Monday, December 25, 2006:

I'll be bored this Christmas.
You can count on that.
Watch me sit and read a bit,
Eat shortbread, and get fat.
Look:  no dissertation
Waits beneath my tree.
I'll be bored this Christmas,
And that's all right with me.

To the Masters students who just spent Christmas Eve frantically putting the finishing touches on thirty-page papers they won't be able to hand in until January 8th but had to get done as soon as possible because they had two other thirty-page papers to write over the break and hadn't started doing research for them yet...

To the proto-lawyers who recently wrote several hideous exams and now long only to bang their heads very hard on any available bricks walls, preferably until the end of time and/or the beginning of term, whichever happens first...

To the first- and second-year Ph.D. students who are still in the honeymoon phase of their degrees and will not yet admit to themselves that they have basically set out to swim across an icy, fathomless ocean at night, during a storm, without any water-wings...

To the upper-year Ph.D. students who have gone completely insane because they should have finished their dissertations years ago and are still waiting for their supervisors' comments on chapter two, chapter one having been found unsatisfactory and ripped entirely to shreds by people who read about half of it...

To the T.A.s of all disciplines whose Decembers were marred by the horror of undergraduate papers and/or exams, all of them riddled with errors, saturated with incorrect assumptions, and governed by the basic undergraduate rule that if you have to study it for more than thirty seconds, it is "too hard to learn"...

Have a good break, Christmas or otherwise.  I'll see you all when the horror begins once more...

Kari.


Monday, December 18, 2006:  Zen and the Art of Cutting 14,000 Words Out of One's Dissertation

By now, thanks to the all-powerful Force of Massey Gossip, the whole damn world knows that I just spent a week and a half maiming the enormous document whose bulk has been plaguing me for years due to the fact that our department has a dissertation word limit.  At one point, I was 23,000 words over that limit.  I later bunged 9,000 words into appendices, but that still left me with 14,000 extra words and no conceivable way of getting rid of them without a lot of merciless cutting.

Those words became a huge psychological block for me.  I would sit down with my dissertation, determined to overcome the nausea it automatically caused me, and I would ruthlessly cut...three or four words from a ninety-page chapter.  I knew my writing was wordy and repetitive, but I couldn't seem to figure out what to do about it.

Of course, all my acquaintances knew about my little problem.  Some of the comments and suggestions I received were:

1)  "Oh, come on.  You're so close.  Just do it!"  (I would if I could, dear one.)

2)  "Why don't you just cut a chapter?"  (Because there are only three chapters, each close to a hundred pages long, and cutting one would effectively destroy my argument.)

3)  "You should cut out every tenth word."  (Ha.  Ha.  Ha.)

4)  "You should cut out all the articles."  (Somehow, I don't think that would be good idea.  But thanks for suggestion.)

5)  "You should cut out all the vowels."  (Tht wld mk th wrds shrtr bt nt rdc th nmbr f wrds.  Pls t wld b nnyng.)

6)  "But cutting is the easy part!"  (Just you wait, Henry Higgins...)

I spent at least a year in this state.  Oh, I did work during this year, but my dissertation didn't get much shorter.  I went to see a writing counselor.  I cried at the writing counselor.  I fumed and felt ill and did not cut 14,000 words out of my dissertation.  I did add several thousand words, though (i.e., I wrote the introduction and conclusion).

Then something happened:  one of my committee members, in response to my increasingly desperate pleas for aid, unexpectedly answered them.  She scribbled all over my intro and conclusion.  She massacred them.  She massacred them so completely that she actually prefaced the results with a note that began, "Don't be offended by these comments."

I was not offended by those comments.  I loved them.  They were the most beautiful things I had ever read.  I went through the documents paragraph by paragraph.  When the committee member crossed out nine or ten lines at a time, I got rid of them.  I ended up with shorter, trimmer documents that were probably a great deal less confusing than the old ones.  Then I took a deep breath and turned to the rest of the dissertation.  I didn't have much hope; the committee member had commented on these sections, but not comprehensively.  I decided to start off by going through the chapters on my own, then return to her comments later.

Well...I think the committee member had tripped some sort of switch in my brain.  On the first day of editing, I cut two thousand words from the first thirty pages of chapter one.  Then I just kept going.  Editing was suddenly...not easy, but not impossible, either.  And this Friday, for the first time since, well, forever, I found myself with a near-complete dissertation that was under 100,000 words in length.  I expressed my joy at this development to maybe five people, who apparently told everyone currently alive on Earth.

I think I may actually have quite a merry Christmas this year.  I hope you do too...


Monday, December 11, 2006:  Well, That's Not Fair

Sometimes life just doesn't work out the way it should.  Witness the events of last Sunday:

After a rousing game of bingo, three Massey Junior Fellows and I retired to the Upper Library for a showing of The Sting.  We got almost all the way through the film...past the climactic scene, in which a couple of characters shoot at each other.  Just as everything was winding down, the DVD began to behave erratically; the action went all slow and jerky, and the sound cut out.

Then there was a bang.  It was a very, very loud bang.

Thinking one of the speakers had blown, we paused the film and were searching for telltale signs of smoke when someone noticed a little hole in one of the windows that overlooked the Master's garden.  There was also glass sprayed about fifteen feet into the room.

