Cats and Grammar and Girls

"Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar they use." - Mark Twain

"Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any very remarkable felicities of expression." - Bronson Alcott

"This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put!" - Winston Churchill, I think

"Meow Mrow Mrrow Mrow Mrrowwww." - Our cat

Okay, so I'm quite tired, at the end of what was quite a long day.  Luckily I have beer.  Beer makes things better.

I have writing, too, and in that direction I will soon launch.

That said, I saw an article today that irritated me.  It managed that not-so-challenging trick by trying to explain to me how to write like a girl.  Girls, you see, interject a lot, finish each others' stories, speak with more description and more empty adverbs (like "really"), and finish more sentences with question marks.

Really? 

I suppose I must bow my head briefly to Ye Olde Stereotype.  Yes, it exists, as the article I just described proved.  And it exists, most often (I suppose), because so many people hold it as truth.

So here's the question--do I write my Elf Queen (a late-teenage girl) as a stereotype or how I hear her speaking in my head?

- TOSK

Being an Evil Overlord

It all began when I, in jest (I think), scratched out the first word in my "Dean of Education" sign and replaced it with a couple of more fitting (at the time) words, thus declaring myself the "Evil Overlord of Education."

Being an Evil Overlord of Education has its good points and its bad, I'd say.  On the one hand, though you undoubtedly have plenty of minions (who are quite intelligent and devoted to their job), none of them are willing to dress up in overalls and sing the "Banana" song.  That's probably because they're quite intelligent and devoted to their job, of course.

On the other hand, an Evil Overlord of Education doesn't really have to destroy much physical stuff, nor do you have to actually kill anybody, to qualify for the title on a fairly regular basis.  Just doing normal Dean stuff is enough, it seems.

"Mr. Blutarsky, zero... point... zero." comes to mind.

That, and there's a remarkable lack of interest among those who might take your job in actually doing so.  Anybody who's been around a Dean for long realizes how stressful the job can be despite the fancy paneled office and comfy chair (yeah, right) and charming assistants.  Nope.  Sorry, man, you're stuck with it.  Unlike most evil overlords out there, your minions do. Not. Want. Your. Job.  Not with a ten foot pole.  Wouldn't even touch it with your six-pointy beanie.  Sorry.

That said, then, there's not a lot of reason for an Academic Dean-slash-Evil Overlord to follow Peter Anspach's Evil Overlord List.  That said that said, though, it's still fun to do so.  Take, for example, number 27 (no, I'm not going to copy them here--he's got a strong enough copyright notice on his site that I'm just not gonna screw with it, which is why I linked it just now).  My life-ending terror-inducing weapon of choice is the pen, and yes, indeedy, I carry two on me at all times.

Number 33, of course, is very, very useful to keep in mind.  It helps keep HR off your back and stuff, you know.  Not that I would think of doing something so politically incorrect in the first place, but--well, Evil Overlords must keep up appearances (unless HR is on site at the time, anyway).

Number 60 is important, too.  Granted, Evil Overlords of Education don't get any five year old advisors, but HR can suffice for that as well.

Unfortunately, I mess up Number 20 all the time.  Oh, well.  Muah hah hah haaaaa!

Happy Monday!

- TOSK

PS--no, I don't hate HR people.  In fact, I've liked just about every HR person I've ever met, which is part of their insidious danger.  I respect HR people, and any of you aspiring Evil Overlords out there should learn to do so, too.  HR folks will always be the Palatine to your Vader.

With Ceremony

"Even the most understated ceremony involves a certain respect for ritual and pageantry." - Vera Wang

Sometimes, it's the ceremony that counts.

As an Academic Dean by profession, I'm certainly tied to that reality. The academic world is full of rituals and ceremonies, each having its own meaning, place, and importance.

One specific and extremely vital ceremony comes to mind: commencement.  I've worked in institutions with all sorts of traditions regarding the act of conferring credentials upon those who complete the requirements, and to many students nothing seems to matter more than the ritual of walking across the stage.  One institution, in fact, only held the ceremony once per year, and though graduates had their credentials conferred, along with all rights and privileges (and pretty pieces of paper), immediately upon completion, some still called me every week as we got closer to the commencement ceremony time. 

"Are we there yet?"

"Are we?"

