Cheerio, old chaps...

We're about to take off for a week in London, so I bid you a fond farewell until 2005!

Happy Holidays!

I wish all of you the happiest of holidays, and I hope you all get what you want.

For some of you Republicans, I'm guessing "new outlets for my fake outrage" is high on Santa's list, so here you go!

Season's Greetings!

But the important question is, are they still great power?

I know it's hard to believe, but a civil rights watchdog group has declared Russia to no longer be a "free" country. OK, it's not a free country anymore, but did they take into account Russia's enormous size superiority?

Screw Texas, anyway...

I know, I know, innocent until proven blah blah blahcakes...

...but I can't believe he's still allowed to do this.

Goddammit, Democrats, stop doing this!

At a recent conference FrankenKerry's campaign manager admits there were mistakes. But she places the blame on her campaign team, instead of saying "I admit that I should have realized that Bush and his scumbag campaign would have kicked puppies to win this thing and that a big chunk of the American electorate might vote as if they were on a lead paint chip diet".

Notice that Mehlman still insists the draft stuff isn't true. 'Cause Repubs have no problem treating the American public like idiots.

Still bitter about Kerry's loss? You betcha. Because I'm pretty sure if Kerry went after our terrorist-lovin' nimrod prez with the same gusto he went after Dean he would have won.

Christ, we're in more trouble than I thought...

I got a mailer from the Army Reserve yesterday, wondering if I'd be interested in becoming an Army of One. I've been promised big bux for college ("Make More Than Spare Change in your Spare Time", I'm guessing the "...and We're Sending You to Iraq" part got left off by the publishers), an additional stipend, "generous textbook allowance", and I get the opportunity to enter the Army as an officer.

Yeah, all of that's persuasive, but I was almost sold thanks to the free T-shirt.

For those of you just tuning in, I'm 33, got my doctorate not too long ago, and slightly more manly than Gene Wilder's character in The Producers.

They've got balls.

Whoa, does Rush kiss his Oxycontin connection w/that mouth?

Atrios has pointed out that Rush used the "d-word" in a broadcast, so to the FCC, everybody!

Oh, if only John Ashcroft were here...

..to save us once again from the horror that is marauding statue titties.

Well, if one could die from poor prose, my ten-strong audience would've kicked it by now...

I'm still in the recovering process from correcting my student papers, and although I'm a relatively inexperienced adjunct, I matched the tenured profs this past week when it comes to complaining about how the kids get worse every semester. No more, though, new rules for next semester. First drafts are now mandatory, and I'm going to make sure the students know the extra five pages they'll need to write are the fault of their peers.

Secondly, exclusively online sources are forbidden. Maybe I only just noticed it, but it seems a lot of students got into trouble this way. The most hilarious example came from a student who Googled Gogol(heh) and used a paper written by a high school student as the primary source. Some students also got around my "don't use my lecture notes" request by using online lecture notes from other Russian lit. professors. Now, they have to crack a book, which will probably result in a lot of footnotes ending with "p. 2".

I've no doubt these new steps will stem the tide of bad writing as effectively as the parasol Wile E. Coyote uses to protect himself against falling boulders.

I've just spent the last fourteen hours correcting student papers, and if I can get something off my chest...

"AFFECT" is a verb, "EFFECT" is a noun. College students don't know this? Jesus fucking Christ...

We'll save the apostrophe rant for another time, suffice it to say I saw them in so many different word positions I could have been reading Klingon...

And it surprises no one...

Tommy Thompson, a man who served in Bush's cabinet, mind you, which means that if he's ever going to lie it will be in the service of the prez, warned the country about the dangers of a terrorist attack on our nation's food supply.

Dubya, of course, ain't worried.

And why should he be? He'll know what's up when his personal taster drops dead...

I'm a TARbitch, he's a TARbitch, wouldn't you like to be a TARbitch too?

TAR, of course, is The Amazing Race, which has gone from merely being the best reality show on TV to perhaps being the best form of entertainment ever devised by human beings. What's not to love? The exotic locales, the incredibly hot host (um, so I've heard), and the thrill of watching loved ones rip into each other with fury after being pressed into unbelievably stressful situations.

Yep, no one goes through the race without a blow-up or two (or in the case of Flo, about six million), but we forgive, and forget, because I'd hate to think of how I'd react to one of my temper tantrums becoming, say, a hot pop-culture item for sale.

While every reality show has its share of douchebags, assholes, and clueless wonders, the non-Flo "villians" of TAR have largely been redeemed and enjoy a cult following. Wanna survive a Race and still show your face to the American public? Two rules:

1. It's perfectly fine to snap and blow your top, but do try your absolute best not to treat your partner like shit.
2. Don't blame the editors.

I'll see y'all in the audition for AR7 (right, sis?) ;)

So THIS is what 1997 looks like...

We just (finally) ditched our dial-up in favor of a DSL connection. I love DSL. It's swell. If you don't like it, go to hell. And you smell.