for what ails you

I spent the day teaching Hume and the problem of evil.

Now I'm going to go drink.


Irish Chicken Soup for the Suicidal Philosopher.

It is a perfectly fitting response to reading the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and entirely in the spirit of Hume.

An Easter treat

This was said to ol' Tricky last night:

"if you shaved you could pass for white."

No, it wasn't just a typical Saturday night for me. It was a family occasion. Here's the recipe: take the angriest man in America, my Dad, let him age for one year, insist on celebrating the day God brought him into the world (he'll claim he doesn't want to and it is true that he has never quite forgiven God for this sentence), and gather up his friends and family. These should consist of:

1: wife whose saintly patience borders on the pathological (true of all who smell of sainthood) and whose name in the sordid world of hip hop is "lil' Slap"

1: suicidal philosopher son

1: very perverse aging chickenhawk (if by some naïve twist of fate you don't know what that is go Google "nambla"--it'll be your special Easter treat)

2: middle aged homosexuals with devious moustaches

1: seventy-five year old devoted patron of the QVC home shopping network who is a dead ringer for former governor of Texas Ann Richards.

Marinate everyone over the age of forty in a hearty mixture of alcohol (gin, vodka, whiskey, scotch, beer, wine) for four or five hours. Only then should the son be added to the mix. Douse him in Irish whiskey. When it runs out, substitute Jack Daniels. When governor Richards is thoroughly saturated with Scotch, have her announce loudly to everyone just how handsome the son is. This will elicit a terribly crude sexual comment from the Chickenhawk. Repeat until the buzz really sets in. Give the bitter Birthday victim a bottle of champagne and chase it with a bottle of red wine. Get out the oysters. Introduce some ill conceived, self-pitying racial bigotry. When you can smell the alcohol from ten feet away proceed to light the match. Step back and watch as hilarity ensues. Oh the hijinks!

Warning: the sight of intoxicated members of the American Association of Retired Persons freestylin' off a RunDMC rhyme has been known to induce an existential crisis in those whose blood alcohol level is not well above the legal limit.

(How, you ask, did I manage to make it to work today, not just on time, but early? In the midst of drunkenly setting the alarm I apparently set the clock ahead an hour and woke up thinking I had to hurry. An Easter miracle!)

paying the fun bill

I often find that I wake up with a song stuck in my head. Sometimes it's a song I heard somewhere that day, other times I don't know where it comes from. Last week it was Thin Lizzy: tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak, followed by the Boomtown Rats a few days later: tell me why I don't like Mondays. Today it was Loretta Lynn's "Van Lear Rose." Which is really a good song, and comforts me just a bit in the midst of my hangover.

Right under their nose
Stole the heart of the Van Lear Rose

The hangover is a persistent reminder that life can indeed be fun, but you better not let it be too much fun or you'll need some suffering to balance the scales. At least that's how it feels now sitting at work, nauseous and with a railroad spike lodged in my temple. Lord I did have some fun though. whew.

Should you ever have the opportunity, I highly recommend smooching pretty Cajun girls.

speeding: chapter 372

A shitty cold grey rainy winter day. It briefly occurs to me that with her driving on a day like this, there is indeed a chance that we could quickly find ourselves in some horrible fatal accident out here on the interstate. It's raining pretty hard but she pays only intermittent attention to the road and the traffic around us. She is changing channels on the radio at a rate that would be frantic for anyone else but is merely habit for her. There is no concentration, incapable of it she is a scattered array of irresistable impulses barely held together in one skinny ravaged beautiful body. The whole while she keeps up her never ending soliloquy: a depressing tale of a life gone to waste. But she tells it as a lamentable ode to victimhood; and always entwined with some absurd plan that's going to turn everything around. It's not her fault but she'll save herself and the world while she's at it. Somehow it never materializes--the plan does not become reality. But it is not her fault. She is a hungry ghost. No telling when last she slept.

thirsty monkey

ok. I have spent the last couple weeks drowning in a sea of student prose, dutifully grading exams and research papers. I have shed tears, I have cursed my fate, I have smoked many cigarettes, and I have stared down the existential dread that comes with reading the first sentence of a ten page paper so bad that it makes me despair for western civilization. An exaggeration? If you only knew my friends. But the worst, I think, is over. For me anyway; things aren't looking so good for America's future.

