My title seems like it comes straight out of David Sedaris's Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk. Perhaps I just wish it to be. I warn you friends, what come next may not be suitable for young adults with adult sensitivities.
Someone, I'm assuming a janitorial custodian of some sort, cleaned up the weekend rager thrown by the pair of squirrels living the good life in our 3rd floor bathroom. The fluffy-tailed rats sampled every roll of back up toilet paper and trampled ever surface near a water source.
Someone cleaned it all up. God bless said person.
When I saw that the bathroom had been repaired back to its original dingy luster, I also assumed that whomever had been tasked with the arduous process of cleaning up that Stage 1 rat den would have taken steps to never let this happen again. I know I would have. Not because I am some holier-than-thou workaholic, quite the opposite, I would be too lazy to ever ever ever subject myself to that level of cleaning again.
As I pushed through the door to wash my hands before class, the two grey silhouettes pushing their way into the wall let me know that any news of their death had been greatly exaggerated. These fuckers were here to stay.
An Untimely Demise: One Squirrel's Story of Deprivation and Self Destruction
Friday, October 16, 2015 | 0 Comment(s)
My office exists in a land time
forgot.
I am on the third floor of a
building thrown up rapidly as a response to the mass of troops returned from
WWII and funneling into the college system.
The necessity of the building, and the rush to bring it into existence, is
easy to observe in the uneven oblong rooms and amoeba shaped bathrooms. Here is how I believe the architect
drew this baby up ...
Step one: Build an outer rectangle to fit the full size of the plot of land assigned.
Step two: Complete the rectangle
by raising a three story structure.
Architect: "What's that . . . Roof
shape? You're asking about roof shape?!? What part of 'build a fucking
rectangle' don't you understand! Just slap a flat-top on the sucker and add in
the floors like you're making horizontal slices in a cake."
Step three: Add floors to 2nd
and 3rd stories, "Like horizontal slices in a cake." Also, add basement level.
Architect: "Now we wait . . .
Final student numbers still aren't in . . . "
Architect: "Ok we got the
numbers; there are many more than predicted."
Step four: Continuing with Step three's cake analogy, we just found out that this cake needs to feed the whole friggin family, so we have to carve as many pieces as possible into this sonofabitch. Do the dorm rooms the same way. Think Tetris. Make some long skinny ones and some short and fat ones. These are bedrooms for ex-soldiers, god damn it, they'll be happy just to have a warm bed outside of Europe.
Step four: Continuing with Step three's cake analogy, we just found out that this cake needs to feed the whole friggin family, so we have to carve as many pieces as possible into this sonofabitch. Do the dorm rooms the same way. Think Tetris. Make some long skinny ones and some short and fat ones. These are bedrooms for ex-soldiers, god damn it, they'll be happy just to have a warm bed outside of Europe.
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| For those doubters . . . this is the actual building. |
Friday, October 9, 2015 | 0 Comment(s)
I asked a question in my lecture class yesterday.
I asked, "Is racial prejudice disappearing?"
Let's be clear, this was an intentionally ambiguous cue. A prompt that could be interpreted as "is it lessening" or "is it going away." Race, of course, being the major filter through which the question was received.
Immediately, and almost as if it were a automatic response, a Black woman in the front of the class began shaking her head, "no, no, no, no, no."
I asked her if she wished to expand on her position.
Her head continued to shake.
And at that moment, when I asked her if she wanted to share her opinion, we sat on the precipice of the reality of discussing race.
This young woman had to decide whether it was worth it to risk being White Man-splaned race by your professor in a large class of her peers. The short answer: No. Fucking. Way.
She also had decide if I, a White teacher, was asking her to explain race to my class.
And a few questions later, a White male student near the front asked another question about "the place of White people" in the discussion about race, and I decided that a fundamental truth about this subject needed to be said aloud.
"Let's be clear, it is not Black people's responsibility to explain racism to you. It is not the job of the systematically disenfranchised to educate you about the reality of the world we all inhabit together. That is your job as a human being."
The entire class exhaled.
I should have added that it was also my job as their professor, but I hoped that was self-evident.
I asked, "Is racial prejudice disappearing?"
Let's be clear, this was an intentionally ambiguous cue. A prompt that could be interpreted as "is it lessening" or "is it going away." Race, of course, being the major filter through which the question was received.
 |
| I figured this picture would draw in a larger audience. |
I asked her if she wished to expand on her position.
Her head continued to shake.
And at that moment, when I asked her if she wanted to share her opinion, we sat on the precipice of the reality of discussing race.
This young woman had to decide whether it was worth it to risk being White Man-splaned race by your professor in a large class of her peers. The short answer: No. Fucking. Way.
She also had decide if I, a White teacher, was asking her to explain race to my class.