After a certain amount of dithering ("I'm sure the window just, uh, exploded because of the cold"), we summoned the Don of Hall, who called the campus police.  The campus police told us it was a bullet hole and called the Toronto police.  The Toronto police told us it wasn't a bullet hole because they couldn't find a bullet (or anything else that could have made the hole, for that matter), and everybody went home.  We never did finish the movie, either.

Now...the problem was that no one could figure out what could possibly have hit that window so hard and at such an awkward angle.  A rock tossed over the wall would not have blown shards of glass so far into the UL...if it had even actually broken the window.  A BB-gun bullet would have had to come from somewhere.  UC was a possible culprit, but the UC windows weren't really at the right angle.  So Master Fraser, among others, proposed that the College may have been hit by a meteorite.

If such was indeed the case, I would like to know where my superpowers are, please.  I mean, come on:  the whole set-up was just too perfect.  There were four of us in that room....two men and two women.  We all had very distinct personalities and could easily be categorised as the Quiet One, the Irreverent One, the Leaderly One, and the Loose Cannon.  At least three of us were good at cracking pun-laden jokes during tense situations.  And we were almost hit, under mysterious circumstances that involved what seemed to be an electromagnetic disturbance, by a meteorite.  Clearly, we needed to develop supernatural powers and go on to fight crime for the Good of Humanity.

The lack of superpowers thus far is thus severely disappointing.  I was hoping for at least the power of flight by this point in time...but no.  I shall continue to have to walk to the university every day.

Well, damn.


Monday, December 4, 2006:  The Ghost of Norwalk Past  

This year's sad but necessary cancellation of the Christmas Gaudy has reminded me of one of the stranger episodes in the Annals of Massey College:  the Norwalk epidemic of 2002.  In particular, it has reminded me of one particular incident involving one particular resident Junior Fellow (not me; that was my first year as a non-resident.  I did, however, witness the events in question).

Imagine you are a Massey resident Junior Fellow.  Imagine that you go to lunch one day and notice that a few people are missing.  Then you go to dinner...and there is a noticeable reduction in the population of the College.  At breakfast the next morning, there are only five or six people getting food.

Imagine that you learn about a twenty-four-hour bug called the Norwalk virus that is making the rounds of the College.  You are a medical student; you know that this illness involves copious vomiting and diarrhea, often simultaneously.  You also know that the virus passes easily from person to person.

You hide in your room.  You wash your hands as often as you can.  You avoid contact with your neighbours...except that your neighbours are spending quite a lot of time throwing up in your bathroom.  Yet since you cannot stand the thought of leaking from both ends for even such a short period as twenty-four hours, you become a social recluse and hope like hell that the virus will pass you by.

Imagine that the Christmas Gaudy is coming up.  There is, at this time, a literary competition associated with the Gaudy; College members have been invited to write short, silly pieces of poetry or prose on a certain subject.  Inspiration strikes you:  you will write a little story about the Norwalk virus!  You scribble madly, then submit your entry via e-mail so that you don't have to encounter any potentially infected person on your way to turn the entry in.

Imagine you show up at the Christmas Gaudy all full of anticipation regarding your entry.  You seem to have avoided the Norwalk virus, and you just know you have a good chance of winning a bottle of the Master's port (the traditional prize).  Impatiently, you watch the judge, Master Emeritus Patterson Hume, riffling through his notes.  He clears his throat and says:

"There were many entries to the literary competition this year.  Unfortunately, most of them seemed to be of a positively disgusting nature...full of illness and...bodily fluids.  I have decided to throw all of these entries out."

Imagine you swing around to face the non-resident beside you and whisper very loudly, "What?"

Imagine that you come down with the Norwalk virus the very next day...


Monday, November 27, 2006:  Ghoulies and Ghasties Redux

Massey's annual Feast for the Founding Master took place this past Friday.  The Feast, for those who have forgotten, is the event at which a random celebrity traditionally reads one of Robertson Davies' ghost stories.  The next day, equally traditionally, at least three Junior Fellows complain that the story is sexist and demand that the reading never take place again.*

This year's Feast was notable for three aspects:  1)  it took place at Hart House because the College dining hall cannot generally accommodate three hundred and twenty people unless, of course, they are all very small; 2)  the reading was particularly good, especially since the reader, Mr. Colm Feore, spent the whole thing mugging for all he was worth,; and 3) the Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario kicked off the celebrations by telling a story that implied very strongly that Robertson Davies was currently residing in Hell.**  I can only presume that Mr. Bartleman got away with this because he is the Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario and thus allowed to be as edgy as he likes.

However, his tale did get me thinking about the whole Massey Ghost Phenomenon.  Robertson Davies wrote his ghost stories because he wanted to provide his brand new college with some Oxbridge-type history; he was trying to be funny, yes, but he was also trying to Create a Tradition.  The problem is that he seems to have done his work a bit too well.  There is ample evidence that Massey College is haunted and has been for some years now.  Whether the supernatural force/power/entity/disturbance/whatever in question is Davies himself or something more*** sinister, no one seems to know.

