I'm back...

I've been in Greece for the past 10 days, it was loads of fun and I'm still toying with the idea of dropping out and moving to Athens. To tide you over until I can get this all typed up, here's a round of funny proffessor quotes, all of which I culled from the margins of my notes. Someone tell me if they are nearly as funny as I think they are.

FromWestern Civilization I with Dr. Ht:

Course intro: “There’s very little to loose except for a little bit of your self esteem.”

Neolithic civilizations and the begings of agriculture: “instead of gathering the famous nuts and berries, now known as granola…”

Ötzi the Iceman: “He’s one of those living… OK, he’s not living.”

The existance of pottery fragments indicates an economic surplus, because pots are used to hold stuff, and then a run down of different types of pottery, including funerary urns. Dr. Ht imediatly realized what was wrong with that statement... “Well, not funerary urns, that means you have a surplus of dead people.”

On Sparta: “And if things don’t go right, they just slaughter the local population and it works out really well for them.”

Cylon: “On the strength of his Olympic victories he became archon, and we could make comparisons to a certain governor of California, but we won’t.”

Pericles’ Funeral Oration, and applying what he says to your own hometown: “Fix your eyes on the greatness of Fargo North Dakota.”

Athens in war: “Do I feel well today? Maybe I can go kill 100 men.”

On Tririemes(sp?): “What Themistocles tried to do was build a kind of SCUD missile or Nuclear Bomb of the ancient world.”

Alcibiades: “He was certainly homosexual in a way that was uncomfortable even for the Greeks.”

Phillip and Alexander: “They have a very strong cavalry, and I just spelled it wrong.”

Carthage: “If any of you want to have an adventure in a Moslem country – and I’m not recommending this – then Tunisia is a nice place to go.”

The founding of Rome, an attempt at class participation: “Then what happens to Romey and Remy?”

Literary Tradition III, with Dr. M:

Intro: “I’m not trying to brow-beat you to stop watching movies and read more great books.. well I guess I am, I’m a professor of literature.”

“Why do people cry when the semi-androgynous Leonardo di Caprio goes down with the ship?”

“Tom Cruise isn’t a heroic fighter pilot, he’s a creepy scientologist.”

“I have a sheet where I say what makes an A Paper, essentially I say make it really good.”

Immigration Office: “The hope is that Dr. Hadley and I don’t get deported, ‘cause that would really mess up the schedule.”

Symbolism in the Oresteia: “If any of you love playing with snakes, I don’t care.”

Aristotle’s Poetics, Rhythm is one of the 6 parts of tragedy: “We’ve all got rhythm. Who could ask for anything more?”

Delphi: “It’s irrational to trust in this woman who is high on Ethylene vapors.”

The Birth of Tragedy: “Nietzsche’s really gloomy.”

“It’s UD, you always have to talk about Philosophy.”

Art and Archetecture of Rome, with Dr. F:

“We don’t have emperors like this now, after all we wear pants.”

“Café Grecco: it was the Irish Pub of the 18^th Century.”

The Sistine Chapel: “Adam doesn’t really have life yet, though he’s been to they gym.”

A statue of Saturn eating his children: “It’s completely gory and disgusting and you guys shouldn’t miss it.”

Hercules: “One of the laws of mythology is that whenever a god makes love to a mortal there will be a baby, so Jupiter has like his own posse.”

“Hercules is one of these guys who is never Zen at all.”

“He wears the lion skin sort of preppy style over his shoulders.”

“Hercules had 40 watts of a 100 watt bulb going.”

The Rape of the Sabine woman: “This makes Rome like the 1^st Australia.”

“It’s like the 1^st fraternity prank ever.”

The Via Appia Antica “This was before they invented SUV chariots.”

“It’s hard to sneeze online.”

“I don’t know the answer. We’ll have to Google that.”

Building a concrete dome: “you let your wooden courses sit there until the concrete is cured, then you cross your fingers and take them away.”

Guest speaker over Augustus:

Greece v. Rome is like UK v. US “You have Shakespeare. What do we have? We have the Atom Bomb. OK, that’s cool.”

“You bring obelisks from Egypt to Rome and set them up. It’s sort of like having a space program.”

“Not only does he become the richest person in the world overnight, but he’s also the only person in the world who can put on his resume ‘I am the son of a god.’”

“You can tell he is an effeminate Eastern Persian because he’s wearing pants.”

“Everything was leading up to … ME!”

Western Theological Tradition with Dr. S. He's not very funny in class, but I have a list of goofy things he said in Greece that is as long as my arm :

The letter of St. Clement: “This is not just papal plagiarism going on.”

On Neo-Platonism in Augustine’s work: “If Augustine ate a sandwich, your editor included a footnote saying Plotinus ate a sandwich too.”

“Let me see that I’m not making this up to much.”

Philosophy of Man with Dr. Hd:

“I hate Nietzsche. That’s a good start for philosophy, in more ways than one.”

There are some lessons that you have to learn yourself, and there are some things that you just accept when you are told, such as don’t get in cars with strangers: “Thank God, most of us believe that without trying it, but some people come back 6 months later as the captain of a pirate ship ‘hey mom and dad, that was a crazy adventure’.”

“Unicorns, to be sure, if they exist, they probably ask questions like this.”

“It’s hard for me to be the serious scholarly professor of Philosophy when the cheerfulness keeps breaking though.”

On the immigration office: “I’ll be treated like an animal at the immigration office, when I come back I’ll have a brand to show you.”

Crito: “If you’re auditioning for this, go for the Socrates part, not Crito.”

on different human desires: “Desire for a bigger breakfast than what Italy offered.”

Starting sentences with 'however' is one of Dr. Hd's pet peeves, and yet there in the Crito what do we find but: “He stated a sentence with ‘however’… ooh.”

“You haven’t met them yet, but we have a small group of philosopher-kings that we keep in a locked room.”

“In a city of pigs, maybe there’s some roasting that has to be done.”

“We’ll leave wisdom until graduate school.”

“The truth is basically wacky.”

There’s an intermission in the Phaedo “It’s nice to know that Plato is responsible for our modern television programming.”

“The jedi formerly known as Darth Vader.”

This is an exchange with a student:
S: “Is the defining trait what makes you you, or is it what separates humans from animals?”
Dr. Hd: “The later.”
S: “Is that the 2^nd one?”

St. Augustine: “You see how I work. I’m just a selfish child.”

St. Augustine: “Hey drive in Italy sometime! Not all roads lead to Rome, but all roads lead to God.”

That's all for now, I'll have Greece stories and photos up soon, I promise.