Sundown

It is the eve of the day that begins the month which culminates with my favorite holiday: Halloween.

As I watch the sun throw up it's last pitifully unanswered cries for help, while the mountains obscure it's grizzly fate - drowned in the cruel pacific - I focus every fiber of my being on the self-restraint it will take to refrain from the sugary sweet goodness of candy corn for another four hours. How can a simple mixture of sugar, corn syrup, egg whites, honey, soy protein, salt, artificial flavors, confectioner's glaze, carnauba wax, and artificial dyes including red 7, yellow 5, and yellow 3 taste so good?

Did You Ever Think When a Hearse Goes By...

Today after work I stopped by Experts Only Collision to pay my final respects to Gretchen and to search her mangled corpse for valuables.

All told she held: a bottle of laundry detergent, my other hobo-glove (whose mate is my favorite pot-holder), three dirty socks, Chaucer's Canturbury Tales, four quarters, and about 643 pens.

It's funny how little I mourn the passing of the lesbian in my life when I consider how attached I was to my Oldsmobile in high school. Maybe it's because the times spent in Gretchen weren't nearly as good as those spent in the Olds, but I should feel some gratitude towards her for getting me through three years of Hillsdale and the move to Colorado.

She's carted more than her share of odiferous highschoolers to and from Young Life, she's been borrowed and battered by nearly everyone I know. She's driven to Chicago without me. She's crossed the Missippi and climbed mountains while bearing my only wordly possessions. And now, like my bike, my savings, my dignity and my will to live, Colorado has taken her from me.

Rest in peace Gretch. May the spirit of Henry Ford, from whom all cars come and to whom they must all return, take kindlier to homosexuals than the God of Abraham and Isaac.



Also, the Fantasy Book Store on Platte does not have The Hobbit. Really they don't have any of the sort of books you're looking for. Really, it isn't that kind of fantasy book store.

Freedom 90

St. Dracula (the patron saint of Halloween that I made up today) has sent me numerous blessings in preparation for the fast-approaching season.

Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead

1. Mallory is coming. I'll have a great friend from home in the Springs for a week beginning this Thursday (just in time to start Halloween right).

2. I've received a standing invitation to watch Heroes and, much like St. Dracula hisself, I can't go anywhere without being explicitly invited (I also don't like mirrors, though I love garlic... hmm...).

3. Gretchen is dead. That's right my woman-loving car is totalled. It took a month for the verdict to come down, but it has been made and she's gone. Hot stuff. The settlement will pay off Gretchen and give me money left over for a down payment and trip to Boston. Turns out this whole thing was serendipitous after all.

Prepare yourselves for my favorite month. It's going to rock the flesh off from your bones.

Only 48 more hours remain in my candy corn fast, then the blood hits the fan (like in the movie Carrie) and I force you, once again, to love everything I do, or to be bored out of your mind for an extended period of time - speaking of which, tonight is Heroes which means tomorrow will be an all-Heroes post. Eat my ectoplasm.

Love Halloween like I do? Let me know what your reason for the season is and how you'll be spending it - disembowelling your loved ones, I hope.

Sunday Morning

Sundays are always beautiful. First sleeping until 10am, then heading to mass and people watching, then to Wal-Mart or Safeway for weekly groceries and more of the same. The rest of the day is up for grabs - a little schoolwork, a little reading, some time at the library - trying to find the perfect combination of routine and spontaneity.

With the introduction of a table my house is starting to actually feel livable:
My favorite block downtown just got a new mural, I'm fine with Barack being portrayed as Lincoln as long as he actually grows the beard. I will not be fine, however, when I see the first picture of him photoshopped onto a crucifix (I give it a week).
Also, Sunday's have the added perk of a new batch of secrets at PostSecret online.



Tomorrow begins a new week of school, and brings a new episode of Heroes (any takers?).

On The Radio

I still have my rental car. I called my mechanic again last Monday to ask what decision had been made - was my car totalled, or was he going ahead with the work - and, flabbergasted, he responded that he had called my claims adjuster half a dozen times, only to find out that he was taking a week-long vacation.

So, that means that a verdict will come in on Gretchen, at best, by this Tuesday (the adjuster has to come down from Denver to look at her) and if she's dead I'll have a week and a half more of the rental to find a new car, and if she isn't I'll have at least a week and a half of waiting for her to get fixed. What I like to call a "groundhog situation."

The DL on XM

A couple weeks ago I was super excited about the fact that my rental came with XM radio, and strangely I found that the "'40's" station could hold my attention the longest, with "Nashville" coming in a close second. At first I was super-impressed by XM. The 90's station wasn't playing songs like "Jenny From The Block" or Inrique Iglesias' "Hero," it was bumping jams like "One Headlight," "What I Got," and "Gettin' Jiggy Wit' It."

By the same token "Nashville" wasn't playing "Redneck Woman" or "Save a Horse..." it was playing "When You Walk In" (early Lonestar) and "Indian Outlaw" (early Tim McGraw).

But, as fate would have it, my XM was only a trial and ceased to function on the same day that I found out I would be driving my rental for another two weeks.

I love resources like Pandora and XM because they prove that somewhere it is in someone's best economic interest to produce a quality product, and to cater to a group other than the "I Kissed A Girl"-loving multitude.

Also, I love that someone is trying to improve radio, while still holding to the principles that make radio great. While I know that at any time I begin a roadtrip I could use my iTrip to blast "Life is a Highway" and start things off right, I would much, much rather have "Life is a Highway" come up randomly on the radio 1 in 1000 times and know that the powers that be have blessed my trip.

The radio is beautiful because it is random, whenever I go back to it I'm always happy I did, and I feel a little guilty that I've had the mp3-player-strangle-hold over my musical life for so long.

So, let loose today, turn on the radio and hear the soundtrack to your life that you've been ignoring.




Also, I want ya'll to know that I came across my old CD wallet this week and, for the first time since freshman year of college, actually had a CD player. So, I've been listening to:

1. The Remix (a great CD Pat made me in high school), highlights: "Hot Stepper" and "Sundown"
2. High School Soundtrack (a CD I made for my walk to school senior year), highlights: "Authority Song" by Jimmy Eat World and "Fire Escape" by Fastball
3. Senior Year (a perfect mix of songs, none of which I can actually listen to because the emotion is still too raw), highlights: "Told You So" by BNL and "Champagne High" by Sister Hazel

Friday I'm in Love

Did you know that Friday in latin in dies Veneris, the day of Venus, goddess of love?

Turns out The Cure was more cultured than we all thought. And that the Romans loved Friday as much as we do.

Too Little, Too Late

Today is going to be big. How big? Well, I'm predicting to double the highest number of people my house has held since the beginning of September. That's right, there will be at least, if not more than, two individuals in my apartment. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but this weekend could possibly even see triple the previous record population of my apartment since Brad and Leroy left, that would mean nearly three souls all told.

Not Your Left, The Chair's Left

But seriously, starting tomorrow I'll be having a guest at the bachelor pad for the next several days, which is wonderfully exciting and unreasonably stressful.

Surely not stressful enough, however, to make me actually begin cleaning my house more than two hours before bedtime the night before, or to actually try putting together the table and chairs that I bought last weekend until, after learning eight wrong ways to put together a chair, I finally do it right two times and don't have enough time to finish the other two chairs.

