The Good Word

New Site

2009-01-02T11:04:00.002-05:00

I've moved to www. zgoodword.com, change your bookmarks and subscribe to the new RSS.

You'll be auto-redirected there in 6 seconds.

Hope you'll stay tuned for the new year. Updates will be coming soon.

Brand New Colony

2008-12-23T10:18:00.005-05:00

I love Michigan. Every blessed-by-God's-own-hand square inch of it.

So far I've:

- Gotten into Det. Met. two and a half hours late (thanks to Den. Int.)

- Thankfully run into Leroy (whose cellphone had died) within my first 10 minutes out of the terminal

- Taken the wonderfully treacherous roads up to Hubbardston (arrival: 5am)

- Been greeted by Pat and Brad at the Osborne home, where Leroy and I spent the night

- Served a huge breakfast by Mrs. Osborne

- Trekked up to Carson City, had spiced cider with mom and sister

- Sojourned to the Leroy Lair, for puppies and guppies, plus Leroy's Mammy gave us some liver

- After a brief stop at Leroy's apartment, we arrived at Clare and were treated to chicken noodle soup and Vivian's homemade sugar cookies

- Watched several episodes of a Dirty Jobs marathon before heading to bed

- Woke up, ate a healthy breakfast and just chatted and played with the kids until lunch (Pumpkin/Chicken Red Chili, a new Vivian creation)

- Set out for Grand Rapids in the Leroymobile

- Hung out with Brian, met his new kitty

- Had dinner (Mexican) with Ashley and Kendra, then checked Auntie Lisa, Ben and Alex, Katie, and Kiki off my shopping list

- Headed back to Brad's apt. for Dance Dance Revolution and the "Leroy gets handsy when he drinks game" (much closer to Tag or Blind Man's Bluff than an actual drinking game, easily as exhausting as DDR)

Bear hugs to everyone we've seen so far: Leroy, Brad, Pat, Mrs. Osborne, Stephanie, Brian O., Bob, mom, Katie, Leroy's Mammy, Lil' Leroy, Vivian, Ben, Alex, Kiki, Kathy, Jim, baby Joseph (neice/nephew number 14), Tim, Brian, Kendra, and Ashley.

Finally, for the benefit of the group, I have some of the most beautiful metaphors ever used in love lyrics. I especially like "I'll be the platform shoes to undo what heredity's done to you."

I'll be the grapes fermented,
Bottled and served with the table set

In my finest suit like a perfect gentlemen.
I'll be the fire escape that's bolted to the ancient brick
Where you will sit and contemplate your day

I'll be the waterwings that save you if you start drowning
In an open tab when your judgement's on the brink.
I'll be the phonograph that plays your favorite
Albums back as your lying there drifting off to sleep...
I'll be the platform shoes and undo what heredity's done to you...
You won't have to strain to look into my eyes.
I'll be your winter coat buttoned and zippedstraight to the throat
With the collar up so you won't catch a cold.

I want to take you far from the cynics int his town
And kiss you on the mouth
We'll cut out bodies free

From the tethers of this scene,
Start a brand new colony
Where everything will change,
We'll give ourselves new names (identities erased)
The sun will heat the ground
Under our bare feet in this brand new colony.

That's "Brad New Colony" by The Postal Service, one of my favorite CDs of all time.

Here's the song set to a slideshow, enjoy:

P.S. I know Michael, Pat, Natalie, and Heidi have found their way back to the blog, but is there anyone else out there? Comment and let me know how your Christmas season is going.

Lost (I'm All About the Wordplay)

2008-12-19T22:55:00.006-05:00

"See Martin, see Malcolm
See Biggie, see Pac,
See success and its outcome
See Jesus, see Judas
See Caesar, see Brutus,
See success is like suicide
If you succeed,
Prepare to be crucified"
- Jay-Z (from Coldplay's "Lost", feat. Jay)

I have to ask: Do Jay-Z's typical fans even understand his lyrics? By far the best word-players in the industry right now are Barenaked Ladies, Relient K, and Motion City Soundtrack, but since no one listens to them the mantle falls to the rappers. Mantle falls? Did we even understand that allusion?

What about Kanye?:

"Dressed smart like a London bloke.
Before he speak his suit bespoke.
And you thought he was cute before.
Look at this P Coat, Tell me he's broke.
And I know you're not into all that.
And I'm feelin' like Mike at his baddest.
The Pips at they gladest."
- Kanye West (From Estelle's "American Boy")

Probably the most successful song of the year and it contains back-to-back references to Michael Jackson and Gladys Knight and The Pips. Right on.

English is the most versatile and extensive language on the planet, with the richest literary history, the most vocabulary, and fewest innate grammatical structures. It's a gold mine, and why more people aren't excited to search out Shakespeare, Melville, Poe, G.K. Chesterton, The Beatles, and pop music to find out just what our language is capable of is beyond me.

Even if it's just a fart joke in Moby Dick that I didn't get until the fourth time around, the greatest literature that mankind has ever written is worth taking time to understand and it pays dividends.

The fart joke:

"For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim)..."

And if you just need some visual stimulation, this is truly awesome (click to enlarge).

Last Christmas

2008-12-19T21:36:00.004-05:00

So. Last night I had my first excursion to a new bargain bookstore having decided that I should do something special for my kids and get them each a hand-picked classic novel for Christmas. Add this to the fact that I've had them bring in stockings over the past several days to be filled by their classmates with treats, and you have me being, once again, the sweetest teacher ever.

I put some work into it too. Not only did I flirt excessively with the girl working at the bookstore to get a bulk price, but I matched up each of my homeroom students with a worthwhile literary work (Of Mice and Men, Anne of Green Gables, Our Town, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Hobbit, Little Women, etc).

The end product was thus: sixteen kids with stockings filled with literary goodness and sugary grossness.
And so, the kids opened their stockings, discovered the treasures that they held (the kids brought in homemade candies, cookies, sour straws, hand lotion for the girls, hackey-sack-type balls for the guys, little light-up toys, and so on)...
And guess what?!? They were complete jerks about it. Seriously. I got one thank-you and about a hundred complaints along the lines of "Ms. Brogan's class is doing breakfast, why aren't we doing breakfast," "I'm telling Dr. Prentice that you gave us a party, that way he will HAVE to cancel his lesson plans," "What? I got Wheelock's Latin? (a $30 book), what am I supposed to do with this?"

It sucked. They whined through an awesome holiday party, they whined through getting to watch To Kill a Mockingbird (starring Gregory Peck) and they whined their ways right down the hall and out the door.

Lucky for them I don't have to see their smelly little selves for more than two weeks.

