The Undesirable Element

Learning How to Manage

2010-10-13T18:38:00.002-04:00

I realize that saying "I haven't been blogging lately" would be exceedingly obvious at this point. I also realize that promising regular updates in the future would be foolish, but I'll do my best anyway.

I've decided that a fantastic use of this blog would be as my personal venting place for my first year of teaching. The fact that most of my readership has practically abandoned me makes it all the better. If some stragglers make their way back, they can be treated to the burgeoning display of my psychoses, but if no one reads this, I'll just consider this writing to be wildly cathartic. It helps me to imagine an actual readership.

So the cause of my woe today is simple: classroom management.

I'm not sure how else to say this: I'm not an effective disciplinarian. I'm not consistent. I'm not subtle. I'm not confident in my abilities as a classroom manager. How much of this is a result of being new and how much of it is an innate failure as an authority figure remains to be seen. However, having spent two years as a college instructor and another year as a student teacher, one would imagine that managing a classroom would be second nature to me by now.

Now, that's not to say that my class is a complete zoo. In fact, two of my ninth grade classes and one of my eleventh grade classes listen to me quite well. We get along swimmingly, and the general tone is one of mutual respect and understanding. I suspect this is because the group dynamic in these classrooms is such that the positive elements are the most forceful.

I have a BIG problem with students talking during class. And I'm not talking about little whispering comments while stuff is going on - I mean full fledged conversations while I'm saying stuff at the front of the room. I've addressed it in many different ways:
Sarcasm: "Well, looks like there are some folks in here who think they're WAY too interesting."
Politeness: "Please save your conversation for later."
Asking: "Could you stop talking, please?"
Anger (not proud of this): "IT'S TOO LOUD IN HERE. BE QUIET... NOW!"
Bartering: "We're almost to the discussion part of class. Keep it down while I'm talking."

So right there... lack of consistency.

But the problem is that nothing seems to work for very long, and I just don't understand the mentality. I would venture to say that 85-90% of my students will do as I ask; however, there's maybe 10% of them who disregard my authority whenever possible. This also sets a bad example for the rest of the class. It makes me look like a pushover. This leads to more kids being a disruption. This particular pattern is especially noticeable in my fourth period class.

I was always such a spineless little pussy in high school. I did whatever my teachers said, even if it was a piss poor teacher. In fact, this trend carried through all the way through grad school. The idea that kids will just flagrantly disregard authority is something that I totally understand on an intellectual level, but on a purely emotional level, I can't understand why someone would act that way.

I don't beat myself up over a bad handout or a questionable lesson because I know I have a lot to learn. But when I can't manage a classroom because I can't understand how the kids are thinking, I question my ability to be a teacher at all. I've never been able to understand social interaction in everyday society very well let alone with developing adolescents. I sometimes wonder if I even have the emotional faculties to really deal with the kinds of behaviors that I'll be confronted with in high school.

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"I've been here eating eggs and ketchup all day waiting for this."

Serious Business

2010-09-08T21:13:00.003-04:00

Where the hell have the updates been? Well, I'm busy, dammit!! I have lesson plans, discipline reports, seating charts, grading, quiz making, PowerPoint producing, porn watching, and reading to do. I can't be dropping everything to amuse a bunch of ingrates from around the interwebs.

....

I kid. I crave your love and attention!!! And look at the funny kitty in the poster. That's worth bundles of yuk-yuks!

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"Don't discourage the boy! Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel."

Exceptions Going Up in Smoke

2010-08-06T18:00:00.000-04:00

In my continuing quest to post some stuff that I wrote at the Writing Project, I now provide you with a sample of an editorial that I wrote when the op-ed editor from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette came to visit our group. He raved about my piece when I shared it with the class, so I hope you all like it too.

I offer one caveat though. Writers often take liberties with the facts even when writing what most would consider "nonfiction." Stories have to be compressed, situations must be simplified, and specifics might be overlooked for the sake of a coherent and persuasive essay.

Second caveat for stupid people: Editorials, by their very nature, are try to convince readers of the author's point of view. If you think this is biased... well no shit. It's supposed to be.

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Let the Exception Go Up in Smoke

An Op-Ed Article for a Pittsburgh Newspaper

Last Saturday, I journeyed back hometown, a little riverside town that’s neither a cultural center nor a social hub in the area. It certainly lacks the diverse options for entertainment that cities like Pittsburgh have. On that typical Saturday night, seeking to drown my sorrows in alcohol with a few friends, I traveled to the town’s primary watering hole, aptly named “The Saloon.” The air in the bar was thick with friendly banter, music, and of course, clouds of cigarette smoke. By the end of the night, even though I never touched a cigarette, I smelled like my grandma’s ashtray after a Matlock marathon. My eyes were watering, and my throat was dry and imbued with a rich smoky flavor.

Of course, in 2008, Pennsylvania passed a state-wide restriction on smoking in public places—including restaurants and bars. However, unlike many other states like New York or Maryland, our law came with a caveat: any bar, lounge, or restaurant that made more than 80% of its sales from alcohol would be exempt. This exception, of course, meant that most bars could still allow smoking. The underlying reason for this exception was that bars would suffer financially if smokers were denied their vice.

Pennsylvania’s exception to the smoking ban is patently absurd, and it should be eliminated. Proponents of the exception point to bars with thriving food sales whose sales of beer and liquor have plummeted since the ban, and they argue that the ban should be lifted entirely. In fact, I would argue that a universal ban could actually help the bottom line. I spent the better part of my college summers helping my father remodel a local restaurant chain. I lost count of how many repairs and replacements were related to smoking in some way. Ceiling tiles had faded. Wallpaper was stained yellow. Air filtration units had been overpowered and destroyed. One of the managers told us that the smoking ban actually improved profits overall and led to more positive customer feedback.

I understand the owners’ position. I wouldn’t want anyone telling me how to run my business either, but the environment in these establishments has become unbearable. When I’m in one of my crankier moods and complaining about the smoke in the bars, my friend will insist, “If you don’t like it here, you can always go somewhere else.” Well, yes I can, but the smoke-free bars are smoke-free for a reason… not enough people drink there! Is it so wrong to want to drink in a real bar without developing lung cancer?

Smokers may love cigarettes, but they’re not going to love smoking and drinking alone if the ban were made universal. Their black lungs may keep them away for a few days, but their black livers will bring them crawling back.

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"Our numbers are down all across the board. Teen smoking, our bread and butter, is falling like a shit from heaven! We don't sell Tic Tacs for Christ's sake. We sell cigarettes. And they're cool and available and *addictive*. The job is almost done for us!"

I Can Haz Job Now?

2010-08-05T18:00:00.000-04:00

Well, it took 2 and a half years, 120 job applications, and one broken soul, but I finally did it. The goal has been achieved.

I, ladies and gentlemen, am employed!

And not as a porn fluffer or a gigolo. I've finangled my way into a legitimate teaching position. That's right, dear readers. This fine specimen of the human genome is going to be teaching your offspring and improving the minds of the next generation. You may lodge your complaints at the nearest school board meeting.

Actually, to allow my ego to fully inflate to its maximum size, I should point out that I actually got TWO jobs. Two weeks ago, I interviewed with the same high school where I did some day-to-day subbing last year. Although I had good answers to the interview questions, I didn't think I did the greatest job. Despite my grandiose sense of self-importance, I was really nervous. I stuttered a bit, and I don't think my posture was particularly confident. Nevertheless, they called me the next day to offer me the job.

I accepted their offer; however, a few days later I had an interview with ANOTHER school, actually the adjoining school district to be precise. So I go into that interview with a bit of machismo. After all, I already have a job in the bank, so the stakes aren't so high. Of course, I'm still kinda nervous because this school has quite a bit of money to offer me, but I channel that nervous energy into some really excellent interview responses and some witty jokes that (surprisingly) did not offend the people interviewing me. I can use my creativity for good instead of evil... sometimes.

So I come out of that interview feeling confident, but I know that it's a more competitive position. Both jobs are actually one-year long-term substitute positions, but one can't be picky in this economy. Besides, the positions still pay the same as a full-time teacher. These are, to put it mildly, desirable positions.

As I learned yesterday, the second school offered me the job too... and with significant cash incentives. I'd rather not discuss the particulars of the schools and the salaries on an open blog, but suffice it to say, this second job is the more desirable position overall. I intend to accept it; however, I certainly don't want to burn my bridges at the first school, so I'll be turning that one down in a classy fashion. This gentleman won't be leaving a baggie full of dog shit on the principal's doorstep, no siree.

Actually, I got interviewed at both of these schools because two experienced teachers from the Writing Project recommended me. They teach at the two schools. This is networking at its finest. Of course, when I was turned down for a full time position at my student teaching placement in favor of the assistant principal's cousin, I was grumbling, "Goddamn personal favors getting people jobs that they don't deserve!" Now that backdoor handshakes and knowing the right people is getting ME the good spots, my opinion of favoritism has improved considerably.

Funny how that works.

I'm all excited about the full time position, and for the first time ever, I can actually contemplate buying some things. Even though I'm still earning a teacher's salary, it's still way more money than I've ever had. Compared to what I made as a grad student (the highest yearly income I ever had), I feel like Scrooge McDuck swimming in his money bin.

So put on your finery, ma! We're celebratin' at the Sizzler tonight!

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"A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary." -- Whoever said this never needed an annual salary.

I Have No Use for a Protocol Droid

2010-08-04T18:00:00.000-04:00

A byproduct (and quite a delightful one) of getting a job is the substantially increased disposable income. Over the years, I've been using the same phone and the same iPod. I've gone without a fun little GPS for my tiny little car. I've had a bulky low-res camera. I never had a video camera of any kind. However, with money in hand, I've moved into the modern age with one fell swoop. Ladies and gentlemen, I purchased the new Droid X. (The "X" makes it sound sexy)

As an avid Star Trek fan, I've longed to have my own tricorder. For the uninitiated, the tricorder is the little handheld device that the characters could use to scan for lifeforms, spaceships, and plot devices masquerading as energy clouds. It also had access to limitless information. On one occasion, Mr. Spock found newspaper articles about one woman in the 1930s... while he was trapped in the 1930s thanks to a friendly sentient time portal. The thing was a miracle device... or so I thought.

Then I got to see the Droid in action. The damn thing puts the tricorder to shame. Kirk could have bested the Gorn in two minutes if he'd had a Droid in his pocket. I haven't yet figured out how to use my Droid to scan for lifeforms, but I'm betting there's an app for that. I already found an app that identifies the constellations in the sky based on how I hold my Droid. For instance, if I point my phone at the ground, the Droid will show me what's in the sky on the other side of the Earth straight at that point. Another app will actually allow me to speak in English and have the phone repeat what I just said in another language. That's right, bitches. It's a universal translator. Eat my shit, Spock! It may not translate Klingon, but it's damn close.

The Droid comes with a flashlight, a GPS, 16GB of storage, an HD camcorder with an HDMI adapter, a camera, Pandora radio, and automatic connections to my GMail and Facebook accounts. There might even be a blowjob app in there somewhere if I poke around a bit.

Lest you think I'm starting to sound like one giant advertisement for the Droid X (though I would be willing to accept a handsome fee from Verizon if they'd like me to do so), there is a problem with my Droid.... I can't see a damn thing on it!!

After the first few hours of orgasmic use, I noticed that my Droid started to flicker on the bottom third of the screen. These fuzzy black bars/lines would distort most of the visible field. It looked exactly like this:
Yeah, not easy to use that way. Now I bet you're wondering, "How did you find a picture of your exact malfunction?" Well, it turns out that I'm not alone. This week, Verizon released the following memo:
"Verizon Wireless and Motorola are aware of a very small number of DROID X units that have experienced a flickering or banding display. Motorola has resolved the issue and is continuing to ship the phones. Any consumer who experiences a flickering or banding display should contact a Motorola customer support center or Verizon Wireless."

Verizon estimates that no more than 1/10 of 1% of the Droid Xs were released with this malfunction. Apparently I just lucked into getting the seizure inducing version of the Droid. Why can't I beat the odds on the lottery?

I took my defective Droid back to the Verizon store, and they were only too happy to replace my flickering Droid with a pristine fully-functional one... except that they were out of stock. So in two days I will have my pristine fully-functional Droid shipped to me. In the meantime, if you try to call me, I may not push the right button to answer because I can't see the right fucking button. I'm glad I have an epic boner for technological gadgets because otherwise this would really sour me on the inevitable development of Skynet.

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"You, I suppose you’re programmed for etiquette and protocol."
"Protocol? Why, it’s my primary function, sir. I am well-versed in all the customs–"
"I have no need for a protocol droid."
"Of course you haven’t, sir. Not in an environment such as this. That is why I have been programmed in–"
"What I really need is a droid who understands the binary language of moisture vaporators."
"Vaporators? Sir, my first job was programing binary load lifters very similar to your vaporators in most respects.”

Wet Blanket

2010-08-03T20:34:00.004-04:00

As I indicated in my last post, I've been working with the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project to create some original writing. I come up with some brilliance, and then the group workshops the piece, offering suggestions to make it better. One of the activities we do for inspiration is called a "Writing Marathon," wherein we travel around the city experiencing things that will inspire us. On one such excursion, we stopped to watch some children play in the dancing fountain outside the PPG Building downtown. This following poem is inspired by that incident, and it's an uncharacteristically serious piece of writing from me. I don't really fancy myself much of a poet, but I do fancy myself a self-indulgent egotist. That's why I'm posting this anyway, no matter how little it connects to the overall tone of this blog.

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Wet Blanket

What do we tell the children
When water shoots from the ground
As they’re dancing atop the fountain?

Do we explain
That these jets are pressurized
Through invisible pipes and tubes
Like sinewy branches
Beneath the concrete?

Do we explain
That these cascading, crisp droplets
Have been carefully chlorinated
And cleansed
And chemically treated
For their health and safety?

Do we explain
That high above them,
In the glass metropolis surrounding this aquatic square
The spires of industry reflect in the noonday sun.
That the employees within
Toil in bourgeois drudgery
To finance homes in fine white middle-class neighborhoods
That their dark eyes will never see.

Or do we experience
Forget
Allow laughter and delight
To seize our imagination
And wash away our rational explanations
Our burden of awareness

Innocence we can never have.
Magic we can never believe.

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"You can't write poetry on the computer." -- Quentin Tarantino

* JP's NOTE: I can say with certainty that more posts are forthcoming because I already wrote them and published them. They're scheduled to be released by Blogger tomorrow and the next day. You're welcome. Sing my praises with some vigor.

Writer, Heal Thyself

2010-07-16T19:50:00.004-04:00

Oh, well look who decided to show up! So you think you can just waltz back in here and pretend that you didn't abandon me for two months?

Look, I was really busy. I tried to make time for you.

Oh, so I'm not a priority for you? I'm there for you every day. I listen to your problems, and I care about your day.

I appreciate that. I really do, but I just had some things I had to take care of.

Why should I trust you again? How do I know you won't just leave? My heart's been broken too many times.

Alas, dear readers, I don't know why you should trust that I'll be timely in this blog. The damn blog is like the monster under my bed that just demands to be fed constantly, which is a reasonable accommodation given the things that the monster must have witnessed from under there. Whenever interesting things are happening in my life, I'm too busy to post. Whenever I have free time, nothing cool is happening. I could always post things like "Hey friends! I took an epic dump today and then played spider solitaire for the rest of the night while eating saltines," but that shit is better suited to Facebook.

Well, I'll try taming this beast again (go ahead and look back over the posts for the least six months. I've made this claim at least 6 times so far). I've made some insignificant cosmetic changes already. Thank you, Blogger for updating your templates. The most insignificant of things can inspire me, so maybe this ridiculously inane change will do the trick.

So for the last two weeks, I've been taking part in the Summer Institute for Teachers, which is a six credit class that will result in me becoming a fellow for the National Writing Project. The program gives me connections out the wazoo (already scored a job interview through someone there), and it can lead to paying opportunities later on. But for the moment, this summer program has actually been providing me with a great atmosphere for invigorating my own writing, an opportunity that I'm relishing immensely.

I've been writing some poems, short stories, and especially creative nonfiction. For the last week or so, I've contemplated posting some of these stories to this blog for your enjoyment; however, several factors give me pause.

1. Some of my stories are about real people... real people who read this blog. One of the important components of writing truthfully and effectively is not censoring yourself because you're afraid of offending people. There are events and secrets from my life that have made their way into my writing, and some of you may find that offensive.

2. Related to the first point, sometimes I've taken liberties with the truth for the purpose of a story. For instance, a moment in my past may not have happened exactly as I wrote it, because I had to compress dialogue, combine characters, or alter events so that the narrative would make sense in five pages. Sometimes I exaggerate character traits because it makes for a better story. This is why the genre is called "CREATIVE" nonfiction.

3. Most importantly, throughout many (if not all) of my work, there's always some element of self-reflection that takes place. I noticed this yesterday (and wrote a piece on the theme with the same title as this post), but it's generally true with all of my writing. My personal flaws tend to become a satirical focus of the stories/poems that I write. Other writer folk might appreciate what I'm trying to do in those poems, but some of you assholes would probably just say, "HA HA!! JP'S A LOSER!" This is true, but I don't necessarily want that thrown in my face.

There are a few stories that I've written that are reasonably detached from reality. I may give those a try first. Yesterday we had a writing workshop with one of the associate editors of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and I wrote a sample editorial that received high praise from him. That seems like something that's not entirely mock-worthy.

In reality, I'm probably worrying about nothing. There's probably not anyone out there who still comes this blog. I've created abandonment issues in my readership.

Maybe I'll write a story about that.

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"Hmmm... I don't recall ever fighting Godzilla, but that is so what I would have done."

Running the Race

2010-06-08T21:29:00.004-04:00

I like my readers to be comfortable here on the blog. After all, it's been awhile since I've made a post, and I want everyone to feel warm and fuzzy after such a long hiatus.

So let's talk about racism again.

And as I say whenever I blog on this topic: I'm white, stupid, and I often dream of candy. If I say something ludicrously offensive, please accept my humble apologies ahead of time.

I'm eating lunch in the teachers' lounge today when race enters the discussion. This happens periodically in this school with zero non-white teachers and a 90% white student population. Specifically, two older male teachers are lamenting particular affirmative action policies in businesses. The one math teacher regaled us with the tale of how he developed industrial fasteners for a company that was hoping to make a lucrative business deal with the military to sell said fasteners. Unfortunately, the military refused their contract because they didn't have enough minorities working for the company. According to the math teacher, "We'd tried to hire minorities, but we'd interviewed 900 black applicants, but all of them failed the drug screening."

Now I have some problems with affirmative action policies, not because I don't believe that minorities don't need protection from the racist/sexist/homophobic power structure, but because the ill will seems to create more problems than are solved. Nevertheless, I had some qualms about the facts of the story. First, how did he have that kind of information? Second, I know quite well that companies can refuse to hire someone for the flimsiest of reasons. Who's to say that the official reason wasn't drugs but the "real" reason was that the hiring manager didn't want those brown fellows fiddling with his fasteners? Finally, what are the odds that ALL of those 900 black applicants failed the drug screening?

But hell, let's accept the premise. Let's assume that every single one of those 900 black applicants was actually a full-blown drug addict (ignoring the fact that you can test positive for drugs from, among other things, poppyseed cake). While neither teacher actually came out and started on about "I hate black people" or anything of that nature, the following general statements were agreed upon:
1. Black people are underrepresented in business (and the school) because they're unqualified.
2. Organizations for minorities are the most racist organizations in existence.
3. Poor black kids do not succeed in the school/workforce no matter how much help you give.

To provide another list, here are the reasons why I'm often uncomfortable discussing race and why I never said a word during this entire exchange:
1. I'm a giant white guy with the world experience of the postman from Mayberry.
2. I'm the English teacher and, therefore, filled with pie-in-the-sky impractical ideas.
3. My opinions are often derided as ludicrously naive because I'm young and haven't been properly jaded by enough bad incidents with black people.

Well, whatever. If I waited to talk about stuff until I thought I was fully qualified to do so, I'd never speak up unless someone had a bug up their ass regarding a comparative analysis of Captain Ahab's whaling ship and the hyperdrive of the Millennium Falcon. So here it goes. Here's why the lunchroom conversation pissed me off.

The two teachers seemed to be conflating cause and effect. The black people can't pass the drug tests; therefore, we're better than black people. Let's completely ignore the slew of economic conditions and media glamorization that leads young black kids to turn to drugs. Women and blacks have created their own organizations that discriminate against white men. Let's gloss over the fact that EVERY OTHER organization is pretty well dominated by white men.

It's all in how you look at it. I spent two weeks as a day-to-day substitute at the inner city high school closest to my apartment. In that school, the black students were clearly the most disruptive, the most unruly, and the most antagonistic. They seemed to have the worst grades, and they accounted for most of the security issues. That's not in dispute. It's not like there's a competing crowd saying, "Nuh uh!! It's the white kids doing all that." I don't think it's inherently racist to point out a particular racial trend. If the black kids are the ones being disruptive, that's the way it is. But a lot of people seem to put the cart before the horse here. The argument I've heard amounts to "Well, if the black kids wouldn't be so disruptive and cavalier toward their schooling, they wouldn't endure poverty, bad family lives, and drug addiction." The implication here is that black students are inherently inclined to bad behavior. But I think that this argument has it backwards. Here's how I would play it, "If we could pull the black kids out of poverty, their bad family lives, and the drug addictions, they wouldn't be so disruptive and cavalier toward their schooling."

It all comes back to economics (DISCLAIMER FROM JP: I can barely balance a checkbook so take this for what you will). Bad behavior, poor work ethic, and broken family lives are so often prevalent in households well below the poverty line. It just so happens that most poor families are black. Why are black families poor? Is it because black people inherently can't get their shit together? No, it's because white people had black people by the metaphorical balls (though sometimes the literal ones too, I'm sure) for hundreds of years. It's hard to work your way out of that. Maybe, just maybe, some of those allegations of "reverse racism" actually go a long way toward mending the inequalities that are inherent in our society and economic system.

Do minorities have to take responsibility for their own destinies? Of course. But we lovable pale males can't just sit back and pretend that black people are where they are because of their own stupid mistakes.

This lunchroom conversation weighed heavily on my mind all day, and that's always a sign that I need to write some of it down to work it out in my mind. It's incomplete, and a lot of people will probably annihilate my argument, but that's okay. This post was meant for me. It expresses my thought process about this issue at this particular time. I'm not trying to tell you how to think. I'm trying to explain how I think.

When I tell you how to think, the message will be loud and clear:
READ BLOG AND SEND JP FREE MONEY!!!

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"You see, Albert's got the right idea. He doesn't write about Negroes or Whites. He writes about robots."
"That's because he is a robot."

And Justice for Me

2010-05-14T23:57:00.004-04:00

As told in a story that is disturbingly only three posts down even though it happened two months ago, a local asshole recently accosted me on the street, leaving me in a pool of my own blood and my own shattered ego. Fortunately, the gentleman didn't get away as he had the foresight to attack me right in front of a police officer and a paramedic. While criminal charges were not pressed against him (much to my regret after the fact), he was given a citation for disorderly conduct by the officer on the scene.

Since the incident, I've accrued almost $3,700 in medical bills thanks to what surely must have been a costly cat scan. Suffice it to say, I dearly wanted this asshole to pay for them. I managed to get in touch with the officer from that night, and he told me that I would be placed on the subpoena list for the gentleman's citation hearing should he plead not-guilty to the charges. He also told me to bring my medical bills to the hearing in the hopes that the judge would simply order him to pay my bills on the spot. I thanked him for his advice and waited to see what the asshole would do. I didn't have to wait long to find out that he was pleading not guilty.

So on Thursday morning, I traveled the sunny streets of the South Side to the district court. I'd dolled myself up to the nines - shirt, tie, black pants, gelled hair (like a felon with Magellan), and clean shoes. I was a classy motherfucker. As I walk into the waiting area, I immediately recognize the attacker sitting there. A look of panicked recognition flashes across his face that seems to say, "Oh shit! The bastard actually showed up. I'm so screwed." My attacker is dressed in an untucked gray dress shirt, green pants, and he has a mop of unkempt hair. He's also tubbier than I'd remembered. At least he shaved his beard from the last time I saw him (re: looking up from a bloody sidewalk).

We wait our turn for the judge, and we really don't have to wait long. About a dozen small cases are crammed into a single room as the judge cycles through them each in less than five minutes. Then our turn comes. My attacker looks dejected; I'm practically strutting.
JUDGE: "So we're dealing with a case of disorderly conduct. What happened here?"
The officer proceeds to provide a nicely detailed summary of the night's events (as outlined in my previous post on the matter). The judge looks at my attacker.
JUDGE: "So why did you attack this gentleman?"
ATTACKER: "Uhh... because he was holding hands with my girlfriend."
On the judge's face, a look of what I can only describe as incredulity makes an appearance.
JUDGE (with heavy sarcasm): "Oh, well that makes perfect sense. What a sane reason to beat someone on the street."
I obviously sense that the judge is on my side, and I start beaming noticeably.
OFFICER: "I believe Mr. P has medical bills here as well."
ME: "Yes I do, your honor." [Writer's Note: I didn't actually say "your honor," but in my mind, it makes me sound more like Jack McCoy]
So I hand the judge my medical bills, and he is, to say the least, appalled.
JUDGE: "Whoa! Look at these totals. Now I'm starting to think that some jail time is in order. I really don't think you've been punished accordingly."
At this stage, the judge begins a truly spectacular rant aimed at my attacker.
JUDGE: "Look, usually I understand some part of the crime. I understand a person's motives. But you just baffle me, sir! Who does this? I mean, Jesus! We live in a civilized society here. You can't just send a man to the hospital because you're jealous. Your girlfriend can hold hands with whoever she wants."
ME (butting in): "Actually it was his ex-girlfriend."
JUDGE: "Even worse!"
I was practically having a religious experience listening to this judge crush my enemy so thoroughly and righting the various wrongs of this experience. I don't know about God, but I do believe in the powers of this judge. At this point he turns to me.
JUDGE: "So what do you want out of this guy? You want his ass in jail, or you want him to pay the medical costs?"
ME: "The medical bills are most important, but the jail time would be a nice bonus."

At this point, the judge orders the attacker to pay my medical costs plus $300 for my inconvenience (a total of $4000), but he won't go to jail. His logic: if the guy goes to jail, he might lose his job. If he loses his job, he won't be able to pay the medical bills. The judge was dropping some straight Spock logic, so I couldn't disagree with that point. According to the terms laid out by Da Judge, my attacker has to pay me $500 by the end of May and then $150 every month until he pays it off. If he fails to make a payment, I contact the district office immediately, and his ass will be hauled in for contempt of court.

