As far as new years go, this one is a bit of a puzzler.

I'm still reeling over our new president. Or is it that I'm overjoyed that the old one is back in Crawford, patting himself on the back? Or am I secretly pissed that I'm now robbed of the schadenfreude of watching him crash and burn under his failed policies, telling "I told you so" to idiots who argued that, yes, you can fight a war with no taxes, and, yes, we're so not in a recession, because this is America, dammit, and bad things are what happen to other countries?

Guess it doesn't matter. I'm high on Obamarama. On Hopamine, or whatever cynics are calling it. Three executive orders this week reversing Bush's doctrines, and my pretty little head is spinning like a Prom date's at a Motel 6 after hours. It'll wear off sooner or later. Problems will emerge. Mistakes will be made. But I can't see Obama hanging signs and smirking contemptuously in the face of world and, dare I say, national opinion to the contrary while the walls come crumbling down. Optimism has taken the reins for January, for the first time in years.

Still, there's always Blagojevich.

I may be a mediocre English teacher, but I'm still a patron of the arts. And when our governor quotes Tennyson's "Ulysses" (as he did last week in a press conference before Senate hearings began), I have to grit my teeth, because now, any students I have watching the news will confuse that towheaded, hubris-laden pontificator with an old man past his prime, seeking one more adventure. The poem ends with Ulysses imploring himself and his friends "to strive, to seek, to find, but not to yield" as they set sail from home. Blago, I don't doubt, sees himself in a similar vein, but there are obvious differences. He's not an "idle king" (the phone conversations taped and held by the prosecutor show he was anything but idle), and his people do in fact know him; his wife isn't "aged" (seems she had quite a few things to say herself), and as near as I can tell, he has no Telemachus to pass his kingdom off to. Maybe he should have taken up with the Strogers.

So as far as literary connections, "Ulysses" works about as well for him as Sonnets from the Portugese works for me. What Rod should have quoted, as more befitting his refusal to step down and save himself and the state the burden of impeaching him, would be my pal Macbeth. When the Scottish king realizes he's doomed, that the prophecies that supposedly made him immortal have actually led him to his impending demise, he manages to juggle both his own pride and self-hatred at the same time. Blagojevich could even have rewritten the lines to fit his situation admirably:

I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before old special prosecutor's feet,
And to be baited with John Kass' damned columns.
Though truth be come to Springfield,
And me opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Fitzgerald,
And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Executive Privilege!'

Now that's poetry, baby.

One more second...

According to the Times today, whoever is in control of the atomic clock is tacking on an extra second to 2009 to take up the slack of our time-measurement instruments, so that it can catch up to our solar rotation span. Or else it's the will of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, I forget which.

Sweet. I can totally use another second.

Lest it seem sort of pointless to make this particular vertical scratch on the wall, the article points out a few things that can be done in a second: "a cheetah can dash 34 yards, a telephone signal can travel 100,000 miles, a hummingbird can beat its wings 70 times, and eight million of your blood cells can die."

I can add to that list: In one second, I can bore a student to tears. I can find one fuckup of the Bush administration. I can remember that I forgot something. I can forget what I was doing. I can run 1/550th of a mile. I can make love to a beautiful woman. I can make a resolution. I can blow a resolution. I can absorb .35 ounces of carcinogens in a cigar. And I can cure world hunger.

Let's call this an upgrade: the year 2009.0001.

The First Days of School

First Day

S'BERG--Still on this weird cold remedy buzz. A wall has been established between me and the outside world, particularly the world of the high school. Behind this wall, I am strangely omnipotent. Like Brahman, I have established an all-knowing wisdom, while, retaining enough of myself, sneering at the goings-on in front of me. Were I without this wall, the things I hear in the hallways (on. the. first. day!) would send me howling at the moon:

"Man, my ass is toasted!"
"Dude, do you have Mr. (my name here)? Let's rush him."
"Tonight, I told him I wanted the whole fist."
"Who does he think he is, telling us not to sniff the glue? It's art class. I can express myself however I want!"
"Dude, did you see Mr. (my name here)'s car? Let's tip it."
"Man, your ass is toasted!"
"Who does he think he is, telling us transcendentalism was an offshoot of Romanticism? It's all about the sublime, rather than a historical period! Asshole."
"Pi squared, bullshit. Didn't Einstein prove Euclidian geometry is fallible? Give me another hit of that, will you?"
"It stopped bleeding. Now it just itches all the time."
"Dude, do you have Mr. (my name here)? Man, he is toasted!"

I feel strong. I feel pedagogical. I feel like taking a nap.