Sheesh.

On the bright side, one little girl sang "Christmas Shoes," one of my two least favorite Christmas songs, but she is so cute that it was worth it. I've got a video clip if you'd like me to post it. Send your requests.

My other least favorite Christmas song is "Mary Did You Know?" mostly because the answer is a simple, resounding "YES". Yes, she did know. An angel told her. Did you even read the Christmas story? Get a life.

24 hours from now I'll be on a too-hot, stuffy plane surrounded by sweating fat people bound for the murder-capital of the world, which, if all remains as it is, will be under ten to twelve inches of snow and dense cloud cover.

The sound quality isn't good, but if anyone should have attempted to remake this song, it was jimmyeatworld.

Someday Soon

2008-12-18T21:08:00.006-05:00

Today was the PTO teacher appreciation lunch.

For the 12 teachers in the 7th and 8th grades the parents provided: enchiladas, four kinds of bread, bread sticks, two kinds of ravioli, three soups, chili, four or five kinds of potato/nacho/bean salad, three different flavors of chicken wings (probably 50 of each kind), sub sandwiches, an entire turkey complete with stuffing and all the desserts you could handle.

It was decadent. Especially since I don't usually eat much for lunch.

So, in preparation for writing a bit about Walking Tall (action movie starring The Rock) I did a Google Image search. Turns out it had not just one, but two sequels. Both starring Kevin Sorbo of TV's Hercules: The Legendary Journeys fame. That's when you know your film was a real winner: when you have two sequels in which you downgrade your star from a pro-wrestler to a washed up actor for a USA(the network, not the country)-only drama.

IMDB also thinks that the two sequels were released in the same year...

Anyway, I liked the movie, but, like I Am Legend, it never really went anywhere.

I liked it mostly because it had The Rock in it, but also because it depicts how The Rock's character (Chris Vaughn) returns to his small-town home after a eight year stint in the army only to find that everything he once loved about his hometown has been destroyed. The lumber mill which used to employ most of the town's residents has been shut down and the economic center has become a crooked casino, which both employs Vaughn's ex-girlfriend as a stripper and fronts a meth lab which sells to his teenage nephew.

I guess I like it because it attempted to portray what it's like to open your eyes one day to see just how screwed up the world you thought you knew really is, and how difficult it is to do something about it.

Maybe Hamlet said it best: "The time is out of joint, O cursed spite! That ever I was born to set it right."

Walking Tall claims to be inspired by a true story, which seems unbelievable to me, but if it is true I would love to read more about the story. The idea of one man redeeming a community like that is inspiring.

This post will probably fall on deaf ears, I doubt anyone has seen the movie, but the point is that it affected me because I miss home and if I'm going to be doing good in the world I'd like to be doing it for people I know and love. And, while I don't doubt that in some way I'm being prepared for that where I am, it's difficult to wait.

And if that was boring, he's a YouTube of clips from The Office:

P.S. I'm totally winning at Christmas. More tomorrow. With pictures.

Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf

2008-12-17T22:08:00.004-05:00

"'We're on a boat.'
'Yes, I know'
'Do you think death could possibly be a boat?'
'Oh no... No. Death is not.... Death isn't. Take my meaning? Death is the ultimate negative. Not being. You can't not be on a boat.'
'I've frequently not been on boats.'
'No. What you've been is not on boats.'"
- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

T-minus two days until break. How ready to be done am I? So ready that I suggested to the younger teachers that we should do a midweek happy hour. How ready to be done are they? They took me up on the offer. $2 pints and half-price appetizers are a great way to end the day. Beer and nachos are a great way to avoid grocery shopping.

Since I discovered the library a couple days ago I've been trying to catch up on movies I've meant to see. So far this includes The Squid and The Whale, Charlie Wilson's War, I Am Legend, and Rozencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead. I've enjoyed all of them so far, except I Am Legend. I just didn't understand why that movie didn't go anywhere. Will Smith only kills like three zombie/vampire/ghouls, he never figures out that they are still sentient (one z/v/g not only comes into the sunlight to save his mate, but he traps Will Smith in a copycat snare and then pursues him to his house), and the dog, who upstages the fresh prince as only a domesticated animal can, dies. Double-U the F.

Today I checked out Walking Tall, because if there's one thing I love more than stock-plot action movies, it's stock-plot action movies starring professional wrestlers.

And now, your moment of Zen:

Feel It All

2008-12-17T07:58:00.003-05:00

You guys remember my award show, The Goodies, right? Where I give candy-themed awards in various categories based on how people, events, and media have affected my life in the previous year?

Well, Jenn from Sunflower Management, the physical embodiment of my accursed apartment landlord-conglomerate, clinched the nomination for the Bit-O-Honey (most diabolical influence) award yesterday with "pipes in downstairs frozen, no hot water in Zach's apartment."

Add this to her previous hits "Zach and Brad live in a state park and get snowed on while no one cleans our apartment like they said they had to," "oops, forgot you were signing your lease today, see you never," and "no heat for two days in your apartment on the coldest days Colorado has seen in a hundred years," and I'm pretty sure she's got this one in the bag.

M79

2008-12-15T19:16:00.004-05:00

M79 (em-sev-in-tee-ny-nuh): 1. A song by the band Vampire Weekend, the title of which refers to a highway... somewhere... 2. A grenade launcher used in the Vietnam War, also known as the "Wombat Gun."
Tonight is the finale of the first story arc of Heroes season 3, not that anyone really cares at this point. Despite the fact that Heroes has become, as io9.com aptly described it, "the show with no consequences," I still think it has the greatest potential of anything on T.V. to become meaningful, quality entertainment, though perhaps it never will be again.

Obviously, I'm not a fan of Hiro Nakamura as the "human reset button," and time travel is never a good idea, but the real crime is the fact that none of the Petrelli's are dead yet (no, I don't believe in the ending last week's episode).

Even though I've spent the last eight months transitioning into post-college life, being thrown headlong into a potential career, and adjusting to life in a new state and timezone, I feel like I'm heading back to Michigan this Saturday with very little to show for it. I've lost some hair. Had my car and my bike destroyed. Experienced six months of 8th graders being my primary social contact. Gained some weight. But not much else.

The following is a poem by the lovely Hannah Agauas, reprinted here without here permission, though with a strong recommendation to check out her blog: agauas.blogspot.com

My third can of Diet Rite,
My millionth time to waste the night,
Shame to me is sixty cents
Clanging down the plastic vents and
Squeezing into tighter pants.

