It seems that, about fifty-five million years ago, the Artic had an average yearly temperature of 74 degrees owing to a sudden and as-yet unexplained spike in the quantity of carbon in our atmosphere. Well, when the eco-apocalypse comes, I want a villa in Franz Josef Land. Come summertime, I'll grow grapes in the midnight sun.

Well, guys, looks like I've finally achieved something more in my life than getting promoted to the lofty rank of shift supervisor. I never really thought it would happen, but they've finally gone and let me into the masters' program at the Institute for Latin American Studies at UT. Yes, starting this fall, I get to spend my days in the sunlight ( Read more... )

You know, I'd always kind of regretted the passing of certain nineteenth-century traditions no longer considered acceptable in the Information Age. Specifically, I've long considered it a shame that politicians now prefer to settle their disputes with soporific platitudes and paranoid-schizophrenic attack ads instead of having the cojones to ( Read more... )

Nick: Man, my right eye sure does hurt inexplicably. I must be allergic to something.

Generic CVS-Brand Eye Wash: You should put us in your eye.

Generic Antihistamine Eyedrops: Yeah, we'll make it feel way better.

Nick: Well, if you say so. What could go wrong?

Generic CVS-Brand Eye Wash: Ha ha! Now, thanks to the boric acid I contain, your ( Read more... )

This past Sunday, Katie and I were up at the junction of the Lampasas River and some creek the name of which I don't know. There's an aged philanthropist of the old-school variety who has a lot of land up there--on which he built a chapel and a graveyard so he could his deceased wife could be legally buried on their property--and he noticed a ( Read more... )

"Of course, like every other man of intelligence and education, I do believe in organic evolution. It surprises me that at this late date such questions should be raised."

--Woodrow Wilson in nineteen twenty-two.

Yeah. Katie's in Belize and will be for the next month. The cats all know it, too. I'm going on unemployment, just like my kid sister advised me to do, just as soon as this week's over with. (She's way more competent at this quotidian human existence business than I am. I'd better take her word for it.) 'Til then, I'm working overtime: ten ( Read more... )

I went to the U.T. library last week and transliterated about two-thirds of the corpus of texts from Tonina they had there, up on the fourth floor of the Benson stacks. I figured, since they were everlastingly at war with Palenque--this is Tonina, not U.T., here--and there were so many great texts from Palenque, some of them involving that war, I ( Read more... )

jun.) I've got a new job--have had for three weeks now, actually--grading essay responses from the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. That used to be the TAAS test, back when i was a lad, and damned if i didn't hate it. I really enjoy the work now, though. I'm pretty sure i'm not allowed to tell you much more than that about it, but i ( Read more... )

I've got a new job--forty hours per week, eleven dollars per hour--with regular daily hours and weekends. I haven't had a weekend in so fucking long.