Memento of Mardi Gras

1:27 PM, Wednesday.

The sun is out. It's as if a new season has arrived. The outside air is fresh. Vibrant and alive. A number of puddles lie dying in the streets, slowly losing their battle against the sun and the wind. There is optimism in the air, a hope of better days ahead.

The hope of these better things comes with a price - a sacrifice. Actually, 40 days and 40 nights of sacrifice, which represent the introspection, the fight against temptation, and surrender of one's will to the surrounding world. Actually, it's 46 days. But who's counting?

A breath is drawn in. An orange glow slightly precedes the quiet sound of burning. A breath of smokes leaves. A second later, ashes fall from the balcony down to the sidewalk below. No one was there to mourn for the sidewalk. And the sidewalk had nothing to give, other than it's constant presence, a sacrifice in it's own utilitarian way. Minutes later, a footstep spreads the ashes across the sidewalk. It is finished.

6:00 AM, Wednesday.

The rain started. A light, methodical rain, that grew, building upon itself. Over the course of a few minutes, the light, methodical rain had crescendoed into the aggressive rain that inflicts little droplets of pain against the skin. And the aggressive rain continued into the morning. It's as though the gods had drawn their fury against the notion that 40 days of reverence was a burden, that a period of revelry was needed to counteract devotion. The rains came. The rains washed away the stain and stench of the drunkenness, the idolatry, the lust, and the gluttony that had permeated the preceding nights.

A breath is exhaled. The bed creaks. The sound of snoring rumbles throughout the room.

7:00 AM, Tuesday.

The ebb and flow of the beats and rhythms and voices and bodies works in tandem with the darkness. Trances. Hypnosis. And in one moment, everything changes.

Light.

Whereas the general flow of life moves from darkness to light, the suddenness with which this light comes offers an instantaneous glimpse into one's soul. Questions arise, about life, meaning, and how one has gotten to this state.

But no answers are to be found.

The mob begins it's movement down the street to join with another mob, to create a, well, bigger mob. But this mob possesses no viciousness, only revelry. And the mob witnesses another, more organized mob. Black men and women march through the street, throwing coconuts, among other things, at the celebrating mob. And there was much rejoicing. Or so we are told.

2:30 AM, Tuesday.

A moment is shared in the bathroom. Celebration. Excitement. Frenzy. Debauchery. Bodies tense and struggle. Shortened breaths become brief gasps. And moments later, the tension is released.

This was no celebration. This was a sacrifice.

And when the sacrifice was over, not a word was spoken. The only feeling was the trance that came with the facade of celebration.

10:00 PM, Monday.

A look around reveals solitude. A quiet lull, the silence at the eye the storm offering a reprieve from all that has come before, and all that will follow. And in a moment, the solitude is shattered. The feeling of forced celebration permeates the room. This was celebration, not earned, but rather for the sake of celebration. On further introspection, this was celebration as a ritual.

But it was a ritual that was well disguised, avoiding detection by all but the most observant. Celebration begat excitement, and excitement begat frenzy, and frenzy begat debauchery. But debauchery was there before all of it, underlying everything that was done. The debauchery was what this was really all about. Everything else was simply a facade. Meaning was lost, and probably had been lost for as long as one could remember.

Or at least for the last 5 days.

6:30 AM, Sunday.

The day of the Lord. The reason why the Lenten season begins 46 days prior to Easter. The 6 Sundays don't count as sacrifice. They were already spoken for. The other 40 days were the sacrifice. But it seemed that this was a technicality based on an old calendar.

A brief internal debate ensues. The chapel? Or sloth? This was the third day of celebration. The laziest of the deadly sins winnowed itself into the forefront of the mind.

No sacrifices, yet. Lent has yet to begin. There was still celebration to be had.

A breath is exhaled. The bed creaks. The sound of snoring rumbles throughout the room.

1:30 PM, Saturday.

There is a moment of confusion. Two strangers meet again. But neither person immediately knows who belongs, and who is the stranger. Pleasantries are exchanged. The stranger shuffles off into the day.

1:30 AM, Saturday.

Two strangers meet. A traveler on a pilgrimage from a far-away land. A resident of the destination, on the way home. Pleasantries are exchanged. Rapport is built. The traveler and the resident shuffle off from the oasis, together into the night.

11:00 PM, Friday.

Sparks of excitement dance in the air. Thousands of wondrously dressed bodies crowd the streets, and people spill into the buildings. A street party. Not just a block party. But a party that starts at Canal, and heading for about a mile into the night. The energy is contagious. Young and old alike are invigorated. Smiles and laughter are everywhere.

The gilded classes are above, looking down at the proletariat, though in actuality not much separates the two. Words are exchanged. Offers are made. A show. A kiss. Payment is given, in the form of cheap, but shiny, baubles. And smiles from those who weren't involved in the transaction spread across the streets.

