Neanderpundit

Probably won’t be with us long.

I’m not a hardcore fan, but I’m damned if The Weight isn’t one of the best songs ever written.

When I was going to school at Purdue, there was a rash of students dropping out and moving out into the marketplace.

One of my teachers, an english teacher named Charlie Tinkham had asked the class this question, more or less:

“Why would you, say, buy a lamp, and then not take delivery of it? if you spent the money, why would you not come get the lamp?”

Referring of course to the students who had paid for that education and didn’t go to school and get it. I didn’t have a good answer for Professor Tinkham then, but i do now.

The lamp, Proffesor, s overpriced. It is not the lamp we need, nor does it illuminate what we want it to illuminate. It’s kind of ugly, too, and while people expect us to have a lamp, they understand it’s worthlessness.

At the time, my drafting teacher was a pakistani guy who loved if you used a lot of weld symbols no matter how inappropriate they were (I once got an A on a paper which had “Weld all around, 3/16″ bead” symbols on each of 200 10-24 screws.

if, on the other hand, your title block wasn’t machine-perfect, you got an F, no matter how well the drawing was drawn. We also had a CompSci teacher who was an actual clown- Partner had him for a couple classes too, and they goaded him into coming to school dressed as a clown one day. He looked like Captain Spaulding. Nobody was surprised. Anyway, his idea of teaching us was to type shit on the main computer while we copied it down. In other words, if you could type, you passed. Very educational.

Oh, I had an architect who taught statics, from whom I learned a great deal, and an electrician who taught basic circuit theory, who helped a lot as well, but most of the teachers thought their jobs were to yap, and the students mere interruptions of their yapping.

So I, like a lot of students disillusioned with the system, I dropped out.

the end of that answer, Professor Tinkham, is that I have learned to make lamps myself. They illuminate what I want them to illuminate. They are elegant and useful, and they suit me fine. And now other people respect the light I shed as well.

“Do you ever wake up and not know where you are?”

Good lord, have I ever.

About a hundred and fifty million years ago, during te cretaceous era, I went down to Florida on one of my first out-of-town jobs. I was staying in one of the older Holiday Inns, the concrete walkways just outside the rooms, the extruded aluminum window-and-door frames, the loud air conditioner/furnace units under the windows, the heavy and ugly curtains. Brown bedspreads, orange carpets. Pepto bismol pink bathrooms.

the third day on this job, I got back to the hotel, took my shower, and flopped on the bed, exhausted. I was aslee before my head hit the headboard, and that took me out for several additional hours.

Around- oh, it must have been three ayem, I woke with a full bladder.

My bedroom at the time was arranged so the door was to the left of the bed, as you are standing at the foot of the bed; I woke up and my natural inclination was to head in that direction, grab the door handle, and go in search of the crapper.

Only when the door clicked behind me did I realize I was outdoors. My keys, my wallet, my glasses, and every stitch of clothing I owned was now on the other side of a locked door.

Now, I’m not amused, but I am a: instantaneously wide awake, b: Chilly, and c: Still (and now, even more so) in need of a pee.

So i look around and find a floor drain next to the ice machine in the hallway between the sections of rooms.

Then as now, you have that moment of intense concentration to make the erection go away so you don’t piss all over the wall, and it took me more than usual in the circumstance. (The old trick for the pee-shy is to do math in your head, works every time, but by the time I pissed in the floor drain I had already revisited the length and breadth of the Binomial Theorem)

I flapped barefoot down the stairs, and had to hop the fence to get to the pool area where I took one of the cushions off a chaise lounge and wrapped it around me like a big hotdog bun, cold, wet vinyl. The desk clerk let me back into my room and all was well again.

She was very helpful that night, as well as going out of her way the rest of my stay to make sure I was comfortable and had everything I needed.

Not until I checked out did I notice there was a security camera pointed directly at that ice machine.

Ah well.