Happy first week of school! I need a nap.

"Hey, teacher: leave them kids alone!" Hurtful.

Happy first week of school to all and to all a good night!

The first week of school is always filled with fun, energy, excitement, exhilaration, surprises and goodwill by the bucketload.

It's also exhausting. For students and instructors alike, it's like discovering a gigantic boulder and realizing that you have until April to push it to the top of a mountain. You'd better keep pushing that sucker, or it'll roll over you and everyone else on its way back down.

This is the one week of the year that I have trouble sleeping and mostly get by on adrenaline, Tim Hortons coffee, and pluck. Like a kid who can't sleep the night before Christmas, I think about my classes, and invariably concentrate on the things that could - or did - go wrong. Not exactly "visions of sugar plums dancing," but what are ya gonna do?

If instructors have opening-week jitters, I'm sure it's nothing compare to what students must feel. For many it's not just the first week of college, it's the first week of a turning point in their lives. 

If that's not enough pressure: first week also means that there are long lineups at the bookstore and Student Services Centre - made worse this year by a recurring power outage - the long wait for that student loan to be deposited into the bank account, and the stress of finding your classrooms and meeting 100 new best friends.

To help ease our first-year students' transition into their new home away from home, today we brought in four former Creative Communications students from last year's graduating class (one per major: advertising, PR, journalism, and broadcast) for a "success seminar." It warmed my heart to see these freshly minted professionals speaking with confidence, style, grace, and class and dispensing advice like old pros.

I was also delighted to see our new first-year students asking thoughtful questions at the seminar and mingling with our distinguished speakers afterward; it was like having a class reunion on the third day of school.

I shouldn't be, but every year I'm surprised that I've lucked out again and got some great students: interesting, smart, outspoken, idealistic, and eccentric: the recipe for classroom success. Creation, cooperation, and collaboration: here we come.

But first: I need to lie down.

"I can tell that we are going to be friends." Better.

Cobain launches new career as rapper in Guitar Hero 5

Cobain in Guitar Hero. Heroin sold separately.

Courtney gives love a bad name.

At a time when the Beatles' legacy is being handled with care by Ringo, Paul, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, Nirvana's legacy is being slowly but surely sold out.

In just a matter of days, the Beatles' first foray into videogames comes out with the release of The Beatles: Rock Band - the New York Times reports on the great care and time it took to "recreate and re-imagine...not just stepping stones in the career of a band but transformational shifts in the history of popular music."

Meanwhile, Courtney Love has sold Cobain's name, likeness, and songs to Guitar Hero, but apparently the deal didn't come with a guarantee that Guitar Hero honor so much as a whiff of the importance and seriousness with which Cobain regarded his music.

Rolling Stone says there's blame to go around:

"Not only did Cobain’s widow Courtney Love have to sign off on behalf of the estate, so did former drummer Dave Grohl and Primary Wave Publishing, which administers the Nirvana catalog."

It's doubtful that Cobain, who wrote "Rape Me," would approve of this abomination, which re-imagines him as Britney Spears, singing the hits of Billy Idol, Bon Jovi, Bush, and Flavor Flav-era Public Enemy, hip-hop moves and all.

Equally scary is that Johnny Cash apparently makes an appearance in the game. Whether he's as adept a rapper as Cobain is anyone's guess.

Update:

On the way home today, not moments after publishing this post, I ran across this forlorn Kurt Cobain action figure in the window of Red River Book Shop along with his plea to "Stop downloading. Buy my CD."

The man has spoken.

Mini Kurt Cobain in the window of the Red River Book Shop. Poor feller.

Update - Sept. 23:

Did mini Kurt Cobain break this TV? If not, he certainly saw who did...