BlogOut is dead...long live Haloscan!

I feel bad for the folks who run BlogOut, but seeing as how they've shut it down, I had to move on to Halsocan. I hope this works.

FYI

The creepiest/cheesiest porn star name ever? Butter.

Cue nervousness...

My first day of student teaching was today, and I think I did pretty well. At least my cooperating teacher thought so...

I took on two classes of GA Studies, and it's very strange to me how different classes develop unique personalities. My first class, 1st Segment, is generally well-behaved, but kind of sluggish in the Q&A department. I hit 'em with a few jokes and...(wind blowing over the desert)...nothing. I thought they were pretty good jokes, considering they were about the Civil War. I did make everybody laugh by noting that the beard on Georgia Gov. Joseph Brown made it look like he had a really hairy neck. Not one student--they are eighth graders after all--could identify the word "attrition." My second class, during 6th segment, was a lot more motivated and a lot less disciplined. I think there's some balance that I need to figure out between discipline and active learning. Hopefully I'll hit that "sweet spot" one day. One student called me a "joker" when I told him that more people died in one day of fighting in Antietam than in the whole Vietnam War (well, more Americans).

One of my students wrote "Bling Bling" on his CD case in white-out. I told him that real "players" probably don't use white-out on their CaseLogic CD holders, and he begrudgingly agreed. I think I might have hurt his feelings.

More thoughts

This is stupid.

I got this email about an overly dramatic student the other day:

"C________ made a big production with J________ regarding a cut that she self inflicted onto herself with scissors- upon talking to mom yesterday PM it was all just an attention seeking task- but it interfered with A________- B________- W______- Mom- and me and our time. (She accidentally did it at home while doing a scrapbook- mom was there when it happened.)

So mom asked if she could be punished for wasting all of our time and energies to deal with the fantasy----

C________ is not pleased with her final outcome.
oh well-"

I, too, witnessed this supposed "attempted suicide" gash, made somewhere near the elbow on top of the forearm.

These dreams go on when I close my eyes...

...every second of my life...I live another liiiiife!

Ahem.

I've had some messed up dreams lately, mostly concerning me doing really misanthropic and often violent things to other people's property. I had a dream about taking an alternator out of a van at someone's house and smashing it with--get this--a rake. I also had a dream about setting fire to a news van. When I passed by the Fox 5 News van today on campus I can't say that I didn't feel a miniscule twinge of excitement at the thought of throwing a flaming gas can at it. Hahahaha! Ha. As many of you know, I have a somewhat storied history of vandalism, particularly that peculiar brand of vandalism known as arson, so I could very well be regressing. Watch your news vans, suckers!

Besides visions of fireballs dancing in my head, most of my thoughts these days concern IEPs, PLPs, SSTs, and CRCTs. If you don't know what those are then you've probably never slogged your way through the bureaucratic wonderland that is modern public school education. Let me tell you: you ain't missing much.

I realize I never did a top ten list of any kind, so here is my list of movies I liked a whole bunch this year, in some kind of order:

Lost In Translation
American Splendor
Dirty Pretty Things
Mystic River
Capturing the Friedmans
Finding Nemo
LOTR: ROTK
POTC: TCOTBP
X-2: X-Men United
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the Ocean
Kill Bill: Volume 1 (how many freakin' colon movies were there this year?)
School of Rock
Freaky Friday
Holes
Old School
Elf
Out of Time (if only for this one scene in an office that was absolutely brilliant, using everyday technology to create tension...great stuff)

There are probably some that I'm forgetting, and there's plenty of stuff that I didn't see. Recently, I saw Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American (both by Phillip Noyce, both from 2002, and both astounding) and the remake of Solaris and enjoyed them all quite a bit.

I agree with my friend, Aaron, who says that The Office is the funnier than any "person, movie, book, picture, TV show, song, etc..." (I'm paraphrasing here) than anything ever. It just may be the funniest show of all time. Not for everybody, to be sure, but then again, if you don't like, you're probably wrong. It gets funnier each time I see it. I can't wait for Season 2 to come out on DVD.

Did Teenage Fanclub ever put out a bad record (that Jad Fair thing excepted)? Conventional wisdom is that they've been no good lately and it's just not true. I think that Songs from a Northern Britain may very well be their best record, and Howdy! is no slouch. They may be the best pure power pop band of our day.

Emerson and other fans of craziness, go here now. Click on the picture of the two Korean girls and prepare yourself. I've never seen anything like it.

