Movie Reviews, kind of

I promised the next blog would be about March of the Penguins and Mad, Hot Ballroom, and I am one to keep my promises usually. I'll begin with the latter . It was a cute movie. If you haven't heard of it, it's a documentary that takes place in New York . It follows a few schools as they learn and then compete in a city-wide ballroom dancing competetion. Here's the catch, they're all 5th grade. So, we got these little people dancing in a very formal and structured way. Again, it was cute. They did a good job and the competition gets heated by the end. Of course they hated it at first, but their competitive natures took over. There were some extremely funny parts, but I can't really explain them in blog-form, nor do I want to ruin them. So we'll just leave it at that.

March of the Penguins was good as well. It was narrated by Morgan Freeman who is the shit. It follows the mating season of the emperor penguins in Antarctica . It was very well done. Too many dead penguins if you ask me, though. I love penguins and dislike dead penguins. But, it was extremely informative and still cute. With that said, a weird ass thing happened afterwards. I was waiting on the second floor (where the theatre was) for Kelly to go to the bathroom. I was just poking around reading the stand-up sign for Broken Flowers (which I still have to see) and out of the men's bathroom walks this Japanese guy down the hall. He walks a little ways and then stops and looks at me (still about 25 feet away). I look at him for a couple of seconds and then recognize him . . . it was Takeo! (guy on the left) And he was with his EXTREMELY pregnant wife. He said she was literally due any day now. For those of you who don't know, Takeo worked in Madison over the past two years. He was a doctoral student, I believe. He's also one of the world's greatest mimes (check out his website if you like, some of it is in English but not much, http://www16.ocn.ne.jp/~k-mime/ ). He is from Japan and helped run Wondrous Tales of Old Japan when we went on tour my Junior year of college. He's a great guy and I randomly ran into him. He thought I was going to Stanford but, alas, I am not. So, needless to say, he was as surprised as I was. We talked for a bit and he said he'd give David Furumoto (prof. at Madison and director/writer of Wondrous Tales) an email. So, that was my first experience of running into someone I know. It was really random. I mean, both pairs of us were at March of the Penguins at 3:30. It was strange.

Anyway, my sisters are in Boston . . . right now, I think. They haven't called me yet. They'll be here for the week. I'm sure they'll want to go site-seeing and such. Whatever.

Dave's in Virginia visiting Stef. He'll have fun down there. I feel bad cuz he was telling me about a conversation he had with John and John mentioned how Dave never got a vacation at all between undergrad and Harvard. I hope he has a relaxing time. He's also going to New York sometime. Maybe I'll see him there. Probably not, though, cuz I'm going to be going with Kelly and she leaves the 25th so we'll be going before that. I think Dave is going for a longer period of time than us, but later in the month. We'll see.

Also, my mom is driving out to Boston with my old car and my piano and guitar (or both in one convenient instrument). I'm excited to have my piano again. I didn't realized how much I wanted it out here. I think I'll take lessons at the Berklee School of Music. I mean, it's an added expense but when the hell am I going to get that opportunity again, right? She'll be out here for a couple of days and then is going to visit some friends in New Jersey . She's then going to fly home, so I'll have a car out here. I want to get to Walden Pond again. I think I wrote about it in an earlier post, but if not, I'll just say that it's the nicest, cleanest lake I've ever been to. The water is a perfect temperature, there's no gross seaweed or anything , and it's just relaxing. I like it there. I'll go back.

That's all for now.

Last day reflection

So,

It was the last day of summer school, both mine and my kids'. It was weird. We had few plans for the day, John said he'd take care of it. No one wanted to do work of course and they were complaining. I mean, it was the last day of school I wouldn't want to do anything either, but we just had them writing letters either to us or their English teachers next year. It was pretty funny, too. Devon came in and said, "I ain't doin' no work today," which was fine. But, we had the class write these letters and he wrote one sentence and then wrote, "I ain't doin' no work today." I just wanted to read the letter then and whisper in his ear, "uhh, excuse me, Devon, you just did some work."

