There's a kid in one of my courses who usually spends a fair bit of the class period trying to write essays with his mouth. This can be mildly amusing or irritating, or — because he's not stupid, and often right — informative.

Earlier this week, however, he said something so jawdroppingly pretentious, so stereotypically "grad school," that I feel compelled to mention it. I approximate:

"I'm reminded of something Kundera said at the beginning of Unbearable Lightness of Being... not my favorite of his books."

I couldn't help but laugh, and once I noticed that the student next to me was similarly amused it was difficult to stop laughing. It was like I'd gotten confirmation that it wasn't just me, that the name-checking here was really that ridiculous. Also, the kid was steepling his freaking fingers as he spoke.

With some effort, we managed to stop laughing, and I'm pretty sure we were quiet enough that no one noticed. Oh, UChicago. Do I really have to choose between cynicism and pretention? Because I know already which I'll pick.

I'm at a disadvantage, of course: I'm so used to off-loading things I know onto my computer that at this point I'm more likely to remember where I put information than the actual information. Plato, that most proto- of proto-bloggers, warned that all this writing would end up as a crutch.

Case in point: Often I'll get into an argument about something I know quite well, but I'll know only that I'm right and where I can confirm this, not the full argument for my position. Inevitably some stubborn Sockless Pete type won't believe me and I'll end up verifying my rightness the next time I'm on the computer.

Sometimes I've remembered incorrectly ("wuv" infuriated Lurr), but often I haven't, and it's a bittersweet triumph to know that someone went home still believing that 20/16 vision is worse than 20/20 (refutation here) or — as happened last night — that abbreviations like "C.I.A." are acronyms (refutation here, definition of acronym here).