Sunday, March 11, 2018
The Third
Mitz rehearses Granger before
her more formal dates.
As in: “You’ve chosen a fine
champagne, Grange. Allow me
to pour?”
Her roommate, Loria. Or Lor Lor.
Always watched in approval.
And helped arrange him in his chair
when the girls left for the dining hall.
One day they hurried, and came back
to find him sprawled face down in
seedy sport jacket and jockeys.
They got him back and fluffed his
pocket handkerchief.
“But you saw his wooden dick!
I know you did! He’s so shy
about that!”
Lor Lor admitted she did, but
found a pair of lycra athletic pants
of hers that would fit wrestler-actor
The Rock.
Would do. Mitz had been waiting for
the end of semester JUNKORAMA
at the Student Union.
Then they had cupcakes.
Everybody grew more comfortable
in time.
Granger’s present outfit: Tennis!
Labels: college, dummy, fantasy, role playing, roommate
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
-Life is a dream...
some say.
-Horseshit peddlers! Row a
different boat!
-Hey! Go easy. I launched
similar-sounding malarkey
to get through college.
-To what end re adding
to the world's wisdom?
--Not my deal! Immediate
survival was.
From what? Floods? Hurricanes?
-The shit storms Society wishes
to smash you down with. Bury you!
-Paranoid now, it seems. I doubt
Society bothers with non-entities.
-I'm entity enough to myself and
my girlfriend!
-God have mercy on her souls!
Labels: college, Nature, paranoid, society, soul
Sunday, November 06, 2016
Their Batting Average
For Cause
Phoned the wrong girl for a date.
He wanted Cindy, a talky personality.
Then he could nod all evening, agreeing.
But he reached Mindy, a stone.
Well, she listened. His problem: the
Honor Society.
Neanderthal politicians attempting
to hijack it! Not a scholar among
them! you’ll have no trouble believing.
Mindy would help him fight! All his
causes, in fact, became immediately
fierce to her! Pattern.
No kids...decided after the first very
very serious conversation–-on a weekend
away from the pressing social external.
She did talk thereafter, and over the years,
but not too much small stuff. Always to
a purpose.
Fast forward to Social Security! They did
a lot together. Battles!
Victories! Some lasting, most not.
Labels: college, college politics, dating, fighting couple, Honor Society, personality, student politics, team
Thursday, September 08, 2016
On the Academy Ramparts
We meet after a year.
-Gotten nowhere. Time to protest anew?
-Is this a cabal?
-As in Cabal TV?
Professor Deitz stopped things, then, by
forgetting which side he had been on.
But Associate Professor Mimsy Borogroves
opined “What’s the difference, Doctor Genius?
So long as we choose the righteous one now!”
Labels: academics, cabal, college, professor, protest, rebellion, university
Saturday, March 19, 2016
College: getting in, getting on
Gritting of Teeth
-Larry didn’t get into State. Letter yesterday.
-A shame. My office will send you a list of
courses he should take in the junior college.
Then, next semester...?
-Be automatic?
-Nothing is. Just let me know when he’s
applying. Which you should have done
this time! Why didn’t...?
-Because I hate to owe!
-Grit your teeth, Joe, way things done.
...
Her Mother and Rachel Discuss Freshman Year
at Rosary College
-I put you with good Catholic girls.
-Well...trying to be good, let’s say.
-That’s the same as good.
...
Routes to the Top
-Aren’t you just a bit apprehensive about
getting in? I kept rearranging my application
materials before sending the whole package
off. Then I got sick!
-Good luck! I’m all set.
-Why the confidence?
-As a alcoholic, and the son of social boozehounds
of the highest order, I’ve met the important
people.
-And that should do it?
-Where you been?
-A planet where you study all the time!
-That might not hurt.
Labels: Catholic, class, college, college admission, drunk, Jew, who you know
Sunday, February 07, 2016
Short, But w/ Family Emotion
When Uncle Rack gave Bertsy a used laptop for college, he requested a Thank-You note practically instantly.
Phoned often, ostensibly to talk football, the university ranked.
Finally, drunk, both, Bertsy and roommate Ock, return laptop to sunporch.
“Thanx unc but decided to go cuneiform!” note avers
"Goddamn brat gotta lot t'learn!"
Labels: cheap, cheapskate, college, control, cuneiform, drunk, laptop
Monday, January 11, 2016
Languages
-Mine just talked a good game!
-Took all my breaks at rich uncle's with this humongous garden.
I'd get lost in there! One night I met a simpleton he allowed to roam.
"I know your name! Your uncle told me! It's a song too! I dream
of Jeannie With...Hair."
"Jenny! I am. And you're Carl."
"And I'm not mean!"
"Well, I'm not either. But I'm Jenny. Isn't that a nice name too?"
"No. It's a mean name!"
"Well I'm sorry. It’s in a poem. Jenny Kissed Me!"
“That’s not as nice as pretty hair!”