I also Boraxed every horizontal surface in my house, Windexed every vertical surface, and attempted to hang too-small pictures on everything in between.

But more importantly:


P.S. Pretty sure I just got borax in my eye.
P.P.S. If I don't get 3 more comments on the Heroes post I will end myself.
P.P.P.S. I also bought sheets today. Don't ask.
P.P.P.PS. I freaking love lolcats.

And most importantly, the song that lends its name to this entry is too good to waste on a post this crappy, I reserve the right to use it again.

Brick

This will be brief, it's late and I have to write a post for tomorrow.

Plus, I'm more than a little downhearted at the non-response to my Heroes post. Evidently you all aren't the culturally affluent people I thought you were. Enjoy Mondays for the next 6 months you yellow-bellied sapsuckers. For shame.

40 Days For Life

Today marks the beginning of the 40 Days For Life campaign, an interdenominational effort to organize the thoughts, prayers, and acts of service of individuals throughout North America trying to end abortion.

I'll be volunteering to pray for an hour a week or so in front of Planned Parenthood. If you are passionate about this topic (and if you aren't passionate you should at least spend some time thinking about why you aren't) you might think of doing the same. If you live in a major U.S. city, then chances are your church is participating, if not, it's not as though you can't think and pray about life-related issues wherever you're at.

I'll probably make remarks on abortion regularly throughout the next forty days, but I'm going to do my best to avoid the term "pro-life". Why? Because I know that there is no sane human being out there who wants to kill babies. The abortion question is not a disagreement at all about whether human life has value, but a disagreement about when human life begins. While defining a period where life begins inherently erodes human dignity, it doesn't mean that there is a faction somewhere that just hates babies.

I personally will continue to err on the side of caution as far as tampering with human life and procreation goes and would encourage you to do the same, but I'm going to try to stay away from mud-slinging, name-calling, etc.

For today all I really have for you is Ben Fold's song "Brick," which is a true story about his reaction after his highschool girlfriend's abortion. Give it a good listen and let me know what you think.

Embedding is disabled so YouTube it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axpuVLQ_m4w

Or just listen to the playlist on the sidebar.

Lyrics:
Six am day after Christmas,
I throw some clothes on in the dark.
The smell of cold,
Car seat is freezing,
The world is sleeping and
I am numb

Up the stairs to her apartment
She is balled up on the couch
Her mom and dad went down to Charlotte
They're not home to find us out
And we drive
Now that I have found someone
I'm feeling more alone
Than I ever have before

She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly
Off the coast and I'm headed nowhere
Shes a brick and I'm drowning slowly...

They call her name at 7:30
I pace around the parking lot
Then I walk down to buy her flowers
And sell some gifts that I got
Cant you see
It's not me you're dying for
Now she's feeling more alone
Than she ever has before

Chorus

As weeks went by
It showed that she was not fine
They told me son it's time
To tell the truth
And she broke down and I broke down
Cause I was tired of lying.


Driving back to her apartment,
For the moment we're alone,
She's alone,
And I'm alone,
Now I know it.

Chorus

Futures

Despite Colorado's best efforts I did end up getting to watch Heroes last night. In a spirit of desperation I sent Megan a Facebook message before I left work yesterday and at 7pm I had just resigned myself to watching the “Jesus is My Friend” video repeatedly when my phone rang. Nota Bene: I don't own a TV, so I need to find a regular Monday night venue for watching Heroes.

To the tune of “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” I sped to Safeway, picked up some peanut butter M&Ms and a bag of caramel apple suckers (a personal favorite) I headed out to the Martin place where I enjoyed the last 15 minutes or so of the Heroes live premier party (which is not live if you live anywhere but in east coast time, stupid Colorado) before the Heroes two-hour season opener began. Thanks again Megan.

Spoilers Ahead, Seriously

Let me just say before I get into the thick of things that Heroes is the best thing on TV right now. If you've never seen it before you need to do some illegal downloading, move it to the top of your Netflix list, or head to your local Blockbuster and get caught up. Also, if you have to start halfway that isn't a problem. The three “volumes” of Heroes are all different stories, so feel free to start at the beginning of season 2 or 3 and rest assured that the fans are just as in the dark about most things as you are.

Not only does the world need some solid science fiction (though its “solidity” is definitely debatable), but the writing and storytelling are just plain good. Heroes doesn't play the same game as Lost, giving you 15 minutes of new footage per episode and then spending the other 29 on recaps and flashbacks. And, thought to the novice it may seem scattered, the greater Heroes storyarc is usually complete by the end of the season, leaving only a few unanswered questions (like why did they have the same guy who stole Claire's Nissan Rogue at the beginning of season two go down to Mexico only to be killed by Sylar without any real explanation?).

As for the premiere itself, it was pretty well done. It did, however, seem strange that in the first episode they spoon-fed viewers the answers to questions they've been asking since season one; like, what is Angela Petrelli's power? If Sylar does ever nab Claire's power, will she live through the process? If powers can theoretically be taken away, couldn't they also be given? And most importantly: Does Sylar actually eat brains?

But, the first two episodes also gave us some great new questions to ask: How is Claire “different” from the other heroes? Does that Rafiki-like fellow who found Matt have Isaac's power? Will present-day Peter be able to use his normal abilities in his new body, or will he be limited to “sound manipulation”? If your DNA determines how your ability manifests itself, why is it that Tracy can freeze things, whereas Nikki and Jessica have super-strength? And most importantly: Since when does Hiro not actually stop time? Because if that speed-demon girl can still move then evidently he's just making things go really really slowly.

Lastly, a few thoughts on where the season is going and a couple of predictions. Heroes is a great show because it generally resists prediction – mostly because the writers monitor fan forums and make sure that the best guess is never the right guess – but I always have to try. I think the real fun of “Villains” is not so much going to be that the escapees from Level 5 need to be tracked down, but that our favorite heroes will find themselves being manipulated into doing more harm than good and the fate of the human race will be entrusted to the more peripheral characters.

What do I mean? Let's establish our groups.

Typical heroes: Peter, Claire, Hiro, Mohinder, Matt, Micah
Typical zeros: Ando, Claire's dad, Angela Petrelli, Nathan, Maya, Elle

So, where do we stand? Well Peter is already confined to the body of a villain. Ando kills Hiro in the future and I'm betting it's because Ando is in the right and Hiro has been led astray by doubt and a desire to fulfill his destiny. Mohinder, out of a desire for power, has given up his standard role as the show's moral compass, Claire is more troubled than we have already seen her, Nathan has found God, and Angela Petrelli is finally taking some responsibility for her actions.

I'm guessing that present-Peter is going to spend half the season incapacitated (as usual), future Peter is going to do more harm than good, Claire is going be soul searching and dying (repeatedly), Angela is going to have do everything in her power to save the work of the company, Ando is going to get an ability and do his best to win Hiro over, Maya is going to try to hold back Mohinder and probably just cry and say “Dios mio” a lot, Elle will prove her worth, Nathan will become the show's moral compass after either getting the best of ghost-Linderman or discovering that he's a useful ally, and ultimately Sylar will be converted. Yes, that's right, Sylar will be converted. It has to happen sooner or later.

To wrap it up: zeros become heroes, heroes become villains, and villains change their stripes.

As long as they don't “bring in the Phoenix,” as the expression I just invented goes, I think they'll do fine.