Even if you rolled your eyes somewhere in the middle of the last paragraph (that means you, Mr. Goehring), read on.  What follows is my personal list of all the recent hauntings--or apparent hauntings--of which I have become aware, whether via word of mouth or firsthand experience.  All names save mine have been changed to, er, Greek letters, but I assure you that these people all exist (if any would like to come forward, I shall happily replace their pseudonyms with their real names).  I shall leave out only the one story everyone knows because the Master tells it constantly:  the one about the Junior Fellow who mocked Davies' ghost stories in his Don election speech and then awoke one morning to find his room flooded and certain (apparently) carefully selected books and documents destroyed by the water.  This story is intriguing, but it dates from before my time at Massey.  The following odd occurrences all happened within the past seven and a half years.

1)  In the spring of 2000, the Lower Library was under construction.  The LL has not always looked as it does now.  It once featured a great deal more concrete, no comfy chairs, stacks instead of study tables, a vault in place of offices, and a great big padlocked slab of a windowless door on the Press Room.  We were supposed to be keeping out of the LL at this time because it was a little bit dangerous; random construction materials festooned the area.  However, at about midnight on the day of the spring elections, three of us--Alpha, Beta, and I--had to lug a huge chalkboard down from the JCR to the storage nook under House IV.  We went through the LL because it seemed the easiest way.  Yet...once the board was stowed, we walked, completely unnecessarily, back through the LL.

Alpha was maybe fifteen feet ahead; Beta and I came behind.  As the two of us passed the Press Room door, we heard a sound...as if someone just inside the door had pulled it quietly closed.

You've got to understand that this was not a door that could have been open.  There was no possible way anyone could have been in that room; the door itself would not have been out of place in a castle dungeon, and it was firmly, obviously, and definitely very, very closed.  Yet...we heard someone shutting it.  Beta looked at me and said, "Did you hear that?  I'm getting the **** out of here."  By this point, all my hair was standing on end.  Without another word, both of us got the **** out of there.

Yes, I do have an overactive imagination.  Beta?  Not so much.  Very practical person.  Organises his books alphabetically and makes sure they line up with the edges of the shelves.

2)  At midnight on October 31, 2000--yes, really--Gamma was studying in the LL while Delta composed odd dissonant piano music upstairs in the dining hall.  Gamma was already fairly creeped out by the music when he heard the sounds starting in the Press Room (which still had the great big windowless door, I think).  He said afterwards that there were several thuds and crashes, as if someone were throwing things violently around.  Gamma did not try to figure out what was going on; he caught up his work and fled.

3)  In 2000 or 2001, Epsilon lived in room V:7.  She had the following experience several times:

She woke up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason and found herself facing the open door between her bedroom and her office.  In the doorway was the silhouette of a man.  She could tell that he was gazing at her--that much was discernible in the faint light that came through her window--but could not make out his features.  As she watched him, he stepped sideways into the shadows in the corner of the room, vanishing completely.

At various times, she said, "Who's there?", turned on her light, and/or panicked and pulled her head under her covers.  The light never revealed anyone in the corner, and the figure never responded to her words.  Though some of her friends insisted that Epsilon must have been dreaming, she was adamant that she had been awake every time.

Finally, someone suggested that she try telling the figure he was scaring her and ask him not to bother her any more.  On his next appearance, she took this advice.  The figure never appeared to her again.

4)  At least two other residents of V:7 also had odd experiences while they were living in the room.  Zeta was always finding objects moved around; Eta's keys kept vanishing and turning up in odd places (such as in her plants), and once, she discovered a book sitting exactly in the middle of her floor.  There was no conceivable reason she or the cleaning staff would have put it there, and if it had fallen off the shelves, it couldn't possibly have landed so far away from them.

5)  Zeta, who tended to wander the basement corridors in the wee hours of the morning, had another encounter as well.  He was over near the LL computer banks sometime around or after midnight when he saw someone crossing the LL towards him.  Something about this figure struck Zeta as strange, and he gave it his Patented Zeta Stare (penetrating and somewhat frightening to people encountering it for the first time), at which the figure was simply...not there any more.

6)  Theta once told me about a "strange feeling of impending doom" that had overcome him in the Puffy Couch Room one night.  He had a hard time describing it, but he did say he felt as if something had gone terribly, fatally wrong; the wrongness was almost a tangible presence.  Eventually, it went away.

7)  The 2005-2006 Massey College photo is a little bit strange.  If you look off to the right of it, you can see what seems to be the oversized shadow of a man projected against the bell tower.  The shadow is impossible; it is at the wrong angle to be cast by anyone in the photo.  People have blamed the photographer for this phenomenon, but the shadow really does seem to be a genuine part of the picture.

So there you have it:  a great deal of supernatural activity (and/or a great many out-of-control imaginations) at Massey, mainly in House V and the Lower Library.

Coincidence?****

You decide...


*This aspect of the event may not occur this year, as the story read by Colm Feore did not, in fact, contain any female characters at all.
**And/or a small writing desk.
***Or less.
****Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.


Monday, November 20, 2006:  We Now Return to our Regular Scheduled Programming

Yep.  I skipped a week.  Nobody noticed.  I feel...free!