Added bonus: the judge issued a restraining order. He's not allowed anywhere near me. If I enter a room/building that he's in, HE has to leave. I'm tempted to start hanging around his neighborhood just to utilize this.

I left the courtroom feeling more self-satisfied than I have in a long time. This was also the only real legal victory I've ever achieved in my life, counteracting the laughably pathetic incidents involving my speeding tickets. This incident restored my faith in the American legal system - or at least in the idea of karmic justice. I was wronged by a man, and I couldn't have gotten more justice if Jack McCoy and Matlock had forced it down my throat.

So the story has a happy ending folks. My enemy has been vanquished, justice has been served, and money dollars have been awarded to me. I'm mildly suspicious that all of this good fortune only portends some sort of major disaster in the near future to balance out the scales, but that's something to worry about later. For right now, I intend to bask in the glory of my success for as long as possible.

Maybe I should call my attacker's ex-girlfriend and sleep with her just to rub salt in his wound... Nah, she's probably got three other ex-boyfriends who enjoy stabbing, shooting, and bone-crushing in their free time. I'll rest on my laurels, thank you very much.

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"Justice is a by-product of winning." -- Executive ADA Jack McCoy
(a bittersweet quote given the announcement that the original Law & Order has been canceled after 20 years on the air)

Job Search: Redux

2010-05-10T20:03:00.003-04:00

So here we go again... round two.

Two years ago, my job search commenced. I scoured the want ads, Monster.com, websites, internet forums, and hobos on the street to find an English-related job in the corporate world. 90 job applications and 90 job rejections later, I gave up and returned to school to get my teaching certification for secondary English education. Now the day has returned. The moment of dread is upon me again.

It's time to do the job search once more.

The last time, I was casting my net wide - craning my neck to find any job under the sun that might accept an English major. Editorial assistants, proofreaders, tech writers, composition instructors, college Registrars, legal assistants, or anyone that sought the highly prized and financially valuable services of someone with a Masters in English. As expected, this search proved laughably futile. This is partially due to my own stupidity (as illustrated in glorious despair HERE) but can be mostly attributed to the simple fact that sarcastic but gorgeous English majors are a dime a dozen (a figure, incidentally, that English majors would be notoriously poor at calculating).

This time I have a more focused approach since I'm only looking for teaching positions. I've already applied to positions at two school districts and I've got four more on my To-Do List. While I'm waiting on long-term stuff, I've applied to substitute at my former student teaching site and my local school district (Woodland Hills). More stories to follow regarding my adventures as a day-to-day substitute at one of the more troublesome districts in the county.

Searching for teaching jobs bears almost no resemblance to the search for corporate jobs. For one thing, if I were willing to travel south, I'd have a job in a heartbeat; however, I'm terrified of living in a locale that's infested with scorpions, killer bees, alligators, giant flying cockroaches, and swarms of snakes. That eliminates most of the south. Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and of course the great state of West Virginia are still on my radar, but my primary focus is on Western Pennsylvania, and the PA job search is its own fickle mistress. For the uninitiated, almost every district in the state subscribes to a web service called "PA Educator." The districts post their job openings, and every teacher in the state signs up for the service. Then the educators use the site to filter out the teachers they want for the position.

On the one hand, this is sort of a relief. The employers are taking it upon themselves to seek me out. That makes me feel good. On the other hand, I feel like a powerless peon with no hope of helping myself. Nevertheless, I've learned from my year of failed job searching. I'm being much more proactive this time around. PA Educator can't stop me from sending in a very thoughtful and focused letter of interest. Their ridiculous search filter won't keep me from calling the school to make a favorable impression. And really, even without all of that, having a Masters in English certainly sounds impressive when you're looking for an English teacher... or at least I hope it does. Hell, the law of averages figures that SOMEONE must be impressed by it.

Don't let anyone kid you: teaching jobs are hard to come by. Even though openings are plentiful, there are thousands of applicants interested in the same jobs as me. I've got a tremendous amount of competition, and many of them don't have a dark cloud of misfortune hanging over their heads, and they're capable of speaking a sentence without saying something incredibly stupid or insensitive.

Interesting positive side: apparently the fact that I'm male and huge is a big bonus. That intimidation factor is important to a lot of schools. Of course, being judged on my looks and my gender makes me feel like a cheap piece of meat... which is AWESOME!!! School districts, you have my permission to hire me for the most superficial and demeaning reasons imaginable. As long as the money-dollars are forthcoming, my ego will be beaten into submission through sheer force of will and daily shots of tequila.

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"I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs, alcohol and insanity to everyone... but they've always worked for me."

A Message to My Loyal Readers

2010-04-26T23:23:00.000-04:00

Captain Picard will tell you where you can stick your complaints about the lack of updates.

My student teaching is over. My grad classes are almost over. My brain has almost returned to its normal levels of apathy. Give me a moment to catch my breath, and I promise to return with the yuk-yuks.

And why don't you folks comment more?? Jeez, give me some goddamn positive reinforcement when I'm writing well.

And make a life-sized gold statue of me and mail it in. Is that too much to ask?

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"Ha ha HA!! Mine is an evil laugh... now DIE!"

I Pity the April Fool

2010-04-05T21:24:00.001-04:00

Go ahead, JP! You should hit on that girl at the bar. What's the worst that could happen?

Gather round, readers. I'm going to explain the definition of the term "worst case scenario."

April 1, 2010 - 6:30 pm
My Pitt class ended early on Thursday night, so my fellow English teachers in training grab a drink at a nearby bar. We're in high spirits (and enjoying spirits, as well) as we look forward to the brief holiday break.

April 1, 2010 - 8:00 pm
Most of the crowd leaves after an hour and a half, but one other guy and I decide to head off to a different bar for a little while. The week had been a long and difficult one, so I was happy to relax at a watering hole and enjoy myself. We spend a great deal of time discussing the trials of the single life and the various idiosyncrasies of our ex-girlfriends.

April 1, 2010 - 9:00 pm
As the night wears on, we start to chat it up with some cute girls sitting next to us at the bar. Because I'm not actually TRYING to impress this girl, I manage to impress her and we get along really well. The night seems very pleasant at this point, and I'm getting a nice drink on.

April 1, 2010 - 10:00 pm
The girl I'm hitting on (Let's call her Sue... not her real name) gets a text message. Sue appears visibly annoyed, and she says, "God! Why can't my ex-boyfriend take a hint." Having hacked my way through my own field of troubled women, I could understand her troubles. We joked about clingy exes for a few minutes.

April 1, 2010 - 11:00 pm
I come back from a bathroom break (remember, booze be tasty) to hear Sue finishing a conversation on the phone, "I'm in Oakland. I don't want to see you. Leave me alone." I should have sniffed out a possible bad situation brewing, but my mind was elsewhere. Booze be tasty... and her curves appealing.

April 2, 2010 - 12:00 am
My friend who I started the night with decides to call it a day. I don't think he was a huge fan of the other girl, so I understand. I decide I better stop drinking if I hope to do well with this woman tonight, and I do somehow need to get my car out of the parking garage.

April 2, 2010 - 1:00 am
The lady friend and I begin to discuss what we'll do once we leave the bar. Suggestive comments and knowing glances abound. In my mind, I'm thinking, "Shazaam!!!"

April 2, 2010 - 2:00 am
I offer the lady friend and her friend a ride home. I'm not pretty sober, feeling only that slight after-drunk that happens when you've only been drinking water for 2 hours. We almost make it back to the parking garage when I realize, "Oh crap! I left my bookbag back at the bar."

April 2, 2010 - 2:15 am
We trudge back to the bar and retrieve my stylish bookbag. We head back to the car once again. While strolling casually down Forbes Avenue, I'm holding the girl's hand and joking with her when I feel a jolt to the side of my head and I fall to the ground. Thoroughly confused, I look up to see this wild-eyed 20-something punching and kicking me. "This is a mistake!" I yell. "I didn't do anything to you." I hear the attacking lunatic yelling to the girl I was with, "Why are you holding hands with HIM!!??"

April 2, 2010 - 2:20 am
I rest my head on the concrete, and a few passersby help me sit up. In an instant, a police officer and paramedic are on the scene. In Oakland, they know better than to leave college students to their own devices. I look down at the sidewalk to see a surprisingly sizable pool of blood. "Oh wow!" I say, somewhat disoriented. "What the hell happened?"
"Dude! I saw the whole thing," says one of the Samaritans. "That asshole just stopped his car in the middle of the street, leaped out, and he punched you in the side of the head."
"Yeah," his friend chimes in, "The punch knocked you into that pillar there. I think it knocked you out for a second."
"The asshole kept hitting him and kicking him even when he was down," the first guy says, now speaking to the police officer. "That's just not cool."
Now from my perspective, I don't really think any of it is cool. Well, that's not entirely true. I did ask the bystanders, "Do the injuries at least make me look badass?" This apparently amuses them greatly. The paramedic checks me out for immediate injuries. He throws a bandage over my eyebrow (which was bleeding profusely) and puts me in a neck brace (which was soon reasoned to be unnecessary).

April 2, 2010 - 2:30 am
I start to get my bearings a bit, and I look up to see four bystanders, a police officer, a paramedic, and some bearded gentleman apologizing profusely to me. "I'm so sorry, man! I don't know why I did that. I was just so mad." I suddenly realize who this guy is. "Wait! You're the guy who attacked me!!??" All the pieces start to fall into place. Clearly, this guy is the girl's psycho ex-boyfriend. Someone is obviously the jealous type. I look around for the girl to get some confirmation on this, but she's nowhere to be found. I find out later that her friend dragged her away after the police told them to leave.

April 2, 2010 - 2:35 am
After the paramedic patches me up, the police officer takes me aside and asks, "Would you like to press formal charges against this guy?" I mull it over, but I'm still woozy and not in the best of moods. "I don't know," I honestly say. "Well," the officer explains, "If you press charges, you have to show up for trial and fill out the necessary paperwork. He'll most likely be charged with disorderly conduct." In retrospect, I don't think the cop wanted to do the paperwork. But all I want at this time is to get fixed up and go home, so I tell him that I don't want to press formal charges. He'll be taken in and given a citation. More on this point later.

April 2, 2010 - 2:45 am
Because I have an obvious head injury, the paramedic insists that I go to the emergency. The four guys who saw the incident offer to walk me to the ER (which is only a block away) so that my uninsured ass won't have to pay for an ambulance, but the paramedic offers to take me there for free since he's heading back there anyway.

April 2, 2010 - 3:00 am
For the next two and a half hours, I regale the emergency room staff with my tale, and I muse about the unfortunate nature of these circumstances. "My friends always tell me to hit on women. 'What's the worst that could happen?' they say. Well, now I have Exhibit A." I tell the ER doctor how much I was hoping to get my ass beaten down by a lunatic while on my way to a girl's house. The doctor agreed that this was about the worst cock block he'd ever heard of.

April 2, 2010 - 4:00 am
Injuries sustained: The blow to my forehead put a deep cut in my eyebrow, and I had a huge lump there. The doctors give me a stitch or two in my eyebrow. My knees were skinned VERY badly. My back and neck hurt, but there was no major damage there. The doctors were very concerned about a concussion or brain injury, so they performed a cat scan. Once again, I will stress that I am one of the uninsured masses, so none of this comes cheap. The cat scan, in particular, really racks up the cost.
April 2, 2010 - 5:30 am
I am released from the ER. It's now been 24 hours since I've had any sleep (aside from a few brief naps in the ER), my knees are oozing blood, my head is throbbing, and I've got stitches in my face. I didn't get laid, I have no jacket, and my shorts are stained with blood. I'm hobbling along the street like a distempered hobo. I'm feeling like absolute shit, and I want to go home. I make my way to the parking garage where I left my car the previous night only to discover.... THE GARAGE IS CLOSED!! There may, in fact, be a God. But if there is, he's certainly a malevolent being who is out to get me. I bang on the gate of the garage, and a guy comes out. He tells me that he can't open the garage until 6am. So I have to sit out in the dark for a half hour nursing my wounds. I have time to reflect on the night's events, and my reaction is one of surprising calm. More than anything, the entire incident seems so bizarre, unlikely, and brimming with irony that I start to laugh.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

This incident just completely cemented my place as the unluckiest man in love. I can't even pick up a random girl at a bar without inviting insanity to follow me home and introduce my face to a concrete pillar. Even a one night stand ends in disaster now. Instead of getting laid, I got laid out.

Now that a few days have passed, my wounds have mostly healed. My brother thought I looked rather badass with my eyebrow scar, though I thought it made me look like Quasimodo. My knees still hurt because of the scrapes, but at least the pain is relatively manageable.

I have no real desire to press criminal charges against this aggressive asshole because I don't need the headaches of trial dates, filing police forms, and possibly even hiring an attorney. What is very important to me is that I manage to get this jackass to pay my emergency room bills. I'm expecting my fees to rack up into the thousands, and I'll be damned if my family and me are going to shell out that kind of cash just because this lunatic can't understand when a relationship is over. So now I'm in the process of finding out what I need to do to file a civil case for the cost of my medical bills. Nothing allows me to channel the spirit of Jack McCoy quite like filing a lawsuit in small claims court.

The day after the incident, the girl from the bar texted me. I'd forgotten that she'd obtained my cell phone number that night. She apologized profusely for the incident, and she said that her ex-boyfriend had never done anything like that before. She told me what a great guy I am (not news to me), and that she really wants to see me again.

Now, I'm all about the easy pickings, but really, there are plenty of nice girls out there. I don't need to pursue the one that has a psychotic ex-boyfriend who may attempt to stab me in the kidney whenever we go out on a date. Really, with my history of women, I can usually expect the woman to be the one who's going to beat me up. Adding in deadly baggage is just pushing the limits of my pain threshold.

So there you have it, friends. The epic tale of my night of misfortune. And after all of these hardships and trials, I've learned my real lesson:
Never escort a woman down the street after 2am. Just have sex with her in the alley.

------------------------------------------
"You'd shoot a man in the back?"
"It's the safest way, isn't it?"

The Measure of Success

2010-03-27T22:15:00.000-04:00

In all of my many exploits, I forgot to mention my one glowing achievement of the last month.

I hit my goal. I made the weight requirement for jumping out of an airplane. I now weigh 229 pounds. That's one pound under the maximum weight limit for skydiving.

Granted, that's only a loss of 3 pounds in the last four months, but I don't care. I couldn't get over that 232 hump for the longest time, and now I have. Also granted, that may in fact be a loss of muscle mass since I haven't been lifting as regularly, but I don't care about that either. The number itself is so incredibly satisfying that I'll now celebrate with a ridiculously dark beer and a plate of hot wings.

Now I have to face the prospect of actually diving out of an airplane. I was feeling pretty good about it until a friend told me about her experience walking through a park and witnessing some poor shmuck splattering into the ground after a failed skydiving experience. She was the first to get to him and saw the mangled slurry of human remains that were left over. Now, I'm sure 99.9% of jumps work out just fine, and as a white, heterosexual male between the ages of 18 and 45, I should happily expect to keep my place in the majority; however, the image she painted was insanely graphic and detailed.

Also, I'm a coward who couldn't make it up a ski lift without tensing every muscle in his body. The only saving grace might be that I'd be strapped to a professional who won't allow me to chicken out. My masculinity may be shredded to pieces, but leaping out of a plane might restore some of my dignity...

unless I piss my pants on the way down.

Of course, this is all academic. I want to lose a few more pounds before I go. I don't want to be be plummeting to my doom just because I ate a heavy breakfast that morning. Also, I may still be too tall to go. I'm going to have to find out if the skydiving place has any height requirements too. That would just about kill the adventure.

-----------------------------------
"This is the greatest thrill of my life. I'm the king of the world!! I'm.... AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Teenagers Scare the Living Shit Outta Me

2010-03-26T22:32:00.002-04:00

So yeah... 14-year-olds are fucking crazy.

First, The "Teenagers are Immature Assholes" Story:

On Wednesday, my mentor teacher and I took half of the ninth-grade class to the nearby university to see a college theater performance of Of Mice and Men, that nice little tale of George and Lennie, the world-wise migrant worker and his mentally challenged best friend. It was a daytime field trip that allowed the attendees to get out of class for the day. Needless to say, attendance was high. I've chaperoned my mentor teacher's regular "Evening at the Theater" events, so I expected this trip to be similar; however, I didn't consider the fact that the "Evening at the Theater" treks are usually attended by mostly honors students.

So we arrive at the campus, and indications are already leaning toward the batshit. After eating lunch in the food court, almost a hundred of them head for the doors. We think they're heading outside, which is fine. When we finally head out, however, we find them all lined along a giant stairwell, staring down and yelling at each other - like they were tripping out after seeing the movie Vertigo. I can't even imagine their collective thought process at the time. "Wow! Stairs! They allow people to ascend levels at a relative incline. Brilliant!!"

So we gather them off the stairway to heaven and herd them over to the theater. They're chattering away before the show starts, but that's no big surprise. However, once the show starts... they don't stop. At every opportunity, they're talking rudely while the performers are on stage. What's worse, with the house lights down, about a dozen glowing phone screens can be seen as the little snowflakes start visibly and obviously texting during the performance. When the lone female performer in the cast makes an appearance, some asshole starts catcalling loudly. At one point, they use a live dog in the play, and some live ones up front start whistling to get the dog's attention. Never mind their titters and commentary at the various swear words in the play. They nearly lost it when they heard the word "nigger" in casual context as it was used in the book. All in all, it was a train wreck.

To their credit, the performers were consummate professionals, despite being just beginning college students. They never got distracted by their antics. And to be fair to the students, the shenanigans were probably limited to about 20% of them. Still, the best moment came after the performance. The director and actors came out after the play for a Question/Answer session (which the darlings couldn't stay quiet for). One question asked (by my mentor teacher, of course) was "How do you get into character?" One guy explained that he tied his hand into a fist for two days to simulate having no hand like his character. Another said something similar. But the guy playing Lennie, the mentally challenged main character, had the best zinger. He said, "Well, I went to a high school and hung out with ninth graders for a few weeks." The joke was lost on a large portion of the students, but the other chaperones and I sure got a good laugh.

* * *

Second, The "Teenagers Are Going to Kill Me" Story:

The very next day, I got a whole different side of ninth grade insanity. For the last two days, my classes have been working on their practice PSSA writing tests. The official ones aren't until their 11th grade year, but they have to do them every year as practice. Well, one gentleman in my inclusion class (the one previously described here on this blog) took exception to this demand. Not only does he repeatedly complain and refuse to do it, but he won't stop playing with his desk - tipping it back and forth, lifting it with his knees, etc. The learning support teacher and I both give him grief several times, and near the end of the period, I overhear this zinger: "I'm gong to burn this whole school to the ground."

Now, they cover this shit pretty heavily in education classes. I can't take stuff like that lightly, but I can tell that he's not being entirely serious. He's in a bad mood and pushing buttons. Still, I very sternly say, "Hey! You know better than to say stuff like that. Do it again and I have no choice but to call you on it." He denies ever saying it and goes back to fucking around.

Then a few minutes later, another student, a wild character in his own right, starts making fun of Captain Verbal Threat. So our angry man hisses quietly, "I'm going to bring in a gun and shoot you." The other student doesn't hear, but I do. I try to give him hell, but the bell rings. My mentor teacher, who had to run errands at the end of class, returns, and I tell her immediately about what happened. She tells me that we have to tell the counselors as soon as school is over.

Now, I don't think for a minute that this kid is going to come in to burn down the school or shoot up the place. The dude has anger issues, but he's just not that committed. But I have to cover my own ass. Suppose the lunatic does come in to light the school on fire. I can't take that chance. So my mentor teacher and I go to the counselors' office as soon as school ends, but the counselor isn't there. The secretary, in fact, berates me for not coming to the counselor as soon as it happened. Never mind that I had another class to teach. My mentor teacher is none too pleased that we've been insulted and belittled in this instance, so we go to the assistant principal, who is much more receptive. He tells me that he'll handle it immediately, and he thinks I acted appropriately.

That hasn't stopped me from beating myself up over the incident.
"Should I have called the office immediately?"
"Should I have sent him to the office after the first threat?"
"Is my classroom discipline to blame for him even making the threat in the first place?"
"Did I overreact?"
These questions kept circling in my mind no matter how many other teachers and student teachers told me that I did the right thing.

* * *

These two stories really encapsulate two days when I was exposed to 14-year-old teenagers rather than just ninth-graders. These were adolescents acting like themselves, not acting in their roles as students. Most of them are ridiculously simple-minded but generally descent half-adults, I suppose. But I've suddenly got a long, scintillating taste of just how crazy these pubescent bags of mostly-hormones can be.

Though I will admit, they do provide a regular source of blog material.... at least when I muster enough wherewithal to actually post.

-----------------------------------
"Teenagers scare the living shit outta me,
They could care less as long as someone will bleed.
So darken your clothes, or strike a violent pose,
Maybe they'll leave you alone, but not me."

The Great Blogger Returns!

2010-03-21T14:21:00.004-04:00

Greetings, my dear readers (those of you who are left). I have returned from my travels with tales that will delight the mind and invigorate the imagination.

Alternatively, I may have simply been busy beyond all belief and haven't taken the time to make a blog entry in forever.

Yeah, I'm going to go with the second option.

In the last two months, I've started student teaching, taken three graduate courses, found a girlfriend, lost a girlfriend, gone skiing twice, gotten drunk quite a few times, chaperoned a trip to see Grease, witnessed the Winter Warlock raping the world, graded more student papers than I'd care to admit, battled the head cold from hell for a week and a half, and pulled Excalibur from the stone. It's been a busy stretch of time.

The big time commitment this semester has been, of course, student teaching. I knew that teaching would become a huge time commitment this semester, but I wasn't truly prepared for just how incredibly overwhelming the task could be. Although I started out by taking over one of my mentor teacher's periods each week, I now have her full schedule - five ninth-grade honors English classes and two ninth-grade inclusion classes. I plan every lesson, and I grade about half of the workload (my mentor teacher handling the other half). Additionally, every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night, I have my own classes at Pitt. Right now, there are three major tasks that I have to complete while I'm typing this, so feel privileged that I've placed your needs over those of ninth graders who have a troubling sense of entitlement.

Honestly, I feel like I'm doing a damned good job at this student teaching gig. My mentor teacher seems to think so as well. Teachers who pass by the room while I'm teaching tell me that I seem to have an excellent command of the class. And yet, whenever I go to my classes at Pitt, I'm constantly made to feel like I'm not doing enough. What about that one student that I'm not reaching? How could I be differentiating the instruction just a little bit more? Couldn't there be more variety in my teaching styles? How could the students be further engaged?

Despite the mountain of lavish praise that's so deservingly heaped upon me, I never think I'm doing a good enough job. There's always something being overlooked. Perhaps I'm not accounting for the kid who needs a more tactile lesson. Maybe I didn't need to snap at that little darling who kept kicking the girl in front of him. There's always something. I once talked to my mentor about this, and she said that you have to accept your failures and move on. She told me that she's witnessed countless promising teachers wash out in their first three years because they try to do far too much and end up having a nervous breakdown.

This is a new level of mental dilemma for me. Usually I have extremely angsty existential crises where I contemplate the various bad life choices that I've made while lamenting the world's constant attempts to laugh at my failures. But this new problem - caring about shit that I can't control - well, that just plain sucks. Sometimes there are practical consequences. For example, there's one creepy little bastard in my one inclusion class who sits in class every day giving me an alarmingly evil death glare. He never says anything or does anything wrong - he just stares... those dead eyes piercing the fiber of my soul. This kid also never does any of his work, and he never brings anything to class. He's never said or done anything explicitly threatening... he's just weird and scary as hell. Now, should I be reaching out to this kid? I've tried. The last time I encouraged him to work, he responded, "Do you like to shoot cocaine, Mr. P?" Another time I said something to him about his writing, he replied, "I read cereal boxes and then light them on fire." One time we were doing a little artsy class project, and Creepy Kid spent twenty minutes closely examining a pair of scissors. Nothing happened, but I want to know what was going on in that twisted brain of his.

There are times, though, where my students offer new psychological insights into myself. On one very memorable occasion, I was explaining the homework for my last honors class one day, and the class was complaining about having no time to do it that night. "We have sports to go to, Mr. P," they wailed. "We don't have time." So I replied, "Well I have class tonight, but I still have to make lesson plans and do my own homework." And this one girl - this bubbly, cheery girl with this sickeningly syrupy attitude - says, "Yeah, but you're OLD, Mr. P. You're life is over. You have no future."

I have to admit... that one stung a little bit. Sincerity hurts.

I have other stories. I'll try to be more prolific in the future.

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"Are you saying I'm a liar?"
"No, I'm saying you're an optimist. Same thing, really."

Grading on a Curveball

2010-02-26T18:43:00.003-05:00

Back when I taught Composition and Rhetoric at WVU, I thought 44 papers was a lot to grade every four weeks. Oh how I moaned and complained about those freshman monstrosities. How totally unfair it was for me to have to grade these papers while teaching TWO whole classes.

Then I started student teaching in a public high school, and I realize just what a slackass I truly was.

With 150 students, my grading time has nearly quadrupled. Granted, high school students don't write nearly as many four-page papers, but what they lack in page length they more than make up for in sheer volume. I did have to grade research papers last month that were each five pages in length, and that took some SERIOUS time. Right now, I have 150 study guides, 150 sets of homework questions, and 150 essay tests to grade. This doesn't even include the 150 writing journals that I should be checking every two weeks.

There are, I've learned, some tricks to reduce grading. First, I can always assign a more creative project that's a bit more enjoyable to read than the traditional prompt. For instance, I also have a stack of storybook projects to grade, wherein each student chose one story from The Odyssey to recreate as a children's storybook. Thus far, quite a few of these projects are really impressive and fun to read. In one story, Odysseus's crew consists of gingerbread men (because the Cyclops in the story eats Odysseus's men) and they put the Cyclops to sleep with "the finest warm milk in all of gingerbread-town" (instead of getting him drunk on ye olde wine). Stuff like that is a treat to grade and really leads me to believe that younger generations show legitimate creativity and intelligence.

Second, and less nobly, I can "grade for completion." The student gets full credit if he or she simply finished the assignment... no matter how much of a steaming pile the product may be in terms of quality. I may pull this stunt on the pile of homework questions.

Finally, I can always find refuge in bureaucracy by grading according to the PSSA Scoring Guide for Writing Assessment. Under these guidelines, I assign a paper a raw score based solely on five areas: Focus, Content, Organization, Style, and Conventions. Now, my mentor teacher uses these five fields anyway, but she tends to comment on the papers as well. But if I'm looking to cut corners in an efficient way, a simple and completely worthless number at the top of the paper is the way to go.

