Procrastination Station and the Heroes of Star Wars III.

I thought Star Wars III was exceptionally good. Wonderful, even. Absolutely dark (dark beyond my expectations). I won't go into any spoilers for those of you who haven't seen it, but it was quite a remarkable achievement. It's clunky in places, but no more so than any of the previous Star Wars installments, even the original trilogy. Every Star Wars movie has a little bit of crappy dialog, a couple of wierd scenes. This one's no different, but it's definitely more poignant. Well done, George. Don't ever make another one.

I went to pick up my rental car today, and it's actually pretty nice. It's some kind of Mitsubishi, but I'm getting it at far under my per diem from the other insurance company, so that's good. All I have to pay for is gas and for repairs if I happen to crash into a tree. Hopefully that won't happen, because I neglected to purchase the insurance, which was like $9 a day. Screw that.

I'm currently avoiding grading. I only have three papers to go, but lemme tell ya', these things are SO BAD. Absolutely incoherent. I've never graded a more wretched hive of ungrammatical sentences and textual misunderstanding. I mean, let's just take an example. There are many different ways to acceptably say "X says: '...'". For example, "Michael says that Coke is better than Pepsi." "Michael states that Coke is better than Pepsi." "Michael writes that Coke is better than Pepsi." "Michael argues that..." "Michael suggests that..." "Michael contends that...," etc. How, then, does a student say "Michael constructs that Coke is better than Pepsi."???? CONSTRUCTS? What is he doing, building a bridge? "Expresses" also gets my goat. He's not doing an interpretive dance, here. There are a hundred examples. Why can't students use words commensurate with their meaning? Why must there be reinterpretation of words that have perfectly entrenched definitions? This is annoying, partly because it's an obvious ploy by the student to sound clever without actually paying the price of writing clearly and making interesting points. Annoying in the extreme. I'm going to tear them a new one on Monday. Just like Darth Vader and Luke and how Darth Vader tore, er, Luke, er, a new...hand? You know what I mean.