In lieu of work...

I really should be doing something; I've done next to nothing here at the Library for 3 DAYS. I'll have to ask Ferocity if she had long periods with no work, because this week I've been going over a stack of hard-to-find orders left over from last year OVER AND OVER AND OVER again (actually, I found many of them, and I found weird resources for finding used books that I'd never seen before--I even found 3 titles that had been searched by others here and not found and which Y. had asked be given to me for a final check).

I've had no cataloging for weeks, no discards, no whatever-the-hell-it-is mystery job M. keeps telling me I'm going to get but won't tell me what it is. I did have a ton of ILL Sunday and Monday, but that's more fun than work. I have a stack of essays I could grade but my stomach did flip-flops when I read the first paragraph of the very first one; I'll save them for Sunday.

Speaking of Ferocity, I told her that Conniption asked me about her boobs the other night when he dropped by. He read on her 'blog that they were bigger than ever and of course he's curious. In response, she explained to me J357's new aesthetic appreciation of her ass. Too funny!

Ah, my weekend commences in about 1 hour and 50 minutes. I do have to teach Joyce tomorrow, but that's not work; I can let the Robot do that while I daydream. The Robot can regurgitate in entertaining Shock Jock fasion all the necessary info: the shift from Realism to Modernism, Joyce's aesthetic ("Aesthetic Arrest" {integritas-consonantia-claritas via Augustine} and "Epiphany" {neither drawn toward [pornography]nor pushed away [didacticism] but frozen in a sort of trance of contemplation}) and the Big Five who not only catalogued their cultures/civilizations but had a hand in inventing them [Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare] and Joyce's

I just helped a patron whose perfume was so potent that it sent me reeling into an immediate and painful sneezing jag. Poor K., my lovely and reserved Japanese student assistant, was also impacted negatively by the odor of pine-scented rearview-mirror car freshener blended with burnt cork and OFF! mosquito repellent. Christ, then I had to reshelve the five journals the patron was reading which reeked so powerfully I was sneezing my ass off in the back room. Ease up on that shit sister! The guy at the PC next to the exit sneezed as she walked by as well.

Every night poor K. gets set upon by three or four ravenous young men who hope to win her favors. They buy her snacks, offer to walk her home, bring her coffee unsolicitedly. She's absolutely pleasant to them all, and completely aloof.

lofty assumption of this role for Ireland (I go now to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscious of my race), and his patternings and borrowings and stacked allusions to Homer (Odyssey) and Virgil (Aeneid) and Dante (La Vita Nuova and The Divine Comedy) and Shakespeare (everything), not to mention somehow every fucking goddam story ever written and every myth ever recorded and every language ever spoken and every religion ever practised and every beer ever drunk and every tart ever tupped and every Sears catalog ever scraped along a gooey arsehole and every content of every chest-o'-drawers ever noted and every stream (o' conscious) ever swum and then of course there's that Vico dude with his cycles and his Giamboreeattista goddam Scienza Nuova

cronologica spone in comparsa il mondo delle nazioni antiche

and the puns and the Huck Finn reference right there up front in Finnegans Wake and the filth and the banishment and the Dedalus and the Molly Leopold Stephen Dubliners all and the fried kidney, etc. I can pull that shit with my eyes closed and then on the midterm we'll see what they absorbed

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howarth Castle and Environs

Get it? Vicus/Vico? HA! How about Howarth Castle Environs--HCE--Here Comes Everybody? 'nuff to bust a gut fer, ya nubbin' landlubber. Fortunately I also have a DVD of Joe soup in a Can who can explain like no other the pippen fees and mythomagneticreligiosynopsises requisite to our discussion which of course has yet to take place though it's happening now and will again tomorrow. Get it? Finn AGAIN? Hardee-har.

I'll have to pay a bit of attention when we talk about "Araby" but I can snooze through a discussion of that without trouble. For "The Dead" Monday, however, I'll need all resources fully marshalled and on point--for Kafka Wednesday and Friday as well.

Today after a pretty good 102 class I lifted weights, ran, and then went to Belvedere Square where I bought veggies, fresh bread, homemade pasta, and a case of red wine. I wonder if David Cobb is at our place yet? I'm thinking of walking up to Angel's Grotto after work and grading essays instead of going home; I don't really want to stay up late talking politics this evening.

Eskimo has been in a really upbeat mood since the cold wintry cavern of her ILL meeting outburst. Now she's taken to hanging out at the service desk again, yakking to whomever happens to be trapped there. Last night and this evening she stayed more than two hours past her scheduled time of departure. We talked about meditation/religion/her son/politics/history/students/GOD/JESUS and A., our very prim and quiet Jesus Freak turned suddenly wishy-washy Lutheran who thinks "That Buddha, the more I read, has lots of interesting things to say..." was trashing Bush (!) along with us after having defended him all summer and I've found I enjoy provoking Eskimo and I try purposefully now to find ways to disagree with her but I think she likes it and that's why she's hanging out late again. When Eskimo is in her Bad Place she pulls her hair back until she looks like Anthony Perkins in drag and those big H. Potter frames turn her eyes into glinting pools of dismay. Now, she's in her Happy Place and she's styling her hair and letting it down and she takes her glasses off a lot and smiles and laughs and I'd like to fix her up with BroJ; if they could get their manias in 'Sync they'd make a fucking fantastic couple, what with his mysterious rants about artwork that resembles his big curved manhood and conspiracies involving Essex Comm Coll students fucking with the brakes on his truck and her martyrdom complex they'd hit it off smashingly.

I have in one corner of my 102 class a Fine Filippina, a Kute Korean, a Sizzlin' Sista, and a Tasty bit 'o Trailer Park. It's my favorite flavas all in one buffet o' delights, alas with no spitguard. Today I played those poor saps a bunch of freaked out tunes and made them try and find metaphoric language with which to harness verbally the incommunicable nature of music. They laughed when I switched from Satie to NWA to Carl Stalling to Woody Guthrie to Penderecki but I didn't think it was funny at all. One told me the Satie was like a cat sneaking along the keyboard, another thought Woody was from the Civil War, a third called NWA "cheesy white boy rap"(?!) and a fourth said Penderecki was The Music of Eric Zahn. The latter I ordered into a triangular cube I keep for just dissimilar occasions, whence he'll be unable to escape sans the formless shapeless unmentionable unutterable 43rd edition of the long-awaited English translation of that ol' Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred's famed and much-maligned Magnum, PI Opus: I can't say it.

Last night I watched some show on PBS that I really liked parts of, those parts being the ones which recreated with lavish sets and actors the thoughts and opinions and reasonings of Sigmund and C.S. concerning God. I must admit being distracted by the fact that in the guise of C.S. Lewis was the actor who portrayed Arthur Dent in the BBC version of



(I kept wanting to say "Hey, C.S., you're a kneebiter!")

Not so good were the segments where a buncha innalectuals debated the ideas contained therein. I haven't experienced that much hot air since I walked three miles from Manila's Coconut Palace down to Intramuros.