It's hard not to get completely overwhelmed by grading when the stacks of papers lay on your desk. Despair creeps in. Resentment begins to rear its ugly head. Before too long, one can begin to harbor disturbing fantasies of lighting the papers on fire and dancing nude in the ashes. I've refrained from drinking while grading, despite how stress-relieving that sounds. I don't need to wake up the next day to find that I've scrawled "YouR paper iz reely pretty! The adjectivs make U look soo hottt!!"

I'm almost ashamed to admit this, but I'm a lot more forgiving of errors near the end of a stack of papers because I get tired of writing the same comments over and over again. I sit there and think, "Damn! I don't want to explain why his paragraph structure isn't right. Fuck it!" This is not the attitude of the world's greatest teacher, but these are certainly the thoughts of an overworked human being with five classes of honors students whose helicopter parents would leap on me if I knocked their grades down unfairly.

English teachers catch a lot of shit because their grading is subjective. Well, generally speaking, it's good that it is. Would you really want your paper, creative and thoughtful that it is, graded according to rigid and unwavering criteria? That's why the state standardized tests are so roundly criticized. Subjective grading allows teachers to use their experience and judgment to assess style, substance, creativity, and individual student improvement until Skynet develops sentience and can create cyborgs to do this. On the downside, subjective grading does leave the student's paper at the mercy of human frailty and weakness. I try my damnedest not to take my frustrations and exhaustion out on my students' work, but dammit, it's hard sometimes.

Maybe I could just beat them instead. That could be cathartic.

-----------------------------
"What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

All Downhill From Here, Part 2

2010-02-10T19:57:00.001-05:00

Previously, on THE UNDESIRABLE ELEMENT:

"I decided to challenge my longstanding losing streak against gravity and outdoor sports by going skiing at Seven Springs."
"I failed."
"All is not well."
"flying out of control"
"crashing into bystanders"
"totally humiliated"
"heckling and demeaning comments"
"Everything clicks!"
"I've got the requisite basics to at least make it down the easiest long hill."

AND NOW THE CONCLUSION...

So I await my lady companion's return from her most recent trek up the mountain with great anticipation. I'm convinced that I'm going to conquer this mountain with style and panache, and confidence radiates from my being. Then I see my lady friend come down the slope, and she starts limping toward the lodge.... limping toward the lodge. What the hell is this?

I haul my ski-strapped ass over to her. She's quite the avid snowboarder, so if she's injured, that doesn't portend good things for my future. Apparently, while up on the slopes, she saw what was clearly a novice snowboarder ahead of her, and she tried to pass him. Unfortunately, just as she was beside him, the newbie suddenly lost control and veered sharply to the left, colliding with her and sending her crashing backwards to the ground. The newbie was uninjured, but my snowboarding friend was left with quite the bruised hip.

I sit with her in the lodge for a few minutes while she recovers, and I tell her that we could just leave now if she wants. It's getting late anyway, and the resort is closing in an hour (10:30pm) or so we think. "Oh no!" she says. "You're not leaving until you go down that mountain. Come on, we're going up."

Now I'm not the world's most masculine guy, but if a woman is willing to drag herself up the mountain in considerable pain just to take me down once (that's totally NOT a euphemism), man-honor demands that I follow. So she shrugs off her pain, and we head back over toward the ski lift.

Of all the challenges associated with the ski trip, this lift was the one I feared the most. I've always had something of a problem with heights (to say the least), and perching myself precariously on a swinging park bench as a cable drags me up a mountain while I'm 30 feet above the ground struck me as a potentially nerve-wracking experience. But with my pale imitation of male machismo firmly in place, I pretend not to be bothered by it, and we make our way to the lift. At first, the experience was rather pleasant. This isn't so bad, I muse to myself. It's just like a weird roller coaster. But then we get higher..... and higher..... higher. And then the air gets colder... and colder... and colder. I wrap my arm tightly around the back of the ski lift bench and grip the side bar like I'm Luke Skywalker clutching the bottom of Cloud City.

"Not as easy as you were expecting?" my lady friend asks.
"I can't believe I was thinking about skydiving." I reply dejectedly.

Despite my childish caterwauling, we make it to the top of the ski lift, and I'm suddenly feeling very pumped about successfully using the ski lift without crying like a baby or falling to my doom. "Let's do this!" says I.

We start our sojourn down the mountain, and for the first ten seconds, everything seems to be going well. I'm zipping along at a controlled clip, feeling confident in my ability to successfully navigate my way down the precipice when suddenly....

CRASH!!!! I face-plant hard into the snow. My skis come flying off (as they're supposed to), and after wiping the snow and ice off of my face, I work to put them back on. "No worries," I say to my friend. "I just got discombobulated for a moment." - Yeah, that word will totally make me sound cool.

I pick myself back up and start moving again, but this time there's trouble. I start careening out of control in a very scary way, and I hear my lady friend call from behind me: "JP!! Watch out!! You're going the wrong way!!" Holy shit!! The last thing I need is to end up on some sort of slope of doom, so I do the only intelligent thing and deliberately throw myself into the snow. Again, my skis pop off, and lady friend catches up to me. "You were about to go down the black diamond path (the hardest one)." She points to a path off to my left. "That's the one we want to do."

We successfully make it to the proper track, and I ski about twenty yards when, once again.... CRAASSSHHH!! This time, I land directly on both of my knees. This hit doesn't look particularly bad; however, all of the force goes straight into my knees, and the pain radiates through them in a thoroughly unpleasant way. My faithful lady friend stops whenever I crash and waits for me to re-orient myself.

"What's the problem!?" she yells.
"My knees feel like they got smashed by a sledgehammer!" I call back.
"What??? You crashed into the log jammer??"
"Never mind. I'm coming!"

I get back up once more. But before I get moving, I hear the distinct sound of WHOOSHING behind me. I turn around to see a whole cavalcade of skiers barreling towards me. Oh shit! I think to myself. I'm about to re-enact the wildebeast sequence from The Lion King. Fortunately, this graceful stampede consists of experienced skiers and they breeze right by me, but the stream of skiers never stops. The slope is now inundated with people.

I start moving again, and my downhill velocity begins to increase dramatically. I've never felt so completely out of control as a result of my own incompetence. The instructor told me to turn my skis into a letter A to slow down, and I do so repeatedly. "LETTER A!! LETTER A!!" I say to no one in particular. But the advice does no good at these speeds, and I keep going. The "Letter A" business continues for a few yards before I look down and see that I've managed to get my skis crossed. They're in the letter "A" position alright, but I can't get them straight again. A few foreboding seconds pass where I know I'm in trouble, and I can't do anything about it. I literally say, "Oh shit," before falling face-forward down the slope. Now this is a fall of epic proportions. Since I have no balance whatsoever as a result of my crossed skis, I proceed to tumble down the slope over and over and over again. My poles and skis go flying in four different directions. I finally come to stop, staring at the night sky. Lady friend sees all of this and makes her way over to me.

"Oh my god!!! JP, are you okay!!??" She told me later that she thought I'd really hurt myself badly that time. In reality, the knee drop hurt far worse than this spill. As comically ridiculous as my endless tumble must have looked, it really didn't hurt at all.
"Nothing bruised except my ego," I moan.
"Can you keep going?" she asks.
I gesture to the slope - the only way back down the mountain. "I don't really have much of a choice." I say.
"Do you want me to go in front of you or behind you?" she asks.
"Why don't you just head on down the rest of the way," I suggest. "I'll probably fall at least six more times, and there's no sense in you stopping each time."

She agrees and glides effortlessly down the slope. I stagger to my feet, but now my hands and knees are shaking. Not only do my knees still ache from that previous fall, but my nerves are completely shot now. I know full well that another wipeout is imminent, but I don't know when it will come.

The slope has now become a full-fledged ski-way, with skiers whizzing by me at every moment. I hear their whooshing and swishing, but I can't see them as I concentrate on what I'm doing. CRAAASSHHH!!!! Down I go again, but I pick myself up once more and continue. "WATCH OUT!!" I hear a stranger say to someone to my left, but his cry of alarm breaks my concentration and I face-plant again. CRAAASSSHHH!!! It turns out that the resort, in fact, closes at 10pm, so everyone still around has come up the mountain to get one last trip in... right as I'm going for the first time ever.

At this point, I realize that my own confidence is to blame. In a wondrous moment of self-reflection, I recognize that my own nerves are causing me to fuck up the whole process. I briefly consider just sitting on the slope and gliding down the mountain on my ass, but I figure that nothing would be more humiliating. So I say to myself:

"Self, you are not going to give this shit up. You've already been mocked, humiliated, bruised, battered, and emasculated. The least you can do is hold your fat head high as you tumble down the rest of the mountain. You may not look graceful or impressive, but dammit, you'll win the day on your own steam."

So that's exactly what I do. By the time I make it back to the lodge, I've fallen at least a dozen times, and I'm covered head-to-toe in snow and sweat. Every joint in my body aches, and my ego has been shattered. I see my lady friend resting comfortably on the bench outside the lodge.

"Hey! You made it!" she cheers genuinely.
"I must be the most uncoordinated man to ever fall down this mountain," I mumble dejectedly.
"At least you never gave up," she says. "And you're not as full of yourself as most of the other guys here who think they're God's gift to the mountain."
I think immediately of the asshole frat boys in the sauna with their waxed chests and derogatory jeers and heckles. Fuckin eh! I'm totally better than them!

We go to return my equipment, and every muscle in my doughy body aches and creaks. As we hobble back to the car, I say, "You may not believe this, but I think I want to try this again."
"Oh thank God!!" she says, breathing a sigh of relief. "After watching you today, I thought you'd never want to come again. I figured this turned you off of skiing for life."
"Nah!" says me, waving my hand dismissively. "As badly as I did on the mountain, that was still leaps and bounds ahead of where I was when we got here."

The way I see it, I'm not taking all of this punishment for nothing. I'm going to learn how to do this thing and zip down the mountain in a manly fashion. Six-year-olds can do it! Hell, I even learned that former Mrs. Employer, a sixty-five year old rotund woman, can ski. If they can do it, so can I. I'm going to master that mountain like the Agro-Crag.

In fact, I'm going again this Sunday, so we'll find out if I get any better or if greater hilarity and misfortune will ensue.

-----------------------------------
"Skiing is the only sport where you spend an arm and a leg to break an arm and a leg."

All Downhill From Here, Part 1

2010-02-08T10:32:00.005-05:00

Last weekend (because my blog updates are so very prompt), I decided to challenge my longstanding losing streak against gravity and outdoor sports by going skiing at Seven Springs. When the girl I went with suggested the idea, you only need to read as far as the word "girl" to understand why I agreed to go. But alternatively, skiing did seem like a lot of fun, and looked challenging but not impossible to do. Additionally, I've never done ANYTHING even remotely cool with my life, so I thought this would be an easy way to get the adrenaline pumping by some other means besides watching my career opportunities careen wildly off the precipice of failure.

I have two goals as we're riding up to the ski resort:
1. Do not embarrass yourself in a spectacular fashion.
2. Don't become overwhelmed with paralyzing fear on the ski lift.

I failed on both counts.

But let's return to the beginning, shall we? My lady friend works for a very, shall we say, well-to-do engineering company, and they buy discounted stuff from Seven Springs all the time. Through Machiavellian strategies I have no way of comprehending, I was able to get a free skiing lesson and a discounted evening pass for the ski lift and equipment. So at this stage of the game, I'm really excited to get my ski on. I figure it will kind of like staying on a balance board - just stay standing and let gravity do the rest. Of course, I was being willfully ignorant of my past experiences with balance boards, and I underestimated the more complicated maneuvers required of the downhill skier.

My first clue should have been the skiing boots, which are designed to snap into the skis and provide some traction should your skis pop off as you tumble down the mountain (SPOILER ALERT: I become intimately familiar with this feature later in the story). Unfortunately, these boots weren't made for walkin' on a normal surface, so I start traipsing around the lodge looking like I'm wearing those old Moon Shoes. I can't even walk up the stairs without looking like a gag reel from the first Home Alone movie. Nevertheless, I assume that I simply need to get out on the powder and then all will be well.

Then I get out on on the powder... all is not well.

On the way up to the resort, I joked with my lady friend that the skiing lesson would probably consist of me and a bunch of five-year-olds. We laughed, but I didn't think it would actually be true. To be fair, it was me, some old dude, and about a dozen 12-year olds, and I don't impress even when I take my first steps out onto the snow. Now, I have size 15 feet, so I'm used to walking while taking such length into account; however, 6-foot skis are a lot more challenging to maneuver than I would have thought. I can barely move forward to take my place next to the impatient 7th graders. Lady friend chuckles at my misfortune and heads off to her own advanced snowboarding lesson (also free). I send her a withering glare as she's walking away, but she fortunately doesn't see it. Meanwhile, my ski instructor, a woman in her mid-sixties, prepares us for our lesson.

Parallel skis make you go forward. Making the letter "A" with your skis (i.e. pointing the tips together) makes you stop. This sounds straightfoward enough, but on my first try, I careen out of control and nosedive into the snow. Laughter abounds from all the 7th graders who got it with no problem. Memories of middle school gym class flash before my eyes. The lesson continues in this manner, but the ski instructor does a great job with me. She gives me the personal attention I need... much like the slow kid in a public school class. By the end of the lesson, I've actually improved considerably. I still can't maneuver worth a damn, but I can get down the hill without flying out of control or crashing into bystanders.

My big problem, however, is that I can't get the hang of turning on skis. I learn from the ski instructor that is the most pivotal (pun intended) skill of skiing. Turning controls your speed and prevents you from careening off the mountaintop in an alarming fashion. As I have no desire to pull a Sonny Bono, I stay on the bunny hill until I can figure out how to turn adequately. Never mind the fact that I'm totally humiliated by this point. It doesn't help that I'm dressed in the most ludicrous manner possible, with my old winter coat (which is now two sizes too big for me), a pair of my brother's windbreaker pants over sweatpants (both of which are two sizes too big for me), and a big fluffy hat. For all intents and purposes, I'm so poofy that I look exactly like I did when I weighed over 300 pounds. This does not bring back good memories, and I don't look very suave on the slopes.

Regardless of my fashion faux pas, I spend the next two hours on the bunny slope. For the life of me, I can't figure out the turning thing. Six-year-olds are whizzing by me, and I'm feeling like such a chump. To make matters even worse, three frat boys from the ski lodge (which overlooks the bunny slope) appear from the sauna balcony and proceed to heckle me: "Hey! Look at the big guy on the bunny slope! Hey big guy!! You can really move! Wooo!!!" I look up at them. This doesn't help. "Hey! He's looking up here!! Why don't you man up and go on the mountain! Booo!!! BOOOOOO!!!!" My face... it burns like a thousand exploding suns, but I can't do it yet. Much as I despise their heckling and demeaning comments, I can't adequately turn my ass to go where I want to go. I begin to lose all hope.

But then suddenly.... everything clicks. It's like a lightbulb just flicked on in my brain. "Ohhh! The weight needs to shift onto the foot in the direction you turn, but you also need to lean weight onto the opposite ski but in a very particular way." It was tricky, but once I got the feel for it, I was zipping around the bunny slope in no time.

With my new-found confidence tucked under my hat, I headed for the ski lift to meet up with my lady friend, who had long since gone up the mountain at my request (both because I wanted her to enjoy herself and because I didn't want her to see me humiliate myself in front of the entire resort). I'm convinced that even if I don't look pretty coming down the mountain, I've got the requisite basics to at least make it down the easiest long hill.

Oh, hubris, thy name is JP.

CONTINUED IN PART 2.

------------------------------------------------
"It feels like I'm wearing nothing at all... nothing at all... nothing at all!"

What Was This Blog About Again?

2010-02-04T22:18:00.003-05:00

JP has been otherwise engaged in other activities that have prevented him from updating this blog; however, I have many new ideas for posts including a recent ski trip, some fun in the classroom, and several personality malfunctions that lend themselves to mockery.

Pleas of "For the love of humanity, please stop writing!" will be summarily ignored.

---------------------------------
"The plural form of 'coccyx' is 'coccyges.' "

Tales From the Back Burner

2010-01-23T17:20:00.000-05:00

Another terrific side result of teaching and taking classes all the time is that my personal writing has taken a back seat to everything else. I have a folder brimming with ninth graders' research papers that requires my grading prowess. Three book chapters need to be read. My teaching portfolio must be assembled. And my burning desire to see Avatar must be sated. I simply do not have time to indulge in the adventures of my stagnant and bemoaning protagonist and his erstwhile attempts to make something of himself. I'm too busy dealing with his real life counterpart: me.

Over the Christmas break, I made some minor attempts to toy with the structure of the book. All through last semester, I never touched the damn thing, but I would get ideas for it and jot them down in a handy dandy notebook that I kept in my bookbag. By the time the semester was over, I wanted to jettison everything I'd written up to that point and replace it with a completely new idea. Rough drafts rape your soul precisely because you have to throw away hours of work for your own good. For instance, my initial rough draft began with my main character in jail and having a cliche-ridden conversation with some dimwitted cops. I was thoroughly displeased with this introduction, so I altered the first two pages significantly to give the police officers a bit more personality and provide some necessary conflict for the main character. But now I'm not so sure that I even want my guy starting out in jail. The whole setup may have to go. It's maddening to think about, so oftentimes I prefer to focus on tangible and immediate challenges for graduate school and teaching. When I grade a paper, that's a finished effort that's not changing at all... unless the students can prove how drunk I am when I score them.

There are times when I wish I had a disposable trust fund to live on as I huddle in a seaside bungalow writing short stories and novels for the enjoyment of the masses. But then I realize that I'd only destroy myself with crippling self-criticism and off myself with a toaster oven, a bathtub, and an H. R. Pufinstuf DVD. I can waste time with the best of them, but I kinda like having obligations to keep my occupied. It keeps my twisted imagination from dwelling on my own inadequacies and failed dreams.

But that novel just gathers dust in my C: drive. I want to finish it... mostly to prove to myself that I can. Once I settle into the routine of student teaching, maybe I'll be able to make a schedule where I devote at least a solid two or three hours a week to working on it. Or maybe old Mr. P will do what my ninth grade history teacher did and have my students read the newspaper every Friday and then use the time to write in school. Those are educational principles, my friends.

For the time being, I think I'll just leave Eugene and the Amazing Time-Traveling Tomato to rest for now. I'll focus on my existing challenges for the moment, and I'll leave the writing of my superfluous verbal fluff for another day.

---------------------------
9 out of 10 readers can't imagine how the book would be any good if this blog is the best JP can come up with so far.

Welcome to the Workaday World

2010-01-21T20:07:00.004-05:00

Well, I asked for it.

I wanted the opportunity... nay... the PRIVILEGE to be a working man with a regular and steady job requiring normal sleep hours and an 8-hour or more work day. I demanded money dollars for my productivity. I craved the sumptuous taste of adulthood and responsibility.

I got what I wanted and came to a conclusion: Adulthood Sucks!

Now don't get me wrong - I'm loving my chosen field. There's never a dull moment when you're teaching. As indicated in previous posts, the adolescent mind constantly invents new ways to create incidents that will entertain and enthrall my friends and family. But this daily 5:30 A.M wake-up call is for the goddamn birds. And not just the normal birds either - like a fucking owl or something. Battling my way across the Parkway every morning with the other working masses only hammers home just how much growing up will bring on pain and misery.

Know what was great? Waking up at 10:30 every morning last semester. Riding my bike to the candy store to buy Ring Pops because I had nothing better to do at age 8. Spending an entire evening pouring salt on slugs on the front stoop just to watch them shrivel. Now the only thing shriveling is my sleep time.

To be fair, this semester is particularly unpleasant. Much as I love my student teaching placement, I'm beat when I get done there. When you're teaching, you have to constantly be in teaching mode, and that constant act is exhausting. A lot of people don't realize that. And when 2:30 rolls around, I want to watch cartoons, eat a fudgesicle, and take a nap (the pleasures in life don't change after age 4). But do I get to do this? Hell no! I have to make my way to my grad school classes on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. By the time I get home, I've had a 15 hour day. The last time I did something for 15 hours straight, I was dumping talcum powder into my pants for the next three days.

I don't write this for the pity (though it's always nice). This is a meditation on the working life that I write for all of you long-suffering folks out there who haven't seen the sun outside of your job site in 8 months. For years I both envied you and mocked you. Now I do neither. I feel your pain and hereby withdraw my objections to your constant and increasingly fervent requests for hard liquor and your random outbursts of frustration. Cries of "WHY GOD, WHY!??" will no longer go ignored or scoffed at.

Curse you, irony!! You've fooled me once again!

-----------------------------
"I don't want to grow up 'cause if I did, I wouldn't be a Toys R' Us kid."

Though This Be Madness...

2010-01-06T20:56:00.006-05:00

I can tell already that Hyperactive Sexuality Girl (who I have uncreatively dubbed HSG) in the inclusion class is going to serve as the source of many quality blog post stories. She creates a scene every goddamn day, and she has a penchant for putting me into difficult and uncomfortable situations. And if there's something funnier than me trying desperately to avoid having to defend myself against molestation charges, I don't know what that could be. While her crass jokes and flamboyant displays of sexuality certainly create the most colorful stories, she's actually one of the most interesting students that I have. When she's not trying to be the adolescent version of Jessica Rabbit, HSG is a brilliant student without a trace of self-consciousness (obviously) or shyness.

Today, my mentor teacher had an IEP meeting with HSG and her grandfather (who officially adopted her over a decade ago) and all of HSG's teachers, and she said I should go as well. I'd never been to an IEP meeting before, so I had no idea what to expect. What it turned out to be was an extended airing of grievances, with her teachers listing all of HSG's behavior problems to her grandfather. Mercifully, her awkward and overt flirtations with me were not addressed. In fact, my mentor teacher didn't really say much at all that was negative about HSG, which I thought was rather nice of her. The rest of the teachers really smacked her down, even after admitting that her grades were, in fact, quite excellent.

HSG actually has ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), with an extra emphasis on the Hyperactivity. She has A LOT of trouble sitting still. So what was the brilliant idea suggested by one of the teachers at this meeting? "Well what if we allow [HSG] to get up about halfway through the class and go for a little walk down the hall?" I mentally shook my head. I can't think of anything more embarrassing for a high schooler. Happily, HSG let them have it: "I'm not going for a walk every day! Jeez, I'm not in Preschool!" Much as she irritates me, I mentally said, "Fuck yea!" That has to be one of the most patronizing suggestions I've ever heard.

As I said, my mentor teacher was very complimentary to HSG during the meeting, but she wasn't expecting that. Before my mentor teacher said anything, HSG said, "I think Mr. P should talk instead. He's my buddy." For once, she wasn't being her usual catty self when she said this. She seemed to be genuinely looking for some sort of reprieve. Of course, I've only been there every day for three days, so I was in NO position to offer any contributions, and I said as much. I felt bad for her though. I got the impression that she genuinely wanted to do well but couldn't help herself. Fortunately, my mentor teacher proceeded to say very nice things about her, so she didn't get completely emotionally abused by her instructors.

In the world of writing, this is called something like "complicating the cliche." There are a lot more layers to HSG than I really thought. Even the math teacher, her most vocal critic at the IEP meeting, explained how HSG has befriended a boy in his class who has been repeatedly picked on and will defend him against the ones who bully him. She also blows every other student out of the water in her understanding of Algebra. Yet she's the biggest pain in his ass all day long.

I know people can have multiple sides to their personalities, but it's so bizarre to see this shown so starkly in someone who is such a thorn in MY ass (not literally... of course). I have some newfound sympathies for HSG (especially after learning of the history of how she lives with her grandparents... the details of which I won't get into). Now if only I could prevent her from doing things like standing against the classroom door during my lunch period and pressing her lips against the glass in a lascivious manner and making little kissy faces (which she did today), we'd be in good shape.

BONUS STORY:
You'll recall yesterday's story about the "rockets" that an inclusion kid was drawing. Well apparently the paranoid schizophrenic was at it again today and drew another, more detailed, cock and balls on the podium without anyone noticing (I was observing another class at the time, so I don't know how). This new shaft and sack had a more wrinkled and veiny appearance... for whatever reason. Once again, the last period kids noticed this new addition and commented on it to my mentor teacher:
"Wow, Mrs. [X], there's a new rocket ship! It's got a lot of extra lines on it."
Now my mentor teacher is a sixty year old grandmotherly-type woman, but for whatever reason, she responded:
"I think that must be a really OLD rocket ship."
The class, and I, burst into hysterical laughter. My mentor teacher, suddenly realizing that she may have spoken too quickly, tries to hide her giggles, but she can't. The class then resumes their discussion of rockets and whether little curly hairs can grow on them.

I can complain about my life choices all I want, but I certainly didn't pick a BORING profession.

--------------------------------------------
"I'm a Rocket Man. Rocket Man, burning up his fuse out here alone."

Love and Rockets

2010-01-05T17:57:00.006-05:00

I'm two days into my official student teaching, wherein I go into my placement every day. For this first week, I simply continue to observe my mentor teacher and go into some other classrooms to see how other stuff is done. However, the stories of legend continue to spring forth from the original classes that I'm in. I can say with pride that the ninth graders this year as every bit as immature and inappropriate as I am.

I've already blogged before about the smartass girl with the hyperactive sex drive in the inclusion class. This girl's FLIRT dial goes up to eleven. Only two days in, and she's already made a huge spectacle of herself in front of me on more than one occasion. Yesterday, my mentor teacher gave the class some time at the end of the period to talk quietly. Of course, some of the kids in the back turned around to talk to me... because I'm just that awesome. Hyperactive Sex Girl (HSG) was one of them. She looks down knowingly at my feet:
"Wow Mr. P! You have really big feet."
"Yeah," I say absentmindedly.
"So..." she says wickedly, "what else of yours is big."
I catch on fast and reply deadpan: "I have really big socks."
I thought that was rather clever of me, but then HSG caught me off guard with the following:
"You know, there's nothing wrong with dating a 15 year old."
I pause. I can't think of any response that wouldn't set me up for an interview on To Catch a Predator, so I simply roll my eyes and turn to talk to another student.

Today, things got even worse. I was conferencing about paper outlines with students in the inclusion class while my mentor teacher monitored the room. Of course, 3/4 of the room didn't even do the assignment, but HSG sure did. She comes sauntering back in a manner that I can best describe as amateurishly seductive. She flops down in her chair in leans dramatically forward, making damn sure that I know what she's trying to do. I'm ready for her bullshit now, so I tell her firmly to sit down. She still makes some attempts to garner my attention, but I ignore her and get through the damned conference.

With only five conferences to do, I finished early and assumed my usual role of wandering about the classroom to keep the inclusion folks from pulling each other's hair, dancing in the aisles, and flipping desks over. When I wander in front of HSG's desk, she pats her desktop and coos, "You can sit here if you want, Mr. P."
"I'll pass"
She glances at the guy who's subbing for the special ed teacher, a guy about the same age as me. "You're so much hotter than the sub," she says loud enough for everyone to hear.
"Get back to your reading," I say.
The sub has no reaction and looks rather bored. "You don't look happy to be here," says another student to the sub.
"I'm just doing what I can," says the sub.
"No wonder you'll never get laid!" HSG shouts to the sub before turning to me. "You're so much better than him."

