This is what I've been spending my free time on, recomposing images into totally awesome crap.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Recent photoshop disaster
This is what I've been spending my free time on, recomposing images into totally awesome crap.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Conjecture for you
Fred Meyer is really pushing the Snuggie.
It cracks me up. Whose idea was this ridiculous invention? My theory is that the son-in-law of some bigwhig FM exec. thought up the snuggie.
Also, in an unrelated aside:
Did Cody T. get a girlfriend? Or is he just not calling me back because he hates me?
It cracks me up. Whose idea was this ridiculous invention? My theory is that the son-in-law of some bigwhig FM exec. thought up the snuggie.
Also, in an unrelated aside:
Did Cody T. get a girlfriend? Or is he just not calling me back because he hates me?
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Is this for real?
Is this our cure all to the "swine flu epidemic?"
FEAR=MONEY.
I can't help but think of the old Cold War Duck and Cover video, and the false hopes it was giving children, and I bet those children grew up and bought this Flu Prevention Kit.
FEAR=MONEY.
I can't help but think of the old Cold War Duck and Cover video, and the false hopes it was giving children, and I bet those children grew up and bought this Flu Prevention Kit.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Saturday, October 3, 2009
This is the real deal.
The following are actual comments overhead in a high school childcare class made by students discussing the new movie, 2012.
"What would it be like if the world ended? That would be so scary."
Q: "What would you do if the world was ending?"
A: (Without a pause.) "I'd kill someone."
"How do you spell heaven?" (This question was asked because the student was using her phone to search on the line and find out where heaven is.)
Sometimes my job can be so entertaining.
"What would it be like if the world ended? That would be so scary."
Q: "What would you do if the world was ending?"
A: (Without a pause.) "I'd kill someone."
"How do you spell heaven?" (This question was asked because the student was using her phone to search on the line and find out where heaven is.)
Sometimes my job can be so entertaining.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Story, Character, and Prose
I am not a professional English or Literature teacher. I am licensed as an elementary school teacher for kindergarten through grade 8. Currently I am not even doing that; I substitute. This means that everyday finds me in a different teaching situation. Yesterday I "taught" AP English.
I use the quotations because one would be hard pressed to demonstrate how what I did yesterday constituted teaching. I administered a vocab quiz and explained the day's assignments. Then I sat at the teacher's desk while the students got to work. Since it was an AP class, no one really even needed any one on one help. This meant that I got to spend large parts of the day just observing and thinking about what I was observing. (Of course, anyone worth their salt as a teacher should be doing as much thinking about teaching as they can.)
I spent a lot of time thinking about the assignment. The students were to use two stories, "A Worn Path" and "Where Does Voice Come From?" Both of these are by Eudora Welty, I believe. I could be wrong about that. They were to analyze how the point of view in these stories affected theme and characterization.
This assignment spurred a lot of thought of my own about how literature is taught, how it was taught to me, and how I believe it should be taught. As I said before, I am not an English or Literature teacher. I did not major in either of these two things in college. I am, however, a reader. I read voraciously. I love books more than almost anything in the world. (Not more than you, Abby.) One of the reasons I did not major in Literature was because of how I feel about what teachers of Literature do to literature. To put it bluntly, I believe that these people kill stories, and they kill stories for incredibly trite reasons.
For instance, let's say that your teacher wants you to know a thing or two about symbolism. They might choose to have you read Lord of the Flies. Then they might have you spend hours and hours of class time dissecting practically every line in order to find the symbols buried within. (I say might, but really this is almost a given.) By the time you are done, you know how to find a symbol like nobody's business (One of their favorites is the Christ figure.) but you are almost certain to dislike the book. Which is a tragedy, because Lord of the Flies is an amazing book. (This is why I recommend that students always read a book independently before they read it in a class. They will be allowed to simply enjoy the book for their own reasons; later, when the teacher tries to destroy it for them he will be unable to because the student will have already developed a love for it.)
The Scarlet Letter is the perfect example of a book that was ruined for most of my high school cohorts. I was fortunate enough not to have to read it for a class and I love it.
All of this brings me to the title of my note, "Story, Character, and Prose". These are the three elements of writing that I believe to be most important. An understanding of them can enhance enjoyment of a book or short story. Moreover, one can understand these elements without dissecting the book to the point that generates hatred of it. If one can write a compelling story filled with compelling characters, one will have done something quite wonderful. Many people are capable of this, though, which is why the third element is, I believe, more important. Case in point: The Twilight Series has a somewhat compelling story and characters, but the prose in it is dreck, which makes it difficult to enjoy. Prose can be bad, it can be competent, and it can be beautiful. Of course, there are levels in between.
