Life is made up of the things that you know you'll never remember and those that you can't forget. Every day is an adventure…some are just smaller than others!
93 – The flight number of the plane that was brought down by the passengers. 44 people, including 4 hijackers, died in an act of sacrifice and heroism that cannot be overestimated. 10 million dollars is still required to finish the memorial.
110 stories in each of the twin towers.
120 minutes; the amount of time it took from the first strike until both buildings were rubble
411 emergency workers died on that day. According to the Washington Daily News, by 2010, more than 916 first responders have died since, mostly from cancers and lung disease. Many of them were denied medical coverage or financial assistance because debate arose over whether their illnesses were caused by their exposure at Ground Zero. 2,5oo contaminants were identified in the dust cloud.
494; 586 miles per hour; the rates of speed the planes that hit the first and second towers were travelling at the time of impact, respectively.
2,996 deaths from the attacks.
2 wars launched.
4,447 US troops killed in Iraq as of June 2011
180,000 contractors, civilians and others killed in Iraq, including 149 journalists, as of August, 2007.
0 weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq.
1,751 US troops killed in Afghanistan as of 9/9/2011
+100,000 troops are still there
77 U.S. soldiers and 25 Afghans were injured in a truck bomb at a small military base in Afghanistan on 9/11/2011. 4 Afghans were killed.
Life is short. Live it well. Sorrow runs deep. Be happy whenever you can.
To all the people that I love: You know, right? I do. I love you so much.
Note: Again I started this post long, long time ago, and never bothered to actually put it out into the cybersphere. I am almost a month into school, so this is old news. Enjoy.
So, it’s back to school again, Maxwell. Even though I did relatively nothing this summer, I was not at all eager to get back to the ol’ grind. I guess maybe my school was not so happy to have me back either, as I didn’t receive my Welcome Back letter until three days before I was supposed to show up, but show up I did, on account of I’m all about having an income.
The week before the students come back to school, teachers have to go to in-service, or professional staff development. I remember when I first started teaching, lo those many years ago, when I thought that I would benefit from being professionally developed by a staff, which, as I am certain you realize, is much better than being infected by one. However, year after year, as pointless, tedious in-service gave way to ridiculous, intelligence-insulting staff development, I’ve sort of lost the mirthful expectation of enlightenment. Nowadays, I bring a book. I bring snacks. Next time I am going to bring Valium.
However, there were two big surprise to this year’s in-service.
First, no foldables; of course, there were still word walls and enormous flip charts and lots of presentations given through sound systems that malfunctioned, which was kind of a blessing. The genius of origami learning through foldables was replaced by educational games (this year featuring puzzle pieces, m&ms and balloons!) and the ever popular chartsngraphs. Chartsngraphs are nothing new, but this year they had a new look to them; instead of simple pie or bar charts, these had multiple axis lines (axes? axises? axisili?), quadrants, and trajectories. I was in charge of our tables’ chart, and I drew an octopus in three colors. It had teeth and breasts – big ones. Eight of them.
Except for a new teacher, everyone else in my group was on his or her Iphone, playing Words With Friends, or on Facebook. One dude was snoring lightly, and I truly think one of our coaches was sexting a clerk who works in the attendance office, so clearly, it was up to me to represent our table. When I put our chart on the wall with the others, I was very impressed with how elegantly the octopus was picking her nose with one of her tentacles while pickpocketing a sand dollar from the Speedo of a surfer. It’s not so easy to look nonchalant when committing a crime, and even more difficult for an artist to portray that using giant flip chart paper and only three colors.
One of the math teachers noticed my happy appraisal of my work, followed my eyes, and sighed. He got up, took the giant flip chart paper down, and in five seconds drew up a new one that had x’s and y’s and plotted points and not only quadrants but eightdrants full of words like synthesis and analysis. It was all in black marker. He stuck his up on the wall where mine had been and shook his head at me. I would have complained, but it was time for lunch.
I had a glass of wine at lunch. Maybe a glass and a half. Who’s counting?
When I got back, just the teensiest bit tardy (I didn’t feel tardy!), I was knackered. Lunch can be so draining. Fortunately, it was time for movies.
Film is always an integral part for staff development. We have flicks on Blood Borne Pathogens (always a thriller!), Your Responsibility in the Face of Child Endangerment (an hour-long documentary that teaches you -spoiler alert!- to call if you suspect abuse…as opposed to doing nothing, I guess…), and the gem in the crown, the Sexual Harassment video.