I am currently cleaning my apartment so that my brother-in-law, who is visiting this week, won't have to sleep on top of a pile of books...so I'm gonna recycle some material, though as far as I know, the recycled material has not yet been seen by any Masseyite.  Here is a song for you all (hint:  the tune comes from the musical Oliver!):

You’ve Got to Write a Thesis or Two

[SUPERVISOR]
[spoken] You see, Oliver...

[sung]At this school, here's what counts:
Theory-speak, large amounts.
Do not ask why, just do or die:
You've got to write a thesis or two.

You've got to write a thesis or two, grads;
You've got to write a thesis or two.

[GRADS]
Write in code and don't ask why.
You've got to write a thesis or two.

[SUPERVISOR (spoken)]
Let's show Oliver how it's done, shall we, my dears?

[sung] Trim the fat, leave the lean,
Make quite clear what you mean:
That will not earn you tenure. Learn
To write a fuzzy thesis or two.

You've got to write a thesis or two, grads,
Just write a fuzzy thesis or two.

[GRAD]
Why should we remove the fat?
We'll write a fuzzy thesis or two.

[SUPERVISOR (spoken)]
Who says obfuscation doesn't pay?

Derrida had it right:
Use big words; you'll sound bright.
Binaries slide when you elide
All meaning from a thesis or two.

You've got to write a thesis or two, grads,
An empty, useless thesis or two.

[GRADS]
Derrida, he had it right:
He had to write a thesis or two.

[SUPERVISOR]
My advice isn't tough:
Academe's mostly bluff.
There is an art to sounding smart
While spewing out a thesis or two

You've got to write a thesis or two, grads:
Sit down and spew a thesis or two.

[GRADS]
Academe is mostly bluff:
We'll sit and spew a thesis or two.

[SUPERVISOR]
Everyone hark to me:
Wanting a Ph.D?
Make bloody sure you sound obscure,
And someday you will be a prof too.

You've got to write a thesis or two, grads,
And someday you will be a prof too.

[GRADS]
Since we want a Ph.D,

[SUPERVISOR AND GRADS]
You'll/we'll have to write a thesis or two!


Monday, November 6, 2006:  Remember Ron Thom II

Mr. Dave Parkinson has weighed in again on the whole issue of Ron Thom's vendetta against chairs.  Mr. Parkinson tells me that Massey's dining-room chairs were actually designed by someone other than Ron Thom...albeit someone who was attempting to remain true to Thom's "vision."  Alas, the name of this mysterious designer remains...a mystery.

I still say Ron Thom was out to get us all.  Apparently, he even infected his fellow designers with the need to fill Massey with the Furniture from Hell.  It's not surprising.  The man was truly a genius of sorts.  Who else could have created a building with so many windows and so little light?  Would a mere crawling mortal have been able to dream up a basement straight out of Dante's Inferno?  And let's face it:  anyone who could build a miniature version of the Jedi Counsel Chamber when Star Wars was still a mere twinkle in George Lucas's eye had to be pretty damn brilliant.  It is just a little bit too bad that actual people must now live in the results of this brilliance.

This is the time of year at which the heat leaches swiftly out of all the residence rooms, collects in the carrel area for a bit, and then creeps away into the ground, never to be seen again.  Junior Fellows learn to type in mittens.  International students discover the joy of Layers.  People start leaving ice cream and bagels in the third-floor hallways.  Penguins frolic in House V.  Kelly Gale's job becomes an endless struggle against the Forces of Malfunctioning Radiators.  This is the time of year, in short, at which we all really, really Remember Ron Thom, Architect.

And whoever dreamt up those bloody chairs.


Monday, October 30, 2006:  Condos...*Sigh*...

Alas for the corner of Bedford and Bloor!
I used to buy dinner-food from there before.
Now it is all empty, and I've got no more
Cheap restaurants for my repast.

It used to have pitas and chicken for me,
Plus subs and convenience stores.  Now I can see
Just blank, empty buildings.  Oh, how can this be?
I stare at the carnage, aghast.

Please tell me, O Psychic Who Used to Live There:
Did you see the condos encroaching?  And where
Have you relocated?  Believe me, I care!
This city's unfriendly and vast.

Would I could return you to your rightful place.
I miss you, your neighbours, and my dinner-space.
Lament for the truth that we now have to face:
Your corner was too good to last.


Monday, October 23, 2006:  From Ghoulies and Ghasties and Long-Leggity Beasties...

I could go into a rant about my students' papers, but if I did, I would probably never stop.  I shall thus write briefly about Hallowe'en instead.

I would like to point out for the benefit of alumni that Massey's pumpkin carving contest is rapidly becoming very Prestigious indeed.  I remember how ecstatic we were several years back when Margaret Atwood judged the contest.  I mean...who wouldn't want to display one's mangled orange gourd in front of Margaret Atwood?  The woman who wrote The Handmaid's Tale and The Robber Bride said witty things about our jack-o'-lanterns...in public.  Since that day, various eminent personages--including, I think, at least one Massey lecturer, and possibly Adrienne Clarkson, and maybe Michael Valpy, and I have absolutely no idea if any of this is true, but it sounds good--have judged the contest.

This year, the judge is the Queen of Sweden.

Let me say that again more slowly and impressively.

