Goodbye cruel People's Republic of Blogistan

To whom it may concern,

I can't take it anymore. Our relationship is over and I'm moving on.

I'm no longer enamored with the way you look. Your features no longer excite me. You just don't do it for me anymore.

There are times when you go away and I don't know why. Then you just show up like nothing every happened. You lose my things regularly. My friends all prefer not to hang around you.

It's over, Blogspot. I'm moving on.

And by the way...

I found someone else...

Cursed be the technologies

I got this in an e-mail this morning. JAT 399 is the course designation for an internship.

In addition to needing JAT 399 in summer, you also need your second LINGUISTICS course for the BA."
- C.H. (my adviser)



I blinked, stared and immediate felt my heart launch itself into orbit.

No. No! NOOOOOOO!!! NOT STUCK HERE FOR ANOTHER SEMESTER!

I ran upstairs (C.H.'s office is right above mine) and practically erupted into her domain.

"Linguistics course? What? Huh?"

She explained to me that she had run me through on APEX, which is the university's bug-ridden degree audit system.

"But... I tested out of Spanish using my Advanced Placement courses in high school. It got me through Spanish 202."

It also saved me from having to endure Spanish III. That class was pretty much the worst thing ever, taught by a subhuman neanderthal of a man with Coke-bottle glasses and hair growing out of his shirt up his back like the ivy at Keeneland (this is an honest-to-God stand-up comic line used by a friend of mine after he had the same prof). This guy also had the most horrific habit of mumbling. I live with two native Spanish speakers and even I couldn't understand this guy. He also had a no-help-from-anyone policy on our papers and was aware of my parents' linguistic past and he just absolutely could not believe that my writing was that much better in Spanish than my speaking. By the time he got around to insinuating that I was cheating, I knew it was time to make like a baby and head out.

The next year I learned that the AP exam credit had been expanded to cover third- and fourth-year Spanish, so it was all good anyway.

Anyway, C.H. pulled my transcript at my request (which was really a well-disguised NO-WAY-IN-ALL-THE-FLAMING-SANDS-OF-ARABIA-AM-I-STAYING-HERE-FIND-THE-TRANSCRIPT order).

Sure enough, there was my Spanish credit.

With that brush fire out, I returned to my desk where the e-mail was still open. Now able to laugh about it, I replied to her e-mail.

April Fools was a week ago
- D

Her reply was:

This was a test of the emergency heart-failure system....this was only a test.....
- C.H.

Four more weeks...

April fools

So regarding my recently developed OMG-level case of dandruff (ha ha, Kef JHC [sorry, my bad], very funny), I think the pictures that I uploaded from my phone didn't do it justice.

A few days ago, the entire campus basked in the sunny glow of 80-degree weather.

And then...



and



Within 24 hours, the temperature went from pretty comfortable to arctic. After a few days of the freezing temperatures, it started to snow.

In April.

Just a few days shy of Easter, no less. Flowers on campus that had been blossoming brightly in the springtime sun were devastated.









Not even the statue of James Patterson, second president of UK, could escape the chill...

Tomorrow should be a little warmer... Anything warmer than 40 degrees sounds like heaven, right about now...

Poor tulip.

Yes. That is snow in my hair. Yes it is April.

I believe too

This post is written in the spirit of NPR's column over the radio "This I Believe." It was inspired by the writings of Karl and Alissa. Rock on.

It's hard for me to know how much of this I will believe as I grow older, grow in experience and grow in relationships with the people I know and the people I've met and the people I will meet.

I don't know what will be subtracted, added or untouched on this list as I travel the road of life.

But I do believe.

I believe that each and every one of us, every last person on the face of this blue-green ball called Earth has a story.

I believe that every story is important and should be told.

I believe every story should be listened to, and that a story unheard or unbelieved is a great loss to human kind.

I believe that as a journalist, I'm blessed and charged with the important duty of storyteller. I'm the old man of the tribe who will tell you of your past, of the now and of that-which-has-yet-to-come.

I believe that whether you tell your story on paper, in speech or on a keyboard, it retains its value, its lustrous importance and gleaming value. No one can take it away from you. Not governments, not thieves, not the evil men who in their tyranny would use fear as a weapon to try and stop up the voice of the one who says "This is my story."

I believe it is my duty and everyone's duty to stand up in defense of the persecuted storyteller. I believe that as one, I am strong and as many, we are stronger and we will rise up, indomitable and unstoppable and just. When my fellow person, male or female, cannot tell their story, I will tell it for them. I believe they will be heard.

I believe in the power of truth, and that truth is the brightest of all lights.

I believe in God. I have stood on death's doorstep and known then and there that whether I believed it or not, God made me and that he truly does care for me. It is this belief that allows me to make it through the darkest of times when believing is a rare commodity at the store of my ability. I believe that God is my friend, and I call him Jehovah.

I believe that my friends will share the good times with me, and I believe they will get me through the bad times, and that I could be nothing greater than the sum of the people whom I hold dear to me and the family that nurtured me.

I believe that every person, with the words of their lips, the works of their hands and the strides of their feet has the potential to do good, and that because of that I should look for that good in all of them. I believe also that I should always bring out the best in myself for others to see.

I believe in me.

I believe in you.

And I believe that by helping each other out as best we can, we'll make it through.

This is my story, and in its truth, I do believe.

Communication?

My twice monthly column from the paper.