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Friday, May 14, 2010

That damned major

What's Mallard raving about today?

College.

And yet, despite the Straw Man, being a Deconstructionist Gender-Theory Grad Student would contribute more to society than churning out Mallard Fillmore everyday.

18 comments:

GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. said...

Tinsley has no idea what any word in the phrase "deconstructionist gender-theory studies" means, but he DOES know that HUR HUR THEM SMARTYPANTS LIBRULS WITH THER BOOK LARNIN GLUG GLUG GLUG PUKE PASS OUT IN THE GUTTER

Tog said...

Welcome to Deconstructing Mallard Fillmore, also known as Digging Through Dogturds.

In today's sample, we see that Bruce "Batshit" Tinsley has chosen to update the tired old "Major in Basket Weaving" gag with an assortment of words he knows his fanbase--the sincere ones, not the ones with frontal lobes who read his works to mock them--cannot understand but may associate with a knock against anyone who is not a Manly Man like himself.

...I'm sorry, class. Forgive me. I practiced that all morning and I was sure I could say it without giggling.

Ignoring the fact that, by adding this to the basic concept--that college graduates in obscure fields never contribute to society, but rather become teachers of useless subjects--Batshit is overreaching and bound to confuse the knuckle-dragging simians to whom he is trying to appeal, one must ask: what does he suggest?

Surely he isn't suggesting students not be allowed to pick their field of study. The idea that fields should be locked in where they stood at the turn of the last century would be quite preposterous for a self-professed free-market advocate. But then, that's why he's "Batshit."

Ducky is Right said...

Ducky:
Watch the first 20 seconds of Avenue Q.
That's how you do the joke you just tried, and failed, to make.
Very first line of the show, and it killed with the audience.

That said, colleges are a place to learn things. There's no requirement that those things are profitable skills.
See, unlike you Ducky, some people enjoy knowing things, even if they're not directly applicable to their financial penis.

MToje said...

DaveyK, I disagree with your assessment: Mallard contributes to society by keeping an eye on Obama, remember? Hence the constant terror in the President's eyes, the dread of being exposed by a surly fictitious duck as the evil liberal godless-Islamist Commie-Nazi that he is.

NLC said...

Y'know, it occurs to me that for someone who tries so hard to present the persona of a hater of popular culture (TV, movies, etc), Tinsely sure seems to get most of his notions of life in the Real World (college students, dating, folks who actually work for a living --either blue or white collar--, blah, blah....) straight out of the worst-written, most cliche-ridden sitcoms.

dlauthor said...

If only the kid had been smart, and gotten a useful degree like Tinshley's double-major in Dittoheadnomics and Applied Ethanology.

WV: redibel, a measurement of the loudness of a group of racist, illiterate rednecks. One Tea Party = 100 redibels (or 400000 if you believe Fox).

exanonymous said...

All skills are profitable if you know how to market them.

As for the degree, it isn't. It might be a thesis topic, but not what goes on a diploma.

The thing that is most annoying is people who downplay degrees. Very seldom do people actually get a job in "English" or "Physics" or "Mathematics" anyways. The knowledge you gain isn't supposed to be the sum of everything you need to know to work a specific job, and only a moron would think otherwise. But hey, no lack of folks majoring in that. But it leads a lot of people to the conclusion that a college degree is useless when there is a VERY good reason why most businesses won't hire someone without one: you learned how to do the work you are given with a certain maturity.

Kip W said...

He just doesn't know, does he? That there's a veritable industry of people who talk about these things and write books and articles about them and everything and consult with businesses about their real-world applications?

I don't mean the straw construct he offers here, but the actual ones he's mocking with his burlesque hyphenated words: English, Math, and other cloud-cuckoo topics that don't matter to somebody who shovels shit or spends his life half-passed out in front of the idiot box.

rewinn said...

For a real example of how gender-theory based deconstruction can be actually useful IN THE REAL WORLD, I offer Technological Boundaries: Defining the Personal and the Political in Military Mothers’ Online Support Forums.

It's a very good and non-judgmental look at some stuff that is actually going on, and offers the promise of actions to actually supports our troops and their families, by looking carefully at ("deconstructing") the way conversations go especially among mothers (who tend to be of a particular "gender").

