Wit & Whim

I just turned in my first late paper. Ever. It is not that I could not have had it done earlier. It is not that I did not have sufficient time, or that there was anything particularly unfair or difficult about the assignment. It is not that the entire universe is so interested in my failure that the fates themselves conspired against me. Oddly enough, neither was it laziness. I have certainly kept myself busy semester. What, then, was it? The due date on the paper had moved a couple times, and I thought I had the final one, but it had, in fact, moved two days earlier. So my paper was due yesterday, Tuesday the 26th, 2013. The funny thing is, I realized this in what would normally be enough time for me to throw ten pages together in a frantic effort. I worked on the paper yesterday, but not the same way I would have three years ago, or even a year ago. I worked on it, accepting that it might indeed have to be a day late when I delivered the finished product. It would mean a midd...

This dream began, at least what I can recall, on a forested hill overlooking a dilapidated city. It looked vaguely dangerous, and many of the houses were in various states of ruin. I had never seen this place before, but I was fairly certain that it was Anderson that I was looking at. Andrew was with me, but he had forgotten to bring his shoes, and was fairly certain that I was taking the long way, so he was going back to the house to get something for his feet and meet up with Jonathan. He left me up on the hill, and felt that it was fairly urgent that I get going rather quickly, but I was wearing a suit and oxfords, so--and this made sense in the dream, I left my jacket and shoes behind so I could run faster. Upon reaching the outskirts of the city, I realized that I needed to go to the library, I also realized that at some point I had lost my shirt and trousers during the run, and that I was wearing nothing but my underwear. It was cloudy, and at this point it had begun to rain; t...

I do not suppose that I have said anything on here about this present semester yet? No? That is a shame, because it is really shaping up to be rather interesting. I was not expecting to enjoy Stat-125, and I might not, but it is proving mind-numbingly easy to this point. Granted, there is a load of homework to be done, but doing it thus far has been driving home every minute point. The practical application of it has actually been pretty interesting. The beginning has all been about methods of gathering and evaluating data, and it has been rather informative when it comes to seeing how might skew statistics with relative ease: by accident or on purpose. The professor seems to have a general misanthropic cast, coupled with a folksy arsenal that would rival Pat White. She is probably tottering on the very edges of sanity, or so it appears, and lacks greatly in demeanor, and in her failure to keep us straight with her other classes, which is particularly problematic when she expects us ...

If I wanted to oversimplify things grossly, then this is the part where I would tell you there were two kinds of conservatives; the right kind and the wrong kind, my kind and their kind. I could tell you that there is only one kind of conservative, and then proceed to shock you by telling you that the trademark of a true conservative is conservatism. Not all those, I would say, who stand under the banner of the VRWC are actually conservatives. I would be going somewhere with this, and I might even ask you to bear with me. I stake my claim to conservatism on the grounds that my philosophy and outlook on the world might actually be described as conservative. My worldview is two nuanced and multifaceted--ok, so its a Hydra--to say that there are just one or two elements which define my world, but there are a couple dominant threads in my political thought. In the first place is a healthy respect for things received. Being the thoughtful student of history that I am, I understand that th...

Last night, I got home, I ate, and I crashed into bed about 2 hours earlier than I am accustomed. What rendered me inert? What brought such a fine specimen as myself to total exhaustion? It might have had something to do with work. Yesterday was the last day before Fort Wayne Community Schools went back into session. It was all but guaranteed to be a pretty wild ride. From the time I got there I could see that it would be a long and busy night. The tops of the tables had already been reduced from neatly folded piles to heaps, and I did not see nearly so many coworkers as I had hoped. To make matters worse, the two guys who were supposed to arrive at the same time as me were not there yet, and the lines were long enough that I could forget about helping customers or cleaning up: I would be running register. The situation did not get better from there. We continued to be crushingly busy until about an hour and a half before close, at which point we were still busier than we are on ...

Every year, about this same time, the unwashed masses descend on my place of work, and trash it righteously. They are not buying presents this time, oh no, buying presents would not make them quite this angry, or not all of them. The seething masses are angry because they are spending their money on their children (again!). That's right, all of this money, all of this clamor, just so little AJ--gender unconfirmed--can be ready for school. A great number of them are incensed that they have to buy to fulfill uniform requirements, of all things, and that AJ can't just wear his Nike shorts and tank tops. Many of the rest of the parents are enraged, because their AJs have a preference for Nike gear, which is so derned expensive. AJ's and AJ's parents agree on one thing, however: it is almost worth it, since that little rugrat will soon be out of their hair. I wonder how many of this actually feel this way, or whether it is all the same false, callous, bravado of 13 yea...

I fail at pretension. Oh, yes. I know that may be hard to believe, but I definitely lost this round. There I was, innocently sitting at Starbucks,trying to kill a couple hours and a half dozen shots of espresso before I left for work, studiously working my way through German adjective conjugation--gotta keep sharp, right?--when a flight of madness struck me. I put away my German and snatched up Foucault's Pendulum out of my bag. Eco. Good Author. Entertaining book. Such were y thoughts as I settled in to read. Forty odd pages in, I had realized my grave mistake. The book reads like it was written by the hand of an eccentric eighty year-old Italian academician-philologist-semiotician with an endless amount of literary knowledge and no editor. I could keep up through the references to Borges and Nietzsche and St. Paul and other such, but exotic obscurities kept popping up, and by the time cabala came up--and I was still not sure what the story was--I resigned myself to never ...