And a few questions later, a White male student near the front asked another question about "the place of White people" in the discussion about race, and I decided that a fundamental truth about this subject needed to be said aloud.
"Let's be clear, it is not Black people's responsibility to explain racism to you. It is not the job of the systematically disenfranchised to educate you about the reality of the world we all inhabit together. That is your job as a human being."
The entire class exhaled.
I should have added that it was also my job as their professor, but I hoped that was self-evident.
Friday, September 25, 2015 | 0 Comment(s)
Dear Bakeries,
Let me begin by buttering you up, it seems apropos. I love your work. Hell, I've loved your work right into a larger waistline. I appreciate that you have to wake up before all those people who wake up super early in order to provide them warm, often crackling, golden doughy goodness. And the filo dough, I mean, shut the fuck up that is so tasty. And with the layering, and maybe some honey. Shit, this is already turning into an advertisement for bakeries worldwide. But that's not what this is. This is a plea.
Many of you provide a category of baked good that goes by many names: Cinnamon rolls, Coffee rolls, or Sticky buns. This is not the complete list. Again, let me pause to commend you on your decision to concoct such delectables -- they are all excellent. I realize that pastry chefs are appalled that I can't tell the difference between each independent sweet in this category, but the truth is I choose to see what makes things alike more than to dwell on their differences, because I'm morally superior.
Among these coffee rolls (yup, that's what I'm calling all of em) we find more divisiveness. The greatest division; Greater than the Crocs debate and perhaps even more enflamed than Uggs' controversy. The line in the sand is, of course, raisins versus no raisins. While I reluctantly agree that coffee rolls may contain raisins, I'm not at all happy about it. It is an abomination. A perverse joke composed of desiccated grapes rubbing elbows with such kings and queens of taste the likes of brown sugar, cinnamon sugar, and melted sugar. Raisins and cinnamon hardly mix (I'm looking at you cinnamon raisin bagels), but we can all agree that raisins are the odd man out of the coffee roll equation. They're weird, and not in a positive sense. At all.
Here comes the plea. If you make coffee rolls, and you choose, despite my best efforts and your better judgements to add raisins, please please please make those raisins visible to the consumer. I'm specifically talking about putting at least a few raisins sprinkled on top. As a warning. Cause raisins are that bad in this situation.
I don't eat a lot of donuts and coffee rolls. At least I try my best not to. I find these particularly glucose-filled delights are best left as occasional treats or rewards. So when I do purchase a swirl of sugary pastry, I begin salivating much like the streams of liquid that drip from my pitties mouth as he waits for the command to "eat." It's a special moment.
For this reason, nothing gets me quite as ragefull as biting into the doughy outer arm of my swirl only to have my front teeth pop the wrinkled skin of dead fruit hiding inside the caked on brown sugar and cinnamon. THERE SHOULD BE A LAW AGAINST THIS!!!! While I admit to suffering the constant worry over the possibility that their may be fruit in my cinnamon roll, to hide those fuckers within the folds with no clear markings denoting their existence is simply immoral. It's immoral. I'm saying it makes you a bad person. So knock that shit off.
Let me begin by buttering you up, it seems apropos. I love your work. Hell, I've loved your work right into a larger waistline. I appreciate that you have to wake up before all those people who wake up super early in order to provide them warm, often crackling, golden doughy goodness. And the filo dough, I mean, shut the fuck up that is so tasty. And with the layering, and maybe some honey. Shit, this is already turning into an advertisement for bakeries worldwide. But that's not what this is. This is a plea.
Many of you provide a category of baked good that goes by many names: Cinnamon rolls, Coffee rolls, or Sticky buns. This is not the complete list. Again, let me pause to commend you on your decision to concoct such delectables -- they are all excellent. I realize that pastry chefs are appalled that I can't tell the difference between each independent sweet in this category, but the truth is I choose to see what makes things alike more than to dwell on their differences, because I'm morally superior.
 |
| *drool* |
 |
| When I look at a cinnamon roll with raisins, this is what I see. |
I don't eat a lot of donuts and coffee rolls. At least I try my best not to. I find these particularly glucose-filled delights are best left as occasional treats or rewards. So when I do purchase a swirl of sugary pastry, I begin salivating much like the streams of liquid that drip from my pitties mouth as he waits for the command to "eat." It's a special moment.
For this reason, nothing gets me quite as ragefull as biting into the doughy outer arm of my swirl only to have my front teeth pop the wrinkled skin of dead fruit hiding inside the caked on brown sugar and cinnamon. THERE SHOULD BE A LAW AGAINST THIS!!!! While I admit to suffering the constant worry over the possibility that their may be fruit in my cinnamon roll, to hide those fuckers within the folds with no clear markings denoting their existence is simply immoral. It's immoral. I'm saying it makes you a bad person. So knock that shit off.