Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Spewing spores

It's finals week here at Irvine Valley College, which is fine by me, except I've got the flu, and I can barely function, but here I am, every day this week, giving this flu back to these darned kids that gave it to me in the first place, no doubt. I sneeze at 'em, spewing spores all over the place. So there.

Rebel Girl's been showing up, too—giving finals, collecting essays—only she's got a cold or something plus pink eye, which she got from Limber Lou, who got it from some of those Republican brats he hangs out with in the canyon.

He's a great kid, that Limber Lou. Check out the picture I took of 'im a couple of days ago. The kid never stops moving—he spews little-kid sauce out in all directions, and there's no use protecting yourself—so this is the best I could do. I like his hair.

The Reb made me take a picture of the "delightful flowers" somebody had layed out there in the so-called "faculty lounge" of A200, which is where they keep us. This is what you get when you share space with biologists. They get excited about tubers and mold and this weird-ass thing here, whatever it is. Me, I go for ordinary posies and ferns. In vases.

Speaking of bio, the Reb dragged me out to the greenhouse/park—over by the tennis courts—where, a few days ago, the biologists put up a nice plaque in honor of their colleague, Alan Cohen. It's all fenced off and locked, so I had to poke a hole in the fence to take a peek.

Why were we out there? Reb's into dark, foul conspiracies by corporations and administrators. With a hushed voice, she suddenly said, "Check out this weird machine over here!" OK. I stared at it. It looked like one of those Dyson vacuum cleaners, only big and green. It was made of fiberglass and it sat behind a chain-link fence. It's mighty weird. I guess.


Then she dragged me just around the corner to some weird emergency shower—you know, for when chemicals splash in your eyes. It was on a nondescript building, sans windows, next to the biologists' greenhouse/park.

What's that all about? Dunno. Maybe that big vaccuum cleaner and this shower are, like, the greenhouse/park for the Chemists. Could be. Raghu's a chemist, isn't he?

Yeah. This must be the "Raghu P. Mathur Chemical Depository and Park." Ugly and creepy. Perfect.

Nobody ever comes out here. Nobody ever will.

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...