Here it is, my 49th birthday, and it’s spring break. My wife’s at work, my daughter is at school, all the students are away, it’s dead quiet around here. How to celebrate? I know! I’m going to do some guest lectures at the local high school!
So that’s where I’ll be this morning, introducing high school kids to the subject of…evolution.
This Spring Break thing is overrated, I think. My usual day is so cleanly circumscribed and planned that I have a feeling of liberty: my PDA goes off to tell me I have a class or meeting, my little to-do list warns me of impending deadlines, and when I’m in between tasks, I at least have the illusion that it is my time.
Right now, my PDA says it is Spring Break, and will be Spring Break for several days to come, with nothing else in there. It is blank and unstructured. I am lost.
So today I polished up and submitted an in-house grant proposal, and then went to town on some substantial university paperwork I’ve been postponing (PDAs are also good for telling you that there is an immediate, high-priority thing you must do, making it easy to justify putting off the big nebulous jobs). 15 pages of bureaucratese, 12 copies, in the mail. I got about a centimeter of the evil box done. Since I’m home alone, I did the few dishes in the sink and am thinking about hitting up the grocery store and fixing a respectable dinner.
I don’t feel very relaxed.
Is it true that we’re supposed to take it easy on vacations?
Sad news: Carl Buell and Hank Fox have lost a good friend, Tito.
Dogs are easy animals to get to know, sometimes too easy. I haven’t been able to bear the thought of having a dog again since the day, when I was 12, that I stepped off the school bus one afternoon to find my dog, Snoop, crushed and broken by the side of the road. At least it sounds like Tito had a good life and a dignified end.
Carl has put up a short photo essay and testament to Tito.
OK, I should balance my non-random ten with a random ten, so here they are:
| Somewhere In Texas | The Raveonettes |
| Strange Fruit | Billy Holiday |
| Three Bikes in the Sky | Tangerine Dream |
| Woman Of Heart And Mind | Joni Mitchell |
| Us | Regina Spektor |
| Black Milk | Eighth From The Egg |
| Tanaka Sound | Saian Supa |
| Truth is (featuring Robert Smith) | Tweaker |
| O Skeewiff where art thou? (man of constant sorrow) | Skeewiff |
| All Apologies | Nirvana |
| Sacala | Don Omar, Wisin Y Yandel & Hector |
| You Don’t Know What Love Is | Chucho Valdez |
These things have a way of snowballing…Luis kindly sends me a couple of Roy Zimmerman CDs, I make a comment about it, and next thing you know, the friendly people at Meta4Records send me the other albums he has made. I’ve got the complete collection now! So I created a Zimmerman playlist in iTunes, set it to shuffle, and present to you the first ten.
| “Acid On Picture Day…” | Roy Zimmerman | Comic Sutra |
| You’re Pretty | Roy Zimmerman | Comic Sutra |
| Hula Yule | Roy Zimmerman | Peacenick |
| My TV | Roy Zimmerman | Homeland |
| Dick Cheney | Roy Zimmerman | Security |
| T.M.I. | Roy Zimmerman | Comic Sutra |
| Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung | Roy Zimmerman | Security |
| Saddam Shame | Roy Zimmerman | Security |
| Think Different | Roy Zimmerman | Homeland |
| Nothing But The Best | Roy Zimmerman | Peacenick |
These CDs are incredibly healthy. You know how, when you read the news about the latest atrocities from the Republicans, and your blood pressure starts to rise, and you’re turning purple, and you’re starting to shred the newspaper or scream at the TV? That’s probably not good for you. What you can do instead is play a little Zimmerman, and he’ll make fun of the Bushites for you—you’ll still feel peevish and have a desire to do something about it, but the humor will take the edge off. It’s going to add years to my life.
As an added bonus, playing liberal folkie music like this around Republicans makes them turn a choleric purple and grind their teeth—if it doesn’t kill them slowly, at the least you’ll know they’re going to spend their declining years with inflamed gums and a diet they have to suck through a straw.
Spring break starts…NOW. I’m done with classes for the day, and just have to make a trip out to St. Cloud to pick up my son for the weekend and my obligations are temporarily over, sort of.
Way back at the beginning of the term when spring break seemed far, far away, I scheduled an exam for my physiology course (75 students) and my introductory biology course (35 students) for this week; I also had my intro students turn in a writing assignment this week, and because they had done poorly on one rather important exercise, had also assigned an extra paper, also due now. There is a rather terrifyingly full box of papers sitting on my desk, growling softly to remind me of its existence now and then. I know that if I neglect it it will glare more ferociously and grow claws and fangs and get increasingly vicious; if I wait until the last weekend of the break to deal with it, it will try to kill me. So I’m going to take it out early. I swear, I will annihilate the contents of that evil box this weekend, splattering every page with red.
That box is evil. I hate it. I will gut it soon, one page at a time.
For some reason, this has been a draining week, and I’m just slumped in my easy chair with the iTunes entertaining me…so let’s toss up a Friday Random Ten.
| Blade Of Grass | Asylum Street Spankers |
| Prayers for Rain | The Cure |
| Skåne | Hedningarna |
| Whip It | Devo |
| My Generation | Patti Smith |
| Hallelujah | Leonard Cohen |
| Logon Rock Witch | Alarm Will Sound |
| Show me forgiveness | Bjork |
| Stripper | Lords Of Acid |
| Dr.Sayus | Simpsons |
Tomorrow is another day in the office, whipping up this talk for Cafe Scientifique, and I think I’ve got a science post or two fermenting up in my cranium.
This is remarkable: I actually have all of my grading done, and even have Monday and Wednesday’s lecture all ready to go. I’m. All. Caught. Up. I think this means the Apocalypse will be coming along shortly.
I don’t quite have all my responsibilities out of the way yet, though. Next week is time for Cafe Scientifique Morris, and I’m the guy giving the talk this time. If you’re somewhere in Western Minnesota or Eastern Repressive State of South Dakota, come on down to the Stevens County Historical Museum (116 W 6th Street) in Morris around 6ish. The Morris Area Arts Boosters will be selling tasty baked goods and coffee, so show up for good food even if you don’t want to hear me trying to convince the community that Evolution Is A Good Thing.
And then, of course, I’ve got assignments due and exams to give on Thursday and Friday, so the crushing burden will resume soon thereafter.
Say, would the nice person who sent me the Roy Zimmerman CDs care to ‘fess up in the comments?
I need to turn you in for sedition. There might be a reward.
So did everyone tune in?
It was a middling show. He said good things about UMM and well, honest things about Morris, so I’m not going to complain about that.
As usual, the gospel music gives me the heebie-jeebies, but I just content myself with the knowledge that I was listening to a pleasant shadow of the richness the composers and musicians would have produced, if only their talent hadn’t been tainted with the rot of religiosity.
I sat next to Skatje, who looked weary with the burden of accompanying a pair of old fogeys to listen to some other old fogies act out skits and music that were even more fogeyish. Ah, the burden of being a teenager…