5:30 AM, Friday.

Keys fumble. But the locks eventually yield. A feeling of excited exhaustion morphs into simply exhaustion. A sense of satisfaction joins with the exhaustion, while steps are heard moving upward, into the night. The door opens and closes. The only sound left is that of clothing hitting the floor.

A breath is exhaled. The bed creaks. The sound of snoring rumbles throughout the room.

10:30 PM, Thursday.

The anticipation of the event has brought expectations so high that anything less than perfection would be a let down. A decision for moderation in celebration is made. The first set of real parades were exciting. Majestic floats: men in flowing robes, women with spectacular outfits, all dancing and giving candy and beads to the masses. But this was a time for moderation, meant to be a brief reprieve prior to the sacrifices of Lent.

A sip of scotch is swallowed.

A breath is drawn in. An orange glow slightly precedes the quiet sound of burning. A breath of smokes leaves. A second later, ashes fall from the balcony down to the sidewalk below.

Hopeless Romantic

Let's just say that a certain someone had an awesome Valentine's Day this past Monday.

Our hero manages to sleep until about 11:30, and then mopes around the house until he has to go teach at 2 and 3:30. Then, he finishes up teaching, and then hides from students in his office until about 5:45, at which time he heads out to go to volleyball practice for 2 hours. Then, he jumps into an IM basketball game so that his buddy's team doesn't have to forfeit, before he finally leaves the gym at 9.

Our hero then wanders to Popeye's for some takeout, and one the way home decides to detour into Wendy's drive-thru to get a Frosty.

But it doesn't stop there. Our hero then forgoes a shower, and instead plops onto the couch to watch mediocre TV on his DVR, while scarfing down fried chicken and frozen fake ice cream.

So on one hand, this was the most awesome Valentine's Day ever. But on the other hand, everyone's reminded again as to why this guy is single.

-Chairman

Premonitions

I don't delve much into things like premonitions. Most of this stuff is just bunk. People have all of these predictions, but only remember the ones that come true. Then they believe that they have ESP or something. Mainly, when you get into premonitions, the lesson that you learn is that people are generally idiots.

Anyway, it wasn't so much a premonition, as an eerie daydream, once I had time to put things back into context. It happened on Thursday morning. First of all, most of you are wondering, "what were you doing being awake before noon?" And that's a very valid question. But I have an excuse. I had to proctor an exam in the morning over in Foellinger, the big, 1500 person lecture hall/auditorium on campus. So, I'm standing there before the exam starts up. Mainly, I was just cranky and tired because I was awake about 4 hours earlier than I was accustomed to, and moreover, I was in some lecture hall with 800 kids taking an exam.

So, my mind wandered off, and I started thinking about what I wanted to do for breakfast after we got done with the exam, and I decided on pancakes at OHOP. Probably the tasty Apple Pancake, or maybe just the Dutch Baby. And some sausage. And coffee. It was going to be wonderful. Then my mind took the next natural step. I started thinking about how this would be the opportune time for some armed psychopath to storm in and start shooting. Early in the morning. 800 students packed into the lower tier of the lecture hall. Of course, I was imagining the shooter coming in through the entrance, and coming down the aisles. So, I thought about how I'd react. My plan was to slide up on the stage, and exit stage left. Make a phone call to 911, and then find some weapons to go back in there and get the shooter.

The plan was to find a couple objects that I could throw with accuracy, and then come back into the auditorium from an entrance where the shooter couldn't see. The plan was to try to bean him with one of the heavy objects. You know, the usual head shot from 50 feet. But to also close in, in case I missed. Then I would take him out with a pen to the jugular vein.

It probably wasn't the best plan in the world. I needed to have a couple baseballs in my bag, as well as a buck knife (rather than some pen). And even then, it would be sort of a brick of a plan. But that's what went through my mind.

I laughed at myself. Clearly, I'm a moron. I snapped out of it, and finished proctoring the exam, and then skipped out on the pancakes (huge mistake - they would have been wonderful). I just went to the coffee shop and got some work done, and then went home and took a nap so I could catch up on the sleep I had missed.

Later that afternoon, I read about the NIU incident. And then we found out that it was actually of U. of I. grad student.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to pack those baseballs and that buck knife in my bag from now on.

-Chairman

Jacked Up

You'd figure that I would learn my lesson by now. Every year, I schedule flag football games late on Sunday, and every year, I have trouble sleeping on Sunday night. This year, we play at 10. So, basically, I've got my blood flowing hard from about 9 until 11, and then I come home, and try to go to bed. Bad idea. The best part is that I'm actually going out to breakfast at 8 with some of the doctoral students and one of our job candidates. I'm not usually a morning person, but going on 4 hours of sleep (assuming I can hit the sack by 4 - it's 3:10 now) should be interesting. Nothing like representing your program and your school by being a zombie at breakfast. Let's just say that I'll be ordering coffee at breakfast. Happily after breakfast, I can just go back to bed until I have to teach at 3. Of course, it'll be fun to see how I can improvise on what the lecture slides have to say in class. Happily, we won't have any cameras rolling.

