All Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing

Don't hate me because I'm pretty.

I was perusing the Rate My Professor website the other day, and, because it's a must, I checked the entries for my own name. In the past, I'd only had one comment that said, "Great teacher. I loved him," which was probably one of the many smitten young ladies that had such unrequited adoration for me over the last few semesters.

But just a few days ago, I new comment was posted:

"Mr. P rambles on a lot about nothing, but at least he is not foreign and speaks the language he teaches. He is also better looking than the rest of the TA's seem to be in the department."

I'm not sure how to take such a backhanded compliment. I suppose it's all true. I prattle on in class about whatever amuses or interests me at any given second. Sometimes I'll simply take a few minutes to muse about something that interests only me... at least none of my students seem to be concerned with who the final Cylon on Battlestar Galactica is.

I love that simply being able to speak the language is such a plus too. I'm sure a lot of my students have TAs from all around the world teaching calculus and physics, but it just seems like such an odd thing to note.

And of course, my ego swells to dangerous levels knowing that this young lady thinks I'm more attractive than the rest of the English department. I don't know if that's a compliment for me or an insult to the department. Although, there's no guarantee that this submission is from a woman. I could be looking at another Apartment Guy all over again. "Hey there Mr. P! My participle is never dangling when you're around."

Oh god!

I guess I'm nothing but an air-headed piece of man-meat. I can live with being a mimbo.

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50% of all freshman English students are picturing JP naked at any given time. Unfortunately, the other 50% are women.

I Fought the Law and Actually Won!

Once again, the local law enforcement put the renegade JP firmly in their sights. I don't know what it is about me that attracts the Fuzz, but for once, I actually managed to come out unscathed.

Last night, the Worthington American Legion [an even dinkier town near Kittanning] held a virtual horse race to raise money for the local baseball team. Some guy has a whole collection of taped horse races. People can buy horses or simply bet on them in each race. Each horse is assigned a number, and then people bet on the horses before the tape is played. The tapes are completely random, so no one can know the outcome of the race.

It is indeed as stupid as it sounds, but it's actually a lot of fun. The biggest selling point is that it's five bucks to get in, but there's all the food you can eat and all the beer you can drink. It's a regular Kittanning paradise!

I didn't win anything at the races, but I did have quite a bit of beer. Given my height and girth, I can have quite a bit of booze before I get drunk. When I left the place around 11pm, I felt fine even though I'd probably had seven or eight beers.

But then on my way home, I see a sobriety checkpoint. Again, I don't think I'm drunk, but I've been wrong before. I pull up to the checkpoint and talk to the officer:
ME: "Evening officer!"
OFFICER: "We're conducting a sobriety checkpoint. Have you had anything to drink tonight?"
ME: "Yeah, a couple of drinks."
OFFICER: "How many is a couple?"
ME: "Maybe three or four over the last few hours." (LIE!)
OFFICER: "Where are you coming from?"
ME: "Um... well... it's this virtual... horse race thing where you bet on the horses... on the videos..."

It's damn near impossible to explain the virtual horse races without sounding like a lunatic. In retrospect, I should have expected...

OFFICER: "Would you mind stepping out of the vehicle sir."

Off we go to the side of the road. As we're walking, I'm going over the various sobriety checks in my head. I can do the backwards alphabet thing. I can even touch my nose. Hell, he could make me recite the Preamble to the Constitution, and I probably would have aced the test. But nooo!

OFFICER: "I'm going to have you walk an imaginary straight line walking heel-to-toe for nine steps."

I started to get nervous. I can't walk on a balance beam in the middle of the day. Sure enough, I couldn't keep my balance because my thunder-thighs kept getting in the way. But then came test two:

OFFICER: "I want you to lift your foot straight out in front of you for seven seconds. You count until I tell you to stop."

Now, I think I did this one pretty well. I had my foot in the air for seven seconds, but he didn't tell me to stop. I kept going until fourteen seconds, at which point I stumbled. He shook his head as if to say, "Tsk tsk, you rummy!" I was beginning to suspect a conspiracy. He finally calls to his buddy:

OFFICER: "Hey Larry! Go get the breathalyser for this one!"

He then turns to me.

OFFICER: "You did so-so on the test, so we're going to have to take a breathalyser."

So they give me the elaborate instructions, but I've done the breathalyser before. Down in Morgantown, they don't waste time. They just have you sit in your car and take the breathalyser from the get-go. It's quite a time saver. I apparently fucked up the operations of the breathalyser too. His buddy yells, "YOU AIN'T BLOWIN' HARD ENOUGH!" I haven't had that sort of chastisement since I was selling nickel blowjobs down on the Rail Trail.

