Personal Fowl: Unnecessary Deliciousness

Why must the holidays be filled with such delicious things? Thanksgiving is a particular offender in this instance. Not only is turkey full of tasty win at the actual dinner, but the leftovers make for fine cold sandwiches or even hot turkey sandwiches with gravy. It's a total myth that the tryptophan in turkey makes you sleepy--it's actually just the high level of carbohydrates in the massive traditional dinner with all the fixins that you're body is working overtime to digest--but I'll be damned if there isn't a better feeling than the post-dinner/pre-pie phase when all seems lazy and right in the world.

And speaking of pie, I LOVE pumpkin pie... easily the best of all pies. Pile a mountain of cool whip on that sumbitch, and you've got a recipe for a tasty treat.

The downside: none of it is good for you. My newfound healthy ways can hinder my enjoyment of the little things in life at times. I am he who knows too much. Oh how I long for the blissful ignorance of my piss-poor eating habits. Then I could shovel in three or four pieces of pie with reckless abandon and enjoy each and every sweet bite. Now I'll still wolf down the same three or four pieces, but I'll feel really guilty about it afterwards.

I guess I'll just accept that today doesn't count. And neither do the three or four days afterwards when I'm pigging out on the leftovers.

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"Is... is that a taco pie?"
"Mmm-hmm"
"TACO PIE!!"
"I added food coloring because it's a holiday. But it turned black because I added all the food coloring I had. Then I ate this butter straight out of the tub, because it tastes good. There's a reason behind everything."

Venture a Guess

Why the hell aren't you watching The Venture Bros.?

Go! Now! Netflix the first three seasons of this show so that you can enjoy the fourth season that's currently airing on Adult Swim.

If you don't, I will track you down and beat you with a large phallic object.

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"You think you're hot shit in a champagne glass? Well, you're cold diarrhea in a Dixie cup!"

Mr. Saturday Night Special

Saturday nights are tricky business. There's an unwritten but socially ingrained feeling in the minds of all single twenty-somethings that Saturday night should be a time of celebration, debauchery, and the picking up of nubile young ladies at the local pub. But tonight I sit alone in my apartment with my laptop, a bottle of cheap wine, and box of Sweet Tarts. I just finished watching the new Star Trek movie on DVD (which I saw twice in theaters), and I'm now seriously considering watching it again with the commentary on. As if that's not sad enough, I'm currently blogging about the wayward misfortunes of my life for my huge readership to enjoy.

Of course, not every Saturday night is like this. Most weekends I can find a few people to hang around with, or I'll head home to spend time with the family if all else fails. But tonight, everyone I know is either busy or too far away to hang out with me. Even my roommate has gone north to see some sort of musical that his sister is in. Hence my current evening of solitude.

Strange as it may seem, I'm not having a terrible time. Sometimes spending a bit of time with myself (in every sense of the phrase) can be relaxing and rejuvenating. It certainly beats going to watch a musical up in West Middlesex. I did consider heading out by myself for awhile, but that's not as exciting as it may seem at first. Sure I could possibly meet up with some hot women and wind up having an awesome time filled with witty banter, flirtatious glances, and saucy nighttime activities. But the bar is a tricky habitat to navigate alone when in the city. In reality, very few people go to bars by themselves, so they're already in their zones of comfort with their friends, and the last thing they want to add is some strange tall man who talks a lot about starships and candy. This holds doubly true for single women. In bars, they travel in herds. Approaching a single woman is hard enough without having to reassure her buddies that you're a nice guy who won't take advantage of their friend while still flirting with the desired woman. In all likelihood, if I went to the bar alone, I'd be spending my evening alone anyway. The only difference is that I'd spend it watching a whole bunch of other people having fun with their friends. My tears would make my beer taste terrible.

Before you think me a complete loser (I know it's probably way too late for that), let me just say that I do go out and about with some regularity. In fact, just last night a friend and I went to a high school football game over in West Mifflin. Granted, this was not exactly an epic evening out, but it beat doing nothing. Over Thanksgiving break, I'll have plenty to do back in the hometown. But right now, I don't really know my Pittsburgh peeps well enough to call them up to spend time on a Saturday night. Most of them are women with boyfriends anyway (English education programs attract a certain niche crowd), which creates a whole new level of awkwardness. I have a lot of friends, actually, but they're spread all over creation: Morgantown, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Kittanning, and even New Delhi. It's hard to round up a posse these days, sheriff!

Let you think this is total pity party, I think this is actually a happy occasion. With no pressure to go out and have fun, I can do whatever I please and damn the consequences. A persistent attitude like that would be cause for concern, but every once in awhile, it's a nice break from the regimen of socializing. Most people suck, and it's hard to accommodate them.

So screw you, world! I'm taking some "me" time, and any fellow antisocial hermits with a penchant for isolationism are welcome to join in.

