When the inmates take over the asylum

There hasn't been much new stuff lately on E&P because I've been really distracted and kind of depressed. The proverbial defecation has been hitting the oscillation here at Division II University. While there have been a lot of layoffs and budget cuts, there has also been a lot of foolish spending on facilities and technology that D2U doesn't actually need. And now it looks as if the trouble has only just begun.

Our new president, Dr. D. Ingle Berry, has managed to make a complete mess of things in his 19 months here. One of his most egregious mistakes was instituting a $40 Course Fee for much-needed required courses such as history, psychology, and English Comp. Unfortunately for Dr. Berry, the Board of Regents does not allow this kind of price-gouging of college students—parents began complaining to their state legislators, legislators began calling up the Board of Regents, and D2U was informed that the millions of extra dollars would have to be refunded to the students. So much for those extra, much-needed sections of English Comp I & II, sophomore-level lit surveys, American History I & II, Intro to Psychology, Critical Thinking, etc. And so much for the funds to pay for extra, much-needed faculty to teach those in-demand courses.

At an "emergency meeting" on the matter, Dr. Berry—who at his previous university was chair of the Business Department, and who, most ironically, holds a Ph.D. in Accounting—said, "We have to return all this money?!? I don't know what we're going to do! We can't do business like this! We'll just have to close the doors!"

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Exhibit A—What Happens When We Let Big Business and Its Interests Run A University. (And we wonder why Wall Street is such a mess.)

Can't pay faculty salaries or offer enough sections of core classes? Not a problem! We have a brand-spanking-new Student Fitness Center, complete with a 20-person hot tub, a lazy river, and an Olympic-sized pool! We don't have a swim team? Not a problem! Students will be coming here in droves because of that lazy river, not because of academics or any of that junk! Enrollment will be through the roof! Hey, let's lower admissions standards while we're at it! Students can't even write a complete sentence? Who cares! They've got a lazy river and a 20-person hot tub for their amateur porn videos! They don't need computer labs or library facilities or a low student-professor ratio, or ANY of that crap!

But I digress.

His hand-picked new provost, Dr. Lili von Shtupp, is no better. A mathematician, she sees nothing wrong with increasing English Comp courses to 90 students per section: "Vell, I deed ze same sing aht Fleegenfluegen Colledge..." However, she fails to realize that at Fleegenfluegen (who were ALL too happy to get rid of her) she had a much larger budget, and a graduate mathematics program to supply her with dozens of GTAs to grade all those little pieces of paper, and run the ScanTron sheets through the grading machines. "Vee need to retayn zhose styoodentz who ahre leeving us for ze two-yeer technical colleges..." Umm—no. Those students didn't need to be at a four-year college for whatever reason, and they're now at schools better suited to their career goals. With Dr. von Shtupp, outward appearances, fancy titles, and hoity-toity national designations mean everything—so what if D2U doesn't have the faculty or facilities to back them up? This is what to expect from an administrator who ends her first speech to the faculty with a quote from Oliver Cromwell. She and Dr. Berry run D2U much like Cromwell and his ilk; any opposition, and you'll find yourself in the Tower...if they're nice. Usually, your head is skewered onto a pike at the main campus entrance, a warning for all who dare oppose their proclamations.

Ladies and gentlemen, Exhibit B—What Happens When We Let Utter Incompetence Masquerade As Leadership. Same theme, of course, as Exhibit A.

The Dastardly Duo called another "emergency meeting" this morning, supposedly to ask faculty for ideas on saving money in the face of "massive budget cuts." They do this "emergency meeting" thing a lot, I think, for two reasons: 1) to keep faculty and staff perpetually afraid of what will happen next; and 2) because they are utterly, completely unprepared and clueless as to how real leadership would handle crises.

So my job, among many others in this department and others, is one of those that may be cut. I may know something today, or then again, Dr. von Shtupp and Dr. Berry may wait until June, when it's too late to look for a part-time college teaching job because most positions have already been filled. Again, it's another way they keep faculty and staff full of worry and fear. Worried, fearful people are more likely to go along with whatever you dictate should happen next.

This afternoon, I'm sending out my C.V. to three other colleges and to the state's Applicant Clearinghouse—just in case.

