I feel bad for student academics. A diet of top ramen and boxed wine keeps them anemic and brittle, and a constant intake of theory papers makes it early impossible for them to interact with normal people the way that tear-wrenching body odor might for inhibit your chances on a first date. Therefore, when I saw a notice that a Korean student needed someone to proofread her papers, I sent off an e-mail.
At the time I didn’t know it was a doctorial thesis, but she said it was on Chinese Erotic Literature which at least sounded intriguing. Reading a literary analysis of Chinese Erotic Literature is approximately as erotic as a cold shower where Michele Foucault pulls open the curtain, punches you in the spine, then squirts shampoo directly in your eyes.
My only joy so far have been some of the choice lines that don’t exactly translate:
“Probably he can be a Phallus.”
“The text is rich in lecherous flavor”
“Yanli did not like any kind of exercise, even ‘the best indoor exercise’”
"Both natives, Jiaorui and Yanli, are no less pure than aliens"
"Qiqiano succeeds in establishing herself as a Phallus"
In establishing myself as sort of a phallus, I am at least getting paid for this—the equivalent of about fifty bucks. I’m on my twelfth editing hour now, which officially dips the wage per hour below the minimum. The irony that I had to pay to come to Asia and compete with the sweatshop kids sewing Gucci wallets is not lost on me, especially since Michael Moore filmed me hunched over the thesis for six and a half hours. At least I think it was Michael Moore…it was a sweaty guy in a hat with a camcorder, which is also the qualifications to work on a porno set. Technically with the low pay and the general exploitations of my labor, I should be working on a porno set too.
2 comments:
I see that education is coming in very handy. You should be pulling in a six-digit income any day now...
I;m making that right now, if you include the digits after the decimal point.
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