Wednesday, September 24, 2003

...

Mood: Frustratingly irate
Music: Metallica-Blackened

Geometric proofs are such bullshit. What's the point of learning this dumb, useless jack-diddly, meaningless, endlessly drivelingly dripping shit? If you can tell me, other than using it if you are going to go into the profession of a mathmatician or an engineer, then be sure to send it to me in the mail with a gravestone. Because I'm going to be in it, some dead zombie that has no head, that can't even get this shit right.

"Given that line segment UV is congruent to line segment XY and that line segment VW is congruent to line segment WX and that line segment WX is congruent to line segment YZ, prove that line segment UW is congruent to line segment XZ."

And then you get this wonderful, mind fuckery picture of a line segment containing, in retrospective order, point U, then V, then W, then X, then Y. Are you basking in the tendrils of a shitconfusion yet? I am.

Then from all this crap, you are supposed to take it, and give each and every step to prove that line segment UW is congruent to line segment XZ. So then you make a little chart-thing, like some little familiar to bitch with, and place that given statement in there.

Of course, I had to give the verbal meanings of the given statement and what you're supposed to prove, otherwise, they'd be represented "symbolically." Might as well just tell me you're talking some crap about psychologically obtuse, motherless children. It means about the same to me: nothing.

So here I am, I sit down to do the assignment over this so-great crap we're assigned.

A kid in class today asked, "Mr. Kosse, not to be a jerk or anything, but why are we learning this? Where will we use it?"

Mr. Kosse, his beard barb-wiring his face, turns to Mr. I-don't-want-to-sound-like-a-jerk-or-anything and gives him a stare through his glasses as he fumbles like a fly with the middle of them.

I wish I could've said that, I wish I could've got right in his face. But I'm not that brash, of course. I'd never do that. But at least, sitting here, slapping away at myself with my mind, I can think I would.

"Well, (add Mr. I-don't-want-to-sound-like-a-jerk-or-anything here), you play football, right?"

"Yeah," he says, still looking at Kosse.

"And what position do you play?"

"Quarterback," says Mr. Quarterback. Mr. Quarterback looks on, as Kosse pauses a while then like some swelling loveliness starts speaking.

"Ah. Then you must have to make a decision when you're making a blitz."

What the hell a blitz is I don't care and I don't want to know. As far as I am concerned, I could care less.

He nods his head. Kosse goes on about something else about blitzes. Pizza sounded tasty then.

Then finally, "That's what we're doing here. Making decisions. Thinking." He holds out two of his fingers, making a small distance between them. "This is how much you'll remember from this class when you graduate. You won't remember much of anything." He points to the board, where the addition property of equality is written. "You won't remember this, and not much else. But what I want to get out of this class from you is the ability to think better." Sure, then why am I sitting here gnawing on my pencil, frustrated as a jack that has all work and no play makes jack a bad boy if I'm never going to remember this anyways?

Right then I thought it would've been classic to put Mr. Kosse in a teletubbie costume, paint his entire body in purple, place a black halo on his head, give him broken, bleeding, crutching wings, and shave off his beard and frame on a fake moustache. That would've perfectly shown what I thought of what he was saying; that would've shown me how much it meant to me. Because I don't know about you, but if I saw some dude talking to me about thinking more by learning some useless bullshit, and he was wearing a teletubbie costume, had his entire body painted purple, was wearing a black halo on his head, and had broken, bleeding, crutching wings, I'd consider I was signing a pact with some form of the devil. Or perhaps Barney the Dinosaur, that gay twit.

I think daily. Every single day of my useless, fucked existence. I know for one thing that I don't even consider, nor do I even blasphemize about math in any form or any purposable form. That's like playing with a card house that's built of pins and needles: it falls all over me in an endless gate of gaping, frustrated hate. It's not a zone that I go to. It's something like a black hole that's as black as my head feels right now.