I am at work, it is a beautiful day, and this is the first chance I've had in many days to take a deep breath and reflect a little. Indulge me if you will while I figure out where the forty-five dollars I had last night actually went.

5 bucks (four and change but I'm rounding up): at the Quick Trip for smokes and Iced Tea. 40 left.

7 bucks: Target on socks and a pretzel. I actually went to get a bookcase but decided I didn't feel like carrying it because my lower back was really sore from doing deadlifts earlier in the day. I need a new bookcase because my roomie is moving out and has moved his books from the living room, so I now have space for one and can get rid of the piles of books that clutter every available surface in my room. The socks were on sale and the pretzel was cooked in the microwave and coated in so much salt that I felt dehydrated for quite some time. 33 left.

3.50: High Life and a tip at the Earl. Went down fast after that pretzel. 30 left (rounding again).

5 bucks: given to Big Country for the three Black Labels (buck and a half a pop) he put on his tab while we played pool at the Gravity. I shot quite well once I had the requisite amount of beer in me. There is a golden window of opportunity for optimum pool playing somewhere between two and five beers. I almost ran the table at one point. Our playing was interrupted by the arrival of two intoxicated yuppie couples. One couple was quite friendly. She was drunk, he was doing blow in the corner. They had a night off from their two little boys. I beat her at pool and we went on our way. 25 left.

8 bucks: a round of High Life for me and Big Country with tip at the Flat Iron. A nice time chatting with Dave the owner, and Wade, the least gay gay bartender in Atlanta. 17 left.

5 bucks: beer and a tip back at the Earl, the last stop of the evening. Left at two a.m. with one cigarette remaining. 12 left.

8 bucks: lunch today on the way to work. When did lunch get so expensive in Atlanta? 4 left. And the mystery solved. I was convinced that I'd managed to lose some money somewhere last night, but no. All that cheap bear adds up. Paid for six, someone bought me one. 7 beers and a pack of Marlboro's: the cost of unwinding from two weeks of grading.

What else have I been up to since last I blogged?

A few dreams of note:

1) after confrontation with angry street person who pulls a very realistic looking BB gun on me, I am forced to move into a new apartment that is already home to a very thirsty monkey.

2) enter a punk-alternative store in a mall (I had read the day before that such things now exist) and find a curious small cast Iron skeleton in a top hat and overcoat thing. It reminds me of Dooley, the Emory mascot. Then I remember that I have to wake up and finish grading papers. I immediately wake up and realize the skeleton referred both to the aforementioned existential dread that comes with academia, and my desire to sleep forever/death wish.

3) at a truck stop in some rural part of the south, I get off the bus I am on and start looking at hats. They have hats with extremely obscure regional references that pertain to my friends. I have to look at these hats and choose some to buy for my friends. But I have inadvertently spent too long looking at them and realize the bus is leaving without me. Bunni and Sherri are on the bus and now I will not get to New Orleans with them. I must find some way to get to New Orleans, and my worry attracts a parasitical grifter who claims to want to help me but is clearly trying to exploit me for some nefarious purpose.

Finished reading a novel called the Dante Club. A mystery/serial killer novel with a literary historical setting. Prominent 19th century literary figures in Boston try to solve a series of murders based on Dante's inferno. To the extent that it draws on the historical and literary stuff, it's kind of interesting, but in the end it comes off feeling like a heavy-handed Hollywood idea for a movie: what if we crossed Seven with the post-civil war literary scene in Boston? Serial killer stuff for people who fancy themselves too smart for it. Of course it is the author's first novel, and I will keep an eye on his future books.