In the past, the movies at our school have been marked with unfortunate technical failures. These mechanical flaws have made the videos bearable at least, hilarious at best. We once watched a video on a 23-inch tv on the middle of a stage 30 feet away from us in an auditorium where the lights went out and the sound didn’t work. The teachers sat quietly through the first 15 minutes, but the cover of darkness and lack of sound proved too much for them. Soon people were shouting quasi-sensical, inappropriate comments like. “That’s no germ – it’s a sperm!” or random releases of hostility like, “Mr. Creighton is an asswipe!” Finally the principal allowed us to leave, but, as I mentioned, the lights were out and there are no windows in the auditorium, so for five minutes all anyone could hear was uncomfortable wooden seats being lifted and then people falling over each other as they attempted to make their ways down the aisles.
Those were the days.
This brings me to the second surprise of the day. I settled in for the double feature du jour; “High Blood Pressure- Silent Killer” and “Sexual Harassment – Stop It!” The room – we were in the girl’s gym – was close and warm, as the air conditioner, never fully functional in the best of times, was wheezing asthmatically in the thousand degree heat of the summer. Lunch was weighing down on me while the lights dimmed. I gently nodded out, floating into the comforting, deep sleep that one can only get in a high school during a movie after lunch.
And then I heard it, from the outer edges of my consciousness – the Sexual Harassment film was pulling me back into alertness because….
…it was AWESOME! It had a real 20 year old super hot high school girl with long frosted hair telling about how her chemistry teacher had made her feel uncomfortable. The girl who portrayed the girl who evidently got laid was a very earnest actress. She elevated the what could have been a bit part into a tour de force of melodrama. She did a lot of that “laughing-to-hide-the-pain-look-at-my-brave -face-but-oh-how-I’m-crying-inside” stuff, rubbing her smooth brow (no matter how good of an actress she was, she’s still only twenty!), and smiling that particular sorrowful smile where the grin is lopsided and the corners turn down. She snivelled, she whined, she was rueful as hell. I would have found her too annoying to harass, but who am I to judge the fictional chemistry teacher?
Then there was a lady principal who stood in a back lit classroom door in a shapely red power suit while she blackmailed a male teacher who sat sweating behind his desk. She was hilarious. I took notes on what she said – she had some great double entendres- so that I could share it with you, but I wrote them on the thick packet of very important information I got at staff development that I accidentally threw away later that evening. Trust me when I say she was really funny. I laughed out loud. Some people turned to look at me, but I didn’t care. The only thing that could have made it was popcorn.
But that wasn’t even the best part. The best part was this very well-educated lunch lady was complaining that even though she was a professional, this douchebag teacher kept hitting on her. She went into a reverie type flashback and we saw her abuse. The teacher had a swagger and a sense of his own irresistibility that couldn’t be shaken despite the “school spirit” t-shirt, tie and leisure jacket he sported. He wore all white tennis shoes, like a creepy nurse.The dignified lunch lady tried to fend off his advances, but no avail. “Mr. Smith, I am a professional!” she protested.
“Aw, Prudie! Call my by real name – Pimp Daddy!”
That, my friends, is Sexual Harassment video gold. It doesn’t get any better than that.
Really, you hardly ever need to use it. See? I just said the same thing I just said without using ‘literally’, and it was just as effective and much less affected.
It’s ok to use it when your head literally explodes, because that is unexpected.If someone said, “My head just exploded,” you might say, “Damn! No shit? Literally just exploded?” Of course, if your head literally exploded, you probably wouldn’t need to underscore the actuality of the event, nor would you be the one to tell about it. Maybe that’s not the best example.
I heard that the fat president, Taft I think, or maybe that president that died from eating too many dried apricots and plums, (was it Zachary Taylor? Did I just look that up on Wikipedia or do I just happen to know stuff like that?) internally combusted. That would be a good one. “He literally combusted from prunes and shit!”
Or if you eat a bunch of super-hot peppers and literal flames shot out of your ass. One would expect something to shoot out of your ass, but not actual fire, so the literally is good there.
Most of the time when literally is used appropriately, some sort of explosion is necessary.
But not when you miss the train literally by 5 minutes. Do you think someone is going to question you so you have to make sure that they know that it was truly 5 minutes? “Come on now,” they ask concernedly. “Are you sure you didn’t miss that train by seven minutes?”
You don’t need to emphasize the veracity of the situation when you say “I literally fell down the steps!” Just “I fell down the steps!” is funny enough. Or, “My deadline is literally Thursday at 7.” Who cares? Not me, that’s for sure. I have deadlines to miss of my own.
Plus, people lie when they use literally. “I was literally starving!” Really? Belly full of air, flies around your head, hallucinating-dancing-hotdogs-starving? I don’t think so. Or, “I literally didn’t have a single thought in my head!”
That one might be true. Some people are literal idiots. Eejits. Egrets. Some people are literally egrets.