I came to understand that ceremony's importance before I became a Dean, thanks to my service as student support coordinator.  It was a common thing the students would comment upon during my meetings.  Okay, okay, I get it....

One of the realities common with career colleges--and the practice is spreading among traditional institutions as well--is that the chief executive of the campus (typically called the President) doesn't always come from an academic background.  Often they're good strong business leaders who can effectively balance a budget and work within a world of restricted resources, but they haven't always taken the time to examine the rituals associated with academic life as closely as they should.

One institution I worked for, in fact, was like that.  Their ceremony, when I arrived, was kind of strange from an academic point of view.  So I changed it, adding the traditional ritualistic feel in which people say stuff that the graduates won't remember past the flipping of the tassels, and then the new grads all parade across stage to receive the honors they've earned.  Then comes the important legalistic part, where the head of academics (usually a Dean or higher) speaks on behalf of the faculty to the legal head of the institution (usually the President) and says "hey, dude, these students survived our crap, so grant them their degrees."

Okay, so it's not typically delivered in those precise words, but that's the general process.  Then the Prez says "yeah, sure, man," and everybody flips tassels from the right to the left and then head out en masse for drinky-winkies.

So at this institution, I rewrote the script, adding that part of the ceremony in.  Though it's not strictly necessary for a graduation ceremony, it makes the students feel like they accomplished something, and it makes the faculty feel important, and on top of all that it makes the chief executive feel like he/she has an important role, too.  It's the ceremony that counts. 

I did 'er up right.  I wrote the President's portion of the script so that it went something something something "and all rights, responsibilities, and privileges appertaining thereunto."  Go ahead, try saying that out loud.  I dare you.  That last couple of words are a tongue-twister. 

At rehearsal, she asked me if it was right.  Absolutely, ma'am.  You need to say that, ma'am.  It's the ceremony, ma'am. 

At the actual ceremony, she nailed it.  The whole phrase, including the last tongue-twisting couple of words, she enunciated perfectly.  Yay!  In fact, she smiled as we were done, and she shared with me how happy she was that she'd gotten the important words right.

Some day I'll have to go back and come clean to her.  Nah, ma'am, I made that crap up to see if you could and would say it.

There was a similar ceremony at West Point, back when I was there, when dinosaurs roamed the plain, when there was a seriously challenging fourth class system.  *ahem*  It happened at the end of the year, when the fourth class cadets, who had been known for the entire academic year as simply "Plebe" or worse, became upperclassmen.  Peers, ish. 

We would line them up by cadet company, and then the upperclassmen in that company would go through the line one at a time shaking hands and introducing ourselves by first name. Recognition Day, it was called.  It was a big deal.

Wasn't such a big deal to some of us when we went through it, honestly.  By that point we already knew what the upper classmen's names were, and we also had our own little pet names for them (most of which we'd never repeat in their presence even after Recognition Day).  It seemed--redundant.  Irrelevantly so, in fact.

Thus it was that my class, in my company, at the end of our sophomore ("yearling") year, all went through introducing ourselves as "Bob."  Guys, girls, everybody--just "Bob."  Hell, they won't remember the names they don't already know, and they already know almost all of our names.  Why not?

The Importance of Ceremony is why not.  I found out a couple of years later that that class group never, ever forgave us for that little prank.  To them, it was a horrible slight. 

Oops.  And I'd been one of the chief architects of that little pranky-wanky.  Sorry, guys.

It's important to do things the right way sometimes:

With ceremony.

- TOSK

Health Benefit of Bacon

"Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon." - Doug Larson

"I unfortunately still crave Chicken McNuggets and bacon, which is the meat candy of the world." - Katy Perry

Bacon!

I posted about the joys of bacon a few posts ago.  Well, okay, it was way back last September, but it still smacks (and crackles and crisps) true. 

Too much bacon is, I suppose, a health risk.  At least, that's what I've heard that they say--they being the mysterious cabal of medically trained experts who are somehow elevated to the position requiring them to tell us what to eat to be healthy.  You know--used to be the four food groups, now it's a pyramid.  Who knows, maybe next year it'll be a circle of some type that makes us healthy.

Anyway, they say too much fat in our diets is a bad thing, and since bacon has a lot of good ole' smoked fat in it, too much bacon must be bad.

I do, however, have a hard time saying "too much bacon is bad" without laughing at the inherent silliness of the statement.

