One more amusing anecdote:

I'm charging up and down the class, ranting and railing about Marxism, feminism, psychosocialism and Freudianism in English literature, one eye on a couple of giggling girls in the back and the other on my watch, counting down the hours until I can escape to the teacher's lounge and drink a glass of fa Chrissake orange juice. "Ladies, quit horsing around back there," I say in my best Authoritative Teacher voice (which usually comes out sounding like a bad case of the hemmehroids). "This is not a playground, and the proletariat/bourgeoise struggle is a serious thing."

They stopped giggling. I went on with my "lesson." "So in this novel, we've got a bad guy, right? And he knows he's bad, right? Right?"

"Are you going to the party tonight?" someone whispered to someone else.

Here I stepped up on a desk, figuring if I couldn't teach, at least I could command attention. "You've got to look above your surroundings, that's what the Marxists were all about. They didn't see their futures as only lasting until the next paycheck. They planned ahead. And they were conscious of their surroundings. Like you all have to be, damn it."

"Hey, should you be swearing so much?" someone asked.

"Be conscious of your surroundings," I snapped. "Pay attention. There's a lot to observe in life, and most of it starts with you and your life. Got it?"

The two girls started giggling again. "Ladies, one more time--quit goofing around. Or you'll be cleaning blackboard erasers until June 5, I kid you not."

I cast them The Look (if you've ever been caught horsing around by a veteran, you know it; if you've ever seen a guy trying to stare down a bully unsuccessfully, you've seen mine) and beat the clock at thirty seconds before the bell ranting about Oedipal complexes in Romantic poetry. "Does everybody have all that? Men want to sleep with their..."

"Mothers," the class intoned dutifully.

"Okay, then, that's it for the day. Have a good weekend." I hopped down and beamed out at all of them, radiant in my scholastic wisdom and savoir faire.

On their way out, the two giggling girls passed me a note. "What's this?" I asked belligerently. "More of your damned tomfoolery? You're lucky paddles are outlawed in public classrooms these days."

One of the girls simply unfolded the note, pointed, and stalked out the room. The other one followed suit.

On the note:Check your zipper.

Somebody call Satan--Hell must have frozen over.

Kim got a blog.

That's right--a blog.

And she's already got her share of reviews:

From the New York Times: "Finally, a blog that addresses the fundamentals of political, socio-demographic and cute, cuddly kittens has found its way to the World Wide Web. I look forward to the next post with bated breath."

From Time Magazine: "This solitary voice of a pro-animal rights crusader and anti-consumer weaves its way among the tangled web of movie reviews, dilapidated memoirs and otherwise cumbersome rants of the sub-literate. Like her stinking boyfriend."

From Cat Fancy: "Lots of cat and dog pics. About f***ing time."

The cat's wake last night was a complete success. I'm sure he's looking down on us fondly right now, thinking how much he misses us. Barring that, he's probably waiting for someone to change his litterbox again.

As for me, another broken up week--I've got a conference to go to Tuesday, which should alter my routine nicely. I've been a vegetable all weekend, and not by choice either. My brain is squeezing thoughts through it one at a time, painfully and quite slowly. It took me over three hours to do one lousy stack of essay exams, and just the memory of that grueling endeavor is keeping me away from the remaining stack. I did do some planning for tomorrow, though--I looked up a bunch of alchemists mentioned at the beginning of Frankenstein to try and get some philosophical background into the class discussion. But most likely it won't work worth a shit.

Layout starts Wednesday, too, and the assistant advisor isn't back from surgery yet. That should be a good issue to tackle: "Listen, Ms. B., I know they just removed your lower spleen, but I need someone to proofread Page One. So quit lying around, slacker. Earn your $8.50 an hour, or whatever we're getting for all this."

At least there's a three-day weekend next week. That's good.

And a four-day weekend (of sorts) the week after that. That's even better.

Also, barring some unforeseen event, I should hear from U of I by then, which means I'll know whether or not to drown myself in alcohol out of self-pity or arrogant victory. I guess it all comes out the same in the end either way.