Yup. I literally choose to end this post with that thought. That just happened. Suck it, egret.
Editor’s Note: I wrote this a long time ago, way back when I was on summer vacation and the living was easy. Then I started stupid work again. The transition made me senile and I never actually posted it. Nobody commented on that which wasn’t there, so I sank into a depressive stupor under the weight of the rejection and feelings of alienation I felt, as I am wholly dependent on the validation of cyber-folk, and why not? They are all prescient, insightful, skilled and supportive at all times. Without cyber comments, love, and web- concern, I am nothing, and life is but a metronome, ticking by, keeping the time, filling in space, but without meaning or melody. I don’t know how long I can hang on.
Actually, I just vegged and forgot to hit “publish”. Psych! Ain’t no thang! Enjoy!
#1. What I did today: Today I ate some honey. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but for some reason at around 2 o’clock this afternoon, I jumped off the couch, bounded into the kitchen, and squeezed a sticky golden orb on each of my fingertips from a little plastic bear. I held my hand up to the window, admired how the honey glowed in the sunlight, and sucked a sweet blob off my fingers, one at a time. Yum.
Did you know that honey is made from bee puke? They ingest the nectar, which I guess is made up of pollen, and then regurgitate it, repeatedly, from their ‘honey stomachs’, which sound a lot cuter than they actually are, and then spew the partially digested food source into the little containers of the honeycombs, which are individual, snack-sized, vacuum-packed, puke pouches.
Not so yum, right?
Perhaps you knew this already. Zach#1 did.
Bee Vomit
Zach #1 created this outcome and drew Bee Vomit on Jun 30, 2008 at 3:34pm.
There you have it. Another productive day in my life.
#2 – Fact: The average American flushes the toilet at home five times a day. That equals 18.5 gallons of water per American, per day, and that is only if the person only relieves him/herself at home. When you do the math, and trust me when I say that I did NOT, that equals 5.7 billion gallons per American at home, per day. All that water flushed down the drain. To put this in global terms, that’s mas agua than than all the homes in the UK and Canada use in a day for ALL of their water needs – cooking, cleaning, bathing, drinking, etc.- combined. Right now 40% of the world’s 6.9 billion people don’t have access to clean water, and by 2050, it is estimated that there will be 2.4 billion more.
I’m not saying don’t flush. That’s yucky. I’m just askin’ you to consider the if-it’s-yellow-let-it-mellow theory. Don’t waste water. Actively think of ways to save and reuse, or restrict your water consumption. It’s important. (Facts from The Big Thirst, by Charles Fishman, 2011, brought to me by way of KB. Thanks KB!)
Here are some bathrooms I have frequented lately. I’m pretty sure I didn’t flush in all of them.
#3 Cassandra Strummer: I think it is fairly obvious to most everyone that the Clash are prophets. I’m talkin’ crystal-ball-future-tellin’-they-just-KNOW prophets. Naysayers to the band as soothsayers concept need only revisit the lyrics of the iconic “London Calling”:
London calling to the faraway towns/Now war is declared, and battle come down…
The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in
Engines stop working, the wheat is growing thin….
A nuclear error!
Don’t you get it? All this stuff has come to pass! Every bit of it, unless you are a Tea partier and don’t believe in global warming, the inevitable effects of dependence on fossil fuels,and the drought and famine that threatens to wipe out civilizations, as is currently happening in places like Somalia, that nuke meltdown in Japan; this shit’s real, dude! The Clash is Nostredamus, man, they are totally 2012, FO SHO! And what’s more, this ditty is the siren’s song for the 2012 Olympics, that are being held where? Oh yeah, let me hear it…London Calling, baby, that’s what I’m sayin’! Never mind that its message is a lullabye of doom, complete with zombies and rioting teen-aged hooligan boys and girls coming out of the cupboards (gay zombie hooligans? Yikes! The worse kind!), it is the official song of the corporatization of corporal competition, and the Clash knew it would be someday…the prophets of profit, cash for Clash, I tell ya, and they deserve every Euro-tuppence they rake in…
#5 – What I am reading: Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell. People, I am loving this book. It took me awhile to get into it, but now I am halfway through it and fully invested. I’ve never read anything quite like it. Or the Shteyngart book. Or Dancer, by Colum Mcann. Those were some real fine books, I tell you what. I know that when I tell you about these books, it doesn’t make you want to rush out and read them. But you should. I’m lonely and I want someone to talk to about these things that impress me so. Do it!
Cloud Atlas is going to be made into a movie with Tom Hanks, Halle Barry, Susan Sarandon, and other folk. I can’t see as it won’t suck, but I’ll probably still pay to go see it.
