What's up with the flying jerk?

We have a new resident.  A blue jay that likes to spend the early part of his mornings tap-tap-tapping seed pods against the gutter rail.  Its more than a little annoying.

In the great American spirit of introducing new species to address specific problems without contemplating the effect said introduction would have on the ecosystem as a whole, I'm thinking of tossing a badger up there in the gutter.  Or a python.  Or a baboon.

I just took the Grey's Anatomy personality quiz (which doctor at Seattle Grace Hospital are you?!) for which I feel dirty all over.

This self-loathing is compounded by the fact that I am, apparently, McSteamy. 

So we are, apparently, listening to the best of Queen tonight.

My roommate, Freddie Mercury, and I are spending a quiet Saturday night at home.  My mom was supposed to visit this weekend but she's been done in by a back injury so our Hui Girls Gone Wild tour has been cancelled.  Which is fine actually.  I need to catch up on sleep and grading and midterm-planning.  And Brian May.

So the bus tour certainly was a trip.  The most surreal/hilarious/inappropriate part was the intermittent narration by some little old man they found (and I mean old, he was drafted for WWII out of college so, what, in his nineties?  I was worried he was going to die on the trip.  Or at least fall over and break a hip) that used to teach in the vet school or I don't know what.  Anyway, he grew up in the Mississippi Delta region and had lots of things to say about that.  He'd start some story about the South during segregation and then trail off for thirty seconds or more and then start up with some unrelated story about cotton gins or war bonds or whatever.

"When I was growing up around here we had a bus that would come by our house and take us to the school which I guess was alright.  I would have to bring my lunch... (very long pause)  ...when I got back from the war I sent a box of valentine chocolates to that pretty girl I met down at the community college near Meridian and I guess that was alright with her 'cuz she said that I could see more of her... (very long pause) ...we didn't have tractors like these when I was comin' up..."  It was like having Grandpa Simpson as our tour guide.

Anyway, we visited Canton, Mississippi, site of the filming of such movies as Mississippi Burning and A Time to Kill and My Dog Skip.  It does have a very pretty little town square with a courthouse in the center.  And some beautiful antebellum homes.

"They say that the reason that Grant didn't burn Canton when he came through was because it had been built by freemasons.  Though I think also they say that the women of Canton we're very hospitable.  That they were very, you know, obliging..."

Stick with the freemason story, old man.  Apparently also, the women of Canton wouldn't allow Grant to take down the metal dome of the courthouse which, according to calculations, was too heavy for the support structures of the building.  And since then some other engineers have similarly recommended that the dome come down or be reinforced.  The nice lady from the Canton, Mississippi Welcome Center proudly explained that three times now they've been warned about the dome but in 175 years the roof as yet to cave in.  A big fuck you to meddling outsiders and their laws of mechanics and tensile strength.

Then we got a tour of the Nissan factory which was pretty awesome (they have all sorts of robots and mechanized soldering machines but the steel stamper was my favorite), though I did get a little sleepy (we had to be on the bus by 6:15) and almost fell off the tram.

"When I was comin' up we'd put all the corn in a wagon..."

And then there was the catfish processing plant in Tchula.  Now, I'd misunderstood and was really looking forward to this, thinking that we'd be out at the ponds tossing in food pellets to watch them frenzy.  But no.  We entered through the door of the kill floor.  They use these vacuum hose things to suck the entrails out of them.  And have these terribly dangerous looking band-saw-like de-skinners for ripping the flesh off the hands of sleepy workers (actually, they said they hadn't had a machine-related injury in 20 years).  And then there was the trimming area where the filets (pronounced fee-lay) are hand cut.

"I had a bucket once..."

I thought all of this was very interesting to see and not as gross as I'd expected (our bus parked next to an enormous bin where the guts vacuum deposited its winnings in gurgly plops and THAT was gross as was the fact that my pants dragged on the floor a bit so they absorbed quite a bit of dead catfish water).  But, as my roommate pointed out later, there was something deeply disturbing about rolling up in our fancy bus and  peering over the shoulder of these workers that had to stand, in plastic ponchos, in dead catfish water, trimming fee-lays all day.  And these are the ones that could afford the gas to get to work.  Many apparently can't.

"and the kudzu there, it could fill up a gully so you couldn't even see it...  you could fall in neck-high in kudzu...  and then you'd be stuck."

Then we went to a working farm.  Or valiant bus driver braved the dirt roads so we could see a combine harvester at work up close which was cool.  Like a safari.  There is a special place in my heart for big, industrial equipment like this.  Big cantankerous rhinos.  