“Is to me!”
"Shhh! The flowers are talking. They work hard all day, you know!"
"Can you teach me how to listen if I promise not to be mean?"
"Not this time, but when you come back from the college next
other time. If you promise to teach me something too!"
-A deal? So, did...?
-He died.
-Oh!
-My last opportunity to be human!
-God! You're so mean to yourSELF! Cold!
-Just starting.
Labels: animism, college, divorce, flowers, garden, masochism, sex, simpleton
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
The Future of Higher Education
Working Scholar
Brencher knew his PhD from The Interstellar
University was earned by doing practically
nothing.
Now teaching at a prestigious institution
in New York State, he didn't fear getting
exposed as a fraud, since he each day
introduced a controversial topic and let
the students fight it out.
Inserting, of course, a hmmm or uh huh.
Today, a twentieth century song: You picked
a fine time to leave me, Lucille!
Males and females lined up rhetorically,
and let fly.
He graded on class participation, not wanting
to read anything the simpletons might compose.
Some few sat with sarcastic faces, but he forced
them to speak also.
Thus could he give all of them A's.
Dean called him in. Danger-Time!
But he just complained that the average grade
had become A for the entire university.
“WE'VE LOST OUR STANDARDS!”
As Dr Brencher headed for a seminar for the professors
entitled Creative Instruction in the Twenty-Eighth Century,
he couldn't stop laughing.
When tears rolled down his cheeks outside the Student Union,
Melissy Oxard, one of his students, felt it mirrored his soul.
Labels: college, future university, grade inflation, PhD, university
Saturday, May 24, 2014
The College Objective
Asking heavy questions about
inconsequential things. That’s
Humanities. Science finds
the animating nonsense. Fairy-
lands of Arts fog any goals, putz
around in marshmallows.
The Business School, of course,
features heavy lifting. Grounded
in philosophy of Galt. Halt-
ing dingbats and dancers
at the door. In Engineering
nothing changes in the mind.
Should have kept the slide-rule.
Labels: arts, business, college, Engineering, Galt, Humanities, university
Saturday, February 01, 2014
As Childhoods Lengthen
Trio
“One thing we will never miss is a college
graduation or a wedding.”
Rudd didn't respond at first. He still smarted
from her goose-step with horizontal finger under
the nose.
All to demonstrate what she took for his Hitlerian
sentiments. Well, he WAS our Righty. The Rolling
Righty!” she proclaimed several times.
I got into her line of sight as a Lefty. She'd ask,
“How many did you kill today, Uncle Joe?”
Then a Cossack dance, faster than possible.
Ever since childhood, she had entertained us, starting
with puppet shows.
Of course, as we got older she showed more edge.
When we left for college, Rudd was too sick.
"Well, Rudd, then the three of us must talk."
I winced.
She went on. "You're gonna die, no reason to think
otherwise, Honey. On the exit ramp. We love you and
all of that, so let's get that out of the way. But when
you're invited to our graduation or my wedding,
you must RSVP.”
“There should be a code. It's nobody else's business!”
I added.
So we decided on 19. Meaning very very sick
and can't make it. Or 7: I'll be there by hook
or crook.
Two sevens for graduation. He’s more wasted in
the wheelchair but getting by. Almost could slide
between the cushion and the steel.
Like a playing card.
When she got the 19 at her wedding, she showed it
to me during the reception. "He dead by now.
He's simply dead." She had been a red-eyed bride,
and I wondering why.
Labels: children, college, death, graduation, Hitler, Left, Right, Stalin, wedding, youth
Tuesday, May 07, 2013
New College President
-What I hear most about the present guy is that he’s beloved.
-Well now isn’t that just Apple Pie!
-Your nephew as a college president? I don’t know...
-Hey! The only qualification seems to be a doctorate. He got that, but I’ll be damned if I can tell you how. Though he’s not as dumb as a bag of hammers, he’s not much smarter.
-I hope he can act the part then.
-Beautifully! What he really brings is fundraising. Terrific at it. That’s the main job anyway. The scholar bit is wayyyy back!
-It just remains, then, easing the old guy out.
-He’ll go. For one thing he got one of those old fashioned pension things.
-Hasn’t been 401-K’od?
-Nope. Evaded that massive screwing. Therefore he can golf content in Boca or wherever.
-Most good pensions demolished courtesy of your legislature.
-MY legislature? Hyperbole! Well...does sound bad, but I guess it’s accurate enough.
-What I hear most about the present guy is that he’s beloved.
-Well now isn’t that just Apple Pie!
-Your nephew as a college president? I don’t know...
-Hey! The only qualification seems to be a doctorate. He got that, but I’ll be damned if I can tell you how. Though he’s not as dumb as a bag of hammers, he’s not much smarter.
-I hope he can act the part then.
-Beautifully! What he really brings is fundraising. Terrific at it. That’s the main job anyway. The scholar bit is wayyyy back!