On the bright side somebody told me that The Killers, who for reasons unknown are on top of my list, are playing a midnight show, so I decided to leave the bourbon on the shelf and I sweet talked a friend of mine (though she did it under the gun) to buy me a ticket for that glamorous rock and roll show. (There are 10 titles of Killers songs in that last sentence)

Seriously though. Killers concert. 17th of Jan. Be there or C-squared.

LYLAS

Hideaway

2008-12-14T13:21:00.005-05:00

Are we there yet?

Five more days of school. That's 24 classes, assuming we don't have any two-hour delays. I won't go so far as to hope for a snow day.

So far my Christmas break (I'll be in MI from Dec. 20 to Jan 3rd) includes:

1. House-sitting in Clare while Vivian enjoys an Alabama Christmas
2. Guild New Years
3. Young Life Christmas in Hillsdale
4. Some time in GR with Natalie, The Richardses and possibly Ashley
5. The Motor City Bowl with Brad on the 26th
6. All day shopping trip in Lansing before Christmas (I'm surely not going to pay $15, $40, $100, for additional checked bags)

If you've got something to add to the itinerary just let me know.

Yesterday I had my first Saturday in a coffee house with my new laptop, and in addition to the Kanye disappointment I downloaded: The Weepies, The Fleet Foxes, the complete Killers discography, Viva La Hova - the Coldplay/Jay-Z mash-up, Vampire Weekend, T.V. on the Radio, the new Feist CD, and a String Quartet Tribute to Norah Jones.

Overall, I've gleaned some good songs from each (excepting Kanye), and really enjoyed Feist and The Killers. I'll do my best to broadcast what I've found over the next couple days.

I also realized that my new laptop has a DVD player and so I headed to the library where I picked over the well-gleaned racks for something that wasn't a documentary and ended up with Charlie Wilson's War and The Squid and The Whale. I watched both yesterday before going to a poker party, which involved much drinking, tons of food, and very little poker.

Charlie Wilson's War was entertaining, despite Julia Robert's face. Tom Hanks is always fun to watch, especially when he's a womanizing, alcoholic congressman from Texas. As for The Squid and The Whale, I'm not sure yet what I thought of it. I love Jeff Daniels, and I was relieved that this wasn't another Royal Tennenbaums/Rushmore movie, but it was still mighty strange.

Which reminds me. It's almost time for my annual reading of Moby Dick.

Welcome To Heartbreak

2008-12-13T16:11:00.003-05:00

New laptop (courtesy of Mike and Maggie). New music (courtesy of torrentz.com, so sue me). New sense of disappointment and regret (courtesy of Kanye West's new album 808s and Heartbreaks).

This CD is probably the worst thing I've ever come across. I think it might be a prank. I'm pretty sure that either Kayne is singing (rather than rapping) the entire thing in a distorted voice that sounds exactly like Lil' Wayne, or that Lil' Wayne put the entire album together and released it in Kayne's name.

Either way the thing is a bad Usher CD. Please, oh please, if anyone out there has had the strength to listen to the whole album refer me to the track that will prove me wrong.

Also, it turns out I'm so culturally out of step these days that I didn't realize Viva La Hova wasn't an official album, and was angry when I couldn't buy it on iTunes. Turns out the only music I was willing to download legally today is the only music that is only available illegally.

Let's hope Jay-Z can bring me back from this state of utter musical/emotional impotence that Kayne's pseudo-R&B, sorry excuse for a Ne-yo CD has put me in.

Wow.

No Fear

2008-10-18T15:23:00.005-05:00

So. It has been a tumultuous couple weeks. I don't know why I've been so down about it, but hopefully I can recuperate this weekend and be ready to live the last two weeks of Halloween to the fullest.

Bored to Death

The last week or so has been strange. I've continued to have problems with my insurance/loan situation. Once again I called my loan company only to find out that they still haven't received any sort of payment from the insurance company.

I've decided also that I won't be attending the CAMWS (Classical Association of the Midwest and South) conference next month.

CAMWS invited me to read my paper "Ripped Up By The Roots: Sophocles' Antigone and The Fall of the House of Oedipus" at their 2008 convention, but because of this car situation and every other blow Colorado has dealt me I don't feel confident enough about my school work or my finances to take off a couple days and attend the convention in Asheville. Also, the fact that G-mail marked a month's worth of CAMWS communication as Spam didn't help either.

I've also decided that if I can get back into blogging I'm at least going to give myself one day off per week, beginning in November. As it stands I owe you all way too many posts about Halloween to cut myself any slack before the end of the month.

I got back to RCIA (basically adult confirmation classes for the Catholic Church) this week after missing two weeks in row. I'm still not overly pleased at how painfully elementary the class is and how much time we spend sharing our "feelings," but I guess I just have to bite the bullet, unless I can find a more ambitious class in town.

Today is devoted to catching up on grading and reading Dracula. I've finished the second and third books in the Eragon series only to find that there's a fourth, and I'm none too pleased about it. While the books are good, and if my 8th graders are all reading them I don't think it's a waste of time if I do to, I can't help but cringe when I see the Christopher Paolini is in league with Phillip Pullman (author of The Golden Compass) whose entire purpose in writing children's books is to undermine the theory of fantasy and fairy stories developed by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein.

Well, this has been scattered, but at least I'm blogging.

Let me know how you've been and remind me if I owe you a phone call.

Your Halloween video for the day:

P.S. If you've never seen the musical episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer you can't consider yourself cultured. The same holds true for the musical episode of Scrubs.

Pray to St. Dracula for a musical episode of Heroes.

Even If It Kills Me

2008-10-16T07:44:00.002-05:00

I've got a lot of things to do tonight,
I'm so sick of making lists, of things I'll never finish...

And the sad truth of the matter is,
I'll never get over it, but I'm gonna try,
To get better and to overcome each moment
In my own way.

And I sure want to get back on track,
And I'll do whatever it takes.
Even if it kills me...

A Rush of Blood to The Head

2008-10-12T11:02:00.004-05:00

"There seemed a strange stillness over everything; but aas I listened I hearad asa if from down below in the valley the howling of wolves. The Count's eyes gleamed, and he said: ---
'Listen to them - the children of the night. What music they make!'"

- Dracula, Bram Stroker

Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies, Oh My!

There has been a thick fog over Colorado Springs for the last 48 hours or so. It has been rainy and miserable and before this morning I hadn't seen the mountains in 3 days due to lack of visibility. But when the sun rose this morning I could see that Pike's Peak was blanketed with snow all the way down to the tree line.

I finished the second book in the Inheritance Trilogy (the first of which is the novel Eragon) in my ongoing endeavor to read the books my students are reading. In that same vein I got permission last week to start a book club for my 8th graders.

