Alicia Dattner

What if your fancy liberal arts college had a preschool extension school?

College Preschool Extension School Course Catalog

Haveli College Preschool Extension School (HC PES) classes commence this spring. Here we have compiled a sampling of course descriptions.




EXPERIMENTAL SCHOOL OF EXPERIMENTAL INTERDISCIPLINARY EXPERIMENTALISM

ESEIE 103 TOPICS IN AESTHETICS: THE SAND CASTLE (prof TBA)

In this proseminar, we will examine the sand castle and its predecessor, sand. We will take a survey approach to the history and technique, and end with a focused study of the drip castle, the moat, and found object placement (along with Freud's modification to this technique: found object displacement). Special attention will be given to the practical applications of the sand castle. There will be a $50 lab fee, for sand. Prerequisite: Public Accounting. Class will meet once a week for a hundred and twenty minutes, and students must attend the weekly sea-lab. Enrollment is limited to 15 students. Thursday 1:20-3:20

EXPERIMENTAL SCHOOL OF GENERIC INTELLECTUAL EXPERIMENTALISM

ESGIE 238 PLAYGROUND THEORY (prof TBA)

In this course, we will examine complex notions of 'play' as it relates to the first-grader in terms of socioeconomic background. We will look at studies on working-class first-graders and first-graders of color at the 'play'ground which show a recent trend for an increasing sense of upward mobility, especially when near the ladder to the slide. Readings will rely heavily (but not too heavily) on Scooter B.'s Derridian reading of Morrison's 'Heterosexism and the Seasaw'. Also, we will look at the queer subtext of Foucault's 'Critics of the Tire Swing: What Matters Who's Swinging', in which Foucault shifts the mode of questioning from 'why are we dizzy?' to 'who is getting dizzy?' and 'on whom are the Dizzy hurling?' Finally, we will examine the 19th century colonization of the swingset by second-graders, and look at its' effect on playground structure (a post-structuralism of sorts). Prerequisite: at least one course on Topics in Aesthetics. Enrollment open. Tuesday and Thursday 1:30 to 2:50

EXPERIMENTAL SCHOOL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIALISM

ESES 189 NAPS OF THE THIRD WORLD (prof TBA)

This couse will take a critical look at napping conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Central America. Our focus will fall on the 1976 nap revolt in Chiapas (a. k. a. 'The Gweat Wevolution' or 'El Napo Grando Stoppo') during which thousands of four-year-olds attempted a coup on Naptime. The dubious coup crumbled around 3 pm when several of itUs foremost leaders fell asleep. What was the deeper significance of El Napo Grando Stoppo's failure? Is there a common thread between this and other unsuccessful attempts? Texts include Naps are for Saps, Goodnight Moon, and Dr. Seuss's The Sleep Book. There will be positively no sleeping in class. Enrollment is open. Tuesday and Thursday 12:50 to 2:20

EXPERIMENTAL EXPERIMENTALISM EXPERIMENTALIST EXPERIMENTS

EEEE/ESES 278 DOCTOR, HOUSE, COWBOYS, AND INDIANS (prof TBA)

This course is cross-listed and will be team taught in order to combine a theoretic background on social programming of archetypal make-believe narrative and a course in creative writing. After examining various texts on make-believe, imaginary and fantasy play of the post-toddler, students will be guided through a process of hypnosis and drunken free-writing sessions, uncovering hitherto hidden truths about our own childhood. Especially important in this course will be the concept of 'false memory'; I think it's a crock. In the beginning, we will rely heavily on some of the lesser-known (read: stupid) writings of Carl Jung ('Let's Pretend!') and Sigmund Freud ('I Like Little Boys' and 'The Natural Tendency Toward Incest'); each day we will try to use Frued less and less until we no longer need him at all. Prerequisite: Successful completion of Psychoanalysis. Limit 25 students. Tuesday and Thurdsday noon to 5:00 

Osho Speaks about Laughter (part 2)

If you ask the question, "What is the meaning of it?", you will feel meaningless. And when meaninglessness is felt, one will be bored. Animals are not bored. Trees are not bored. Rocks are not bored. They never ask what the meaning and purpose of life is. They never ask; so they never feel it is meaningless. As they are, they accept it. As life is, it is accepted. There is no boredom. Man feels bored. And laughter is the antidote. You cannot live without laughter; because you can negate your boredom only through laughter. 

You cannot find a single joke in primitive societies. They don’t have any jokes. Jews have the largest number of jokes. And they are the most bored people on the earth. They must be bored; because they win more Nobel Prizes than any other community. During the whole of the last century, all the great names are almost all Jews – Freud Einstein, Marx. And look at the list of Nobel Prize winners. Almost half the Nobel Prize winners are Jews. They have the largest number of jokes.
And this may be the reason why all over the world Jews are hated. Everybody feels jealous of them because they win every competition. When you cannot compete with someone, hatred is the result. Jews must be feeling very bored. So they have to create jokes. Jokes are the antidote for boredom.