Many classics are written with only competent prose. War and Peace is an example of this. It is, therefore, absolutely possible to write an amazing and timeless book without any exceptional talent for prose. A River Runs Through It is a book that is written with beautiful prose. This elevates the book to a level that is seldom attained by a writer.
The thing is, though, that too much time spent analyzing any of these things is akin to seeing a beautiful sunset and talking too much about how the light refracts, or the particles in the air, or anything of this nature. Discussions of this type have their place, mostly in science classes and labs, but to bring them up during the sunset is almost criminal. Just sit there and enjoy it, man. With books, the same is true. English teachers should save their discussions of things like symbolism, metaphor, hyperbole, and point of view for the times when they are hanging out with people whom they know get into this stuff. They certainly shouldn't talk about it in their English classes, if for no other reason than that it does not do what is intended. Instead of increasing the students' appreciation for the work, they lessen it.
Keep it simple, folks. Talk about the book in a casual manner that focuses on the story, the characters, and the beauty or lack thereof of the prose.
I use the quotations because one would be hard pressed to demonstrate how what I did yesterday constituted teaching. I administered a vocab quiz and explained the day's assignments. Then I sat at the teacher's desk while the students got to work. Since it was an AP class, no one really even needed any one on one help. This meant that I got to spend large parts of the day just observing and thinking about what I was observing. (Of course, anyone worth their salt as a teacher should be doing as much thinking about teaching as they can.)
I spent a lot of time thinking about the assignment. The students were to use two stories, "A Worn Path" and "Where Does Voice Come From?" Both of these are by Eudora Welty, I believe. I could be wrong about that. They were to analyze how the point of view in these stories affected theme and characterization.
This assignment spurred a lot of thought of my own about how literature is taught, how it was taught to me, and how I believe it should be taught. As I said before, I am not an English or Literature teacher. I did not major in either of these two things in college. I am, however, a reader. I read voraciously. I love books more than almost anything in the world. (Not more than you, Abby.) One of the reasons I did not major in Literature was because of how I feel about what teachers of Literature do to literature. To put it bluntly, I believe that these people kill stories, and they kill stories for incredibly trite reasons.
For instance, let's say that your teacher wants you to know a thing or two about symbolism. They might choose to have you read Lord of the Flies. Then they might have you spend hours and hours of class time dissecting practically every line in order to find the symbols buried within. (I say might, but really this is almost a given.) By the time you are done, you know how to find a symbol like nobody's business (One of their favorites is the Christ figure.) but you are almost certain to dislike the book. Which is a tragedy, because Lord of the Flies is an amazing book. (This is why I recommend that students always read a book independently before they read it in a class. They will be allowed to simply enjoy the book for their own reasons; later, when the teacher tries to destroy it for them he will be unable to because the student will have already developed a love for it.)
The Scarlet Letter is the perfect example of a book that was ruined for most of my high school cohorts. I was fortunate enough not to have to read it for a class and I love it.
All of this brings me to the title of my note, "Story, Character, and Prose". These are the three elements of writing that I believe to be most important. An understanding of them can enhance enjoyment of a book or short story. Moreover, one can understand these elements without dissecting the book to the point that generates hatred of it. If one can write a compelling story filled with compelling characters, one will have done something quite wonderful. Many people are capable of this, though, which is why the third element is, I believe, more important. Case in point: The Twilight Series has a somewhat compelling story and characters, but the prose in it is dreck, which makes it difficult to enjoy. Prose can be bad, it can be competent, and it can be beautiful. Of course, there are levels in between.
Many classics are written with only competent prose. War and Peace is an example of this. It is, therefore, absolutely possible to write an amazing and timeless book without any exceptional talent for prose. A River Runs Through It is a book that is written with beautiful prose. This elevates the book to a level that is seldom attained by a writer.
The thing is, though, that too much time spent analyzing any of these things is akin to seeing a beautiful sunset and talking too much about how the light refracts, or the particles in the air, or anything of this nature. Discussions of this type have their place, mostly in science classes and labs, but to bring them up during the sunset is almost criminal. Just sit there and enjoy it, man. With books, the same is true. English teachers should save their discussions of things like symbolism, metaphor, hyperbole, and point of view for the times when they are hanging out with people whom they know get into this stuff. They certainly shouldn't talk about it in their English classes, if for no other reason than that it does not do what is intended. Instead of increasing the students' appreciation for the work, they lessen it.