This flag football season has not been a memorable one. In retrospect, I shouldn't have tried to put together a team myself this year. I should've just rolled with The Judge and the psych folks, maybe bringing a couple guys over with me. I thought that we had enough manpower to put up a very strong version of 13th Tribe, but some of my regular receivers couldn't play this year. And our recruiting efforts have been down. We haven't had a sub at any of our 3 games, and one game we actually played a man down. Not good times. The sick part of it all is that I may be putting together my best season at QB this year. I'm making some money throws, I've figured out some good route combinations, and am doing a pretty decent job of moving the rock around the field.

So tonight's game was a tough 18-13 loss. We got a little shell shocked in the first half when they just marched down the field and scored on us. We opened up with me getting a little confused by the defense. They didn't really rush me all out, instead having two tall rushers just stand in the passing lanes and try to bat the ball down. I got a ball batted, and on the next play I got overaggressive and threw a pick. Quick slant route where I tried to force it in, and the linebacker jumped in there. A couple plays later, we were down 12-0. Not good. We put together a couple passes, but turned the ball over on downs and they scored again to make it 18-0. We did manage to put together a couple nice passes to close out the first half, which actually helped things out, got me some confidence.

We came out in the 2nd half, and completed a couple short ones, working the ball around to everyone. I also mixed up the rushers with a couple pump fakes and a couple rollout plays. We got a first down, and then, we took a shot deep. Boom. 45 yard bomb down to the 6. Funny story here. One of the refs actually saw that we were down a player, and asked if he could play with us, since he was done working for the night. He was a former player, so he was confident, begging for the deep ball. If there's one thing I can do it's launch that 40-40 ball. 40 yards deep, 40 feet high. He hauled it in, but couldn't stay on his feet, so we took over. They rushed a little harder and almost sacked me, so we switched it over to our fast QB. Incomplete on 3rd, but on 4th, he rolled out right. I stayed in the middle of the field, and saw that he wasn't finding space to run or an open receiver on the strong side, so I yelled, "weak side." He heard me and launched a ball back across the field in my direction. I actually adjusted to the ball and jumped up and took it away from my teammate (who I didn't realize was my teammate until after the play). This was my first TD catch since the year I played with an I-Life team that had Jared as the QB. Let's just say that this doesn't happen often. I throw for plenty. I'll punch one in there on the run everyone once in a while. But I hardly ever catch TD's. If I was thinking more, I would've had a better celebration planned out.

We came out on D, and their QB, maybe feeling a little frisky, decides to launch a deep bomb, as well. Bad idea for them. Great for us. We pick that guy off, and get the ball back pretty quickly. We get a couple short passes, and have the ball just inside our 30 or so. Once again, our new player is begging for that deep ball. So, I send him on that route. I was looking to my short routes first, but the blocking opened up a nice area for me to step up, and as I was stepping up, I saw that the safeties stayed sort of short. My guy was behind everyone. Boom. 50 yards in the air into the endzone. Pretty hot. We get the conversion on a little quick hitter, and were down 18-13 with a little over 2 minutes left to go, needing a stop. We didn't get it until too late. They actually got the ball down to our 2 yard line, but we managed to stop them on 4th down, but with only 15 seconds left. We got the ball out to the 25 with a quick completion, but couldn't get enough laterals together to get into the endzone on the last play of the game. This was the second week in a row where we had a bad first half, but adjusted and played a good 2nd half, and had the game come down to the very end. The sick part is that if we got the ball back with 1:15, instead of just 15 seconds, I really liked our chances with them in prevent.

Oh well. Basically, the story of the game was that our defense didn't wake up until the 2nd half, and our QB (me) was an idiot until the 3rd drive, at which point, we were already down 18-0. So, this puts me at 0-3 for the first time ever. But the thing is, playing w/out subs, and down a man, and keeping every game close has been a pretty satisfying feeling. Don't get me wrong. I hate losing, especially when I have a team that should win. But man, playing with a patchwork team, and doing some good things on the field is a neat feeling. The best part is that the legs are holding up just fine. I'm pretty sore after the games, but that's from being out of shape. The knees feel just fine once I've gotten warmed up. And I actually jumped like a foot in the air to catch that ball, so that's encouraging.

In any case, we have one more game. Hopefully, we can put together some offense and have our defense come out aggressive this time and get a W on the board to close out the career (unless they somehow talk me into coming back for one more season :-) ).

Anyway, I'm off to get a glass of water and try to get a couple hours of sleep before I have to wake up and do breakfast. Uggh.

-Chairman