My mentor thinks I'm handling HSG pretty well, but she makes me nervous. I know I'm not going to do anything inappropriate, but who knows what sorts of shenanigans she's going to pull next. Sweet statutory, I don't need this in my first year. Mentor teacher even admits that she's one of the stranger cases that she's had in all her years.

But the inclusion fun doesn't stop with HSG. Before the holiday, another inclusion kid came into the classroom while the mentor teacher was on her lunch break and proceeded to draw at least a dozen very clear and detailed pictures of penises and balls all over the teacher's podium. Apparently this is the kid's calling card, who routinely draws them all over his homework and assignments in all of his classes. He's a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, but maybe he's got some Oedipal issues as well. In any case, the drawings are still there for some reason, and the final honors class took note of them yesterday.

Now honors kids are a different breed, of course. They're smarter and generally more mature; however, they're still kids who like to make jokes. Heck, I'm 26 years old, and drawings of genitals all over a teacher's podium would make me giggle like Beavis and Butthead too. The great thing about honors folks is that they're far more clever in their immaturity. Instead of jumping for the obvious, one kid blurts out, "Hey Mr. P!! Check out the rocket ships on the podium!" Another kid shouts, "Yeah! They've got big wheels on them too!" Then the floodgates open. "Looks like the exhaust is coming out the wrong end of that one." "That rocket looks pretty chubby." "Look at the size of that one!! It must be penetrating really deep space!" My mentor teacher was actually teaching the class, and even she couldn't keep a straight face. Meanwhile, I'm in the back trying so hard not to laugh and failing miserably.

I'm not sure why this English class in which we're teaching research papers has become a hotbed of sexuality and explicit content, but it's certainly more interesting and colorful than I'd been expecting. I have to admit, even though it's probably frowned upon by the administrators, it's certainly not boring.

----------------------------------
"What is it son?"
"I don't know, sir, but it looks like a giant..."
"Dick! Dick, take a look out of starboard."
"Oh my God, it looks like a huge..."
"Pecker! Over there. Wait, it's not a woodpecker..."

10 Resolutions for 2010

2010-01-01T15:28:00.005-05:00

WE WISHEN YE UN HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM VALHALLA!

In the next year, I'd like the make the following changes to my life:

1. Learn to Dance - I'd like to take a legitimate dance class wherein I learn to cut a rug and trip the light fantastic. I'm not talking about the casual club dancing either. I want to learn something classy. My brother once learned swing dancing, and I've had the opportunity to take a class in it on more than one occasion, but I always declined. Now I think it would be fun and worthwhile.

2. Blog Consistently - I don't blog near as often as I should, and the subjects range from bizarre to downright self-indulgent. I need a focus and a commitment to content. I find it fun on my own (it's writing with no pressure), but if people are going to read this thing, there needs to be a bigger spark.

3. Find a Job - I will NOT be unemployed during 2010. Once I'm done with this certification program at the end of April, I'll have two months (May and June) to substitute teach. As long as I can find some temporary work in July and August, I can start applying to full time teaching positions in September. I'll move wherever I have to in order to find a job. I'm sick and tired of mooching off of my parents and government loans. I want to be able to take some pride in my work and have my own life. Such things require steady and earned income.

4. Get a New Haircut - I'd like to try some new style. I've had the same hairstyle forever, mostly because my frustratingly straight and fine hair doesn't do much on its own. But maybe I can try something new and exciting that will make me look suave and epic. This one, admittedly, sounds stupid given how sexy I currently am. :)

5. Lose Weight - I'm 22 lbs. away from my ideal weight (210 lbs). I'd like to get there to see what I look like.

6. Travel - I need to go SOMEWHERE this year. I've never traveled on an airplane, and I've never been out of this time zone. I've been trying to work toward a trip to India, and I just might have to push that through this summer. If I wait for the financial situation to be perfect, I'll never go anywhere.

7. Learn Spanish - This one is a long shot, mostly because everyone says they want to learn a new language, and no one ever does. So I won't be terribly disappointed if this one doesn't happen. But I have a lot of Spanish vocabulary floating through my brain from five and a half years of classes, but I've forgotten a TON of the usage rules. I'd like to start refreshing this stuff so that I could get something out of it.

8. Be More Social - I'm kind of a loner when left to my own devices, and while I like my solitude quite a bit, sometimes the loneliness can destroy a man. I'd like to make a greater attempt to do things with other people on the weekends and in the evenings. It's very easy to become acclimated to a hermitic lifestyle.

9. Find a Relationship - I'm not looking for my one true love here, but I'd like to have some sort of relationship with a member of the opposite sex that lasts longer than 2 months. It's been six years since I've been able to pull that off.

10. Write Every Week - I really would like to devote some serious time to my writing. I say this all the time, but I have some great ideas swimming around in my head, and I should make a scheduled commitment to typing them into story form. I actually have some new approaches to this that I plan to blog about soon.

Of course, if I can even do ONE of these things, I'd be ecstatic. The way I see it, having ten goals and knowing full well that I can't accomplish them all takes some of the pressure off. Having this out in the open on my blog keeps me honest. I can't just change my mind or pretend that I never had the idea. Here's hoping I can create a JP that is more to my liking.

-----------------------------------
"WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TOMORROW!!"

Wanted for B&E: Kris Kringle

2009-12-25T10:44:00.003-05:00

He came into your house... through the chimney. He ate your cookies and left you with toys made through slave labor with materials not approved by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. I hear the bastard even uses lead paint to cut costs. He left hoof prints on your roof, too.

But go ahead. Let's all thank Santa Claus for his generosity.

Merry Christmas
from The Undesirable Element

----------------------------------
"You better watch out,
You better run fast,
You better duck down,
I'm telling you why.
Santa Claus is gunning you down."

Portrait of the Psychartist as a Young Man

2009-12-16T19:17:00.004-05:00

While out and about on the town celebrating my birthday, my drunken revelry brought me to a bar called Belvedere's down in Lawrenceville. It was a really different bar with a bizarre aesthetic. The front room looks like a very traditional bar, but the enormous back room features a ping pong table, two pool tables, two refrigerators, a big-screen TV from the 1980s, a big bookcase filled with old horror flicks on VHS, and about two dozen old rocking recliners of various styles and colors. I rather liked the place.

Sitting right in front of the TV was a black gentleman all by himself eating a giant pizza and quietly but rhythmically tapping his fingers on the table while watching what appeared to be one of the early Jason movies. One of the friends I was with went up to him in an attempt to bum some pizza off of him, but she ended up getting dragged into a rather lengthy conversation with him. Eventually, my other friend and I want to know what's going on, so we went to join them. Thus, I got to meet one of the more colorful characters in recent memory.

He called himself "The Psychartist." Or "Firewolf." Or "Visionary 27." I guess it depends on what fan circle you run in. You can call him by his "birth name" Deion, but where's the fun in that. It turns out that the Psychartist fancies himself quite the slam poet, and he quickly regaled us with a rather impressive set of rhymes about the importance of following your dreams. We complimented his style. Apparently, the Psychartist works a day job down at the Bettis Grille and frequently entertains his patrons with these little diddies.

He continued with a lengthy and heartfelt monologue about the dangers of alocholism and the sins of the flesh. Monogamy is very important to the Psychartist. He spoke in great detail about how everyone should follow his or her dreams in order to find true happiness. There's nothing in this world more important than happiness, and if you simply pursue sex with every random girl, "then you'll get AIDS, and no one will be happy." The Psychartist be droppin some straight truth.

The best was yet to come. He asked if we wanted to hear his original CD compilation. Apparently the Psychartist has an amateur band and is trying to break into the big time with upbeat songs featuring uplifting messages. I was truly mesmerized by this man's bizarre hip hop after school special lifestyle, so I couldn't pass this up. He popped his personal CD (which he had on hand) into the DVD player....

It was AWFUL!!!

Imagine the most deranged and gutteral growls and wails from the devil being channeled into a microphone while singing lyrics about the importance of staying in school and monogamy. I remember one particlar track very well because the same lyrics were just repeated over and over again:
"If you cheat on your wife... YOU AIN'T NOTHIN
If you cheat on your girlfriend... YOU AIN'T NOTHIN
You think you're so bad but... YOU AIN'T NOTHIN"
It went on and on like this. The rest of the songs weren't any better, but I couldn't tell him that. He was beaming with pride and annotating every track, expressing the importance of each moral lesson as he went along.

He concluded our conversation with his hope for the future of psychartistry, a term and artistic movement that he apparently dreamed up (or so he says). What is psychartistry? As best as I could piece together, it's when you express your deepest psychological turmoil in artistic form while attempting to convey a strong personal message. I always thought that's what regular old "art" was, but maybe I didn't quite get it. I'll admit, I was drinking quite a bit, and he said a lot of things.

Still, he split a pizza with us, and he was one of the funnier and most interesting characters I've met in some time. You can bet your ass that the Psychartist is going to be incorporated into my novel in some way. He's just too good to pass up.

---------------------------
"If you cheat on your girlfriend... YOU AIN'T NOTHIN!"

The House That JP Built

2009-12-15T00:45:00.002-05:00

Virgil's recent stories of moving into her new home got me thinking about my own dreams of being an esteemed property owner and having my own house. Of course, such speculations are completely baseless at the moment, given that I can barely afford to pay rent even with a roommate. Still, a gentleman with too much time on his hands can dream... even if those dreams can't be fulfilled for another decade.

Location is always an important component, and I don't think I'd really like to live out in the middle of nowhere. Having spent the first ten years of my life in town where the houses are about a foot apart and then living the next fifteen years on a solitary hillside, I've experienced both extremes. I think I lean towards preferring the former arrangement with enough space added to keep me from knowing my neighbors far too intimately. Living in an apartment has its perks, but I'd like to have a decent yard with some room for nude sunbathing. However, I also don't want to have to hike a half a mile to see my nearest neighbor. There's a big difference between solitude and loneliness, and if I spent my life in some desolate rural field, I think I'd become quite the Lonely Larry. People may baffle me, but I like being around them.

But enough about the property. Let's talk about the actual structure. First, I want a big ass porch. I want to be able to go chillax on the front porch with a cold beer while hollering at the little kids to stay off my lawn. There's something chillingly uninviting about a house that has no porch. As proof, imagine any house where there's a front door with no porch and then a side door with an alluring deck or patio. I guarantee that everyone uses that side door. Porches are where you distribute candy on halloween. It's where you can play cards on a rainy night. It's a sleeping space for the cat during warm months. You can even let homeless people sleep there for a small fee. What's not to love?

Another absolute must have: BIG ceilings. My current apartment has surprisingly high ceilings for a Pittsburgh apartment, and that's an excellent trend that I plan to continue for my future dwellings. There's nothing more uncomfortable and rather claustrophobic than for me to be in a space where I have an inch or less clearance above my head. I feel like Gulliver in the land of Lilliput. Equally irritating are low-hanging chandaliers and other lighting fixtures of that nature. Mrs. Former-Employer had very high ceilings in her castle-home, but right in the center of her library/office was a bulky chandalier hanging 6'4" off the ground. I'm 6'5". I think I've lost the brain cells necessary to calculate how many times I've whanged my head off of that thing.

This is a guilty Englishy pleasure, but I'd also love to have a library in my house. One of the few tangible symbols of my education (because a salary sure isn't one of them) is my vast collection of books. I already have three stuffed bookcases, and I'm sure I'll acquire even more in no time flat. Nothing screams high-class muckity-muck like having a library. It'll adjoin my parlor and sitting room, and then my guests and I will retire to the study.

These are all legitimate desires on my part, but then my geeky side kicks in with its own ridiculous wishes that add a whole new meaning to the concept of "dream home." I'd be happy with a completely normal library, but imagine how much more epic it would be if I could pull out one book and have one of the cases slide away to reveal a secret passageway!? And what if my swanky and spacious porch also contained a trap door just in front of the entrance so that unwanted visitors could be dropped into an underground pool of maneating alligators? And despite the architectural nightmare and safety concerns, a long curved staircase with a slick bannister that I could slide down would put an extra spring in my step every morning.

I actually have an unhealthy infatuation with the houses in the Regent Square neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Not only do they all have extremely large and ornate front porches, but they're large, close but with enough space for comfort, and old enough that they probably already have secret passageways and Victorian staircases. And they're solid structures too. I don't think there's anything more tacky than these houses in planned communities where the front has this elaborate facade of brick and windows while the other three sides have nothing but plain siding and a shabby deck. The houses in Regent Square are solid brick (or sometimes stone) all around, and they seem to look good from any angle. They don't make houses together like that with such care anymore.

On the other hand, those houses probably require the GDP of a small country to heat during the winter, but dammit, I still think they look awesome. And Regent Square has so much cool stuff along Braddock Avenue that I could die a happy man living there. It's called "Regent Square" for crying out loud. It couldn't sound more regal if it were called "Platinum Viceroy's Royal Palace."

-------------------------
"Our street is us and we are it. Our street is where we like to be, and it looks like all our dreams."

English 101: Rhetoric and Incompetence

2009-12-14T01:23:00.001-05:00

When I was teaching Rhetoric and Composition at WVU, I actually believed at the time that I was pretty good at it. My young charges weren't complaining or throwing rocks at me, and they consistently gave me high scores on the teacher evaluations at the end of each semester. I'd had some difficult days, to be sure, but I figured I'd had all the kinks pretty well worked out by the end my last semester.

Then I started learning about proper teaching from the leading experts in the field... and yours truly received a swift education in just how pathetic his English 101 class had been.

In reading the research on effective teaching strategies for my certification program, I've come to realize that just about everything they highlight as being a piss poor teaching strategy is something that I implemented with alarming regularity at WVU. Class discussions following a shared inquiry model serve as the best way for students to work through difficult readings. I dismissed them as worthless exercises in babbling that made me uncomfortable. More and shorter writing assignments help students. JP, in his infinite wisdom, deleted existing papers from the curriculum and lengthened the remaining ones. Grammar lessons should be integrated into literature and writing lessons so as to encourage practical application. Guess who tossed out worksheets with rote lists and examples on them?

Speaking of grammar: marking up every grammar mistake on a paper does NOTHING for student learning... yeah, I went red-pen happy with reckless abandon too.

The worst blow to my ego was realizing that my goddamn coordinator at WVU was right about quite a lot. My swelling sense of superiority allowed me to simply say, "Bah, my stupid boss, you don't know what you're talking about." Then I'd throw out his ridiculous ideas as condescending and pointless. Well, it turns out that my former boss, despite his childish and condescending demeanor, actually knew a few things about teaching. It seems that all the current research indicates that multiple drafts, portfolios, feedback without grades (holistic style, if you will), and structured peer review workshops really are necessary to proper writing instruction.

Lest you think I'm being too hard on myself, I should point out that I had an entire course at WVU called "College Composition Pedagogy," wherein I was supposed to learn most of this stuff. In my automatic assumption of my own superiority, I dismissed the articles we read in class as the dribblings of pompous academics who knew nothing of real teaching. I badmouthed the professor of that class and the English 101 coordinator (behind their backs, of course, because I'm a classy like that) for their ridiculous strategies.

In retrospect, I think I spent far too much time worrying about how well their four major papers met my obviously arbitrary grading requirements instead of determing whether they were actually learning something about writing. When I would wonder why my students never came to see me during office hours while Virgil and Batmite had visitors constantly, I used to think that they just didn't like me... or were intimidated by my sheer awesomeness. But now I know the real reason: they knew I wouldn't provide one bit of genuine help. An office visit with old Mr. P would be akin to an appointment with a doctor who treats you with leeches: it's supposed to help but you end up leaving woozy and bleeding from odd places.

My students probably gave me high reviews because they didn't know that they weren't learning. As far as they were concerned, my class was a cakewalk. I never challenged them to do better because that would lead to mistakes and problems, which take longer to grade. Goddammit, we couldn't have that!

Did they learn how to predict what JP wanted? Most definitely.
Did they actually learn something useful about writing? I highly doubt it.

All of this wallowing and self pity seems especially bitter after I returned to my apartment today to find a sizable envelope from the Praxis Testing program (The Praxis is the test that all teachers must take to prove their mettle). The Praxis I is a complete joke, but last month I took the Praxis II (which tests the prospective teacher's subject matter), and it was reasonably difficult. In the envelope, I found a certificate with my name on it that reads:

"In acknowledgement of your outstanding score on the Praxis Series
English Language, Literature, and Composition: Content Knowledge
Your exceptional performance earned a score that ranks within the top 15% of all test takes who took this assessment in previous years. This achievement indicates a high level of proficiency in an area critical for professional educators."

The attached letter had the following addendum:

"This honor will be indicated on all of your score reports. It formally acknowledges your personal effort and commitment to learning and to teaching... Your performance on the Praxis II assessment shows your dedication to high standards in education."

I'm not telling you this to impress you. And really, it was a standardized test that proves next to nothing of my teaching ability. Still, after reading the letter, only one word kept flashing through my mind: FRAUD. Yeah, I know my content, but is that really such an indicator of a great teacher? Shouldn't "Doesn't automatically assume he's smarter than every education expert in the country" be somewhere on the checklist of teacher quality?

There are roughly 175 students at West Virginia University right now who have me to thank for their piss poor writing skills. At the time, I was more concerned with grading quickly so that I could waste my evening watching Justice League episodes and eating goldfish crackers. That is some commitment to learning and teaching right there.

Well, here's hoping I've actually learned my lesson, because it looks like this program is actually going to award me a certification that will allow me to teach the youth of America how to read and write. Given the cracker jack job I did at the college level, maybe I should hire some of you to come kick me in the face periodically and tell me to keep my ego in check.

Okay, enough of this self-loathing. The next post will feature my glorious return to unabashed self-aggrandizement!

----------------------------
"Dammit, Fry! I can't teach. I'm a professor!"

Another Day at Metropolis University

2009-12-02T18:34:00.002-05:00

This is a video clip of a prank some kid pulled in a college lecture. I only wish I had the wherewithal and the showmanship to pull off something like this:

Not only does this guy commit himself to the role (complete with a heroic pose before blasting out the door), but he never once hesitates.

Though I wonder about the guy seen in the foreground as our boy bursts out the back door. He's got his head resting on his fist as though this sort of thing happens every goddamn day. "YAWN! I'll give a shit when it's something unusual."

If it takes more than that to pique his interest, he's going to be living one boring life.

--------------------------------------
"Three things sell this newspaper: tragedy, sex, and Superman."

Personal Fowl: Unnecessary Deliciousness

2009-11-26T12:29:00.003-05:00

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.

------------------------------------
"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

2009-11-22T22:51:00.000-05:00

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.

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

Mr. Saturday Night Special

2009-11-21T22:30:00.006-05:00

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.

-----------------------------
"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

2009-11-19T21:54:00.003-05:00

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.

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

Wake Me Up When September Ends

2009-11-18T19:51:00.003-05:00

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

2009-11-06T23:12:00.007-05:00

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!!!"

JP 2.0

2009-10-30T22:05:00.003-04:00

One of the side effects of being a writer (I'm not sure when I decided that I deserved that title, but it sure makes me feel important) is that you inevitably compare the stuff you write with your current life. Also inevitably, the real world falls hugely short of the fascinating fiction that you've created. Such is the case with me, so I want to start making my own personal narrative much more interesting. Batmite once joked that he'd like to ret-con his life, and I think I'd like to do the same. If you don't know what "ret-con" means, then pat yourself on the back, for you are getting sex regularly.

First, I need a better origin story. "Young boy plays school with neighbor girl and eventually becomes a teacher himself" lacks the panache and swashbuckling adventure that my life deserves. Perhaps I was once sucked into a parallel universe in which the narratives of every book ever written existed for real, and then Long John Silver and Holden Caulfield help me battle Moby Dick, Count Dracula, and the personification of post-modern existentialism... played in that universe by Brian Dennehy. Once returning from my dimension-spanning adventure (which is totally not ripped off from the movie The Pagemaster), I'd become so enamored with literature that I'd HAVE to become a high school English teacher.

Second, my life requires a villain, a worthy foe, some adversary whose machinations must be countered by my every life move. I'd imagine a Professor Moriarty type played by Alan Rickman who speaks in a menacing British accent and is obsessed with ruining my reputation... or perhaps stealing a magical jewel or gem that I have in my possession. In fact, I like that second option. In the rebooted version of my life, I use a crystal made of Imaginatium that maintains the balance between fantasy and reality. Of course, this battle between me and my nemesis takes place in my off hours. During the day, my foe works as a rival English teacher who teaches only EVIL literature (like "The Scarlet Letter" and anything written in the Victorian Era).

Third, I need a sidekick... and Batmite would serve this function adequately. He would be the Robin to my Batman... only, you know, without the homoerotic overtones. In the new JP-Prime universe, Batmite's parents were killed during an elephant stampede, so he inherits their fortune, which he uses to assist in my various quests and adventures.

Fourth, lots of chicks! We're talking like James Bond-esque weekly beddings of comely lasses with a penchant for swooning. Of course, these minor sexual conquests will merely mask my unrequited love for some long-term romantic interest who is my intellectual and witty equal with whom I often flirt but never develop a serious relationship with due to various plot machinations that keep us apart. But every few years or so, my long-term love interest and I will get together seriously before she develops amnesia or is manipulated by my archnemesis into betraying me. Then we'll do the whole dance all over again.

I suppose Batmite-Prime can get some secondary chicks. His relationships, while more comical in tone, will likely prove heartwarming... or his women will end up dead as I must assume the role of makeshift legal aide in order to defend Batmite against murder charges.

Finally, in this new rebooted version of my life, I need theme music. I'm torn in this regard. I'm not sure if I want a really hardass rocking song with electric guitars and drums or a sultry, pimp-tastic jazzy number heavy on the saxophones and Barry White vocals. I'm really leaning toward the latter. I have no idea where this music would come from. Maybe set my alarm clock to begin every morning by playing it. Or hell, as long as we're talking parallel universes, let's say it constantly emanates from the aforementioned magical Imaginatium gem.

Oh yeah, and I constantly wear tuxedos, drink scotch on the rocks, speak with a sexy French/Spanish accent, and I have a wicked-awesome beard. Fucking right!

And maybe my Physicist brother in the alternate universe would have already built a time machine and magic wand so that this shit could become reality... unlike the slackass version in THIS universe who hasn't invented diddly-squat (insult will be retracted if he actually builds his solar death ray).

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"I get it now. He bad mouths you, and you make him delicious, sugary energy shakes. And I open my mouth, in a helpful way, and I get slapped. Must be in topsy-turvy world!"

Eating Out on the Town

2009-10-28T21:04:00.002-04:00

Cooking for one is no easy feat. Most foodstuffs are not designed with the single novice cook in mind. For instance, the cheapest way to buy potatoes is by the bag, but do you know how long it takes for one person to eat a sack of potatoes? Unless you hear me crooning "Top o' the mornin, to ya!" one week, I'm not scarfing down two or three daily taters. But even ignoring the sizes of items, cooking for one person feels like a lot of wasted effort. It takes at least a half hour to cook a reasonable meal (some sort of meat and a side or two), and then you can always add on the nuisance of clean up.

The inefficiency and labor of old fashioned home cooking often leaves me longing for restaurants and take out shops to prepare my meals for me. What's more, Pittsburgh (and the area surrounding Pitt, in particular) aren't hurting for restaurants... good ones too. The Original Hot Dog Shoppe (affectionately called "The O") is right across the street from my department's building. Primanti Bros. is right down the street should I desire my cole slaw and fries directly on my tasty sandwich. I discovered a lovely place that serves gyros. There are pizza parlors out the wazoo, and a legendary chinese restaurant (for which I have a gift certificate) beckoning me at least twice fortnightly. This discounts the seemingly hundreds of little coffee and sandwich shops littering Oakland and Squirrel Hill.

And yet, despite the temptations of delicious meals placed in front of me with zero effort, I've been dedicated to my home cooking regimen. While my diet certainly plays a hefty part in my decision (most restaurant food doesn't skimp on the calories), the primary inhibitor to my restaurant carousing remains: abject poverty.

Eating out is fucking expensive, and I'm trying to live on my own while unemployed. Oh sure, that five dollar footlong from Subway sounds like a good deal, but I can go to the store and get a loaf of bread, a pound of lunch meat, and some good cheese for less than ten bucks, and that will make me at least five lunches. When you get right down to the numbers (and when on a budget, that's exactly what you do), there's no comparison. Eating out will rape your wallet every time. A box of cereal and a gallon milk gives me breakfast for a week. Two donuts and a cup of coffee one morning costs almost the same. A bag of five frozen chicken breasts cost me $6 at the store today. A buffalo chicken sandwich (with a single chicken breast on it) set me back $8 when I was out at the bar last week.

I wish I'd had this economic revelation during my tenure in Morgantown. Batmite and I ate out constantly due to laziness and insatiable cravings for food of the deep fried variety (or tacos... deep fried tacos were but a dream). I'd wish I had kept track of how much I spent on restaurants during that time... I bet I'd have a lot more money now if I'd channeled my inner Paula Deen back then.

I've found a few cheats for cooking at home. First, I have a few regular standbys that are always easy to make. Pasta is a no-brainer, so there's always some whole wheat rotini in the cupboard and a bag of frozen ravioli in the freezer. Frozen chicken breasts are also a lifesaver because you just toss one in the oven and let it cook. And grilled cheese with tomato soup can be whipped up in a jiffy (I can make the Kessel Run in less than 12 jiffies). I still need to get in the habit of cooking larger meals and leaving leftovers for myself. That would be mighty convenient.

The better I get at cooking, the less likely I am to eat out. With more practice, my food becomes more and more edible, which was often a problem during Grad School Phase I. Every once in awhile, I still crave something from around town, so I eat out occassionally. But I try to limit myself. I'm honestly amazed that since moving to Pittsburgh, I have yet to eat at Primanti Bros. or The O. That's practically Oakland sacrilege. I may have to rectify those oversights simply to satisfy my inner completist.

I do wonder what would happen if I had a lot more money. I suspect my resolve to avoid restaurants would crumble like my hopes and dreams.

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"Homemade [at a restaurant] is a myth. You want to know some things that are homemade? Crystal meth. Crack cocaine. A pipe bomb full of nails. Now we're talkin' homemade!"

Duck and Cover: A Grad School Story

2009-10-15T13:21:00.007-04:00

Okay, I wasn't planning on resorting to MORE videos today, but thanks to Cracked.com (7 Horrifying Moments of Classic Kids' Movies) I've got a truly excellent example of an animated metaphor for my time in graduate school.