Anyway, we had the class generate two categories for Jeopardy and John made three other categories. We had Tasha (one of the students) be the host. I think she liked it and found it was a bit difficult controlling the class. Hopefully she'll reflect on that and understand how difficult it is to lead discussions and such.

What was so weird today was that the kids actually did stuff, despite their bitching at the beginning. Jenny and Amanda, two evil girls, were as nice as they get in class. Amanda actually got up and passed out some paper for the letter writing, told people to shush, made pleasant conversation: it was spooky. Jenny was still loud-mouthed, but a little more controlled. After class, too, we had a big gathering where Mr. Myrie (principal) and Kay (director of TEP) spoke to the students/mentors/interns and then had an ice cream party, and the strangest thing happened: Jenny and Amanda came up to me, Dave, and Hannah and gave us all hugs. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? Why couldn't they have taken 1/39875th of their niceness today and brought it into class any other day? They were tough. Jenny is smart, but has an absolutely horrid attitude. Amanda can be pleasant sometimes, but she's older than Jenny and doesn't really want to do work.

Frankie had a good day too. This kid is wicked smaht. He sees right through the surface level of stories and goes after the deeper meaning like it's nobody's business. He was in Group 1 for Jeopardy and even his guesses were right. One of the questions was "How did Matzu prepare Stephans eggs in 'The Samurai's Garden'?" (a book they were supposed to read). You can just tell this kid is smart because he always participated in discussion, got that Jeopardy question right and never read the book. He's a cool kid. I would like to hang out with him. He's so little.

I just want to take a moment to give a pimp shout out to my flygirl Fer-vignewton who is the only person reading these. Keep it real.

I read the letters the kids gave, they were cute. It's amazing how much they bitch. Truthfully, we worked the shit out of these kids. They wrote SO freaking much, and we dragged them through it. I believe they are all significantly better writers, but it was still tough. And for all that moaning and whining, in the letters they said that we gave a lot of work, but they liked it, or can see how much better they got. That's interesting, I thought. Cuz as teachers we want everything to be fun and engaging. But, I have to remember that sometimes, they just need to practice and do the work. There actually is something to rote practice. So, that's the end of that.

John, near the beginning of the summer, was commenting about how he never keeps the same pen. He believes, "pens are universal. No one has their own, they belong to everyone."
= He said this numerous times so as a parting gift we got him a nice pen and a card. I wrote something like, "Thanks for all your advice this summer. Your humor and thoughtfulness was great in the morning and made the afternoon delightful (see a blog from a while ago)." It was funny, he got it. Anyway, he also gave all of us Moleskin books to write in . That was nice of him. I'll be sure to visit his class during next semester. I'm sure I'll always be in touch with him, asking him questions and bouncing ideas off of him. He was probably the best mentor in the whole program, and I was lucky to have him.

That's all for now. Kelly-girl and I are going to go see March of the Penguins . We saw Mad, Hot Ballroom yesterday. I'll write about the two in my next blog.

Peace outside.

P.S. Since the theme of this blog appears to be pics, here's one more:

Today's lesson is . . .

Hey.

So, sorry I have not blogged in a while. I've been a bit busy. Who reads this anyway? So, we're wrapping it up down at CRLS (where I teach summer school). I had a big day of teaching today. We all took one whole week to plan this summer and then John decided that we should each take a day to teach on our own. Usually we have a day willed with three or four parts to it and we divvy that up. So, my day was today. I also had a big, lame-ass paper due today too. I actually got a good portion of it done on Monday (which is very unlike me) but merely in anticipation of me having to plan a whole day of activities and execute them. So, after teaching and after our class on ELL (English Language Learners) I just stayed at Gutman Library and finished my paper at 'round 8:30. Not too bad. Got home, ate, worked on my lesson a bit. Watched Stella at 10:30. If you don't know Stella yet, check it out. It's a comedy trio consisting of David Wain, Michael Showalter, and (my favorite) Michael Ian Black (yes, the boys from Wet Hot). The comedy is a bit strange, but it still makes me happy.

