It’s been another long week in New Wye, what with the teaching and the reading and the grading and the hey-hey-it-hoits-me, as Professor Frink would say. I am thinking about making Frink my role model in all things professorial. No one can say that is a bad idea. Mahoyven.
Life has generally been good, with the exception of a few minor annoyances. For example, all of my debit, credit, and ATM cards seem to expire all at the same time, and let me tell you it is near impossible to get your bank to mail you the proper replacement card to the proper address and bother to include a PIN. Impossible. This never would have happened had Parallel-Universe Me (the excellent bank employee) been somehow running things at all the various financial institutions involved. Thankfully for my sanity, though (but not for my convenience), there is no such thing as Parallel-Universe Me; there is only This Me, and This Me gave up the banking gig a long time ago.
School has been as busy as humanly possible, and the thought of “time for research” makes me either want to laugh or cry till I piss my pants. Research! Feh! There is only time to be moderately prepared for class, at best. This is why it is wise that I have decided to make one of my classes a film class: film screenings do not take much prep time on my part. I just have to put the film on my Netflix queue and sit on my duff waiting for it to be delivered. And on that note, have you seen Hoop Dreams? If not, you should. I know next to nothing about basketball, and am generally at best a one-sport lady, making time for the Red Sox and the Mariners, maybe, and that’s about it. Nonetheless, I find this documentary to be completely compelling and at times heart-wrenching. You should watch it. It will change your mind about a lot of things, the entertainment value of documentary film least among them.
I have hope for a lot of my students — some of them have really been impressing me so far, so I am looking forward to reading their papers. Some of them, however, have already been giving me the stink eye. You know that look that spells This is a Required Class and I Have to Take it but I Don’t Have to Like It? That look? Well, they have that look tattooed across their faces, where normal human expressions should be. Speaking of tattoos, one of the Stink Eye kids asked me out of nowhere the other day whether I had any tattoos, “because, like, [her] other, like, English Teacher Lady had all kinds of tattoos,” and I couldn’t decide whether to tell her sternly that that was a completely inappropriate question, punch her in the face, or show her my tattoo and ask her if she didn’t think it was, like, so totally bitchen. But then I remembered that kids these days don’t know the meaning of the word “bitchen,” literally or figuratively, so I opted for the face punching. I expect a stern memo from the dean any day now.
It’s “bitchen”? I’ve only ever written “bitchin’” To think, I have been wrong all these years! My world is coming to an end!
That’s funny: I debated myself about bitchen vs. bitchin’, but decided, without checking, to write bitchen. I’ve just looked it up and they’re both acceptable, but bitchen is a “variant” of bitchin’. I guess I am just out there, on the edge, all forward-thinking and variant-like.
In other news, maybe this entry and comments string will be a resource for people googling this very question in the future. SO TOTALLY BITCHEN.
Also, doesn’t that mean they’re both variants of bitching? Appropriate, since bitching is all I am good for lately.
How do you know you don’t get along like neutrinos or even electron-neutrinos? Since their mass and energy eigenstates differ neutrinos can actually oscillate between different flavours. Thus, anti-neutrinos, electron-neutrinos and neutrinos could be the same particle in different quantum mechanical states. Sorry for the diversion, but I spent 2 post-grad years working on that.
And just because I apparently share the same first name, style of glasses and type of employment as Prof. Fink, it does not mean we are related. Maybe.
I vote for “bitchin’”. If Rodney Anonymous isn’t authoritative, who, for God’s sake, is?
Research is a snare and a delusion. Focus on whiskey. That is the literary thing to do.
How soon we forget the sewage filled apartments.
I vote for bitchen, on the grounds that its rhyme with kitchen bodes well for future national anthems.
Well, HA HA HA here has a pretty convincing citation, and yet Alexis’s vote for the bitchen kitchen also seems convincing. My archives tell me I have been fairly inconsistent on this matter in the past.
Case Status: Pending.
Also, John, the title is merely a Frink quote.