The following video is the beginning of the Disney movie "Mickey and the Beanstalk" (the plot being what you might expect). What's great about this particular interpretation of the classic story is how thoroughly Goofy's, Donald's, and Mickey's starvation and poverty are explored. In particular, Donald Duck cracks under the pressure and suffers three separate psychotic breaks, and attempts to murder a disturbingly anthropomorphized cow in one instance.

Watch the video. Analysis will follow:

Okay, first of all, they don't make dark and twisted comedy cartoons like this anymore. Second, while the segment illustrates one duck's descent into madness during a famine, it also serves as a parallel for the grad school experience. Allow me to demonstrate.

We open with three miserable saps drowning in existential despair as they attempt to survive on their meager earnings. This comprises the entirety of English graduate students, complete with an extremely lame pun about the cow being an "udder failure." Englishy-types love lame puns (see title above).

But then with no discernible external cause (around 1:55), one of the sufferers snaps at his own narrator (all graduate students imagine having their own narrator) and completely loses touch with reality. This represents the moment when a grad student realizes his or her sense of personal failure and lashes out against whatever happens to be nearby. Incidentally, there's a double parallel in that I've often felt like reacting EXACTLY as Donald Duck does in this part during particularly difficult times of dieting, complete with fantasies of consuming cutlery and dinnerware.

After calming himself down, Donald goes crazy again (2:20) - this time filled with murderous rage. He's out for blood, much like when grad students begin to harbor violent resentment toward their professors: those who heap the abuse upon them with reckless abandon. As the narrator so aptly explains, "He's suffered too much."

If I murder my Old English professor, the hurting will stop.

(Side Note: There's a solid 15 seconds in this clip where it looks for all the world like Donald is planning to butcher Mickey Mouse and eat his carcass. I love old cartoons.)

As time passes, hope seems to be on the horizon. For the grad student, the misery is almost complete, and better prospects await! Early celebration commences (3:17):

Huzzah! We won't be trapped in existential despair forever!

For me, this occurred just after I finished grad school and began looking for worthwhile employment. Hope sprang eternal. Everything in the future looked bright and happy.

But then.... NO! You can't be saying that I'm going BACK to graduate school!!! I thought the misery and pain was finally over!!! The grad student can't take it anymore. Hanging from ceilings and the pulling out of hair (feathers?) commences:
If Alan Shore is my super-ego, being everything that I hope to be that is rich and cultured and awesome in the world, then Donald Duck is my Id, representing everything evil and batshit crazy that I've secretly longed to express.

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"My therapist is a duck. I'm beginning to think he's a real quack!"

A Gentleman's Guide to Bar Brawling

2009-10-14T23:11:00.003-04:00

In lieu of coming up with original content, I'll retreat to providing amusing second-hand video.

If you seek fine fisticuffery, young pugilists, Alan Shore of Boston Legal shows you how to conduct a proper brawl. No nincompoopery here, good sirs! You'll like the cut of his jib and his unadulterated moxie (probably the only aspect of Alan Shore that isn't adulterated).

Alan Shore is everything I wish I were. He's Fantasy JP.

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"Don't be deceived by my cushy appearance."

Mimetic Genetics

2009-10-07T21:35:00.001-04:00

Have you ever watched an episode of a TV show that involved the main characters dredging up a story about their ancestors, which leads to a flashback episode involving those ancestors... except that the same actors from the show play their own grandparents (or great-grandparents as the case may be)? For instance, Walker Texas Ranger featured several episodes where Chuck Norris played his own great-grandfather as a sheriff in the Old West. Don't you hate it when that happens? What are the odds that a guy would look exactly like his own grandfather? What about the influence of both the grandmother's and mother's genes? That seems like common sense.

Well fuck common sense. Turns out one CAN look just like one's own grandfather.

The picture above is the wedding photo of my grandmother and grandfather (on my dad's side). Notice anything... familiar about my grandfather?
He looks JUST LIKE ME!

(Actually, this picture doesn't quite illustrate it properly, but if you know me personally, you can probably already see the resemblance.)

This revelation occurred this past Christmas when the family was looking at a compilation of wedding pictures that had been assembled for my grandparents' anniversary. (The post is occurring now because I only recently got a digital copy of the picture.) My brother is sitting there staring at my grandparents' picture and then squinting at me. Finally, he says, "You know what? Grandpap looks EXACTLY like [JP]!!"

No one (including me) had picked up on this, but once it was pointed out, everyone saw it. The big ears, the squinty eyes, the furrowed brow, the awkward smile, the ruggedly handsome physique. It's all there. We asked my grandma about it, and she said, "Oh I've noticed that for years." Thanks for letting me know, grandma. (Though imagining my grandmother's perspective regarding me looking like the younger version of her husband leaves me confused and deeply disturbed.)

My grandfather was in the hospital at the time recovering from heart surgery, so when we went to see him, we couldn't help but bring it up. "I've known for a long time..." he drawled in his usual gruff fashion. As coincidence would have it, I was wearing my stylish pea coat at the time, which reminded him of his Navy days. This led to an odd reminscience from my grandfather about a torrid romance between he and his female commanding officer (he had been a nurse) while in the Navy during WWII. The story sounded delightfully scandalous... until he revealed that she was critically wounded at one point, and he had to assist in the failed surgery to save her. Awkward silences abounded.

The unfortunate implication of looking exactly like a younger version of your grandfather is that, logically, you will eventually look like the CURRENT version of your grandfather. Oh how I wish I had a present-day picture of him to put up here to illustrate why this concerns me. On the plus side, he's like 87 years old, so maybe that bodes well for my longevity.

Alternatively, I accept that this photo could be evidence that I will one day travel back in time to become my own grandfather, thus creating a paradoxical time loop that will destroy the multiverse.

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"Oh, a lesson in not changing history from Mr. I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"

The Bus Stops Here

2009-10-05T22:39:00.001-04:00

Okay, so public transportation hasn't really been a lifestyle choice for me so far in my life. Whenever I needed to get somewhere, I've had a totally boss ride of my own and very few parking problems up until now. However, traveling into Oakland from Swissvale every day reveals some inherent traffic and parking problems in driving my own car. Most noticably, I just don't have the money to pay their exorbitant parking fees. So for the last month, I've been taking the Pittsburgh buses to go to class. That's right, those filthy, inefficient, poverty-packed public transportation monstrosities that you've heard so much about. And you know what?

I fucking love it!

Not only do I get to avoid all the traffic of the east side of Pittsburgh, but I don't have to pay a cent for parking or gas. My bus (the one from my actual route pictured above incidentally) stops relatively close to my apartment and comes just about every half hour. As an added bonus, all Pitt students can ride all Allegheny county buses for free!! Epic win!

But the savings and convenience only scratch the surface of explaining the awesome sweetness of the bus. The cast of characters littering the buses on any given day truly makes for an inspirational ride. I could write ten books based around the colorful collection of city travelers that I've witnessed.

A Small Sampling:

The Helpful Talkative Jew: On my second day of riding the bus, I witnessed the first of many eccentric folks: a tubby, bearded Jewish man who spent the entire trip chatting it up with the bus driver. His conversation was innocent enough until he decided that the Port Authority of Pittsburgh buses use inefficient routes, and he adamantly explained to the driver how their route system could be more efficient. "Please stay behind the yellow line, sir," said the patient bus driver. "Don't be such a shmuck. If you'd just cut across 5th Avenue to the Boulevard of the Allies, you'd make it to Centre Ave..." "Sir... please sit down." It went back and forth like this the whole way into campus. He never did get the hint. When I disembarked, the Rabbi Magellan was still extoling the virtues of his directions.

The Senile Babbler: Public buses have a well deserved reputation for featuring some of the mental cases from around the city, and my route is no different. On one occassion, I had the misfortune (or good luck perhaps) to sit across from one such character. This old gentleman swayed back and forth in his seat while muttering to the railing next to him. For all intents and purposes, this guy looked to be completely detached from reality, except when the bus would make a turn onto a new street, then he would point forward in a dramatic fashion (think Captain Picard ordering warp speed) and demand, "Full speed, that-a-way!" before returning to his usual ramblings. This continued the entire way home; however, in one moment of perfect lucidity, he suddenly turned to the poor woman sitting right next to him and said, "Bus is running a bit late today."

The Bubbly Chatter: Bus etiquette is no mystery. I picked up on most of it on just a few trips. The most important thing is to sit down, don't take up two seats, and don't talk to anyone else. Nobody wants to chat; everyone would prefer to travel in peace. But one afternoon, the bus stops at Carnegie Mellon, and the most enthusiastic traveler ever to ride the bus bounded aboard. This spritely young lady decked out in pink (not kidding) hops up the stairs and announces, "HI EVERYONE!" (cue uncomfortable shifting of eyes from passengers) The girl makes her way past me, saying hello to everyone she passes. She finally stops next to a middle aged woman who, as far as I could tell, had no prior relationship with her. She proceeds to tell this unlucky soul about her entire personal history: "You know, I don't normally take the bus home on Mondays, because I normally go to the library on Mondays to study. But today I wanted to go home to study because there's a marathon of Gossip Girl on tonight, and I need to catch up on last season. There's just no time to study and catch on your shows, you know? I'm studying psychology but I just don't know if I can handle the advanced classes that deal with social disorders. Can you believe that there are people out there you can't understand basic social mores?"

The Mad Bomber: This seedy passenger comes aboard wearing a gray hoodie pulled up over his balding head. His remaining hair is matted and stringy. He's wearing sunglasses at dusk and sporting a long black trenchcoat. He's carrying a tattered and very full bookbag. He sits down and stares blankly out the front window. To say that the collective mood of the passengers shifted to "unnerved" would be an understatement. Fortunately, the suspicious gentleman traveled to his destination without incident.

The Comic Book Pedophile: Another instance of criminal profiling. Young children are hardly rare on the bus, and most people pay them no mind even if they're being noisy and unpleasant. This particular young boy was happily absorbed in some sort of nondescript comic book (I didn't recognize the title anyway). Everyone ignored him except for one bespectacled bearded man in his thirties wearing sweatpants and a windbreaker. He comes over and sits down next to the young lad and proceeds to inform him of his sizable comic book collection and explains that he has a rare issue of Spiderman encased in glass "at my mom's house." The man embodied his own trope. The mother eyed him suspiciously, but he seemed so genuinely interested in the boy's comic book that no one could be sure of any questionable intentions. Still, what kind of grown man has engaging conversations with random six-year-olds about comic books while riding a bus (you know... aside from Batmite)?

And on a related note:

I also go jogging/walking in nearby Frick Park from time to time, and the oddballs creep through there as well. Last Monday, I encountered two such yahoos. The first was a carbon copy of the Comic Book Pedophile, complete with beard and thick glasses. Except this guy was wearing a black shirt with the words "HAN SHOT FIRST" emblazoned on the front. If you don't know what that means, you probably get laid on a regular basis.

On the SAME TRIP, I'm jogging back toward my car, and I see a man wandering off the main trail carrying a spade shovel and a very large cumbersome white sack. He sets down the sack about fifty yards into the woods and proceeds to dig into the ground. I wanted no part of witnessing whatever this fellow was trying so unsuccessfully to hide, so I continued on my way. I have no desire to be a helpful informant.

Pittsburgh's got a colorful cast of characters. No wonder my family's from this city.

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"So these people live here?"
"This is a bus. People use it to get places that they need to go."

This is a Faux Update

2009-09-28T21:34:00.004-04:00

Updates are forthcoming. I've had homework up the wazoo and drunken revelry to attend to at the State Firemen's Convention (Kittanning Firemen's Band took 2nd place). But I have four posts already in various stages of completion saved as drafts on Blogger and several more ideas floating in my head. For once, I'm not hurting for ideas... just time.

So bear with me, gentle readers, for soon you too can share in my charmingly witty misery.

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"Now hear this, now hear this. This is your Captain speaking. My fine pinioned pirates, we're approaching the tricky buoy! Sharpen your cutlasses! There may be skullduggery ahead!"

Weight Weight... Don't Tell Me!

2009-09-19T15:20:00.002-04:00

Reasonable approximation of JP's physique

I'm shoutin' it from the rooftop bitches! As of today, I've lost 100 pounds! I started out at 336 lbs six years ago. Now I'm at 236. That's 17 lbs less than what I was the last time I was bragging about my weight loss and 100 pounds overall. Woot woot!!

Of course it's a completely meaningless figure (unlike my actual figure, which is GORGEOUS!). I didn't even realize the significance of the number until hours after I weighed myself this morning. I still haven't achieved the weight necessary for jumping out of an airplane, and my medically ideal weight is 210. But dammit, I'm proud of myself, and when I'm feeling good about myself, I get to celebrate!

And today is Talk Like a Pirate Day, so I be a slender scalawag ne'er so large as the yardarm of me vessel. Ye be celebratin or ye be feelin the wrath of the keelhaul. Yarr!!

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"I'm so hungry I could ride a horse....... I don't get it...... Well, I could ride it to the store I guess."

In Which Our Protagonist Creates His Protagonist

2009-09-17T23:05:00.002-04:00

Since going back to school, I've been reading books, writing essays, and making lesson plans that would dazzle the writers of even the most inspirational movie about teachers. But one task that has fallen woefully by the wayside for the last three or four weeks is that pinnacle of creative manuscripting... my novel.

I haven't touched the damn thing since moving to Pittsburgh, and I'm annoyed. I was really hitting my stride near the end of the summer. I'd knocked out about 30 typed single-spaced pages, and I'd figured out most of the ridiculously derivative plot. But when instructors cram deadlines up your ass with the force of a sadistic proctologist gleefully giving an enema and prostate exam (I've been working on my imagery), the temptation to concentrate solely upon that which will earn you a winning smile of approval or harsh tongue lashing of scorn becomes overwhelming.

Timing, of course, has a way of putting everything in perspective. Just two days ago while sitting in my Teaching Writing class, the class discussed the importance of encouraging students to write and demonstrating that writing is a continuous process, and we as teachers are constantly working on our own writing as well. The hypocrisy bubbling in my throat tasted of despair and regret (remember: imagery practice). While the discussion continued, I quietly bemoaned the fact that I'd been shamefully neglecting the life of Eugene, the gleeful protagonist from my novel. Through cosmic coincidence, Virgil mentioned just today that she sets aside time to write every week - a writing day as it were - and suggested I do the same. I must admit, the temptation is palpable. A day spent immersed in my fictional little hamlet based rather derivatively upon Morgantown sounds tantalizing.

Somehow though, I have trouble figuring out my main character's deal, which makes the writing process really hard to get into right now. Not understanding the main character's motivations results in my brain crashing head first into the writer's block. Eugene was originally loosely based upon me. Naturally, I made him dashing, charming, wildly intelligent, and a gripping public speaker with a wit that would make Oscar Wilde jealous. He enjoyed blogging, singing karaoke, and discussing the finer points of comic bookery with his Indian friend. Basing Eugene on this admittedly idealized vision of myself seemed fun at the time, but in the greater scheme of the plot, there was nothing for him to do. When your character starts out awesome, he has nowhere to go but down. I had no interest in creating a tragedy in which I destroy the fictionalized version of myself (delightfully masochistic though that may be). So I started adding faults to Eugene. Now he's rather arrogant... and socially awkward... and a milquetoast office assistant with no career ambitions... and he has a string of ex-girlfriends with bizarre character quirks that have left him emotionally battered. Now I have the opposite problem. Now he's too much like real JP. Confronting all of my own crippling social inadequacies on a weekly basis through this written prism (or perhaps "prison"... oh I'm so witty) seems even more daunting than just hammering out a few pages. Why does writing have to be so personally goddamned draining to my soul?

I think I need to split the difference. Eugene needs to be less like me and a bit more fictional... someone who can go through the ringer without it becoming an exercise in self-mutilation.

Then maybe I can leap back on the creativity wagon and churn out this novel that will earn me a Scrooge McDuck-sized money bin full of gold doubloons. Maybe I should make Eugene an angsty vampire if I really want to rake in the greenbacks.

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"Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice..."

Caution: Student Teacher Aboard

2009-09-11T22:17:00.000-04:00

Today marked my first official day of observation at the high school where I'll be student teaching in the spring. For the fall semester, I go to my high school once a week to observe the ways of the English teacher (Grammaticus Pedagogicus) and help out as the semester progresses. Once the spring semester starts, I'll get to be Teacher-in-Training guy, sharing wisdom and witticisms with my young charges and training them in the ways of the Jedi arts.

My co-op (education shorthand for "cooperating teacher" or "she who can make or break me") teaches five sections of Gifted/Honors 9th grade English and two sections of what they call "Inclusion" 9th grade English at a very well-to-do school in the region.

The Gifted/Honors classes run the gamut from tedious zones of close-lipped shyness to the off-the-wall antics of smartasses who are bright enough to wield their cheeky wise-assery in an entertaining way. While I was certainly in the former group when I was actually in high school, I much prefer the latter gang now. No wonder teachers didn't like me in high school; I was too boring.

The inclusion classes provide a theoretical "safe environment" for kids with emotional and learning disabilities that prevent them from understanding the subject matter. These are not the severe cases (those with official mental retardation) or high-functioning folks, but the average students who happen to have IEPs for various reasons. My favorite of these folks so far is a creepy little bastard with a shaved head and thick coke-bottle glasses who, upon my co-op's introduction of me at the beginning of class, promptly turned around to stare at me for no particular reason. I'm not talking about a casual glare. This kid was bug-eyed, leaned forward, and shooting lasers into my forehead. More intrigued by this looney kid than anything else, I stared right back at him in the same manner. I'm be damned if a ninth-grader is going to best me in a staring contest. The showdown finally ended when one of the kid's friends said, "Jeez, Pat, quit staring at Mr. P. It's weird!" Apparently my response to the situation impressed my co-op as she thought it demonstrated my lack of fear in the classroom. If only she knew it was my childish desires fueling my ego rather than any noble desire for respect and trust.

My co-op has also warned me of some girl in the class who is apparently "boy crazy" and will attempt to seduce me at her earliest convenience. Sweet statutory! Why can't I find these women when they reach adulthood? Or maybe I have, and those ones in the crazy classes grew up to become my colorful minefield of ex-girlfriends.

For a few classes, I simply sat back and observed as my co-op led a discussion and quiz of "The Most Dangerous Game." I fondly remember this story from my own high school English days, and while sitting in the classroom listening to this discussion again, I realized just how many hokey action flicks sprung from this premise. Predator and The Running Man jump to mind immediately, and that magnificent dandy popinjay Trelane hunted Captain Kirk for sport in "The Squire of Gothos." In fact, Star Trek loves human hunting episodes; the franchise is littered with them.

But aside from letting my imagination regress into childish fantasies, my co-op also asked me to try my hand at grading some vocabulary quizzes. Now I realize that grading quizzes becomes an integral part of the English teacher's day, but I couldn't help but think that Ms. Co-Op was taking advantage of my presence by using me as a workhorse to finish the tedious grading.... because that's exactly what I'd do in her position. I mentioned this to her at the end of the day, and she laughed heartily..... but didn't deny it. As a nice bonus, I now have a flawless command of ten vocabulary words from "The Most Dangerous Game." My affable, disarming, and venerable persona certainly leeched away my solicitous ennui and indolence, which felt palpable and tangible in an opaque way.

So I left the building at 3pm feeling completely drained but oddly invigorated; confident but terrified; arrogant but humbled; and smart but overwhelmed by my own ignorance. Any annoyance with the traffic on the way home paled in comparison to that quadruple existential crisis.

And waking up at 5:30am blows a big ballsac. Man was not meant to rise before the cock crows. I leave it up to you to decide which of the two previous sentences is more lewd and offensive.

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"Do you know what the chain of command is here? It's the chain I go get and beat you with to show you who's in command."

My Heart is All Atwitter

2009-09-09T00:01:00.002-04:00

I'm now on the TWITTER, bitches!!

That's right. I've expanded my hold on the interweb by moving to its OTHER form of completely worthless communication. You can find me at www.twitter.com/undesirablement. I thought "Undesirablement" would be a cool amalgam of "Undesirable Element"... by which I mean that it meets their 20-character maximum requirement whereas "Undesirable Element" does not. Foiled by linguistics!

I figured I could branch out given how timely and highly viewed my posts are here. Why not give myself something else to do?

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"Where is the chase, and how do I cut to it?"

The Employer Giveth...

2009-09-08T02:11:00.006-04:00

I don't know if I mentioned this enough, but Mr. and Mrs. Employer are very VERY generous to me. Despite our plentiful differences, they practically treat me like a member of the family (albeit not in any way that would leave me with a sizable inheritance), and if I ever needed anything -- money, lodging, concubines -- they'd be happy to help me out. Mrs. Employer gives me baked goods at every available opportunity, and they allow me generous access to their fruit cellar, which is filled with all manner of tasty fruits, vegetables, pickles, and the most delicious tomato sauce you've ever sampled.

I've worked for them every summer, and every year they give me a very generous bonus before I go back to school. Occasionally I get a card or some really cliched book of poetry (because they think I'll appreciate it with all of my mad English skillz), but typically it's a handsome monetary sum. For a man in my tenuous economic position, that's always a really big help.

This year, I once again received a generous check to help me out; however, this year they added an extra tidbit as a token of their appreciation: a new hard cover copy of the Quest Study Bible.

That's right. Mrs. Employer, the power pastor that I've religiously (pun intended) complained about for her overly conservative religious beliefs, felt it necessary to give her resident atheist a goddamn BIBLE as a parting gift. And not just any Bible, but a version complete with annotations and insights from the world's top biblical scholars.

Actually, from a completely academic standpoint, it's a pretty valuable book. Religious or not, one can't deny the impact that the Bible has had on Western literature, so it's worth having a usable copy around. But seriously! This was a present... from a pastor to her atheist underling. What could she possibly have been thinking!? I have two theories:

1. She has no idea that I don't believe in God and genuinely believed that I would like this book.
2. She's known all along that I'm a godless heathen, and she's out to save my soul from eternal damnation.

I tend to lean toward the second option, but I can't completely rule out the first. Maybe I really did hide my utter disdain for her entire occupation better than I thought. But even if the second option is the real case, maybe I should be flattered that she thinks enough of me to believe my soul is worth saving. Well the joke's on her! I sold my soul five years ago for a bologna sandwich and a stale doughnut. Nobody's getting my ethereal essence when I croak.

Still, Mr. and Mrs. Employer are highly influential people with money, power, and a predilection for tasty baked treats. They can just as easily taketh away, so I politely and graciously accepted her gift, and thanked her for everything she'd done for me over the years. And believe it or not, I genuinely meant that. Just goes to show you that you can't pigeonhole anybody. Even folks who hang on Rush Limbaugh's every word, believe an old bearded man is judging their eternal souls, don't care for "the negroes," and use some of the shadiest business practices this side of Bernie Madoff can still be kind, generous, and damned nice people who want me to go to heaven and chill with Jesus.

As long as I stay away from the Jews, blacks, and queers.

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"Maybe you should read your Bible."
"Any particular passage?"
"Oh, it's all good."

Lost in Transition

2009-09-02T20:13:00.005-04:00

No longer an acceptable method of teaching grammar

Sorry I've been remiss in my posts, faithful readers. It's been a busy week or so. Since I last posted, I've recoiled from the world of sermon typing and bulletin copying back to the hovel from whence this blog emerged: graduate school.

Granted, it's not the same graduate school. I'm at the University of Pittsburgh this time instead of West Virginia University. And it's not the same program. Secondary English Education Teaching Certificate instead of straight English. But even though the lyrics have changed, it's still the same old tune. Still, much has changed, and I have stories aplenty. My adventures with public transit, my new apartment, and an angry gentleman in Quiznos can be saved for another day; today I'm going to talk about the new program that I'm in.

For those not in the know, I'm back in school to earn my teaching certification so that I can find gainful employment as a high school English teacher. This is the exciting turn that my life has taken. Unlike many other certification programs, Pitt's program consists of 7 graduate classes (five in the fall and two in the spring) that can eventually be applied toward an M.Ed. (Masters of Education). You may be wondering, "But JP, you already taught college-level English with HI-larious stories pouring onto the internet as a result. Why would you need additional schooling to teach high school?" That's a very good question, Reader X. But sadly it's misdirected. The more pertinent question should be, "Why didn't I need additional schooling to teach college." Now that I'm trying my hand at teaching, reflecting back upon my previous teaching experience fills me with regret, shame, and embarrassment... and that's just in remembering the comely female students who didn't sleep with me.

Teaching high school requires an extensive commitment to lesson plans and teaching goals. Such was the case in college as well, but my advisor -- bless his apathetic and spineless heart -- never really gave a rat's ass. Consequently, my planning often amounted to typing endless but sarcasm-laced handouts and consulting with Batmite over the best way to incorporate my Green Lantern plushy into a discussion of genres. Such chicanery and tomfoolery won't be tolerated by principals and managing teachers during my training. Now I have to be JP: Official Teacher of Wordsmithing.

Actually I lucked out in my teaching placement with a great school and great student teaching adviser, but I'll talk about that in another post. At the moment, I'm now three days into the delight of graduate classes in education. They run the gamut from truly fascinating to incredibly insulting. Some of the professors really seem to want to challenge the traditional methodology for teaching, and they explore very contemporary themes in literature and pedagogy. In one class, however, I had to make a name tag for myself out of construction paper and magic markers and then spend an hour and a half listening to a group of bickering former English majors (we do bicker well) argue about where prewriting ends and drafting starts. And how does that make us feel!? It made me feel like a goddamn simpleton, but then I remembered that a week ago I was doing the work of a trained monkey and I felt better.

I can't believe how modest the reading load is. The one professor (the same one with the construction paper name cards and infantile discussion) divided up our reading assignment for next week because 100 pages was just too much. Jesus Fucking Christ! English professors don't bat an eye when assigning a 400-page novel for next week. Granted, I wouldn't read it anyway, but the expectation was there for me to cavalierly disregard!

But on the flip side, the number of little nagging projects increased four-fold. No more giant research papers. In their place are a hundred little mini-lessons for me to plan and several faux discussion groups for me to lead. And those classes of zoning out for three hours and coming up with some catchpenny profundity on the fly every once in awhile by cribbing notes from Virgil and Batmite? That shit probably won't cut the mustard with their mandatory reader/writer journals where I have to compile my readings, notes, and observations for every goddamn class. I haven't taken notes in class in almost four years. It's like they peered into my brain, recognized my sloth and cavalier attitude, and adjusted their syllabi accordingly. Curse their effective teaching methodology!

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"I fail to see the educational value of this assembly."
"Ah, it'll be one of their few pleasant memories when they're pumping gas for a living."

