First, the horrifying news: a former student was abducted and murdered in Russia. We were no longer in contact, but my mind conjured her the second I saw her name. She was an extraordinary young woman.

My 304th class began–and advanced writing course at SCC (asynchronous). A few students are already awesome, and a few are already getting on my nerves, due to the inability to go a few hours without emailing me about something they could totally find themselves. I got the whole course loaded–all six weeks are set up on Canvas. And this week I start figuring out my two UCD courses that start just as the SCC one ends.

The Sacramento French Film Festival was this week, so I watched nine films and all the shorts. I also managed to finish the latest season of American Gods and Nghi Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful. My brain wants to write nine papers about the former, and I’m glad the latter is part of The Bloggess’s book club, because I need to talk about it. It is beautifully written, but there’s one bold choice that I just don’t get/appreciate. Without giving anything away, I’ll just say that a metaphor becomes literalized in a jarring way that doesn’t really add anything (for me).

I discovered this recipe for skillet enchiladas, and I will never roll enchiladas up and stick them into a hot oven again.

I was part of the judging for Prized Writing (and had another student win), got to celebrate the end of the year with my union, and had a productive end-of-year meeting with the Stand Up Club.

My body has not been helpful at all this week, but I’m back up to 45 minutes on my walk.

I also created a Bumble profile. I’m not really doing anything with it yet. I realize that as things open up, I’ll want to have someone to go to events with–and while I have lots of friends for that, it might be nice to have sex after an event every once in a while.

I’m still hesitant, though, about dating again. It’s often such a demoralizing hassle. And I don’t think I’m looking for anything long-term right now.

I’m pretty sure the writer, directors, and producers of Avenue 5 aren’t psychic. They’re probably just as surprised as anyone that their show, which was conceived in 2017 and premiered on January 19th, 2020 (HBO), is the perfect media mirror for pandemic America.

[Spoilers follow–most are revealed in the first episode. Since it’s a black comedy, you knowing a few things in advance shouldn’t spoil the enjoyment.]

Avenue 5 is a starship/cruise ship. In this future, NASA exists, but passengers have embarked on an eight-month journey on a private enterprise venture. Josh Gadd plays Herman Judd, owner of Judd Galaxy and a not-so-thinly-veiled parody of Trump. (He’s an idiot, he worships himself, he thinks all decorating should be gold, etc.)

The thirty second commercial for his cruise can be seen here, to give you an idea.

Unluckily for him, and perhaps even more unfortunately for his passengers, he’s aboard this ship when they get thrown off course. They quickly learn it’s going to take three and a half years to get home (not that they have enough supplies for that).

Can Captain Jordan Hatwal (Hugh Laurie) save them?

Absolutely not, and not because he’s an incompetent captain in the way that Judd is an incompetent businessman.

Hatwal is an actor, playing a captain, complete with toupee and fake accent. His job is to inspire confidence, which would be relatively easy if the ship were sailing smoothly. It’s much harder when reality and Judd’s antics work against him.

It was eerie to watch this last year, with the pandemic in full swing. When classes first went online in March, and we were all supposed to stay home, we thought it might be for a few weeks. Soon after, as we started to see the numbers, we realized that the end of isolation wasn’t in sight. I lost sleep thinking about everything I needed to prepare for my son in case I got sick, in case my damaged asthmatic lungs succumbed to the virus.

To say I empathized with the ship’s passengers is an understatement. There I was, in seclusion with my son, worried about dwindling supplies and dwindling sanity, watching confused and terrified and isolated people who didn’t know when or if they would make it.

Did that make the show any less funny? Nope. I love this show–it’s hilarious. The cast is amazing. My favorites are Zach Woods, as the nihilistic Head of Consumer Relations, and Himesh Patel, as the ship’s beleaguered stand-up comic.

My students are working on a time capsule assignment this term–if they had to pick one piece of media to put into a time capsule, what would it be? What captures us?

Here’s why Avenue 5 would go into mine.

