Where do we go... from here?

Ah, an "Evita" moment. [pointy finger of reckoning!]

As of 7:48 PM Indiana Time (no, not Central or Eastern Standard... don't get me started) Tuesday night, I am no longer a student of The Language We Do Not Speak Of.

[sounds of lowing as a randomly selected cloven-hooved ruminant is sacrificed to gore-soaked pre-Christian deities in thanks]

I wish I could say that this class prepared me for something, that it meant something, that it was worth my time more than, say, watching reruns of "The Love Boat" in Kiswahili. I've endured classes that weren't amusing if I felt that, one day, I'd be able to utilize the skills/knowledge I'd procured in the class in my life. I've justified taking classes during my undergraduate such as:

Introduction to Aquaculture
The Literature of the Sea
Elementary Greek (ancient; Attic)
World Food Supply, Population and the Environment
The Religions and Philosophies of the East: Hinduism
Introduction to Forest Biology
Classical Art and Architecture
Dinosaurs
Introduction to Human Geography
The Holocaust
Chinese Art

This is because I believed, and still believe, that all of those courses brought something to my life that I will be able to use, even if it is just for my own amusement. After all, like any of you give a rabid rat's malarial undercarriage about sustainable salmon fisheries in the Gulf of Maine, the symbolism of the albatross, the REAL way to spell Athens, the effects of desertification in SubSaharan Africa on tuber foodstuffs, allusions to same-sex unions in the Bhagavad Gita, the blight of gypsy moths in temperate North American forests, the sordid history of the Propylea on the Athenian Acropolis, the probable usage of the post-cranial crest of the parasaurolophus, settlement patterns in tropical Southeast Asia, how many metric tons of ash were recovered from Auschwitz or the uniqueness of Tang dynasty glazed "camel" figurines. But, seeing as how I am insufferable, these things fill me with delight. OK, so maybe not "delight" for the whole human ash thing; that's effed up.

Yet, there is an indescribable hole in my corn-encrusted world. Whither, then, my rage? I can't possibly endure a life without something to bitch about to a captive audience. (OK, well, you're not really captive... one click on that "x" in the corner and my ravings will be no more). French provided a convenient scapegoat for the vengeance, for the lunacy, for the dead nuns in my attic. A year's worth of Satan, and now what?

{muffled weeping; weeping, then sinister cackling}

Today, I came to a startling realization. I have a problem, and since I am admitting it, I guess that's the first step in my healing process. I've discovered that I cannot make it through a schoolday without the aid of chocolate no-bake cookies. If you were raised on a coral atoll in the Pacific where you ate raw conch all day, every day, you might not know what these wee delights are. Essentially, you take choocolate, peanut butter and oatmeal and mix them together with what I assume to hairs from the head of the Christ-child Himself. The resulting tastiness has me so utterly spellbound that the thought of not having one every day makes me need to kill again, and this time I might not be so careful about the disposal of the remains. There can be no good that comes from this. I can see the headline now: Man Sought In Tot Slaying: Baked-Goods Deal Gone Wrong?

This past Tuesday, as I was thwarting international students' efforts to successfully reach the beleaguered advisor staff with my *ahem* legendary patience, I nearly went around the bend when a young South Asian woman came to me at the desk. She was my last victim of the day, and the door was already closed. I'd seen, at that point in the day, more than 40 students and scholars. She comes to the desk when I call her by her 458 syllable name and she sighs pregnantly.

"Finally," she mutters under her curry-eating breath.

I was too shocked to speak. I'm not sure if she realized how hard my job is sometimes, or how many people I'd helped that day (none of whom had, it seemed, "normal" issues), or that I was, at the time, possessed of a disaster-full bladder of white hot man-piss and a crap "in camera" that threatened menacingly to ruin my life and the lives of all around me; these reasons, and these alone, prevented me from actions further than those I took. I politely explained to her that we're very busy and that, indeed, it's the quality of our services that we strive for. To drive the idea home, I emphasized that she was one of about 3,500 internationals here at IU, and that it WAS the end of the mothereffing semester; shouldn't she have thought about this before? She thought about it for a moment and steered her questions in a more delicate and tactful direction.
Maybe it was because I was weaving an effigy of her out of real human hair at the time, but I dunno, she seemed to get what I was saying. Insulting my turnover rate! Man, I'll cut'choo, cut'choo real bad, a'ight?

I had my oral exam in Turkish today; it was mass-graves-in-the-Balkans bad. The premise of the exam was for us to describe two pictures that Abbas bey was going to show us, and he'd given us the six contender pictures ahead of time out of mercy. He was to choose one and we were to choose one. Well, I picked the one with the couple who was getting married. I talked about how neo-Nazi Americans are protesting, at this very moment, about same-sex unions being "special rights" and how (1) Man + (1) Woman = Jesus. No, I actually talked about civil ceremonies versus church weddings, how we make these fantastically enormous and often tasteless cakes, and how at least one of the bridesmaids gets schtupped by a drunken groomsman in the reception hall coat-closet. He seemed pleased, but it's hard to tell with Abbas whether it's "pleased" or "I'm going to cut your throat out of your lard-ass neck and take a dump down the wheezing hole." Then, he picked his. Now, Dustin and I knew which one he'd pick because he was mothertouching obsessed with the chapter; it was about conservation and saving nature. The chapter's name was "Dünyamız Çöl Olmasın!" , which means "You Must Not Let Our World Become a Desert!" There really isn't a lot to say. People are gross and that won't change until we all die and roaches and Paris Hilton rule the planet. I wanted to fiddle with some of the slang I'd procured via internet and some of my less savory Turkish friends, but telling Abbas bey that I was going to plant a pine tree in his mother's woman parts and fornicate with his sister in the shade of said tree seemed inappropriate. So, what I did instead was mumble like I was developmentally challenged about how trees give us oxygen and how people shouldn't throw shit into the sea. It was tragic. {sound of a Guiness being slammed; slammed, then a satisfied belch of pleasure}

I received a lot of response to my 'blog series about my faithful minions. Other than the box of venomous Venezuelan spiders (all of whom seemed to be wearing the pelts of small mammals they'd snuffed on their quivering backs), people seemed to warm to the idea of it. Now, I know that there are more of you out there. There are a few of you whom I know exist, and I hope you know why I can't write a 'blog about you. Mesela, helvacı kabağım için. Thanks, my minions, for allowing me to publicly display my affiliation with you for the whole world to see. I've been getting hits from India, China, Taiwan, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Costa Rica and Switzerland, to name a few. Huh. I wonder what "corn" would be in Bengali.

I've decided that, this summer, I will read no fewer than 25 books for pleasure. In random order, their titles:

1) Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (my heroine!)
2) Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind
3) The Lovely Bones
4) East of Eden
5) The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier
6) A Fine Balance
7) The Black Book (KaraKitap)
8) Zorba the Greek
9) A Bend in the River
10) The Ground Beneath Her Feet
11) In the Arms of Africa
12) Geisha, a Life
13) Catfish and Mandala
14) Dinner with Persephone
15) Vietnam, Now
16) From the Land of Green Ghosts
17) Black Dog of Fate
18) An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan
19) The Acropolis: Global Fame, Local Claim
20) Snow (Kar)
21) From the Ganges to the Hudson: Indian Immigrants in New York City
22) Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror
23) Chinatown
24) Traveler's Tales: Turkey.

But, most importantly of all:

25) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Yessssss, oh yes. Already pre-ordered. [mouth floods with saliva]

I remain, as ever,

Dom