The usually interminable and deathly boring meeting of administrators we have every Tuesday was blissfully cut short to enable everybody to listen to the verdict in the Chauvin trial. Apparently, the verdict is coming in within the half hour.

I decided to embrace my newfound identity as a conservative, which, for me, means finding a reading list and ploughing through it. In my searches for lists, I have come across this brilliant syllabus for a course titled “Conservatism in America” by a professor at Appalachian State University.

You can see this is a great prof by looking at how many office hours he has and when they are scheduled. Appalachian State had really good professors in the Humanities. There’s something deeply great about their hiring policy.

The book club wants to read Shakespeare. It’s OK, I like Shakespeare. The only problem is that they’ve chosen the single play of his that I can’t stand. It’s The Tempest. Nothing whatsoever wrong with it, except that I’m in Hispanic Studies, which means that I’ve been fucked in every orifice by the postcolonial readings of this poor play. If there was ever a way to spoil Shakespeare for people, it’s this kind of incessant clobbering over the head with a single, very politicized reading.

The reason why Dawkins’s 1996 award was taken away is that a couple of days ago he tweeted that people get hounded if they don’t believe that transwomen are literally women. And he immediately got hounded for making that observation.

I know that Dawkins is annoying but that’s not the point. This isn’t about trans issues either. We are now in a situation where stating facts of objective reality is not allowed if these facts contradict the dogma. The facts range from “2+2=4” to “Officer Sicknick died of a stroke.”

Folks, I can’t recommend my pre-birthday ritual strongly enough. It took a bit of shuffling things around but spending an entire week doing nothing but stuff that I enjoy is totally worth it. I feel renewed, refreshed, rejuvenated, and deeply at peace.

You don’t have to wait for your birthday. Do it as “a celebration of spring” ritual. All you need to do is make a list of everything you really enjoy and plan for how you’ll fit it into a week’s time.