Laters, Peeps! Try not to overheat!
P.S. Hey! While we were talkin’, I saw you noddin’ out!
I have no life these days, because I have a dog. Said dog is very fluffy and often quite adorable. However, fluff and adorability are often thin facades thrown up to hide an uncanny knack for a dark kind of sneakiness. I know this for a fact, because the cuter and fluffier I am, the more likely I am secretly scheming and plotting. I can’t help it. It’s my nature, and apparently it is a trait that has seeped out of me and been absorbed, osmosis-style, by my innocent little puppy. Or maybe he was just born a dickhead. It’s hard to tell.
I like him best when he looks like this: He doesn’t look like this often.
He is very energetic. Too energetic, really. When I tell people this, they always say, “Aww! He just a puppy! That’s the puppy in him! That’s just how puppies are!”
I think he snorts cocaine. I don’t know where he gets it or how he pays for it, but several times his wet, black nose has had some unidentified substance off, and he won’t sit still for me to wipe it off with a Kleenex. I told you he was sneaky.
He does other bad things. He ate his bed. He ate a bag of charcoal. He ate two computer cords. He ate something’s poop in the alley one day. That’s bad and disgusting. And it doesn’t matter what it is that he ate, he still thinks he can come breathe in your face whenever he wants, even if you are sleeping. He’s like that. Insensitive.
I guess I could deal with that sort of self-centered compulsion toward self-gratification (he does that, too, but hey, who doesn’t?), but now I think the drugs are influencing him to try all kinds of dangerous things, illegal things.
He broke into a backyard pool. There were fences up and everything, but he just felt like taking a dip.
I could see his tail wagging while he swam. I told him to GET OUT RIGHT THIS SECOND BEFORE SOMEONE COMES HOME AND CATCHES YOU IN THE POOL, but he didn’t. He just looked at me and laughed so hard he almost drowned. Would have served him right.
He’s started tagging. I explained to him that while many consider grafitti to be a valid form of self-expression, if he got caught, he could do time, real time, the kind that would make his days at the pound seem like doggie daycare. The next day, he posted this on his blog:He thinks if he shuts his eyes, nobody will be able to figure out his true identity.
He has no shame. I swear, that dog has balls! Well, phantom balls, anyway.
I worry about him.
Here is a piece of a story I am writing about our adventures. The names (and in some cases, the genders) of the guilty have been changed.
You can read it, but don’t steal it. Seriously, don’t.
Claire says: People just love Harmony. Everywhere we go, they stop to pet her, or to tell me how sweet and pretty she is. I don’t know why exactly. I think people are attracted to her because she seems so carefree and eager. It’s funny, because the first time I saw her, I thought she looked kind of scary.
One day walking home, cranky and draggy, we had to wait on an old lady backing out of her driveway. She had a big old Lincoln, and she inched her way down the drive, all careful stops and starts like old ladies do. I was sweaty and sleepy and ready to get home and take a shower and a nap. When she finally got on the street, I nodded at her, but I didn’t smile. Instead of driving past, she pulls up right next to us and rolls down the window. She’s all made up, crimped, coiffed and curled, wearing a three piece polyester pant suit with the jacket on, even though it’s already a thousand degrees out. She has a vest and wears a jaunty little scarf knotted loosely at her throat, for Chrissakes! Her lipstick matches her fingernails, which match her purse. Her hair is a lilac helmet that flips up on either edge, a J of hair on one side of her little, puckered peach face, reverse J on the other. She was pure-D styling, circa 1972.
“Wonderful, wonderful!” Her head shakes a little, and her voice is creaky, a gate longing for oil. She reminds me of a cross between Katherine Hepburn and Liza Minelli, and she’s smiling so wide with her orange lipstick mouth that it looks like her face is going to crack in a million pieces, like a puzzle. “Wonderful dog, there!” she cackles. It sounds like “wan-dah- fuh dawg, they-uh!” She throws her bobble head back on her wrinkled skinny neck and laughs, HAHA! Then she rolls up her window and drives off, just like that! It was completely weird, as if she was a southern belle Technicolor movie star, shrunken and shriveled and wrapped in a polka-dotted polyester shroud, come to the future to tell me the dog was wonderful. She looked happy crazy to tell me. Sheer joy. You don’t see that too often, really.
Her little outburst seemed so strange, almost surreal, because nobody in my world could be that happy about a dog. Maybe her grip had slipped, and she was remembering some dog she once knew, a long-dead Lucky or Princess. Who knows who Harmony was in her world? Sort of sad. But even sadder still: whose world would I rather live in; mine where I look forward to sleeping through the day, or hers, where seeing a dog in the street is a moment worth celebrating with a stranger?
