Yankee in a Red State

The ramblings of an expatriate New Yorker in the South ~ formerly known as The Kudzu Kronikles ~

Post-Day Dump

What a day.  Cooper Hall got cleared out by a fire alarm and so there ended my plans to screen the second half of Animal House.  Students actually showed up to see the second half.  Well, two or three did but the rest just blew off class.  I love the end of the semester :)

This does not trouble me.  I know it bothers other instructors but my students are adults now.  I know that some are working on their papers and I know some are not.  It's the age-old story of the student who procrastinates.  I am hardly one to lecture on the evils of procrastination -- or maybe I am, because I am a master at it.  I used to be able to toss off brilliant papers that received A's and then I tried to write my thesis which shall hereinafter be referred to as "that piece of crap."

I love to teach but I am not a scholar.  I engage in too much "journalese" according to my director, a brilliant, very scholarly woman who flogged me silly.  I was not prepared to write that thesis but I had to.  The choice was more economic than personal.  I deserved each flogging.  She did keep her flogging to the verbal kind, in her notes on my pitiful drafts and in her emails to me.  They still haunt me.  I admit to not having proofread them as carefully as I should.  Rule #1: never hand your thesis director a draft that has any errors on it. 

It occurs to me that it has taken me this long to process the fact that I actually did the damn thing since I was strangely quiet about it here.

How did I get down that road?  Probably because it's the post-day dump when I empty the trash from my mind into the dumpster that is this blog.  I have to put it into words or it will gnaw at me like my Jack Russell at his squeaky toy.

The Jack Russell, by the way, almost met with a fate worse than death.  Remind me to tell you all sometime about the hippies.  They figure in the story prominently.  Nevertheless, my hippie friend Jenny stopped to vist me on her way across the country and brought her two pit bulls with her.  I don't think I need to go into a long story.   The vet bill was $700 because my Jack Russell decided to be a Jack Russell.  He came with the name of "Taz."  I think it's fitting.  Someday I will tell you all why owning a Jack Russell should be one of those decision one makes like, oh, getting married or having children.  They take constant commitment and energy.  I also have had to train my family to give the same commitment and energy to the dog as I do.  He bonded with me, of course.  I'm Alpha here.  AND I watch "The Dog Whisperer."

Enough procrastinating.  Time to work on the novel.  It is going to be brilliant. 

posted by: willothwisp at 23:04 | link | comments (4) |
ramblings and rants

Slacking

I have been slacking.  Life just gets busy sometimes.  Papers to grade, holidays coming up.  After Election Day I have to pick up my pace and make sure I'm on top of teaching or everything else will go to shit. 

The election.  Let's just say I am rather pleased at how things turned out even if FL still has a Republican for a governor.  I have the feeling this Republican isn't one of those bad Republicans, however.  Time will tell.  I reserved any crowing only because no one has been sworn in or has started working in earnest.  There's talk talk talk.  I will wait to see the shove that ultimately comes after the push.  For now, I'm hoping that we can at least move our troops out of Iraq and to Kuwait to give them much needed rest and keep them out of harm's way.  Iraq is exploding and our children are at the epicenter.

I have been working on my novel.  Hooray!  It's not very long yet but it will be very good.  Most of the work has been going on in my head for the past oh, say,  40 years.  It's interesting to see who is emerging as characters.

We drove from Florida to South Carolina a week before Thanksgiving.  We went on a mission to pick up my stepson's car from the Saturn dealer in Columbia.  He is still in Southern California at Fort Irwin doing a job for the Army.  It's a long story about how the car was in SC and the details are sordid so I will avoid telling it here.  It was wonderful weather, however, and Hotzstuff and I had a nice drive.

I will be back soon with more tales of derring do ...

posted by: willothwisp at 20:02 | link | comments |

Remember Remember

It's the fifth of November.  Guy Fawkes Day in Britain and a day and some hours left before Election Day here in the United States.  Partisan hysteria rises, I get my sample ballot out and mark who I plan to vote for since I never vote straight party lines.  I was considering my choices between Charlie Crist and Jim Davis for the Governor's slot being vacated by Jeb and then, the other day on campus, bright green signs started sprouting like harbingers of spring.  They were heralding the candidacy of  Max Linn, who is a Reform Party candidate who made it onto the ballot by the skin of his teeth.  He seems to speak my language.  I really cannot abide the thought of voting for Charlie Crist, who is Jeb redux, or Jim Davis, the absentee congressman.  Crist oozes insincerity in his "people's governor" rhetoric.  Usually when someone insists they are the "people's" whatever, they are not.  Davis, on the other hand, coos "Welcome, Floridian," from his website.  I'm not sure what a "Floridian" is yet, even after six years of residence here in the Sunshine State.  Native Floridians, for the most part and with a few exceptions, are a strange lot.  Other "Floridians" are simply transplants from other states. I think if one lives here long enough one becomes a clone of a Floridian but I'm not sure.  All I know is that Florida still sits on the bottom of the heap in terms of education and since I am a teacher in this fair state, my vote is going with the first person who promises to do something about the damn FCAT.  Linn's website states

The state of Florida has a $4 billion surplus -- FOUR BILLION DOLLARS! That's a lot of money...that money should be used for excellence in education. We need to attract more top quality teachers. And the best way to do that is to pay them more money. We need to pay teachers a minimum of $50,000 with incentives to earn more.

OK you have my attention.  On the topic of offshore drilling, Linn favors keeping our beaches beautiful and our reefs safe.  Got my vote so far.  On immigration, he is oddly noncommittal but if Mel Martinez hates Linn, he must be doing something right.  (My beef with Martinez, beside the fact that he is a Republican, is that he is a revisionist dolt who denies the Holocaust.)  Linn is also in favor of stem-cell research, and after the flap with the Big Buffoon that is Rush Limbaugh, I am even more in favor of it too.  Abortion is not going to go away.  Let's use fetal tissue for a good purpose.

I would like to hope that Florida voters have had enough of the status quo but I'm not sure sure.  Sunshine does something to the brain and people tend to just keep things the way they have always been, but Florida is quickly disappearing under developers' evil plans.  Hotzstuff recalls the 1970s when one could drive down Gulf Boulevard from Clearwater to St. Pete and see the Gulf.  Shortly, people will only be able to see the high rise condos and hotels and only the rich will have a Gulf view.  Beach access will be gone.  Get used to swimming in your back yard pool.  Linn wants to slow development, which is fine with me.  I was one of the last ones in.  I say close the damn gate before the rush to balmy weather overtaxes our infrastructure and natural resources.  I'm already getting too familiar with the alligators in my pond as it is, and if they keep building around here, the gators will no longer have anywhere to go.  (On that note, I heard that the Powers that Be are considering allowing hunting permits for gator again, since they are not as endangered as they used to be.  It's good eatin' ... tastes a little like lobster and chicken combined.)

So Max will be getting my vote on Tuesday, along with anyone who is running against the homophobic Ronda Storms who thinks that banning gay literature in libraries will make them go away.  For you, Ronda, I have only one thing to say ... they're here, they're queer, get used to it!

Now, back to my sample ballot to figure out which of the rest of the crooks will get my vote this year.  Here's to another great Election Day!

posted by: willothwisp at 19:48 | link | comments |
politics, ramblings and rants

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