And that's about it.  They took us to a very nice hotel in the middle of the very poor town of Greenwood (the first time I've seen an armed security guard since arriving in Mississippi), home of the Viking stove factory.  We had a wine and crudite mixer with local power-brokers.  I'm sure I impressed the city councilmembers with my dead catfish pants.  Also, the vice-provost was telling me about George Wallace and how he wasn't very tall and, pointing at me exclaimed, "short!  short like you!"

I am short like George Wallace.  Don't quite know what to make of that.

"and those black boys, we didn't mix much with them.  I found out they had to walk two or three miles to their school... so... I had a bucket once..."

Road Trip!

Today they are piling all of the new faculty into a bus and driving us out to the Mississippi River Delta for some sight-seeing, the Nissan plant among other things.  I'm way too excited, perhaps because I'm envisioning something like the bus trip my brother I took to Koh Chang years ago.  Its certainly possible that they will serve juice and fish crackers.  If they start playing Thai music videos I'll start shrieking with joy...

It arrived in the mail today

Dental News & Views

(vol. 16, issue 9)

Ask the Experts... We love your questions!

Question 1: Do I have to floss every tooth - even if there isn't one next to it?

I find it both funny, troubling, and sad that this is the first question (their answer was: It's your choice!).

Today the dog learned what a box turtle is.

Today I learned a delta blues turnaround to a B7 chord.  And I'm darned pleased with myself.

This weekend has been one big jam session.  Friday night was my Rock Band debut.  I can really channel The Clash on drums set to medium difficulty.  And THEN today one of the philosophy professors, who used to tour with some east coast indie band, came over for a piano-guitar-banjo playdate.  Turns out, comrades, that I am a rock god.

Step 1: Steal the underwear.

Step 2:

Step 3: Profit.

Unicycle Watch 2008

Robin has finally gotten the hang of it so the Dynamic Duo can tool around together now.  As they passed by our house just now they were having some sort of argument and one threw something at the other.  And then they kind of circled around each other shouting.  And then they were both off their cycles throwing - of all thing - small cartons of milk at each other.  

Some thought questions: Why do they have so many little milk cartons with them?  And if they need so many so badly why are they so quick to start hurling them in the middle of the street ("Don't you mess with me or I will totally lose my calcium on your ass.")?  Or is this part of the training for the single-wheeled dairy cavalry neighborhood watch?

So. weird.

So I had my heart broken last night.

Absolutely crushed.

Every single one of the three avocados I bought yesterday were slimy and grey on the inside.  

And smelled like old meat.

We had a quiet burial for them in the compost heap out back.  My roommate did a beautiful liturgical reading.

I have decided that Mississippi is one big bureaucracy graveyard.  It is where inefficiency uses the last of its meagre energy stores before grinding to a complete halt.  The sun-bleached carcasses of previous interfaces, databases, failed anti-poverty campaigns - creepy temples to failed institutions - litter the landscape.  This is where helpdesks come to die.

Recall that I was instructed at the ITS helpdesk to email them (at the helpdesk) about my need for an admin password in order to finish setting up my printer.  So I did that.  And I got an auto reply telling me what my service ticket number was.  Excellent.  We are moving forward.  Ten days have now passed so I thought I'd call the helpdesk (showing up there in person apparently has already been determined to be completely ineffective) to follow up.  The auto navigating thing has me enter my ticket number.  Done.  Hooray for progress.  Then we move on to ringing.  The guy that answers asks me for my ticket number.  Hm.  Lateral step?  A step back?  I explain to him what the issue is (apparently having my ticket number doesn't give him any access to whatever sort of service file or post-it note or vague memory of my email exists).  He says he'll email the person who is responsible for that ticket number about my problem and that she'd be contacting me soon about it.

Um.  So we're back at the beginning then?  Isn't that what I did ten days ago?  And wasn't this supposed to be taken care of six weeks ago when they were setting up this computer for me?  All I need is someone to walk out the ITS door, turn left, go up a flight of stairs, turn right, come into my office, and then enter the admin password.  The biggest frustration is that their sluggishness is keeping me from taking care of it myself AND its not like this is a problem that can just resolve itself when ignored long enough.  It is a rare, passing moment when I identify with Dagny Taggart.

Did anyone notice, by the way, that the contractors under criminal investigation for the botched demolition of the Deutsche Bank building in Manhattan was some shady group that renamed themselves the John Galt Corporation?  

I noticed today where they hide the shallots at Piggly Wiggly's.  Yes I bought shallots (they cost, by the way the same as four fresh catfish fillets, a reasonable $2.50).  I would have bought arugula too if they had it.  And white wine if they sold wine at all.  So there.

Off for a shallot and beer snack...