Quick Update

I was out late watching Heroes last night (more on how that transpired later), so I still owe ya'lls a full post for today, but to tide you over, a live performance from Sonseed, my new favorite praise band:

Happiness Is...

Five Good Reasons To Be (Almost) Catholic

1. Yesterday was “Chili and Margarita” day at Divine Redeemer, which meant that I went directly from mass to eating homemade chili and enjoying mixed drinks in Fellowship Hall, and they were tall and unusually strong. Those old ladies know how to whip up a margarita. Only in the Catholic Church would you have hospitality volunteers signing up to bring “12 large bottles of tequila.”

2. Flannery O’Connor is Catholic. I bought a copy of A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Short Stories at a used bookstore on Saturday for $3.50. I was three stories in before reading the back cover and discovering that not only was O’Connor Catholic, but her expressed purpose in writing these stories was “to reveal the mystery of God’s grace in everyday life.”

3. I also started reading Dracula in preparation for Halloween. it’s interesting to note that Dracula is sort of built around the liturgical year, beginning on St. George’s day and culminating on Halloween, or All Hallows Eve. My plan is to set the mood in the month of October by reading Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Frankenstein. Who’s with me?

4. Today in our bulletin I found the following announcement under the heading Annual Blessing of Pets: "On Monday, October 6th, in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, we will be blessing family pets. You may bring your pet to Divine Redeemer for a special blessing of good health and, hopefully, good obedience. All pets are welcome.”

5. And finally:

More Than This

Artemis Fowl has the encyclopedic, bland and blatantly British narrator of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the "just kidding he's not dead" moments of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, the blatant disregard for mythology of My Little Pony, the "boy without parents" license of Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire, the amoral cast of Snatch, the awkward hints at teenage romance of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and the crude mixing of technology and fantasy found only in The Santa Clause II.

Finally, A Response

Despite all that, I read all 300 pages and probably would read the second book if it was placed in front of me. Why? Because it's entertaining. It's the same reason I'll watch a show like "Everybody Loves Raymond." I'm not going to learn anything from it, I'll laugh out loud once, and I'll forget it the moment it's over and never watch it again.

I guess that's the difference between a good book and a great book. A good book is worth reading once; a great book is worth reading once a year for the rest of your life.

The girl who recommended Artemis Fowl to me also happened to get the speaking prompt "If we lived in the world of Fahrenheit 451 and you could save one book what would it be?" and she absolutely couldn't pick one book. She had to have the entire Artemis Fowl series, the entire Percy Jackson series, and the entire Eragon series. But I wonder if she's ever read any of them more than once.

I know that most eighth graders haven't read any book more than once, but would she ever want to pick up Artemis Fowl again for any reason other than nostalgia?

I guess this is, in a way, my answer to Pat's comments from the post "Shot In The Dark." I really do think there are distractions, or at least "lesser goods." I really do think that Artemis Fowl is almost completely devoid of an accurate or enlightening portrayal of humanity. While (I hope) most people reading this post haven't read Artemis Fowl, it seems to me to be just one aspect of the mask of popular culture, and sometimes I think there's nought beyond (that Moby Dick reference is for Mike).

Whatever entertainment someone gets out of Artemis Fowl, High School Musical, or the music of The Pussycat Dolls, could be better obtained from Huckleberry Finn, Fiddler on the Roof, or Dave Matthews, and with it would come brilliant insight into our human nature.

Obviously, no form of cultural outlet will find us staring into the face of God, but some books are just better than others. Better in that they address subjects that concern our humanity (I addressed this in "Same Old Thing" earlier this week).

But what about the rest of our lives, when we aren't reading, watching or listening? Well, I think Pat is right there. It's all about what you're called to. I'm beginning to think we all have four vocations: a personal, a political, a professional, and a spiritual.

Marriage is a beautiful thing to which not all of us will be privileged, but we all have a relational calling. Being a leader among men is a burden to which not everyone is called, but we all have a role to play in the life of our polis (city). Everyone has a role to play professionally, but not everyone will see the work of their hands become a tangible change in the world. Everyone is called to find the final and ultimate source of Truth and find their place in His universe, but not everyone is born to be a theologian.

However, no one is called to polygamy, no one is called to be a tyrant, no one is called to make pornographic films, and no one is called to be a subverter of truth, but you all know that.

And who am I to judge? A human being. It's everyone job to not only discern right from wrong, but more wrong from less wrong. I absolutely believe in degrees (all puns...), but only because I believe in an absolute truth, toward which we can all draw closer, and from which we cannot absolutely turn away.



Oh, and just so you know, no one is called to watch CSI, but that's another post.

Coffee

Last night I read Artemis Fowl. That's right, the "young adult," Harry Potteresque novel. Why? Because I told my eighth graders that I wanted to read their favorite books. I made it through all 300 pages in about 3 hours so I don't consider it a huge time investment, and it will open some doors to talking with the kids about literature. I just needed to confess to you what I did with my Friday night.

Also, Brad and Leroy, where the devil is my pancake mix? I woke up this morning craving pancakes and I can't find it anywhere. There's no way we actually ran out that stuff, so I'm guessing one of you hid it in the toilet tank or the freezer or something.

Now That's Just Creepy

When I came across this phenomenon yesterday I thought about saving it for Halloween (and by Halloween I mean October), but at least part one of this message is going to go stale before then.

First I'd like to say that I'm not a fan of Starbucks. I don't care how good it tastes or how green they are, I just want free Wi-Fi with my coffee, and since early this summer they've become T-Mobile exclusive in most stores, and AT&T exclusive at others. Despite this fact, however, I did find two good reasons to go to Starbucks in the near future.

1. Free Coffee - That's right free coffee, but only for teachers and only on Mondays in September. I'm definitely taking advantage of this on Monday morning and you should too; check out the rules at: http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/pressdesc.asp?id=896

2. Creepiest Big Business Mascot In The World - Have you ever wondered what that girl was doing on the Starbucks logo? Me either. Doesn't matter. Maybe she's a queen or something. Who cares? Give me my coffee. But this summer Starbucks came out with "retro" labels which revealed a bit about how their logo has evolved.

Turns out that girl with the crown is really a naked siren - the creatures that would tormet Greek sailors and lure them to their doom - and the original logo isn't just less market-friendly, it's downright creepy.

The retro-label is sort of the happy medium. It admits that coffee is irresistible, something supernatural in the water that is luring you to your doom, but at least it's a bit more aesthetically pleasing than the two-tailed seahag they started out with.

So, I couldn't hold back and save it for monster month, but I hope this revelation about Starbucks is as new to you as it was to me.

Also, is it bad that my students are already trained to answer the question "How much land does a man need?" with a choral response of "six by six by two"?

And if you haven't responded to yesterday's call for "I like my coffee like I like my ______" then do it. Do it now.

Steady As She Goes

Lately I've been hearing from all sectors of my Web 2.0 life that I need to focus my blog, refine my vision of what I'd like it to be and get into a groove. I've been taking that to heart and after at least 2 1/2 hours of consideration I think, if my blog could be known for only one thing, I'd like it to be the exhaustive and complete source for all "I like my coffee like I like..." jokes. I only know of three or so variations myself, but I know there is potential there. Try your hand at one today and leave it as a comment.