So yeah, here I am, trying to do my assignment. Trying to think, as Mr. Kosse said, seemingly wearing his little guise that looks like Barney the Dinosaur. Nope, you can't really believe in someone like that. How unreal it is.

How unreal that I'm sitting here, trying to think, listening to my music which gives me concentration, yet all I can continue to think of is how fucking much I hate math with a passion. And not just math really, more or less the bullshitzone that is GEOMETRIC PROOFS. And he, my friends and scurrying chimpmunks, is one bitch.

I sit here and I stare his paper face right in the eye. I sit here and tell myself I can do this the bullshitzone that is this shit, and that I can actually sit myself down and have enough patience to not send out an SOS and gallantly gallop hold of some neighing impudence or crutch. Or procrastination. But I still end up doing this, after sitting here, copying down each problem, taking all the steps as such:

First, right down the given statement. Okay, I gots that one if Snoop Dawg ain't my name, and here she is, all beauty and all smack:

" Given that line segment UV is congruent to line segment XY and that line segment VW is congruent to line segment WX and that line segment WX is congruent to line segment YZ." As I said, it is represented in "symbols" which are much shorter and I cannot properly key on this keyboard.

So I make this thing, called a two-column proof. Makes me think of cheesy puffs, really, all stale and nothing. But whatever. Yeah, so say this is my "two-column proof," and she's one bitch:

Statement Reason
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
--
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-


It looks like that. You put the statement in the statement box, then you give a reason, and you keep on fucking with it like some mad tweaker until you finally get to the answer, and even for the answer you have to put a reason, as fucked up as that sounds to me.

And yet, as I look more closely at this "Geometric proof" I have to create, I realize, and ask, what is the point to explain this when, by looking at the drawing provided, I can see a reason discernable, right in my eye, that's not fake, and isn't in some dream. Why can't I just put down that, well, this segment here looks as long as this other segment here that I'm supposed to prove is congruent, and that that makes it work for me. Why do I have to go into it like some masochist just loving the pain, just bleeding for nothing, and gaining nothing. Why?

Oh, that's right, so I can think Oh, I see. Think. Yeah. Think.

Think.

So as I sit here thinking, I'll continue gnawing on my pencil like some baby bloomer that just knows this shit and is intuitioned with it like a pimp. I've even chewed on it so hard that it's left large indentations in my pencil, and has caused my teeth to ache. You know what, though? It still doesn't hurt as much as Mr. Geometric Proof. And really, all I have to do is think, like Mr. Kosse said. Yeah. Think. Like Mr. Kosse said. Think.

I mean, the only thing that's really on the line here is me passing this class. That's nothing too big, really, as far as I see it. But wait, it's my future. I want to go to college, I want to become something even though I'm nothing. So I'll just sit here and sit here and sit here and try and understand this bullshitzone, thie blitzshit. Maybe I'll figure it out. Maybe by tomorrow I'll know what the fuck I'm doing.

Maybe I should just ask the teacher, but I know that won't help. He's Barney the Dinosaur in a guise. He sings about how much he loves me and hates me, and makes up all these bulllshitty things. Things that he had to learn too when he was in school, stuff that's about Geometry, another language, one that I hope is crucified on a cross and hanged in a lynching. And the main thing I know is that I've grown up knowing to teach myself what I want to know, not to be weak and ask for help. But asking a teacher for help isn't weak! It sure isn't. But I have a way with things. Especially something as evil as math: I know that if I don't get it, then nothing else much will help me.

It's too bad evil is such a beautiful face, really. Too bad it's so wretched and eating and gnawing and bony. Too bad it has to be here, looking at me, talking to me everyday, trying to understand why I don't understand this stuff. Because Evil says to me that this stuff isn't evil, and that once I look close enough, I'll see the paradox that is the spiral of math, and see that evil also is a paradox.

Well, Jiminy Crickets, I'll just have to see about this. Continue stressing out over some numbers and symbols that are, as far as I am concerned, just lines and ink on a piece of paper. I'll just sit here and read into this bullshit that I could careless about.

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