I am going to make a little sign, in Baskerville Semibold font, to hang next to the other sign giving my office hours and email address, that reads as follows:

No, the professor is not married.  But that does not mean it is appropriate to ask her out on a date, especially during office hours. 

What a strange day...

I was so sleep-deprived and jumpy from various preceding events that I actually screamed when a butterfly fluttered near my face on my way to fetch lunch.

It was bound to happen eventually.

I heard a Radiohead cover played on a banjo last night

and

I was wandering around a street music festival thingy down town last night with a couple of philosophy professors, deep in a tipsy conversation about Heidegger (of course I was tipsy - why else would I even attempt a Heidegger discussion with philosophers), when I was accosted by a small little blond girl waving around a plastic red cup and claiming to be one of my students.  I felt really bad that I didn't recognize her but then again, in a 200-person lecture, the faces all kind of blur.  I also didn't really know what to say.  Don't do drugs?  Quick, give me three social consequences of the Punic Wars that, in turn, contributed to the collapse of the Roman Republic?  

How do I convey coolness and authority in a way that doesn't seem too measured?  How do I become an enlightened despot without sacrificing authenticity?  

How did I not notice it before?

Like the tell-tale bump of a third trimester pregnancy...

Two things:

1. The scrolling sign at the Express Lube at just past the BP at the Montgomery-Highway 12 intersection informs us that "Tuesday is Ladies Day!"  I've blankly stared at this sign almost every day, waiting for the light to change, and only today did I realize that I don't know what this means.  Will I get a discount if I roll up for an oil change tomorrow?  I'm just positive that crumpets and lace doilies be involved.

2. There is a little drive up building, between the barber shop and the shaved ice/beignet wagon, before the old armory, again on Highway 12, that has a little keypad thingy that, wait for it... dispenses bulk ice!  I think this is just great.  Like an atm for ice!  I wonder if these are normal around here.  I find it amazing.  Like the automated key-maker at the hardware store.  I'm trying to think of a good use for 200 lbs of loose ice (only $15!).  Transporting a sea lion?  Finally perfecting my cold fusion device?  A four-day sangria bender?  I'd have to find bulk oranges.

Oklahoma's son, Will Rogers, once said:

"If dogs don't go to heaven, I want to go where they go."

Kind of makes me want to cry...

I honestly don't know how the week flew by so quickly.  Maybe the breathless Hurricane Gustav coverage?  Or my total inability to not watch all of season 3 of The Wire in one sitting?  Anyway, it turns out, if you're not paying attention, time passes.  Not such a profound observation, really.

I set up my voice mail on my work phone this week.

And I was chased by a dog on a run.  I've been chased by dogs once or twice before but they were, well, they weren't particularly fierce.  Mostly they thought it was a game and kind of jogged along with me, yapping their happy bark, wagging their happy tails.  This one though was on duty.  Like, I really needed to get out of there.  Granted, his little dachshund feet weren't going to get him anywhere fast but still, sharp, angry bark=deadly jogger assassin.

In a flurry of domestic I-don't-know-what, I erected a chicken-wire structure that can easily function as either a compost heap or a chicken igloo.  Then I went crazy trimming back our trees and shrubbery and tossed all the yard waste in.  Hedging shears are just about the most fun yard tool (the garden hose will never win because its such a pain to wind up, those aerating cramp-on shoe-thingies though... a close second).  I did some magnificent work with the hedges here.  Or at least up until I disturbed a wasp nest.  Mean fuckers.  Ruthless.  They're the like the Ancient Assyrians of the bug world.  I find obscure references like this funny because I know the tiniest little bit about Ancient Mesopotamia now/give college lectures on the subject.

I'm madly in love with my compost heap.  I may or may not mutter quotes from Macbeth when stirring it, my magic cauldron of organic waste.  My roommate pointed out that I was going to start gaining weight because I seem to be eating more just for the glee of adding rinds and stems and uneaten hummus to my heap.

Status of my battle with the printer: Ongoing.  I went to the ITS help desk to ask for the admin password necessary to load the software.  They told me there to email the ITS help desk and they'd get back to me.  This does not bode well for a quick and bloodless resolution.

Status of my battle with the university textbook store: A tenuous peace has been negotiated.  I unintentionally roped the Vice-Provost into the mess which I think gave my saber-rattling some legitimacy (it always helps to have NATO allies) but I think I may have shown my hand too early.  This will put me at a disadvantage in the anticipated flare-up when I need to order textbooks for next semester.

And NOW I am off to the first MSU home game.  Or, actually, the tailgating of the first MSU home game.  BrrreaaAAAAGH!

p.s. Diesel, I will be back in LA for a visit in December at the latest, but possibly earlier.  There are a lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what-have-yous.