Breathing Easy

Since I've started teaching, every Friday is the best day of my entire life. Our Fridays are shortened, which means that the kids leave at about 1:30 and I don't teach Latin at all - a small compensation for the fact that the periods between classes are only three minutes. While I struggle to stay on task for that extra afternoon prep-time, I enjoy the fact that the four classes I do teach on Fridays are shortened to 40 minutes.

Yesterday the 8th graders gave impromptu speeches, based on prompts like "If you could tell Obama and McCain one thing, what would it be?" and "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" They were required to speak for a minute and a half and then answer a question about their topic asked by one of their fellow classmates. It was by far the funniest day yet in my class, especially when it came time for the student with the prompt "Tell Mr. Good's life story" to present.

It turns out that in the eyes of my students I am a closet Canadian, born in 1979, to a world renown cupcake chef, and the son of a carpenter with an obsession for rocking chairs. I was also an amateur jump-roping star with Olympic aspirations, who kept rats and goldfish as pets (and a rat curled up in the pocket of my suit at all times).

I'm nearly finished with Julia Child's memoir My Life in France and while I've enjoyed the ride, not a bit of that enjoyment comes from picturing my grandma, a woman who would be about Julia's age, were either of them still alive, and nearly her height, as well. My favorite moment in the entire book occurred on page 289 and constitutes the harshest euphemism I've ever encountered, which is saying something as I'm a sort of connoisseur of kakophonisms. After relating how her dear friend Jim Beard had nearly died of heart failure Child says: "It was a close call. We were now at the age where some of our oldest and best friends were 'slipping off the raft', as the saying goes..."

Okay, first of all, that's surely not a saying and secondly, for any of us who have seen Titantic or read "The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane, that is an unnecessarily gruesome way to refer to death. And lastly, it's hilarious. Almost as funny as a T-Rex delivering pizza on a tricycle.

Here's a little bit of extra Julia, just to make your day:


For those two of you that knew her, tell me that this doesn't look like my Grandma Good. .

Not The Same

“'See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his people,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.'
And the one who was seated on the throne said, 'See I am making all things new.'”
- Revelation 21:3b-5a

I Believe I'm a Walking Contradiction

Today's post is long, but I think it's worth it, and, if you're feeling lost, be sure you read yesterday's: Same Old Thing.

Today I started class by challenging my students with the quotation that began yesterday's post. I asked them to tell me one thing that had happened in the last 2500 years that would have surprised the writer of Ecclesiastes - one entirely new aspect of humanity that he never could have dreamed of.

First came answers like “the microwave” and “the internet,” but I pointed out that the microwave and the internet are just new ways to cook and share information, things humans have always done. After more thought they put forth “the moon landing” and “the atom bomb,” and again I reminded them that death, suffering, and pain, the discovery of harsh and alien landscapes were very old experiences, and that the atom bomb and moon landing differed from their antecedents only in magnitude, not in kind.

Finally, two students kicked the discussion up a notch by posing two important questions: “What about miracles?” and “What about individuals?”

Honestly, they had stumped me, especially since I teach at a public school and am therefore relatively limited as to what assertions I can make.

While the laws of nature are universal in every time and place, I believe, if I believe in the gospel, that at some point God utterly violated those laws and changed everything, forever. That much I had to admit, as well as that while human nature itself might be entirely universal (we are all born, we all learn, to love or desire family and friends, we labor, we fall in love, we reproduce and we die) the individual is just that: unique and therefore of inestimable value.

When the author of Ecclesiastes composed this passage he neither had a conception of the spiritual transaction that would take place during the crucifixion of Christ, nor did he have the fullness of the gift of the Holy Spirit that we experience now. In a sense, those things are entirely new, but I'd like to consider them in light of the comment Katie made on yesterday's post. She suggested that somehow, even if we weren't privy to the knowledge, the nature of God has always been the sole factor in determining what constitutes reality. God was always three persons: Maker, Redeemer, and Advocate.

Moreover, God doesn't look at time like we do, he doesn't see a linear progression in human knowledge. In the same way that we can't see or conceive of a mono-dimensional object (with only length, width or height), I doubt, except insofar as he condescends to our own time-based minds and senses, that God really notices a thing like time at all.

I love Catholicism, and Christianity in general, for a number of reasons, but perhaps the foremost among these is the fact they not only accept, but embrace as doctrine, and even worship, contraries which blatantly oppose logic.

For example: that God is one nature and three persons, that Christ is 100% man and 100% God, that the Eucharist is actually the body and blood of Christ despite having every discernible-by-sense-data quality of bread and wine, and most importantly that God was just when he accepted the life of an innocent man as a ransom for those worthy of death.

While Christ did come at a specific time for a specific purpose, and in doing so totally changed our conception of human nature, in many ways his coming is so absolutely perfect that we can't imagine history without it. He seems to be the deus ex machina, but could we really make sense of anything that had happened before or after Christ without him? We were always the redeemed people. We were always children of God, but he decided, in true heroic fashion, to let us lose him, so that he might win us.

But, is the beauty of the thing an adequate justification for believing it to be true? Can I rest assured that because God did what appears to be the most beautiful thing, that the facts of the matter can defy logic?

Let me know what you think, and listen to today's song; it's by Ben Folds and describes an especially strange story of conversion.

Same Old Thing

“What has been is what will be,
and what has been done
is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is,
“See, this is new”?
It has already been,
in the ages before us.”
- Ecclesiastes 1:9-10

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

Every day I begin my English classes with a famous quotation. Lately, we've been looking at what figures like Oscar Wilde, Goethe, C.S. Lewis, and Thoreau have to say about originality.

“Most people,” Wilde says, “are other people, their thoughts are the opinions of others, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation,” and most of my students are inclined to agree. They've already been primed with Goethe (“all truly wise thoughts have been thoughts a thousand times already”) and Lewis on the subject, and I think I've fairly convinced them that the themes of human literature and thought are few: love for country, brother, nature, woman, and God, hatred of oppressors, enemies, death, and decay, and desire for immortality, honor, and self-knowledge.

While the list isn't exhaustive, it is startlingly close to being so. No work that is founded on a so-called “unique” idea will ever be great, principally because the great ideas have all been ideas “a thousand times already.”

Of course, it's obvious that Wilde isn't really on the same side of this debate as Lewis or Goethe. While he too admits that there is very little about mankind and our thoughts that can be called revolutionary or unique, this thought isn't the comfort for him that it is for Lewis; rather, it seems to actually disgust him. I'd be tempted to accuse Wilde of a “poor me” attitude, and of entertaining the misconception that he was the first and only homosexual writer to aspire to greatness, but I know he was better-read than that.

Personally, I think more people's passions should be a quotation. My personal passion would probably come from Ecclesiastes, A Midsummer Night's Dream, or the work of Emily Dickinson. Mimicry, in fact, is one of the best habits we can acquire: whether it be of our national heroes, of the saints, of great authors or thinkers, or even of Christ himself, we need models.

My students' final and most desperate plea toward original thinking went something like this: “What about politicians? Shouldn't they be original thinkers? The problems they have to deal with are all new. The oil crisis, atomic warfare, terrorism, the internet- it's all new.”

