Alec Guinness' Basement

      It seems my latest entry caused (undue) some concern among a few of my readers.   Have no worries, and let me restate matters, perhaps more clearly: the ole Doc is just trying to find something better for himself, something that will pay better and may actually (Heaven forfend!) proffer some form of advancement.   My only immediate way to enable such possibilities within the academic world is to finish the blasted dissertation which has now become an albatross on my neck.   Given, though, that writing even a small entry for this blog has become as painstaking as passing a stone, my prospects for completing an entire dissertation are as likely as my chances for living in eternal connubiality with mine own private seraglio.   (The difference between the two is that one would rejoice at being done with the former.)   So I'm trying to extricate myself from this "Situation Hopeless But Not Serious" scenario.   There's only so long one can live in Alec Guinness' basement.

      As for other stuff, I keep thinking I should be able to write something here that is more profound (and surely more than whinge)-- about, well, anything. There's an election in the offing; there's no end of silliness and stupidity screaming for attention; and there's surely enough literature out there upon which I could summon some sort of commentary, insightful or not.   I find, though, I'm becoming more and more interior as time goes by-- for good or for ill, but comforted slightly by the surety that silence is a virtue inadequately appreciated.   Or maybe I've grown tired of proving Mark Twain right, especially after doing so with Wilford-Brimley-like regularity.   Something tells me I should insert a Quaker Oats logo at right.

      The winter break has now arrived for the academic year, and with it a dhowload of grading.   To that, add the lavish lunacy that is the holiday season, about which the less said the better. (Shopping remains to my mind an activity best accomplished with a machete and a broken bottle of Cutty Sark.)   Ah, December: you bump and grind away, like a crack whore with a credit card to pay....

      [Hey, where in the Hell did that couplet come from? Damn and blast, damn and blast!    And worse, I just dangled a preposition!   I'm imploding from within like CIA information!}

      Oh, yet another Christmas, and its particular bliss.... In the immortal words of Father Mulcahy, "Jocularity! Jocularity!" 'Tis sometimes the best way to keep one's sanity: irregularly, even in Alec Guinness' basement.