Off to ETS and SBL

It's that time of year again: airports, bookstalls, chatting, papers, coffee, receptions, renewing friendships, and begging publishers to give me at least five minutes of their time so I can sell them my latest project, "Shakespeare's use of the semi-colon and its impact upon the grammar of the KJV".

I will be flying out on my birthday to Boston. So remember, should you see Michael Bird then (a) give him a hug and pinch his cheeks and say "Ooh what a cute little boy you're growing into, happy birthday Mikie", (b) buy him lunch with salad, steak, and lobster, (c) buy him a book from a European publisher, (d) buy him a glass of imported Aussie red wine at a nice restaurant, (e) take him to a "football" game featuring the Greenbay packers [I use the term "football" rather loosely here since it is played by a bunch of pillow biting nancy boys]; (f) buy a copy of all of the books he's written and get him to autograph them as to increase their resale value on e-bay; (g) attend his two ETS papers, applaud loudly at the end with optional wolf whistles, and then quote what the people of Tyre and Sidon said to Herod in Acts 12.22; (h) buy him a copy of Jimmy Dunn's book Beginning from Jerusalem and Craig Blomberg's The Case for Historic Pre-millennialism; (i) tell him that you love reading his blog (except for the rants by his sidekick Willitts); (j) buy him a bottle of Aussie red wine, ask him what he thinks of the New Perspective, and stare into his gorgeous blue eyes as he talks the night away; (k) buy him a cassette of books from either Brill, Mohr/Siebeck, Walter de Gruyter, or Baylor Uni Press; (l) if you see him in a liquor store buying red wine because the Yale reception only had the vulgar French stuff, avoid eye contact and pretend you don't know him; (m) tell him you saw James Crossley giving a paper at the Queer hermeneutics session and that it was really, really bad (then explain what you were doing there in the first place); (n) buy a round of drinks for Michael and all of his Ph.D students who he will be meeting with; (o) ask him if he is the guy who plays Horatio on Miami CSI and act shocked when he says, "why yes"; (p) tell him to run faster after he is chased out of the ETS banquet hall by an angry mob of PCA/SBC academics for proposing a toast to the USA's president-elect; (q) ask him if he could get you Joel Willitts' autograph and watch him roll his eyes; (r) wish him a happy birthday and a safe trip home.