The officer was looking at the breathalyser with what could only be described as delighted anticipation. This asshole was just salivating over the idea of sending me to jail. He seemed crestfallen and amazed when he said, "You passed!!... How many did you say you had?"

Feeling a certain smug superiority now, I reiterated, "I told you... three or four. I'm a big guy. I can drink quite a bit." He had to let me go. But before I left, he asked, "Where you headed to?" I said, "Back home." Which was a lie. I was planning to head down to a bar downtown. I almost told him that (to be an even bigger smartass), but I thought better of it.

While the whole ordeal was kind of embarrassing (a lot of cars got to witness my fun test), I got a big kick out of actually beating the officers at their own game. It was nice to actually be innocent for a change. There have been a few times when I've driven my car when maybe it wasn't quite the best idea, but it's never been for a long distance. I think I'll have to be more careful in the future, since it's clear that the law enjoys fucking with me at sobriety checkpoints as well as speed traps. I did have the foresight to not have anything else to drink at the bar. I made it an early night. Proving one's own incompetence while soberly performing a sobriety test is a definite buzz kill.

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POLICE: 6 JP: 1

Business as Jewsual

Wading through the job descriptions over at Monster.com can be a really tedious process. All of them pontificate about the virtues of the company while making me feel completely unqualified. One description, however, had an entirely different flavor:

"Blattner Brunner is looking for writers with the kind of work that elicits envy, fear or a mixture of both from fellow creatives. Ideas will not be stolen. They will be met with large amounts of glee, audible hoots of approbation and comments such as, "You gotta see this!" as we schlep them around the department. Chances are, this will be followed by a mercifully un-businesslike phone call."

With the use of the word "schlep," I can't help but picture a raucous group of drunken rabbis giggling about their latest drawing of a yarmulke-adorned Jewish pirate shouting "Ahoy vey!" as they spin dreidels and laugh about their gentile employees.

The company is actually a legitimate advertising agency, but their little blurb amused me... and served as an inspiration for endless Jewish stereotypes! I was also really proud of my title. That alone was reason enough to post even though I just posted less than six hours ago.

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Blattner Brunner: Kvetching about Hershel forgetting the Kegerator since Jehovah only knows when.

Nothing to Sneeze At

There are a few bodily inconveniences that I was spared while growing up. I never had to wear braces. I never had asthma. I only broke a bone once (and even then only a hairline fracture). And most importantly, I never had allergies...

until now.

In the last few months, whenever I would come home, something would cause me sneeze all damn day. My immediate suspicions fell on one particular source:

Lord knows that freeloading feline has been enough of a pain in my ass; I figured it was just one more thing to add to my list of grievances against Miss Cleo. Unfortunately, my parents weren't convinced, and I didn't really have any proof. In fact, my mom has had cats in our house since I was born. There's never been a time where our house has been cat-less. So I continued to personally suspect Miss Cleo without really having any definitive proof.

I still don't have any concrete evidence, but I think my case is getting stronger. While I was fine on Friday and Saturday, my sneezing returned with reckless abandon on Sunday. My parents and I continued to speculate on the source of my troubles - me still pointing the finger at my calico Caligula with them arguing that I was just trying to keep from having to take her back... and they may have had a point.

Then when I woke up this morning (at the crack of dawn.... Pacific Time), I noticed that Cleo had accumulated quite the collection in her litter box (her usual walrus-like shits I might add), so I decided to clean it out. Her litter box sits at the top of our basement steps, so I started to sweep down some of the excess kitty litter that had spilled down the stairs. As I did so, cat fur that had accumulated on the stairs as well wafted up around me. I started sneezing and couldn't stop.

Fucking cat was trying to kill me without even knowing it.

My sneezing fit lasted a few minutes, and for the next half hour I felt like I couldn't take a full breath. I took an allergy pill, and I haven't had a problem for the rest of the day. Fortunately, my parents were witness to this whole event. They're still not convinced that I'm allergic to the cat specifically, but they agree that the cat seems to be involved somehow (as though she's an accomplice or something). I've heard that people can be allergic to cat litter and that they make a hypoallergenic cat litter (which I'm sure is so reasonably priced). I still have my bets placed firmly on that cat. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not a true cat allergy; I'll bet I'm allergic just to Miss Cleo. That would just seem right to me.

Adults can certainly develop allergies as they get older, and I hear cats can survive being drowned in a burlap sack. Maybe we should test both theories.

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Miss Cleo: Formerly known as "Satan's Cat."