This book club would meet for two lunches at the end of the month. At the first we will discuss a book of the 8th grader's choosing and at the second I will provide lunch and we will discuss a book of my choosing. For the month of October the books are:

8th graders: Twilight, the first book in the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyers
Mr. Good: Dracula, by Bram Stoker

I'm about 100 pages into Dracula and it's really starting to get good. Evidently, this book is not only the original vampire novel, but also the original werewolf novel, and the original... oh, what do you call people who like comsuming other creatures merely because they are destroying a life? People who would eat flies and spiders, or would feed flies to spiders so that when they ate the spiders the would be comsuming a dozen lives rather than just one? Anybody know? ...well, it's got one of those too.

At this point all these creatures are sort of converging on London and preparing to begin feeding off the innocent populous. Good stuff.

Well, I'm off to church. Have a spooky Sabbath.

Also, since there's a Halloween dance coming up at my school and of course I'm chaperoning I need your suggestions on:

1. What I should make for our Dracula book club lunch.
2. What I should choose for our November book.
3. What I should dress up as when I chaperone the upcoming Halloween dance. Keep in mind Ms. Brogan's dress code prevents me from displaying "weapons or gang signs."

Your Halloween clip: Jonathan Harker first encounter's Count Dracula

Abracadabra

2008-10-11T15:26:00.003-05:00

I just finished my seventh week of school and the 8th graders just took their unit test over George Orwell's Animal Farm. Despite how much I enjoy my kids, how much I enjoyed having Mallory here, and how well everything has worked out with my move thus far, I feel discontent. Maybe it's just because I haven't blogged in awhile. We'll see.

Lifetime Incompetence Award

If you've been keeping up on the blog here, you'll remember that I was in a car accident in late August. Click here to read the post. That was the last day of classroom preparation I had before school started the next Monday.

Those of you who know me know that I have lots of luck. Good and bad. Things never go "alright" for me. They are always terrible or great. I will now recount for you the tale of how fate gave me the most incompetent insurance agent who has ever lived.

While still at the scene of my accident, as my arm was bleeding and the firetruck (because when you tell 911 dispatch the cancel the ambulance they send a firetruck) was just rolling up, I was already on the phone with Progressive reporting my claim.

At the time I was really excited about the fact that Colorado doesn't do No-Fault Insurance. That meant that the woman who blindly pulled out into moving traffic and hit me would have to pay for the damages and my insurance rates wouldn't go up, unlike in Michigan where when an old man hits my parked car, sets of the alarm, pulls forward, and then backs into it again, I end up paying a couple hundred bucks more per year for insurance.

Unfortantly, because Colorado doesn't do No-Fault Insuranace I've had to spend the last 9 weeks dealing with some jacktard that has no interest in keeping me happy at all. And here's what happened:

Week 1: I call Mr. W and try to arrange a time for him to look at my car and do an estimate.

Week 2: He misses the appointment we made, shows up the next day when I'm not at home, drops his business card on my driver's seat (through the non-existent window) and leaves.

Week 3: I receive, not a phone call or an e-mail telling me what's going on, but a check for $4,500. I wonder if I should contest the amount and call my Progressive agent who tells me a of a reliable body shop to take the car to.

Week 4: I finally get ahold of Mr. W again and let him know that if I'm going to take my car in to get repaired that I need a rental. The guy at the body shop ends up negotiating the rental with Enterprise because Mr. W can't seem to figure out how. After looking at my car for about 10 minutes Sam, the guy at the body shop, says "there is a lot more damage here than he put on this estimate... ...he also put about 12 items on here that don't even exist on a Chevy Aveo..."

Week 5: Mr. W, after telling me he would be back down to give my car another look, goes on vacation for a week. Both Sam and I call his office a couple times a day until we find out, on Wednesday, that he won't be back in the office until the next Tuesday.

Week 6: I drive a rental around.

Week 7: I play phone tag with Mr. W's secretary. The XM free trial ends on my rental. Mr. W takes another 3 days worth of vacation.

Week 8: Voicemail message from Mr. W "uh... Mr. Good it looks like we're going to have to declare a total loss on your vehicle, get in touch with me as soon as you can." I loot Gretchen's corpse and wait to hearfrom Mr. W about a settlement. Mr. W tells me that they'll give me 10 G's for Gretchen and I agree. He claims he'll take care of it from there.

Week 9: Voicemail message from Mr. W: "uh.... Mr. Good I'm going to need you to return your rental in the next 48 hours..." I panic and start looking for cars.
Voicemail from my loan company: "Mr. Good, this is your final notice, we need to reposess your vehicle." I call Mr. W and find that he has yet to contact my loan company, which means I'm two payments late and they still don't know my car has been totalled.
Letter from 5/3 bank, received on October 10th: "Mr. Good your account has been overdrawn. Please pay $170 in fees before Oct. 8 or your account will accrue further charges." I call Progressive and tell them that my car was totalled and that the insurance payment shouldn't have hit my account, much less my Hillsdale account. They are nice and give me back two months worth of insurance payments that I wouldn't have incurred had Mr. W called them to tell them the car was totalled. I buy a new car, return the rental (one month later), and leave a voicemail for Mr. W telling him to just void the check he originally wrote me and pay off my damn loan like he said he would.

Yesterday: Voicemail message from Mr. W: "uh... Mr. Good now that our business is settled I need you to go ahead and return your rental car." I called him back, told him I returned the car 48 hours ago and that he needed to pay off my loan. He said he had made a payment to the company, but that I would have to take care of the rest out of the original check he wrote me.

Last night: I answer the phone, "Hello, is this Mr. Good?"
"Yes it is..."
"This is Detective M I wanted to confirm that you are the owner of a '06 Chevy Aveo and I need to know where that vehicle is."
"I was the owner, the car is totalled and if the insurance company hasn't claimed it yet, it's at Expert's Only Collision in Colorado Springs, Colorado."
"Could you giv me the number of the body shop? It seems that Farm Bureau Insurance out of Denver thinks it's a little suspicious that your car is in the name of a deceased person. I've already talked to your step-mother."

Ich habe du nicht gesheisst.

I kid you not. That's actually what's been happening. I've had to buy a car on the assumption that I would some day get reimbursed for my accident, I've had to talk to people who wanted to reposess a totalled car, people who were insuring a totalled car, people who thought that I had stolen said car and totalled it, and Mr. W who probably still doesn't remember my name.

But here's the new ride:

And here's your Halloween clip of the day:

I'm going to head to a coffee house later today to watch the episode of Heroes I missed this past Monday. Hopefully that will put me in a better mood.

Help?!?

