The Junkyard Dog Goes Up Against TeePaw

Or, We May Need to Learn How To Play With the Cards We've Got

Things have been slow at BigU.

The students have a nice break from Christmas until the day after MLK day when spring semester begins.

Maybe OurProvost has finally found the time in his busy schedule to make his trip to Italy?

Perhaps OurLeader has been off at the NCAA meeting with his old friend Myles Brand?

Myles, you will recall, was the president at the University of Indiana where he famously had a run in with Bobby Knight. He then scored big with a talk on "Academics First: Reforming Intercollegiate Athletics" and was rewarded for this Oscar worthy performance by the NCAA, who appointed him president. He now makes an obscene amount of money and specializes in gross generalizations about mens sana in corpore sano. Professor Margaret Soltan blogged from Nashville on Higher Ed in a well-worth reading series of posts about the joke that is the NCAA, including a few choice remarks about Myles. But I digress...

Mr. B's friends have been razzing him about the lack of posts and Mrs. B. even gave him custom Bonzo t-shirts to try to shake him out of his lethargy. But nothing does this more effectively than new nonsense from Morrill Hall or from the State capitol.


You will recall that OurLeader was complaining to his friends at the Strib prior to the Christmas break about the tin cup approach to higher education funding. Therein he threatened junk-yard dog behavior.


Our governor, Tim Pawlenty (fondly known in these parts as TeePaw) has been busy in New Hampshire with his campaign to be John McCain's running mate. But he is now back in the state and has thrown the junk yard dog a hamburger laced with cyanide.


You see we have some bridges in Minnesota that need fixing and much of the budget is devoted to that task. Consequently the ambitious aspirations of OurLeader for megabucks have been slashed by the guv.

One might think that the Democrats would try to save the University's butt, but OurLeader saw fit to stiff labor recently and the labor oriented Dems may not forget this. For the relatively small amount of money that a decent settlement would have taken, the behavior of OurLeader seems even more foolish in retrospect.


I think the money devoted to Driven to Distraction would have more than covered it. But I guess that is why OurLeader is paid the big bucks. It will be interesting to see how this all works out. But based on what happened last time in his bug tussle with the guv, OurLeader might want to count all his piecesparts. As Jim Croce put it:


Well the two men took to fightin'
And when they pulled them from the floor,
Leroy looked like a jigsaw puzzle
With a couple of pieces gone.

And its bad, bad Leroy Brown
The baddest man in the whole damn town.
Badder than old King Kong
And meaner than a junkyard dog


Mr. and Mrs. B. are off to SF tomorrow to see AlexBonzo prior to the start of Spring Semester at BigU: kick-off time = the day after MLK day. Because it is MacWorld in SF we have had to go way downscale and are not even certain of internet connections.


Ciao, Bonzo