There is No Spoon

Okay, so last Thursday's class is the first time in the history or Theory & Criticism (the class. not the concept) that I have had moments where I didn't understand a word of the explanations about a topic. This isn't true for the entire class, I think I have a shaky understanding about what Baudrillard says about representation and simulation. I'm not too worried, yet, about not totally following Thursday's class. I blame the migraine--sized headache I had going on, caused by two days with a total of about four hours of sleep, and a seminar that morning. When the class was discussing Baudrillard, my brain was pretty well tapped out. I know that I'll be doing some careful readings of what he wrote before diving into assignment # 9.
Speaking of our next assignment, I think the fact that I have seen The Matrix, and watched it quite a few times (until the sequels came out and, for whatever reason, I managed to loose interest with the all the movies) is one of the only reasons that I could somewhat follow the discussion on Baudrillard, at all. As, Dr. Pound said, understanding the concept is definitely in the examples. I found the map and the money examples, and the religious relics examples hugely helpful in following along. I really liked the money thing because I had always wondered (somewhere in the back of my mind) how shillings and pounds and the rest came about. I had wondered if it was something like, a pound is equal to the same in Stirling silver, and now I know. So, even if I can't say that I really understand Baudrillard, I can say that I learned where the concept of modern money got it's foundation.
Anyway, as I said, having seen the Matrix before, helped me follow along in class, to the extent that I could, with my skull cracking(or feeling like it was). I blame some of the one-track mind on being over-tired, but every time we were discussing something that I couldn't grasp at the time, I would just think, "right, 'there is no spoon,' I get it" (The Matrix).
So I guess to sum up my thoughts of the day, I need to read Baudrillard pretty carefully to try and figure out just what he's saying, I'm really glad that we still have another class to talk about him (and with any luck I'll have gotten sleep before hand), and there is no spoon.