Anyway, today's lesson. My focus was teaching my kids (who range from 9th to 12th grade in the same class, yup, World Lit I) how to reveal character/personalities through dialogue in writing. I started with a scene from my favorite movie Out of Sight. I used the first scene with J Lo and Dennis Farina. It's a good scene cuz it's easy to find the relationship between them and how her father cares that she's dating a married guy. The TV I had playing the movie was faced away from the kids, actually, so they could only hear it (cruel, I know). I gave them a dialogue I typed up of the scene and then led a discussion about how they could tell various things from the dialogue. It went fairly well. I played the movie a second time and then asked them even deeper questions.

Next, I gave the class a dialogue I wrote the night before. I just made it up, but it's pretty scand'lous. (Leave a comment if you want me to post it). The kids got way into it. They had a great group discussion. Well, some of the kids had an excellent group discussion. Half probably said nothing. But, I think it was bearable for them to watch, at least. Entertaining at the very worst.

Lastly, I told them to pair up and grab two characters from one pile and a conflict from the other. They then had to write a dialogue where the reader had to figure out what the people were like and what was going on without explicitly saying it. It was pretty successful. After they wrote them, they switched with another group and answered some questions (the same kind of questions I had been asking from the beginning). It was good. Some of the stories were pretty good. This one kid, Jonathan, is real quiet but way beyond the level of our class. He is going into 10th grade I believe, but dropped out of school for a year. He's been shy and has not made many friends. Today, though, he led his group (they had the only group of 3) and they had a real interesting story. It was a corrupt cop and law-abiding cop at a car accident (they picked those randomly). Neilsen, another kid in the group, said he wanted to read the story, but kept stumbling because Jonathan wrote it. At one point, Neilsen said, "none of . . . none of . . . is that a p?" to Jonathan. Jonathan took it and read it, he said something to the effect of, "hey, none of your . . . fucking business" which was what he wrote. That was fine. I told them the characters could swear if it was necessary and was what the character was like. He ended up reading the rest of it with other swears and stuff, but it was a good story and I think the other kids actually listened to it. Since he's so nice and shy, a lot of the, well, let's say, more assertive kids kind of overshadow him. He had a good moment where he stepped up and did a good job.

That's all for now. I have to take a shower, I've got a lady comin' over *wink wink*. Kelly's flying in tonight at 10. I'm stoked. It'll be fun. Plus, today was really my last day teaching for the summer. I just have one more class at Harvard and then we have a big ole party at Pizzeria Uno's. We had one about month ago and it was sweet. They bought probably 60 pizzas over the course of 3 or 4 hours, and endless soda. We have to pay for our own booze. Although, at the beginning of the year, they had a party and I actually got a little buzzed from it. They had so much food and alcohol it was actually strange.

Hey, since I talk to almost no one that I know from the Midwest, leave some comments and ask me some direct questions about what it's like out here. Plus, it'd be good to hear from you.

Lather my butt

I'm trying to think of some stuff that happened today. We ended class with an activity where they went from station to station in groups doing different magnetic poems on the boards. They seemed to dig that. One of my favorite lines was in the poem about Respect. It went something like, "tenderize his moist respectful pole." See how they slipped that in there? "respectful pole." Nice. Another one says, "lather my butt." God is that poetic.

Anywho, I went and explored a little bit today. I found a whole bunch of cool streets like state street in Madison, only a bajillion times more expensive and much nicer stores. It was cool, though. I think Kelly will like it a lot.

My ma called last night and asked me if she should drive my car out here and then fly back to Wisconsin. I'm not sure how I feel about that yet. I mean, we have a free parking space at my place and I could, theoretically, use it to drive to school. But, a car in town is unnecessary. There's nowhere I could drive. Cars are awful here. I could use it to get groceries from Costco and do my laundry. I could also use it to go to Walden Pond (which I did the other day. It was AWESOME! Easily the cleanest, nicest lake I've ever seen or been to. It was great to swim in, too.) or the mountains or like Connecticut and stuff. So, I dunno. It's a hassle, though, trust me. I suppose I'm leaning toward having it, cuz it's not like I'm paying to park it. It could sit there for a year and I guess it wouldn't be a loss. I also could drive back for longer breaks and save a couple hundred on air fare. I think I just convinced myself to have a car out here. Well, whatever.