After reminding them of the striking resemblance that JFK's “Inaugural Address,” which we recently read in class, bears to Barrack Obama's speech at the DNC a couple weeks ago, I told them this:

“Heaven help us if the people running this country are original thinkers. My ideas, even my best ones, have only been churning around in my head for five or six years, yours have only had two or three years. At best, an original thinker has had a decade or two of rolling over the same thoughts. Shakespeare has had over three hundred years, Lincoln over a hundred, Homer over three thousand. If I were to teach you only from my own thoughts, I would have exhausted them about two and a half weeks ago. None of us has a long enough lifetime to comprehend the great truths. Heaven help us if we tried.”

Tomorrow I'm going to use the above quotation from Ecclesiastes, we'll see how they respond.

Let me know what you think.

I Woke Up In A Car

Some people get up and run every morning, some people read their Bible, some people even go so far as to floss, but I think the best thing I could possibly do for my day would be to spend half an hour every morning just dancing around to Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger."

Queen of the Road

Gretchen is in the shop. My accident happened over three weeks ago, so it's about time. While the ol' ball and chain is getting a final once-over to determine if she's headed to the big junkyard in the sky, I'm driving what I like to call "The New Hotness." While it isn't much, and definitely not a car that I would consider masculine, it's about a flight* or two up from Gretchen. Right now I'm thinking of calling her Betsy, but maybe I should go for something a little more exotic.

She's a Saturn Vue, whatever the crap that is, and she's BRAND new. I'm talking plastic still on the floor mats, presets still set to deadair, only 15 miles on the odometer, the whole shebang. Plus, she's got XM radio and a CD player, which will be especially useful since I got a package from Mike and Maggie today containing a CD marked "Zach's Culture CD." I can only imagine that it's a copy of ABBA Gold.

After driving a busted-up Gretchen for several weeks, "The New hHtness" felt a little weird at first. Not only was I looking down at people at stop lights, but I had power windows, locks, and an XM radio (which will probably get its own post in the near future). I seriously felt like I had ditched my sandspeeder for an Imperial AT-AT Walker.

The biggest change, however, was actually being able to open up my driver's side door (which I haven't been able to do in a couple weeks). I left school midday to pick up the rental and as I pulled back into the parking lot I actually said out loud "well, now how in the hell do they expect me to climb over that console to get out." There was absolutely no thought in my mind that I could just open my door and exit the vehicle.

In other news I ate lunch with my 8th graders today. It seems strange, but our Executive Director asked us to try to eat with the students once a week. The soccer guys readily accepted me into their ranks and we spent most of the meal daring each other to eat some conncoction that one boy's mother had told him were "wasabi peas." That's right, you guessed it: dried peas covered in wasabi.

Also, I was informed by the lunch crowd that my facial hair was not in line with any known classification. They decided to call it the "mutton chop/soul patch killer combo," though I'm pretty sure it resembles neither.

Also, if you haven't already been over it, review my How George Lucas Stole Star Wars post and then check this: Brett Jordan's Blog


*Get it? A flight is like, a bunch of steps.

Happiness Ltd.

CSprings never ceases to amaze. I'm one of only two patrons at Pike's Perk this afternoon; the other is a well-dressed man, about 6' 4", with sunglasses and a complexion suggesting either Russian or Italian ancestry.

He caught my attention as he walked past the storefront windows and into the shop, but his appearance didn't merit retelling until I saw that he was holding the door open - for nobody. After he was satisfied that his invisible companion had made his way into the shop, he proceeded up to the counter and ordered. Once he took a seat, I finally saw the reason he had held the door. A small dog, previously hidden from view by a couch, hobbled over to where the man was sitting and threw himself onto the floor beneath his owner's chair.

This dog (I think it was a Maltese) was unleashed, had only three legs, and a beard. It looked as though, during periodic trimming, the hair around the dog's face had been allowed to grow out until he had a beard that was a good four inches longer than the rest of his hair and nearly reached the ground. What an odd pair. They deserve to be characters in a novel.

My Cast of Characters

I don't have any friends. None. Colorado Springs, like the sands of Arrakis, only provides enough to survive on and friends are a luxury it refuses to afford me. That doesn't mean, however, that I don't have important people in my life. Here is a quick rundown of some of the notables.

1. Favorite Homeless Guy - throughout the summer I walked two miles to work and back every day through downtown CSprings. It was a really nice way to start my day and, coupled with my evening walks with Brad, it allowed me to get acquainted with the area. While I never dare hope to see someone from downtown more than once, as most are just passing through, there are some constants: the homeless. My favorite, by far, is a fifty-something scruffy-looking black man, who always asks for my change. He always has a creative response, whether you contribute to his cause or not, my favorite being "God bless ya, sir." I once gave him a piece of strawberry pie from the Corner Cafe.

2. Geek on the Street - Early this summer I was met on my walk home by Urkel-incarnate. Before I knew what was happening, the 5' 6", skin and bones, suit-wearing early 90's star was giving me the bro handshake and attempting to sell me a journalism project he did on modern art so that he could "buy batteries for his tape recorder, pens, notebooks, etc." Evidently the aspiring journalist, despite being weird as all get-out, is a fixture of downtown Springs, and writes a weekly column for the local periodical Newspeak.

3. Charismatic Catholic - Catholics are generally known for the austerity of their worship, but one parishioner at Divine Redeemer is breaking the mold. Regardless of the tempo of the hymn and looks of disgust from neighboring pews, she claps, dances, ribbon dances, and creates handmotions for all her favorites. Yesterday I was given the privilege of sharing a pew with her, and what a special Sunday it was. She was sporting a denim vest with F.R.O.G. (Fully Relying on God) written in puffy paint on the back, and her 7-yaer-old daughter made quite a stir when she pulled her entire family from one end of the pew to the other so she could hold my hand during The Lord's Prayer.

4. My Boss - As a junior high English teacher I report directly to both my principal and the head of the English department. One of them is the sweetest lady I have ever met; the other has actually given me nightmares on multiple occasions. Both are there to make sure I don't end up screwing up these kids for life, but their methods of doign so differ vastly. While I'd already been observed by a school board member and a parent, I had no idea what fear could do to a man until the head of the English department, a five-foot tall blonde woman in her 50's, came in and sat down in the back of my class. My throat tightened, I froze up, started sweating, and if she hadn't showed up on a day where my students were giving speeches for most of the hour, I don't know what would have become of me.

5. Gentle Giant - There is a janitor at my school who is the height and build of Lou Ferrigno, can pick up the copy machine and hurl it to the other size of campus, and is at least a head taller than anyone else at the school. He stopped me as I was leaving school on Thursday to give me the most soft spoken and heartfelt thank-you because he saw me picking up paper scraps in my room before I left. Then, on Friday, he happened to eat lunch at the same time as I did and spoke at length about his worries regarding the carpool line, and how he was sure some student would get hurt if the parents didn't learn to slow down and obey the traffic signs.


And if seeing Sarah Palin on TV for the next four years wasn't reason enough to vote Republican, know that we'll also get Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on SNL for the whole term. That's the best reason to be passionate about this election that I've heard yet.

The Future Freaks Me Out

Today I went into work to finish putting together progress reports. After finally filing copies in triplicate and getting a third meal of out the leftovers from pizza Friday (the PTO buys teachers pizza once a month), I headed home to kick back for a bit and finish Dune.

In Defense of Sci-Fi

Dune was great.