Give Me a Break

It's like looking into my own future...

My final spring break started yesterday.

Unlike the fall semester, where Thanksgiving Break didn't come until everyone was about ready to commit suicide, this break was perfectly timed. I was just starting to get a bit frayed around the edges. I won't pretend that my job is particularly difficult - everyone's job has its ups and downs - but when you're counting down the days to graduation, a week-long respite can be very welcome.

Spring Break isn't what it used to be. All of my friends have real jobs now, and I don't really have the funds to go anywhere, so I'll be loitering around my parents' house for the week. I have a belated St. Patrick's Day party to go to tonight, but that's about it; therefore, I've decided to take this opportunity to apply for some jobs. Over Christmas Break, I got my resume in order, but I didn't actually apply for anything. I set up a thing with the Pittsburgh version of Monster.com where it would send me an email anytime it found a result for the search criteria of "writer." This let me see what was out there. At first, I was a bit disappointed. Monster kept sending me results for Software Analysts, Secretaries, and something called a Crystal Reports Writer. Most of these jobs were either way out of my area of expertise/interest, or they required years of experience. The low point came when Monster sent me a listing for "Parking Lot Attendant." I think my neighbors heard my wails of despair.

But I finally found a few leads. Quite a few engineering companies in Pittsburgh are in need of technical writers. Turns out those crafty engineers often don't have the time or talent to write reports and memos and such. Engineers also pay well. These same people who are doing the hiring think "Master's Degree in English" sounds a lot more impressive than it actually is.

Technical Writers can make upwards of $40,000 to $50,000 annual starting salary. This pleases me immensely. Going to class week after week to learn about sodomy and the intricacies of meta-biography can really make one feel that he or she is not learning any marketable skills. This information was just the kind of pick-me-up that I needed.

I've received a lot of unsolicited advice from friends and family who tell me that the job market is so much more unpleasant than the academic world. That may well be true, but I'm just schooled-out. I wasn't always the apathetic ragamuffin who doesn't do 70% of his homework that you see before you today. I used to be a really great student. Every year has been spent preparing for a future that hasn't arrived yet. There's only so long that I can spend preparing for the future before I actually want to go out and do something to make it happen.

Such will be the plan for this break. I'll get my students' papers graded at some point, but my only motivation for completing my own classes is the following declaration, which I must repeat to myself on a regular basis: "You only have seven weeks left! Don't fuck it up now!" I'm doing my final seminar paper on suggestive language regarding sex during the British Romantic Period. This is one of the extracts that I'm working with:
"I saw, with wonder and surprise, what? Not the play-thing of a boy, not the weapon of a man, but a maypole of so enormous a standard, that had proportions been observed, it must have belonged to a young giant! I could not, without pleasure, even venture to feel such a length, such a breadth of animated ivory whose exquisite whiteness was not a little set off by a sprout of black curling hair round the root. In short, it stood an object of terror and delight."
The fair young strumpet knows how to appreciate a fine-sized maypole! Essentially, I'm studying old-time porn, and no one cares. If that's what I'll end my graduate school career with, then so much the better.

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Nine out of ten readers can't believe that JP is not in hell (or at least a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison) yet.

From Hell's Heart I Stab at Thee

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAANNN!!!!

One of the places in Morgantown that I really like is the Warner Theater - a small old theater downtown that plays independent movies at about half the price of normal theaters. Two weeks ago I saw Old Country for Old Men there (liked it a lot!) and last week I saw There Will Be Blood (also really good - Daniel Day Lewis owns your ass from the 19th century). Yesterday's movie experience was a little different. For some reason, the Warner Theater got the rights to play the first three Star Trek movies, and last night they were showing my favorite - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

I managed to coerce a few friends into going with me. I think most of them were more eager to see my fanboy reaction to the film than the actual film itself. I didn't care. Kirk was about to put the kaybash on Khan and look good while doing it.

While Star Trek V is enjoyable on a camp level (Kirk finds God, Kirk fights God, Kirk kills God), I legitimately love Star Trek II. It's a sequel to an episode of the original series (an episode that, surprisingly, I have never seen). In that episode, the Enterprise happens across a ship from the 20th century filled with humans in stasis. They wake them up (why not!?) and find out that these people are genetically-engineered supermen who started a huge global war with Earth in that crazy year 1996. Their leader, Khan, seduces a comely young lieutenant and tries to take over the ship. Kirk, highly annoyed at Khan trying to take his ship and comely lieutenants, exiles Khan and his cronies to Ceti Alpha V (nearby planet).