Since I haven’t had the chance to do much travelling this summer, I’ve been asking everyone who is going somewhere to bring me something he/she finds on their trip. My neighbor Emmy went fly fishing in Idaho (no, you da ho! That never gets old!), and guess what she found for me…
Why, it’s Ernest Hemingway’s grave! Fantastic! Look at all the things people leave; cigars (Havana’s, maybe), bottle tops, Jack Daniels (noticeably empty), and lots of pennies. I had to look up why the pennies. There are lots of theories, (http://www.ehow.com/facts_5241692_pennies-left-grave-markers_.html) but I think my favorite one is that they were left by people who wanted a favor from Papa. I can just picture some skinny, broke-ass, frustrated writer going to Ketchum and wishing on a penny for a big break, knowing it’s not going to happen, but kind of believing that it will.
Anyway, I thought this was a great gift. (She also brought me “gunpowder green tea”, which I haven’t tried yet, because I am a pacifist, and salt from Utah that is beautiful; it’s pale, pale orange with flecks of gray and white, and it tastes extra salty.) I hope she goes somewhere else soon. My neighbor on the other side, Todd, went to England and got me a little sump’n — sump’n, too. I don’t know what it is yet, but it will probably be mildly pornographic, and I’ll probably like it, also.
With all this gifting, I decided I wanted to be a giver*, but what more can I give you people? I give you my soul in every post – what else do you want from me? You have my words, and, as Hemingway said, “All our words from loose using have lost their edge,” which is basically what I said yesterday**, but which is only relevant here because the quote actually has the word ‘words’ in it. That is a stretch.
And while we are doing mental gymnastics to find some kind of a unifying premise in this entry, I now give some of you the gift of a shout out – YAY! To make it just that much better, I shout out to you using Hemingway’s words, be they appropriate or not.
How’s that for unifying!
* Let’s be absolutely clear about one thing: even though I’m giving, I am still receiving, so if you have something for me, you still have time to send it on!
**We said basically the same thing, but Ernest did it much more clearly and concisely. Good thing I let that goal fall by the wayside!
To the Sanchezes:“Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”I am sorry for your loss. Trixie lived a full, warm, well-loved life, and I know that you will always have many memories that distinguish her.
To Elise:“About morals, I only know that what is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.” Feel good, Elise!
To chm chm, on getting published: “All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.” May you see your words – in print!- anew many, many times! Congratulations!
To chm chm, on big changes, bold moves: “Courage is grace under pressure.”You amaze me.
To McAdams and Big Poppa:“All things truly wicked start from innocence.”That kid (kids?!) is going to be WICKED COOL! Also, he or she might be Wiccan… whatever! Congratulations!
To Denichiwa:“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.”
To Bonnie, Jill, and my mom: “For a long time now, I have tried to write simply the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.” Here’s to those days when something comes from you, and it makes you proud that it was in there.
To Hemingway himself: “His talent was as natural as the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did…”
To Atticus Jones, my dog: “Did you just fart?” (I’m sure Hemingway said this at least once in his life. Go ahead – prove me wrong!)
Ernest Hemingway said many other brilliant things – duh! He was ERNEST HEMINGWAY! Here is one last quote that I love:
“I know now that no one thing is true – it is all true.”
Nice one, right? Now go out there and find me a gift, would ya?
I’m finished with having goals. I’m not really what you’d call an ambitious person. Goals kind of suck because you have to strive to attain them. The word “strive” sounds a little painful, doesn’t it? “Strive”, “strain”, “stress”… see what I mean? It is a little unsettling that I was unable to go a full week with goals, but I have decided to remain content waiting for things to fall into my lap. “Lap.” Now there’s a peaceful word. Rhymes with “nap”.
So, what did I learn from this little experiment?
First and foremost, I don’t like to be told what to do. Even if I am the one doing the telling. When that happens, I get on my nerves. First I ignore myself, then I tell myself what I think I want to hear, then I get angry, and I become belligerent, and more than once, sneaky. Then I have to beat myself down, and eventually I do, because I am relentless. Finally I do what I am supposed to, but only at the last minute, and kind of half-assed.
In the end, it’s best that I just don’t ask myself to do anything. My new strategy is to wait until I have actually done something, and then praise myself profusely. If there is one thing I have learned in doggie obedience school, it is this: positive reinforcement for good behavior is key. And it’s working already! I didn’t want to write this post, because to write it I’d have to start it, but then I did it anyway, and look how far I am already! Yay me! Who’s a good girl? Who’s a pretty lady! It’s me! I am!
I also learned that when it’s 252 degrees outside, it is relatively easy to stay inside and nap. The more you lay around, the more exhausted you become. I now sleep about 18 hours a day. And I sweat a lot less.