I mean, c'mon--this is bacon we're talking about.  It's pure happiness in one slice of culinary perfection.  Yesterday for breakfast I had a slice of bacon with two eggs (fried, over medium) and potato casserole, and it was terrific.  Last night we grilled hot dogs--bacon flavored hot dogs, in my case, since they were a new product in the store--wrapped in bacon.  This morning?  Omelets.  Omelets, I should add, stuffed with cheese and bacon.

Hey, now, I combined the cheese and bacon with green stuff (broccoli) and with carmelized onion, so it had to have been healthy, bacon or no.

Besides, too much of anything is bad for us.  I've always heard that it's important to drink a lot of water, but it wasn't that many years ago that a woman made national news when she perished in a water-drinking contest sponsored by a local radio station.  Her cause of death?  Drinking too much water.

See?  Water = bacon.

On the opposite side of the issue is the importance of happiness.  Not long ago I read an account of a German medical study (had to read an account of it, since I don't read German well) proving that men who look at well endowed women's breasts for at least ten minutes per day are happier than others, and as a result they live longer.

My wife didn't buy it.  She's perfectly well endowed for my happiness, of course, but the thought of me staring at her for ten minutes per day kinda weirded her out, wedding ring or no. 

That notwithstanding, it's clear that happiness is a good thing.  Bacon makes us happy.  Therefore, bacon is a good thing.

Right?

- TOSK

A Kitten Named Freya

I used to live in Wasilla, Alaska.  Life in Wasilla way back then wasn't always normal.  Okay, to be honest, it was rarely anything that could be considered remotely normal.  Leaving Christmas lights hung on the eaves all year long so you can see outside in the fall isn't normal.  Hanging bars of Irish Spring from your trees to keep the moose from stepping on your dogs isn't normal.  Getting almost to the end of your driveway, having just shoveled about a hundred feet of foot-and-a-half deep snow, only to have the snowplow fly by and blast you in the face with street snow, isn't normal. 

Naming your kitten after the Norse goddess of all things emotional--love, hate, war, the afterlife--that's not too normal either, I guess.  But hey, I did it.

I was looking for a feisty cat, after all.  For a while it was just me and my great big chow and lab mix puppy, and after I'd returned from three months of training out of state, it became me, the puppy, and several hundred shrews (the Lex Luthor of the rodent family).  I tried baiting the shrews with cheese and with peanut butter, and for a while the traps were effective.  After a bit, though, I figured out that I was just doing Darwin's work on the population, culling the less intelligent ones. 

So I got the feistiest member of the litter from a friend whose cat had just had kittens.  The little black fuzzball that pounced on everything--yeah, that's the one.  To reinforce it, I named her Freya after the Norse shaman goddess, leader of the Valkyr, and commander of half of the warriors in the afterlife.  Woo hoo!  What a badass name!  Go Freya!

She sucked at catching shrews.  I remember one night I was sitting there watching TV when a shrew decided it could cut a rug across my living room.  I looked over at Freya, who looked back at me with a "well, what do you expect me to do about it?" expression.  I happened to have a roll of duct tape sitting there on the end table (what Alaskan end table doesn't have a roll of duct tape on it?) and I flung it at Mr. Shrew.  My aim was true, and the population was reduced by one--stupid or slow, I'm not sure, but its genes were removed from the pool regardless. 

Freya would have nothing to do with the little corpse, either.  She ate cat food, not little furry things, she told me in very clear meows. 

Then Heide moved in.  With, of course, her kids.  And, of course, her Chihuahua.  I think Freya's word for Chihuahua meant something in the realm of "cat toy." 

I didn't believe it at first.  I mean, Freya was such a cute and loving little being when she was around me.  Sure, she sometimes decided to leap onto the chow/lab's back and ride Darby like a circus animal, but that was more entertaining than really dangerous or hurtful. 

She stalked the Chihuahua, though.

The "great room"--a common space in Alaskan houses--was the size of a dining room and living room all together, and it separated the kitchen (and dog food/water) from the bedroom (which was Chihuahua haven).  Poor Peco, the noble little guy, would make his run for a little bit of water, and he'd do just fine getting to the kitchen.  You could watch him prepare for the trip back, though--first, he'd look around the living room to figure out where his nemesis was.  Usually Freya would be laying, draped across the back of the couch, asleep. 

