paper naming nightmare? Relax, dollface. We just make it a little hipper, a little smoother, and a little more aloof. You really want this prof to think you _care_ if they understand and appreciate your deeply shallow insights? Fine, I'll show you a formula for gussying up a pre-existing title page that never fails! The SlackerSmacker Formula (TM) is: 1. "Original Title" + 2. How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The (fill in the blank!) You still look confused, kid. I'll give you a fer'instance. This is what your original tripe...ahem...I mean _title_ will look like once it's been sent through our patented abacus: "Szasz's Myth of Mental Illness, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Libertarians." Zazazowie! That one is sure to be a hit with all the hepcats in the humanities. And if you order in the next 15 minutes, I'll even throw in our paradigm-shifting _Departmental Relativism Indicator 2.0_, This little device might just look like the decoder ring from a box of CrackerJack, but it *in fact* uses patented NMD laser technology to apprise you of your department's most recent political climate (featuring FOUR different settings: Left, lefter, Lenin and neoconservative.) Got a killer prospectus that how you plan to prove that Reagan *really* won the Cold War by asking Gorbachev if he wanted to come over and play _World of Warcraft_ ? Afraid that it's not going to cut the mustard with that prof. who got a degree in hating on Reagan back when he was still in B movies? The _RelativismMechanism_(TM) will let you know just how limber those old "I'm ready to read something that doesn't blatantly appeal to my personal politics" muscles really are. Call now! Operators are standing by!

   Permalink posted 12/13/2006
2. 

   Add To My Trusted Moggers
   Smooth Hegemon says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szasz Progenitor of the anti-psychiatry movement. Staunch libertarian. Blogger (by proxy) Proven he can hang with the Scientologists.... Heartthrob.

   Permalink posted 12/13/2006

Comment on this Post

Login using email and password below.

Email

Password

Remember me on this computer

Forgot Password?

Don't have an account?
Join MOG. It's Free!