Keep it simple, folks. Talk about the book in a casual manner that focuses on the story, the characters, and the beauty or lack thereof of the prose.
We've Got to Stop This!
More and more in the past couple of years I have come to the belief that the college path is not for everyone. In point of fact, it is not for most people. Yet our politicians, with Barack Obama at the helm, are encouraging more and more of America's school children to attend, to the point now where it is being suggested that EVERYONE go to college. This is a notion that is so ludicrous it is almost unbelievable that it is being propagated.
Regardless of the fact that there are myriad career paths that do not require a college education (ie plumber, auto mechanic, electrician, professional driver, hermit), the fact is that even with those career paths that do require a college education, the vast majority of them don't, not really. For instance, teaching. Since the dawn of time we have had people who were willing and able to teach. They passed on specific knowledge as well as general wisdom. Most of them did this for free. Most of them were very good at it, because if they weren't, their students would just move along to the next person, who was. Today we have a highly schooled professional teaching force, yet most of them possess little to no wisdom and very little actual knowledge. They use prepackaged lesson plans and textbooks that weigh forty or fifty pounds to collect their fat government paychecks and pensions. Basically, I'm saying that the current status quo, that of the teaching profession requiring a college education, is inferior to previous systems in which teachers were driven by a need to pass on knowledge that they had acquired through non-college means.
Another example is the business world. In the past, people would apprentice themselves to established and successful merchants, and once they had proven their abilities, they would be allowed to go out into the world to start businesses of their own. The same model still works today, but far too many people instead feel that they must plop 40-100K down on a business school education, only to find themselves entering the business world in the same positions that they would be without it.
With the cost of the college education ever rising, it makes me livid that America's youth are being told that this is the only and best path to a secure future for them and their families. The worst part of the whole scam is that for the majority of majors, nothing is learned that couldn't be self taught for free using the public library and by meeting with groups of like interested people in local coffee shops. We should not be encouraging such a ridiculous waste of money, especially not in these bleak financial times.
Someday I would like to see true leadership, leadership that challenges the dominant ideology instead of reinforcing it. It is so safe to encourage everyone to go to college; it would take real guts to suggest alternate career paths as a viable alternative. I'm talking about apprenticeships, trade schools, or simply small business loans to intelligent, yet young entrepreneurs. At the very least there should be a concerted effort made to reduce the cost of college significantly, thus allowing people to attend if they wish without breaking their backs with debt.
Perhaps, one day, this too will come to pass.
Regardless of the fact that there are myriad career paths that do not require a college education (ie plumber, auto mechanic, electrician, professional driver, hermit), the fact is that even with those career paths that do require a college education, the vast majority of them don't, not really. For instance, teaching. Since the dawn of time we have had people who were willing and able to teach. They passed on specific knowledge as well as general wisdom. Most of them did this for free. Most of them were very good at it, because if they weren't, their students would just move along to the next person, who was. Today we have a highly schooled professional teaching force, yet most of them possess little to no wisdom and very little actual knowledge. They use prepackaged lesson plans and textbooks that weigh forty or fifty pounds to collect their fat government paychecks and pensions. Basically, I'm saying that the current status quo, that of the teaching profession requiring a college education, is inferior to previous systems in which teachers were driven by a need to pass on knowledge that they had acquired through non-college means.
Another example is the business world. In the past, people would apprentice themselves to established and successful merchants, and once they had proven their abilities, they would be allowed to go out into the world to start businesses of their own. The same model still works today, but far too many people instead feel that they must plop 40-100K down on a business school education, only to find themselves entering the business world in the same positions that they would be without it.
With the cost of the college education ever rising, it makes me livid that America's youth are being told that this is the only and best path to a secure future for them and their families. The worst part of the whole scam is that for the majority of majors, nothing is learned that couldn't be self taught for free using the public library and by meeting with groups of like interested people in local coffee shops. We should not be encouraging such a ridiculous waste of money, especially not in these bleak financial times.
Someday I would like to see true leadership, leadership that challenges the dominant ideology instead of reinforcing it. It is so safe to encourage everyone to go to college; it would take real guts to suggest alternate career paths as a viable alternative. I'm talking about apprenticeships, trade schools, or simply small business loans to intelligent, yet young entrepreneurs. At the very least there should be a concerted effort made to reduce the cost of college significantly, thus allowing people to attend if they wish without breaking their backs with debt.
Perhaps, one day, this too will come to pass.
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