I, Muehlenhaus. U, Riedermaus.

I am not going to say anything about the strike, because if I say anything I will certainly tick off somebody, and I'm getting too old to collect new enemies. Hell, I'm still trying to shake all of the old ones I have accumulated, starting back in first grade when I switched from the Howard Gnesen club to the Marxhausen Club and was instantly ostracized by the kids that claimed Hartley Field as their stomping grounds. I still shudder whenever I drive by that patch of mosquito infested swamp back in hills of Greater Duluth.

So I am not going to say that the Hunger Strike is completely demeaning of hunger strikes. I am not going to say that I think the graduate students and others who are on Hunger Strike are a bunch of egotistical, self-righteous attention addicts. I am not going to say that several students in my department seem to have a Jesus complex, and that I wouldn't put it past them to light themselves on fire over something as mundane as the closing of their favorite Marxist bookstore, if they believed it would get them attention as completely selfless individuals, which of course they obviously are not. I am not going to say that I am extremely glad I stood my ground and was not for grad student unionization, or I am sure that we would have been on strike now for no reason other than the same grad students that are up in arms right now about another union's strike would love to strike themselves. And finally, I am not going to say that I find it really ridiculous that some of the most acerbic, condescending, and all around snobby, Gucci-Marxist professors and grad students that I have witnessed first-hand treating our clerical staff like undeserving serfs are the ones that are now on the front line of this injustice. If the Snobs for Striking contingent would just start interacting with our university staff in a humane and friendly manner on a regular basis, and stop hyperventilating about themselves like a troupe of narcissists, the staff wouldn't mind getting paid so little, because their jobs would be so much more pleasant. But I'm not going to say that. And I didn't.

Ugh.

I can't wait to graduate. I fear the Social Science Tower is actually bedlam. Someone should probably lock us all in there and throw away the key. Even though I don't see myself as half as bad as some of my grad school colleagues, I probably am and deserve to be locked up too!

But I didn't say that; so don't even try it.

Labels: university of minnesota afscme strike