Asleep.  Uh, huh.  Right.  "Asleep" my tuckas.

Peco would make his first little dart back toward safety, from the kitchen opening to the dining room table base.  Freya wouldn't move, but the end of her tail would twitch.

Peco would dart again, this time to a chair a little closer to safety.

Twitch.

He'd dart to behind the love seat, and then peek out carefully to see what had followed him.

Nothing had.  Yet.  Twitch.

He'd maneuver around the couch system carefully, putting himself into position for the final break, the longest single unprotected leg of the journey.  Once he was satisfied that the coast was clear, he'd leap out from the safety of the couch, four-inch legs propelling him as fast as they could across the carpet.

But the black streak named after the Norse goddess of war was faster.

"Stop it!" one or both of us would yell as the Chihuahua screamed in terror at the impending doom presented by the cat.  Suddenly Freya was back on top of the couch, appearing to sleep peacefully, tail giving but a single twitch.

Sadly, Freya wasn't with us for long.  She developed a seizure disorder that was pretty traumatic to watch.  A cat in control of its claws is one thing, but a cat flying across the floor with four sets of little scythes flying is terrifying even to us humans.  We took her to the vet, who shrugged and offered us some seizure medication.

Cat seizure medication, at least in those days, couldn't be used as a preventative.  It had to be used during the seizure.  And, of course, it wasn't available as an injectible.  No, to administer the medication, you had to wade in between the flying blades, raise the poor creature's tail, and insert the suppository.

What kind of sick mother f person came up with that, anyway?  "Oh, hey, this seizure medicine, we can't make it too easy to administer.  Let's make it a suppository."

The condition eventually took her from us, but I'll never forget a little kitten named Freya.

- TOSK

Doing Your Own Thing Isn't Always Best

Subtitle: When Kalik Saved My Life

Once, several years ago, I took my then-fiancee, now lovely bride, on a cruise.  She'd just gone through the tragic loss of a close family member, for one thing, and for another, the cruise line just happened to call me at the right place at the right time with the right price.

I say "right price" because they were incredibly cheap inexpensive tickets.  I think, in fact, that for four days at sea from Port Canaveral to Nassau, Bahamas, and back, the cruise cost only about sixty or seventy dollars a day per person.  Who knew luxurious cruising could be so cheap inexpensive, eh?

As the time marched steadily closer I realized why the cruise tickets were so inexpensive cheap.  Living in Alaska, I was used to moose season, bear season, red (salmon) season, silver (salmon) season, king season, and even mosquito season, but I forgot all about one of the most important seasons of all: hurricane season.  We just didn't have those up there. 

As luck would have it, the storm hit and passed before the boat sailed, but the seas were still choppy as the rather large boat followed the even larger storm out to sea.

By choppy, by the way, I mean stabilizers-don't-do-any-good choppy.  We boarded to find the close-able, liquid proof flexible sacks commonly referred to as "barf bags" taped to every wall in every elevator.  We enjoyed our first evening's show in the ship's theater, watching the dancers bounce-dance bounce-dance bounce-dance down to stage left, and then dance-bounce dance-bounce dance-bounce down to stage right.  Bounce, repeat. We actually had to hold onto our drinks to keep them from slipping off the tables and spilling, in fact.

Whoo-whee, what a hard time that was.

It became disappointing, in fact, as we neared the Bahamas.  Freeport, our first stop, had suffered little, but that was just a quick stop where we got to go downtown to--well, the downtown--and experience a Bahamian market.  Nassau was the stop we were looking forward to, though, because they had snorkeling.

Yay, snorkeling!

There really is nothing quite comparable to swimming along in nice calm fairly shallow water, eyes protected by waterproof goggles, watching the multi-colored sea life toodle along beneath you.  It's peaceful, and it's gorgeous.

Unless you're trying to do it with a broken collarbone and three broken ribs, but that's a whole different story.  I think I'll title that one "Why I Drank Bermuda Out Of Rum" when I get around to writing it.

Anyway, we were really looking forward to snorkeling in the Bahamas, but as we drew close to the port in Nassau they gave us the bad news.  See, cruise ships have this incredible way of raking in lots and lots of money called "shore excursions."  These excursions are overpriced tours of the local attractions, but when you're only likely to hit a place once in your lifetime and you've always wanted to see a particular attraction, the excursion is generally worth the extra price since quality of the experience is overseen by the cruise line.

