In a nice bit of symmetry, this happened today.

Me: Hi, um...I hate to bring the room down, but I have a somewhat less light-hearted question. In my copy of The Handmaid's Tale, in the back, there's an interview with you, in which you say, essentially, if you wanted to take over the country, you would claim to have the word of God.

Ms. Margaret Atwood: Of course!

Me: So, I was wondering if you had anything to say about our current administration's [laughter, applause] relationship with religion?

Again, I thought I might throw up and/or pass out, but thankfully, neither happened. And after meandering through a bit of history, Ms. Atwood finished her answer with the advice that if we didn't start standing up for ourselves we were really going to end up "in the soup." She was on campus to discuss The Penelopiad and the myth project (and how she got roped into it one morning before she'd had a chance to have her coffee) and she told stories about drinking and the Bible and dozens of other things in this weird, flat voice with unexpected intonations. Oh, and she's funny! This comes as less of a surprise than the fact that Salman Rushdie is funny, but still, she's funnier than I expected. I may have to look up more of her poetry. Apparently she has one called Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing. And I particularly liked this one that she read tonight:

Siren Song
This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who had heard it
is dead, and the others can’t remember.
Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?
I don’t enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
with these two feathery maniacs,
I don’t enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

Also today I attended my first class - an interdisciplinary seminar on human rights. I was a bit daunted at first, because it's scheduled for three hours. I forget, sometimes, that not all classes feature a prof writing Greek letters and equations on a white board. A three hour discussion is much more stomachable. And, I already have a big dork crush on one of the profs. He's in the poli sci department, which is apparently beefing up its stats, and he teaches some of the higher level courses. So I walked out with him after class, discussing the application of various models for predicting which animals will mate to conflict models attempting to predict which groups will have violent conflicts. I hope I didn't gush too much.

Also this morning my roommate's boyfriend discovered that Cleo (the cat) left us a little present on the hearth (of the dead rodent variety). Given that I let her in before going to bed and I'm fairly certain her mouth was empty at the time, we're facing the potential reality of a mouse problem. So I e-mailed Dad for advice (shocker) and he ended his reply thusly, "This is guaranteed not to let them die in the walls, but could provide Cleo with some messy fun. Finding a tortured mouse stuck to the trap is a bit traumatic. Sucks to be toward the bottom of the Kingdom!"