Finally, some stuff going on in the world: In Russia a popular uprising against the "Barbification" of the world. And nearby, in the Ukraine, the world's tallest man is having a tough time of it. Take a look at the pictures; he really is a sad case.

luck be a lady tonight

So last night we bid a fond farewell to Mr. Blaze who is headed for sunnier climes. My favorite Blaze quote of late: "yeah a lot of em were ugly, but they weren't as ugly as me." He's a charmer.

Of course the very intelligent, very attractive woman who went to Indonesia to work with monkeys after graduating from Cornell has a boyfriend. A very interesting conversation nonetheless. I seem to get along well with women who work with monkeys...what exactly does that imply?

My not terribly consoling consolation: twenty dollars on the table, all riding on a four. Roll anything but a four and I was out, roll a four and the pot was mine. No dice on the monkey girl, but I got my four.

Godspeed Blaze.

thanks

Ok...straight to the chase:
may I write your eulogy? It need not be "the" eulogy, merely "a" eulogy, but if you are reading this you are someone I care enough about, yes you, that's right, to want to have my say at such an auspicious moment. Don't get all kind of crazy ideas, it is a simple question. And yes...ok, fine, I've had a lot to drink. And yes, I'm a seriously flawed bastard, but I was paying attention even when you think I wasn't. And I still think the world of you. You are free to say no, with the absolute guarantee of no hard feelings. This trust is what makes us good pals and I know that each of us may know things that the other doesn't want broadcast, even (especially?) in the strange space (public?private?) of a funeral. I realize this is quite a request, and a far step removed from a friendster testimonial, but jesus, sometimes you're the only thing that keeps me plugging along. I've said enough and even when I am stone cold sober I'll tell you that I meant every word of this.

send me off

How's that "Tango till they're sore" song go? I'd tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past...
If I were able to make some sort of top ten worst days of my life list, the last 24 hrs. would definitely make it. It was bad enough after the events (disastrous,no try again, humiliating, yes but there are more apt terms I think, give me a minute) of last nights liquor workout, or more specifically the events which followed. Which I'm not going to divulge right now, suffice it to say that it all went downhill in a hurry after the young lady did the "topless shot." So I woke up today feeling mighty low and then things got a whole lot worse.
It's always a challenge to find the good in those failures that change the direction of your life. I try to imagine unforeseen possibilities and the potential to pursue things I could not have otherwise. I'm having a hard time believing myself at the moment.
so send me off to bed forever more...

Well Equipped Instructor

Got the written comments from my teaching evaluations the other day. They are all positive. One student wants his papers back promptly. I concur. After the first month or so, and despite the fact that I liked my students, the prospect of reading their papers inspired a certain amount of dread and I would have liked nothing better than to get rid of them as fast as humanly possible. Instead I started procrastinating. Here are the comments:

"Excellent job teaching. His ability to adapt to current events helped me put things in perspective."

"No Comment. Oh I forget, he is a great teacher-I learned a lot." (No comment was underlined twice on the paper. Who knows.)

"Good instructor, very good class makes clear what Islam is and how it emerged; well equipped instructor; has all answers and encourages us to learn "

"This class was very intensive, and Professor Noble did a great job."

"Overall an outstanding instructor, was very well prepared, knowledgeable of the material, very thought provoking. In the future would like to get papers back in a timely manner but again overall an outstanding teacher. I highly recommend him to my peers!!" (The two exclamation points were really there)

So five out of the thirteen that finished the class bothered to write comments. And while the comments make me happy, it’s quite possible that the rest of them reamed me on the standardized evaluation. But of course these will go in the old teaching portfolio, should I ever bother to put one together.
By far my two favorite comments are: "well equipped instructor" that one's going on a business card pal, and "has all answers". That one sounds straight out of the gypsy booth at the carnival. TRICKGNOSIS: HAS ALL ANSWERS