1. The obvious comparison between the plight of the passengers and the plight of the world in the pandemic.
2. Judd as Trump, for the same reason. Take this Judd quote: “You know how you make things happen? You find someone who’ll say it can happen, and then you make them say it. That’s how they built the pyramids.” You can picture Trump saying that, right?
3. Because the characters have problems connecting with their friends and families back home, and because they can’t physically be with them and because of the lag. Watching Judd get frustrated when there’s a lag with his team back on Earth will be familiar to anyone who had to learn Zoom really fast and had to work with people who aren’t fast learners.
4. There’s a Karen. A literal Karen. Her name is Karen Kelly, in fact, which is funny in my house because of a particularly troublesome neighbor named Kelly. Is Karen Kelly everything a Karen meme promises? Yes. And more.
5. There’s mansplaining. And people who call it out.
6. Staff who actually know what they’re doing are constantly undermined by their asinine bosses, much as Dr. Fauci and all of the other scientists were undermined by Trump and the GOP.
7. The characters struggle, and relationships fall apart under the strain, as happened in quarantine.
8. Women of color have their work and victories appropriated by white men.
9. There’s classism.
10. There’s scapegoating.
11. Some of the passengers begin to think the ship’s tragedy is a hoax. Rather than listen to the (admittedly problematic) leaders, they decide they’re actually on Earth, on a prank show. Much as Boris Johnson went to a hospital and touched infected patients without using PPE to show he wasn’t “afraid” of Covid (and then got Covid and ended up in the ICU), some passengers try to prove their conspiracy theory by going out of the airlock. And they die.

Armando Iannucci‘s satire of human nature under stress is spot on.

My 304th class starts tomorrow. I tried to rest a bit this week, and I did pretty well. The you-must-be-productive-always voice in my head did pressure me to get some things done, like getting rid of some useless recipe books and filing some recipes I did want to keep, but plenty of things went uncleaned, unfiled, undone.

The Sacramento French Film Festival started, and most of it’s virtual, so I’ve already watched several of their films and shorts. I’ve also discovered Netflix’s great series Feel Good, finished Lupin, The Handmaid’s Tale, Kim’s Convenience, and The Kominsky Method, read a bunch of New Yorkers and sci-fi novels (the former on the hammock), watched Kevin Kline and Meryl Streep in Dear Elizabeth (a virtual staged reading), and decided that the music editor on Loki jumped the gun by using “Holding Out for Hero” in episode 2–it’s a boss-fight song, as we know from Shrek 2, so it needs to come later, when the first two lines will have a lot of significance in a confrontation that’s surely coming.

Dante and I also stumbled across a great pre-code comedy yesterday, Design for Living. A woman can’t choose between two suitors, so she lives with both of them, but they all keep violating their “gentlemen’s agreement” on “no sex.”

It’s been terribly hot (think 109), but I’ve managed to walk every day, even though it meant get up much earlier than I needed to on my week off.

I tried a few new recipes–one great curry, a nice asian sauteed spinach, and one so-so curry. I’ve got a new chicken recipe in the crock pot now. And this was also the week I had my first air-fried okra of the season.

Finally, I invited Facebook and Twitter to pressure me into buying a few wraps/kimonos. They obliged.

Happy Pride, Solstice, Juneteenth, and Father’s Day Weekend!

Here’s a picture of me, wanting to imitate my (Grand)Daddy and using Mr. Potato Head’s pipe to do so.

I told my son that I was going to try to take this week relatively off. He’s skeptical, since I’m a workaholic.

I told him I wanted to binge more, to read more, and to walk more.

“Well, there’s only so much walking you can do,” he said, acknowledging both my back and the epic heat we’re in for this week.

Yesterday, I got up early, started a podcast, and headed out. My back has been tolerating about 35 minutes of walking lately, but I decided to add on another 10.

This morning, I woke up with two new blisters on the ball of my left foot.

I still went for my walk, but it was slower, and I’m back down to 35 minutes.

The universe is clear: it wants me to die early, fat, and hypertensive.

Finals week is done–the grades are in!

One of my summer courses starts next week, but I’ve got the first four weeks set up on Canvas, SO I AM NOT DOING ANY SCHOOL WORK THIS WEEK!

(Except for answering the inevitable, inescapable emails.)

The quarter was fine–every time I teach the International Relations class in Spring, I have a student not do the work but expect to pass, because they’ve already graduated in spirit. And I always have a few squeak by. But there was also a wonderful surprise. The student who thought she graduated years ago turned out to be fantastic. And she said she was surprised by how helpful, practical, and entertaining my class was, saying she wished she had taken it before she started her career. I’m really glad that she got stuck with me when she had to come back.

In other news this week, I was exposed to someone with Covid, but I didn’t get it because of this cool thing called “vaccines.”

Dante’s gums are still sore, so the cooking experiments continue.

I had to spend about $500 to fix a power steering fluid leak, and I did a home test for sleep apnea.

What’s been good this week? Loki (the writer was channelling Douglas Adams in the first episode), Hacks, Kim’s Convenience, and reading The Children of Blood and Bone.

I’ll end up writing about Hacks at some point . . . or at least presenting on it at PCA.

One of my friends posted about pride, saying straight people have not been bullied for being straight. One of his friends then wrote several long comments about how critical race theory was going to lead to bullying of straight cis white men. And then there would be suicides cause we wouldn’t take it seriously.

