Aaaaaaaaaaaaaieee!

Classes start next week, but the administrative burdens began today: a two hour division meeting, followed by a one hour discipline meeting, with paperwork to do this afternoon. But first, I’m going to go assess spiders. Fortunately, my diligent student came in while I was locked in a room with a seething mass of academics, and he fed everyone, so I just have to measure mortality for a while. Spider mortality, that is…all of the academics emerged alive, with only a few scars.

Then…keyboard pounding for a while. Then…university-wide social at the horticulture gardens, although I’m bringing my camera and might do more socializing with the spiders while I’m there. Then…last night with my granddaughter, before I have to take her to the airport tomorrow. I’m thinking maybe I can arrange a swap with our cat (don’t tell Skatje).

She’s been learning about finger-painting! She can’t leave now!

At least my spiders love me

Her mama put baby Iliana in my lap this morning. She looked at me, her little chin crinkled up, her lip trembled, and in moments she was howling with tears running down her cheeks. So that’s how my week is going.

It could get worse. Today begins my week of meetings and appointments and duties in the run-up to the first day of classes, next Wednesday. I’m expecting to walk into classes and see the Iliana Reaction on the faces of all of my students now.

Sweden was always getting freaky

Scene of the crime

I know, you think Scandinavians are staid, boring, normal white people, but I can tell you that deep in their bosoms beat the hearts of the weird. Witness the events in Insjön a few years ago.

It was Friday night in the village of 2,000 souls when two teenage siblings wandered out with their smartphones to play Pokémon Go.

But instead of finding Pikachu or Squirtle they soon came face to face in the park with a couple who must have seemed scarcely more real.

The teenagers’ mother, who reported the incident to the police, told newspaper Dalarnas Tidningar:

“They wore rubber masks depicting pigs’ heads and they started screaming and waving a green laser.”

A laser beam hit one of the teens in the face and the children rushed back home, shaken but luckily unharmed.

The masked shooters, who also wore T-shirts labeled ‘King’ and ‘Queen’, were next spotted by incredulous motorists as they had sex beside the hamlet’s waterwheel.

As one does. It wasn’t even midwinter yet, when brains turn into a hamster wheel of desperate crazy seeking release.

What kind of job is it to work at a student medical center?

I find this whole idea disturbing and alien. Daniel Kelly, an MD who worked at USC and UCLA, is currently under investigation for sexual abuse of a large number of gay and bisexual men who received ‘care’ from him — he seems to have been fond of overlong, invasive rectal examinations, and of prolonged fondling of patients’ genitals. He would, for instance, give a rectal exam if a young man had symptoms of a cold.

But that’s not what bugs me — if found guilty, he’s just another sick abusive man, and we’ve got evidence of plenty of those. No, the bothersome bit is how the university handles these situations.

Kelly joined UCLA in 1980. In 2002, he stopped working there, signing a confidential settlement that paid him $68,320 and barred him from seeking employment at any University of California campus. In a statement, UCLA said the settlement was “unrelated to allegations of sexual misconduct.”

He did something that got him banned from any UC campus, but it was all wrapped up under a confidentiality agreement, and he got paid? I don’t get it. I keep my nose clean my whole life, I do my job, and my university never takes me aside and hands me a big check while telling me I can’t talk about it. I’d happily not talk about it for that much money!

Especially when that much money is just about exactly what I need to pay our lawyer.

But no, it always seems to get paid to creeps who objectify and abuse students, and nope, I’m not willing to do that. Why is it always corruption and crime that are so lucrative?

13 days

One of my students had to mention that we only have 13 days until classes start again.

I am not ready.

Next week, I have to get my syllabi ready and figure out this brand new courseware they’re forcing us to switch to, at the same time when my granddaughter Iliana is visiting. This is going to be impossible. Unless Ily is ready to help? She’s what, 10 months old?

Yeah, she’s ready. Looks eager, even. I’m sure she can hammer out a syllabus in no time.

Start your morning with a hair-raising close call

This is a drone video shot in the UP of a lovely lake scene, some kayakers, and…HOLY CRAP THE CLIFF JUST COLLAPSED.

So…don’t go kayaking near the base of a cliff, it might fall on you. Don’t go hiking along the edge of a cliff, it might fall under you. Don’t go near cliffs, period, they’re evil. The midwest gets mocked a lot for being boring, but at least it’s mostly flat.