The lecture hall is freezing. Your professor’s voice is just as frigid. Worse, it’s monotone and emotionless. As she drones on about calculus and the upcoming exam, your mind wanders into a daydream.
Crystalline mountain springs feed a rolling stream teeming with salmon. A wide-open pasture of blooming colors and lofty green pine trees lays before you like a great green sheet. A horse grazes in a distant field beneath a vista of snow-capped peaks. It’s warm in the sunshine. You turn your face up to the sun, close your eyes and catch its rays on both cheeks like a cheery human sunflower. Everything looks and smells as if it were washed with Tide Spring Meadow detergent. This is your fantasy — you’ll do with it as you please. Your daydream has now completely hijacked your attention, so you jettison your last tether to reality and close your eyes.
But as you explore your outdoor make-believe, something pulls at your elbow. Your meadow is replaced with the slate gray of a table. “Someone wake him up,” you hear your professor say in an icy tone. A cold puddle of drool clings to your left wrist. You can feel stares on the back of your head.
Embarrassment washes over you. Your friend passes you a note. Scrawled in pencil, it reads:
Darts and Laurels
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee exploded on Thursday. Confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh have devolved into partisan posturing and political tennis as Democrats and Republicans bat attacks back and forth. Sen. Lindsey Graham all but yelled, “What you want to do is destroy this guy’s life, hold this seat open and hope you win in 2020.”
What Graham failed to remember was that it was Republicans, not Democrats, who prevented the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the court despite him being a moderate choice for the position. They were the ones who stalled until President Donald Trump took the White House to nominate their choice, Judge Neil Gorsuch.
Let’s get it over with. A dart to Kavanaugh for his Trumpian loss of composure, calling his own confirmation hearing a “national disgrace.” Twin darts to Sens. Ted Cruz and Graham for making this process so difficult and partisan. We could have an independent investigation into the matter and be done with it. A sympathetic laurel to Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her and gave four hours of testimony about the alleged assault and her life. We hope no more women will endure what Ford did Thursday.
In other news, Tesla C.E.O. Elon Musk is getting sued because of a tweet. It seems to be happening a lot these days. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed the suit Thursday, and it alleges that Musk lied to the public when he said he had the funds to take Tesla private at $420 per share.
The lawsuit is long and full of legal jargon about finance and investors. You don’t really need to know all that stuff. What you need to know is that, according to the lawsuit, Musk rounded that number up to 420 after his girlfriend, the singer-songwriter Grimes, told him that it would be funny to cannabis smokers. This is why we don’t own Tesla stock. “420 blaze it” is not sound financial advice. We are, however, looking forward to Elon’s weed-powered SUV coming out in 2020.
So many darts to Musk for trying to make a lame joke that fell flat. Oh, and another dart for allegedly lying to the public about his stock prices. A laurel to his girlfriend for giving us all a good, hearty, ironic laugh.
The last round of pure laurels is reserved for Eric Johnson, 47, who police say stole underwear from Walmart and tried to sneak bath salts into Alachua County Jail Wednesday. We can’t endorse that behavior, but we can definitely award laurels for more crime-related comedy. Maybe Johnson and Musk should get together and collaborate on the nation’s next fleet of drug-powered vehicles.