I can't really think of anything else I did today. It was pretty hot during the day but it stormed something fierce so it's cooled off now a bit. Shit. I'm forced to talk about the weather. As you can see by the time, I didn't go out, I just hung out around the apartment. Cleaned up the kitchen.

Tomorrow there's a party at another TEPees place celebrating mine, Mark's, and Michelle's birthdays this weekend. When I went shopping earlier, I went with Dave and Mark (Mark wanted to go for his birthday or something). Mark's great. He's older, has been teaching for some time now and decided to go back to get his Master's. He's a funny dude. Super nice. I enjoy his company. The best part about him is his laugh. He makes a really cute face when he smiles. He was also one of the first people I met at TEP. We went to get lunch on the first day, I believe, and have been good friends since.

That's all for now.

El Ultimo Blog del dia

I really only have one more thing to add for da blog. Well, two. One, I made chicken sausages and baked beans for dinner and then had some Cookies and Cream. Two, class today was interesting. Not the class I attended, but the one I teach. Dave was repeatedly told he has a "nice/tight ass" by students. The class had a lovely discussion as to what Black Ice was referring to when he said, "How the fuck do you figure/ that your shit is bigger (pause to look at crotch)/ than mine" repeatedly: his dick (thank you Jenny from class). Actually, I suppose that was really all that was eventful in class today.

My last softball game was cancelled and I was pissed. We (me and Dave) play for the School of Education here at Harvard. We have the coolest t-shirts in the world: it's a picture on the left-hand breast side of the Red Sox logo and below it it says "Ed Sox." It's wicked awesome. Anyway, I played shortstop for the team and I never let a single ball past me all three games I played. I did finish batting .500, but that was with only 10 AB. Still, it was very anti-climactic when I found out the game was cancelled because I had been dragging my softball stuff around with me all day and changed real fast after class to make it to Jordan Field by the Harvard Stadium in time for the game. Plus, they didn't even email people the game was cancelled until 4:55. I thought that a bit inconsiderate. Oh, well. If there's no more games, hopefully we can start up again in the summer and get our own TEP team. Whatever.

That's really all I've got. I'm swamped with work for the next while: bullshit lesson plan with my group for a bullshit T210A class, 1 hr. lesson for a reading tip for next week, 8-10 pg. observation paper. Suckiness. I'm not overworked or anything, I just don't want to do it.

With that said, I'm sucking it up and doing it.

Slam . . . duh duh duh

Class is over for the day. It was boring again, but I was sitting next to Chris who I'm becoming chums with. He automatically gets two life points for his first comment to me today. Joanna (the teacher for today focusing on ELL (English Language Learners)) was showing the agenda for the day and the third one down was Cummins Quadrants of learning. She mentioned this and he whispered to me, "He he, she said cummin." That takes balls for someone who is not good friends with someone else. So, he wins for the day.

Anyway, I said in my last awesome blog that I'd put in some poetry from a video we watched in our World Lit I class today. It was an episode of HBO's Def Poetry Jam hosted by Mos Def (who's awesome). There was this one guy, Black Ice, who was amazing, but I don't have his text written. John (mentor) brought in a book today of some of the Def Poetry and the one I will be putting below was the first guy who won the 1998 Slam poetry something or other on the video. It's good, but it's missing a cool chunk in the middle which I didn't notice until we watched it a second time today. So, here it is:

I wanna hear a poem
Written by Steve Colman

I wanna hear a poem
I wanna learn something I didn’t know
I wanna say ’YES’ at the end
Because I’m sick of saying ‘so?’

I wanna hear a poem about who you are
and what you think
and why you slam
not a poem about my poem
because I know who I am
I wanna hear a love poem a sad poem an I hate my
dad poem
a dream poem an I’m not what I seem poem
an I need poem an I also bleed poem
an I’m alone poem an I can’t find my home poem
I wanna hear a poem about revolution
about fists raised high
and hips twisting in a rumble
like a rumba
I wanna follow the footsteps of Che
and hear the truth about the day
the CIA killed Lumumba
And because every second matters
I wanna hear long poems and short poems
about time and its limits
because it took less than three minutes
to attack Abner Louima
to frame Assata Shakur
and destroy Hiroshima
to kill Eleanor Bumpers
and Anthony Baez
to gun down Malcolm with bullets they bought
from the Feds