My Difficult Friend

Oy vey. I'm an hour and a half into my shift and I don't really feel any better yet. Though measuring discomfort is a tricky thing. I won't say pain, though that too is notoriously tough to gauge, as pain would seem to lend a dignity to my current state that it is certainly unworthy of. However as I sit here typing and trying to ascertain the particular unpleasantness of my condition it seems that perhaps my head does hurt less than it did when I woke up this morning.

brief thesaurus interlude here: measure, gauge, ascertain, determine, assess, evaluate

I woke up because I needed to pee. Normally I can ignore that but once I was awake the pounding behind my temples kept me from going back to sleep and I slowly recalled why I felt so miserable. In addition to the dull, throbbing headache I felt like I needed to throw up and even as I write this the mere thought of vomiting makes me begin to salivate in anticipation of doing so. Oh alcohol you are a difficult friend. I did not throw up though there was some fire in the bottom land that seems to have abated only temporarily.

Despite my wretchedness I did manage to get to work on time. Early even, with a bagel in hand which is mostly uneaten at this point. The alarm from the emergency exit was activated once again. It isn't loud and not especially alarming. Annoying at best. But it continues to be a mystery. No one can figure out why it is going off. And it only gets set off in the middle of the night when no one is here. At first I thought that perhaps someone was hiding in the library after we closed then using the emergency exit to make their escape but I've searched every nook and cranny of the library after closing and no one was here. A mechanical failure of some sort seemed the most likely culprit but the maintenance folks have come out and replaced the alarm itself to no avail. Perhaps we have a ghost in the library. It's been so slow as of late that I have far too much time to sit around pondering this.

Some of the events from last night that I should recall: One young lass who shall remain nameless giving me a friendly flirty little kiss and telling me that if we weren't such buddies she'd be hitting on me hard. Now I had suspected as much but it was nice to have it confirmed. I believe that might have been my cue to further encourage her, and while I have thought about it, I know she's trouble and I think it wise to remain just buddies. I did ask a different gal to go out with me and thinking about it now I realize that I was none too subtle. After asking her, I went to the bar for another drink and her friend, who is a bar acquaintance of mine, told me that he'd put in a good word for me but she wasn't interested. Well, of course I had to hear it for myself so I asked her what she'd decided. This is where it gets strange. She says "ask me again in two weeks." Pardon? At which point I launch into what may have been a harangue (tirade, rant, diatribe, jeremiad) about how I would not be at all offended if she simply said no, there would be no hard feelings, I would not be embarrassed and nor should she and so forth. I'm not sure but I wonder if my tone did not imply, hell make explicit, my ongoing frustration with what I see as the depressing lack of honesty in human communication. Surely a topic best left for later. Despite my making it clear that "no" would be ok, she stuck to her guns and told me to ask again in two weeks. Now I'm left to wonder what difference two weeks is going to make and the possible significance of her saying this. If she really wasn't interested then why set herself up to be asked again? But if she was interested then why not just say yes? As I'm thinking about this now (after also sitting here pondering the difference between "ambivalent" and "ambiguous") I'm remembering that I might have also said something like "I'm not gonna be any better looking in two weeks." I cannot conclusively confirm that I said this but I have a suspicion that I did indeed unleash the drunken wit or lack thereof. It's probably best that I stop trying to remember this. In any case I expect I will ask again in two weeks if only to get to the bottom of this deep and confounding mystery. Though I do wonder what I'll do if I see her before then. Pretend it never happened until two weeks passes? Sarcastically indicate that I'm anxiously counting the minutes?

Had an interesting conversation with a bar gal pal who is mostly pal of a pal. I'd never sat and talked to her for that long. I wonder now if it was evident that I was drunk. There are degrees of drunkenness of course and I do well up to a certain point and despite my misery today I don't think I really did anything to embarrass myself. I hope so anyway. Oh alcohol you wiley rascal.