I absolutely believe that Science Fiction is the last custodian of prophesy, speculative fiction, and the "fairy story" model, as practiced by J.R.R. Tolkien and George MacDonald. Frank Herbert, the author of Dune, packs into one book the most complete understanding of Western civilization that I have seen since Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. He combines a deeply Roman sense of politics, depicted in the Bene Gesserit (Latin for "he/she manages it well"), a secret society of women who are shapers of history and custodians of the art of politics, with a feudal Galactic Empire reminiscent of the Carolingians, and a superb understanding of Old Testament prophecy and Jewish mysticism depicted in his desert-dwelling Fremen. A large portion of their prophesy is in the form of direct quotation from the book of Isaiah, the Psalms, and the Pentateuch.

Dune also introduces the most complex and complete picture of an alien society that I have ever seen, and in doing so shows us what a future looks like when politics, commerce, religion, and poetry are only practiced by small and exclusive groups.

Science Fiction, as a genre, fills a vacuum left by several now extinct genres. It fills the void of Utopia Fiction, showing us how a paradise, such as that in Huxley's A Brave New World or Thomas More's Utopia, is not always what it seems. Terry Pratchet and Piers Anthony take up where Sterne and Juvenal left off with the genre of satire. Allegory, too, now seems to be the sole possession of Science Fiction.

Most importantly though, while we may not have flying cars yet, or be in imminent danger of succumbing to the rule of Big Brother, we need books like 1984 and shows like Heroes to tell us what might be coming, so that we have time to prepare, both physically and morally.

On September 10th the powers that be flipped the switch of the Large Hadron Collider. In recent years we've actually seen a lot of fruit from the world of "mad science," that is, science without any specific purpose or direction. While knowledge is obviously a good thing and we should absolutely be probing the depths of the natural world at all times, we should do so with deliberate care. Science Fiction, again, gives us a window into the future to see what the result of such labors might and will be, and, as raw science frequently forgets to do, ties these developments directly to humanity, and its detriment or advancement.

Without the permission of the author, here is a great example of amateur Sci-Fi/speculative science at work:

Through a very powerful telescope, like Hubble, we see images of stars, solar systems, and galaxies as if they are young, fresh, and in the process of creation.

But that is not so. We are merely seeing the images that have taken millions of years to get here. By now, these stars may be dead, the solar systems swallowed up into red giants, and the galaxies vanished into the black holes they are surrounded by. Humanity will never see this though, as our solar system and galaxy may indeed swallow itself up before the images of the slow deaths of these distant objects make their way to distant Earth.

In that same sense, if we could get beyond our own solar system's curb of light emmittance, by device or reflection, we could witness the birth of this planet. We could see first hand the creation of the oceans, of the continents separating, and with enough magnification, we could see the dinosaurs, watch the D-Day in real time, watch the Kennedy Assassination, watch our own births. We could see the face of Jesus.

From the right spot and with the right tools every moment of history is still accessible to us. Waves are everywhere, always just waiting to be intercepted. As we send our media, transformed into frequencies, into space, directed at satellites, a large amount of the information bypasses the satellite and just floats out into space. Somewhere, intelligent life in the next solar system might be watching the world premiere of Britney Spears' "Hit Me Baby One More Time," or just getting the news that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.

Science is beautiful and frightening, and just as it was the duty of learned men in simpler times to study the stars for their meaning, to practice their Latin grammar and learn the lessons of Virgil by heart, to learn the art and the beauty of rhetoric, it is our duty to look to the future and prepare for what lies ahead.

Science Fiction keeps this spirit of philosophical and moral speculation alive, because, sooner than we imagine, the questions these books ask will actually be set before us. Will we be ready to answer?

Oh, and don't watch all of this, but here's a clip of what the SNL cast of '79 thought Jeopardy would look like in 1999:



Also, keep in mind that we're only a week or two away from all the big fall premiers and I need someone to host a viewing of the Heroes season opener. You provide the the TV, I'll bring the Man Nachos.

Your Woman

Colorado Springs is one queer city. It's also filled with homosexuals. For the most part I'm perfectly fine with that, but just like when people want to tell me about the way to heaven and they pull out the Mormon Bible, or when a homeless man attempts to convince me that the world is ending, I take the substance and tact of the argument into account before I automatically discredit the source.

Let The Puppy Moo

The Gill Foundation and the Gay and Lesbian Fund (if you look at their websites you'll find they're the exact same organization), in 2006 began a million-dollar ad campaign centered around a lovable little spaniel puppy named Norman. Several TV spots, a multitude of newspaper ads, and innumerable yard signs and bumper stickers which still blanket the city told the story of Norman, the mooing puppy.

In an attempt to woo the general populous of Colorado Springs into supporting the cause for gay marriage, GILL/GALF gave it the face of a cuddly little canine whose only flaw was that he was born different.

When I first came to the Springs, I saw a single yard sign in a neighboring lawn which, next to the adorable mug of Norman, read "Let the Puppy Moo," and I instantly knew what it meant. Only a real bunch of screw-ups could come up with such an obviously ill-conceived argument. One which, in the eyes of a person biased against their cause, instantly identified them despite its obscurity.

The obvious flaw? Puppies aren't born mooing. It doesn't happen. It's absurd.

To try to prove that humans are born homosexual by symbolizing the gay community as a puppy who does something completely and utterly against its nature is something that only the opponents of gay rights would think of doing.

I've been teaching fables and allegory to my 8th graders for a couple weeks now and even they could pick out the flaw in this ad campaign. Using personified animals as symbols or models of human behavior is only an effective technique when the animals actually possess the qualities that you want to highlight in their human counterparts. Foxes are sly. Sheep are followers. Donkeys are stubborn, etc. Puppies, however, don't moo.

That's probably why, if they ever did have a website, which a campaign of that nature would be insane not to have, they took it down after they realized just how ineffective and costly such a campaign would be.

Wow.


On a lighter note:

If you love Pam as much as I do, then you'll love this video. If you don't, well, you'll love it anyway.


P.S. I have no idea whether the person singing today's song of the day is a man or a woman. I've been listening to it since 1993 and I still just have no clue. However it's my favorite gender-confused song, so I thought it was appropriate.

No Diggity

It's late. I've consumed my monthly recreation budget in beer during happy hour with the co-workers. At a coffee house downtown, open until 11pm, I fight the inner battle between listening to Ingrid Michaelson via Pandora and a local artist mutilating the song "Sundown" upstairs. Sipping apple juice ($1.89+my change as a tip) I try to finally unwind from my third week of being a middle school teacher.

Tearing Down The Walls

If I didn't love Abba, poetry, the Lilith Fair, and sucking at sports so much I'd probably be one of those people you see who are in the midst of a race crisis. Baggy pants, rap jargon, trucker cap cocked to the side, and either a left-and-back repetitive head twitch or the periodic urge to interject "know what I'm sayin'" and thumb my nose in daily conversation. Sadly, as demonstrated by my middle name and the fact that I'm blogging and drinking apple juice, I'm pathetically white. Do I envy the racially-gifted such as my former roommate Mr. Mikail Gonzales Hamilton? Yes.

While I admit that I have very little to offer, I would hope that if we ever get to the point where we're picking teams again, I'll get picked up by a race with a bit better sense of rhythm. And while we're talking about it, I have to admit that no song has ever made me forget my white-itude like Blackstreet's "No Diggity."

The heavy blues piano, the ever-flowing verse-alternating rap, the persistent chain gang "hum," and the gospel-worthy chorus make this one of my favorite songs of all time.

