Wisconsin, you've gone too far.

Really? Really, Wisconsin? I'm resigned to the 6-month winters. I'm resigned to the weeks when the wind chill dips to -30. I'm resigned to the fact that the University will never, ever close for the cold, and that when the public schools are closed and the undergraduates decide to just skip class, I will always, always have to bundle up and wait for the buses (which are running late, but of course you can't count on that, so just when the weather is the worst, you have to stand around outside, not moving, blasted by wind, your nose hairs, eyelashes, and contact lenses freezing, for longer than when it's nice out) and trudge down the icy wind tunnel that is N. Park St. and spend my day in a building shaped like a parking garage. This is the price of being a grad student in Wisconsin. Fine.

But when I put up with all of this, early in the morning, and I arrive at HCW *before* having my coffee, and I shed my layers and begin the slow process of bringing feeling back into all of my exposed skin for a long day of talking about books, I do NOT appreciate...

A. Fucking. Fire. Drill.

A 9:15 in the morning fire drill. With the wind chills outside at -28. Yep. I expected to get bent over, Wisconsin; I just didn't expect to get bent over this hard.

Taking a hard left here, the season finale of Lost is re-airing right now, in anticipation of the season premiere tomorrow night. They're trying to attract new viewers, which is a difficult thing to do with a continuous narrative. Close to 75 episodes have already been aired that build secrets and revelations on top of the ones that came before. To solve this problem, it seems, the producers (stand-ins? I think the real ones are on the strike) are re-airing this one 2-hour episode with a little scroll bar along the bottom that fills in the background. So, while Charlie's being tortured in the Looking Glass, the scroll bar reads: Charlie is a former rock star who's being tortured by the Looking Glass sisters because he's trying to un-jam the blocking frequency of the Others, but he already knows he's going to die because of Desmond's prophecy that he will die trying to save Claire, who's the blonde Aussie chick with the baby.

Seriously? This can't be working for people. Four things in that one convoluted sentence alone need explaining to even make sense. It's like watching a crazy-ass pop-up video, only you have to remember all the seemingly unrelated information and plug it together. Also, there's so much reading it's hard to follow what's going on in the actual episode. I want more Lost viewers as much as the next guy, but... um. There are a bajillion characters. Give or take umpteen.

OMG LOST PREMIERE TOMORROW.

And because I guess I'm just going errata-style here: While trudging up the walk to my apartment tonight, a helicopter with a searchlight flew overhead. I gotta say... I really hope they find who they're looking for. I'm pretty fucking terrified of anybody bad-ass to go on the lam in -30 wind chills. That's beyond bad-ass.

Moving on again: I love Prof. S. And I love his class. Most things about it. But one of the things I love (even though it's not actually lovable) is the way he doesn't actually answer questions.

Me: Prof. S., I have a somewhat historical-contextual question about the novel, that might be open to interpretation but that I'm just looking for some of your insight on. It's X.
Prof. S.: When I was a boy, my dad gave me a $2 bill and I still have it.
....
Prof. S.: So, any thoughts on an unrelated topic?

It's kinda awesome. Seriously.
It's gonna be a good semester. I think I'm figuring out how to do this grad school thing. Slowly.