-It just remains, then, easing the old guy out.
-He’ll go. For one thing he got one of those old fashioned pension things.
-Hasn’t been 401-K’od?
-Nope. Evaded that massive screwing. Therefore he can golf content in Boca or wherever.
-Most good pensions demolished courtesy of your legislature.
-MY legislature? Hyperbole! Well...does sound bad, but I guess it’s accurate enough.
Labels: 401-K, college, dedicated pension, education, Nepotism, pension, politics
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Southern Reactionary-Progressive
“Take my wife,” said the Jewish comedian,
Henny Youngman. “Please!”
Mine, who I’m tickled to retain, is a graduate
of a
hyphenated southern college, the rap on
which was it served only as a finishing school.
It did that, of course, but reforms gave the girls
much more in the way of History and Literature.
Even Political Science, with its grimier facets,
the ladies could absorb without losing their
gentler sides.
And still fiercely compete in athletics! My woman
a softball player who just missed the final cut in
the Olympics.
In the best case, women soften society. (And doesn’t
that open me to attacks! Yet it’s true.)
go off flawlessly.
The infinite details of which I’d screw up.
On the other hand, she stays away from my business.
If you’re invited here, you’ll swim in a sea of old gentility,
hospitality, gourmet food and beverage, etc.
And intellectual conversation.
If you’re a “Yankee” you’ll of course note the help is
black.
True, but with exemplary wages and benefits!
It’s the New South!
So much so that a reception we hold for local college students
includes a daughter of trusted staff.
Thus parents serve her, and my wife and I make her
more than welcome.
We find that beautiful!
How you do is your lookout.
Labels: college, equality, New South, Race, South, tradition, women, working
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
The wonder is, wasn’t done in
by their collective incompetence.
After dear preparation, started
following a terrorized heart
to them. Quite a risk for us
Labels: college, graduate, incompetence, terror
Monday, February 20, 2012
Chuckie the Center
blows out both knees after
two years, switches to academics.
Highlight reel: Microbiology's Meershim:
“You'll get these unknowns if I must skip
dinner! Mrs M a Kraut too, but assembles ex-
traordinary lasagna! Your own assembly too
sloppy, but if you ever acquire technique,
you'll hear singing. Everything, deep down,
is art.” Mrs Leonard in English hits the same note:
“We call it Composition. Not smash-together!”
Memory of young math prof. Fuzzier. Taciturn save
when filling blackboards in chortling frenzies.
And now the Athletic Department, which shunned
when he went studious, elects him to its Hall of Fame.
He stares at the wall where Jilly has removed photos
and banners and highschool awards. Cleaning.
But she leaves for the last time, taking
her old cheerleader stuff. Lately, he tries
math apps on his tablet. He can answer
many problems by a sort of rote, but
how others fall to surprising intuition!
On the plane the Captain proves a woman.
Ends her staid routine with a wisecrack
re wastrel brother to a sparse audience.
He sprawls in back and whispers, "Well,
in my case, half a man better than none."
Labels: athletics, college, Hall of Fame, studies
Sunday, May 01, 2011
College President and PR Man: Window
“I don't think we've really had Public Relations up to now.
As a result, perhaps, we've been mostly forgotten.
But we have, of course, a story to tell.
Look at the buildings alone. Most ivy-covered and decaying.
Going back to the earth. Isn't that something of what
Frank Lloyd Wright was getting after?
That monstrous hulk is Old Recitation Hall. A homeless man lived there for seven years before he was discovered. Well, his body was when the place stunk even worse than usual.
And the human resources! That mess of dawdling affectation on a six-thousand dollar bicycle there is a poet. Girls are digging his vagueness.
Off he goes!–backpack and beard flapping in the wind.
Anyway, wander around. His like inhabits most departments. Along with relics, grinches, and creeps. Oh there are normal people, but they’re overwhelmed. You'll find some muttering to themselves, prior to taking walks to strike out
at invisible evils.
When all the trees are in bloom, nobody notices a thing.”
“I don't think we've really had Public Relations up to now.
As a result, perhaps, we've been mostly forgotten.
But we have, of course, a story to tell.
Look at the buildings alone. Most ivy-covered and decaying.
Going back to the earth. Isn't that something of what
Frank Lloyd Wright was getting after?
That monstrous hulk is Old Recitation Hall. A homeless man lived there for seven years before he was discovered. Well, his body was when the place stunk even worse than usual.
And the human resources! That mess of dawdling affectation on a six-thousand dollar bicycle there is a poet. Girls are digging his vagueness.
Off he goes!–backpack and beard flapping in the wind.
Anyway, wander around. His like inhabits most departments. Along with relics, grinches, and creeps. Oh there are normal people, but they’re overwhelmed. You'll find some muttering to themselves, prior to taking walks to strike out
at invisible evils.
When all the trees are in bloom, nobody notices a thing.”
Labels: campus, college, tradition