2008-10-07T07:26:00.002-05:00

I've gotten the 24 hour (unfair and I'm going to contest it) notice on my rental, despite not having received my settlement check yet.

That means I have to get a new car pronto, which may be near impossible as I guess I don't even have the credit necessary to obtain a Sears card...

Last night I looked at several vehicles, but because Colorado is the only place in the U.S. that still has enough money to kayak, ski, and buy $500 running shoes despite the economic state of our union the prices here aren't great.

I don't want more debt. I just want to put up a $1500 down-payment, get a vehicle, drive it for 50,000 and be done with it.

I've found a 96 Suburu Outback with only 77,000 miles that I can get out the door for $7,500, but that still doesn't seem great to me.

Help.

Bad Moon Rising

2008-10-05T19:00:00.002-05:00

I was thinking as I drove home from work on Friday, that even if cars end up eating the ozone layer and baking us all to a crisp, in some way, God has sanctioned their existence in the pleasure that a dog experiences when he sticks his head out the window.

Mallory responded to this thought by asking why it is that dogs love sticking their heads out the window of a moving vehicle, but they hate it if you blow in their faces....

What Has Jesus to do With Halloween

Every Sunday the bulletin at Divine Redeemer makes me smile. This week, among other things, it advertised a church sponsored haunted house. That's right, not a Fall Festival, not Trunk-or-Treat, but an honest to goodness, scare the pants off you, vampires and werewolves, haunted house.

One of the many thing I love about the church is that they take humanity as it is and go from there. They don't start with the assumption that if we know Jesus we're perfect already and just need to be kept that way.

Championing Halloween shouldn't just be the job of the Catholic Church though, Christianity in general should realize what a perfect opportunity for evangelism it is when, for a month out of the year, everyone in America acknowledges the existence of a spiritual reality.

I don't know about you, but I would much rather talk to a pantheist or the pagan about Christianity than an agnostic or an atheist. At least the devil-worshipper is working with all the same dimensions of reality as the Christian. They acknowledge that a spiritual world exists and that it interacts with the physical world in a meaningful way.

Every child, unless otherwise guided, by the age of 12 will have a fully developed set of pantheistic beliefs. They'll see God in nature, in music, in their friends and family. They'll see evil in the destroying power of divorce and family strife, in ignorance and hatred, in alcohol and even in the fact that the more they know, the less sun-shiny their world seems. Everyone feels the transcendent in music, in physical exertion, in the fuzzy feelings of a first love, the rush of the wind and a warm summer rain. It is only our teenage years or an earlier and more unnatural introduction to materialism that will either make us cling to our false gods or throw them, along with our stuffed animals and LEGOs into an attic, only to be held from that point forward with nostalgia rather than a truly spiritual fascination.

There is something so hard-hearted about not believing in any spiritual reality of any sort, and something ignorant about a Christianity that doesn't realize the real spiritual good that Harry Potter, Eragon, and Halloween are doing.

Christians should be able to embrace Halloween as the only time the most people will acknowledge that a spiritual reality exists at all.

It's amazing how much the shadow tells us about the light and how ineffectual a battle we would be fighting if we set out to conquer rap music, immodest clothing and fast food without allowing Christians and non-Christians alike to see that our battle "is not against enemies of flesh and blood...but against the spiritual forces of darkness of this present age."

Also, the bulletin announced that the Colorado Springs Catholic Young Adult Group would have their monthly "Theology on Tap" meeting at Jack Quinn's at 7pm on Wednesday. Nothing like a Bible study at an Irish pub. Seriously. These people really know what's up.

Your Halloween video:

My Own Worst Enemy

2008-10-05T11:08:00.009-05:00

Yesterday was:

A trip to the Garden of the Gods, where we found out that cute little bunnies, like the one below, have the plague. (click to enlarge)
A visit to Manitou Springs for Mallory's first taste of Manitou water and a look in at the local cult scene
Bacon cheeseburgers and some much needed encouragement from Bob and Virginia at the Corner Cafe
Searching the newspaper for cars and kittens
Finding out there there are actually no pets at Petsmart
Nearly taking advantage of the Border's 25% teacher discount
Nearly adopting a kitten from the Humane Society
Great food and great wine (homemade chicken alfredo and a German Riesling)
A walk downtown to find a local brewery
One beer turning into two beers and a couple games of pool (after finding out there was a $10 minimum on credit cards
Two beers and pool turning into several beers and singing along to a cover band that played exclusively 90's alternative rock (a-mazing)
Fighting a rabid weresquirrel on our walk back to my house
Sleeping long and well before church

And your Halloween video of the day:

In The Shadows

2008-10-03T07:31:00.006-05:00

Real quick - there was no internet to be found at my house yesterday so I'm going to do my best to double-post today.

5 Good Reasons to be Scared Today

1. When I got in my car today, eating a piece of cold pizza slathered in roasted garlic, I thought the Vue was greeting me with a Halloween message, but really I had just mistaken "Odometer" for "October".

2. A kid, with the most sincere expression and tone, excused his absence on Wednesday by saying that his family had spent Rosh Hashanah at home preparing for the End Times. Seriously, the kid spent the day reading Revelation and trying to tie Nostradamus prophesies to current events. So.... if this kid's dad "feels a rapture coming on" is he going to miss more class? On the bright side I really didn't see Sarah Palin as the Whore of Babylon, but it does kind of make sense and now I can be prepared. Why else would a woman only own red suits?

3. Cardinal John Henry Newman has been disinterred and is to be kept in a church on Halloween and All Saint's Day in preparation of a mass honoring him and promoting his cause for sainthood. Read about it here.

4. Perhaps they are digging up ol' Newmie in hopes of finding that he is incorruptible. What's incorruptible? Why I thought you'd never ask: 10 Incorruptible Saints. Check out especially St. Bernadette who died in 1879 and as of a really 80's looking photograph still looks like she's just sleeping.

5. This is my favorite Sesame Street segment of all time:

October

2008-10-01T19:38:00.003-05:00

"This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams becoming more fervent and vivid." - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

It is officially the Halloween season. I slept with a bag of candy corn under my pillow and when I woke up at 1:17 I nibbled on a handful of the waxy kernels before continuing to dream of Heroes.

Words, Words, Words

Last night I played the closest game of Scrabble that I have ever witnessed. I compliment Eva, my opponent, and admit that I underestimated her abilities.

Our scores were within 20 points the entire game, we both easily broke 300 points, and the final four words played were "one" (on a triple word score), "furl," "jeer," and "oven." I ended up winning (after the adding and subtracting of Eva's final letters) by 1 point. Wow. A good omen for the coming month.

Mallory arrives tomorrow, which means a week of insanity for all parties involved. Expect pictures. Expect it to be good.