I wanna hear a poem
where ideas kiss similes so deeply
metaphors get jealous
where the subject matters so much
that adjectives start holding pro-noun rallies
at city hall
because I want to hear a poem

that attacks the status quo
that attracts the claps of the cats
with the phattest flows
that makes the crowd
pass the hat
and pack my cap
with a stack of dough
I want to hear a poem that makes this audience
Yell HOOOOO!!!!!
Because I want to guess your favorite color
then craft rhyme schemes out of thin air
I wanna hear a poem about why the statute of
limitations
for rape
is only five years
I wanna hear a poem
I wanna feel a poem
I wanna taste a poem
Give me your spot on the mic
if you wanna waste a poem
I wanna hear a poem.


There's a lot of good parts of this song. The flow when he starts with the "status quo" line is good. I LOVE the part talking about kissing a simile so deeply metaphors get jealous and holding pro-noun rallies. I thought that was smart. This really pales in comparison to Black Ice, though. That guy went off. He spoke with so much feeling and used words that just blew me away. His flow was so much more complex and just incredibly intelligent. I really wish I had his lyrics.

I have to cut this short, actually. Dave is bitching at me to make dinner. Seriously.

Yup.

Midday post

Hi y'all, (although no one reads this except me pretty much)

I'm in a computer lab at school and have time to post something real quick. I've been talking about this poem that one of my students wrote the first week of summer school. I thought I'd post it. He's one of the students taking the class for enrichment rather than because of failure. He's a rising 9th grader whose first language is not English, though when we give him a rule he picks it up and applies it quickly. The poem is called The Most Scariest which, I know, is not grammatically correct, but we were teaching superlatives and so this was his first go. Don't judge. In fact, I like that he called it the most scariest. It just seems better. Anyway, it reads as follows:

The Most Scariest
by Bessena Cabe

I am the spooky man. The
Most Scariest man in town.
I do not get along with
anyone. At night I went
to every child's house,
made them scream like
a baby that just came out
of their mother's belly. Make
them run like a cat that
get wet. I am the spooky
man.

At night you can't see my
body except for my two
red eyes. Look at them.
It's like a dog who's barking
behind you. Make children
dream about me in their dream
and jump. I Am the spooky
Man.


Is that not awesome or what? What a great poem! There's so much I like about it. First, I love his repetition of the line "I am the spooky man." That's awesome. My favorite line, though, is "Look at them." It's so eerie and creepy. I mean, from this poem you must think this kid has a slanted view of reality. I can't emphasize how nice, calm, polite, and intelligent he is, though. Cabe is just a joy to have in class.

Well, I have to go now. Class starts in five minutes in another building. I think I'll write another poem from this Slam poetry video we watched in class. Unfortunately the poem is missing a chunk in the middle, but there are still other parts worth sharing.

Tootles.

Day 2 of Blog-mania

Well,

I'm gonna try to stick to my guns about keeping it positive. It's tough, though. I'll start with something I learned the other day from the Mentor Panel (a select group of mentors (mine was included) spoke to the cohort as a whole, answering questions and giving useful advice and information) which was probably the most useful "class" to date. One of the mentors was talking about how the three R's have changed from reading, writing, and arithmetic to relevancy, relationships, and rigor. I thought that was very insightful. It's a catchy little twist on an old idea in the trend that this program leads toward, which is cultural relevancy and, a confusing line from our H210A class, that it's about the content (but it isn't).

