The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle

Commentary on the Flux of Events

Yesterday I was doing my lecture at Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. During the Questions and Answers session following my spiel, a middle-aged chap of pleasant demeanor got up to remark that some civic group of his acquaintence was organizing a "Walk Your Child To School" day, and wasn't this a wonderful thing that we should all approve of and applaud. The idea here, you understand, was that children might walk to school more often if only their parents would give them a little therapeutic quality time hands-on encouragement.

The progressive class has become so pitiful, hasn't it?

It apparently hadn't occurred to this well-intentioned fellow that many, if not most, schools in America are sited in such remote suburban wastelands, along highway routes so dangerous and demoralizing, that even a well-intentioned politically progressive chap in the finest Birkenstocks could not walk his child to school under any circumstances.

I had to yell at the stupid fuck in front of the whole audience. I suppose that's the last time he'll try to brown-nose a visiting lecturer.

On the way out to South Bend, I enjoyed a four hour sojourn in the new Detroit Airport. (Apparently Northwest Airlines has merged with the Bulgarian National Airline. Every other flight is cancelled for a "mechanical" -- i.e. they scratch underbooked flights and pretend it's engine trouble). So the new Detroit airport has become the northern annex of the Bermuda Triangle. Things fly in but they don't fly out.

South Bend, when I finally got there, looked like it had been devoured by locusts.