Also, expect October to rock your socks with:
1. Daily quotations from Frankenstein, Dracula, or the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
2. A YouTube video every day, increasing in spookiness and nearness to my heart as the month goes on.
3. Either a new decoration in my house or a new element on the blog in preparation for my 100th posts on November 1st (All Saint's Day).
4. Good reasons why you should never dress your kid as a princess or a cowboy.
5. A simple, progressive explanation of why Jesus loves Halloween just as much as Christmas or Easter. And finally...
6. The absolute denegration of every secular Christmas song and tradition.

Today I just want to ease you into the season with a short video from National Geographic on the history of Halloween. Enjoy.

Sundown

2008-09-30T20:21:00.003-05:00

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

2008-09-29T18:41:00.004-05:00

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

2008-09-28T15:58:00.004-05:00

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

2008-09-27T09:49:00.005-05:00

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

2008-09-26T14:04:00.001-05:00

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

2008-09-26T06:35:00.000-05:00

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

2008-09-24T19:30:00.000-05:00

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

2008-09-23T18:56:00.003-05:00

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

2008-09-23T07:31:00.002-05:00

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...

2008-09-22T07:18:00.004-05:00

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

2008-09-21T08:09:00.001-05:00

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

2008-09-20T11:10:00.006-05:00

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

2008-09-19T08:26:00.002-05:00

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

2008-09-18T09:03:00.001-05:00

“'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

2008-09-17T10:59:00.005-05:00

“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

2008-09-16T09:05:00.002-05:00

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.

2008-09-15T09:10:00.003-05:00

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

2008-09-14T09:30:00.003-05:00

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

2008-09-13T09:05:00.001-05:00

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

2008-09-12T21:12:00.005-05:00

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

2008-09-11T10:30:00.002-05:00

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

2008-09-10T18:26:00.006-05:00

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

2008-09-08T18:05:00.003-05:00

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

2008-09-06T12:05:00.008-05:00

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

2008-09-06T09:00:00.003-05:00

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.

This Week's Sponsors: Biting the Hand

2008-09-05T18:44:00.003-05:00

Thanks to:

Aunt Lisa for 3 bags of Michigan-made Traverse City Cherry Coffee
BoyScout for "No More Mac and Cheese: The Bachelor's Guide to Cooking with Ease"
Grandma for a little "pick-me-up"
Heidi, Kristen, and Natalie for the phone calls yesterday
Mom for a towel set and classroom posters
and, as much as I hate to admit it....
Maggie for making me read My Life in France (more on that later)

The little things really do mean a lot; thanks.

Eight Days a Week

2008-09-05T14:38:00.002-05:00

Have you ever worn the same shirt for everything you had to do outside the house for two or three days in row? Have you ever had this great scheme ruined by seeing someone at Wal-Mart that you are supposed to watch a movie with the next night? Well, don't tell the world, but I only have one non-dress shirt left. Seriously. My luck has held out for like a month: I never see the same people twice outside of work, but soon the inevitable will happen and laundry day will be forced upon me once again.

The Walrus and The Carpenter

I read far too little. As I prepare to teach 2-3 authors per week to my eighth graders I read a lot of mini-biographies (of varying credibility) on figures like Jean De La Fontaine (a French fable-writer), Lewis Carroll, George Orwell, and Robert Service (the poet who wrote “The Cremation of Sam McGee). Learning that Lewis Carroll was reading Pilgrim's Progress at age 7 or that George Orwell had read every work of Charles Dickens before he was twenty, not as a matter of pride, but as a matter of course, I get the feeling that I'm already impossibly far behind. And I am.

I'm twenty-two and it's too late for me.

I could be content knowing that I probably read about ten times more than the average American (after all: it's not what you do, it's who you beat) but I'm not. I love the fact that I'm in a book club with friends from Hillsdale, but I'd like to doing a little more to close the gap between myself and the cultural standards of the past.

So, (and I'm especially talking to Mike, Pat, Kevin and Jose) I'd like to get something going where I can read great authors and discuss their works on a more regular basis. The idea came to me today of starting an “Essay of the Day” group, where we could each suggest one essay by a notable Western thinker every week and write a review to which the rest could respond. It wouldn't be much and definitely no more than one essay per week per person, but it would keep me intellectually engaged outside the classroom and I think I need something to get me involved in conversation with someone older than 14.

I took about 10 minutes yesterday (we were reading “The Walrus and The Carpenter”) to field all the arguments my students could come up with to prove to me that pigs didn't have wings. They were unable to overcome my logic,and the proverbial question of “whether pigs have wings” is still open for debate.

If you read this blog and would like to be a part of something like an “Essay of the Day” group, please leave a comment with your thoughts/suggestions and if there's an interest, I'll take the time to begin putting something together.

Also, I was looking through old files last night and, in addition to uncovering the full album of songs that I wrote in high school (I was emo before Death Cab was a twinkle in Atlantic Record's eye), I found the series of Microsoft Paint single-frame comics I made for my first (and ultimately ill-fated) blog. This was a favorite of mine:

1000 Miles Per Hour

2008-09-04T10:12:00.002-05:00

Today I cracked open a bottle of Ok Go, a 2003 vintage. It had all the sweet and subtle aromas of a Michigan fall: the smell of Vivian's rhubarb pie, the cool winds of the Mackinaw straits with all their manifold flavors, the scent of a neighbor's leaf-pile still smoldering after a day of raking and burning, the last attempt to remove nature's first blanket, before she adds her second. The texture was that of evening sand with its fleeting warmth, the soft tucking-in motion of Lake Michigan waves as they wash over your feet, and the comfort of line-dried jeans.

There will be fall in Colorado Springs. Today I could sense that. But it won't be like Michigan, even if the leaves do turn and children wear red zip-up hoodies to jump in the leaves. Even if the stores downtown fill their windows with spiderwebs and bats, and even if storm windows are put up and screens are taken down. Even if there is cider and pumpkins, donuts and hayrides, even if I take the time to walk somewhere just to hear my feet shuffle through the leaves. Even if all that is true here as it is in Michigan, I still will miss the places that own my memories of fall.

Fall is by far my favorite season, I'm sure I'll mention that frequently over the next couple of months, and though I'll surely be busy with school, I'd like to really take the time to slow down and appreciate it this year.