On a less racially awkward note my car is on its way to be repaired at last. After taking Gretchen, philogygenous little auto that she is, into the shop yesterday I found out that she may be totaled, which would make my day. I hate that car. If I could get a settlement which could pay off what I owe on her I would jump for joy.

Either way she goes in Monday and I get an insurance-provided rental car for a week. Good times.

Today's question: If you could choose one song to represent "Fall" what would it be? I'm trying to put together an ultimate mix, which will provide titles and themes for posts in the month of October. Let me know.

P.S. You can have my ghetto handshake and "brutha hug" when you pry it from my cold, clammy, white hands.

At least Kermit can identify with my skin color woes:

Say My Name

Today's song of the day can be found here:
http://www.myspace.com/superchunkmusic
It's a remake of Destiny's Child's "Say My Name." Just open the myspace page and either click on the song or hit the "next" button. A serious must-listen. I love a remake that takes the hook, the chord progression, or the back-beat that made a hit what it was and brings the rest of the song in line with that core of pop-goodness.

And sweet mammy-jammies, hot off the presses: http://www.myspace.com/fun

Wow. My world just got rocked- though I forgot my headphones at home so I can't even listen to their demo song. For those of you who don't recognize the momentous occasion that is the above myspace page, it's a new band featuring Nate from The Format and Andrew from Anathallo. Since The Format broke up this year, God rest their souls, I've been stuck in the first stage of grieving: denial. But, with this new project it looks as though some of the old magic might be back, and yes, they're playing at The Intersection.

Looks like they've got a show in Denver too. Let me know if you're in the area and you'd like to join me for a concert.

Alright, back to business:

The Pronoun Game

We all know that girls are the most conniving, unscrupulous, despicable creatures that have ever walked the earth. The Huns, they were bad. Pol Pot, he wasn't the nicest guy. But girls bring a whole new meaning to the words "guerrilla warfare".

While no known individual has compiled an exhaustive catalog of their crimes against humanity, there are brave individuals in isolated pockets who still writhe valiantly within the ever-manicured grip of feminine tyranny.

Today I'd like to talk about a reconnaissance technique that may one day save your life: a foolproof way to detect and defuse the Geneva-prohibited weapon known only as The Pronoun Game.

1. Notice basic patterns of female speech. Under the overwhelming landslide of shoe-talk, hair-talk, Food Network-talk and scattershot gossip often lies a nugget of information. Obviously, most of the time they're just filling the lines with meaningless babble, but every now and again there are coded battleplans embedded in that hurricane of meaningless dribble.

2. Identify keywords. As long as you're dealing with proper nouns you know the pronoun game isn't being played. Just let the Orlando Bloom, Jennifer Aniston, Rachael Ray, etc. slip by unnoticed, but when she stops name-dropping, perk up your ears. Look for phrases like "a friend from work," "a bunch of people," "a study group," and "several of us."

3. Return fire. Anytime a girl speaks indefinitely about the number of people involved in an event or about the gender of her "friend," "coworker," or "classmate," you can be sure that the number she means is two and the gender is male. So, when you reach this juncture of the conversation, say that you had "made plans with a friend" too, and see how she reacts, or just simply ask for the specifics and see how long she can dance around the facts.

4. Everyone plays. There are no exceptions. No matter the girl, no matter the time or circumstances, they are all experts at The Pronoun Game. Why do you think George Orwell wrote his anti-fascist novel Nineteen Eighty-Four? Where did you think he got the idea of Newspeak?

Knowledge is power. Fight the good fight.

Fun Fact: I've tagged more than one post with the label "sexism."

A Day Late

At the library again. I haven't been able to get on the internet (outside of school hours) for the past couple days, so I'm cashing in my credit from the day I got in my car accident and double-posted. I won't count it if you won't.

It seems as though I devoted a bit too much time this weekend to leisure, because I have felt disgustingly unprepared for class every day this week. Every day I manage to pull through, but I feel like I'm just barely getting by.

On the plus side, it looks like my car will soon be fixed. I got a check in the mail from the insurance company of the woman who hit me, and tomorrow I'm going in to talk with the mechanic who will be doing the repairs and he's going to see if he can cut down on their estimate so that I can keep a little bit of the insurance check for myself. Hopefully that conversation goes well.

Also, last night was my first RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) class. After having some trouble finding the building, I sat down in a semi-circle with about a dozen other individuals including three instructors, two sponsors, and a handful of candidates/catechumens. The average age in the group was probably upwards of thirty-five and I was the only unmarried adult (there were two sixteen year-olds). So, once again, probably not the place I'm going to be making friends... The class itself was alright, though a bit too touchy-feely for my tastes. I don't want to circumvent the system or anything, but I wish there was a more rigorous route I could take. I expected homework out of the Catechism, saints' lives to read, rituals and historical data to memorize, etc. Instead the meeting was really just the sort of "feelings" session that I have previously found so refreshingly absent from the Catholic church.

Oh well. I'm sure I'll find a way to get what I need to out of it.

In the near future I'd like to:
1. Respond to Pat's comment on yesterday's post.
2. Comment on Mike and Maggie's blogs.
3. Put down some thoughts on Sarah Palin.
4. Explain what I meant when I said that Julia Child and I disagreed about the nature of art.
5. Attempt to start a blog centered around reading and reacting to essays by notable authors a couple times a week.

One last thing: yesterday a student told me about a website called FreeRice.com where you can identify vocabulary (in English, French, Spanish and German) and for every word you get correct, the sitemakers donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program.

While I have implicit trust in neither this website, nor in the UN, it is fun, and it couldn't hurt. My best vocabulary level is 51. Let me know if you beat that. These words are HARD.

Fun Fact: I've tagged more than one post with the label "empty promises".

Shot In The Dark

Ah, blogging from the laundromat. Strange how the scent of dryer sheets can make it okay that they never clean the floors. The company is odd: a man asking me for the 70 cents he needs to take the bus to Old Colorado Springs, whom I oblige in true Franciscan fashion, but know that he could have walked there in the time it took to wait for that 70 cents of charity; in and out go a wide array of twenty-somethings either living in dorms or stuck in the same sort of low-rent apartment where I hang my hat; every once in awhile the out-of-place harried looking middle-class mom who suffered a washer breakdown and has three kids to dress for school tomorrow. There's no wireless so I fire-up AbiWord on craptop and word-process away.

If I were a wealthy entrepreneur I think I would own a laundromat just as a self-supporting way of feeding my latent magazine addiction, though I would replace Newsweek, O, and Fashion Monthly with poetry and archeology journals. I imagine that if I actually paid someone to keep the place clean and only held twenty or so subscriptions, I could break even.

'Twas Brillig and the Slithy Toves...

With so many authors to cover in our introductory unit on fables, so many books to give out, and so many diagnostic tests to give, my kids have been taking way too many notes and doing way too little classroom discussion. So, to spice things up a bit, I decided that our first poetry unit would be on Lewis Carroll. Everyone knows Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking-glass, but it's always nice to come back to childhood classics and really see the beauty in them. In the case of Lewis Carroll, a method emerges from his madness after reading his poetry in large doses, especially when you realize that he was a mathematician and a professor of Logic and Mathematics at Cambridge for over half his life.