Usually.

Anyway, there are several shore excursions in Nassau to go snorkeling.  They're all awesome, from what I hear.  I wouldn't know, because they all closed down on us.  Post-hurricane, don't you know.  Waves, don't you know.  Crushed dreams, don't you know.

Except one, don't you know.  One operator said he'd go ahead and take a group snorkeling.  Yay!  I figured this guy must really know what he's doing.  He must really be into doing his own thing, out away from the beaten path, and he must know someplace special to go.

I was wrong.

The someplace special to go that he knew was down the shipping lane that cuts through Nassau (great big canal, with beautiful mansions lining each side and huge rusty cargo ships in the middle).  Along past Atlantis, he pulled over to the side and cut off the engines.  Time to snorkel!

Eh, what the hell.  I was a swimmer in high school and at West Point too.  Couldn't be that hard to keep afloat with life jacket and all, right?

So, after the safety briefing (which consisted of "stay out of the channel" and "raise your hand if you get in trouble"), I found myself in the water.  I dipped my head down, and hey!  There was a fish!  Granted, it was about twenty feet down, but it was all tropical and pretty and stuff.

I kept my head down for a minute or two, watching my bright little friend darting around in the rocks at the bottom of the channel.  For that moment it was easy to forget that the skies were still overcast and the chill wind of the storm was still whipping.

Just for that moment, though.  I raised my head and glanced back at the boat, which in those few moments had leaped to about a hundred feet away.  At least, I guessed it was a hundred feet or so, because it was difficult to estimate the distance with four and six foot swells violently seesawing both me and the boat. 

Time to swim back, I realized, so I started out with the strongest crawl stroke I could muster.  It's difficult, though, to do the crawl stroke in a life jacket; your shoulders just don't have the room to do what they need to do.  That, and the thing rode up around my neck, which made me miss at least one "turn head now" motion, which in turn caused me to gulp down some yummy tasty saltwater. 

Yummm.

Still, I powered through the strokes as hard as I could, and finally raised my head again.  I'd made about a quarter of the distance.  I switched to my favorite stroke in high school, the breast stroke, since it's much easier to do in a life vest.  It's much harder to do in swells, though.  I got a few more good swigs of ocean water, and then I gave up.

Yes, I gave up.  Dammit, I was on vacation, which is not a good place to die from drowning.  Messy requirements on international remains transport and all....  I waved my hand at the boat.  They saw it, luckily, and after a minute or so one of the (many) ropes they were using to haul the other folks in came free.  It was tossed, and I gleefully (okay, I frantically) grabbed it and held on as they pulled me in to the boat. 

I felt like a king salmon looks after you've fought it all the way in to the bank for an hour.  Ugh.  Just take me. 

Luckily there was beer on the boat.  Kalik is a local Bahamian lager, and it's pretty good.  I had gulped in nearly half of the Atlantic Ocean, though.  Have you ever gotten salt water into your stomach and lungs?  It makes you feel pretty bad like your insides are about to shrivel up and die.  I collapsed onto the seat and barely managed a "muh humm" when Heide asked if I wanted a Kalik.  She (who had managed to snorkel and still swim all the way back in) became my heroine that day, skipping bravely over to the libations counter to buy her lover a beer. 

It was good.

I had another.

It was better.

It was then that I learned that a good solid beer makes an effective counter to the awful feeling you get after swallowing too much sea water.  I also, though, learned that sometimes doing your own thing isn't the best option.  Sometimes it's good to just go with the pack, especially when there's been a hurricane and your life is on the line.

- TOSK

A Hard Day

It was a good day.  It was a bad day.  It was a challenging day, with a lot of both sides of the good-bad spectrum happening at nearly the same time.

The best part of the day is that Jessa came safely home on a completely uneventful flight.  Yay!  Her cat can now quit doing figure eights around Heide's legs.

The good thing about challenging days is that they teach us stuff, and they spark our creative energies at the same time.  I've come up with a great chapter in the Elf Queen, and I just took a short break in its writing to craft a few words over here.  You'll forgive me, I hope, if I just finish those few words and bounce back, because I'm really on a tremendously exciting roll over yonder.

Fingers of flame!

- TOSK