From C to Shining C-

2009-08-26T18:14:00.003-04:00

I maintained in an earlier post that the citizenry is not to be trusted because they're mostly ignorant boobs. Bill Maher agrees with me (and incidentally enjoys the same punny titles that I do... so I stole one from him). I've listed some of the statistics given in the video above, though I'd heard some of these before.

-----------------------------------

On the eve of the Iraq War, 70% of Americans thought that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11

Six years later, 34% still do.

At a recent town hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his congressman, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!”

A majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government or explain what the Bill of Rights is.

24% could not name the country that America fought in the Revolutionary War.

More than 2/3 of Americans don’t know what’s in Roe v. Wade

2/3 don’t know what the Food and Drug Administration does.

Nearly half of Americans don’t know that states have two senators.

More than half can’t name their congressman.

The average voter thinks that foreign aid consumes 24% of our federal budget. It’s actually less than 1%.

A third of Republicans believe that Obama is not a citizen.

A third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence because it contains the words “Bush” and “knowledge.”

18% of us think that the sun revolves around the Earth.

Only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity.

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"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor

The Tax Man Can

2009-08-13T14:29:00.004-04:00

Before I begin my diatribe, let me admit up front that my yearly tax forms consistently make me feel like an economic dolt. My current understanding of taxes amounts to: "Fill out forms so government can send me refund for being broke." I use the H&R Block online tax thingy every year and I believed everything to be in order as far as my state and federal taxes were concerned.

Then a few weeks ago I received a nice little letter from CENTAX (Central Tax Bureau of PA) telling me that there was an earned income tax audit discrepancy for the 2006 tax year. Apparently I was delinquent in paying my local school district taxes. The tax is a meager 1% deal with a relatively minor penalty. All told, I owe $84. Not all that bad really.

What annoyed me was that I couldn't figure out why I owed school district taxes. One of Mr. and Mrs. Employers' favorite topics of social inequity involves the fact that school district taxes are paid by wealthy and responsible property owners, and they pay for the children of mooching and lazy renters to go to school without having to pay a dime. Being a lazy and mooching less-than-renter, I couldn't figure out why I would owe taxes.

One phone call later, I learned that this particular tax is levied against anyone who earns an income; the other larger tax applies to people with property. And you know what? That's fine. I have no problem paying my share of taxes. In my mind, I never consider my taxed money to be part of my income anyway. It's money that I never had rather than money that the government is taking from me. So fundamentally I have no gripe with CENTAX.

What annoys me to no end is that, once again, the bureaucracy has informed me that ignorance of the law is no excuse... pay up! Typically, if your employer lives in your community, the 1% is automatically taken out of your wages, but if you work in, say, West Virginia while your home address is listed as Kittanning, you have to know intrinsically to pay your local school tax on your own. Maybe everyone else learned in third grade that one must determine his or her own local tax status, but I never got that memo. CENTAX never sent me a letter telling me that owed them money. The local government never sent me a letter telling me to go see my local wage office. Quite simply, I was just expected to know to go pay my local 1% school district tax somewhere somehow.

I'll follow the rules when I know what the rules are. But don't keep the rules secret and then fine my ass when I don't follow them. I'm sure a lot of people learned that local taxes were their own responsibility, but I never did. I'm certainly not the dumbest waste of space in this state, so I'm sure plenty of other people screwed it up too. I half-suspect that they do it on purpose so that they can fine people when they fail to pay up.

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"Let the bears pay the Bear Tax. I'll pay the Homer Tax."

For a Chance to Win Big Money!

2009-08-11T21:16:00.004-04:00

So many television shows from yesteryear have been reinvented (Password, Press Your Luck, Family Feud), but there are so many game show gems from the past that I personally want to see again. I am an avid fan of the genre, and while some of these titles are obscure, I think they deserve some air time again. Give them a dark blue set with a visible metallic structure and let Regis Philbin host. I guarantee mad ratings.

Match Game: Why this one hasn't been redone is beyond me. Everyone loves washed up celebrities and suggestive and bawdy game show innuendo. For the uninitiated, a contestant would be given a statement with a word missing, and they would have fill in the blank and try to match that word with words written by six celebrity panelists. And the sentences would usually be wildly suggestive. For instance, "Violent Velma is so violent..." (the audience would yell "How violent is she?") "She's so violent that every night before bed she always wants to ______ her husband." The contestant would then give a nice family-friendly answer like "hit," but everyone got the joke. (another example: "Did you catch a glimpse of that woman on the street corner? She has the world's biggest _______.") And the best part of the show is that the celebrities simply screw off the entire time. There's really very little strategy involved, and the D-list celebrities they found were usually very happy to ham it up for the camera. I'm sure today a panel of Tim Curry, William Shatner, Brian Dennehy, and Kathy Griffin would work their magic. Hell, if Charles Nelson Reilly and Nipsey Russell weren't already dead, they'd be right there on day one.

Tic Tac Dough: I remember watching this game religiously, but I don't remember a lot of the rules. It's basically Tic Tac Toe, but in order to put an X or an O on the board, you have to answer some ridiculous trivia question. I imagine half its popularity was due to its incredibly groan-inducing pun of a title, but TV shows have succeeded with less. Look at Deal or No Deal.

Bumper Stumpers: I would be AMAZED if anyone else remembers this show. Contestants had to decypher vanity plates in various puzzle formats. (SK8BDR = Skateboarder for instance). I doubt this would succeed today, but I love odd word games, and this is my fantasy list, so I'm including it.

Double Dare: On the other hand, here's one that just about anyone who watched Nickelodeon at all during the 80s and early 90s remembers fondly. Back then this was relegated to a startup children's network on cable TV, but look what passes for Prime Time network television now. The Physical Challenges and ending obstacle course could be amped up, and you could call the whole thing Double Dare Extreme (or X-Treme for that added punch).

Name That Tune: This is another one that would never take off today, and honestly I don't know how anyone greenlit the program originally. This show was probably like hardcore porn for music nerds. I mostly remember the final round where the host would give some clue about a song, and the contestants would bid on how many notes it would take them to guess it. Some macho asshole typically bid it down to one note, though that was no guarantee that he or she would get it right. This show was balls hard... like Jeopardy for music majors. I'm not sure why my musically-ignorant five-year-old self became fascinated by the show, but in retrospect, perhaps it foreshadowed my later predilection for karaoke.

Classic Concentration: Like the classic children's game concentration but on TV. Match cards, reveal picture, solve picture riddle. This one used to be on back-to-back with Family Feud in the 80s, and it was hosted by Alex Trebek (back when he had his sweet Dago moustache). I've found a whole cache of episodes on YouTube, and there's much hilarity to be had in mocking the contestants for their repeated inability to remember the cards.

$100,000 Pyramid: This is the one I want the most. I used to take my lunch at varying times throughout the day until I found out that $100,000 Pyramid reruns aired at 1:00 every afternoon on the Game Show Network. I wonder if my boss ever considers why my lunch schedule has become so much more regular lately. As opposed to the Match Game, the celebrities on this show had bring their A-game. The normal rounds aren't all that difficult (though you do have to think fast), but the Winner's Circle must be like the ninth circle of hell if you're giving clues. I've seen categories like "Things that are Horizontal," "Vague Things," and "Things that are Cherished." I realize having Dick Clark host it today would lead to all sorts of unintentional and wildly inappropriate hilarity, but he took that game so seriously you would have thought he was proctoring the SATs. There was a brief attempt to bring it back with Donny Osmond about ten years back, but it flopped. I want a big one-hour sumbitch where they up the ante to a million dollars and take the categories to extremes. Let's see them get "Existential Things" or "Parts of a Metafictional Novel."

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"Forgetful Freddy was so forgetful.... (How forgetful was he??)... he was so forgetful that every time he tried to remember someone's name, he drew a blank."

Feeling Fruitier Than Usual

2009-08-06T15:30:00.003-04:00

I love cantaloupe. It may be my favorite fruit.

Yesterday I cut up two whole cantaloupes. In less than 24 hours, I've consumed all of it.

I'm sad to see the cantaloupe gone. In fact, I'm feeling rather meloncholy.

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Making objections to my lame melon puns is fruitless.

Caution: Genius at Work

2009-08-04T18:03:00.004-04:00

As I hinted in an earlier post, I've been tinkering sporadically with writing a book. With ample free time, significant progress has been made. I've written three chapters, amounting to about 23 single-spaced Word pages, which would be somewhere in the ball park of 30 to 40 normal book pages. This doesn't mean that the writing is good or enjoyable... I'm just saying that it exists.

I've been working on it for probably the last six months or so, though my commitment often wanes or shifts to more immediate concerns (like the online class, sleeping in on weekends, and watching game shows). For quite some time, I didn't really want to tell anyone, figuring that I'd just be mocked mercilessly. "How's that novel coming, Hemingway?" "Get that publishing deal yet, Shakespeare?" And since the story had only developed into a pre-infancy stage, hell practically just a used condom stage, I really didn't want to talk about it.

I still don't want to discuss the plot in any great detail, mostly because it seems to change every time I write more of the story. "No, no!" I'll shout to nobody. "Eugene wouldn't do that, and Phoebe CERTAINLY wouldn't do that." So my outline shifts to suit whatever new character wrinkle I've worked into the narrative. For that reason, when you get right down to it, writing is really a colossal pain in the ass. Even though I've got 23 single-spaced pages now, I've probably re-written those pages three times. And they'll probably get re-written again as new stuff develops. Hell, I had an entire first chapter written before deciding that the whole thing sucked a testicle and chucking it into the discard pile.

Tasty Aside: I will hint that the plot was inspired by a blog post that I wrote about six months ago. Take that for what it's worth.

Aside from learning that revision is a cruel but necessary evil, I've taken other lessons away from this project already. For instance, characters are much better when they're wildly flawed. When I started, I imagined a group of totally awesome characters who were badass, witty, and got laid with alarming regularity. Quickly one realizes that you can only ride "total awesomeness" for a few pages before you run out of shit to do with it. So I splatter my canvas with heavy coats of arrogance, emotional turmoil, existential crises, stupidity, and just plain asshole behavior. Suddenly people do stuff that's a lot more interesting. The lesson seems obvious in retrospect, but when you're actually the one writing, the temptation to make all your characters exaggerated fantasies of how you wish you were is extremely tantalizing.

Anothing double-edged sword that I still have trouble wielding comes from using my own life as inspiration. Most, if not all, of my characters are based on people I know. Some of the characterizations are vague or simply draw on people's personalities while changing their life events. Others are complete ripoffs. Batmite, for instance, serves as the the direct parallel for one of the characters, and he wholeheartedly supports my fictionalized creation. He's just too damned colorful to pass up, and I mean that in only a half-racist way.

It should come as no great surprise that I'm creating a comedy. I enjoy making people laugh, and if I may say so, I think I'm pretty good at it in written form (though I envy people who can tell a well-constructed funny story in person). I still need to work on my character's inner motivations (when the narrator tells what the characters are thinking and feeling rather than indicating plot developments or backstory) and some of the dialogue. Dialogue is surprisingly hard to pull off convincingly because you want it to sound natural without including all of the "umms" and "likes," awkward pauses, and trivial small talk that litters real conversations. It has to sound real without being real. I should have been a physicist; it something sounds real without being real, it's probably just quantum mechanics.

Recently, writing this book has become something of a compulsion, and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I think about the damned thing all the time, and I'm convinced that I *have* to write it just to get it on the page. When I started it, I expected to either lose interest in a few days or crap out some trash to sell for a quick buck to a publisher operating out of an old Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips. But now I actually want it to be good, and I'm beginning to think I could actually do something worthwhile with it. Who knows? Maybe you might see JP (hopefully with a sweet badass pseudonym) as a published man in your favorite bookstore.

Or the plot could be reworked as the script for a B-grade skin flick. I think I might even prefer that option.

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"You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me angry!"

Why I'm Awesomer Than Virgil

2009-07-29T16:26:00.006-04:00

In response to "Why I'm Awesome" by Virgil.

In her most recent blog post and in the comments for my last post, Virgil has been challenging the essence of my being for no honorable reason. Laughing at me, you say? Don't bother with a reply, you say? Well, madam, I shall not take these indignities sitting down. Why, I'll even be standing as I type.

So here is why *I* am awesome... specifically, how I surpass Virgil's awesomeness in every respect that she lists:

1. My child is better than Virgil's child because mine is imaginary. I named him "I Get to Sleep Through the Night and Never Change Diapers or Help with Homework." ... Or "Junior" for short.

2. I am also a writer, but I don't adhere to outmoded colonialist narrative structures that incorporate detail, motivation, and perspective in a dictatorial attempt to destroy more enlightened stylistic forms. While to the untrained eye my writing may seem pedantic, meandering, hackneyed, or plodding, I'm actually subverting the traditional authorial and didactic expectations of a post-structuralist readership. Epic win!

3. The truth is just an excuse for a lack of imagination. I will not insult the creative impulses of my friends, family, or students by giving them a cliched "truth" when a lovingly crafted fabrication stimulates the mind in a far superior manner. And how can I be expected to get anything done without the careful and skillful manipulation of those around me? What you would call manipulation, I call leadership!

4. Backbones can be broken, but spineless folk like me are more flexible and adaptable. The world punishes initiative and gumption but rewards cowardice and a lackadaisical attitude. When a Virgil goes down after challenging someone more powerful than herself, there will be a JP there to suck up to the new boss and earn favors. It's all about the endgame, Ms. Virgil.

5. A toilet can stir shit. I am not impressed. Besides, white males the size of most doorways seldom earn people's sympathy with finesse. When retaliation is required, I bluntly state my case. When that inevitably fails, I utilize my spineless nature to beg forgiveness. Then with all the time I saved, I spend the evening drinking myself silly to forget why I ever wanted to retaliate in the first place. Efficiency, madam, I has it!

6. I'm not just a "pretty good" teacher... I'm an EXCELLENT teacher! Not only have my students labeled me "ballin' out of control" and "better looking than most of the other English TAs," but I effectively prattle on for an entire class period to provide the illusion of an education without ever having to actually instruct about anything useful. It's acute business sense. Sell nothing but earn money-dollars. Coming to my class was like buying a pet rock... looks pretty, but it's fundamentally worthless. Financial cunning, Ms. Virgil. That's what I call it. Just wait until you see the business model for my Thneed company.

7. I am the ultimate man about town... mostly because I never go out. The suspense only whets the appetite of the community. And when I do go out, I also look smashing in a dress or leather pants. And when I drink, there is never want for entertainment, because as long as a karaoke machine is nearby, prepare to be regaled by the finest rendition of "Hungry Like the Wolf" that you've ever heard! Why I can hear those melodious strains now....

It's clear who wins here, Ms. Virgil. JP represents the epitome of humanity! Your attempts to bait me with baseless insults were fruitless.

:)
---------------------------------
"A true victory is to make your enemies see that they were wrong to oppose you in the first place."

How About a Little Fire, Strawman?

2009-07-28T11:07:00.006-04:00

Believe it or not, since the presidential elections, I've made a conscious effort to avoid blogging about politics (with a few minor exceptions) for three reasons. First, my opinions are seldom supported by factual evidence; therefore, they shouldn't change anyone else's opinions. Second, despite any evidence to the contrary, I try to be funny, and I know many readers of mine disagree with me politically, which can interfere with the yuk yuks. Third, it's often pointless since political discourse has consisted of the "yes to change" and "no to change" crowd arguing back and forth for centuries. Look at the Greeks. They bitched about the same basic stuff... only with togas and pederasty.

But then I have to listen to Mr. Employer blather on about politics, and it riles me up something fierce. It's not that I particularly care about what he says (I'm sympathetic to conservative political causes even if I have no tolerance for their social ones), it's his argument strategy. You would think as an Ivy League graduate (University of Pennsylvania) that he would not only be able to observe everyday logical fallacies, but that he might be able to avoid them most of the time as well. And yet, whenever Mr. Employer wants to talk politics, I am cordially introduced to his friend, Mr. Strawman.

Put simply, a strawman is an argument in which you portray your opponent in a laughably simplistic way and then argue against an exaggerated (or outright wrong) version of his or her position. The idea being that you've created a man made of straw, fought it, and declared victory while never touching your true opponent. For instance:
"We can't have cake for dessert. If we ate cake all day, we'd all get diabetes."
The strawman argument is essentially the grownup version of a parent telling a child, "If your friend jumped off a bridge, would you do it, too?" in response to a completely different request. Pundits or comedians sometimes use strawmen in a *wink wink* sort of way where they know it's absurd, but they're making a larger point. Mr. Employer, however, genuinely seems to believe in the ridiculous opponent he's trying to argue against.

A few days ago, he was arguing about the new health care plan. I don't pretend to understand it, and I'm sure it's riddled with flaws (many government programs are), but to hear him tell it, you'd think that Obama and his "socialist buddies" are deliberately working to overthrow American democracy as we know it. His basic argument:
"If this new health care system is implemented, we're going to have the same system as Canada, and that system has flaws X, Y, and Z."
From my limited understanding of the new health care proposals, there are some major differences between what the new health care plan and what Canada has. But still, look at his argument. He's not arguing against the new health care plan, he's bitching about Canada's. When I pointed this out, he wasn't pleased, but insisted, "We'd be well on our way to that sort of system in no time." In addition to inviting his relative Uncle Slippery Slope to his party of rhetorical fail, he doesn't seem to want to explore the social, economic, cultural, and political differences between the United States and Canada that might create a few differences in how our medical care might work.

In the world of Mr. Employer, all democrats are freedom-hating, dictatorial, socialist, business-challenged, minority-loving conspirators who are working to undermine the honest and true hard-working American businessman (i.e. him).** He does this bullshit all the time. Last week it was welfare reform. To hear him tell it, you'd think that everyone below the poverty line is an unethical, lazy, and mooching liar who will simply suckle the federal welfare tit for all eternity... and enjoy it! (Though who wouldn't enjoy eternal tit sucking, no matter how metaphorical it might be?) When I asked about, for instance, coal miners who work 12-hour days and still make shit for wages, he promptly started on a tirade about how the environmental whackos are keeping clean coal from revolutionizing our energy policy.

He drives me fucking mad when he's talking politics. Typically I don't argue with him because it's entirely pointless. Sometimes my silence leads to hilarious examples of overgeneralizations on his part. One time he was bitching about atheists and said, "Atheists really have no basis for their morality... they don't have a reference like you and me." My inner one-upper wanted so badly to scream, "I'M AN ATHEIST, YOU DUNDERHEAD!" But then I realized that he wasn't going to be convinced, and I'd only piss off my primary source of income. So as has become my mantra, I wisely remained silent.

Once again, I have no quarrel with conservative policies. I can appreciate the view even if I disagree with it. But if you want to argue, learn how to do it. Otherwise, do what I do and keep your mouth shut.

Unless you have a blog... then you can blather on for an eternity with your ill-informed opinions.

** Not to be confused with the opposing strawman that paints all Republicans as women-hating, money-grubbing, tree-burning, Bible-thumping, Klan members.

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"It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs." -- Albert Einstein (apparently never having met Mr. Employer)

Planeteer Alert!

2009-07-27T10:52:00.004-04:00

Despite what my brother would consider to be my touchy-feely liberal tendencies, I really don't care about the environment. Academically speaking, I understand the impact of pollution and the importance of maintaining a stable ecosystem; however, emotionally I typically can't muster the wherewithal to be truly upset by environmental issues. Perhaps it comes from too many years of watching Captain Planet; now I expect serious environmental violators to be malevolent and dastardly mutants who pollute just for the fun of it. Hell, one of the villains was named Looten Plunder. How do you beat a name like that? Answer: you can't.

My environmental apathy typically continues unchecked until, every once in awhile, I stumble across some information regarding the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. No, this is not the mythical home of the Garbage Pail and Cabbage Patch Kids. In fact, it's a giant island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that's twice the size of Texas... and it's made up entirely of garbage. It's also colloquially known as the Pacific Trash Vortex, which is a way cooler name.

Simply put, the currents in the North Pacific Ocean (the North Pacific Gyre) gather all the garbage in the ocean and bring it into a swirling but stable area where it can fester forever. Said garbage kills fish and other marine life. Have you ever let a bag of trash sit outside for too long? Well multiply that by about one trillion and then let is stew in water. It's not hard to see why this sucker would be problematic.

In any case, this is an environmental tidbit that people can wrap their heads around. "Floating garbage island twice the size of Texas" stays with a person far better than "Global warming will make the Earth's temperature rise a few degrees in a hundred years." While the latter is serious, it doesn't sound serious to a lot of folks. A new continent made of garbage really sounds like a big problem.

The beautiful thing is that this trash vortex is getting larger. More and more garbage keeps accumulating. There's something sadistically fascinating about the whole thing. Part of me wants to see this eco-disaster get worse and worse. At the moment, the vortex isn't visible by satellite (so no chance of finding it on Google Maps, I'm afraid) because it all floats on the water's surface, but maybe if we let the sumbitch accumulate into a super-sized mass of used tires, discarded diapers, and old Filet o' Fish wrappers, we can have ourselves a new garbage continent called Trashica.

------------------------------

"By your powers combined, I am Captain Planet!"

The Summer of George

2009-07-21T11:18:00.000-04:00

"My name is George. I'm unemployed, and I live with my parents."

With so many television shows out there, I think everyone can find some television character who embodies their circumstances if not their personality. Batmite is a shorter, paunchier version of Raj from The Big Bang Theory. Dave is the Tweek character from South Park. And I've maintained for some time that Kyra Sedgwick's character from The Closer is essentially Virgil if she were a police chief.

But those are all endearing characters. I realized a few weeks ago while watching Seinfeld that I am the living embodiment of George Costanza.

The line inspiring that train of thought is clearly the one at the top. If that isn't the most succinct summation of my circumstances (brought on when George decides to do the opposite of his natural insticts by being completely honest with a woman), then I don't know what is. In addition, George repeatedly fails with women, complains about insignificant minutiae, and lives vicariously through the interesting lives of others. And in the long-running Seinfeld plotline of George and Jerry trying to create a pilot for a sitcom, George fancies himself a marketable writer despite never actually selling any written material.

Given that George is something of a fictionalized version of Larry David, the creator of Seinfeld and current star of Curb Your Enthusiasm, I also find myself frequently sympathizing with the main character of that latter show. George, Larry David, and I could all sit down and have a marvelous lunch together. We're all essentially the same person.

Except I'm not bald.... or Jewish.... yet.

More Costanza quotes that apply to me:

"If you take everything I've accomplished in my life and condense it down to one day, it looks decent."

"I'm disturbed; I'm depressed; I'm inadequate; I've got it all!"

"I was living the dream. I was stripped to the waist eating a block of cheese the size of a car battery."

"You ask me to have lunch, tell me you slept with Elaine, and then say you're not in the mood for details? Now you listen to me. I want details and I want them right now. I don't have a job. I have no place to go. You're not in the mood? Well you GET in the mood!"

"I'm ALL awkward pauses!"

---------------------------------
"The jerk store called... they're running out of you!"

Because I Said So, That's Why!

2009-07-17T03:41:00.004-04:00

My online teacher is an arrogant ball bag!

For my final paper (three are a total of three papers and one portfolio), Professor Douchenozzle required a research paper about the No Child Left Behind Act. Given that it's the dominating legislation in education today, the topic seemed reasonable. However, when I went to the library last weekend to start researching, I was flabbergasted to discover that on the prompt he wrote, "It's hard to say how many pages this will be, but 10 is a good place to start." Lest you think I'm getting worked up about nothing, 10 pages is the same number of pages required for a final paper in gradute school... in English! ...where writing is the whole point. Also, this flew in the face of his course syllabus, which claimed that all the papers were three pages long.

To add further insult to injury, I went to the course website and discovered that the point values for our first three-page bullshit paper and this new 10-page monstrosity were the same. Both papers were apparently worth 300 points. Needless to say, I suspected that this might be an error or an extremely stupid decision on his part, so I sent him an email asking why the two papers were with the same number of points since the workload was clearly far heavier for the latter.

Also in the email, I asked him why the sample portfolio provided on the course website had almost nothing to do with the prompt provided. I'm usually pretty good at figuring out where teachers are coming from with their examples, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it. So I politely (honest!) asked about the point values and the portfolio sample.

Here was his response:

Mr. [MY LAST NAME]:

This is a 200 level EDU class. NCLB is THE topic of most import in education today. Don't worry about 'points.' Worry about presenting a paper that fulfills the requirements. If it does not seem fair to you, you always have the option of not doing it.

Read the folder: the INTASC standards are a "possible format" offered as a guide if you wanted some direction. As stated, we developed the format in an in-class Foundations class. They make clear sense if you understand they provide a coherent template for a port.

First of all, he talks about a "200 level class" as though only the most prestigious doctors and lawyers have signed up to take his lofty course. He's teaching an introductory course about education to a class that should be made up of freshmen and sophomores. As a former grad student, I'm the exception - not the rule. Furthermore, it's at a community college! Should this jackass really be flouting his holier than thou attitude? I realize I went to WVU, which is hardly a scholarly mecca, but at least that's a state university.

Ten-page papers aren't easy to write. They require a thorough understanding of how to craft an extended argument, and even in grad school I sometimes struggled with them. Granted, I think I'm pretty good at writing them now, but what about freshmen or sophomores who have only ever written four-page papers for their community college writing courses? It's not like he offers any help. In his requirement for an abstract, he writes, "If you don't know what an abstract is, any standard writing book will tell you." That's right, you dumb and poor bastards. Go look it up yourself! I'm just your teacher; I'm not going to lower myself to actually TEACH you anything.

And he acts like I've offended his sensibilities by asking about the grading system. I realize that grades aren't everything, but I do like to have some idea of how I'll be assessed in a class. It's not unreasonable to expect that longer and more detailed assignments that require more research and writing will be worth more than short three-page assignments that I can churn out in half an hour. Furthemore, he raved about my first paper, and he praised my writing skills and my commitment to going above and beyond the requirements of the class in answering the question. Did he really need to take a tone of complete and disdainful condescention when responding to (what I thought were) my reasonable concerns?And his response to my portfolio question essentially amounts to, "Read it again. If you understand it, it'll make sense." Seriously, nothing in his response makes any fucking sense. The prompt makes no reference to how that example gels with what's required.

As you may have guessed, I resented his implications that my questions were those of a stupid and lazy person who didn't bother to read directions. I wanted so badly to write a snarky and scathing response brimming with vitriol and dripping with sarcasm. But I quickly dismissed that idea. The arrogant old prick still has to give me a grade for the class, and I'm sure burning my bridges before I even cross them would be considered unwise. And he's the chair of CCAC's English department. I may never go to that dump again, but he may have connections that could bite me in the ass later in life. Suppose his wife is the principal of a school that I want a job at someday. Knowing my luck, that would certainly be the case. So instead of tearing him a new one, I took the opposite track. I sent a quick and thoroughly heartfelt reply that read:

Dear Professor [ASSHOLE'S LAST NAME HERE]:

Thank you for the clarification. I didn't mean to sound disrespectful or disparaging. The assignments will be completed fully and on time.

