Cultural District

So last week my oldest son came home from school after puking. Shortly after that I got it too; didn't puke, but spent the night feeling oh so close, like that bad stage of drunkenness when you've had too much to drink too fast and the hours don't go by nearly fast enough. We both spent the next few days feeling grey and pasty, but he's making a faster recovery than I am.

It may help that he's got the day off today, while I'm at work. It's true, as I tell people, that I sit down for a living, but it's still annoying sometimes. Constant alerts from Nagios for stupid things, having to put off reasonable requests because I don't have time...actually, just repeat that last bit about a hundred times. It's yak shaving all over the place, and it gets to me.

Not as much as the campus Senate-mandated rah-rah, though. Today's episode of geriatric profanity disorder was brought on by seeing the words "Cultural District" on a map of the campus. It's one more illustration of the incessant marketing, advertising, and desperate chearleeding that goes on here. "Start an evolution." "[Blah]. From here." "A place of mind." B-roll footage free with any story. Don't know what it's like at other campuses, and lord knows it's not unique to this place, but I really, really want to be done with it.

My wife and I were talking about this tendency to grumpy solitude we sometimes (hah!) exhibit. The occasion was a local self-congratulatory exercise, written up in the local paper with headshots, and we were trying to put our finger on why it bugged us so. We realize that shit gets done by other people, people who are not afraid to self-promote, and that we are the beneficiaries (to greater or lesser degrees) of that action. We're certainly not hurt by that backslapping. But it rankles, it really does.

Ah, well. As I like to tell people, someday I'll die and this'll all be over. And they give me funny looks like I'm about to slit my wrists, I try -- and usually fail -- to explain that someday, even the stupid, irritating things I haven't the grace to ignore will be a welcome alternative to never, ever doing anything again. I'm trying to remind myself that, all things considered, it's better than the alternative.