Unexpected biking sight:

Late at night just west of downtown, I see up ahead a utility service van near an uncovered manhole where there are lines going down in and pumping stuff out, and as I bike by the van with its back doors wide open and its back part all lit up inside, there's like 4-5 workers in the back in hard hats and orange and neon green vests sitting down in there and eating their lunches (dinners?).

Some thoughts on tenured professors...

...due to interactions with one who was editing a higher ed activism piece of mine, and seemed oblivious to my concerns how certain editing choices to streamline the main argument would increase my risk of workplace retaliation:

1) People in tenured professors just don't get the financial instability that other people face.

2) Tenure makes people stupid activists, since they never suffer for making bad political choices (i.e., personal risk increases savviness, the "having skin in the game" phenomenon).

3) They're very full of themselves, since they think that any solutions to what's wrong in higher ed will involve or go through them.

Overall, I don't think that tenured people realize just how irrelevant they're becoming, outside of their little gatekeeping fiefdoms where they practice their hobbies and pretend that it matters.

What really gets me, too, is that tenured people (esp. from older generations) think they're somehow irreplaceable, when their fat salaries at some places make them sitting ducks for a labor devaluation.

You're telling people you deserve high salary for your hobby?  Is your hobby really that important?

Too, there's hundreds of people behind you who'd fill your job - many of them your students, or people from your program's graduating cohort.

You can't tell me that you're all that better than them, or even any better.

What better example of lucky people attributing successes to talent.

Dream and then last art school class: A very odd day.

After a four martini night on a Monday, I woke up with the impression that my body was incredibly large but my bed was very small and just fit under it, and I couldn't get that image out of my head as I lay there.

Then, just like last year, b/c I had a class w/heavy but important subject matter, I had made it optional attendance...

But only one person showed up out of eighteen, rather than more than half the class.

(I think that's the difference between a mid-semester optional class, and an optional class as the very last class of the year.)

So, me and her went to an upstairs cafe with a nice view and had coffee and chatted over the very fascinating material for like 3 hours.

Letting Go of Animus towards David Axelrod - for the Moment.

I had been thinking of putting together a case from the recent city mayor's race for why the David Axelrod-designed campaign was subtly race-baiting, and even made an (unsuccessful) article pitch to an editor I know, but something in my gut told me that I shouldn't be hasty with something so divisive in unforeseeable ways, and so I've put the project on the backburner indefinitely, i.e. an outline of ideas is now sitting in my files.

For one, I'd have to know the election and his career inside-out to make a compelling circumstantial case, and that would involve reading Axelrod's new, very long Believer book and incorporating that, which I really don't have the time to do right now.

Plus, if I went after his values and legacy in running that campaign, I probably would leave myself open to be smeared by someone as smart and savvy as him.

On top of all that, I'm already fighting an activist battle on one front, and I can't go after everything, even something big like this...

Some (hispanic) friends here in the city agree with me about the strategy of the campaign, but honestly, maybe it's something that should be up to them to say - and it would be more irreproachable if they said it, too, I think.

In any case, I have my outline, so if I ever read books or coverage that relate, I can tuck that material away, and have a story to pitch next time Axelrod's in the news, if it seems good then.

Art school student comments (2 of 2): Blowjobs by miniature ponies.

In my sex class, a student (the butcher!) incidentally mentioned that after seeing the one documentary on bestiality and its mention of how a veterinarian who came to get animals from the barn of a busted-up horse-sex ring saw a miniature pony sidle up to a stallion and start giving it a blowjob, she was like, "I've talked to a few breeders, and none of them have ever seen or heard of anything like it, they must have been training that pony!".

Art school student comments (1 of 2): Bird droppings.

In my world religions class, a hagiographical tale involving bird droppings made a (sweet but uncritical) (white) (female) student say that we didn't know how that culture valued bird droppings, and that Chinese people think they're good luck, and that if you go to China, people actually run around under trees trying to get bird droppings to land on them.

At that, I glanced across the room, and the one (Chinese) (female) student in the room was looking at her with a "shooting daggers" glare, that was somehow off kilter because it was a tempered by a strong dose of "what the f*ck?!".

The best part was as the student talked about Chinese people running around under trees, she even flung herself back in her chair a little bit with her arms outstretched and her head tilted back, looking upward and swaying like she was a Chinese person running around a tree trying to get bird droppings to land on her.

Even *more* compliments from (Chinese) people...

...as I was strolling and picking up windblown trash in the local quarry park, on a pleasant Sunday evening before heading to the grocery store:

1) A (middle-aged) (Chinese) woman walking by on the sidewalk was like, "Good job for the neighborhood!".

2) A (slightly older) (middle-aged) (Chinese) woman walking by with her husband farther down the sidewalk was like, "Good job!".

It's funny to think that I got *no* compliments from Chinese people last summer, and this year they're effusive.

I really shouldn't shit on them as litterers.

Though maybe I'm only just seeing the same 1-2 women, though, and I only *think* they're different people?

j/k.