okay

i'm done.  i'll finish this term, because i've already arranged tutorials, and it would be tacky not to show up -- but i've pretty firmly decided not to keep going with this next fall.  i mean, what's the point, frankly?  i can geek out about language and languages from wherever i am -- i don't need to be here to do it, and what are the odds i'll actually need a PhD for whatever i wind up doing next anyway?  historically, i haven't had a single job i wasn't preposterously overqualified for.  i don't have any reason to believe that won't change.

so.  that's that.

yeah, so (+ more dream theater).

it was in fact an April Fool's post.  i was a little surprised it took four comments before someone called me on it -- i thought for sure most, if not all, of you would have known i'd never say such a thing (and mean it).


anyway.  still miserable from head cold.  feel certain that tissue consumption has single-handedly called for deforestation of large areas.  had further weird and unsettling dreams last night and this morning, including one in which i was in a movie where in a dinner scene someone came in and was making some sort of villainous speech and pacing around the room, and came to stand behind me and tap on the back of my head for emphasis with a serrated chef's knife.  the scene had been particularly mentioned in various reviews of the film -- look how realistic it is, the critics wrote; she's petrified.  and i was!, because the guy was tapping on the back of my head with a goddamn chef's knife.  i was tense and scared to death and clutching at the hand of the person sitting next to me but trying not to move, or to whimper too loudly, and when the scene was over i collapsed and i was actually bleeding, because the guy hadn't been hitting me with the damn knife but those edges are sharp, you know?, and i had to be bandaged up and taken care of.  and then i was also making a sequel to that film, which was only fifteen minutes long, and i wore my most fabulous red dress, which fit better than it ever has before.

i think the collapse-in-a-heap bit must have something to do with the lightheadedness from this head cold.  possibly i'd got myself into a position where i was face-down in my pillow or something, and the people-taking-care-of-me stuff was the dream-mechanism explanation for my pushing myself up and rolling over to lie on my back.  who knows.

then i dreamed that i needed to fly from chicago to cleveland, and we got on a plane where the pilot was practicing, so we took off, flew over lake michigan for a while -- this in a commercial jet, mind you -- and landed again in chicago something like four hours later.  and had to explain all over again that we wanted to go to cleveland.  no, not houston.  yes, there are two airports in houston -- we don't want either one.  cleveland.  and somehow my seventh-grade english teacher was involved -- someone was telling me that she had a small child, and her husband was an artist of some kind.  this surprised me, because i know that in real life her (second) husband (and the father of her small child) is my eighth-grade history teacher.  in fact she married him only a couple of years after divorcing her first husband, my tenth-grade english teacher.  oh, the intrigue.

also, there was curling, and it was really difficult; and the first difficulty i became aware of was that the hacks weren't frozen into the ice, but sort of adjustable things hung over sawhorses or hurdles or something.  which made them really hard to brace against.  and then i kept trying to deliver from the wrong sheet, or from one of these mobile hacks on the far hogline, i.e. only about five feet from the house i was trying to deliver to, and it was very frustrating.  and then it became clear to me that there wasn't even ice on the floor, so no wonder things were going badly.  it was just hardwood, and not especially level at that.

i'm not even running a fever, y'all.  this is just from the head congestion.

okay, it has to be done.

The Pope is dying, and Frank Perdue is dead, so the stars are aligned and I must tell this joke I heard from my uncle when I was about eleven.


Frank Perdue goes to Rome for an audience with the Pope.  "Your Holiness," he says, "I have a proposition for you.  I will give the Roman Catholic Church one million US dollars if you have the world's Catholics say Give us this day our daily chicken instead of our daily bread."

"Are you crazy?" says the Pope.  "I can't just change the words of the Lord's Prayer."

"A billion dollars," says Frank Perdue.

"It's not a matter of money," says the Pope.

"A billion dollars annually," says Frank Perdue.

"Well," says the Pope, "let me speak to the College of Cardinals and see what we can work out."

So the Pope goes to meet with the College of Cardinals.  "Boys," he says (and my uncle especially loved that bit, the concept of the Pope speaking to the Cardinals like a board of directors in the back room in some film noir type setting) -- "Boys," he says, "I've got good news and I've got bad news.  The good news is, Frank Perdue is going to give the Church a billion US dollars a year to change the words of the Lord's Prayer to Give us this day our daily chicken."

"But that's wonderful news," say the Cardinals.

"But," says the Pope, "( the bad news is ... )

"