Woe is education: first wacky low-rez MFA programs and now transponders in lieu of intra-student, inter-classroom exchanges. Had a gig this AM at Middling City U documenting a newfangled thing that is like a remote control but allows students sitting in mega-lecture halls to point them at receptors on walls and answer impromptu or lesser-promptu quizzes.
I happened to know a girl sitting in the front row, a would-be photog who would follow me around a bit at rock extravaganzas and the like and ask several questions. I always gave much time to the learning with questions, especially the girls and my wisest words were to just keep shooting pictures and to get business cards and pass them out like mad fiends. So this girl, Emilee, is sitting there and complaining bitterly about the remote answering device. She said Middling City U wants to pretend you're not just a number and then this. She showed me the back of the device (that the students had to pay for - $30 with a $20 mail-in rebate) and how the number on it was registered to her so if she or I went nuts and started pressing madly it would record that Emilee suddenly had answering anxiety or inappropriate transponder behaviour and pressed madly. The prof was a bit awkward (NB: he's the showman type of teacher, all big gestures and phrases he's got down from years of the same materials . . . basically, he's accustomed to being the genius in the room) when I asked to make some pictures of him before the lecture holding the dang thang. I did after his hemming, hawwing. There were a few areas of buzzing and tittering in the gigantic hall and I feared I'd lose his concentration and kept shooting, giving him a bit of direction. So I'm done, the lecture is underway and Professor Showman announces that he'll be showing some slides and the show begins. Some of the slides are quite old, bad, out of focus. Suddenly there's one up of a bog person. Cannot recall if I've blogged about the bog people, the people who were murdered and who were tossed into bogs and preserved quite well and are not hanging about in Pittsburgh's Hall of Oddities. So then there's another slide, one of the burbling tarpits in L.A. Suddenly my pal Emilee is waving her arms as if her transponder is shocking her and Professor Showman finally sees her in the darkness. Not knowing her name amongst the print-out list of perhaps hundreds of names, he offers up a very friendly Yes. . . and Emilee blurts out a tale.
I was just there, at the tarpits last week and I can report that they are still active and I watched two pigeons die an untimely death.
I can see the face of Professor Showman change a bit and then he blurts out a generic Well, thanks for sharing and moves along to the other side of the lecture hall, not wishing to share his stage with such spunk.
I thought about saying bye to Emilee but thought You know she just might, being so jaded with this scene, use this as an op to blurt out who in hell knows. So I planned my exit strategy and drifted away, drifted into the abstract embrace of deadlines and such.

Such love.