Lilapsophobia

So, Eyrieville has been pelted by horrific weather recently. Hail the size of Volkswagen Jettas. Winds that tear your shorts off on the way to the mailbox. Thunderheads so dark and ominous that one expects the four horsemen to come galloping out of it, flaming swords in hand.

What's going on here? Honestly, every Thursday night the firmament opens and the Lord allows the bottom to drop out on us for several hours. This has happened for the past six weeks, loyal bloggeneers, and this Bibb is getting a bit twitchy over it.

Have we got a Jonah here in Eyrieville? Is someone trying to hide from God's commands down one of our back avenues? Should I organize a posse? I don't know that I've ever been this freaked over meteorological phenomena before. I've lived through a Texas hurricane, an Oklahoma tornado, a Wyoming blizzard, and the movie Michael Clayton, so one would think I would be past any revenant disaster phobias by now. But I'm not, blogfellows, I'm just not.

Take a look at the following photograph.

Now try to imagine that bearing down on you as you desperately try to drive away from it. No matter which direction you take, the twister follows, even if you make a 180 degree turn. This describes a recurring dream I've had about tornadoes off and on for most of my life. I'm no Freud, but I guess for me, tornadoes represent the unbridled power of God through nature, and my attempt to outrun them or evade them may indicate a latent fear of answering God's purpose for my life.

Good grief...I'm the Jonah?

What should I do, blogpals? Try to confront the twister in my dream? Go Pecos Bill on its ass and rope it into submission, metaphorically speaking? Or have I got things all wrong with my analysis of the dream?

Whaddya say, bloggerinis? Put Bibb on the couch and pick his addled brain.

Tempus Subsisto

Tick, tock, blogowatts.

Lately, I've been thinking how supremely satisfying it would be to have the power to stop time's irrevocable flow. Why hasn't one of our think-tankers figured that one out yet? We've isolated the addiction gene, constructed the Tapei Tower and the Three Gorges Dam, and flown remote control robots to Mars, but we still look like amateurs when it comes to boring old time.

C'mon, eggheads! Einstein gave you a damned good foundation! Where are our chrono-physicists? Where are the tempologists? Where, great Scott, is our Dr. Emmett Brown?!

One-Point-Twenty-One Jigowatts!

Many a time this semester, I've glanced forlornly up at the HUGE clock that hangs above our fireplace (why did I do that to myself?) and I've thought, "My life is running out with each modulation of that insufferable second hand. And what have I done with this precious second? What about that one? And the next?"

Folks, I wrote myself a letter when I was fifteen years old. I sealed it and scrawled "Do not open until January 2025" on the back (along with an incredibly lame clock with lightning shooting through it; I told you people I was nerdy). When that January finally rolls around, I will have reached my 45th year. I'll probably have kids in high school, a tenured position at some modest teaching college (God willing), and the United States Secretary of Education for my wife. And do you know what's really weird? I have no idea what I wrote in that letter.

I think it was some hair-brained teenage dream about inventing time travel (I thought I was a budding physicist in those halcyon days), but I really cannot recall. If only I had invented that most glorious of science fictions, the obsession of every moderately brainy kid who read Mr. Wells's fantastic novel--the first to put forth the suggestion that there exists a fourth dimension, one accessible to everyone with a functioning memory:

"But you are wrong to say that we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence: I become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. . . . and why should [the civilised man] not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?"

So you see, in a way I did invent time travel by writing that letter back in 1994. When I open it in 2025, my mind will travel back along the Timestream to that spring afternoon in my room with the green shag carpet on 10th street and uncover the revolutionary scientific aspirations of a lonely 15-year-old. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty cool.

But it would still be awesome if I could get a little of what Joshua got that hot day outside Gibeon.

That's a hint, God.

We Regret To Inform You...

Recently, eaglets, I received yet another "Dear Nigel" letter from a group of Snoddy Snodgrass editors who thought my paper was "very fine" but not quite suited to their esteemed SCHOLARLY journal. Try another journal, they say. Maybe one that's more "devoted to narrative." As opposed to what, I say? Papers on the proper way to tie your Windsor? Comparative analyses of the "summering" experience on the French Riviera vs. the Italian Riviera? Structural interpretations of the perfect soufflé au fromage? Poppycock!

Apparently, one must sell one's soul to Mephistopheles in order to succeed in this business. But since I don't know the proper spells for such an endeavor, perhaps you blogles (that's blog-eagles, you know - I love a good portmanteau) could provide me with paper topics snooty enough to satisfy even the bluest of the high-falutin' bluebloods who run these SCHOLARLY journals (in between their tours of the Swiss Alps and their deep-tissue massages). So whaddya say, eaglogs? Can you spare an upper-crust thesis or two for a poor tramp from the boondocks?

Why Blogs Suck...

Let me count the ways:


1. NO ONE READS THEM.


2. They're usually hampered by excessive "cuteness" involving bad puns and lame titles.


3. They contain even less useful information than the half-baked codswallop on Wikipedia.


4. NO ONE READS THEM.


5. Making them is extremely time consuming, even worse than PowerPoint presentations.


6. Who the hell are we kidding? They're as dead as disco. MySpace and Facebook are the new kings.


7. NO ONE, BUT NO ONE, READS THEM.


8. They allow fools the right to publish their folly, thereby infecting us with foolitis.


9. They were invented by nerds who desperately needed to vent about how disappointing the "X-Files" movie was, or some such related nerdery.

10. AND NO ONE, I MEAN ABSOLUTELY NO ONE, READS THEM!!!

It's time for a change.

The countdown has begun...

O'erwhelmed & Unemployed

Sorry my blogs have been so sluggish lately, but I have so much work to do sometimes that I simply cannot breathe. I swim through mounds of tasks, menial and herculean, on a daily basis, and I have nearly drowned many times. One of the academic librarians at our great Eyrieville University told me that she dropped out of her PhD program due to chest pains resulting from extreme panic attacks. All around me graduate students are dropping like novice soldiers in an epic battle with bloodthirsty monsters, and I sometimes wonder how long my paltry shield will hold out against their ceaseless onslaught.

Also, I desperately need a job for the upcoming summer. The powers that be at Eyrieville U have slashed my department's budget once again, and there will be no classes for the Teaching Fellows this summer. I have sent out applications to the local community colleges, but few have responded, and those that have all tell me how impressive my credentials are before they inform me that yes, they have no bananas; they have no bananas today. So, blogensteins, you must help me choose my summer job. Here are some choices:

• Lame-ass Book Clerk at local Christian bookstore.
• Lame-ass Book Clerk at local used bookstore.
• Lame-ass Book Clerk at Our Lady of Barnes & Noble.
• Male prostitute (The wife might protest, depends on the money).
• Ninja assassin-for-hire.
• Domestic cat-trainer.
• Wandering minstrel.

Cast your vote for my pathetic employment! Or suggest another pathetic job not listed here! Woo! Overeducated unemployment is great!

I Know You're Out There; I Can Hear You Leaving

Well? Is anyone there? For the last several posts, I've felt rather like a blind mime performing for an audience of no one. Blogs cannot live without an audience, so this mime might just have to wipe off his make-up and hang up his invisible ladder if he doesn't start getting some comments. I do have other things to do, you know. Jeesh, people.