An Obscure Star Trek Reference*

I apologize for being negligent again, but the final weeks of the quarter/semester have finally arrived, which means even the most oblivious and self-absorbed students have raised their heads from the trough, eyes glazed, still senselessly chewing their dining commons cud as the reptilian portion of their brain struggles to buy its host another day. Finally they hear the distant, tolling bell as it peals across the campus, not realizing that it marks their own funeral. When exactly is that hallowed ceremony to begin? On that glorious last day of instruction, when they ask how their constant absences and missing essays will affect their grade. "How?" you ask. "Not unlike how a bullet tearing through a human skull affects brain activity."

There are, of course, the dedicated students, who despite even personal tragedy will still turn papers in on time and attend every lecture. Yet I cannot help but marvel at their polar opposites, their alternate dimension counterparts who emerge on the starship College Education, identical to their antitheses save for the curious goatee perched on each of their chins.* These are the guilty parties most likely to wander into class after being gone for a week, as if having accidentally stumbled into the wrong room on their way to buy a churro, and genuinely ask, "Did we do anything while I was gone?" What do you say to that? "No, we did nothing important. The class spent the hour deciding whether a rabid giraffe would beat a unicorn in a fight. We settled on a tentative 'no,' but only so long as it was a fair fight." Was it too blunt to just ask me if I did my job while you were away? Bloody twits.

I suppose I have simply become tired (as one does every term at about this point) with repeatedly encouraging the students to show up to class and turn in their assignments. You'd think this was obvious, but you'd also think they'd realize that them being absent the day a paper is due doesn't adequately justify its late submission. I wish I were making that up, but even hearing that transpire (it did) made something no doubt delicate and essential to the system quietly snap inside me. And thus, until I find a Swiss watchmaker who dabbles in repairing the human soul, I will be forced to shuffle along with that something rattling impotently inside me. Should it ever be fixed, I may finally decide to tell a class what they should really hear. I don't know precisely what that is, but I have an idea:

"Don't say another Goddamn word. Up until now, I've been polite. If you say anything else -- word one -- I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for you this fear engine will bore a hole between this world and that one.
When it begins, you will hear the sound of children screaming -- as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin.
I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth."

Perhaps this is too much. I never know, but I imagine my point will be made. Also, not to dip into the stagnant waters of plagiarism, of which I warn my unheeding students routinely, let me point out that the quoted text above is yet another gem from the writer of Penny Arcade. Can you see he's a bit of an influence? Honestly, if I could write like that at will, I would seriously consider scrapping the Ph.d program and actually making some money in this world.

Then again, if I did dare to tread outside the barren and paper-strewn halls of academia, I fear one of my former students would inevitably be my boss. And then...hating your ignorant boss with every fiber of your being...well, who honestly wants to become a cliche?