Quote:
’Sir, you’re drunk’
‘Drunk I may be, madam, but in the morning I’ll be sober’ and insert the rest of the Churchill quote here. It’s a good one. You really should go look it up. No, really.

So, why am I putting on a drunk on a weekday afternoon, and a work day at that? Because I had a meeting with the Dean this morning, and even though it's only half over, this is one hell of a bad day at work.

"Drinking at work, sir?"
Hell yes. Thank god for tenure.
“Um, professor?”
Yes, Sally, go ahead.
“Isn’t every day a bad day at work?”
Yes. Your point?
“Well, if you’re going to use that as an excuse, it seems to me like you should either qualify the experience somehow—maybe by citing other extenuating circumstances—or you should...”
Yes, Sally? Go ahead and say it.
“You should maybe not drink so much, sir.”
Noted. And Sally...
“Yes, sir?”
bring this up again and I’ll dock your grade.

If there are no more questions from the class...
[cricket chirp]

Perhaps it was only a normal-sort-of-bad-day at work. Even so, I took advantage of some of the more enjoyable side effects of slow alcohol poisoning and vented quite a bit of the usual stress, along with some of the worries related to [insert: work, dames, money, life et. al.] and maybe managed to shut down some of those pesky higher brain functions for an hour or six.

Or not. My brain is a remarkably adaptive organ, and many years of alcohol abuse have merely toughened it. Hence the discussion...

“Professor?”
Yes, Jimmy?
“Um, is this going to be on the test?”
No, Jimmy.
“Then, um, why do I have to listen to you ramble on drunkenly for an hour?”
Look, son, it’s a condition of your plea agreement. You don’t want to be here, I don’t want you here, but you better try your best to pass this course or you’re going to have a pair of very interesting conversations with your parole officer and the judge.
“Yes, sir.”
[beat]
“um, prof?”
[beat]
[sigh]
Yes, Jimmy?
“So, if a term of my parole is taking your class...”
We have the same judge, Jimmy. And apparently, she has a sense of humor. I’m not going to cover this topic again, Jimbo.
“yes, sir”

before I was interrupted by a pair of jokers...
[stares down the class]
good. Like I said, before interruptions, I was going to expound a bit on the healthful psychological benefits of the more common weekday drunk. ‘Drunk’, in this case referring to the state of intoxication, rather than the proponents of same, though of course the usual usage of that noun would tend more toward the participants rather than the activity...
[beat]
Yes, Sally.
“Um, sir, I don’t know if this sort of lecture is appropriate for college...”
[interrupting]
Sally, half the people in this class started drinking before I did, speaking on a personal-chronological scale. Another significant fraction is bored to tears because they know this already, and of the remainder, most are frantically taking notes, hoping that I’ll get to fake ID’s and establishments with lax enforcement before the end of the hour.
[beat]
“Sir?”
[beat]
shut up, Sally. I’ll explain it to you later. Make an appointment with Miss Nisbet after class. And be thankful there’s still that restraining order...
“Sir?”
Nothing, Sally.

So I’ve spent the last five hours or so drinking fairly steadily, just because I can. No, really. You’d be surprised at the reasons I shouldn’t, but every now and then I manage to find a clear field and no pesky excuses not to.

It’s kind of like owning a rocket car and living just five miles or so from the nearest dry lake bed. Day in, day out, you putz about on the normal roads, but when you can get away, and manage to drag the car just a few miles out of town, you can light that sucker up and really burn.

‘better to burn out than to fade away’ or some crap like that. Most of the rockers I can think of—Morrison, for example—who lived by that motto ended up fat, wasted, and choking on their own vomit or some such
[interrupting]
[sigh]
Yes. Sally.
“Sir, the catalog description for this course...”
Yes, Sally?
“Um. Comparative Mythology and Modern Psychology?”
[beat]
[sigh]
Yes, Sally?
“Um. Professor, is this it?”

Darling, we have 30 lectures this year. I handed you a syllabus, and a reading list. If you find this boring, I have no idea of what you’ll make of the Masks of God or the Portable Jung. And in any event, all that scholarship will be meaningless unless you can find some way to tie it into life in general, and your own damned existence in particular. In any event it’s only the first week, and to be honest, you have another 4 weeks to give this a try before you can just drop the course, without penalty. Why are you being so questioning-slash-reluctant at the start of the semester?

“Sir, I just expected more. And don’t call me darling, sir. I’ve heard about the restraining order.”
[beat]
Shit. I should really ask Miss Nisbet to be more discreet.
[beat]
And I wasn’t hitting on you. Just for the record.
“Tell it to the Judge, sir”

[3 August '05, edit: Even though this started as a stream of consciousness bit, me debating with a couple of figments in (I'll admit) the odd venue of a college lecture, I have since decided to embrace the metaphor fully. So there are a few changes from what was originally posted; the Professor is a bit less me and a bit more of an independent character.]

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