I’m still not very good at regular updates. I can’t seem to keep from writing 3 pages if I write a word, and it takes so long to put out three well-composed pages, that I never want to start. Go figure.
A few quick points to finish up my graduation story, and then I’m on to better things:
They don’t tell you your final grades until well after you walk. So it’s always a big surprise to find out if you got any honorariums. Remember that I was worried right up to the last about whether I was going to graduate at all, my scores in “Modern American Drama” were so bad. Judge to my surprise when the dean of students announced “Kyle French. Cum Laude.” I have the proofs here from photograds.com, cute little 1×2 inch spots on the order form, and looking at these pictures, I would say I was pretty surprised. Either that, or I always look like a dorky idiot in a cap and gown, (plus a hoodie).
Since then, I’ve gotten my final grades from the school. My total GPA was somewhere around 3.51 or .52, I forget which. Every class I ever took was an A or a B, except one. Modern American Drama. That professor gave me my first and only C-. The way I figure it, the only reason I didn’t get a D is because a D in your major means that you have to take the class again to graduate. I don’t like that professor any more, so my assumption is that, since he’s the only one who teaches that class, he gave me a C- because that was the lowest possible grade he could give me and still guarantee that he would never see me again. Had he been a nice guy and had I been an idiot who was trying his best and just not getting it, I’d be much more willing to believe that my non-failing grade was a sympathy score. But I don’t like that professor, so I’m going to assume that I got the grade I did because he’s not just a jerk, but a lazy jerk. It may be an opinion, but it’s a unanimous opinion.
After my parents left, my sister stayed (remember, she flowed in, instead of driving). The plan was for her to come up and spend a week hanging out with me, and then fly back. And so she did. It was a pretty uneventful week. Somebody has been living it up, and managed to spend the entire week in a semi-coma. She would come up for meals and a single trip to the mountains. Here are the pictures she took in NC. There would probably have been more, but somebody had a digital camera, and through various foibles, had managed not to bring either a memory card, or a USB cord. She had a limit of 20 pictures, and no cheap solutions for getting them off the camera until she got back to Oklahoma. Alas.
My dad wanted her to take pictures of my done up apartment, including new bed. However, Ces opted instead to take pictures of her present for me. A fish. Actually, she got me a tank and a filter, and some rocks, and a goldfish. The breed of fish she got is called a “black moor” which translates roughly as “Black Muslim.” Pretty special. Not only does it have a race, it comes with it’s own religion. Apparently, I have a very angry little goldfish, determined to fight back against the man. I would like to make it clear to any Muslims in my readership that I intended no slight or socio-political commentary when I named my little fish “sushi,” which translates roughly into “light snack.”
On Monday, while Ces was sleeping till some ungodly hour (like noon—everyone knows that God frowns greatly on noon), I went down to Wal-mart and bought some accessories for my new fish tank. A lid, for instance. I had two options: one with an incandescent lamp for $18 and one with a fluorescent lamp for $30 something. After much deliberation, I decided that , over a period of 30 years, I would probably save money on the fluorescent lamp. I’m a sucker for long-term savings, so I bought the expensive lid. I also bought two plants, an algae eater, and another black moor. I can’t tell male or female by looking at a fish, but my hope was that, with any luck, I’d get a matched pair, and within a few years I’d have a bunch of discontented little er fish. As yet however there have been no further breeding developments.
However, within a few days, the did determine that the algae eater invasion of their holy land was not to be tolerated, and I had to have a small funeral. What I think actually happened was that I got a species of fish that wasn’t particularly hardy. Or it could have been just that I got the poor thing from Wal-Mart, which is roughly the equivalent of saying he came from the SARS ward of the local Hong Kong hospital. Poor feller didn’t have a chance. I have since bought all my fish supplies from PetsMart, which is closer anyway.
I now have 2 goldfish, 3 plants, one window cleaner (a replacement for the algae eater), and a frog. I got the frog mostly because my mom couldn’t stop me. That and he was only like a dollar. He’s about an inch long, likes hiding in corners, and lets the fish eat all his food. It’s also really hard to tell if he’s alive because frogs don’t breathe underwater. They just sort of soak the O2 in through their skin. But when one of the fish mistakes him for the landscape and tries to nibble on him, you can tell he’s alive. Little water rocket, he is. And they don’t just taste like chicken, they are chicken. Anything and everything sends him hurtling into the hidey hole he’s made. Including food falling from the sky. On several occasions I’ve also seen at least two snails that I think were stowaways with the plants. But I haven’t seen them in over a week, so I don’t know what’s up with that.
Currently, however, my fish are sick. Some kind of fungus showed up (probably another result of buying your aquarium supplies at Wal-Mart) and put white flecks all over them, ate away at their fins and made them generally despondent. I gave them some really powerful medicine, and now I have happy fish with crew cuts and no white spots, and blue water.
Very slowly, I assure you, I am running out of news. Very soon I will be getting back to the really important things, like philosophy and poetry.
Thas all for today.
KB
neumatikos 