Fifteen years later, a hapless starship mistakes Ceti Alpha V for Ceti Alpha VI (the equivalent of taking a wrong turn at Albuquerque I guess) and finds Khan there. Khan is rather pissed. Six months after Kirk dropped them on the planet, the neighboring Ceti Alpha VI exploded, sending Ceti Alpha V into a wider orbit and destroying just about everything on the planet (sans Khan and company).

Khan has had nothing to do for fifteen years except play checkers, read Moby Dick, and curse the name of James T. Kirk while sitting on the can every morning. Khan uses some indigenous mind-controlling earwigs to brainwash the hapless starship captain and his first officer (the equally hapless Chekov). He takes over the ship and flies off to kill Kirk.

The movie rocks hardcore. There are larger implications regarding life and death (including a Doomsday Device that can create life on a dead planet or wipe out all life on a living one), but you can't beat Ricardo Montalban musing about his superior intellect being more than a match for Admiral Kirk. (Khan seems to take it as a personal kick to his genetically-engineered balls that Kirk was actually promoted since stranding him).

Kirk and Khan get to see who can chew the most scenery as they square off. This is one of the most over-the-top scenes, and it's probably the most well-known.

I love that the black captain would rather kill himself than shoot Kirk - despite the fact that he had no problem vaporizing some poor underling about ten seconds before this clip starts. Then you have the ear slug screaming after being vaporized, Kirk shouting so loud that it reverberates through the planet and out into space, and finally the clip ends with what looks like Ricardo Montalban having an orgasm.

I challenge anyone to find a better scene in cinema!

I make fun of the movie, but it's only out of undying adoration. It's legitimately good. It even ends with a half-charred Khan staring at the Enterprise and quoting Moby Dick. As the movie ended, the monthly showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show was about to begin, so the Star Trek geeks exiting the theater and the RHPS fanboys trying to get in were both trying to pretend that the other was more ridiculous.

Of course, I didn't dress in drag to come to the movie.... this time.

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Khan: Beating out the Shakespeare-quoting eye-patch-wearing bald Klingon from Star Trek VI for "best Star Trek villain" by a small margin since 1982.

NO PED XING

Fun Morgantown Event #47: I almost got run over by a car this afternoon.

While there are plenty of crosswalks in town, they're more like suggestions that have been painted on the pavement more than actual legal markers. It's an accepted rule in this town that waltzing across the street at any given time on any given road is an appropriate method for traveling to and fro. This is especially true on University Ave., which is the road that runs right through the busiest part of campus.

Geographical Note: The new English building is on one side of University Ave., and I teach on the other side of it next to the library. Dozens of students are crossing the street at this point whenever it's time for class change.

This brings me to today. After I finished a rousing two hours of peer review, I attempt to cross the street to the English building. I see the white SUV coming toward me, but accepted WVU practice indicates that said SUV will slow down. Apparently, I didn't get the memo that vehicular manslaughter was null and void if the target could be mistaken for a wayward yeti.

As I'm crossing the street, not only does the car not slow down, but the irate driver, annoyed at this classy English-type ragamuffin who dare cross him, blares his horn at me. HOOOONK HOOOOOONK!! I have to book it across the street before Christine's man-child bowls me over.

I have to admit, I get a bit frustrated with seemingly-suicidal pedestrians wandering into traffic with the expectation that all drivers will stop for them. Driving my car, I know that I've felt the urge to run over my share of students. I consider it a point of pride that I haven't killed anyone yet. Think of the lives I've saved by not committing vehicular homicide on a daily basis!

What I don't understand is why a driver would want to run me over. I wouldn't be a clean kill. I'm 6'5" and above 280 lbs. (I'll be vague regarding just how far over 280 that figure is). I think I'd cause serious damage to an automobile that dared to literally let me get up in its grill. That horn-happy driver would have been better off running down a rabid moose than having to scrape JP blubber out of his engine for the next six months.

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Beware the Ides of March!

Mein Fuhrer is but a Dream

I had a weird dream a few nights ago.

I'm not sure why, but the theme of my dream was that everyone could have a good time. My dreamscape consisted of this joyful little world where everyone was singing and dancing without a care! And then right in the middle of the whole thing was Adolf Hitler playing an accordion and wearing lederhosen.

But the strange thing for me was that Hitler was clearly not having a good time. He was, in fact, quite the sourpuss.

I found the dream odd. I told Batmite of my dream. Batmite has added "dreams of Hitler" to his list of reasons to fear me. He also thinks it's disturbing that the only part of the dream I found odd was that Hitler wasn't happy.