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"Are you lonely?"
"Yeah."
"Have you spent half your life in bars pursuing sins of the flesh?"
"This guy's good!"
"Are you sitting in a bean bag chair, naked, eating Cheetos?"

According to Gym

With five graduate classes and an observation every week, getting the gym on a regular basis has been difficult. It doesn't help that the gym is on campus (I'm not) and quite a trek uphill from the bus stop. Still, I've managed to get there at least once a week this semester. The weather's been pleasant enough for me to jog and walk around my little community near my apartment, so when I go to the gym, I can concentrate on my strength training.

The Pitt gymnasium (there are actually more than five, but I use the largest) is the single most-impressive building on campus. It contains the basketball court for the Panthers, the weight room, the aerobics area, a sizable food court, and a team store. And that's just what I've seen on the right side of the building. There's a massively massive television in the main lobby (the lobby being three stories high and the size of a basketball court in its own right) that displays any and all information about Pitt athletics. Every time I enter the place, I feel like I've come unstuck in time and workout in a spaceport beyond the moons of Jupiter. Unless the escalator is broken; then everyone can hear me bitch, "The escalator's down!? What is this, the dark ages?" I have a workout to do, dammit. I can't be climbing up stairs wasting valuable potential energy, can I?

By the time I've hiked from Fifth Avenue up to the mega-gym and then up the broken escalator, I've already got a solid warm-up going, so I'm all ready to do some serious exercise. Except, that's not really what happens when lifting. In any given one-hour period when I lift weights, 60% of the time is probably spent staring at myself in the wall of mirrors. Lifting weights involves short bursts of exertion where I push sweat-greased barbells over my head in various contorted positions while making strained noises like a constipated octogenarian. But for every minute of actual heavy lifting, there's about two minutes of "rest time." Without the breaks between sets, your muscles will probably shred to bits. When I would lift at home, I'd amuse myself in these breaks by singing along to some highly effeminate music selections or pacing back and forth while practicing my latest attempts at phone interviews (back during those laughable attempts at employment). But in this public gymnasium with people everywhere, no one does anything weird. And because everyone's doing the same thing, we're all often resting at the same time. So at any given moment, ten sweaty guys are probably staring at themselves in the mirror while they desperately avoid eye contact with each other... or we secretly watch the hot trio of nubile redheads in the mirror as they stretch behind us.

At least, I assume they're also watching the redheads. I know I am... I didn't stick with Thursdays at 1:00 for just any reason.

I do notice just how serious a lot of the other guys at the gym are about bulking up. While I've devoted a considerable amount of time over the last few years to lifting weights, my goal has been simple weight loss and maybe a bit of muscle definition to keep me from looking flabby. I really don't have the wherewithal or commitment to spend 8 hours in the gym every week trying to make my body look like the goddamn Hulk. I do understand that muscle burns fat, and I'm all about eliminating my doughy physique, but I just don't want that kinda size. I've spent most of my life dreaming of being smaller. I don't want to get any goddamn bigger.

Interestingly, the ones who are typically the muscle-heads are the shortest guys. The taller gentlemen, lifting in the same way that I do as far as I can tell, seem content with simple definition and general fitness. But then Arnold comes strutting by the free weights in his wife beater, veins bursting and arms swaggering. He'd be intimidating... if he weren't 5'2".

So whenever I think I should be looking like a Marvel superhero after lifting weights for this long, I remember that I'm perfectly content to maintain a reasonable body image and fit into at least few coats. Being six and a half feet tall and left-handed means most of the world wasn't designed for me. I don't need the shoulder span of King Kong to make things even worse.

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"I say, Finneus. It's a wonderful day to be doing squat thrusts with these large triangular weights!"

Wake Me Up When September Ends

Legitimate updates are coming, I promise (probably by Friday). Until then, I came across this clip on the internet, and I've watched it about five times now, and it still makes me laugh.

There's a reason Richard Dawson owned at Family Feud. He was not afraid to just throw the whole format of the show to the dogs for a good laugh. In this case, he didn't cause the break from format, but he sure did enjoy it thoroughly. Videos like this are just gold for game show whores such as myself:

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"How the hell did you people get on the show!?"

Inclusion Not Included

Friday, November 6, 2009
12:07 p.m.
A High School Somewhere in Allegheny County, PA

As the honors students smile and wave goodbye for the weekend, their promising and bright futures radiating like the warm glow of hope, a new wave of student crashes upon the shores of my English classroom. Well... not "my" English classroom - technically it's that of my cooperating teacher. But that's semantics... they have no place in an English class. Anyway, these new students are of a different breed. They smack each other in the head; I can't tell if they're being playful about it or not so I tell them to stop. As though I'd simply waved hello, they shout, "MR. P!! What up, fo-shizzle!?" They are white. They care not. They do care about the laptops that are on their desks for the research they're supposed to do today. Several make highly suggestive comments regarding websites that they've visited. One young redheaded gentleman strolls in with his bookbag under his shirt and turned backwards giving him the appearance of a pregnant woman. This is exactly the look that he's going for and riles up the class with his shenanigans. I attempt to smother a chuckle, but the bastard is funny and quite the showman. My co-op returns from the restroom with the Special Ed. teacher in tow. They attempt to restore order, but this is where the wild things are. They too can't resist smiling at the faux-pregnant ginger in the back row who is moaning loudly that his water broke and praying loudly for another set of twins.

