Lat pulls, Moby Dick, and Ally McBeal

Scatter-shooting while wondering what happened to certain highly-paid Dallas Morning News sportswriters. . .

I think I'm moving to Austin.
(beat)
Has the cycle finally been --
Or maybe not.
Dammit.

Now that my grad class is over for the semester, I finally have enough time to get back to the gym. And I am sore as crap. I have every intention of getting in two ass-kicking hours at the gym every day over the break. I have come to terms with the fact that I flat-out suck at working out, and will never, for a variety of reasons, have anything even resembling an impressive physique, but going to the gym regularly does insure that my pants will continue to fit and that I can take off my shirt at the pool. Most importantly, however, it gives me a bizarre boost of mental energy. I assume that for most people this manifests itself as sustained energy throughout the day, getting up more easily in the morning, etc., and I enjoy a modicum of those benefits as well, but mostly I suddenly find myself with the gumption, the pluck, the audacity, really, to, say, attempt to conclude the semester in my literature elective, the one filled with random students who needed a second period class, by teaching Othello. Take that, teenagers. Do your worst. And also to read Moby Dick, so as not to have to look embarrassed every time one of my literature professors says during class, "I assume you have all read Moby Dick?"

There was an episode of Ally McBeal once in which, at the beginning, Ally is caught by a co-worker buying some sort of prophylactic. The rest of the episode is comprised of the office speculating about why she might be buying prophylactics, and with whom she might be using them. She explains to a friend at the end of the episode that when you buy a lottery ticket, you have no intention of winning the lottery. Yes, technically someone does win the lottery, each and every time, but the odds are so astronomical that you'd have to be delusional to think that you would win. But you buy it anyway, because it just feels good to act as if you have hope. She bought the prophylactic because it was her lottery ticket. In that vein, I'm going to buy a bottle each of red wine, white wine, and, I don't know, vodka (and some cranberry juice or something to go with it). You know, just in case someone happens to want a drink. It'll be my lottery ticket. *crosses fingers*

Quote of the Day: To plainness honor's bound when majesty falls to folly.
Poem of the Day: The Code -- Heroics by Robert Frost http://www.bartleby.com/265/127.html
(It's long, see.)

A Humble Request

I think I'm going to move to Austin.

No wait, I've changed my mind.

No wait, I am.

All I want for Christmas is to be able to have a train of thought other than the above, say, once a day. It's terribly inefficient to have your mind perpetually preoccupied with a complete lack of decisiveness. It's the opposite of efficient, actually. I'm enamored of the idea of living in an actual city, with actual places and things to do, and, I'm nervous mentioning this because I don't want to jinx it, books. The idea of being able to browse a bookstore that stocks something other than James Patterson, Twilight, and Ann Coulter is enough to make me feel guilty for entertaining such indulgent thoughts.

But the idea of losing my departmental seniority and having to teach freshmen, or sophomores (or "freshman," as I like to call them) is enough to make me google "hermitage."

But I taught the current sophomores in third grade, and I have to get the f out of town before they get up to me. Their souls are as black as the night itself.

But I have the current advantage of working for incompetents, which makes it terribly easy to get away with pretty much anything I want.

But I have the current disadvantage of working for incompetents, which makes it terribly easy for me to drink a lot.

But the thought of being in a community with intelligent, educated single people makes me think I'm dreaming about, well, a community with intelligent, educated single people.

But the thought of having to deal with I-35 makes me think I'm having a nightmare about, well, having to deal with I-35.

But I have the current disadvantage of living in what is, according to my unsystematic and thoroughly incomplete eleven minutes of research, the most conservative county in Texas.

But I have the current advantage of living in a county where I get to feel superior.

It's Amy Poehler's last show on SNL. Et tu, Baby Mama?

An actual musing

I'm having trouble with my identity. I can't find it, see. I used to have one, and was moderately fond of it, work in progress though it was. But I seem to have misplaced it. I swear it was right here, and I can't imagine where it could have gotten to. Those pesky identities. Take your eyes off of them for one second, and they up and disappear. I seem to have become the type of person whose kitchen table is cluttered with books and bills and unopened mail and notes. I remember tacit tolerance of such pointless clutter as being quite contrary to my identity. But I don't have it right in front of me, so I can't check to make sure. I could get a new one, and in fact many people suggest that in that respect this is more of an opportunity than a conundrum. But it's one of those catches (not a catch-22, which is, in reality, an extremely specific kind of catch, and is reported to be the best catch there is) in which you have to have something to get something. It's easy to search for identity when you know that at the end of the day you've got one waiting for you at home. It's like a job that way, or a car. And it's terribly annoying. I find myself, in the interim, having to construct a makeshift identity out of whatever happens to be handy, like putting up printouts of paintings by Egyptian abstractionist Farouk Hosny, or sleeping on the couch for no reason other than that I can, or reading poetry by Dylan Thomas and Mark Svenvold. But sometimes all that is handy is something horribly un-useful, like staying up too late or drinking beer or buying pizza, and those things are very cheaply made and don't last very long at all, and I just end up having to replace them. I think that maybe my identity ran away and I need to go find it. I think that maybe it ran off to Austin, because that was its first home, or it might have taken off to Seattle, because it always talked about one day moving there. Sometimes I get the weird feeling that it's hanging out in Dallas or Portland or New York, or Houston, but it would only go there to make me mad because it knows how much I hate that place. I wonder if I should go after it, but I would really hate to go to all that trouble just to find that it's not really there after all, or that it had already moved on by the time I got there, or that while I was going out to find it it decided to come back. What a comedy of errors that would be. Maybe I should just wait, you know, to play hardball with it, or set it free because that's what everyone says to do with something you love. But that advice has always sounded suspect to me, because what kind of a way is that to show that you care about something? I think it sends mixed signals. But then, what kind of a position am I in to be giving advice? I can't even keep up with one little identity.

Quote of the Day: Once or twice a day I find myself enveloped inside what I like to call the Impenetrable Shield of Melancholy. This shield, it is impenetrable. Hence the name.
Poem of the Day: The Emperor of Ice Cream by Wallace Stevens
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream