The Joel Train

losing your mind is a funny thing. i think it happens slowly, bit by bit, so that one day you might think "this cheese is staring at me" and next thing you know you're running through your neihborhood with a butcher knife tucked in the elastic band of your underpants.

school has been kicking my ass for two solid months. there is just so much to do, and since historically i have refused to do any kind of "outside" research (homework, assigned readings, that sort of thing), i cant seem to get caught up. i dont miss too many classes and yet its not enough to sit in class and pretend to be listening. i havent dropped out of any classes though.

last semester i dropped out of a humanities class. the professor drove me nuts. honestly i think he drove me crazy because it wasnt clear to me what he wanted from us. having dropped out of the same class once before, i already had a sense of how a competent teacher might cover the material, and he just wasnt pulling it off. so after i dropped the class, i went to one of those rate your professor sites and started to read his reviews. everybody loves this guy!

here are some examples:

"our class rocked. never had a professor as cool in so many ways before. learned a hell of a lot in his class. dude has gotta be a genius."

"Professor _____ is so brilliant and oh soooooo sexy! I highly recommend him--stimulating in a lot of ways!

"Do sex me up Dr. J!!! Oh that brilliant oxford mind of yours--that hot greek bod to go with it---that gorgeous smile. I beg you, teach the next class in the series so that i might drink from your well again!"


i mean jesus christ.

so i decide to even the playing field alittle bit and leave a message of my own:

"____ tries way too hard. it just seemed like he was crying out 'look at me! look at me! arent i smart!?' which makes me sound like a jerk, but i couldnt figure out how St Augustine's Confessions translated into 20th century cubist art. How do we benefit from somebody name dropping for an hour and 10 minutes twice a week? but what do i know, he's got cute buns."

take that academia!

but straight away things started to go wrong. when i wrote the comment, it was a response to the "oh so sexy" comments i'd read before, but when i posted mine it showed up at the very top of the list. when i mentioned his cute ass, suddenly i was pioneering the idea.

when you write one of these things nobody ever gives their name. usually they leave something like "asheville dude" or "sweet kitty". the form you fill out asks for a name and of course i continued the smackdown with "not impressed", but then it asked for my email address and i got confused.

well. maybe they want to send me updates to the site.
when you register to use other sites theres stuff you just have to include.
what if they wont post my comment without one.

it turns out that only fools add their email address to documents that talk shit about their teachers. i went back to look at my post and there it was, for all the world to see. and its not like i've got one of those vague addresses like guitarstudy@yahoo.com
it might as well been "joel, you know, that guy that was in your 2nd period class on tuesdays and thursdays, sat in the third row, smelled like fritos@yahoo.com"

as you can imagine, i was sure my cover had been blown.

but weeks went by and no axes fell. the semester ended and while i still saw him on campus, we managed to greeted each other with mild enthusiasm of the "no hard feelings for dropping my class" variety.

the semster eneded and i moved on to other things.