Reason #24501 why I love my university

Professors with doctorates in astrophysics who give their lectures on analyzing stellar wavelengths in rhyming tetrametre.

Riffing off of "Hiawatha", no less.

In a BRIAN! BLESSED! voice.

(no subject)

Don't hold back any joy -
the world is full of sadness,
full of anger and failure and people
bearing the hate of the universe
on shoulders they don't know can bear it,
full of shoulders accepting other people's hateburden.
Joy is not inappropriate.
It seems so, next to the weight
of our own regrets,
of other people's regrets,
of the world shaking itself to bits on television
(or perhaps not on television -
you are close to me this way though
I cannot see you
- everyone is closer now, closing in).
Joy does not diminish the import of sorrow.
The contrast is not an eclipse,
not an erasure.
Tell me your joys. Give them to the world.
Send them off
into the ether, into the inter, into the intra,
make them jubilant ones and zeroes riding wires
across the world,
make them exultant vibrations of air!


I just found myself apologizing for being happy about something I had every right to be happy about. For the love of Pete, self, I said to myself, don't do that.