I'm a few days late on the 5 year anniversary (seriously 5 years, or greater than 1/5 of our lives thus far) of these pictures, but here they are:

Three things:
1. I miss the Olds more than you can imagine. When asked the other day what my dream car was, without a moment of hesitation, I answered: a 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Sierra - blue.
2. Where is the lobster? Kevin, do you have it? Does Jonathan have it? It would do my old heart good to know that my favorite crustacean still draws breath.
3. Ha! I was really peeved the other day because I was starting to think that my red hat (pictured above) was getting too raggedy to wear. I guess I should be thankful that it even still exists. After all, even 5 years ago, it was still a hand-me-down.

Sleeping To Dream

2008-09-03T18:05:00.005-05:00

Today's post is just a copy/paste job of some exercises I've been doing to try to string together memories...

_________________________________________

Places I've Lain My Head:

Elwell Street: In the back corner of a second story room. The corner closest to the tree-fort that I would now and again steal from Nathan Ward, the neighbor boy. The room with the Victorian-patterned light which, as I found out when my sister was old enough to move from the crib in my parents' room to share a room with me, looked far too like E.T. when the light was left on dim. The sweetest smelling and most melodic home I have ever experienced. Always the soft sunshine of fall.

Riverside Drive: In a drawer-bed adjacent to the kitchen where Vivian's banging of pots and pans would wake me up at 5am every Saturday. That vent let in the smells of home and sounds of discord.

Carson City: The back corner of the room. Sleeping beneath my comforter with its African animal pattern, fashioned and fitted over the no-longer-appropriate clown and circus pattern. From there I was able to survey my entire room, and to wake up with chills when I dreamt of a shadowy figure standing the doorway. Again, in the opposite corner near the window, where I would hear children playing outside when I had already been sent to bed.

Stevenson Lake: In a room never quite my own. In a bed too high with too many pillows. Where the sun would pour in far too early. Then on the basement couch where I would fall, exhausted, after everyone had gone to bed and would rise before even Vivian dared to stir. The only time I can remember wetting my bed: while in a virtual coma after a 38-hour work day.

Galloway: The foot-to-foot double-bunked arrangement of our room on the second floor, sleeping on the sheets that came in a cloth bag from Wal-Mart. Coming home midday to find Scott or Abe asleep there. Then in our one-semester room where Mike and I got Axe-bombed. Where I first felt the strain of sophomore year. Where we held our Bible studies. The room I left to drive home in a snowstorm to be with my father when he died. Then the room, twice as big, to which we were relegated due to the Dean's dislike of my tact as an RA. The triple-tiered arrangement which fit perfectly into the corner of the room. Where Abe blew up pictures of Mike and Maggie and Cherrie and I and put them over our beds.

Downtown: The room of my own over the tobacco shop. Third floor with my head near the window. The rush of semis passing at 4am. Hearing Mike make his late night calls to Maggie. Hearing the town clock tower, situated at just my altitude and just across the street, chime every hour through the open window. Sleeping on Mike's floor when I could, out of pure love and loneliness.

West Street: Blinding myself between a dresser and a blank wall. Sleeping “I Love Lucy-style” with Abe. Keeping the alarm clock in my bed like I used to in Galloway. Coming in after a midnight-4am shift on security and falling into bed for the few hours that remained before 8am Anatomy.

Colorado Springs: Floor at first, then double bed again - found next to a dumpster but nearly new. Too much room. Having to sleep diagonally and continually losing my blankets. Having my own room again, and then my own house. Sleeping in a house alone for the first time.

Indoor Living

2008-09-02T11:13:00.000-05:00

Ever eat in the shower? It seems like it ought to be against the rules, but take my word for it: shower-eating is exactly the reason why they made Flavor-Ice popsicles. You know the ones contained within the plastic sleeve? Not only is the cold artificial flavoring extra tasty when you are being bombarded with hot water, but they are a good way to conserve water as well. If it takes you longer to shower than it does to eat a popsicle: you are wrong.

Plus, there's nothing like standing in your manwear (dress socks and boxers), listening to your favorite pump-up song (Britney Spears' "Hit Me Baby One More Time") and knowing that you are still eating the same popsicle you were when you jumped out of bed 12 minutes and 43 seconds ago.

Ramen is for Lovers

Despite having a long weekend I spent most of the last four days indoors. I toured the local coffee house scene, spent time in the library, and went into school for a couple hours yesterday. While I'm jealous of friends who were hiking and camping over the weekend, I've been content to stay at home nursing a cold and reading good books.

I finished Chesterton's book on St. Francis, and I'll give a full fledged review of that in the near future, but I also wanted to mention that I started reading both Julia Childs' book "My Life in France" and Frank Herbert's "Dune". Although I can only really stomach Julia Child while I'm actually eating (as a substitute for Colbert or The Simpsons, since the lovely people with the unsecured wireless network have finally shipped out), it isn't bad. In fact, it's nice to be reading a book again that is primarily about vocabulary words and pictures.

Today is the start of my second week of teaching and I'm feeling pretty good about it at this point. Of course, I'm writing this blog post from the past (6:12pm Mountain Time on Sept. 1st) so I'm less than 12 hours from actually being back in the building, which is a little frightening, now that I think about it.

Today is also "Back to School Night" which means I'll be at school for every second of my day. From my arrival at 6:00AM, at which time I will set off the door alarms for the third time in a week, to when the last parents finally leave at 9:30PM, I'll be going non-stop. If there's one way to add pressure to your first month of teaching, it's adding parents into the equation before you've even given the first test. Bad times.

I keep envisioning it as a School of Rock experience, where the parents realize that I'm not at all qualified enough or concerned enough about hygiene to be teaching their kids.

Dear Everyone:
Please come live with me. That is an invitation to every one of you to come out here and spend some time in one of the prettiest states in the union without having to pay for lodging. Give me a couple weeks with The Joy of Cooking and I might even be able to guarantee you food.

Seriously though, the only reason to have a house is to fill it with people. If I didn't think that some of you would be joining me out here (as Brad and Leroy already did this summer) I would probably just live out of my car. So, let me know when you'll be here (notice there isn't a "I won't be attending" box to check). Honestly, if you are reading this you have to be at least in my top 100 favorite people, so make a little plan Stan, just hop on a bus Gus and get yourself out here.

Also, I appreciate how concerned you all are for my culinary health. Last night I made a salad for dinner and if you don't mind my saying so, I don't think it looks half-bad (not pictured: the tator-tots I had for dessert).

Television, Television

2008-09-01T11:07:00.000-05:00

Anyone have $20,000 or so I can borrow? It would go to a good cause. You see, they are auctioning off a Spider-man 4 package on Ebay that includes a meet and greet with the cast, a spot as an extra in the new movie and a trip to the premier. But really, I'm just interested because the proceeds are going to benefit Stand Up To Cancer.

