Col. Gentleman Turns Corner in Life, Bangs Knee

I've been away for months now, but it has been a productive number of months. I'm now officially Col. Gentleman, Ph.D, or Doctor Colonel Gentleman, whichever you prefer. I've also enjoyed being jerked around by my gainful employer, which itself is a victim of California's budgetary woes and, if I'm to believe my union's rhetoric, the inhuman greed and ignorance of university administration. Rhetoric aside, if I have finally tasted the uncertainty common to most working Americans, unsure if I will keep my job or for how long, the fact remains that I am still teaching and thus have it a lot better than most. For this, as for so many other things, I remain thankful.

I also went through this year's round of applications for tenure track jobs in academia, which is apparently the thing you do after you graduate, this despite the fact that only a modest percentage of graduates ever land tenure track jobs even after years of trying. I won't go into details, but the process is the equivalent of asking every single girl in your high school to prom and being turned down by every single one. You don't expect the captain of the cheer squad or the junior beauty queen to give you the time of day, and there are plenty of others you've never heard of, only seen in the halls passing silently by with their biology textbooks clutched protectively to their sweatered chests, so again, no loss there. But when the girl with the strange skin affliction and a lazy eye, the one who weeps openly as she rereads the Twilight saga and gorges herself on baked meats, when that girl turns you down too...it stings a little. Thankfully, the process doesn't start again for another nine months, so I have time to nurse by bruised ego.

Things move forward on other, lighter fronts. I and the regular cast of villains have convened through the dark arts of the Internet to begin a regular Dungeons and Dragons campaign again, which provides a far more ready satiation of the urges that, had they no other outlet, would eventually compel me to don a purple bathrobe and pointy hat to stalk the freezer isle of my local supermarket and throw balls of tinfoil at passersby and shrilly cry, "Lightning Bolt!" Instead I may safely purge these emotions in the privacy of my own home, admittedly wearing a headset and brutalizing my peers with a poor imitation of Sean Connery. Still, it has produced other, glossier fruit:


In short, life moves on, and if not always in expected ways, it is not entirely unpleasant. And, without having to constantly devote my spare time to the dissertation (well, spare time not already devoted to video games and alcohol abuse - though in my defense, that bottle of whiskey had it coming) I may once again resume my duties as your humble blogger. It may very well take a few posts to get back to my usual form, so please bear with me. But for better or worse, I'm back, bitches.