This is not Nam, this is English. There are rules!

Near the Blockbuster I go to, there's a new store, or a store with a new sign, or a sign I've never noticed before. The store/restaurant is simply called "Fish and Chicken," and it has two of those little cloth men on air vents in front of it (so they look like they're waving). Next to the bright red neon sign are several other blobs of neon, which may just be decorations, or may be symbols of some vaguely Asiatic origin. I'm not sure. But I am tempted to go get some chicken. But not fish. I'm not that crazy.

Anyway, I'm sick, and I have a headache, and I have an outline due tomorrow for a paper I have no clear idea about, so naturally I'm here blogging. Once I finish blogging, I plan to sleep. I plan to dose myself liberally with Nyquil, and hope that when I awake, my cold will be gone, as will my headache, and I will magically have a clear view of my paper. What can I say? I'm an optimist.

If said idea does not come through, I don't really care that much. The entire Vietnam War was a morass, why should my paper on said war be any different? This is excuse #3 I have to offer the professor. #1 is I'm sick, cut me some slack. #2 is I'm not a history grad student, and I have no idea how to write a history grad student paper. And then there's #4, which is I'm almost a dissertator and I just don't give a damn about your paper, as it's only for my minor, which is very small in the grand scheme of things. So back off.

I've noted I'm becoming increasingly hostile to the world of academia, or at least that part of it that thinks I still need to take classes. This is especially apparent in my other minor course, where I have dreams (during the lectures) of telling off the professor, critiquing his absolute failure to understand any basic pedagogical skills, lecturing skills, public speaking skills, or even any concept of what it means to study or teach history. In these fantasies, I then take over teaching the lecture just to prove I could do it better, even without any prior knowledge of the subject, and I do, to thunderous applause. Then I look up, realize only five minutes have passed, and he's still reading names off a sheet and telling us who they are. (I kid you not. It's like a study sheet for an exam, but that's the entire lecture, apart from him showing us pointless slides and rambling incoherently about common historical knowledge like the Boston Tea Party.) Then I die a little inside, because I know this will make the rest of my Tuesday or Thursday all the more crippling to me. Ask my office mates. I am positively hateful when I come out of that class.

Studio 60 was much better tonight. I really recommend it now. Echoes of Sports Night, which was always prime tv (or at least it was when I caught it in reruns on Comedy Central at 1:00 am).

Ok, that's all for me. If I'm not heard from after tomorrow, it's because my professor has killed me. And he could, too. This man traveled with guerrillas in Laos. He's on the CIA's angry list. He could probably kill me with a pen. And he gives a mean lecture (which I rarely appreciate, seeing as how I'm in such a bad mood from my earlier lecture).

In closing, some words of wisdom I heard on the radio tonight, as I took back my rental of Inside Man (which is excellent, watch it):

Do you believe in life after love?
I can feel something inside me saying, "I really don't think I'm strong enough."

Hah. Now it's stuck in your head, too. Feel my pain.