Oh, I know. I can talk about my mentor for a little bit. I'm convinced he's the best of the bunch or, at the very worst, tied for the best. He's intelligent, sardonically funny, and is actually an effective teacher with strategies for teaching and reasons behind them. I'll give you an example of how much you should appreciate this fellow. His name is John. We were discussing Bring It On
before class one day. Both John and Dave were mentioning how much they loved that movie. I was flabbergasted to say the least. They kept saying it was such a good movie. I wanted them to articulate their feelings a bit more. They taught me about this word "kitsch." The dictionary definition is different from the one they gave me, but they said it was a piece of art (usually cinema) that elicits nothing but good feelings. What I mean to say is, there is no deeper meaning to the work. It's just about happiness and good things. Lollipops and daydreams. Rainbows and cotton candy. You got it. Now, I still was unable to understand fully. That answer wasn't good enough for me. I mean, the way they were talking about BIO, you would've thought it was the greatest movie on the planet. They may have even argued that. So, John proposed an analogy. I was willing to hear it because I thought there was no way I could relate to his feelings . . . and then he said, "Bring It On is the cinematic equivalent of Starland Band's Afternoon Delight. Do you know that song?" I admitted right there and then how that was the absolutely most perfect analogy anyone in the world could have ever come up with. Seriously. I mean, put one million people in a room for a million years and they would be hard pressed to find a better example of "kitsch" for me.

It does not end there, though. We mention the song occasionally in the mornings because it's so bad and so good at the same time and it's a good inside joke. Well, here's another piece of the story. John was telling us how to get through terribly boring, and mandatory, school meetings after class: he plays BINGO. He makes up a couple of BINGO sheets with words they have to listen for in the discussion. Then when one of them gets BINGO, they have to somehow subtly say BINGO in a comment they make so the other people will know he won. Example: Raises his hand, "So, you're saying that we're just supposed to introduce the topic and, BINGO, the kid's supposed to get it?" Something like that. Genius. Anyway, he also suggested just having a word of the day and trying to work that into a comment for the group at these meetings as well. So, John mentioned briefly, and I thought jokingly, about working Afternoon Delight into the panel discussion. Well, I forgot all about this, and his second to last comment to the group was answering a question about what teachers do with state mandates. Do they follow them? Try to bend them? John answered thusly, "Well, I can remember a situation I encountered when I was teaching in D.C. We had a state mandate that children were required to read in their English class for ten minutes. Well, the English class I was teaching met right after lunch, and I made them do the reading right at the start of class. We called it the Afternoon Delight. So, yeah, you work it in when you can. I mean, you're legally obligated to do so, but you make it your own." See what I mean? Genius. I couldn't believe he did it. He might have made up that whole story just to fit that in there. I had forgotten he was going to try, but no one had any clue besides us four who have him as a mentor. I was impressed.

So, that's John. He gives good feedback and things to watch for in our teaching.

This is leaning toward bitching, but it's more of a thought I've been having lately. I wish I wasn't so busy. It seems like such an excuse for not keeping up with personal friendships. Most of all it's unfair to Kelly. I talked with her on the phone last night, but I was so worried about a lesson I had to do today that my mind was other places (the lesson plan fiasco is a whole 'nother story, that if I were to get into would break my cardinal blogging rule of not bitching. Man, was I pissed, though). She is so understanding and is clearly not trying to upset me because I'm 1200 miles away and cannot do much about it. But, she did say she was doing great which is a double-edged sword. I'm glad she's not sitting in a closet weeping while staring at a picture of yours truly. But, a part of me feels better when I know she misses me as much as I miss her. Unfortunately, our last few conversations have mainly been a one-way street, me not divulging very much information. So, it very well could be a response to the lack of feeling I have perhaps conveyed to her.

That reminds me of a lot of people's reactions when I told them I was moving. They asked, "So, are you going to stay with Kelly?" I immediately replied, "Of course." I do truly feel a woman like her does not come around often, sometimes not even once. And then, naturally, the follow-up comment comes, "Cool. Well, long-distance is hard." No, shit. Thanks for the pearls of wisdom. Yeah, it's hard. I'm sitting on my bed in my room, alone, listening to Afternoon Delight, with pictures to keep me company. That doesn't mean I can't do it. I'm going to make it work. It's a temporary thing. It's not like I work in Boston, and she's moving away and we will visit once every three months for the next five years or something. I mean, it's a year-long program. I can do that. I lived, or half-lived, my life for 19 years before I met Kelly. I believe her when she says she loves me and that we will get through this. I'm not an emotional wreck or anything. I just feel she makes me a better person. I do miss her being here. Talking on the phone is not enough. If you can't tell, it's quite difficult articulating this feeling. I mean, I wish I could send her flowers every day, or write her extended letters. She is in my thoughts constantly during the day. But, when I'm done with my work, I almost always just pass-out. Also, it ain't cheap living out here so I can't buy her stuff all the time. I don't even buy myself stuff. These are not excuses though. I think that's why I started writing about it here in my whine-o-blog. I understood what I was not providing for her last night and this morning. My schoolwork was brought home with me (again, for extenuating circumstances that still irk me) and I could not focus on the important people in my life. That's something I will work on.