I guess that's it for me today. Sorry things have been so slow. I honestly haven't been following politics very much lately, but things are sure getting exciting. It's kind of fun just to sit back and take it all in like some big reality show.

Mr. Sandman...

I need for someone to hit me over the head with a shovel. I'm super-tired, but I feel completely unsettled and nervous about...? I don't know. I feel really uneasy and I should be in bed because I have to wake up in, oh, five hours or so. What's my freakin' problem?

I can't do much of my movie radio show this semester and that sucks. I have to do my top ten movie list for you, loyal readers, very soon, but, honestly, the last thing I want to do when I get home every day is blog. Mostly I just want to curl up with my lady, my pets, and a nice round of Match Game PM on the Game Show Network. Mame doesn't like Seinfeld (I do), so we were always looking for a show to bridge the gap between Friends and the Simpsons in the early evening. Match Game has filled the bill famously.

Hopefully tonight I will dream of Orson Bean, Brett Sommers, Nipsey Russell, Gene Rayburn, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Betty White.

So very tired.

This blog will remain close to derelict for the next semester as I embark on a tour through the magical world of student teaching. So far it's been pretty fascinating from a sociological perspective. I'm a little hesitant to write about anything school-related on this blog, so I'm sorry that I can't go into more detail...

I used to be a morning person all the way, but my schedule has been pretty slack in the getting-up-early department over the past year, so I've let my morning-ness fall into remission. No more! I have to get up right after my lady, who gets up at about 5:30 in the morning (give or take ten minutes or so). It's really thrown me for a loop. I used to make fun of her because she'd sleep in until noon or so every day (she still does on weekends!), but now I'm the asshole who can't wake up early. "The chickens have come home to roost," she said. And she was right.

One morning I woke my sister up by walking into her bedroom and singing the Dallas theme song like a chicken. I think it was the highlight of my life. You know, besides getting married and stuff.

Ray Davies got shot. I hope he's aight. Of all the "big" Brit bands of the sixties (Beatles, Stones, the Who, the Kinks, etc.), I'd say he was probably the best guitarist of the lot in terms of sheer craziness. George Harrison probably did more inventive stuff, but he never flipped out on the guitar like Ray Davies did on "I Need You."

Right now, as we speak, I'm digitally archiving a coloring book. So...it's come down to this, eh? I didn't think we could sink any lower.

I just realized that I didn't write about New Year's or Christmas or anything. Sheesh! There's so much to write about that I just might take a pass and say that all were lovely and I gave and received a good many gifts and the mountains were great and New Years was a blast for a change and...yeah...I'll take a pass. Maybe in a few days.

In the limelight again

I must admit to being a Rush fan. Part of it is a product of my upbringing: being a drummer in high school means you have about a 99.9% chance of hearing air-drumming along to "La Villa Strangiato" while drinking Bud Dry in some older guy's apartment. I haven't listened to any of Rush's most recent records (listening stations at Barnes and Noble excluded!) but nothing gets me higher than Aimee Mann's duet with Geddy Lee on "Time Stands Still," the wicked bass solo in "Limelight" (and those "great" Objectivist lyrics!), the 7/8 breakdown in "Tom Sawyer, and, yes, even the rap in "Roll the Bones," which I will repeat to you, almost totally from memory, here:

jack...relax
get busy with the facts
no zodiacs or almanacs,
no maniacs in polyester slacks
just the facts!
gonna kick some gluteus max.
it's a parallax...you dig?
you move around
the small gets big. it's a rig
it's action, reaction
random interaction
so who's afraid of a little abstraction?
can't get no satisfaction
from the facts?
you better run, homeboy -
a fact's a fact
from nome to rome, boy.

what's the deal?
spin the wheel.
if the dice are hot: take a shot
play your cards. show us what you got
what you're holding.
if the cards are cold,
don't go folding
lady luck is golden;
she favors the bold. that's cold
stop throwing stones
the night has a thousand saxophones
so get out there and rock,
and roll the bones.
get busy!


It is with a heavy heart that I provide you with this latest bit of Rush news.

Is simulated killing worse than child molestation?

The Post (NY, that is) thinks so. Read this article about Take-Two Publishing and their ultraviolent video games (GTA, Manhunt, etc.):

"People, this is insane. This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy - or than any lie the feds think Martha Stewart ever told them, or any line in any song that Bruce Springsteen ever sang that rankled a cop in the Meadowlands." (emphasis mine)

Um, really? So I guess playing "Cowboys and Indians" on the playground as a kid was probably worse than rape or murder because it was a) simulated violence and b) racist.

Thanks to Penny Arcade for the tip-off.