Oh Miggs, not again!

"How can such as I, that live
among such troubles, not find profit in death?" Antigone by Socrates or in other words "Happy Monday"

Yes another meeting, another hour dedicated to me restraining myself from swallowing my tongue. It was one of those meetings that makes you understand why people choose to fall on their swords rather than live.

The highlight of today was that my presentation was augmented by another teacher an alledged "Man of Theater" about the classics of anitquity we are teaching. He spent the whole time discussing the Scottish play ( or Mac B--- as those of us in the theater call it, as we can not speak its name out loud) and Hamlet which had nothing to do with anything and certainly not antiquity( as they a are seperated by the MIDDLE AGES), except it did spur another teacher ( a new one, but NOT the young'un) to ask the assembly "What is the greatest love story in all of Shakespeare?" Which again, has nothing to to do with anything we are teaching ( he isn't teaching the course the presentation was for) except to involve us all in long and pointless discussions that I could care less about. I kept sitting there and thinking "What the hell does Troillius and Cressada's virtue as a love story have to do with Antigone? Why must I continue to live through these meetings which continue to be an education only on how one can evolve a modicum of learning into a half an hour's worth of irrelevant pontification?" ( I love that word.)

I have absolutely no free time. I rarely get more than three hours of sleep and I'm totally behind in terms of grading and and lesson plans. So my time is very valuable. In the words of my mother, "If I don't absolutely have to hear this, then I absolutely don't have to hear this."

I used to know this ER doc and he always came up with the best awful things to say about his staff. One time I picked him to go out for an evening margaritas and snarkiness and I said "So what's going on?" And his response was "Some days I want to come down here dressed all in black like Max von Sydow in the Exorcist and say 'Do you renounce Satan?'" At the time I laughed.

Today I totally understand. Sometimes hating the idiocy I deal with feels like a holy crusade. Like I should come out with a flaming sword, and just start slashing whenever anyone makes a totally gratiutious unneccesary lecture on something totally irrelevant and also cliched. I mean who could really care about the greatest of Bill's love stories? I mean even debating the best of S. villians is hackneyed and been done.

I mean at least if we talked about the obscure imagery of hats in Irish poetry of the fifteenth century, it would be original. Still irrelevant, but different.