UPDATED at 11:12 a.m. to add: The state legislature is looking to cut $300 million from higher-education funding next fiscal year. This means a possible 20-25% budget cut for Division II University—and with no increase in tuition dollars, nor any "trimming of fat" from the school budget, 31% of faculty would be let go.

What was that, again, about embracing academic excellence at all levels, starting a doctoral program, and encouraging undergraduate research?

Basement Kitteh went down to GeorgiaHe was lookin' for a nom to steal

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

A country music reference and kittehs! Who could ask for more?!?

Chicken Monday: 2/22/10

Last evening, I collected five pretty brown eggs from the hens' nesting box.

And I found Ernestine dead behind the chicken coop.

Earlier, Lucky and I had headed out to the country to grill out with Mom and Steve, and we returned home just as the last daylight was fading from the sky. Ernestine's carcass was very fresh, with most of one thigh and her head missing. The fence at the back of the chicken yard, a few feet behind the coop, was accordioned down.

The culprit? Most likely a fox, though some in the neighborhood swear there's a bobcat prowling around, and that that's what snatched Myrtle Mae.

This. means. WAR.

Friday Kittehs: 2/19/10

Sorry that this Friday Kitteh(s) post is so late; today was filled with meetings at Division II University. But here's sweet little Joy, helping me grade a few practice Regents' Exam essays.

Student Essay Insanity #66!

There's been quite a bit of sadness here on E&P lately, so maybe this long-overdue installment of Student Essay Insanity will give you a laugh. Or a bad case of hives, either one.

This crop of bloopers are from practice essays that my students have been writing to get ready for the Regents' Essay Exam, a 60-minute exercise squarely and firmly planted outside that which we call Writing Reality. (But I digress.) I tell my students to humor the Board of Regents and just learn to outsmart this exam, as if they're playing hide-and-seek with a three-year-old. "The questions don't get any better," I tell them when they complain aloud about the hokey, vague prompts recalling both the world politics of 40 years ago and the content of a kindergarten play.

As always, these are real bloopers from real essays, and were written by real students. And they're mostly real(ly) bad, or silly, or inadvertently sexual. And sometimes nothing's really "wrong" with the passage, but I included it because the student writer makes a great joke or observation.

Yes, they're real. I shit you not.

**********

• It is everyone's responsibility to get their pets spade.
• Laughter can elongate one's life.
• Having an entire school dress the same way [by wearing a standard uniform] is a wast and robes the students of their individuality and personal style.
• The primary cause of divorce is that many of us think that other people can read our minds.
• THe truth is that nuclear power is safe, clean, and cheep. Not cheep to get started, but cheep to fule.
• The world today is made up of gangsters, athletes, and drug dealers.
• Some people see marriage as a gateway to sex from their virgin significant others.

Naturally, I've saved the best for last—an e-mail from a student who missed class all last week:

Prof Kitty,
Sorry i missed class all week, I am home sick with the strip throat.

Shiver me doggie timbers.

The Colonel's evil little dog had surgery last year to remove cataracts. He was only three at the time, and had the first symptoms from the time he was six or eight months old. (As far as I know, Schnauzers aren't genetically predisposed to cataracts.)

After the surgery, the Colonel spent months putting antibiotic drops and ointments into PFC Dog's eyes. Schnauzers hate having their heads and eyes messed with, so you can imagine how much fun this four-times-a-day-for-six-months regimen was—for both of them. And it looked like the surgery had been a success.

Until a couple of weeks ago, when PFC Dog began having seizures.

The veterinary ophthalmologist examined him thoroughly and ruled out (for now) a brain tumor or neurological disorder. However, the pressure in the dog's left eye was abnormally high, and so inflamed that the white looked more tomato-juice red.

Final diagnosis: The left eye will have to be removed.





The surgery is at 9:00 this morning; doggie and Daddy should be ready to go home in the late afternoon. Of course, the Colonel is sad about the whole eye fiasco, but happy that he'll have his best buddy around for quite a while longer.

But the best part?

Two words: Pirate. Doggie.

YARRRRRR!!!

