Some Random Thoughts

I decided I hate the word "random" way back in the late 90s, when virtually everyone used this word all the time. Only "sketchy" approached it for sheer overuse. But today I used "random" in my title. Sue me.

I was going to make my gmail status read "used to get up around 7, now I get up around 9," but this is my liberal adaptation of a song lyric from the song Mr. Brownstone by the late, great Guns 'N' Roses. The problem here is that the song is clearly about drug use, and I really can't have people thinking I am using heroin, because I'm not. Plus, if I had updated my status to say that, it would have been untrue. I was online today by 6:15 and most days I'm on before 8, at the absolute latest.

This weekend is officially "Student Appreciation Weekend" at my university. When I got the email informing me of this fact, I thought "this sure is a nice gesture, after they've ignored and mistreated so many of us for so long [not me, "us" here is generic]." Yet upon reading through that entire email, I realized that the university's idea of "appreciation" is not the same as my own. In my world, students would be appreciated by the university just because they're students - after all, students are, theoretically, the reason universities exist. Here we're only going to be appreciated by the university, according to this official email, if we go to enough of the athletic events being held this weekend. Those of us who have other things to do (like go to church, celebrate my birthday, and so on) are not going to receive any of this appreciation. We're going to continue being under-appreciated. But it's still a nice gesture on the part of the university, right? I mean, you can win a weekend with an athletic coach, or a dinner, or something. So that's probably pretty nice for some people.

Time to finish editing this chapter.

This just in:

According to Gmail, Mike Ditka: "If God had wanted man to play soccer, he wouldn't have given us arms."

Me: If God had wanted us to play U.S. football, he wouldn't have given us brains. But at least participants in that sport do their level best to avoid using or keeping those brains into their 30s.