Poophead - Who Knew it Was a Compliment?

In an effort to celebrate the end of the school year, I thought I’d write about knowledge. Funny enough, if you type “knowledge” into Thesaurus.com, one of the synonyms with which you will be provided is “poop.” I can’t say I’m overly surprised, as this has been a suspicion of mine for quite some time now. I am happy to know that I am not the only one who believes that scholarly creativity is very much akin to bullcrapping, that blessed skill which I cherished throughout high school and, admittedly, many a times in college. As I’ve worked my way through “higher education”, I have become more and more convinced that bullcrapping and creativity are, if not one and the same thing, then nearly-identical twins. After all, what is bullcrapping but the ability to make crap up and then eloquently support it? Isn’t this what creativity is? In fact, I dare say that a talented enough person could, prior to examining any source material, devise a paper topic and, upon viewing the source material, produce a captivating article that ties the two together.

For example: several months ago, Babycakes and I had plans to hang out with my sisters. When we arrived at my older sister’s apartment, they were watching an Elvis Presley film that happened to be on cable. Though it was nearing the end of the film, I soon began commenting on its blatant homosexual overtones. This was a joke, of course, but as the movie went on, I found more and more evidence to support my theory, namely that the movie dealt with Elvis’ struggle with same-sex attraction. Needless to say, if I invested the necessary time, I’m sure I could produce a half-decent essay entitled, “The Homoeroticism of Girls! Girls! Girls!” But so what? Apparently, you needn’t even be human to concoct such poppycock—just check out this recent post by Johnny-Dee. Like Johnny-Dee, I find this “very humorous” indeed.

So, should you be the type of person to find faux intellectualism (whether detected as such or not) extremely enjoyable, here is an idea for your next soiree: as guests arrive, hand each of them a small scrap of paper. Have half of them write down the general theme of a potential academic paper (e.g. the effect of poverty on crime, sexual discrimination in the workplace, etc.), and have the other half write down the name of a fairly well-known film. Mix the movie titles in one hat and the paper topics in another hat. Once everyone has arrived and enjoyed the hors d’oeuvres and small talk, have guests take turns randomly pulling a piece of paper from each hat. That person then has to argue, as persuasively as possible, how the two things “naturally” coincide. You’ll get gems like “Marxism in The Wizard of Oz,” “Peter Pan and the Oedipus Complex,” and so on. And if you’re not throwing a shindig, you can still try this quite informally with as little as two people. Just have each person come up with one of the two topics and, once both persons are ready, say them aloud. I tried this with my sisters just the other day, and it was generally quite surprising how much potential seemed to exist in the combinations we came up with. If you try this, I can guarantee you one thing—once all the laughter has died down, you’ll be pooped.