Chicken Monday: 2/15/10

Today's Chicken Monday™ picture is recycled from December, as Blogger is being fussy this morning about the chicken photos I took yesterday afternoon. Oh, well.

The girls are still laying eggs, though—four to seven nice, big, brown eggs a week. I gathered two eggs yesterday afternoon. Since I've been doing a little more baking and cooking lately, these eggs are really coming in handy. And there is nothing like backyard-fresh eggs first thing in the morning, scrambled with chorizo (spicy Mexican sausage) and wrapped up in a flour tortilla! It's a breakfast that really "sticks to your ribs."

Perhaps everything will work out so that I can get a few more hens this spring. If and when it happens, E&P readers will be the first to know.

The difference is LOVE.(A Valentine's Day Pupdate)

When Lucky first came to live at the Happy Kitten Cottage, he was a very, very sick puppy. The Colonel had found him sitting in the middle of the road, directly on the double-yellow line in a curve. The little dog's eyes were nearly sealed shut with a crust of scabies, yeast, ringworm, and flea droppings; he had no hair save for on his toes, his tail, and down his spine, as the rest had fallen out from the uncontrollable itching and scratching. His belly was full of worms and pus from an abscess, making him look as if he'd swallowed a grapefruit. Left alone, the vet said, he might have survived for another three or four days. Might. The Colonel said that when he looked over the hood of his car at that tiny, sickly, frightened, lost puppy sitting there—whining and tottering around, confused and in pain and left for dead—he made the little dog a promise: "You're not gonna die today, buddy. And you're not gonna die like this." He got out, put the smelly, mange-ridden puppy in the car, and continued on to my house. He couldn't have lived with himself, he said later, had he driven away and left the little creature to the wheels of the cement trucks that barrel down that narrow road at all hours of the day and night. Several weeks later, I was looking for someone to take care of Lucky—yeah, the Colonel named him—while I made a research trip to Nashville, Tennessee. I called every kennel in town, even those staffed by vet clinics, but no one would board Lucky while he still showed even a hint of scabies. On the home front, Mom's dogs had already suffered through scabies once before, and she didn't want to risk another such ordeal. And the Colonel's own dog had just had major surgery and didn't need any other sick animals around during his recovery. We were, as the old saying goes, shit out of luck. Lucky spent three days and three nights among the bright lights and shining stars of Music City, USA.
It was at the rest stop above, playing with this fierce yet pitiful little dog, that I realized there was no way I was going to adopt him out. He had wedged himself firmly into my heart; Lucky was MY puppy now. Nine months later:
There are lots of differences between this video and the first, but the biggest of them all...is LOVE.

Oh, sweet Maddy. Your Mama loves you so much.

And so does your Aunt Kitty.

MADELEINE ?? Apr 1998 - 12 Feb 2010 May my favorite niece Rest now in peace.

Student + clue = Awesome.

Dear Professor Kitty,
I just had a random thought the other day about grades. I know this
isn't high school anymore where teachers send out weekly progress
reports, so whenever we're concerned about our grades how should we go
about finding out? Do we need to find you in your office or what?

Thanks,

Josh*

Chicken Monday: 2/8/10

A prayer to St. Francis and Bastet

St. Francis image from Lemurian Abbey Bastet image from Magic Tails

Oh, St. Francis and Bastet—please hear us. You have brought so many furry, four-legged souls into our lives, along with all the blessings that animals bring as they cross the thresholds of our homes. We have been privileged to walk with our companions on their journeys through this world; we are so incredibly fortunate that you chose us to rescue the abandoned, tend to the injured, and remember the forgotten creatures who have found their way to our doorsteps. Thank you so, so much for all the barking, chirping, whinnying, meowing blessings you have sent our way. But now we have come to a confusing, sad, and difficult part of the journey with one of our animal friends, and we need your help. Please look after Maddy in her illness. She's been a part of our lives for so many years, and we ask that you comfort her and her Mama today and in the days that she has left with us. You see, we know in our minds that Maddy's furry spirit will eventually return to us. But we don't really know it in our hearts—even though we humans have had a long time to learn, somehow we haven't quite gotten there. So we're struggling with our sadness, and trying to understand it all. Maddy has good days and bad, and we struggle to figure out how best to make her comfortable. Please help us reassure Maddy that she is very deeply loved and cared for, and that yes, we will come find her at the Rainbow Bridge. Please let her know that a kind, loving Creator makes sure that people can bring their pets with them—and that pets can bring their people, too. Thank you, St. Francis and Bastet, for your multitude of blessings. Thank you for hearing and helping us all—especially Maddy. Amen.