So begins another 9th grade inclusion class.

I've mentioned these inclusion classes before, but elaboration is necessary. Many schools around the country have created "inclusion" classes wherein students with emotional issues and learning disorders are placed in with the general student population (though severe cases are still separated). A special education teacher assists in these classes to ensure that the included students' needs are met. In theory, the class would then proceed as though these included students were not, in fact, actually there.

In practice, this is bullshit.

"Inclusion" class is a total misnomer. EXCLUSION class might be more appropriate. These special needs students are not mixed in with the general population. They are mixed in with the troublemakers, loudmouths, slackers, and other undesirables that no one else wants in their classrooms. These students, rather than providing support for each other, actually feed into each other's neuroses and distractions. The narcissist will loudly start shouting about his day. This aggrivates the kid with Asperger's who is trying to focus on some doodles in his notebook. His doodles draw the attention of a gent with chronic ADD who wants to know what the doodles are before asking about the window locks. The ADD kid inadvertently flirts with the girl whose sex drive is turned up to 11 and interprets everything as a come-on. All of this is absorbed by the gentleman in sweatpants who is gouging his name in the desk while singing a bawdy sailor's tune.

My co-op teacher, her addled brain clear turned up to "crazy," actually volunteered to teach these two inclusion classes because she wanted the challenge; however, I strongly suspect that she's been challenged enough with these folks. Now, lest you think I'm being elitist here, I did not get into teaching so I could only teach the best and the brightest. I have no qualms about helping special needs students. But when you toss them all together in a big pot and allow them to simmer into one big vat of Crazy Stew, you cannot create what we in the biz call a "learning environment." You know that scene in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest where Jack Nicholson gets the patients all worked up and they feed off of each other's symptoms? Yeah, it's like that... only without the electro-shock treatments to keep everyone in line.

Speaking of that movie, in one of the classes, there are 13 students with IEPs and one student who doesn't have one. That's right, there are 13 loonies and one normal person. That's a recipe for a meltdown right there.

You know the real shame of these inclusion classes? Quite a few of these kids are REALLY bright. Remember the aforementioned poser-pregnant ginger? That kid has some comic timing. He's always ready with a quip or a witty observation whenever he gets bored. One quiet girl can't interract with others to save her life, but she writes some of the most detailed papers for class that you've ever seen.

Then there's the young lady who could be the captain of the debate team and go toe-to-toe with Jack McCoy in the courtroom, but she has an astounding and stunning hatred and disdain for authority. She's the one I sympathize with the most because typically I like a rabble-rouser and someone who will tell the Man to go fuck himself. But she has no plan... at all. Her insistence on telling the system to go to hell keeps getting her into hot water and making life difficult for her. When she speaks, you can tell that this girl has some serious intelligence in that brain of hers and the will to use it... but only on her terms. Once in awhile, some of the kids might be foolish enough to make fun of her, and she will berate them mercilessly with a barrage of clever and sharply-barbed insults. She's got all the raw talent necessary to go far in the world, but she cannot keep her mouth shut long enough to actually use her powers for her own benefit. Instead, she just mouths off to whoever happens to be in charge of the class (and often me because she feels like it) and do highly inappropriate things. At one point today, my co-op bent down to grab some laptops off of a low shelf, and our heroine came up behind her and started gyrating in what can only be described as a lacivious manner. I noticed and quickly yelled, "Hey! Stop it!" She just spun around and snarked back, "Oh you like that, Mr. P?" before making a face and slouching back in her seat. The term "rebel without a cause" could not apply more aptly to an individual. She may also be bipolar, because sometimes she's happy as a clam and very concerned about our feelings and what-not. She nearly broke into tears last week when she inadvertently asked about my co-op's husband and found out they were divorced. "I'm so sorry, Ms. V!" she blubbered. Emotional trainwreck!

(I think I've dated an adult version of this girl on more than one occassion...)

I have little patience for the slackers who could do better and are too damned lazy, but I'm in a conundrum when it comes to these intelligent kids who are essentially struggling despite themselves. Of course, I resent them for making my life a huge pain in the ass for two periods of the day... but I can sympathize while I curse their names.

Still... they're damned funny sometimes.

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"WILD CARD, BITCHES!!! YEE HAW!!!"