No Wonder Nobody Takes Me Seriously - by Jon

At some point, I'm going to write some kind of Omnipost describing the events of my life over the past month. But not now, because I'm busy reading for a seminar class later this afternoon.

Short story, though: This past Saturday, I made my first foray into the world of legitimate academia by giving part of the Queen's University Archives' Annual Lecture, which took place in the form of social history tours of Kingston. I was giving the Black History tour, because the small body of work I've done on the black mythohistory of Queen's University apparently makes me qualified enough to talk to other people about the black history of Kingston during the 18th and 19th centuries.

(Admittedly, I was their second choice to give the tour... only the fact that the local expert on Kingston's Black history was unavailable thrust me into the limelight.)

At one point, I was walking the tour group around Kingston's City Hall because a rock concert that nobody had planned for was going on at City Hall, and forced us to detour. Bearing in mind that my tour group was largely consisted of cute old senior citizens, I find it particularly funny that I managed to nervously sputter out this gem:

"Sorry, I was hoping to talk to you from the steps of City Hall, but you know how rock concerts are always breaking out around here.

(*silence*)

(At this point, any reasonable person cuts their losses and gets on with what they have to say. But no, not me. I happen to have a 'beating dead horses' fetish)

"... but you know the old saying: You can plan a picnic... (*pause*)

... but you can't stop the rockin' "

And THAT, my friends, is why my career as an academic is either going to die in its infancy, or be TOTALLY AWESOME.