The kitchen torch came with a crème brûlée cookbook, which I also have never used, although yesterday all of my cookbooks fell off of their kitchen-window-ledge shelf (more on this in a minute) and as I labored to set things right I noticed that under the large title CRÈME BRÛLÉE the tagline read, "America's Favorite Dessert." Which I think is stretching the truth an awful lot, because nothing with three different diacritical marks is ever going to be America's Favorite anything.

Francis: "Isn't it rather dangerous to use ones entire vocabulary in a single sentence?"

Goldie, the sculpture that looks like a rusty, prone robot, lies mute on Woods Quad. Curious, delighted visitors drawn to the enchanting novelty of a dead or sleeping robot hanging out on the grass in the middle of the University stand next to it and pose for pictures.

But the artwork and its sculptor – UA graduate student Joe McCreary – have a serious story to tell. Goldie symbolizes the closing of Birmingham’s Sloss Furnaces in 1972 and America’s passage into the post-industrial era. The robot is not so much dead or sleeping as turned off.

"The robot's been decommissioned, shut off," McCreary says. "It's not needed anymore."

McCreary's sculpture will lie out in the Quad until December. The artwork, which may weigh as much as 2 tons, brings a dynamic change of pace to viewers absorbed in UA's academic life.

"Goldie is a figurative work, so people relate to it," says Craig Wedderspoon, associate professor of art, who teaches sculpture. "People see in it a reflection of the human condition. They imagine Goldie in different scenarios. It's a nice break from the perils and stresses of academic life."