The reading goal worked well for me. I finished another big best seller- I’m trying to be au courant and hip, so that when I am invited to fancy parties with hors d’oeurves on silver trays and fountains of sake running through ice sculptures of bears catching salmon in glittering sake streams, I will be able to say, “Oh, yes, I read that! As you can tell by my love of reading, and the fact that I have read many modern bestsellers, I am no dummy! I would be a welcome addition to future parties of this ilk! Now please, accompany me to the sake bear, and we will intelligently and animatedly discuss current works of stimulating literature, while I fill the perfume bottles in my purse with sake that tastes of mountain air and harmony!”
The novel I last read is A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan. It was good, especially at the end. I gotta say though, I’m still partial to the Shteyngart, though the title is a pain in the ass to type. If you want to read it again, look it up. You have the Google. Anyway, the two books had some things in common that I really like. They both jump around in time and person; neither are totally linear. The authors examine the characters’ inner monologues in interesting, new ways. Both do a great job with dialogue and making the characters distinct and sympathetic, while weaving complex plots that are compelling, though not fantastic or extraordinary. They make the every day, common stuff seem pretty darn riveting. Thematically, they explore missed opportunities and mistakes that can’t be undone, as well as those that are of the “shit happens” or “wrong place, wrong time” type, and other things that are eternally fascinating, like love, loss, and the passing of time. They both look at the future, and the future these authors imagine is dystopian and sad. They are indebted to 1984, which is still the greatest book ever. All three books point out that in the near future, a different language is spoken, and people are unable (and increasingly unwilling) to attempt to express themselves openly and directly. Here is a passage from the end ofA Visit from the Goon Squad:
Rebecca was an academic star. Her new book was on the phenomenon of word casings, a term she’d invented for words that no longer had meaning outside quotation marks. English was full of the empty words – “friend” and “real” and “story” and “change – words that had been shucked of their meaning and reduced to husks. Some, like “identity”, “search,” and “cloud,” had clearly been drained of life by their Web usage. With others, the reasons were more complex; how had “American” come to be an ironic term? How had “democracy” come to be used in an arch, mocking way? (p.324)
True that, right? In an age where we have Face Friends and Friends With Benefits (how many of those friends are you still friends with after the benefits stop?), and reality tv sets a new definition of real, when “natural” often has nothing to do with nature, and when “awesome” or “epic” or “great” all basically mean “good”, etc., etc., we lose the precision of language, and with that the ability to say exactly what we mean. Perhaps we lose the ability to pinpoint exactly what we feel or think.
All three expect increased government and media control, and reliance on technology, and less individual creativity and will.
I love torturing myself thinking about that gloom and doom stuff.
The goals thing taught me that there is a lot to do that I don’t want left undone. Tick, tock, tick, right? So I hope that I get a bee up my butt and start to do something soon. I hope I don’t regret wasting my summer by laying on the couch admiring the red, yellow and green leaves of the Japanese Maple outside my window until my eyes grow heavy, or crawling to the window sill to get a close-up view of a skinny, spring-grass green lizard, bobbing up and down and puffing out his rose-pink throat, maybe just for me. I love these moments, but I worry…
Of course, this is the ambivalence that started the whole goal thing in the first place. I am right back where I started. I have learned absolutely nothing.
Crap.
These ice sculptures were handcrafted by Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo. They were displayed in 2009 by the German branch of the World Wildlife Fund to highlight global warming. You can see more photos of them here:http://www.streetartutopia.com/?p=1089This street art site is terrific! Go to their home page and check out the more modern stuff.
One of the clever sayings I pass on to others frequently is: “People who don’t read are dummies.” Sadly, I find myself in the dummy category for at least six months out of the year. When I am teaching, all intelligence and intellectual curiosity gets squeezed out of me like an adolescent pizza-face’s tube of Clearasil. I become beaten down by stupidity, laziness, incompetence, and tedium, and then after I have dealt with all that from the BSISD administration, I still have to deal with my students. When I come home from work, I am forced to lay around on the couch not thinking in order to replenish the brain matter that has been lost during the day. Sometimes I have to have a medicinal merlot or malbec. Or Nyquil. Sadly, this doesn’t leave much time for reading.
When one doesn’t read often, one loses the ability to focus and concentrate for a sustained period of time. The best thing about a good book is the way the reader can lose herself in it, but if one can’t focus, this doesn’t happen, and reading gets to be a chore. Every year I have to retrain myself to read. I think I have a touch of the Attention Deficit, so sometimes it’s hard for me to sit still and do one thing, and I also feel like if I don’t have proof of productivity (the laundry is done, I printed these pictures, I wrote this), I fret that I have wasted the day. It’s hard for me to actually set aside time to pick up a book and get into it.
