The Cure for Pessimism

There's a women's health magazine in our basket upstairs in the bathroom. Don't as me how it got there or came to the top of the pile over the much more worthy Reminisce, Entertainment Weeklys -- lots of them, or the Utne Readers. But anyway its been open for two days to to an article entitled "The Cure for Pessimism." I haven't bothered reading past the first boring sentence, because its obvious that the REAL cure for pessimism is to be the girl in the picture who takes up a third of the page.

True, she is clearly one of the pessmists in question. Indeed, judging from the malaise on her face, she may even be the queen of all pessimists.

BUT Ahh -- to be a pessimist like her.

Skin lightly tanned, body perfectly proportioned, lanky, lean & atheletic. Gently wavy long brunette locks, just wisping annoyingly in her pessimistic vision...

Which, is the point of the whole magaine right? Even thought its called "SELF" -- it's really about selling the answer to all of our problems -- self-disatisfaction. Envy. Longing. Desire. Discontedness with our own flawed skin.

....

But in other news, I really do have the cure for pessimism.

It's the position I find myself in.

I've been, against my better judgement, entered into a:

KISS THE PIG contest.

and tonight someone will (not me) kiss a pig in the middle of a basketball game. But just the fact of being in the contest at all seems to render me the punchline of some extended karmic joke.

Little buckets with bad faculty pictures have been on plastic buckets sitting in the one classroom building on Malone's Campus. (Is it ironic that the only classroom building on campus also houses the "academic departments" called Business and Education?) As I pass students and colleagues in front of the buckets on the way to and from my classes, someone always, ALWAYS asks: Going to kiss a pig?

I know they are setting me up for some kind of zinger, you know if I was a genuinely funny guy, I should be able to hit that one out of the park. But I can't ever seem to imagine what the appropriate comeback is. So I always shrug and say:

"No."

Because I'm quite sure that a KISS THE PIG is actually:

an unpopularity contest....

vaguely veiled as a popularity contest?

Right? Because kissing the pig is a social taboo, isn't it? It's an levitical violation which you would only wish on those who you have at least some hidden angst toward?

But the complexity of the karmic joke is that -- I would kiss a pig on a minor dare. I don't find it repulsive at all.

And I'm not saying that I don't think I *couldn't* win an unpopularity contest. I'm sure I could if you lined up all the people who have ever not liked me. I'd be a bona fide contender.

But as it is, I'm pretty sure that more people at this particular midwestern college just could care less if I do or don't kiss a pig. I happen to know that I only entered the contest as a fill-in for a far more popular (not that I know who) faculty member than myself. SO, I entered the contest knowing that there's a good chance that I was just a placemarker. That some real targets had already been ascertained...

So, if the dogs' been biting, if the bee's been stinging, if you're feeling sad, simply remember that tonight, I'll be just one of several losers in a contest of vaguely resented faculty members, missing out on an opportunity to smooch a swine...