This year...the judge...is the Queen...of Sweden.

How the heck did that happen?  The Massey pumpkins are going to be judged by a monarch.  Ja!  Det is mycket mycket mycket freaking weird, det is (jag talar svinglish, ja).

I vote that next year, we get the Pope.  Or George W. Bush.  Or Queen Elizabeth.  Hey...how about Bono?  I bet Paul McCartney would do it.  Or the Barenaked Ladies.  I would love to see the Barenaked Ladies judge the Massey pumpkin-carving contest.  We might consider trying for Cher.  Or...I wonder what David Bowie will be doing on October 31, 2007?  Imagine having one's jack-o'-lantern judged by the Goblin King.  Bliss...

At any rate, this should be an interesting week in Massey World.  Pumpkin-carving on Tuesday, Royal Swedes on Wednesday, Margaret Somerville on Friday, and the Hallowe'en Date-a-Thon--er, Party--on Saturday.  No one will notice Sunday because everyone will be asleep for it, but that, at Massey, is par for the course.


Monday, October 16, 2006:  The Craven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious essay full of plundered lore,--
While I scribbled, mind a-teeming, suddenly, into my dreaming
Came the sound of someone screaming swear-words through my chamber door.
"'Tis some undergrad," I muttered, "screaming through my chamber door:
Only this and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I recall it!  It was strange, but really, all it
Prompted me to do was bawl it right back through my chamber door.
Dreading marking on the morrow...running out of cash to borrow...
I was wallowing in sorrow--sorrow for my life.  And more,
For the fact that I was screaming rather madly at a door.
I could handle nothing more.

Then the blatant fact-omission in each awful composition
Caused, in me, the exhibition of a mood ne'er felt before.
"Sir," said I, "or madam, waiting in the hall, please hear me stating:
Just for you, I'll be abating all this yelling at the door.
Quit your whining; I shall see you."--here I opened wide the door:--
Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting my own fading hearing.  Then I glanced down at the floor.
Trembling, I held high my taper.  In sulphuric clouds of vapour
Lay another bloody paper written 'bout the days of yore.
Yes:  another curst and craven paper 'bout the days of yore.
This there was, and nothing more.

Fast into the room retreating, my faint heart a-swiftly beating,
Went I, thus (I thought) defeating that infernal paper.  Or
Was I?  As I turned about, I found I had some cause to doubt I
Ever would quite turf it out.  I saw it there inside the door.
That infernal paper rested calmly just inside the door.
Quoth the Paper, "Nevermore."

Now the Paper, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
In a fug of pungent brimstone just inside my chamber door.
I, my pallid elbows leaning on my desk, regard it, keening,
For I think I know its meaning, and it's one I can't ignore:
Marking's never truly finished.  It piles up upon my floor.
I'll be done this...nevermore.


Monday, October 7, 2006:  The Fridge Goes Ever On and On

My friends, I want to tell you a story.  It is not a very long story, and it doesn't really have a plot, and it really only covers a single incident, but ah well.  It involves a Massey Junior Fellow named Ian and his wonderful--nay, miraculous--ability to create space in refrigerators.

You will doubtless remember from your own tenure at the College that the Massey fridge is not a thing of beauty and a joy forever.  It is, in fact, the twenty-first-century Canadian equivalent of the Hell-Mouth.  Things go into the fridge.  They do not come out.  They stay...and stay...and stay...until they eventually change into something rich and strange.  Well...into something strange.  A year and a half later, some brave but doomed soul who has decided to "clean the kitchen for good and all" finds these items of (for want of a better word) food, exclaims over the patterns of mould that cover them, and chucks them in the trash.

Now...one of these futile cleaning sessions happened just over a month ago.  Obviously, the fridge is now back to its usual infernal state.  If Hell did actually freeze over, it would look like the inside of that fridge.

Or it would have done until about 8:30 this Sunday evening.

Ian wandered down to the kitchen as everyone was cleaning up after Thanksgiving dinner and asked how he could help.  "You can make room in the fridge," said Hanah.  About ten people burst into hearty laughter.

And Ian proceeded to make room in the fridge.  Admittedly, he did quite ordinary things such as throwing out a container of sour cream without a lid, but he also must have worked some sort of  Harry-Potter-esque magic, since all the leftovers--all the leftovers--from dinner fit...with room to spare.  He actually harrowed the fridge.  I think maybe he has Powers.

Some of the witnesses to this miracle did speculate that perhaps it was the fridge itself that was special.  Someone mentioned the possibility that the fridge was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside.  It was, at one point, compared to Narnia.  Ben observed that Narnia, being large and perpetually cold, would, in fact, make the ideal refrigerator.  Others drew attention to the fridge's apparent ability to replenish itself.  I have already noted its transformative powers.

It is possible that Ian's "magic" consists simply of a deep understanding of the Massey fridge's unique position in the space-time continuum.  He has mastered the concept of Spatial Refrigeration and is able to manipulate it with ease.  We can only stand in awe of his talents.

But the next time someone decides to clean out the fridge, he should probably take a day-trip to Ottawa.  Once the community at large finds out what he can do, he will do little else.  Ever.

For the rest of his natural life.