But the thing is, I love to read! I ain’t no dummy! So Friday’s goal (which I actually did on a Tuesday and started writing about on a Wednesday, and am actually going to put out thereon a Friday, but almost a week later – I look time in the face and I laugh! Ha ha time! You’re not the boss of me!) is to read all day long, which I pretty much did. Yay, me! Aren’t I the anything-worth-doing-is-worth-doing-well-quitters-never-win-keep-on-truckin’ -really-smart-reading-girl type?! Yes, I am!
WARNING! Rant Ahoy! Turn back now, because it’s going to get ugly!
It seems that the British tabloid, News of the World has long adhered to the practice of hacking into peoples’ voicemail in order to get ‘scoop’. They have been busted for this repeatedly; for example, actress Sienna Miller successfully sued the paper’s parent company, News Corporation, for 100,000 pounds, plus court fees, over hackings that took place in 2005. Businessweek says that she is one of more than 20 celebrities and politicians that are suing the paper, and several journalists have been arrested. The latest brouhaha (great word!) is that News of the World got caught hacking into a missing 13 year old girl’s phone. ( Later, when I watched the CBS News, they showed me exactly how to do this. Turns out it’s super easy. I don’t know if this information is on the nightly news because it’s the public’s right to know, but now there sure is a lot of the public that knows how to do it right!) When her mailbox became filled with the frantic and desperate messages of her friends and family, the paper just deleted earlier messages to make room for more. The parents found out that someone was deleting messages, and so they assumed their daughter was deleting the messages, but by then, she was already dead. That was in 2002. Today the New York Times reports that News of the World also broke into the cellphones of several victims of the 2005 London subway bombings. This is appalling to me. I am just disgusted by the lack of integrity, ethics and respect for people that this brings to light. Sure, we all suspect that things like this happen, but it’s just so dirty, and I don’t mean that in a good way! I don’t care what Sienna Miller and other celebrities say in private; often I don’t care what they say in public. Still, just because they feed on media attention doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to some privacy. And the victims of horrible crimes are victimized again, even in death, when their private messages and conversation are turned into tabloid fodder. Sometimes it’s just not worth it to get the story. It’s just not right. Of course, this leads to speculation about where we get our news and information, and how we can be sure that it is fair, accurate and unbiased. I don’t think we can be sure. It’s hard to know who to trust.
It’s easy to know who not to trust, though. Rupert Murdoch and his giant corpocracy, which includes The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and 20th Century Fox Studios, is repeatedly accused of ethical lapses, biased media, and sometimes criminal activities. He is launching an internal investigation into the hacking thing… almost a decade after allegations have arisen. Of course this is no solution; the company will just find a scapegoat, cut him loose from the flock, and tell everyone that all is peaceful and right in the meadow. The last time this happened in Britain, the guy who was fired went on to be the communications director for the prime minister. And that’s another thing. Murdoch & Co.’s serpentine fingers, like those of other huge, multi-faceted conglomorates like Halliburton, have snaked their way so deeply into the fabric of society that they are able to control the shots in their own best interests and act with impunity. We are all bought and sold (or we buy and sell others) for the acquisition and retention of power and wealth, regardless of the consequences or recklessness of our actions.
Of course, News of the World or Fox News aren’t forced on people. Even when we know big business is overstepping, infringing or deceiving, we don’t care. We just accept it and keep buying whatever is being sold, keep tuning in for more. Why? I don’t know. Because we are lazy? Apathetic? Used to it? More interested in satisfying our urges, no matter how base, than thinking in terms of right and wrong? All of us -J’ACCUSE!!!!
END OF RANT (pretty much)
I also read that in Atlanta there was a widespread case of cheating on the state’s educational standardized tests by 178 teachers and principals at 80% of the schools in the district. This does not surprise me at all. Just like I blame Murdoch for creating an atmosphere of non-negotiable ‘do whatever it takes, or else’ mentality, I blame No Child Left Behind for the actions of educators that are told that the schools will be shut down if they fail to make certain goals, regardless of extenuating factors or the feasibility of the objective. I’m not saying that anyone was right to cheat or that people aren’t accountable for their own actions, but I understand why people try to conform to set standard and expectations, even if they know that what they are doing is wrong. http://www.prisonexp.org
I decided perhaps it was best that I left the Internet for awhile and read books instead. Not that books don’t possess the power to piss me off – what doesn’t? – but I still like to turn pages and smell paper. It’s soothing. Since I just finished a great novel (Shteyngart? Super Sad True Love Story? Have I mentioned it? Here’s a review not by me: http://www.slate.com/id/2262500/pagenum/2 ), I thought maybe I’d peruse a little nonfiction. I have a huge stack of books by my bed, and I picked out three of them and read the first chapter. The lovely and attractive David Eagleman has a new book out, Incognito.It’s about how our subconscious controls most of our cognitive reality. This book explores “the vastness of inner space.” Chapter One just kind of nutshelled the study of the subconscious from St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century to Freud and Darwin. I’ll let you know when this gets interesting.
