2002-05-12 - 11:16 a.m.

I come before you, noble savages, as a Bachelor of the Arts.

At least in the technical sense. They have yet to hand me my catskin and demand my final sheaf of irrelevant paperwork, but for all intents and purposes I am done, completed, finito,no ms, out the door, on my last legs, given my walking papers, born free, facing the setting sun with my ramblin' boots on and goin' down to that Old Man River.

I've served my term, performed my amazing and astonishing repertoire of dazzling tricks, left the audience gasping for more, and retired backstage to have a sloe gin fizz and sign a few autographs.

I've run up the curtain and gone to meet my maker. I've joined the bleedin' choir invisible. If I wasn't nailed to my perch I'd be pushing up the daisies.

Color me gone.

...

But not really. I'll be going through the traditional mechanisms of graduation and strange heathen ceremonies and darksome rituals and rousing sing-a-longs of graduation, but it's not as if I plan on GOING anywhere for a year or so. I've got not one but TWO comfortable jobs here on the grounds of this hallowed home of edutainment, and a summer's worth of cheap housing.

Plus the lovely and talented Julieclipse will be spending another year enmeshed in the toiling coils of learning, so I might as well stick around. I plan on getting a one-year teaching certification and taking advantage of the massive financial carrots they're offering to all us foolish bunnies willing to put life, limb and sanity on the line teaching high schoolers about James K. Polk, James Watt, Jesse James, King James, and Larry King. The stalwart Actionhero has warned me that I might want to follow in his footsteps and teach a class full of sexy and rebellious recidivists at the local Adult High School. I think I can handle the kids, myself. Sure, I can't curse as colorfully as I normally like to when teaching American history (on the administration of Andrew Jackson, for instance), and I'll probably want to wear some Kevlar body armor, depending on where I am, but at least I can dazzle them by being wittier than anyone they watch on television. And if I can pull their minds out of TV Land for even a single instant of shining comprehension ... I'll own their SOULS. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

And people say teachers get no job satisfaction.

...

Oi, children, that baccalaureate was a thing of rare beauty and grace. If only you could have seen me deftly flicking aside bullet points, snapping arrows out of the air, and crushing the stones hurled from the slings of outrageous fortune in my bare hands. I left them lying in pools of their own ichor and strode out from that room of masks and ice water secure in the knowledge that I had made the world a better place.

Of course, a large portion of my heady success could conceivably be attributed to the fact that they all agreed with my thesis and enjoyed the writing immensely, and so did not ask any actual questions ABOUT my thesis. For form's sake, they still had to ask questions, so I was asked about:

• Newspaper layout, and how it relates to the future of electronic media. (It's important. Layout is more than half of how a newspaper is understood, and the advent of electronic archives will kill a large portion of history.)

• Hearst as a socialist. (He was a socialist in his youth, and advocated public ownership of everything and the aboltiion of trusts. Then he stopped trusting people.)

• Hearst and the Jews. (He hired many of them, and men such as Edmond Coblentz and Solomon Carvalho were dear and trusted friends. But he had an ingrained rich white man's fear of the Jewish Conspiracy, whatever it might be.)

• Hearst and the blacks. (He did not meet many and did not mention them often. They were an underclass beneath his radar.)

• Hearst and the Italians. (Um ... he had a reporter named D'Annunzio on staff, and during the '30s he paid Mussolini to write guest columns for him ...)

• Hearst and the South. (He got there late and spent his time appealing to the phenomenally large Democratic bloc.)

• Hearst and the Mexicans. (Dusky savages.)

• What Hearst REALLY thought about the Chinese. (He didn't like them.)

• Hearst at Harvard (He had a pet alligator named "Champagne Charlie" and when it died he stuffed it and used it for a hatrack ...)

• Hearst and the Eastern intellectual establishment. (He was always bitter about the fact that he could never be part of that most fundamental conspiracy, and spent his time tearing them down.)

• Where the English got their Krupp guns. (From Krupp Industries. Germany made the only good guns available.)

• The French Radical party. (Were French.)

• Hearst and World War II. (He was in favor of Hitler's government early in the '30s, but he got nervous about the racist rhetoric around '33, and tried to straighten Hitler out with a man-to-man talk. It didn't take, and Hearst turned against Germany early.)

• Whether I thought World War I was preventable. (Yes. If everyone wasn't insane.)

It was a very light-hearted affair. Frankly, a part of me wishes I had come up with something really bold and daring and made the battle more pitched, more bloody and more thrilling. Maybe I could've written about how Woodrow Wilson was a rampantly sadomasochistic homosexual. Or a "What If?" story on the Asian nations sweeping Europe and America before them in all-out war and dominating the world. Something sexy. Put a little gore on the walls.

Naaahhhh.

Well, that's where I've been for the past few weeks. Finishing the job. Ending the contract. Wrapping up the loose ends. Squaring the circle. Tightening the knots. Righting the wrongs. Ending the tyranny. Introducing folkdancing.

And now that New College is over with ... what then, Mr. Wheel?

I've meant to write up some more of my fabulous theories, such as my Theory on Why Everything is a Conspiracy, and my Special Theory on Baseball Caps and Music.

After Free Comic Book Day last week, I meant to write something charming about comics. But all that for later.

Thinking about my thesis has made me tired again. I think I'll continue catching up on four years' worth of rest.

Adieu.

- Wheel Triumphant

*****

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