*blush*

Note to other Professional Academic-Type People:

Just because you think the entire third floor of your building is empty because it is the week after grades were due and all the offices looked dark does not mean that it's OK to crank up the Tupac gangsta rap and bop around your office (and potentially the hallway) singing along with "Every other city we go/Every other videooooo/No matter where I go/I see the same ho-o-o-o". That might attract attention. It might attract enough attention to draw a small crowd to your door just in time to hear you rap out "I won't deny it/I'm a straight rider/You don't wanna fuck with meee-ee-ee." It probably doesn't matter that you think it's funny that an English teacher sees a metaphor between "writer" and "rider."

It will likely draw you some of that there negative attention. No one believes you when you say you're the Lyrical Gangsta, and no one will likely buy your excuse that you are tired from having done grades and are trying to catch some relief from your current work on your own professional portfolio. You can try the excuse that you are also doing research for a paper, which sometimes works, but probably won't, since they caught you dancing as well.

You will likely also not want to try to explain yourself by continuing to talk in Tupac, including saying things like "Only God can judge me now" or "the blind stares of a million pairs of eyes looking hard will never realize that they can't see THE P!!!" You could accuse them of "playa-hatin' 'cuz we be bailin' with Death Row." But that will likely make things worse. At that point, pull a Hail Mary (which is also a Tupac song) and try to explain that "Shorty wanna be a thug" is really a serious social drama that allows a unique look into the process of inner city demoralization (it so totally is). They'll be so impressed when you point out the song talks about the incoding and scripting roll the judicial system plays in jading the younger generation in a way that both startles the narrator, a jaded participant himself, and calls attention to the way in which the middle class is beginning to become absorbed into the process through culture. They'll be so impressed they'll leave.

As they're walking away, you can say, "Money over bitches" to their backs, and go back to bobbing your head, there, ragtop.

::smooths skirt::

Almost as embarassing as the time I got caught war whooping after I got hired for this job. But at that point in time, I didn't care, because it was such a punctuation mark to a few hard fought years.

-- DV, straight writer