Monday, October 2, 2006:  Stress Theory 101

The fact that I have been having a particularly slothful week, despite the further fact that I really can't afford sloth right now, has led me to procrastinate (again) by refining my theory regarding stress and its relation to space-time.  No, I am not an absolute freaking crackpot.  After years of careful study and observation, I have concluded that there is a fundamental Law of Stress that grad students can, if necessary, harness.  An understanding of this Law will allow one to finish one's dissertation...eventually.

It runs as follows:

1)  Without deadlines, Stress remains a latent force only; the deadline is the catalyst that allows the utilisation of Stress.  The so-called "false deadline" is insufficient as a catalyst.  Though it may activate an initial Stressful reaction, this reaction is difficult to maintain without a genuine deadline.

2)  The more stress factors (the dissertation, jobs, family issues, financial strain, lack of chocolate) involved, the more powerful the Stress will become.  However, without a deadline, these outside factors will fail to activate the Stress reaction in the subject and will instead bring about Lethargy, Procrastination, and the Tendency to Blame Problems on Software Bugs.

3)  The stress factors combine with the deadline to create in the subject a state known as Panic.  Panic is not yet true Stress; it is an initial stage marked by its promotion of inactivity.  At this point, the Stress is still latent.  Panic can be recognised via the presence of tears, pacing, nervous Web-surfing, occasional hyperventilation, long coffee breaks with bored friends, and an apparent lack of progress on the piece of work in question.

4)  As the deadline becomes more prominent, Panic will deepen and narrow in its focus, and most of its indicators will disappear, replaced briefly by wide-eyed terror and then more permanently with the ability to open necessary documents and begin work on them.  The reaction is now in its most crucial stage.  A withdrawal of the deadline will cause failure and residual hyperventilation.  If the deadline holds steady, the subject will enter Stress and become subject to the Speed of Stress.

5)  The Theory of Stress-Speed claims that the imminence of a deadline, in combination with an apparent lack of enough time to meet that deadline, will cause the space-time continuum itself to become warped.  Effectively, the subject experiences what seems to be the slowing of time to a crawl.  Activities that should take hours are done in minutes; the world appears to move in slow motion, though in actual fact, the subject is working much faster than seems possible to outside observers.  The subject is now in a state of heightened concentration fueled by Panic.

6)  The Speed of Stress is notable for this property:  it always "slows time" just enough that the subject will finish all necessary activities two minutes before the deadline.  The factor of two minutes is a constant that researchers have so far not been able to explain adequately.

7)  The passing of the deadline causes a complete failure in the reaction; space-time reverts to apparent normality as the Speed of Stress ceases to apply.  Occasionally, a side-reaction will occur, prompting an extended return of Lethargy and Procrastination, both of which states will continue until the introduction of another deadline.

This Law has been demonstrated time and time again by graduate students around the globe.  I am currently stuck on #2.  Do not follow in my footsteps.  If you want to achieve the Speed of Stress, for heaven's sake, get a deadline.


Monday, September 25, 2006:   Happiness is a Well-Used Paper-Clip

I was going to do a rant about grammar this week.  See...I have recently discovered that some first-year university students use comma splices not because they are ignorant or lazy but because they are taught to do so in high school.  Taught!  By!  Their!  English!  Teachers!  Last Tuesday, I had several students glaring at me because I had just undermined everything they had ever learned about sentence structure.  I am considering challenging all high-school English teachers to a duel.  It will be a very long duel, but I shall win, for I have the Forces of Grammar on my side.

Yet...I'm tired of ranting about grammar.  The fact that a significant number of high-school English teachers believe that "It is a nice day, I shall find some rabbits to bludgeon" counts as a complete sentence just makes me tired.  I shall instead veer unexpectedly onto the subject of...

MacGyver.

I have actually never seen an episode of MacGyver.  However...I do know that the character is famous for his ability to solve complex problems with common household items.  What strikes me about this sort of thing is that most of us do occasionally have MacGyver Moments:  bursts of inspiration during which we fix stuff with stray pennies and wads of chewing gum.  And damn, but it's a good feeling.

Most of my personal MacGyver Moments seem to involve broken shoulder-bags.  Okay, sure, that's not very exciting, but still...I once fixed a hopelessly broken bag-strap with a cheap key-ring I had picked up off the street.  Some woman tried to get me to use tape, but the stuff kept falling off and sticking to the wrong things and generally not working.  The key-ring, on the other hand, is still holding my bag together.  I am very proud of it.

Just today, I went to the Massey porter's lodge in search of some safety pins with which to fix another bag.  No pins were to be had...but there were plenty of paper-clips.  By turning them into little wire twist-tie-shaped thread-like thingies, I actually sewed my bag back together.  With paper-clips.  It was fantastic.

Perhaps someday I shall have a MacGyver Moment that does not involve purses.  I would like to save the world with stationery supplies, or perhaps two handkerchiefs and a pinch of table salt.  I expect I would also have fewer initial problems with purses if I didn't insist on filling them with books, pens, enormous wallets, and random stuffed badgers (don't ask).  However...at least broken bags give me the chance to make like MacGyver.  Broken grammar just gives me the chance to jump up and down and go, "That...is not...a sentence!"

