A suggestion for a college sliding inexorably into decay and mediocrity owing to its shitty "leadership" that the goddam board seems to love

maggot: a soft-bodied legless larva, esp.
that of a fly found in decaying matter.

The A400 "Beam Signing BBQ event" is a hit

Click on photos to enlarge them

     As you know, some of us—including the long-suffering (i.e., perpetually facilities-deprived) faculty of the School of Humanities—will be moving into new professional digs in a few months.
     Some sort of milestone has now been reached in the construction of A400—the structural steel/frame is done, more or less, I guess. At today's festivities, designed to mark the occasion, someone asked, hopefully, whether the project is about half-way done. The chief construction guy said, "ish," and that got a laugh.
     Somebody (I know not who) hatched this idea of having the future denizens of A400 sign a construction beam, now that beamage is done. So a corner beam was painted white and, today, after the BBQ (provided, I think, by a local caterer—no doubt paid for by the college I'm now told that the construction folks paid for the food), we wandered over to that beam and commenced scrawlin' signatures and small messages. (Most of them, predictably, were decorous. E.g., "Give us bookshelves or give us death!")

The event was well attended. The construction folks were invited and seemed
to have a good time.

That's A400 in the background.

Vice President for Instruction, Craig Justice, was on hand, as was the Dean of
the Schools of Humanities, Languages & Learning Resources, and Social
& Behavioral Sciences.

Craig noted that some of the faculty who await the opening of A400 were
compelled to deal with "wildlife" this week, a sly reference to our notorious
dead rat episode. Dean Feldhus declared that A400 will be "the most
beautiful building on campus."

Here's the actual beam signing. Diane Oaks was on hand to take a group pic.

Rebel Girl made a point of inscribing the names of the original faculty of the School of Humanities and Languages (1979)

Construction, early this morning

ET CETERA

The maggoty rat, part II

From a DtB post of nine years ago

     Late Monday, I related the adventure of the maggoty dead rat, which played out here in our dreary corner of Irvine Valley College on Monday morning (there is no older and more decrepit zone, at IVC, than that ramshackle addition cobbled onto A200 about thirty-five years ago).
     Naturally, one of the asynaptic cretinoids who persist in monitoring our blog, and who seek to torment us with the occasional illiterate and idiotic "quip," weighed in with the unpleasant suggestion that our ratty fate was our own fault, the result of our leaving out food. But, in fact, the Reb and I are vegetarians and are pretty fussy about food. Further, owing to our aversion to ratitude (and maggotude and mousitude and various other itudes) we are routinely careful not to leave out food. Hence, we long ago acquired a little refrigerator for perishables and a hermetically sealed container for everything else.
     So there.

Wall repair made Thursday morning
Scene of the rat slime

* * *

     Today, I found that our little adventure was a topic of conversation throughout the halls of our benighted little college. One or two instructors informed me that they had discussed "the maggoty rat" with their students, who were much amused. Others with whom I spoke had run into administrators who seemed curiously up to speed on the whole business.
     “Really? They knew about our rat?”
     Yep.
     Today, as I returned from my 9:30 class, I found two colleagues climbing around the dirt and plants just outside my office window. Their eyes were trained on the outside correlative to the inside corner of my office, where I found the aforementioned rat-'n'-maggots blob Monday morning. “Yes,” announced one colleague, “this office is easily accessible to rats right there.” He pointed downward.
     I, of course, was staring at these colleagues from the inside. I glanced down at the portion of the office wall in question: yes, there was something like a hole there. Big enough, it seemed, for rat entry.
     Later, my dean came by. She, too, had heard about the rat episode from various colleagues. She had not, however, read my DtB account.
     “You should read it,” I said. “In my post, I made a point of singing the praises of the maintenance crew who helped us out and saved us from stinkitude and ratitude.”
     She nodded. “That's good.”
     Throughout the day (I stayed until nearly 5:00 p.m.), various colleagues came by to inspect the now-legendary maggot zone, which, in truth, betrays no indication of its recent repulsive state. One colleague said, “Yeah, I popped in yesterday morning, and I saw at least 300 maggots wriggling on the floor there where you grabbed that dead rat.”
     I thanked her for the detail. I hadn't noticed all those maggots on the floor. They were sucked up by the maintenance crew before I had returned to the scene after having grabbed and disposed of the odious rat bundle.

A year or so ago, lots of "cricket shit" was found in some A200 walls.

* * *

     Two or three years ago, during a rain storm, a puddle actually formed in that very piece of real estate now known as the rat zone. At the time, the problem was addressed via large fans placed in the hallway with the air directed outside through the rear door. Those fans roared all day long.
     People said: “OK, that'll dry out the carpet. But why don’t they fix the cause of the problem? The building clearly leaks like a sieve!”
     Supposedly, "they" did fix the problem, but I have my doubts.