I can tell you one thing, though, the worst part of my day is hanging up the phone. It's so significant. It's not like the conversation is over and then you think of something else to say and can just tap them on the shoulder and say it. You've already done the goodbyes and physically closed the flip-phone on them (or in this case, her). She is coming out here for two weeks, though, and that's going to be great. She's worried about getting used to each other again, but I don't even remember who that guy is yet. I can't wait for her to see me because when I'm not the "Adam she remembers" all the time, I feel like I'm letting her down. Well, I won't have school, work, or anything, so it will be devoted to finding the beans together. Actually, she'll be here for two days I have school and I have to finish a bullshit paper, but that's it. I'm really excited. I don't get excited often.

That's all for now.

I have reached a new point in my life I am not proud of

Well,

I have caved. I have succumbed (succame?). I find these blogs to be pathetic, yet addictive. Why are they so interesting? They are not nearly poetic, nor spouting eternal Truths. I guess it's just a step beyond Reality TV; now we can bitch and moan without being censored yet still deal with personal difficulty, anguish, and strife. I mean, LOOK AT THAT!!! WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT???

I think my point is made.

So, here I am beginning what, undoubtedly, will take up too much of my time (of which I have not nearly enough), and will not supply any answers to my problems whatsoever. I mean, by the time I post something that's bothering me and get the response, I will have most likely already dealt with it. Unless, I post a life changing event that will stay with me a long time, in which case a little comment made by someone else will probably not effect my decision anyway. So, there you have it.

Let's move beyond this, shall we?

I will try to focus this blog (by the way, I figured out that "blog" is referring to a "web-log," and, since the "wuh" sound just takes too much time it is circumsized to "blog") on positive things if I can. I'm sure occasionally I will have to vent something, but the internet is full of so much negativity (aside from the endless streams of effulgent porn) that I will make my stand here in my circumsized weblog.

Today was a rough one in my teaching team, but as I said, I'm not going to get into that. Instead, I'll focus on this HBO Def Poetry Slam dealy we watched in our preparation time. It was pretty good. I actually stole the rhyme of pathetic and aesthetic from that. It was a great rhyme. I noticed (not just from this viewing, but over the course of the last couple of years) that when I feel something is significant, or strikes a certain chord within me, I get chills. That seems so cliche, but, quite literally, I get goose-bumps and a chill up my spine when someone (typically through some sort of active medium (i.e. play, movie, poetry recitation)) says something with great weight, feeling, or meaning. It's a good feeling. It lets me know that I actually can care about things. I get bogged (that's bogged, not blogged) down so much by analyzing books, studying poetry and philosophy (well, sometimes) that I question everything, even my own existence. This makes me feel so alone that I want to shut off sometimes. But, it's through moments like I described, and thoughts of Kelly that I know I can feel. It's almost worth the depression (I'll call it that for lack of a better word, though I assure you I am not depressed) to get those moments of life. It's a good feeling. It's a good feeling.

I think that is enough for the first 'blog. Later, I hope to post a poem that a student in my World Lit I class (the class I co-teach) wrote the first week. It's so good. I think it's called I Am the Spooky Man. If it's not called that, that's the chorus at least. Man, it's so vivid and creepy. He's just the nicest kid in the world, though. He's a rising 9th grader yet is much more advanced than some of the 12th graders. He clearly does not need to take our class but is doing so to strengthen his English (he's a second language learner). Okay. I'll leave you with that. And please, let me know who "you" is. I'm curious as to who actually reads this. That's all from Beantown. Oh. Yeah. Beantown. I have not seen, nor heard any reference to any bean at any time in this city. I gotta look into that.