Laughter is needed for you to exist. Otherwise, you will commit suicide. Now try to understand the mechanism of laughter and how it happens. If I tell a joke, why do you laugh? What makes you laugh. What happens? What is the inner mechanism? If I tell a joke expectation is created. You start expecting. Your mind starts searching for what the end will be. And you cannot conceive the end.

More from Osho coming up...

Hey 2009, You're Looking Mighty Fine...

Dear Fellow Humans from the year 2009,

As 2008 passes like a gall stone, I'm laid up for the first day of the new year, high on early episodes of The West Wing and the belief that the inauguration of our new president will rescue this country from free-fall. It's been an endlessly interesting year for us all. Electing our first black president, losing 40% of the capital in the stock market, seeing Tina Fey look so much like Sarah Palin, I can't tell who's who.

Personally, I've had an interesting year as well. It began with a ten-day silent meditation course in India. You all followed my travels throughout India, Thailand, and Cambodia for three months starting last February. I gathered parts and memories of myself scattered in many lifetimes during that trip. 

I also joined a year-long training course for life coaching and workshop leading in August, and began coaching people in creativity and spontaneity. After doing standup, working and playing with others to break through to what is most true for them is my favorite thing to do. And after almost two months of work on my solo show, "The Punchline," I played to sold out houses at the Fringe Festival. It was an honor to win Best Female Solo at the Festival and be selected for the Solo Show Festival in Marin in February (the 24th.)

I'm sending out this new year's wish to you because I want to reach out and connect with you. I've been very affected by the intensity and fear of the world's events--the end of easy oil, the reluctance of auto companies to completely re-invent themselves in order to protect the environment, the blindness and greed of the mortgage industry, and the sense of scarcity the downturn in the economy has had on us. And the message I want to convey is that it's time to open our eyes to what's really happening in the world. And to take a stand. To speak what we believe, and to align our actions with our values and our words. But I also want to say that there is so much more to life than the what's in the news. Our own thoughts and actions are what truly build the fabric of reality, moment by moment. And together, we have the power to focus our thoughts to send an asteroid crashing into Bernard Madoff's living room. (But read some of my beloved Krishnamurti and you'll realize we are all Bernard Madoff.) 

So stay tuned for info about my gigs, laughter yoga classes, and workshops in the coming year. I'll be premiering the full version of Eat Pray Laugh! at some point, and I'm also putting together a down and dirty old-school standup set for the clubs.

To 2009, may all beings be happy.

-Alicia

http://www.aliciadattner.com http://www.creativeheartcoaching.com http://www.monkpunk.org http://www.examiner.com/x-453-SF-Comedy-Examiner http://www.youtube.com/AliciaDattner

Comedy at Morgan Hill

I did a set tonight in Morgan Hill, California.  Far far away from, well, anything it seems.  I'm very uninterested in political material, partly because I never feel as informed as I'd like to be to back up my arguments, partly because it's annoying to talk about something that I care about and find out who the Republicans are in the audience.  Then I wonder what they're thinking of me, and if they're thinking as poorly of my opinions as I am of theirs, and in general it's just unpleasant.  So I did some of my new material about my trip to India and meditating, and it went incredibly well in a room mostly full of Christian Republicans.  They had fun, I had fun.  They heckled, I heckled back.  People always apologize to me after shows where they heckle me.  Like somehow we're old buddies.  Ok.  Be my buddy.  Fine.  But so I was surprised that my material, which is designed for a room full of new agey spiritual types actually went over with the straight crowd.  Good to be doing standup again.

Thank God Obama Won (so I can get back to worrying about myself)

You caught me with my morals down.  I'm another relieved armchair liberal.  Yes, I'm going to keep buying organic produce, turning off the faucet when my boyfriend leaves it on for no reason, and only recycling paper bags by putting bottles and paper in them to transfer them to the recycling bin.  And I'm breathing a sigh of relief that maybe the next four years won't be as terrifying as the last eight have been.  Did you read the salon.com article about how the Gen-X'ers are sorry for hating on the Boomers?  It was great.  And, yes, I do feel a swell of hope--hope that Barack will lead us, unite us, bring understanding and dialogue within the country as well as around the world. I have hope that the crumbling of financial institutions lead to the kind of dissillusionment that real truth and real care for the land and people we need.  I have hope that the rise in oil prices will finally spark the development of alternative energy sources--that someday soon, they won't be "alternative" sources--that solar and wind power will be the plain-old, everyday way we power up (kind of like when alternative music became mainstream and everybody in tenth grade, even the jocks, were listening to the cure and pearl jam and dying their hair black and this turned high school upside down.)  I want to turn high school upside down.