Deep inside me somewhere, I truly hope that he would feel guilty that I sound so repentant for having offended his sensibilities. But given this guy's track record (his emails to the class are equally condescending and rude), I suspect he simply nodded and said to himself, "Finally, someone who recognizes the splendor of my magnficence."

Arrogant old asshole probably thinks he's too good to be teaching at a community college and delights in his own superiority complex. One more week and I can bid his inflated ego a fond adieu.

-----------------------------------
JP doesn't think he was ever this much of a douchebag to his own students, though surely at least one of them would disagree...

Prophet Margins

2009-07-15T15:00:00.003-04:00

"L-l-l-l-let my p-p-p-p-people g-g-g-g-go!!"

In her most recent church bulletin, Mrs. Employer included the following selection. My favorite parts are highlighted in blue.

The next time you feel bad or useless and are too far from God to do any good, just remember...

Noah was a drunk
Isaac was a daydreamer
Leah was ugly
Moses had a stuttering problem
Sampson had long hair and was a womanizer
Rahab was a prostitute
Jeremiah and Timothy were too young
David had an affair and was a murderer
Elijah was suicidal
Jonah ran from God
Job went bankrupt
Peter denied Christ
Martha worried about everything
The Samaritan woman was divorced... more than once
Zacchaeus was too small
Timothy had an ulcer
Abraham was too old
Jacob was a liar
Joseph was abused
Gideon was afraid
Isaiah preached naked
Naomi was a widow
John the Baptist ate bugs
The disciples fell asleep while praying
Paul was too religious
AND Lazarus was dead!

This may be the greatest religious compilation I've seen since I watched Monty Python's The Life of Brian. I understand that Mrs. Employer is trying to humanize the characters of the Bible, but in doing so, she inadvertently created much delight for this humble nonbeliever. I thought that these prophets were supposed to be role models and that we're supposed to take our guiding moral principles from the Bible? I've already mentioned in a previous post that Moses is a murderer, but he apparently has a stuttering problem, too. He's starting to sound more and more like a sociopath every day. And he's not even the only murderer on the list. David's a noted killer as well.

I didn't know Noah was a drunk, but if I had to spend 40 days and 40 nights on a mythical ship filled with animals, I'd probably hit the sauce too.

The list makes the people of the Bible out to be adulterers, womanizers, prostitutes, drunks, and killers. I thoroughly approve. While it seems peculiar that Mrs. Employer, devout Christian that she is, would want to emphasize that the very people she reveres are also wildly inappropriate, I can see how it would help to comfort mere mortals who fear they're not good enough for God. Of course, it doesn't say much for God that this so-called supreme being cavorts with such questionable folks.

Isaiah and John the Baptist are my favorites. They preached naked and ate bugs respectively. Nudists and bug-eaters always meet with my approval. I also like that Paul was "too religious" for God. The implications of that statement are staggering.

Some of these "weaknesses" seem a bit judgmental though. Why are having long hair, having an ulcer, and being ugly considered problematic? Is Jesus a hippie-hating, jalapeno-eating, narcissistic asshole?

Lazarus rising from the dead is just awesome whether it actually happened or not. Immortality shouldn't be considered a personality defect.

The moral of this lesson is that you can do pretty much whatever you like... God will forgive you anyway.

Especially if you kill someone... so stab away my gentile friends!

--------------------------------
"Whoa! Is that really the blood of Christ?"
"Yes."
"That guy must have been wasted 24/7!"

Tales of Astounding Nothingness

2009-07-14T11:20:00.004-04:00

I don't know if you've noticed or not, but I feel that the quality of my blog posts has been slipping in the last few months. There are likely those among you who feel that there has been no change in quality - that I have sucked since the beginning. That's a valid argument, so I won't disagree. I suppose I could chalk that up to lack of talent, but I prefer a much simpler (and less self-effacing) explanation:

My life is boring.

I sometimes feel like I've run out of stories to tell. Here is a typical day:
7:00 - Alarm goes off
7:30 - JP actually wakes up
8:30 - JP works out for an hour
10:00 - JP goes to work
10:00 - 4:30 - JP spends hours on end typing old sermons into Microsoft Word
5:00 - Dinner
6:00 - 8:00 - Waste time watching TV
8:00 - 9:00 - Make some feeble attempt to work on my online course or perhaps enjoy other sinful pleasures of the internet
9:00 - 10:00 - Either read or watch some other mind-numbing TV
11:00 - 12:00 - Daily Show and Colbert Report
12:00 - Bed
12:00 - 7:00 - Dreams of one day rising to the level of mediocre success

And so it goes. Sometimes if I'm feeling really ambitious, I'll do some writing for the secretive fiction project that I'm working on. (I'm convinced maybe 5 people read this blog anymore, so admitting that won't affect much.) And then there's the Firemen's Band, and while there's plenty of drunken revelry to be had, nothing blog-worthy ever really happens there.

I'm not really bored like I was last summer. I'm just boring. I have plenty of stuff to keep me occupied, but it's the same stuff over and over again. I don't mind the repetition, but a tangential result of my humdrum life is that I have no fun tales of interest to tell in real life or on this blog. When I was teaching, I never knew what sort of bizarre, self-serving, wholly-stupid things my students would get into, so that was always a reliable source of entertainment.

Granted, I could always just repeatedly blog about the strange attitudes of Mr. and Mrs. Employer or the rampant and stupid belief in Ayn Rand's Objectivism that seems to permeate the Firemen's Band, but that could become dull and tedious rather quickly. I've given some consideration to dedicating my time to more fictional posts such as The Once and Future JP, Reader Mail, or my weeks-long Presidential Run. That last one was particularly fun.

Once school starts back up in the fall, I'm sure I'll have plenty of stories about returning to "graduate school" and student teaching. Until then, I have to give some thought to what I want to blog about. Bear with me. The part of your brain that appreciates that perfect blend of high-brow entertainment and poop jokes will thank you.

------------------------------------
"Go to beige alert... and tell my wife I said, 'Hello.'"

Man of the People

2009-07-12T18:25:00.008-04:00

Democracy is overrated.

I spent this afternoon at a nearby college library researching the No Child Left Behind Act for the final paper of my online course (which must incidentally be a minimum of 10 pages long - the same length as a paper for a graduate English course, but that's another rant). In my reading, I learned some interesting facts from the a report published by the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 1998:
>> 10 million high school students cannot read at the basic level.
>> More than 25 million students do not know basic U.S. history.
>> More than 20 million high school students cannot do basic math.
Not too long ago, in a source I've since forgotten (because I wasn't planning to do any citations with it), I learned that 2/3 of Americans don't know that the United States has three branches of government. I thought that was American Civics 101!?

Rampant ignorance hardly surprises me. In simply observing the world, one can conclude that most of the world simply isn't that educated. I'm not talking about intelligence here; statistically speaking, approximately 49% of the American public should be of above average intelligence. A person can be smart and still uneducated, and according to just about every measure American public schools, our country isn't exactly a crew of scholars.

Which brings me back to my original statement about democracy. The common wisdom in America is that we have a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." But the much ballyhooed "people" don't inspire me with a lot of confidence. In fact, most of the founding fathers felt the same way. That's why we don't really have a true "democracy" in this country - we have a republic. We elect who we feel is the most qualified to represent our interests and make intelligent decisions on our behalf.

I always grumble when I hear people talk about how elected officials should listen to their constituencies and do whatever they want. It sounds nice in theory, but think about the complications in practice. In determining policies and laws, officials should ideally be poring over dozens if not hundreds of documents to research all the angles and points of view. Then intelligent decisions can be made by people who actually know what they're talking about. Remember, 2/3 of the American public doesn't even know that we HAVE three branches of government, so putting stock in their opinion of government issues seems unwise to me.

If you want a nice counterexample, take a look at California. They really do have a democracy with regards to all laws. Whenever some new legislation is introduced, Californians go to the polls to vote on it. Again, this sounds great in theory, but remember the blithering idiots who are voting. For instance, when Proposition 8 (regarding gay marriage) came up for a vote, do you think every Californian considered the legal, historical, sociological, and political implications of the decision? Or do you think most of them just said, "I hate those fucking faggots!" or "Gay people seem nice to me!" and cast their vote accordingly?

Now lest you think I put myself above everyone else, let me just say that I have very little understanding of most political issues. I stay reasonably well-informed with regards to what's happening in the country and the world, but when it comes to specific legislation, I'm just as ignorant as the next guy. I put a lot of faith in my elected officials to make the right calls. And I don't care how informed you are; on some level everyone does. We all can't be informed on every single area that the government handles. There are government agencies overseeing the economy, global warming, education, health care, agriculture, industry, transportation, parks, international relations, and countless other issues that concern all of us. We elected people we find to be credible and intelligent, and we trust them to wade through the mountains of legal mumbo-jumbo in order to make the right calls.

I don't want the government to listen to me. I don't know shit! I approach government this way: I observe my elected officials and if their results are positive, I just might reelect them. I try not to get hung up on specific policies because there could be 100 different perspectives that I failed to consider in forming my opinion. Should our sales tax be increased to 23% so that we can reduce income and property taxes? Hell if I know. Don't ask me about it, Mr. Elected Official, and don't look at the opinion polls. Go ask some economists with twelve degrees and look at some industry reports. Quit using "the will of the people" as an excuse for making bad policy. People are fucking dumb.

Of course, this whole argument is undercut by the corrupt, ignorant, glory-seeking, money-grubbing, ass-kissing, philandering politicians who litter our public offices.... and that doesn't even include Sarah Palin and Mark Sanford!

I suppose we could always try to educate the masses... though that would be a job for those educator-types who want to be high school teachers. And we all know how loony those people are!

-----------------------------------
JP realizes that he's practically declared his full support for some sort of bourgeois dictatorship, so feel free to completely disregard his entire argument.

All the News That's Fit to Print

2009-07-07T22:47:00.005-04:00

Well, my adoring fans, I've hit the big time! After laboring in obscurity for 25 long years, the news media has finally recognized me: I'm on the front page of The Leader Times, Kittanning's most prestigious (re: only) newspaper. Not only did I make page one, but it happened in a week when Michael Jackson's death and funeral steamrolled every other major story in the world. I beat the King of Pop!! Eat your own lyrics, Michael, and BEAT IT!

Of course, I graciously share my fame with the Firemen's Band drum major and my fellow tromboner, but I clearly dominate the left portion of that photo. I'm just not sure how I'll cope with my throngs of adoring female fans who want me to sign their breasts. I guess I'll just have to suck it up and make the best of it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go bask in my fame for awhile longer. I've now joined the ranks of other distinguished and acclaimed persons from the Leader Times' front page including the homely woman who makes wind chimes from old cran-grape juice containers and Filet o' Fish wrappers and the elderly man who grew the largest pumpkin in the tri-county area.

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The Leader Times: Possessing excellent taste in photography since July 6, 2009.

Cooking with JP

2009-07-01T22:27:00.003-04:00

You know me as the charming, witty, super-sexy blogger who amuses you while you're procrastinating at work or recovering after an intense hour at porn sites. But today I added a new skill to my repertoire: I can prepare an edible meal that other people actually like!

My parents were both out of town yesterday and part of today, leaving me to handle dinner for my two younger brothers and me. Typically, I go straight for the easiest dinner possible and make a beeline for the pizza delivery menu on the refrigerator. But I've gotten pretty tired of fast food dinners of late, so I decided to actually prepare something on my own. My two youngest brothers were perfect for my experiment because they're far more likely to eat whatever glop I'd prepare than to go to the trouble of getting anything else.

The first night was pretty tame. I just made some generic macaroni and cheese, which was actually a minor accomplishment for me because usually when I make macaroni and cheese, it's often a watery, soggy mess. I've since learned to drain properly, so that's less of an issue now.

But this evening I was feeling particularly ambitious. Earlier today, Mrs. Employer recruited me to help her make a pierogi casserole for some sort of church function. The damn thing looked delicious by the time we were done (and was filled with enough cheese to choke a Packers fan), so after that, a Big Bacon Classic just wasn't going to cut it. With no easy-fix meals in the pantry, I scoured our house for whatever might be edible. I found some chicken breasts, white rice, and frozen french-cut green beans. As you might imagine, I made some chicken breasts with white rice and french-cut green beans. Emeril would hardly be impressed, but I'd rather woo Rachael Ray anyway. The process was even easier than I'd anticipated because the chicken that my parents had purchased was already pre-breaded and ready to go. I had the materials and wherewithal to bread the chicken myself, so I want brownie points for having the skill set (though a pan of brownies would be nice too). I jazzed the chicken up a bit with some basil and shredded cheese on top, and voila! Instant deliciousness!

I really do enjoy cooking stuff. Granted, the day to day business of preparing meals would get tedious, but every once in awhile, I think it's fun to try to make a delicious dish. When I lived by myself, I could make a pretty respectable batch of chili, a mean pasta primavera, and a truly excellent tortellini salad that I bastardized from a friend (LD) into a much more unhealthy concoction featuring a ton of salami and feta cheese. And, of course, let's not forget the baked chicken.

One of the hindrances to cooking on my own is that it's often a big pain in the ass to cook for just one person (or even two when I was with Batmite). Another problem is that I don't really understand what the spices do. I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between cilantro, basil, and dill weed if Paula Dean were holding a machete to my throat and demanding that I do a blind taste test. Furthermore, I always get the timing all wrong. I guarantee that any side dishes I'm making will be done ten minutes before the main course. This is why anything I could make in a crock pot was golden to me!

I could be cooking at home, but an audience makes the whole thing even worse. If I screw something up on my own, I'm the only one who has to choke the food down. If I screw up at home, five people miss out on dinner. And in my family, you don't want to be responsible for that mistake! And once again, the spices screw me over because I've noticed that half of my family likes spicy and sour things like I do, but the other half doesn't. Cooking for other people is hard! Why can't everyone enjoy a tasty cucumber salad with vinegar, parmesean cheese, and a boatload of pepper and a batch of hot buffalo chicken wings with bleu cheese on the side? Although I probably shouldn't eat that meal if I have to be around other people the same day.

I may have to start playing around in the kitchen more often though. I really need to start compiling some recipes that are tasty but that also don't take half a day to prepare. I should probably start with casseroles and work my way down. One of these days I'll get my dad to show me how to make kugelis and some of the other bacon-filled Lithuanian dishes that he knows. That way I can make myself look even thinner by packing my dinner guests with tasty and mouth-watering cholesterol!

Oh who am I kidding? I could eat a whole pan of that stuff myself!

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This post in no way serves as a contractual obligation for JP or any other persons associated with The Undesirable Element to prepare dinner at home on a daily basis. Bribery must be utilized for such an arrangement.

A Close Shave

2009-06-28T16:37:00.007-04:00

I like having a nice clean-shaven look. I tried having a goatee for a year in college, and while I thought I rocked the goat at the time, in retrospect I looked pretty stupid. It never grew in very thick, so in most pictures from that time, I appear to have a ring of brown dirt around my mouth and chin. I don't think my face lends itself well to a beard either. Much as I'd love to sport the Commander Riker or the Rasputin look, I think smooth is the way to go.

However, shaving regularly means that I have to endure the daily trials and tribulations of the process, and that's starting to piss me off.

I keep getting this damned rash of red bumps on the center of my neck, and no matter what I try, they won't go away. I use the traditional troika of shaving cream, razor, and aftershave gel. I scoured the internet looking for tips and tricks for a better shave, and half of the information contradicts the other half. Some "experts" argue that applying foam liberally over the face before a shave is key. The others say that a light oil is all that is necessary and that the foam actually hinders the shave. Half of internet shavers say that you should stretch the skin with your fingers as you run the razor over your face to get the best shave. The other half claims that you should never stretch the skin because it causes irritation. Some say I should be shaving every day to get my skin used to the shaving process. Still others argue that shaving every day irritates the skin. And all of this doesn't even scratch the surface of the debate between electric versus traditional razors. And in movies, everyone always uses those insane straight razors despite the fact that one false move with one of those death sticks could slice an artery.

How the hell have men been shaving their faces for centuries and not been able to come up with a consensus on how to do it!? Why is it so hard to find reliable information?

There are some tips that everyone agrees on. Alcohol-based aftershaves are apparently terrible for the skin (and yet they're sold everywhere and used as the basis for that shaving scene in Home Alone). After a hot shower is the best time to shave. Replacing your razor blades at least once a week reduces skin irritation. And cleansing the skin before shaving is critical. I've incorporated the first three tips into my shaving regimen, but I haven't yet purchased an actual skin cleanser to use before I shave, so that may be the next step in my quest for an effective shave.

I tried some new ideas, and they failed spectacularly. I bought this special shaving cream that you spread very thinly over your face. The claim was that the cream would cause the hairs to stand up straighter allowing the razor to cut them more effectively. I guess it's like a hair-Viagra. That lasted all of one day. I looked like a lawnmower had just eaten my face for breakfast after shaving with that stuff. I also tried a special aftershave moisturizer, but it left my neck feeling gooey the whole day, and it didn't really do anything for the rash. It'd be nice if products would come with disclaimers like "This substance sucks balls! Do not buy!"

I know it's probably unmanly to bitch about shaving techniques and irritated skin, but god dammit, I have to do it every day! The whole idea behind shaving is to make me look better, so if it's not working right, I want to fix it. If any of you faithful readers out there have had the same problem and found a successful solution, I would love to hear it. My neck will thank you.

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"Two heads are better than one."
"Who said that?"
"I think it was a man who sold hats."

Dude, Where's My Career?

2009-06-24T19:00:00.001-04:00

Last week, a gentleman from a local staffing agency called me to inform me of a technical writing position in the area. I recognized the name of their agency as one that I’d used to apply for a job at a different company many months ago. Apparently, they actually kept my resume on file, and when this job opened up, they asked if I’d like to have my resume submitted for the position.

I haven’t been applying for jobs much since my acceptance to the teacher certification program. Every once in awhile, I’ll churn out a resume and cover letter for some editing assistant position, but I’ve gone from sending out two or three resumes a week to maybe one a month. Not only have I been thoroughly and heartily discouraged by months upon months of failure in the job market, but I’m also pretty excited to start the certification program. My inner masochist is just bursting with anticipation to fill my life with long, unpaid hours of hardship, stress, and torment. The sad part is that the previous statement contains no sarcasm whatsoever.

Nevertheless, with someone on the phone asking me if I’d like the opportunity to make actual money dollars without going back to school, I decided to accept the invitation. I sent the man an updated copy of my resume and cover letter for a job opening at a bank in, of all places, Kittanning. Well, actually it’s in the nearby “industrial complex” of Slate Lick, but good luck finding that on a map. This would, of course, mean that I’d be stuck living in Armstrong County for even LONGER, but I figured I didn’t really have anything to lose by accepting an interview.

All of this went down last Wednesday, and the gentleman on the phone told me that they’d be reading all the resumes the following day and that I’d hear from them either Thursday or Friday if they wanted me for an interview. It’s now the following Wednesday, and your humble author hasn’t heard a peep from them. I can safely assume that my resume is nestled comfortably in the “REJECTED” pile on the human resources desk. Even though I’m literally five minutes away from this place and have the general qualifications necessary, I figured that I’d be a long shot since I have no actual technical writing experience.

What baffles me is that I don’t know whether I’m unhappy or not about my not getting the job. A year ago, I thought I wanted nothing more than to trade my hopes and dreams for mountains of filthy lucre regardless of what menial tasks were required. I would have been happy to sell my soul to the corporate world and leave teaching to the suffering of others. I certainly haven’t suddenly developed a conscience, but it’s unsettling to me just how my thoughts repeatedly drift back into educator territory. For instance, I often find myself coming across articles in magazines and thinking to myself, “Damn, that would have been perfect for the Genre Analysis!” And then I catch myself thinking that I try to drown my overactive mind in cartoons and pornography.

I may not be able to handle the day-to-day classroom for decades, but I know that my interests and passions lie somewhere in education. That’s the stuff I like to read about, talk about, write about, or have mental breakdowns about. Just look at how many posts on this blog have the “Teaching” label! There’s certainly a noticeable trend.

I’ll still apply for other jobs because the fact that I’ve never successfully had a corporate job interview really gnaws at my self-esteem, but I’m pretty happy with my decision to go back and get my teaching certification. Once I’m given full reign over a classroom, I’ll have multiple groups of trapped high schoolers who will have to endure my endless Star Trek references and rants about how the hand dryers in the bathrooms leave my hands with a funky residue. Oh, they have no idea what they’re in for!

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"Your life, as it has been, is over. From this time forward, you will service us."

One Giant Trombone Led the Big Parade

2009-06-23T21:25:00.004-04:00

To amuse myself during this lazy Kittanning summer, I joined the Kittanning Firemen's Band. My two younger brothers and several friends have been trying to get me to join for years, but I stubbornly refused on the grounds that I'm just far too accustomed to being contrary. But I finally broke down this summer, and I'm now the newest tromboner in the band.

Two years ago, the band participated in a parade, but they needed one more person to have the minimum membership necessary to compete. Since my brother couldn't make it, I threw on his uniform, went along with them, and carried the banner. It was simple enough, and there was much drinking and merriment along the way. Since that single instance, the Firemen's Band has sent me all of their newsletters and publications as though I were already a full member. So while I feel that I've only been part of the band for about two months, the books have probably had my name on the roster for two and a half years.

I swore I'd never play the trombone again after high school. Trombone music in high school bands is typically dull and tedious. There are a lot of whole notes and lifeless rhythms that serve to bump up all the truly awesome parts played by the trumpets, saxophones, and clarinets. If we even glimpsed a melody or anything slightly complicated that was labeled "fortissimo," we actually stopped doodling and mocking each other long enough to play what little musical morsels they would decide to throw our way, and we'd make the most of them. I may not have been a very good trombone player, but I could play loud. When in doubt, blow your brains out, and hope that no one will notice that you played the wrong note.

But in the Firemen's Band, the trombones get the melody (or counter-melody) all the time. At one recent performance, I wasn't aware that ONLY the trombones play the melody of "Amazing Grace" for the first half of our arrangement. Since I was the only trombone at said performance, my amateur ass got a solo on one of the most melodic and familiar songs in the band's oeuvre.** Take THAT consistently third-chair high-school JP. You got to rock a solo!

As if that's not enough, the trombones are right out front when we march in parades. In the photo at the top, that's me at the DuBois Parade right in the middle behind the drum major. Since, as with most situations, I tower over everyone else, it looks like I'm either leading the band or that I'm serving as their honorary bastion. Though in that uniform, I look like a mutant Ghostbuster.

Another advantage that the Firemen's Band has over the high school band is the ready (and often free) access to alcohol. I am thoroughly amazed by the huge fanbase that this ragtag group of Sousa-march players has across the state, though I suspect many of them think that everyone in the band is an actual fireman (which is not really the case - the band is simply supported by the Kittanning fire companies). But regardless of their motives, I'm equally impressed by said fanbase's willingness to give us free booze. A consistent stream of liquor could have made those high school football games a lot more interesting.

In a town replete with hopeless and cultureless slobs whose idea of reading involves the pizza shop's delivery menu while they drink themselves into a stupor every night as they're waiting to deal heroin out of the home of their pregnant teenage girlfriend because their brother is still serving jail time, it's nice to be with a group of guys who actually like to do something reasonably enriching in their spare time.

Though I suppose we drink ourselves into a stupor after every performance, so we still have that in common with our village brethren.

** My pretentious use of needlessly complicated words has now extended to music, as well. You're welcome!

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"Do you find something funny about the word TROMBONER!?"

This is Only a Test

2009-06-10T12:13:00.009-04:00

For the last few weeks, I’ve been enduring the monumental intellectual task of completing my online community college course. “The Foundation of Education” boasts a challenging and rigorous curriculum that utilizes cutting-edge pedagogical techniques and demands the highest scholarly work from students. Additionally… *cough* … *hack* …. *blergh* … *ahem* Oh, excuse me. I’m choking on the sheer bulk of sarcasm here. I’ll attempt to be more genuine so that it goes down more smoothly.

This ridiculous online course, which I’m only taking as a prerequisite to the teaching certification program at Pitt, is driving me mad. Not only do I have to wade through the tediously repetitive book chapters that are written for a fifth-grade reading level, but I also have to take the most poorly-written online exams ever associated with a course.

Let me be clear. This course is laughably easy. I read a chapter, and then I’m supposed to go online to take a multiple-choice quiz… WHILE I SIT WITH THE BOOK RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. The questions aren’t even challenging. Question 1 comes from the first page in the chapter. Question 2 comes from the following paragraph, and so on. You seriously just roll right through the chapter and answer the questions as you go. I almost feel foolish for reading the chapters ahead of time.

However…

There’s a problem with this seemingly perfect assessment situation: the tests were written by incompetent sub-humans who have no basic grasp of how to write a simple question. I’ve taken three of these online “tests” so far, and it’s a huge blow to my already inflated ego that I’ve missed three or four questions on each one. Of course, they don’t reveal which questions I missed, but I have a pretty good idea.

Here’s a good example of one of the questions:

How many sexually-active high school students admit to using a condom during sex?
A: 25%
B: 50%
C: 75%
D: 100%

Seems harmless enough, doesn’t it? Well, in the section regarding sex education in high schools, the book goes into a bit more detail: “2/3 of sexually-active high school girls admit to using a condom during sex. However, only 1/2 of sexually-active high school boys admit to using one.” That’s all the book has to say on the matter. Do you see the problem? The answer is somewhere between 50% and 75%, but I can’t really be sure. Some basic math tells me that the answer is “closer” to 50%, but it’s not really the right answer. I have no problem with using critical thinking skills to answer questions on a test, but don’t give me a goddamn math problem to do in order to estimate a figure that’s not in the fucking text.

For another choice example, let’s take a look at the book’s section on poverty. The online quiz had a nice little question asking me to evaluate four statements about poverty and then determine which ones were true. Each multiple choice answer offered two or three statements as being correct (meaning that there was at least more than one). However, after scouring that section on poverty and any other reference to it in the chapter, I could only find evidence of ONE of those statements being true. What the hell, test maker?? These weren’t options that could be extrapolated from the existing material either. These were statements regarding data such as “20% of American students live in poverty” or something to that effect. Unless that’s written in the book, how am I supposed to know whether they consider that to be a true statement or not? I haven’t committed to memory random statistical data from other studies for use on tedious online quizzes.

These tests are littered with vague questions. Some simply have two answers that could both be interpreted as correct from a certain point of view, and I’m forced to decide if the test writer was being tricky or if I have to think more like a stupid student. When I took the LSAT back in the fall, they had questions like that too, but they put them there on purpose. They explicitly said that I was to pick the “best” answer even if another answer might have some validity. But these online tests have no such caveat. But the only one they should really put is: “This test was written by a fucking dimwit. Approach with caution, and prepare to be royally screwed.”