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You can bring a Hitler to the party, but you can't make him smile.

The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything

Life Lesson #1: Learn to operate one of these

This started off as a rant in real life, but I realized that it would make a good rant for my blog too. My real and virtual selves have collapsed in on each other.

I'm so sick of being required to teach life to my students. The class I teach is supposedly titled "Composition and Rhetoric." That means that I should be teaching these kids how to write... and I do so. But that's not all that's expected of me. I can't just let them write whatever they want. No, no, no. The department has guidelines for what these students have to write about.

The first paper is called "The Literacy Narrative." Basically, the student has to reflect on some event in his or her past that affects his or her knowledge in some area. What's worse is that I'm expected to grade students based on how well they've reflected upon this event. As Batmite has repeatedly stated, the Literacy Narrative is the most masturbatory essay ever conceived. Most students end up extolling the virtues of completely trivial events, and I can't say I blame them. I'm the one who's forcing them to write on this ridiculous topic. They can even make up an event if they're so inclined. What time machine am I supposed to use to check up on them?

The paper I'm currently grading (and what set off this line of thinking) is called "The Genre Analysis." The other TAs teach this paper in many different ways; personally, I have my students pick some ads and analyze them. The problem here is that my students don't know how to analyze the specific things that they pick. Even after two weeks of discussing how ads work, I'm still getting brilliance like, "The color of the can or bottle is extremely important because an ad should pull the reader's eye in and flow nicely." I'd say 90% of them can't get beyond that initial, "This is there because it works" mentality. They don't give any thought to why these advertising techniques work. But with only one paper devoted to genre analysis, what can I really expect of them?

My students HATED this paper too. I get grumblings from a few of my moppets with all of the papers, but the Genre Analysis is universally reviled. My best students get really stressed because they don't know what to do, and my lazy students just give up entirely.

And who really gives a shit if they can analyze ads or not? Why is this my problem? Christ, I wasn't told how to do this. The English department wants me to just let them analyze any genre they want. I've done that in the past, but no one knows what to do. People chose to analyze music, ads, product packaging, poems, stories, TV shows, and other such things, but no one really knew what to do with these genres. In two weeks, I can't talk about each genre, so I just picked one. I had my own readings, and I taught the analysis of advertising in the best way I knew how, but the idea totally flopped.

I know how to teach writing. I can help students with introductions, conclusions, transitions, organization, grammatical problems, developing their ideas, etc. But I've never been trained to explore a student's learning moments, deconstruct the meaning behind every genre imaginable, or how to conduct an effective interview.

Yes, that's the next paper... The Interview. Everyone has to deal with this. Here's a newsflash: a Bachelor's degree in English does not qualify me as an expert on conducting interviews. The little two week training session that I had a year and a half ago didn't cover it either. I got to fly by the seat of my pants when telling my students how to conduct one. The only interviews that I've ever conducted were in my sophomore year in college when I briefly worked for the school's newspaper... and I didn't do a very good job if the handouts that I give my students are any indication.

In addition to these goofy papers, I'm expected to have deep discussions of the reading material from the textbook. The trick is that the readings in the book are all examples of the different papers that they're supposed to write... only a lot more artsy. For instance, they have two sample interviews in there, but no freshman English student could be expected to write in the same manner. Either way, the subjects of the essays are not related to the class AT ALL. For the interview paper, the first essay is an interview with a woman who's an alcoholic. The second one is an interview with one of the guys who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. These are interesting topics, but they have NOTHING to do with the paper at hand. My students catch on pretty quick that there's no practical relationship between a discussion about alcoholism and the paper that's due in two weeks (beyond the "this is also an interview paper" angle).

In our training session, we were told that part of our job was to expand our students' thinking. I have no problem with critical thinking, but give me something that I can work with. I'm tired of coming into class all the time feeling like their fucking life coach. I'm sick of giving bad grades to students because their analyses of advertisements are shallow because then I feel like I'm grading them as a PERSON instead of grading their work. "Sorry Timmy, but you get a C- in life."

I have no problem with freshmen learning all of these things, but I'm an untrained college student dividing my time between teaching, my own work (in theory), and lamenting a complete lack of direction in my life. I'm grateful that I get to go to WVU for free and get a stipend because I teach, but I am NOT qualified to teach the course in the way that they want me to. I do the best that I can, but the bullshit from the department always makes me feel like my best isn't good enough.

I'm not sure what brought this rant on now. Grading papers always puts me in a foul mood, I guess.

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Parents of WVU Students: Do you have any idea what kind of instructors that your tuition dollars are paying for?