I would like to advocate more broken purses and fewer incompetent English teachers.  In fact, I would like someone to make some sort of law about it.

I would be willing to enforce this law all by myself.


Monday, September 17, 2006:  Zen and the Art of Computer Maintenance

This Tuesday past, my day went as follows:

1)  I was going to my kitchen to get a drink of juice when I tripped over the printer cable and knocked my laptop off the coffee table onto a pile of papers on a carpet.  Despite all the cushioning, as well as the fact that the computer really didn't have all that far to fall, the LCD display cracked clear across.

2)  Even though I knew that computer warranties generally didn't cover faults arising from complete incompetence, I spent the next forty-five minutes tearing my apartment apart in order to find the warranty, just in case a miracle happened and I did need it after all.  I finally found it exactly where it should have been, only under something.

3)  It was my first day TAing at OCAD.  While waiting to begin my third workshop, I noticed that there was a note on the door of the classroom I was supposed to be using.  It informed students that the two evening sessions of the workshop (which I would be running) had been switched to another classroom.  I had not been told of the switch.

4)  One of my third-workshop students was in the wrong section, but when we went to talk to the secretary about it, she insisted that he was in the right section...even though I was also teaching the right section in the right place, and he was not in it.  No one quite understood what any of this meant.

5)  I had managed to forget my bike helmet in one of the classrooms, a fact that I realised at about 5:25, thirty-five minutes before the computer shop--a seven-minute ride away--closed.

6)  I got into the elevator to go to the fifth floor so that I could retrieve my helmet.  The elevator doors closed.  The elevator went...down.  To the basement.  And just sat there.  The doors only opened when I pressed the "Open Doors" button.

7)  I made it back up to the main floor again, but the elevator wouldn't go any further; it kept sinking to the basement.  I couldn't find any stairs in the basement.  At last, I realised that service to the upper floors was probably cut after 5:00, goodness knew why.

8)  I ran up five flights of stairs and found my helmet in a (currently occupied) classroom.  It was about 5:35.

9)  I ran back down five flights of stairs and rode my bike through the miserable drizzling rain to the computer shop.

10)  The guy at the shop confirmed that idiocy was not covered by the warranty, then said I would need to pay for a new monitor, plus $180 for labour (apparently, replacing a broken monitor takes $180 worth of time).  When I asked how much the monitor would be, he said, "Anywhere between $500 and $1300."

11)  After crying most of the way through dinner, I returned to OCAD for my two evening workshops.  I didn't bother with the elevator this time; I walked up the stairs.  The door of my classroom was locked.

12)  I ended up holding the workshops in the corridor.  At least the floor was carpeted.

13)  As the workshops progressed, the students kept being distracted by sounds emanating from the classroom we should have been using but weren't because the rooms had been switched (and ours locked) without explanation.  These sounds ranged from pop music to folk music to Indian dance music to tortured screaming in various languages.

Now, that was a great day.

(Re. the computer:  the new monitor has turned out to cost "only" $400.  I am therefore merely out the price of a new no-frills computer rather than a small car.  But I'm really beginning to think I should get in on this computer repair scam.  I would be able to retire at the age of thirty-five.)


Monday, September 11, 2006:  Remember Ron Thom...

Mr. Dave Parkinson, a Massey alumnus, has the following to say about Ron Thom's approach to chairs:

Local low-priced furniture stores (in my case, Goodwill) ought to pay royalties to the man's heirs.  His useless furniture has driven many a Masseyite to spend valuable textbook/beer money on something more functional.

Dave...you're absolutely right.  Ron Thom was not, to put it very lightly, good with furniture.  He did not understand how it worked.  To him, a chair wasn't something on which generation after generation of grad students would have to sit.  It was Art.  It was Beauty in the form of office and/or dining-room furnishings.  It needed to have a certain poetry about it.  In short, a chair, to Ron Thom, was more than just a chair.

What remains is the problem of the hapless Masseyites who do actually have to sit in the damn things.  Hell...chiropractors ought to pay the Thom estate too.  The office chairs in the residence rooms and the Lower Library don't have backs.  Oh, sure, you can argue that that pretty strip of wood that snakes around to become the armrests counts as a "back"...in the same way that the pond in the Massey quadrangle counts as a "lake."  It is my understanding that chair-backs usually rise more than halfway up your spine and provide something resembling support.  Visit the Lower Library some time.  Almost every single person working at the tables will have stolen a cushion from one of the cushy chairs in order to introduce a modicum of comfort to Ron Thom's design.

Did you know that the chairs in the dining hall were originally made without seats?  They had that pretty tan leather covering, it's true...but under the leather were the chairs' struts, and the struts were what the Junior Fellowly Rear Ends felt when they rested upon the chairs.  Though someone subsequently nailed sheets of plywood in there, those who have had the misfortune to get stuck with broken chairs during High Table dinners can attest to the fact that Ron Thom's dining-hall chairs were originally damned uncomfortable.

