Syllabus #201

Summer break begins on Friday.  I think the school year cycle for educators must be something like what mothers report after giving birth.  Every year, as we approach the end of the school year, I'm exhausted and over it beyond any measure I ever thought possible.  I'm absolutely certain I'm more tired THIS year than any other year, and yet by August, I'll have forgotten this misery and will be ready to do it again.  But right now, I'm on my hands and knees, screaming obscenities and demanding the epidural that they won't give me because it's too late, and I'm probably convinced I need to poop but no one will let me because they don't want me to have a toilet baby.  At least I hear that's what childbirth is like.  

I was stripes, just saying.

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They say comedy = tragedy + time.  It sounds like some of these comics are using creative algebra and balancing this equation with (time ~ audience expecting jokes) and just going for uncomfortable laughter without any real emotional distance from the sad thing.  Does it work?  Maybe?  Depends on the person and the delivery, I guess.  I would argue that in Tig Notaro's case, it worked because a) it's Tig Notaro, whose delivery is unmatched, and b) there was so little chronological remove from the tragedy (getting a cancer diagnosis that day) that the shock of it prevented any emotion from entering the picture yet.

I have a soft spot for creative grilled cheese.  I still dream about Turkey and the Wolf's collard melt that I ate 5 years ago on a trip to New Orleans.  We need this kimchi grilled cheese immediately.  You must go directly to my mouth.  Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Analog Reading:

Finally finished Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet.  It was an interesting mix of historic facts and speculative fiction about Shakespeare's actual son named Hamnet, who died of unspecified causes a few years before ol' Bill wrote Hamlet.

Just started Poverty by America by Matthew Desmond.  It's a lighthearted romp very heavy horror show.  We are a horror show.  Our tagline as a country should be:  America!  Where we have the resources to elevate everyone out of poverty, but the big guys at the top like riding in private jets and not paying taxes, so suck it, poors!