This time, the lucky professor is none other than the legendary, quirky, wonderful Daniel Coffeen, my Rhetoric 10 professor. There won’t be as many as there were last time, but these are a bit . . . more. Rather than laughing at the giddy confusion of a woman who spends a little bit too much time thinking about cod, this post often containes some deceptively bright witticisms by the man who best embodies the field of study into which I am plunging. Many are from his introduction to the course, which itself is entitled “Introduction to Logic, Reason, and Argument.” Enjoy.

“Everything’s a freaking argument. . . . Everything. Every freaking thing. A flower plant, your eyelids, this chalkboard . . .”

“The problem with the statement ‘everything is an argument’ is that ‘everything is an argument’ is a valid argument, and so is ‘not everything is an argument’.”

“Formal logic is based on proof. Proof is the end of argument. Rhetoric begins precisely when the question of proof has been rendered moot. Only when proof is moot can rhetoric exist, when proof is an argument itself.”

Rhetoric is this strange beast . . . that helps us negotiate a world where there is no certainty.

“I came out of this program with a Ph. D. and I don’t know anything.”

[On current events, and in response to the previous]“I know we bombed a country in the Middle East, and it seemed rude.”

“A tulip is an argument: this is the way to be. Stand up straight. Bend a little. Be purple.”

“We�ll talk a lot about the argument grass makes.”

[Justifying a grant to fund the continued existence of the Rhetoric department]“Uh, I study the way things . . . go? In the world?”

[Closing his first lecture] “I’m skinny, but I can hold a lot of booze. People are surprised by that.”

“I might have made a good portion of this up; it doesn�t really matter.”

“As the name differs, so likewise does the reality”

“Go home, teach your parents this word [Ecceity, literally ‘this-ness’]. They’ll have you pulled out.”

“That’s our one enemy. The adamant prick”

“Tulips are so, like, groovy. They don’t need to proliferate, they stand alone”

“I urge you to get through an hour without some phatic discourse [pauses and meaningless utterings like “um”].”

“Your hair is brown, true or false. Rhetoric is the hippest major, true or false. Coffeen is full of shit, true or false. These things are verifiable, right?”

“I did my laundry today . . . that�s a sentence that should never leave somebody�s mouth [speaking of its banality, not of the virtues of cleanliness].”

“What’s at stake is whether you’re afraid of life or you enjoy it. That’s rhetoric.”

“There is something about being in a frat that means you have to like bad music.”

[On professionalism, his lack of it, and the reasons for professors’ dislike of him at an art academy] “I mean I can be an asshole, but these guys are all assholes, so if it’s on that grounds, then we’re all kind of equal.”

“An MD has never told me one fucking thing that I didn’t already know. But I can’t write my own prescriptions, so I have to go see these idiots.”

“Do you know what I’m talking about? Wait until you’re older and start to die.”

“I have always wanted to start this thinktank called ‘the society of individuals.’ [laughter]. It isn’t funny. But I guess you’re laughing and that’s the point.”

“Multilogical? Polylogial, that sounds less grotesque.”

“Socrates is the Gene Kelley of philosophy.”

“The book [Plato’s Phaedrus] says by the end . . . that all writing is play, it is never serious. You’re reading the fucking thing! I don’t understand how the history of the world missed the irony, but it did. . . . This is not subtle, he’s hitting you over the head with it. ”

“Is the Socratic legacy that all young handsome men should love old poor men?”

And so concludes volume 2. Comment, if you dare.