Oh, yes:  and stop by the carrel area, the wells in the JCR, or the new mini-lounge in the basement if you want to get an idea of the sort of chair that used--before the advent of various (still not particularly wonderful) strappy chair-like objects--to serve as every Junior Fellow's "relaxation" chair.  To sit in one of these...things...one has to go into a semi-crouch and sort of fall violently backward.  One must then either sprawl in a semi-prone position while the cushion under one's rear end continually attempts to escape one or hitch oneself forward to perch on the bar at the very front of the chair.  Neither position feels natural.

The couches aren't bad; I'll give Mr. Thom that.  Correction:  the couches aren't bad if you are seven feet tall.  The seats of these couches are oddly elongated.  Shorter people are unable to sit all the way back on them.  They have, again, to perch...or else let their legs stick out in front of them as if they are seven years old.

I do not know exactly what Ron Thom had against chairs.  Perhaps his obvious antipathy towards them can be explained by some childhood trauma; perhaps he just never had to sit in one.  At any rate, I'm sure that wherever he is now, he has plenty of Massey furniture to keep him company.

Oh, yes...I'm very sure that he does.


Friday, September 8, 2006:

My Dearest Readers:

At last...the happy day has come:  Brenda has finished the first installment of her recipes column.  Hurrah!  Hurrah!  Hurr...

Well, but this also makes me a bit sad, since it means that I no longer get to hijack said recipes page with irrelevant thoughts of my own.  I have thus created a whole new page, not out of egocentricity but, rather, out of a burning need never to work on my dissertation.  Ever.  At all.

(No, Mom...really...I am making progress.  Look...here's a footnote:

Fulcher's account of the incident runs as follows:  "Here our men suffered from excess hunger.  I shudder to say that many of our men, terribly tormented by the madness of starvation, cut pieces of flesh from the buttocks of Saracens lying there dead.  These pieces they cooked and ate, savagely devouring the flesh while it was insufficiently roasted."

Isn't my dissertation fun?)

Speaking of food...I'll probably not stick to it as a subject.  I don't know exactly what I'll be writing about, but it won't always be food.  Cannibalism, perhaps.  Undergraduate prose styles, almost certainly.  Milton's inability to end his sentences (ever), probably.  Massey College, indubitably.  Badgers...well...who doesn't like to write about badgers?

For now...enjoy Brenda's recipes, sign up for the Terry Fox Run, and go out and buy some chocolate.  You deserve it.

Procrastinatingly yours,
Kari.


Monday, September 4, 2006:

Aaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllmooooooooooost theeeeeeeeeeeere...

Brenda has submitted three recipes.  Eventually, there will be a fourth recipe and an explanatory blurb.  Then...the page will launch.

For now, here is a poem I wrote last year at about this time:

All hail to September, whose reign shall be long:
We greet you with garlands and snatches of song.
Oh, how we have yearned for your coming this year,
Your headaches, your deadlines, your odd dearth of beer.
Begone, mighty summer, and never come back;
Your languid temptations have led us to Slack.
No more!  Hail the work-week, and essays, and dorms,
And drowning in course-work, and filling in forms,
And stress and insanity, great heaps of marking,
Committees, librarians, lack of free parking,
Bananas for dinner and pizza at dawn,
Then noodles till our indigestion is gone,
Exams, supervision, tuition, bad hair,
Worse skin, guilty consciences, pain and despair.
Let idylls of summer expire and fail;
We're ready for nightmare.  September, all hail!

And another one from about the same time for the markers among us (you may, if you're brave, sing it to the tune of "Something There That Wasn't There Before" from Beauty and the Beast):

It's ten o'clock
On Sunday night,
And look:  your thesis isn't anywhere in sight.
What I write down
You'll just ignore,
And your mistakes are ones you've often made before.

Your points are dull
And way too long,
And your interpretation of the text is wrong.
This marking gig
Is just a bore,
For your mistakes are ones you've often made before.

Vague
And a bit confusing:
I am not quite sure what you mean here.
Yet
I find it amusing
That you have such faith your meaning simply will appear.

This comma splice
Is not so good,
Though I am doubting you'd correct it if you could.
Let me be done!
Oh God, there's more,
And the mistakes are ones you've often made before.

Yours until next time (unless there isn't a next time; go, Brenda!),
Kari.


Monday, August 28, 2006:

Dear Readers:

Brenda has submitted her grape cake recipe, but we're waiting on a few others and an explanatory blurb before we launch the page.  Getting closer...cloooooooooossseeerrrr...

This week, I wish to discourse on the mystery that is the Annual Massey Cream-Puff.  That is...once a year, every year, the Massey kitchen serves cream-puffs for dessert at dinner (and the subsequent three or four lunches as well).  These delectable pastries are filled sometimes with ordinary whipped cream and sometimes with a chocolate- or coffee-flavoured whipped-cream-like substance.  They are very, very good...but they are served only once.

Why is that, I wonder?  Does Massey employ a temperamental cream-puff chef?  Did Darlene sign some sort of contract forbidding her to produce cream-puffs twice in a given year?  Has the Master put his foot down and denied the Call of the Cream-Puff, reluctantly allowing a single annual exception due to bakers' union rules?  Does whipped cream go sharply down in price only very rarely?

Yet another Massey Food Mystery to solve!  Help us out, O Readers.  Do your best to discover the answer to this conundrum.

Brenda can help too if she likes.

Dreading yet another August Week of Horror,
Kari.