What's this, a post?

Surely not. He can’t possibly be adding actual content, can he? We’re talking about a total slacker here, someone who couldn’t maintain a consistent blogging lifestyle if his dog’s life depended on it. Of course, he doesn’t have a dog, so that might not matter. In any event, there are a number of largely unstructured mentionables:

1. Chapter One has been turned in! Of the many monkeys clawing desperately for space upon my back, the fattest and angriest is (and has been for some time) The Dissertation. The turning in of Chapter One, albeit in semi-draft form and with one or two areas still in need of tidying up, represents a down payment on that Big Ass Monkey Gun that I’ve been saving up for. Needless to say, it is said Chapter One (plus my futile attempts at teaching college students the difference between the words “lessons” and “lesions,” no kidding) that has been sucking my life away for the past weeks. Hence, the silence. I just thought you all should know.

2. The Weather is so unspeakably fantastic that I can hardly stand it. This is deeply cliché and not terribly observant, but it is so incredibly true that it seems stupid not to mention it in some way. When it is the dead of winter, thirty-eight degrees and raining miserably, I often think longingly of spring. The spring that I picture at that moment is out of a movie, as all fondly longing mental pictures typically are. In that picture, there is a soft light-green haze breaking out on the trees, the purple and white of redbuds and dogwoods accents the impossibly green grass, the sky is clear and perfect, the smell of flowers drifts along the gentle sixty-six degree breeze, and the world positively shimmers with wonderfulness. See? Hot off the assembly line at the cliché factory. And then last week, there I am riding around the countryside on a spring evening in the back seat of a convertible, and I realize that all of those things are true, and life is so freaking beautiful I can hardly stand it. I can’t look hard enough.

3. Some photos have accumulated on ye camera phone, and they may be worth your consideration. In no particular order:

Well thanks for the clarification. I was worried I might be buying meat mangoes.


Ingelhoffer Wasabi: Preferred Condiment of the Axis Powers!


One of the campus greenhouses was apparently hosting an all night plant party, and there was so much light that it started spilling out the front door.


There are documents that deserve to be framed on your office wall. Your Department of Defense Race Relations Instructors Course completion certificate from 1973 is not one of them, I think. I also think it would have been very interesting to take a DOD Race Relations course in 1973.


Possibly I am going to hell for thinking this, but the idea that my voice can end rape makes me feel as though I have some super power. How come nobody told me about this?


I have no idea what to make of this, the 2006 wall calendar at my local Chinese restaurant. Sponsor’s name prominently featured? Check. Culturally appropriate background? Check. Attractive model? Check. Eleven-year-old Nebraska Cornhuskers Football Championship t-shirt? Eh?


I think that “big yellow taste” does not make me want to eat Corn Pops. Doesn’t yellow taste like artificial banana flavor the same way that purple tastes like artificial grape flavor?