But, if there's one thing I love more than poetry, it's The Muppets, and as usual YouTube was one step ahead of me:

While Carroll appreciates nonsense, he resorts to nonsense because of a belief that on the other side of an experience, in the world of Alice, one is better able to see truth. I like that. It's why his artistic vision is valuable and enduring. His is just one more way to "tell all the Truth / but tell it slant," as Emily Dickinson put it.

Out of a complimentary Newsweek, as my tee's and dress socks enter their final cycle, I'm reading an interview with Woody Allen that actually reminded me a lot of Lewis Carroll. Woody Allen, it seems, despite a successful film career, a decade-long marriage, two beautiful adopted children, and all the artistic and professional freedom a man could dream of, isn't happy.

During the interview, Allen calls life "a meaningless little flicker," says that he "lies awake at night, terrified of the void," and that he "can't really come up with a good argument to choose life over death."

Despite using his films as something "to be focused on... ...so I don't see the big picture," he claims that in the end pleasures, however many and however good in themselves, are ultimately empty forms of distraction. In the words of the interviewer "the moments don't add up to redemption," and in the words of Allen "it doesn't accrue to anything."

So, how does someone who admits that he has made no progress on alleviating this nihilistic vision that he claims to have held from age five continue to entertain us after decades of movie-making? I have no clue. Before reading this article I was pretty convinced that at some time I would have to make it a point to take in a wide sampling of Woody Allen's films, but now I wonder if it would be worthwhile to do so.

Can a great artist really hold that nothing is eternal? That there are no truths and no constants? That human nature is ever-changing? That we're all that we see and seem is just a dream within a dream? Or, is Woody Allen just another form of distraction: a romance novel, a soap opera, a Harry Potter knock-off, and another sequel to High School Musical?

See you next month you great quarter-stealing monstrosity. Tu illegitime magne!!

And, because you were all waiting with bated breath, my favorite shows of all time in no particular order are: The Muppet Show, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Scrubs, The Red Green Show, and Two Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

The picture that begins this post is of local legend: "Uncle Wilbur," an animatronic fountain that, on Saturdays and Sundays, plays music and launches water on the hour.

It's Saturday in blog-time and I'm at the Colorado Springs Public Library. It's a small building, constructed in the style of Kresge- that is, done in the 70's-style architecture which is undoubtedly the product of architects of the 70's attending college in the 60's. Everything is angular and flourescent. In any given room the walls are made up of either 90% windows or contain none at all, with no comfortable middle ground.

As I sat outside of the library this morning waiting for it to open, I wondered why I had left my house at 9am, knowing that the library wouldn't open until 10. I realized that I wanted to be here early because of the interesting crowd that opens the library every day. It's a pretty even mix of stay-at-home moms and their young children, trenchcoat-wearing 30 year-olds living in their parent's basement who just come for the free internet usage, and homeless people looking to spend the day in the law library or reading 'O' magazine. A client who can and desires to read is a notable exception.

Today I decided to settle in for the long-haul. I brought a bag full of school work to grade, a couple books to read and even a sack lunch. Of course, since I walked the mile from my house, I forgot the three items most necessary to my getting anything done today, but I'll make the most of my time here, maybe eat lunch in a park and after I get my fix of the internet, I'll head home.

Update: Turns out a human can only exist in the sub-zero temperatures of a public library (without wearing three flannel coats) for about 2 and 1/2 hours. I bailed out at lunchtime, ate in the park, and headed home. After about four hours of grading (yikes!) I decided to have some me-time.

Me-time, since I have no friends and no hobbies, looks a lot like me wandering around CSprings waiting for something to happen to me, and that's pretty much what it is. I charge up the ol' ipod, pump up the jams and wander around downtown looking like a low-class college student, or a bum who stole an ipod. I noticed last night that when I can't hear the world around me, I tend to smell it. From cheap perfume, to the garlicy-wine scent of a group of businessmen, to flowery teenage girl smells, to rancid B.O. and everything in between, CSprings really has it going on - odiferously at least.

Also, I realized midway through my walk that if I was actually smelling people then I was no longer under the tyranny of the first cold of the year. WooT!

This week marks my first session of RCIA, so y'all will recieve a full report on that come Wednesday. Also, I'll be trying to cook up something from The Joy of Cooking and something from No More Mac and Cheese this week. So, two more bachelor-tested, blog-approved recipes coming soon.

Anyone tried man-nachos yet?

Keep Breathing

It's Friday afternoon as I write this. I'm sitting in a little coffee shop at the corner of Boulder street and Tejon (pronounced Tay-hone) - and two of my favorite locals just happened upon me and asked me to go across the street for a drink. As I've already settled in with my latte, I'm going to make them wait a bit.

There's no place like a coffee house on a cold day, and while it is certainly still T-shirt season in CSprings, my house was a too-cool 60 degrees when I got home from work today. Since Retriarus (the god of the internet) has cast a lingering stigma over my house, I decided to suit-up Zach-style (those Vans that I've owned since senior year of high school, my Gerber Scout Camp '99 t-shirt, my too-tight laundry day pants and that brown zippy thing that I wear, you know the one I'm talking about) and head to the local shrine of Retriarus to start picking up what he's putting down.

Oh and Brad, I want to you to know that I just started an Ingrid Michaelson station on your Pandora account, you were already logging in on craptop....

My Life in French

As I mentioned yesterday I've been reading Julia Child's memoir My Life in France. For those who don't know, Wikipedia tells me that Julia's resume includes several cookbooks, a number of Food Network-type shows, and acting as a spy for the OSS in Indochina. Rock on. Also at 6'2" she's pretty much the most intimidating homemaker to ever walk the earth.

My Life in France recounts the years spent with her husband in post-WW2 France that led to her personal and professional interest in cooking. Overall she's a bit pretentious and we've had our disagreements about politics and art, but I'm 150 pages in and I'm honestly enjoying the book. Not only do I enjoy translating the French that she's too pretentious to translate into a variety of dirty words , but I have a pretty good feeling that reading Julia Child while I eat my own dinner makes it taste better. If Julia Child is the garlic and shalots of dinner-reading, then Aristotle is definitely the "crap, the top fell off the seasoning salt mid-shake". Some books are just better spices than others.

I've never seen the value in biography/autobiography, but it's refreshing to read writing with an entirely different aim and tact than I'm used to. I also found out that she did some work on the newest edition of The Joy of Cooking which has recently come into my possession. Really, I was just starting to like the old bag when I read the back flap of her book's dustcover this morning and realized that she's been dead for four years.

Also, I've actually been reading certain excerpts from The Joy of Cooking, including the chapter on wine which, in its description of Pinot Noir, states that: "If the Holy Grail were ever found, Pinot Noir would be the wine they'd drink from it."

Wow. That's a pretty bold statement. I'm pretty sure that if The Holy Grail were actually discovered, nobody would drink from it, and if they did it would be reserved for Easter mass given by the pope at the Vatican. Bold and brazen words from the ever blasphemous and anarchical world of professional gourmets.

Also:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIKE!!!!
I vividly recall Mike's birthday freshman year when I, attempting to please the palate of my culturally diverse new roommate, got a lasagna dinner to-go from Savarino's and brought it back to Galloway while Mike slept off his first week of college classes.

Have a good one Mike; I trust that the ethnicity of your birthday dinner is the same, but that the quality and the company greatly improved.