Next I looked at Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test – A Journey Through the Madness Industry. I am familiar with his work from This American Life, and I like him a lot. His voice is honest and unassuming, and I like his dry wit. So far the book reads like a novel and I’m looking forward to reading more. And finding out if I am a psychopath.
The last book I first-chaptered is the most dense and academic, but I think I may end up liking it the most. It’s about how the rise of alphabetic literacy- read “reading”- replaced the image as a method of communication, which led to all kinds of major changes in perception, and in fact, fundamentally rewired the human brain. This, of course, caused major cultural, historical and religious changes, including a colossal shift from societies that worshiped the feminine to those that revere the masculine. It’s a book that talks less about what we read than how we read, and the effect of modes of communication. Here’s a little teaser from page 7:
“Goddess worship, feminine values, and women’s power depend on the ubiquity of the image. God worship, masculine values and men’s domination of women are bound to the written word. Word and image, like masculine and feminine, are complementary opposites. Whenever a culture elevates the written word at the expense of the image, patriarchy dominates. When the importance of the image supersedes the written word, feminine values and egalitarianism flourish.”
I don’t know if I agree with this, but it’s an interesting premise. If Shlain ends up making me a believer, I won’t have to read anymore; I’ll just look at the pictures.
I read some more stuff that day, but by now I’m sure you are bored of reading what I read and I am bored writing it. Saturday’s goal is going to be a lot less wordy, I assure you.
Here is a video of hoola hoops, from the perspective of the hoop. Enjoy.
We interrupt your scheduled daily posts to report that there has been an obvious interruption of your daily scheduled posts. As you have probably figured out, today is Monday, and I have yet to write Friday’s goal. I know what you are thinking: “This is an outrage! What is the reason for this lack of continuity? I want answers, and I want them now, and dammit-all-to-Hell, this better be good young lady!”
Floods, wildfires, oil spills, a possible Perry-Palin ticket, horrible heat and electricity outtages, Atticus had a touch of the doo-doo squirts, a bad economy, that lady killed her baby and Nancy Grace keeps yelling at me, rising homelessness, a failing education system, I still haven’t been told what I’m teaching next year, we are all moving inevitably toward the grave, etc., etc.
It is true that not all of these things effect me directly, and of course to varying degrees, but they are all happening right here in the U.S. of A., and we are one nation under foreign debt; therefore, what effects my country effects me, and so I have been way too busy to keep up with things like schedules or deadlines or days of the week.
Besides, this is the 4th of July and I am free to write about whatever I want, whenever I want! Don’t fence me in or tread on my parade.
Also, I forgot to have a goal on Friday and Saturday. I don’t remember Sunday, and today is a holiday.
I’ll get back to goal-a-day real soon, y’all, but in the meantime, Happy 4th!
From “America” by Allen Ginsburg:
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
Zach #1
Honey
TRUTH
Bee Vomit
One of the clever sayings I pass on to others frequently is: “People who don’t read are dummies.” Sadly, I find myself in the dummy category for at least six months out of the year. When I am teaching, all intelligence and intellectual curiosity gets squeezed out of me like an adolescent pizza-face’s tube of Clearasil. I become beaten down by stupidity, laziness, incompetence, and tedium, and then after I have dealt with all that from the BSISD administration, I still have to deal with my students. When I come home from work, I am forced to lay around on the couch not thinking in order to replenish the brain matter that has been lost during the day. Sometimes I have to have a medicinal merlot or malbec. Or Nyquil. Sadly, this doesn’t leave much time for reading.
It’s about how our subconscious controls most of our cognitive reality. This book explores “the vastness of inner space.” Chapter One just kind of nutshelled the study of the subconscious from St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century to Freud and Darwin. I’ll let you know when this gets interesting.
It’s about how the rise of alphabetic literacy- read “reading”- replaced the image as a method of communication, which led to all kinds of major changes in perception, and in fact, fundamentally rewired the human brain. This, of course, caused major cultural, historical and religious changes, including a colossal shift from societies that worshiped the feminine to those that revere the masculine. It’s a book that talks less about what we read than how we read, and the effect of modes of communication. Here’s a little teaser from page 7:
