Noam Chomsky is not coming to BYU nor is he dead

So this term I am taking two courses: Spanish 655, which is a seminar on Cuban Poetry and Spanish 520, "Problems in Spanish Grammar". They are actually both fairly interesting and really not difficult to sit through for 2 hours, 3 times a week. (Yes, I'm crazy, but that's also why I am in graduate school). The Cuban poetry one is interesting and I really like the professor, but we are mainly focusing on Jose Marti and I am not a big fan of his poetry. He is the national poet of Cuba and is constantly quoted by both Fidel Castro and the exiles trying to get their country back from him, and led the first revolution against the Spanish, yada, yada, yada. For some reason his poetry reminds me a lot of Emily Dickinson, that weird visionary stuff full of big words and wacky symbolism and other things that make you wonder if everyone just thinks they are geniuses because no one can understand their work. I actually kind of like Emily Dickinson, so it's not like I'm slamming her or anything--her poetry just makes me tired after a while. Anyways, most of the same people are in my two classes since the Spanish department doesn't offer very many classes during the summer, and they combine grad students and undergraduates. I like almost everybody in my classes, except for one guy who I think we all want to strangle. He's the one who always sits up in front and is completely lost all the time, but not afraid to ask stupid questions or to show off big words that don't mean what he thinks they do. I know you know him and have had classes with him before. So today in my grammar class we were talking about phrase structure rules and universal grammar and the professor said "You all know who Noam Chomsky is, right?" So this guy piped up with, "Isn't he coming to give a seminar here or something?" My professor gave him a funny look and said something like, "No, I don't think Chomsky has any plans to come here any time soon." So then Slow Guy said, "Oh, he's dead, right? At this point the akward tension in the room was getting way too thick, so Dr. Turley simply changed the subject and went on with discussing noun phrases. Sigh

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