ain objects; the historian brings new or reinterpreted data to bear on a particular event; the critic relates a passage or a text to a context that makes it appear in a new light" (124). I hope you are beginning to see the way in which my "funny" argument is beginning to make alarming sense: since the human condition originates in a fall from divine grace, all human truths are subsequently tainted by lies reminiscent of the first one (in my hopefully soon forthcoming book [an referene to my Pious Impostures and Unproven Words which has been published more than 10 years ago by now] I call this the "lie about a lie that was not a lie"). Which should bring me (around) to my conclusion. This paper is intended to exemplify the fictitious term paper. As usual, it fails. That is, though is was meant to be entirely spurious, irrational, and parodic, it has (I don't exactly know where I took the wrong turn) almost become "serious." I know from past experience that you will experience something not unlike the experience I have just experienced. Let me nevertheless lay this down as a "law": your paper must not make sense. This isn't, of course, an absolute law. Nor could I enforce it, even if it were. So do the best you can. But have fun, in any case. I think I shall have written this in a later handout for this course (which you may or may not receive in this one), so let me "prepeat" (the opposite of "repeat") it here: what is no fun to write, is no fun to read. In other words, no fun for the writer, no fun for the reader. In other other words, without fun there is no fun. Or words to that effect. Are you still with me? Good, because if what I have been saying here is a true lie, then the fictitious term paper you are about to write will have been the truest thing you shall ever have written in your life to date. Makes you think, does it not? And wonder, too....