Now ... there's a lotta guff and fluff in college and making fun of it is perfectly o.k. (once again Doonesbury does it better), but the reason for that is that 50% of EVERYTHING is below the median. It's a sad fact that in any distribution of quality, someone has to occupy the low end of any curve; case on point: Mallard Fillmore.

David B said...

I’m not a fan of deconstruction, but i know enough about it to know that deconstruction is one of many theoretical approaches that can be used in gender studies, not something that can be used as a simple adjective for gender studies.

Really, if you’re gonna try to make a joke like this, you could at least do enough research to find out how to actually use the jargon you’re mocking, lest you get mocked yourself.

WV: prosh, the way Tinsley ends up pronouncing the phrase “democratic process” after having a couple too many.

Anonymous said...

I nominate dlauthor @ 5:53 for Best. WV humor. Ever.

WV: ingis. What Tinsley does when he... no, that's no good. What Brucie thinks about... dammit! This is harder than it looks.

Frank Stone said...

And thus we come to the end of yet another week of "Stup'd college'n'shit ej'cashun SUUUXX urp BRAAP where's my damBOTTLE???"

WV: Coofing: Trying to cough a mouthful of booze straight up into the air and catch it in the mouth again. Most often attempted by alcoholic cartoonists.

Bill the Splut said...

A friend of mine has been selling RVs for 15 years. He's arranged loans for vehicles that can sell for the price of a small home. He applied to a bank for a job as a loan officer, and was told that he could make 60K as a business officer, but he could only be hired as a personal officer for 30K. Why, with his 15 years experience? Because he doesn't have a degree. You can be 21 and not know a damn thing, and be given that job with no experience.

So he's gone back to college online, to get his degree and double his earnings potential. He just finished 2 courses: Nutrition, and the Music of the Beatles. Yes, his magic piece of paper doesn't require that his degree relates in any way to making loans.

So the straw grad actually has a better chance at some jobs than someone with no degree at all. The real problem for grads is that they need to get jobs that will pay off their student loans.

Sorry, I hope that wasn't overly TL;DR. Short version: Tinsley is a stupid drunk on wingnut welfare and has no idea how the real world works.

Kaitlyn said...

The look on his face in the last panel implies that he doesn't like his degree, he didn't enjoy learning...

Because colleges FORCE you to get a certain degree.

And someone with a degree like that would probably go back to grad school, maybe work as a professor or in the real world, work with domestic violence victims, work with children/teens on reversing the damage done to the word feminism...

That is a degree that requires a lot of work - if it didn't exist, he had to create it. And most schools will let you create one, if you know what you're doing.

So why the long face?

But this is a better "joke" than the old saw about how you get your degree in English and have to work at McDonalds.

I'm getting a degree in French. No grad school for me... as of right now.

I don't want to teach. Maybe I'll work as a translator - I could do that from home, which would be good if my chronic pain is still around. ::sigh::

But I'm optimistic - I know that any entry level "white collar" job requires at least a BA. I don't need a job related to my major, I just need a job.

Kaitlyn said...

Bill - that sucks that he has to get a degree, but at least he had fun while getting the sacred piece of paper.

It makes me sad - my grandparents' generation didn't need a high school diploma to live a comfortable life. My parents didn't need a college degree for the same thing.

Now we get the feeling we need at least a BA/BS to live comfortably.

So will the next generation have to go to grad school?

Is this good - we're getting more education? Or is it bad - it's making the degree meaningless, because you just needed a high school diploma to get your foot in the door, now you need a BA for the same thing.

The future will be interesting.

Marion Delgado said...

This is more proof that you're not like the other 80% - not like US, Kaitlyn. At least we knew enough to hate our classes, hate our degree, and curse our school for not hiring Glenn Beck to teach all our boring history courses.

I'll never forget how all those rich spoiled America-hating brats made fun of me for bringing my lunch every day in a Dukes of Hazzard Lunch Box.

rewinn said...

I nominate " redibel" for the UrbanDictionary!

Use it often and proudly: " a measurement of the loudness of a group of racist, illiterate rednecks. One Tea Party = 100 redibels (or 400000 if you believe Fox)."

Kip W said...

rewinn, I think all you have to do is go over to the Urban Dictionary and put that in and see if it gets votes. I could be wrong, but that's how it looks from the times I looked things up there.