Cockroach Christmas.

Our favorite insect, blogging cockroach, skittered through the Red Clock Café a few minutes ago:

hi professor
sorry i haven t been around much
tommy s computer was broken
tommy is the boy whose computer i use
anyway computer trouble was only for starters
grand mere showed up from france
you know mom here at the house is french
well the very formidable grand mere blew in
complaining about everything americain
but grand mere took a spill in this fancy
cambridge food store that tries its best
so much to be french that julia child used
to shop there anyway grand mere is in hospital
and won t be out until christmas quel dommage

then we ve had snow snow snow and 2 out of 3
of tommy s christmas concerts were cancelled
that make money for his school quel dommage
which is actually a choir school where they sing
in latin if you want for weddings and funerals
quis a misericordia

well this is the first year everybody didn t
go to france for christmas er noel
so i was looking forward to grand mere s
french christmas cooking because if she s
anything like mom she s real sloppy
which is the first thing i look for in a cook

usually it s real quiet here during christmas
and i have a chance to meditate
on my having the transmigrated soul
of a composer and music professor
which is a little odd to be able to
remember but maybe i didn t get my
dose of the soup of forgetfulness
which proves that the cosmic cook
was probably a little too neat in my case

i have to admit that being a cockroach near harvard u
is pretty good comeuppance for a reborn
asshole prof at a 3rd rate state u
maybe it was 2nd rate but don t make me
a worm next time for bragging
you know i only wanted to get by last time
and what better way than cooking up
academic crap music that was only trendy
at 3rd rate state u s where the deans thought
they were being so avant garde
while they really were wearing no clothes
and no one would tell them
but at least i could hit on grad students
with nice legs
they had to have nice legs
and we got to the no clothes part asap
but now look at me
i ve got lots of legs these days

anyway i use this time to contemplate
how i got here and have resolved to be
a better sentient being if even an insect this time
because i now have an inkling of how
you can blow it if you re a jerk or even
if you re wasting your talents on useless crap
which i now think is a sure path to
invertebratedom in the next life

but this is all so hard to figure out and
it doesn t help that i only have 960 brain cells
although you would be surprised that
consciousness has less to do with the
hardware than you might imagine
so think about that the next time
you squash a cockroach
merry christmas

IN THE COMMENTS: Sir Archy -- our "Ghost of a Gentleman dead these 260 Years and more" -- stops by, with a response on the subject of reincarnation:

I may tell you that upon my Death I had expect'd to be sent to Heaven, or, Hell, or, perhaps, to have been Transmigrat'd into some other sentient Being, as the Hindoos teach and you have experienc'd. You may imagine my Mortification at finding myself remaining a disembody'd Spirit all these Years. I should have been happy even to have been plac'd in the Body of a miserable Cockroach, such as yourself. I endeavour'd, as much as any Sinner, to live a virtuous Life, and have thus always regarded my disembody'd Existence a most unfair Sentence; but, our Situations shew how hard 'tis to comprehend the Will of GOD, or, as some would have it, the Workings of the Universe. In this, the teachings of my Calvinistick Religion would seem to be vindicated; yet, as a Ghost, I may tell you that the Doctrines of neither Geneva, nor, Rome, nor, Benares, nor even, Lahsa are adequate to the Matter....

But this post is already long, so I must send you inside to read the rest.