It doesn’t help that the professor has a reputation for being a lousy online teacher. Apparently I lucked into getting Dr. Apathetic for this ridiculous course, and while that normally wouldn’t bother me, I highly suspect that he wouldn’t have a lot of sympathy for me were I to send a strongly worded email to him. He’s an English professor too, so he’d likely just give me a lengthy bullshit spiel about academic policy that will save him from having to change the test.

Can’t say I blame him. I’d try to pull the same stunt.

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2/3 of JP’s readers don’t care about this post. How many don’t care?
A: 20%
B: 80%
C: All of the above
D: United Arab Emirates

The After Picture

2009-06-02T00:41:00.002-04:00

JP: Making maroon even less manly

Virgil/Contemplator requested a current picture as proof that I actually lost weight, and I can't blame her since making a dubious claim to attract attention and undeserved praise is actually a pretty good idea that I wish I'd thought of earlier. So to appease the skeptical, I took a picture of myself today. I'm not sure why I'm holding my hands out like I'm baffled by the art of photography or welcoming a gaggle of devout worshippers to my cult, but there you have it. That's JP at 253 lbs.

I call it an "after" picture, but it's more like an "in progress" picture. I wisely and tastefully chose to photograph myself with my shirt on, so you can't see the doughy gut and man-boobs that still remain. Maroon may be slimming as well. Also, my blindingly pasty skin may have interfered with the photo, so I think this was the right decision.

And note that I'm wearing a legitimate shirt and not one of my now-discarded button-downed checkered monstrosoties that would so conveniently hide those unsightly jiggly bits. I want fashion points for that!

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And so JP finds himself slimmer than he ever was before, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap would be the leap home.

Half the Man I Used to Be

2009-05-30T23:24:00.010-04:00

JP exactly 82 pounds ago.
It's also clearly JP from the mirror universe since he's sporting a hideously evil goatee.

As a few readers have hinted in the comments to my previous posts, I could be undervaluing my own achievements lately (curse you, Impostor Syndrome!). So to counter my feelings of career-oriented inferiority, this post is completely and unabashedly dedicated to tooting my own horn and gloating proudly.

In the last four years, I've lost 85 pounds! And Jenny Craig, Subway, and Atkins had no part of it. This was all done with diet, exercise, and an overabundance of free time.

The weight loss scheme began way back at the end of my junior year of undergrad. Back then I weighed 335 lbs (oh yes, that's a lot). At the time, I wasn't happy with my weight, but I had no immediate plans for losing it, and I never truly pursued any long-term plans for a diet. Then one day that all changed. A friend's girlfriend's friend needed a date to a sorority formal at Thiel College, so me being the charming and single one in the vicinity, I was asked to go. I guess she was so desperate to go that her standards just went right out the window. Unfortunately, the only suit I had stretched pretty snugly over my doughy physique. Rather then shell out money for a new suit, I figured I could fit into it pretty well if I lost five pounds before the formal, which was still three weeks away. Apparently my frugality trumped my desire for tasty treats because I pulled it off, and the suit fit well enough for me to go out on the dance floor and make a fool of myself.

But I didn't stop with just five pounds. For some reason, this little jump motivated me immensely because during the summer between my junior and senior years, I lost 40 pounds. I've since been told that it's not uncommon for that initial burst of motivation to almost feel like a light-switch coming on, and the reasons can be downright bizarre in retrospect. That certainly held true in my case.

My long road to being a slimmer giant wasn't always easy, but I had a lot of help. My mom being a respected and very talented dietician and personal trainer certainly made things a lot easier, though I'm sure she got sick of me whining all the time about how hard my paltry bench presses were using just the bar in those early days. She has my unending gratitude!

I didn't keep up the frenetic pace of that first summer, but by the time I started graduate school, I'd lost another 20 lbs. and was sitting comfortably at 269 lbs with high hopes of losing more during my two years at WVU.

Then grad school started, and I learned what it means to be a "stress eater."

Apparently, I have the dietary habits of a middle-aged woman, because when I get stressed out, I want to curl up on the sofa with a container of Ben & Jerry's and a bag of Salt & Vinegar chips while I watch cartoons and complain loudly to whoever might be nearby. I'm filled with murderous envy at people who *can't* eat when stressed. I saw the weight gain happening, but with papers to grade, books to read, papers to write, and a swirling abyss of a future filled with fail hovering ahead of me, I just didn't care. Over the two years in grad school, I gained back 30 lbs. I just tipped the scales at 300 lbs. last summer when I decided that it was time to buckle down again and get this flabby bulge off of me.

The snacking was the hardest thing to eliminate. I was loving my daily combo of evening snacks and TV. It was hard, and I still fall into old habits from time to time, but now I can watch TV at night without feeling the compulsory need to snack at the same time. I try not to deny myself any kinds of food. I just try to limit the amounts. That way if I'm really jonesing for an Oreo Klondike, I can just eat one and not sit there angrily munching on carrots. But now I can stop at just one.

It's been 10 months, and I'm 50 lbs. lighter. I'm a happy little unemployed blogger. At 253 lbs, I haven't been this light since before I was in high school. I can wear reasonably-sized clothing now. I fit comfortably into theater seats. My sardine-can-sized car actually seems roomier. I have more energy and stamina. And I'm looking damned good. I'm a very pretty man!

Though I will admit, I really want the man-boobs go away. I was hoping they'd do so on their own, but they're still noticably present, and while it can be fun to flaunt a nice perky rack, I'd rather they weren't there. I still have plenty more weight to lose so we'll see. My goal was once 250 lbs, but having essentially achieved that goal, I think I can do better. My new goal is now 230 lbs. That may or may not have something to do with that being the maximum weight for being able to skydive. I can certainly hold a grudge. :) If the aforementioned he-hooters are still around then, I may consider having them removed through other means.

I just hope that I can keep up my new healthier lifestyle. I now know that my dietary habits respond very poorly to stress, so I do worry about what will happen once I start taking classes in the fall and then teaching after that. It's a constant battle, and while I'm sure I'll bugger it up from time to time, I like to think that I'm generally on a road to a better place.

Or at least I might end up being the thinnest guy in the unemployment line!

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They say pride cometh before the fall, so hopefully my gloating won't be followed by an ice cream and taco binge of epic proportions. Besides, fall doesn't come for another four months.

By the Book

2009-05-28T21:10:00.003-04:00

Look closely: he's reading a book called "Enemy Pie"

My current career path towards a glamorous and financially rewarding life as a high school English teacher occasionally gives me pause. While I'm conflicted on how to continue my long-running heroin addiction while teaching and moonlighting as a whale poacher, I think I'm most concerned by the fact that there is a significant portion of the so-called "classics" of literature that I've never read.

I stumbled upon a list of books that all high school students should read, and that got me thinking about all of the "traditional" books that have, for one reason or another, failed to be inserted into my scrambled brain. I've never read any of these:

Moby Dick
The Grapes of Wrath
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Anything by T.S. Eliot, Henry James, or James Joyce (though I once attempted Ulysses and failed spectacularly)
Catch-22 (despite two attempts to get through it)
The Divine Comedy
Anything by Dickens (except A Christmas Carol)
Little Women
Pride and Prejudice
Most of Faulkner
Anything by Mark Twain (except Huckleberry Finn)

The last one really irritates me because Mark Twain is full of win. His essays still bring chuckles even if they're only taking acerbic potshots at opponents of the Knights of Labor or Freemasonry.

I'm a product of a literary education that emphasized a more varied approach to teaching literature. In high school we read things like Cry the Beloved Country and The Joy Luck Club - books that would never have been assigned 50 years ago. Of course, if my English degree is worth even slightly more than the paper it's printed on (and that's a dubious claim even now), I can say with some certainty that the traditional or "canonical" works of literature are not necessarily required anymore. A lot of different stuff is available to teach, and I think it would make class more interesting because you get to read material written by folks who may not have been as respected in their time.

I know that anyone who hires me will understand if I haven't read one book or another. Administrators can't possibly expect for their candidates to have read every single book in the literary canon. But I worry that students and parents may not be so understanding. Suppose some ambitious student read Moby Dick the previous year and wants to blab about it in class. My knowledge is limited to a phenomenal summary a guy at grad school came up with, ("They killed a whale... it took awhile") and Khan growling to nobody, "From hell's heart I stab at thee!!!" in Star Trek II. How am I supposed to look like an authority when I haven't read some of the most well-known "Englishy" books out there.

I will say in my favor that I have an unnatural affection for Shakespeare. And that has nothing to do with the eyepatch-wearing, Shakespeare-quoting, bald Klingon from Star Trek VI. In fact, I even know quite a bit about some of the plays I never even read (Thanks Wikipedia!!). I'm a big fan of bombastic theatrics, and nobody does theatrics quite like Billy S. (Save perhaps Gilbert and Sullivan, but I still have some masculine pride). Shakespeare is still the tops. Nobody fucketh with thy Bard!

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Three Star Trek references (including an obscure one) in a post that has nothing to do with Star Trek! I've outdone myself! (And I'm never getting laid again.)

We Few, We Happy Few

2009-05-25T18:19:00.005-04:00

As I've mentioned many times before on this blog, I don't believe in God, an afterlife, or any sort of ethereal realm containing spirits and the ascended form of Zombie Jesus. Most of the time, I'm content to simply ignore questions of life-after-death since I'm not confronted with it on a daily basis, but since today is Memorial Day, I figured the topic might be worth a few imaginary beard scratchings.

Memorial Day is a tricky thing. The idea behind it is that we honor the soldiers who have given their lives in service of their country. But what does it even mean to "honor" them? Today I marched with the Firemen's Band in the Memorial Day parade. I love those old Sousa marches, and I always get a thrill out of playing "The Stars and Stripes Forever" (even though the trombone part is out of my range and surprisingly complex). The crowds really seem to love them too. We always get big cheers wherever we play.

But you know who I don't see anywhere along the parade route? Dead soldiers.

For all the talk we have about Memorial Day being for the dead, it's really about people who are still alive. The dead don't care. Even supposing that there is some spirit realm where they're deading it up with Jesus, Budda, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I would think that the soldiers would have a lot more interesting things to do with their disembodied selves than to watch a parade down in the asscrack of the Allegheny Valley.

I don't even think Memorial Day is really for Veterans even though they always seem to be very emotionally invested in the festivities. They don't need a day to remember the military. Getting your ass shot at by hoardes of Nazis is probably something you can remember without my ass tooting "Semper Fidelis" on my horn. In fact, I think Memorial Day is ideally directed toward we cowardly folk who never had any desire to serve in the armed forces. Willingly choosing to be shot after enduring basic training at the mercy of a drill instructor whose force of will could probably shatter my spine is no small sacrifice.

I'm a cowardly sort of fellow, and I know I would have crumbled immediately under fire. I imagine myself curling into the fetal position, sobbing loudly, and giving up valuable American secrets to any inquisitive interrogator who threatened to tickle my feet. I also don't think that those aforementioned drill instructors respond well to snarky backtalk or childish giggling in the ranks. Back in days of yore, they'd round up all the peasant folk and force them into battle against whatever nearby fiefdom the king had managed to piss off that week. As a penniless peon who happens to be the size of a small moose, I know I'd be drafted under that system in no time. Thank you soldiers for ensuring that my laissez-faire lifestyle can continue uninterrupted.

I do get annoyed when remembering fallen soldiers is conflated with celebrating America. That's what the Fourth of July is for. Stay in your own damn month, America. Sometimes soldiers do die during noble American missions, but oftentimes, soldiers die because America fucks up. Should we remember the soldiers who liberated concentration camps more fondly than those who got us cheaper gas prices? Not at all. In fact, that's why I respect those in the armed forces. You've signed up to follow the orders of someone you'd never met beforehand, and you may end up dead for a completely worthless cause. People line up in droves to volunteer for military service when they believe in the cause (WWII being a prime example), but how many of us would sign up for ANYTHING we were asked to die for. Theoretically, you could die because some general sent you into battle because his cousin, who happens to command the opposing army, slept with his wife last week (I think that may have been the plot of a Shakespeare play or two).

Sometimes young men and women sign up for the military for stupid reasons. They may not care a whit about protecting anybody. They might be in it for the benefits, to escape a bad home life, or because they need a job. In which case, their deaths should weigh even more heavily on us. There are probably a great many soldiers overseas who hate being there, but even if they would have preferred not to sacrifice, they still do. Some poor guy might have signed up for the Army Reserve, confident that he'd remain stateside, but then he stepped on a landmine on his first trip abroad. Memorial Day is exactly the time to think about the complexities of military service - the pros, cons, and TV shows - that are typically ignored.

Even if a soldier dies for a lousy reason, that has value to we breathing humans. We can think back on it and realize that maybe we don't want to go to war for just any old reason. Save our soldiers for raiding chocolate and cheeses from Switzerland. In fact, I think I'm going to write a very strongly worded letter to the Pentagon asking for exactly that.

Don't just remember the dead, today. The dead are dead. Think about their history and how that affects you. And support your local tromboners who play at Memorial Day parades. We're a charming and dashing bunch!

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"Never worry about the bullet with your name on it. Instead, worry about shrapnel addressed to 'occupant.'"

Incriminating Trek Pics: Volume 1

2009-05-22T22:47:00.011-04:00

KHAN NOONIEN SINGH

LOVES A GOOD BLOWJOB!

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SCOTTY
JUST RAPED AND KILLED A MAN

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JAMES T. KIRK
SAYS HIS CAPTAIN'S LOG IS SO MUCH BIGGER

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Q
GOT CAUGHT MASTURBATING

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"I'd like to get my hands on her ample nacelles if you'll pardon the engineering parlance."

No Brains, No Talent, No Service

2009-05-12T22:21:00.004-04:00

My employers seldom fail to come up with interesting ways to exploit my meager collection of skills. Today's task was by far the most explicit reminder of my past life: I graded papers.

Now these were not just any papers. Mr. Employer is a proud member of the Rotary organization, and they award a reasonably-sized scholarship to a deserving student in the area who has demonstrated a commitment to community service. Students wishing to apply for this scholarship have to submit an essay explaining why they deserve it, and then the Rotary members are supposed to read these essays and rate which is the best. Well Mr. Employer/Delegator decided that I would be perfect for this task, so I was given roughly 24 essays on the subject of "Service Over Self."

The 17-18 year-old age group has a writing style with which I am intimately familiar, but it's been so long since I've been wrist deep in a steaming pile of essays that I'd forgotten just what terrible writers the vast majority of high school graduates are. But this wasn't simply an exercise in assessing their writing styles, so I turned my attention to the content and tried to see who could best write about the personal and social importance of community service. I'm hardly a noted humanitarian, so I felt like I was headed into difficult waters. These were seas best left to an expert navigator like Virgil, who essentially pioneered the service learning program in the English department down at Dub-V. I only got the briefest taste of that world, and I don't know how she chews on it every single day.

These kids have no concept of what community service means. As I said, I'm a terrible person with regards to helping others, but at least I know and understand the causes that I'm being completely callous towards. A surprising number of essays referred to community service as "burdensome" (in some cases that was the exact word used), and even though they quickly followed that with some variation of "but it was extremely rewarding," I couldn't help but sense that they felt forced to do the work. I may not be involved with any official organization, but I've occasionally decided to ignore my disdain for humanity and help others. While the work can be difficult, I always feel really good about it. Granted, part of that comes from my inner voices telling me what a great person I am for helping, but I like to think that some part of me enjoys seeing the impact that my work has on others.

The best parts of these essays were the moments where they tried to convey just how selfless they are. As I mentioned, the topic of the essay was "Service Over Self," so I suspect that these budding humanitarians were trying to squeeze every last drop of sincerity into explaining how they always put others over their own well-being. My favorite line has to be, "I always put myself last." I guffawed out loud at that one. Apparently someone needs to put Sally Selfless on the suicide watch list. Not only is that statement highly unlikely, but it also sounds like the person has the self-esteem of a grapefruit. Another fine young student said that helping to find a cure for cancer was one of the most rewarding experiences of his life. Of course, his contribution to the ongoing research involved selling candy bars when the proceeds went toward cancer research. I wouldn't award him the Nobel Prize just yet.

A few snowflakes really never seemed to grasp the concept of "volunteer" work. One gentleman said that while he got paid to be a lifeguard, his dedication to the job invoked the spirit of community service. I spoke to the Spirit of Community Service on my Ouija board, and he said you're a ball-bag. Yet another claimed that working at the hospital snack bar could be described as "helping the less fortunate."

I was not alone in my project. Mr. and Mrs. Employer have company this week, and they recruited two of the women to read essays as well. One of them couldn't have been more qualified - she's a professor of social work at the University of North Carolina and now works with the continuing education department. On the off chance that maybe I'd been away from students too long and was being too critical of their work (or maybe that I was just uninformed in the ways of service), I asked her what she thought of the essays. Her opinion of the essays made me look like the most understanding reader on the planet. I've never heard such sadness and despair (bordering on contempt and vitriol) for student writing. While there was clearly a winner in the pile (thus allowing us to successfully complete the task), she and I agreed that the whole process made us simultaneously fear for the future of community service and writing.

Sometimes I can't believe I want to get back into teaching, but then I read stuff like that, and I'm actually more committed to being a teacher (or more likely to be committed to an asylum), because SOMEBODY has to try to stop the pandemic spread of stupidity in high school essays. I mean, good gravy!! Some people actually have to read this shit!

Virgil, if I wore a hat, I would tip it in respect to your skills. I imagine you have to sit down with just about every one of your special little learners and say, "I'm sorry, darlin', but y'all can't consider helping grandma in the kitchen as community service."

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HIGH SCHOOLER WISDOM: "In these modern times, helping the less fortunate is very important." -- Because in the past, nobody ever needed help.

I Give It Two of Your Earth Thumbs Up

2009-05-08T00:30:00.002-04:00

Was there a Gorn fight? No, but I'll restrain myself and not hold that against the movie.

All things considered, the new Star Trek is a truly epic movie. I loved every minute of it, and I really think that you will too. This is easily the most public-friendly Star Trek movie since The Voyage Home (AKA the one with the whales). You don't have to know jack about the Star Trek universe to understand the film, though there are dozens of little tidbits thrown in for those of us who have a better understanding of the border disputes between the Federation and the Cardassians on Setlik III than any real world political situation.

I didn't think that I'd truly buy the new cast. Oh sure, I figured they'd be fine actors, but I thought that I'd constantly be comparing them to the originals. But after a few minutes, you completely believe that Chris Pine is a young Captain James T. Kirk. He even beds an green Orion girl. Despite his public reputation, Kirk never actually did hit on any Orion Slave Girls in the TV series, so new Kirk already has one up on Kirk Prime.

The new movie doesn't completely disregard the old Star Trek universe. Nero, the primary villain, is a Romulan from the future in the original universe (like the timeframe of The Next Generation movies or thereabouts). The Romulan sun goes supernova and obliterates Romulus. Nero happens to be near the black hole that was created by the star's explosion and is sent back in time. He's really jacked that the Federation did nothing to help the Romulans, and he's going to take his revenge by blowing shit up real good. Meanwhile, someone else from the original timeline (a fairly well-known someone) has traveled back in time to help defeat Nero.

The dialogue offers a lot of very clever and funny bits. Bones and Scotty are particularly hilarious, and they even manage to make fun of Chekov's inability to pronounce the letter "V" (a dilemma that Batmite will sympathize with, I'm sure).

The movie has a relentless pace, which is both a plus and a minus. On the one hand, there is never a dull moment, so if you're checking your watch at any point, then you're either in the wrong theater or suffering from some serious OCD. However, the fast pacing of the movie also keeps the emotional impact of some moments from being fully realized, and Nero's motivations are occassionally glossed over. For instance, I don't think that the inital "planet-shattering" distress call early in the movie builds the tension as well as it should; however, the payoff to this part of the movie is phenominal so I can deal. Also, if you have a problem with spinning and hand-held camera shots, you may want to bring a vomit bag. It's not that distracting, but it's noticable enough that I could imagine some people being sensitive to it. This is, after all, the same director who brought us Cloverfield.

The audience wasn't quite the cavalcade of costumed freakdom that I'd been hoping for, but they certainly didn't seem out of place at a Star Trek screening. One gentleman several rows behind me looked like a Klingon in human form - complete with a burly beard and long flowing locks. The only person in costume was one guy that I saw entering the theater just as I was leaving. He was wearing an old school Captain's uniform as his shirt with faded blue jeans. I commended this man's half-assed commitment to his ensemble. It's like he said to himself, "I'll wear the Captain's tunic complete with rank insignia and Starfleet logo, but I'll be damned if I'm going to wear the black pants and boots. I still have my dignity!"

While waiting for the movie to start, I heard the general plot summary to the next movie that I have to see. As the gentleman behind me explained to his friend on the phone, a humanoid alien played by the guy who played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ comes to Earth to join forces with Vikings to take down an alien creature from the future. Is there anything in that description that doesn't sound sweet? By Googling "aliens" "vikings" and "space," I was able to determine that the movie is called Outlander. This B-movie is definitely going on my A-shelf next to Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and Death Bed: The Bed That Eats.

But that's a movie for another post. For the time being, do yourself a huge favor and buy a ticket to the new Star Trek movie. They won't make another movie for me unless enough of you go see this one. And in this case, the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.

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"My ship, whom I love like a woman, is disabled."

Gorn Porn Not Included

2009-05-07T00:06:00.005-04:00

That's right, normies! It's a GORN BOBBLEHEAD!! It's only the most rocking gift ever, and that's not just because the Gorn's primary attack is throwing large boulders. Proving that she understands the geektastic existence that I lead, my mom bought me this bobblehead. I don't care if the website for these bobbleheads claims that they're recommended for ages 5 to 8. It fits right in with my Hot Pink Jesus and Green Lantern plushy. My mother gave me the choice between this and a talking Mr. Spock bobblehead that says three lines: "Live long and prosper," "Fascinating," and "You are, after all, essentially irrational." (The last one is a bit of an odd choice, I thought) I was tempted, but I just couldn't pass up the Gorn.

The Gorn has gained something of a cult status as being the worst foe ever faced by Captain Kirk. In fact, if you Google the words "Worst fight scene ever," this will be the first result:

The timing of the gift was exceptional. In less than 19 hours, I will be sitting in an IMAX theater enjoying the brand new Star Trek movie. I purchased my tickets last week for the earliest possible showing, which turned out to be a day before the full release. I know the kinds of people who will go to this kind of showing, and those are the moviegoers that I want to be surrounded by. I want to share the auditorium with Mr. Spock's bespectacled Asian doppleganger and the tubby balding guy who's loudly bitching that he doesn't need the subtitles to understand the Klingon dialogue. The general public will likely wait until the actual Friday release date content to fill their Thursday night with sports that aren't Romulan in origin and fantasies about women who aren't painted green. You well-adjusted folks are not welcome at my screening!

When I decide to shout at the screen because the screen on the Enterprise's bridge isn't displaying the warp factor properly, I want a room full of people who will join me in their outrage. I don't need people shushing me or pulling their offspring away from any adjacent seats. This will be my chance to get my geek on without worrying about what anyone else thinks.

And if some recreation of this scene occurs...
Then I'm immediately going outside and leaping in front of a bus because life can't possibly get better after that.

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"After a time, you may find that "having" is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as "wanting." It is not logical, but it is often true." - Spock wisdom that will hopefully not be true of this new movie.

Three Little Pigs: Houses Under Quarantine

2009-04-29T23:02:00.003-04:00

People are fucking dumb.

Either that, or their long-term memories reset every year.

For those of you who have been living in an isolated shed in the woods for the last week, the world has been inundated with reports of a swine flu pandemic around the world. It's a flu that is relatively common in pigs but rare in humans. Recently, however, humans have been getting a form of the swine flu, and people are losing their minds. Pictures are rolling in of Mexicans and Asians wearing dust masks (an image that always makes folks jumpy for some reason). Even the media usage of the word "pandemic" stirs up images of millions of mutating zombies coming to eat your brains.

This new disease, as the dangerously paranoid like to proclaim, could cause the downfall of western civilization as we know it. Why, it's just like the 1918 Flu Pandemic, it is! There have already been 153 deaths from it already. The humanity of it all!! It even comes from pigs!! The Jews were right; they're not kosher at all!! We're doomed! DOOOOMED!!!

Except that we're not.

Does no one remember the previous diseases that were apparently going to turn our organs into liquid and make our eyeballs bleed? SARS, Avian Flu, the Ebola Virus, West Nile Virus, and just plain old Smallpox have all given hypochondriacs a reason to cry themselves to sleep at night for the last several years. Though as you may have noticed, none of these dreaded pandemics ever caused any serious damage. We're still here, and we'll just have to wait for stupid people to shoot themselves in the face with nail guns in order to thin the population.

But THIS is DEFINITELY the diseases that will KILL US ALL!!!!

I'm afraid of mice, bugs, heights, and wild-eyed hillfolk, but even I'm not the least bit afraid of dying from the goddamn swine flu. If a pig is going to bring me down, it's going to be from eating too much bacon not because of some wonky flu bug.

The whole thing is an overblown mess anyway. These 153 deaths you keep hearing about are only the "suspected" deaths. That means that the doctors think that the swine flu may have been the culprit, but they don't know for sure. There are only eight confirmed swine flu deaths, and seven of those were in Mexico. The last was in the U.S. but that was a Mexican child who contracted the disease in Mexico. Let's get some perspective here. Every year approxomately 36,000 Americans die of the regular flu every year, and nobody gives a shit. I just learned that figure today, and I was floored. Sure the flu sucks, but I didn't realize that so many people actually DIED from it. Maybe in the future I won't roll around in my bed moaning, "Oh, just let me die!!" in a dramatic fashion whenever I get the flu.

It's not even technically the swine flu. It's just kinda-sorta associated somehow, but the name "swine flu" rolls off the tongue a lot more easily than "Influenza A Sub-type H1N1." And why the "swine" flu? What's wrong with the "pig flu" or "hog flu." How about the "porcine flu." Then everyone would have to crack a thesaurus before they panic.

Fun fact: you can't get the swine flu from eating pork. But people are so dumb and panicky that pork sales have nosedived due to people avoiding all pork products. I find this offensive. Take your insecurities and paranoid delusions out on loved ones and small animals... don't punish bacon!! What did it ever do to you? (You know... aside from the whole clogged arteries thing.)

What do doctors recommend for preventing the swine flu? They say you should wash your hands and avoid getting coughed on. In other words, keep doing your normal hygene routine. Unless you're an unkempt and germ-ridden dirtbag; in which case, start taking baths!

The swine flu will not kill you. Media induced panic probably will. Stop going nuts and eat a goddamn pork chop.

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"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."