Thursday, December 29, 2011

A Big Thirsty for Fantastical Dreamers.


Of course I'm a teacher of 16 gauge railroading.

But if there were no such field,
I would have been
an actor.

Just look at my visage!

Q: If not a proffie,
what/who would you be?



34 comments:

  1. Robbing/demolishing banks with C-4.

    Building atom bombs for the Cubans.

    Selling weapons to unstable third-world countries.

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  2. I would be on the radio!

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  3. I would have liked to have been a gadfly.

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  4. I would be making more money.

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  5. If I hadn't become a prof, I would have been a simple adjunct. Oh, wait....

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  6. probably back at my old job in IT, wondering if I should have quit to become a proffie.

    or running a pet store.

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  7. I'd be consulting in the same field (more than I currently do).

    If not in this field at all, I'd probably run a micro brewery. If I ever bail on this, the micro brewery sounds fun. Beer sales continue to do well even when the economy's in the shitter.

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  8. If I hadn't been an astronomer, I would have been a vertebrate paleontologist. I made the decision to switch fields when I turned five years old. It was the right decision, since the field work in paleontology is digging in dirt, whereas the field work in astronomy is staying up all night, which I found I was very good at, when I was a teenager.

    When I was a freshperson, I also thought of becoming a mathematician. I resisted the temptation, though: I'd already told everyone I was going to become an astronomer.

    Come to think of it, many of the jobs in all these fields are as university professors. The correct answer to your question therefore is probably that if I hadn't become a proffie, I would have become a perpetual postdoc.

    I was going to post on the recent thread on nightmares that mine is that I'm a postdoc again, living like a salesman only on commission, supported only by soft money, unable to see even a year into the future. Any silverback who says one's postdoc years are the best years of one's career doesn't have a good memory of the chronic anxiety, or is so old, any postdoctoral work they ever did was well before 1970, when most people got t-t assistant professorships straight out of grad school. Now -that- is what's unheard-of, whereas multiple postdocs ending quite possibly with only a handshake are the norm. Gee, isn't there supposed to be progress in science?

    Brian May could say that instead of becoming an astronomer (specializing in observing the Zodiacal Light) he'd become an international rock star. I could never do that: when I play guitar in front of an audience of screaming fans, they're screaming for a reason.

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  9. I'd be helping Cranky at the microbrewery. Or a travel writer. Or field ornithologist. Or I would have tried to get hired at one of the Legoland parks making large models.

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  10. Fiction writer, but with a trust fund. The lack of which is why I became a professor.

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  11. I don't know what I WOULD have been--but I know what I would have LIKED to have been. A songwriter for Broadway musicals and commercials. Or a priest.

    If I had all the money in the world, what I would do is just be a student for the rest of my life. I could get several more doctorates before I die. I'd be completely harmless, as I would pay my own way and wouldn't expect or need a job at the end.

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  12. And I'd discuss the holy books with the learned men, several hours every day. That would be the sweetest thing of all.

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  13. You seriously in, Dr. Lemurpants? I can imagine a bunch of CM inspired recipes. 
    Dr. Cranky's Up A Kriek
    Merely (academic) Malt
    Lemur's Lager Lite
    Beaker Ben's Bitchin Bock
    Archie's Arsekickin Ale
    And everyone's fave...Stella & Strelnikov Stout

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  14. I'd be a technical writer. It was either that or be an architect, and seeing as architecture jobs are currently in the terlet due to the economy, it looks like I made the right choice.

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  15. @Dr. Cranky:
    mine's a pint of Real Goddamned Moderator!

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  16. Well, I'd still be broke, but I'd be playing rhythm guitar in a fourth-rate rock and roll band, doing covers. At the very least, I'd be having fun an hour a week up on stage. Assuming no one was throwing bottles at the band--or at the very least, that there was chicken wire (a la Blues Brothers) between the band and them!

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  17. A chef. I daydream about what I'll do if the job market doesn't pan out, and it usually involves opening a small cafe where I spend all day tinkering in the kitchen. Of course, that dream would never pay off those student loans.

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  18. AA: Can I sign up to be a bouncer for your band?

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  19. Mine is somewhere between AA and Curmudgeon. Unfortunately, those are mutually exclusive jobs unless you cook at a diner that only serves breakfast and lunch.

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  20. Architectural preserver, curator, Latin teacher, blimp pilot.

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  21. Landscape architect or dog trainer. Plants and dogs are so much more trainable than undergraduates.

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  22. Middle Aged and Morose--you can so be a bouncer for my band! We'll supply you with brass knuckles, black leather and some metal studded accessories. We play hard rock and metal, by the way, and I play a mean Les Paul knockoff as an homage to Slash.....

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  23. I'm sure that whatever I was doing I'd wish I was doing something else. Right now in my 'field' I'd like any job where I got to go outside regularly, owning a record store, owning a bar, or, shit, I'd just settle for drinking at a bar.

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  24. Can i be keyboards in AAs band? And novelist, sharing F&T''s trust fund.

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  25. Merely you can be keyboards, and I hope you're willing to share F & T's trust fund! Our first gig is at the Watering Hole Bar in East Bumble$*XK, North Dakota. Dress rock and roll.

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  26. A whitewater kayaking guide.

    However, as I approach 40, I realize that none of the whitewater kayaking outfits I'm familiar with had guides over the age of 40. What do these guides do after they 'get old'? Fuck if I know.

    But, it would have been bliss for those 10-15 years.

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  27. "What do these guides do after they 'get old'? Fuck if I know."

    They teach new guides while saying the Danny Glover line: "I'm gettin' to old for this kinda shit..."

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  28. In this fantasy, my trust fund is big enough for all of you. We live in Yaddo-like cottages at a vast retreat designed by Dr. Mindbender and Finnfan. Merely and I write. On the grounds, we have a big soundproofed room for the band to practice (I get to be a backup singer in exchange for my filthy riches -- yes, I bought my way into the band). We keep Bubba in a spacious cage with his own hamster-nanny tending to him. Strel has his own bunker, bomb-building room, and foxholes, at the edge of the grounds. Darla's in charge of the radio station, and Fab hangs around the band and the on-site bar, gossiping while Prof. Terguson pounds back pint after pint. Beaker Ben prints money on the in-house printing press. AdjunctSlave is free at last. EC1 and R&orG run the map room. Middle-Aged and Morose tends the petting zoo. Besides my trust fund, we live off of the brewery run by Dr. Cranky and Dr. Lemurpants. Frod and Anteater are our Renaissance men. There's a Perpetual University of Utopia nearby, where Stella is enrolled forever and Sultans hangs out at the Divinity School. Curmudgeon and introvert cook for us all, except when they don't want to, and introvert has dinner off for band practice. Professor Poopiehead leads senior citizens on rafting tours just outside the grounds. Philip makes sure our race perpetuates itself. Yaro occasionally appears to deliver inspiring oratory. And we all live happily ever after.

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  29. Still a starving artist/musician. No. Big. Diff.

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