Critical race theory is, at its most simplistic level, about bullying. About the ways in which POC have been bullied historically and about the ways in which bullying of POC has been codified into the law and our existing power structure.

It’s so telling that anytime we fight for gay rights, for women’s rights, for equal rights of any kind, privileged people think that what we want to do is to turn the tables, to reimpose a hierarchy, except with us at the top.

The problem is that their limited imagination can’t fathom a society free of sexism, racism, homophobia, classism . . .

But their nightmare of a society in which they’re oppressed is no match for our dream of one in which no one is.

I’ve just started venturing out a little bit–I’ve eaten inside a restaurant, and I’ve seen other friends who have been vaccinated.

It’s ironic that as safe as I’ve been this whole time, I had to get a Covid test after one of my friends tested positive. We still don’t know how she got it, and so far she’s fine. I’m guessing she was more vulnerable to infection than the rest of us because she got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which had lower protection against initial infection than the other vaccines.

My vaccine has kept me from getting infected, for example, even though we were in close contact for a few hours.

Watching so many Republicans refuse to get vaccinated, especially while countries like India and Brazil are in such danger, and while so many other people around the world don’t have access to vaccines, is infuriating. And I know it’s not just Republicans–there are conspiracy-theorists in all parties, but the Republicans were lied to by their leaders for so long that their reluctance to vaccinate has solidified into something dangerous to all of us–even knowing their leaders have been vaccinated can’t undo it.

Studies show that giving anti-vaxxers scientific information just makes the dig their heels in.

So what are we to do?

This American Life did a great episode recently, in which Republican strategist Frank Luntz (the guy who brought us manipulative political slanting like “the death tax”) worked to trump Trumpers’ concerns, using a focus group.

What he discovered has been reported elsewhere, but I highly recommend listening to the episode.

Despite all of our doubts, there was a way to reach them.

Bonus points if you can guess at which moment I screamed at an interviewee the most.

I’m exhausted. Looking back at this week, it’s not surprising. It’s the end of week 10, which means I’ve done a lot of grading and had some touching goodbyes with students I’ll miss.

I was also a scoring leader for the AWPE, which went well.

Everything was complicated by my back, which decided I wasn’t allowed to bend over for a couple of days. I’m happy with how my new stand-up came out, especially when I was hurting so much during the performance. My chiropractor was leaving town for a wedding the next day, but was willing to see me after the show, to make sure I didn’t have to wait until Monday to get fixed.

My students were all amazing; I’m so proud of them! You can watch the show here.

Dante ran AV, even though he was recovering from his surgery–I was expecting him to be able to handle more solid food by now, so my fridge is packed with stuff I have to eat by myself. Luckily, though, I always make too much of everything, so there’s plenty of brothy things. He has, though, made a list of what he’s craving, for when he can chew. Are we still watching The Simpsons all day long? Of course we are!

My union has overwhelmingly authorized its leadership to strike. We’re hoping this pushes the UC System to engage with our exceptionally reasonable demands (for example, we would like our junior lecturers to have the same job security adjuncts at California Community Colleges have). We don’t want to have to strike, but we also have gone over a year out of contract.

A wonderful friend, colleague, and mentor is retiring, and if I didn’t live so close to her, I’d be completely devastated.

There are also birthdays and virtual plays this week, and thanks to vaccines, I’ve been able to actually see and hug some of my dearest friends again.

I also had a bout of Spring Cleaning, so my living room got a deep clean and some minor redecoration. I’m absolutely awful at hanging pictures, and I have a shit ton of them, so my walls are decorative, but not stylish. I had someone hang some new movie star art–I thought my picture of Katharine Hepburn needed some friends, and to rehang some of the other pieces.

My crappy (but dreadfully expensive) Davis apartment will never look grown up, but at least my geeky things are displayed more artfully.

Finally, I have the happiest news! My doctor is still going to work a couple of days a week, so I don’t have to find a new GP! I’m ecstatic that Paul will still be leading the team.

I write this with The Simpsons on, as they’ve been for three days. When the boy or I are injured, this is what comforts us.

And the boy is injured. His wisdom teeth were taken out Friday morning. We had a few tough moments right after the surgery. He was nauseated and bleeding, and his body’s attempts to throw up meant a lot of blood went everywhere.

Things have settled down since, and we have a large stock of pudding, mashed potatoes, soups, and ice cream.

In other news, I’m proud of myself for diagnosing a weird car noise correctly, I watched (and loved) Ted Lasso, and I’m working as a scoring leader for this year’s AWPE.

I’ve also written a new stand-up routine, which I will premiere Tuesday night!