* * *

     A year or so ago, our office (along with one or two contiguous offices) were surrounded by red or yellow police tape. Upon these office doors were affixed official notices alerting passers-by to the grave mold dangers within.
     That was, of course, the notorious 2013 A200 mold scare, not to be confused with the even more dire 2005 A200 mold scare (see).

It never ends

* * *

     Naturally, this "rat" business has been a source of amusement more than alarm—largely, I think, because we in the School of Humanities (and the School of Languages & Learning Resources) are all looking forward to being moved to a brand new building (A400) in late Spring or Fall.
     We are assuming, of course, that our new digs will be rat- and mold- and puddle-free.
     Yeah.

Post-holiday funkitude (a big dead rat avec maggots)

     This morning, after six straight days of holidayness, I entered my office, whereupon I was struck by a severe funk.
     Fish? Fungus? I had no time to identify the source; I grabbed a dry erase marker and rushed off to my first class.
     I returned at 10:50 or so, noticing Rebel Girl down the hall. She had not yet entered our miasma. Natch, it was still stinkin’. Soon, the Reb entered, whereupon I said, “It’s funky in here. Don’t know why.” She crinkled her nose. “It stinks in here,” she said. “Fish?” She started poking around. “Why would there be fish in our office?” she said.
     I too got up and looked around. I soon found what appeared to be an amorphous pile of rat nesting, plus assorted rat turds, in the corner, just below our office window (which is sealed shut, but that’s another story). It was kind of dark back there and the “nest” was gray with hair or something, so I really couldn’t make out much.
     “Looks like a rat’s nest,” I said.
     The Reb was horrified. “A rat’s nest?!” she exclaimed.
     Off I went to a restroom to grab seven or eight paper towels, an ersatz prophylactic. In the meantime, the Reb had gone down the hall, no doubt alerting friends to our entertaining post-holiday predicament. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor rat-in-office fails to amuse the Reb, our little hamlet's town crier.
     Upon entering the empty office, I reached down behind my desk with my left arm, then semi-blindly covered the “nest” with my paper-protected paw. To my surprise, my hand clutched, not a fluffy nest, but some dense material, with weight. I sensed no movement. I pushed down hard into the carpet and grabbed around the entity, pulling it up. It was stuck to the floor some but gave way.
     I looked at my catch: it was a big dead rat avec maggots. Weren't no nest at all. No sir.
     I immediately registered thankfulness that the Reb had chosen that moment to leave the office. Off I went out the door and out of the building, unnoticed. I attempted a nonchalant stroll toward the trash receptacle twenty or so feet north of the coffee truck, which was crowded with customers. In it went. Nobody noticed a thing. Result!
     After a careful washing of hands (lots of soap and hot water), I returned to my office, whereupon I encountered two or three maintenance workers who had somehow been alerted to the situation. They scrambled for vacuums and sprays and descended upon the hideous corner, which, I’m told, still sported residual maggotry and turds. The Reb and I decided to wait at the nearby faculty lounge while these heroic workers took care of business, which they did with great speed and efficiency. Hell, they even unscrewed our window, and slid it wide open! They wished us well and took off.
     I must say, these guys did a great job. It was service with a smile! After an hour or so, the air in our office was near normal. Whew!
     Tomorrow, when you buy your coffee at the coffee truck (just south of the Admin Building), be sure to visit the trash receptacle on the corner.
     If it’s seriously funky around there, well, it ain't the donuts.

I see the future, and it's good

I do believe that Nguyen was once a
student of Red Emma's

Bao Nguyen Is Garden Grove's History-Making Mayor in More Ways Than His Ethnicity
(NavelGazing, Nov. 25)

…Bao seemed destined for electoral politics. He would argue with conservative classmates at Pacifica High during the 1996 Bob Dornan-Loretta Sanchez battle. He volunteered for former state senator Joe Dunn's campaign while studying political science at UC Irvine and won an internship that took him to Capitol Hill. But Bao left the political realm early last decade to earn a master's degree in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, a private university founded by a Tibetan monk with the help of Beat poets.
. . .
Victory seemed unlikely, despite the backing of the Orange County Labor Federation and the Democratic Party. But through meet-and-greets, precinct walking, and calling on his volunteer base, Bao pulled off an improbable victory. Unsurprisingly, Bao had to weather smear campaigns painting him as a communist sympathizer, a move that cost him thousands of votes.
. . .
Bao takes a particular interest in the city's younger residents, not just because of his own age and his two years on the school board, but because he feels that constituency pushed him over the top. "We got a lot of mail-in votes from college towns--those students were the 15 [votes that secured his victory]."....

I found this on my Facebook Page this morning.

See Veterans' FUBAR