I didn't know we had these in Red State.

There is a large shopping center only 15 minutes from my office. To get there, I have to walk over a bridge spanning the river. There's always something interesting in the shallows. I took this picture today with my cell phone on maximum zoom, which is my excuse for its quality.

Too bad he's bloated and dead. I'm pretty sure there aren't any of these beasts anywhere in the greater Ellesiouville area, so he must have been washed miles downstream from somewhere up in Red State's desolate northern territory.

I was not looking forward to this particular developmental milestone.

Flushed with embarrassment, the Angry Kid whispers (loudly enough for her father to hear, unfortunately) that she has a boyfriend.

Deep breaths. Inhale, exhale...

"Is he cute? What's his name?" I whisper back, feigning enthusiasm.

"I don't know," she replies.

"You don't know? He isn't in your class?"

"No, he's a fifth-grader."

"Um, does he know he's your boyfriend?"

"No."

Big hugs.

I am a terrible, angry professor who has no human feelings.

Two things happened on Friday. First, I gave a final exam in statistics. Second, and more importantly, I spent over two hours in my dentist's office being stabbed, drilled, ground, molded, re-glued and otherwise worked over. My graduate students proctored the exam while I was being tortured by people who must have trained under Pol Pot.

I returned to my office after my adventure, numb to my cranium, the entire left side of my face drooping and a steady stream of saliva pouring down my left boob. I was starving. I tried to eat, against my dentist's explicit prohibitions, and succeeded in ingesting a significant portion of my left lower lip.

Then I checked my email. I found a series of desperate messages from a statistics student who had missed the exam for no good reason except that he had been very, very late. Each message detailed the tears he was shedding, how sorry he was, how if he fails the class he will both lose his financial aid and not get into med school.

My course policy is very clear: if you don't call ahead of time, no makeup exam. I'm very generous about makeups, but I expect the courtesy of a phone call. (I violated this policy once for a student who had been called up for active duty and had to report to his base the morning of the exam. First responders and students defending their country get a free pass.) I blew a sloppy raspberry at my workstation, shut everything down and went home and ate Vicodin.

I haven't checked my mail since.

Please, take this advice.

Have you been admitted to graduate school? Are you interviewing at one of the graduate programs to which you applied? Then I recommend that you do not

• assume nothing can go wrong at this point.
• address the female graduate students as, "Yo! Bitches!"
• fill your plate with so many sandwiches that there is nothing but chips and pickles left for the students still in their face-to-faces.
• tell sexist and off-color jokes to the female graduate students, even after they tell you that you are making them feel uncomfortable.
• call the female graduate students "Bitches" a second time.
• confess that you really screwed up your last interview by behaving inappropriately.
• (updated!) tell graduate students their work is boring and no one is interested in it.
• (updated!) tell international graduate students that their country is stupid and that everyone who comes from that country is stupid.
  

Don't do these things because (1) you are on an interview and (2) you haven't yet been funded. The fellowships were handed out today and you didn't get one. We also called your letter-writers and told them of your behavior.

Good luck on your other interviews.

Nasty people show up in nasty places.

Tonight I had dinner at a TGI Friday's in the airport. Yes, it was disgusting. Don't ask me why I ate dinner there, just trust me when I say I had no control over the situation.

More disgusting than the food was the yuppie in the next booth. It seems he fancied himself some sort of wine connoisseur and he had ordered a glass of the house rose. It was not very good. He wanted to send it back, because it was not up to his standards. (Corked, maybe?)

He tried very hard to send it back. He realized, eventually, that his server would suffer for his lack of foresight and didn't push the issue. This did not prevent him from subjecting her, each time she passed his table, to a harangue about good wines and bad wines and how many wines he's tasted and how very knowledgeable and particular he was about his wines. He also marched up to the bar and demanded an explanation from the bartender. I didn't see it, but I presume the bartender just held up the industrial-sized box of Franzia from which his wine was poured.

So here's a secret message to Airport Yuppie Douchebag: Hey, Dude! A wine-tasting class at the community college does not make you an enophile. Who expects a van Gogh among the black velvet acrylics at the gas station? Lay off your server and go sit in the men's room, where you can jack off to your own magnificence without making this dining experience even worse for the rest of us. And next time? Order a fucking beer.

I have no idea who this person is.

From: Mistee Testenstuff
To: Angry Professor
Re: Making up work

Dear Professor,

I'm sorry I haven't contacted you in a while. I need to schedule a time that I can make up my missed exam and quizzes. I wasn't sure if you would permit me to attend class without having taken the exam and quizzes, so I haven't been to class since I fell ill in January. Please let me know when a good time would be to make up this work.

Thank you,
Mistee