Friday Kittehs: 2/5/10

Joy may look stern, but she was actually purring up a storm when I took this picture.

A visit from Grandmommy and Paw-Paw

[SCENE: Sunday afternoon at the Happy Kitten Cottage.]

SEEBEN: Kitty, where's the little-bitty cat?
MOM: She's around here somewhere.
ME: Oh, here she is. [picking up Beignet] Paw-Paw's tum to see you! Yes him is! Um gib dis bebeh to Paw-Paw, mm-hmm.
SEEBEN: [cradling kitten in one arm, scratching her chin] Awwww, it's a sweet wittle kitty! [turning to Mom] Grandmama, why you always talkin' bad bout dis kitty?
ME: 'Cause it's true. [getting camera ready]
MOM: It is.
SEEBEN: [to Beignet] Awww, you not mean! Noooo, her's a good girl. [petting her head] Now look at Mama! No, darlin', look the other way! Her's takin' picture of the purrty kitty!
MOM: Hmph. Evil kitty.
BEIGNET: [beginning to struggle] ...rrrrrrrrrrrr...
ME: Hang on, almost there...
BEIGNET: [more struggling] ...rrrrrrrRRRRRRR...RRRRRRRRR...
SEEBEN: Why you growlin'? Hmm? Awww, why my kitty growlin'? I not hurtin' dis bebeh! Um just pettin' mah bebeh! [gently scratching between her ears]
BEIGNET: ...rrrRRRRRRRREEEOOOOWWWWRRR!!!
ME: [camera click] Got it.
[BEIGNET leaps out of SEEBEN's arms and runs into living room, attacking ERNEST.]
SEEBEN: [laughing] Why you so mean, little kitty?
MOM: See? What'd I tell ya?
ME: Oh, Paw-Paw. Her can't help her's a bad kitteh.

Chicken Monday: 2/1/10

Even though it's January, the girls are still laying five or six eggs a week between them. I don't eat eggs every day, so they can really add up! But Mom and Steve (aka Seeben, aka El Seebeno) are always willing to help me with the surplus of fresh organic chicken eggs. Yesterday afternoon, they stopped by to visit with the grandkitties, grandpuppy, and grandchickens.

Mom asked if I knew the flock was out of food, and I replied, "They're not anymore. I got another hundred pounds last week, and one more 50-pound bag still in the truck."

Seeben was kind enough to haul the huge, heavy sack of layer mash out of the truck and into the chicken coop. (While I'm strong, my lifting ability is nada once the load is over 40 pounds.) So Mom helped him maneuver around various fussing, feather-ruffling-to-look-bigger chickens, and I stayed outside the chicken yard with Lucky...who reeeally wanted a chicken dinner, but was out of luck.

It was Mom who found Pearl, the big white hen, dead in the coop.

We buried her in the back yard, near many other Happy Kitten Cottage animals who've passed their last days here. She was a Cornish Cross, as are Big Chickens #1 and #2, and bred for slaughter 60-90 days after hatching. It was amazing that she'd lived as long as she did—nearly a year.

After Pearl was safely in the ground, Mom cleaned out the water fountain, much to the delight of two-legged, feathery "people." (And mine, too—thanks, Mom!)

Seeben scattered some cracked corn in the flock's "public area," and they were very happy about it.

Even though none of them are tiny little "peeps" anymore, they all still love the anise-flavored chick grit from the feed-and-seed store. Chickens don't have teeth, so in order to digest their food, they scoop up and swallow along with it small rocks to grind against and break down their dinner. In this case, the grit is pulverized granite mixed with a reddish vitamin-mineral supplement and aniseseed (licorice) flavor.

They didn't seem to be moping around missing Pearl, and that's not a bad thing. There are enough birds here to make the loss of a coop-mate a passing memory.