Such Stuff As Nerdy Dreams Are Made Of

I've been worrying a lot about this fall lately. Not about school or about bills, about being away from Michigan, or even how I'm going to afford two plane tickets in November. No, I'm worried about not having a TV. It hasn't mattered up until now, but as we near Sept. 22 and the two-hour Heroes season premier, I'm getting progressively more anxious about how I'm going to get my fix without waiting for the episodes to hit Hulu.

Luckily, NBC has come up with a string of webisodes for both The Office and Heroes to tide us over until the coming season.

In The Office summer series Kevin takes out a loan and in the Heroes miniseries we meet Echo Deville, who may be one of the villians from "Level 5".

A teaser for the new season of The Office, featuring Dwight:

Also, it looks as though Britain is taking a cue from the international success of The Office and launching a show called No Heroics which will do to Heroes what The Office did to Ally McBeal and every other corporate drama and sitcom out there. Check out the trailer here.

Of course, a lot of that sexual humor will never cross the pond, but at least we can rest assured that an Americanized version will replace it with racial humor and violence. Huh... maybe it's because I used the phrase "across the pond" but Blogger seems to think "humor" is spelled incorrectly and wants me to change it to "humour"... no lie.

Seriously though, if you have a TV and live in CSprings, or if you want to go halfsies on the Spider-man thing, let me know.

Less is More

2008-08-31T11:53:00.000-05:00

Thanks again Jose for sending me the book on St. Francis. The first 30 pages were so good that I couldn't stand to keep writing down quotes and thoughts on stitcky-notes and decided to head to Borders to buy a copy for myself. Really, I can't stand to read a good book without writing in the margins, underlining, etc. and G.K. Chesterton's life of Saint Francis of Assisi is one of the best books that I've come across in a long time - well worth the purchase.

In other literature-related news, I went down to the library today and checked out the book club pick for this month: "My Life in France" by Julia Child.

Chapstick, Chapped Lips, and Things Like Chemistry

G.K Chesterton says of St. Francis "His life was one riot of rash vows," and that "Never was any man so little afraid of his own promises."

That courage of resolve comes from a dedication to honesty, that few are manly enough to seize with surety. We have already wronged so many. We are all so in debt already, how could we ever just decide to become men of our word? I know I'm in debt to nearly everyone I know, for so many things that even if I tried to remember them all I couldn't. So what hope is there?

The only hope is to be so completely transparent and so ready with your charity that others see in you a consciousness of universal debt. We owe each other more than we can say, so whether you get your philosophy of charity from St. Francis, or from the movie Pay It Forward, or from Barrack Obama's words at the DNC this week:

"This country is more decent than one where a woman in Ohio, on the brink of retirement, finds herself one illness away from disaster after a lifetime of hard work.
This country is more generous than one where a man in Indiana has to pack up the equipment he's worked on for twenty years and watch it shipped off to China, and then chokes up as he explains how he felt like a failure when he went home to tell his family the news.
We are more compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty; that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes."

It all amounts to the same thing: as individuals we are better than our baggage. Now you may not agree with the way that someone else says it, but the choice we have is simple. Whenever we decide to we can clean up our act and start acting like Christ. And what's beautiful about that is that Christ was the most human person ever to live. He did humanity right and in him is every true aspect and characteristic of every individual that will ever live.

To sum it up: the Truth of humanity is so incomprehensibly big and so incomprehensibly a part of who God is that I am confident that in heaven we'll experience everything that we find true and good and beautiful on Earth.

This all struck me last night as I walked down a side-street after dark listening to the song "Ants Marching" by Dave Matthews Band. I realized that there is something about this song that reveals an aspect of humanity that was previously unstated or at least never stated so beautifully. And because of that unalterably true aspect of that song, I'm sure that a part of the adoration of Truth in heaven, whatever that ends up looking like, will include what is good and beautiful about the song "Ants Marching".

I love literature because it always attempts to say more clearly and more beautifully what we already know. Music is the same. There's something that always gets me about the song "In The Belly of the Whale," which is a children's song from the Veggie Tales movie about Jonah and the whale. The story of Jonah is one of those stories that captures a certain aspect of humanity better than it has ever been captured before.

Now, Jonah is by no means a long story, but when the Veggie Tales song sums it all up in the lines "got outta dodge, sailed on a bon-less bon voyage, you said North, I headed South, tossed overboar,d good Lord that's a really large mouth," I can't help but think that as silly as it is, it's incredibly pleasing to God.

And if all that bored you:

Brought to you by an unusual propensity toward rodentia on the part of Productivity 501, here are some tips on how to live your life from rats:
1. When you want to learn a skill, sleep a lot.
2. Too busy or tired to exercise? It's probably because you aren't exercising.
3. And finally: don't be influenced by preconceptions, otherwise your preconceptions will influence others.

On Holiday

2008-08-30T11:52:00.000-05:00

With a week down and 35 more to go I feel a little bit like a 6 year-old starring down the bottomless abyss of formal schooling.

This Week The Trend...

...was to get myself up about 5am, take the few unconscious hours that I have to spend, and work away the rest of them.

My kids are great. They really are. I don't think there's a brighter 8th grade class in the country, and I'll prove that to you come standardized test time. Also, after taking a couple hours just to finish some grading and enter it into the computer, I discovered that the student who has been my biggest discipline problem so far (which just means that he doesn't sit up straight and tries in small ways to be a class clown) is the only student thus far with a perfect A. After 3 quizzes, 5 homework assignments, and a writing lab, he has yet to miss a point. These kids are really good, and, despite the fact that they are only in 8th grade, most have done a pretty good job of understanding everything I say, even in the moments when I'm teaching in a way that would be more appropriate for seniors in high school.

Gauging the level at which I can lecture and the level at which I can expect my students to perform is going to be one of my biggest problems.

Now I'm sitting in a coffee shop using craptop to get some internet-related work done. Craptop is Brad's old hollowed-out computer that has neither battery, nor floppy drive, nor CD drive, and to top it all off the cord is covered with an electrical tape coat in an effort to make it more likely that the power-supply won't be cut off (which in the absence of a battery shuts the computer off immediately). Despite all that I've seldom been more thankful for a machine as i've been unable to "borrow" internet at home as of late.

Someday I do plan to return that internet. My future business (constructed on the Mr. Whitford business model) entitled "Good Times" will have free Wi-Fi.

If you didn't already know, and I'm pretty sure only two of you did, I signed up for RCIA classes last Sunday after mass. Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults is a preperatory program for receiving the sacraments in the Catholic church. So, over the next several months, starting September 6th, I'll be attending weekly cathecism class with the intent of entering the church at Easter. So, if you have reading material or well constructed arguments for me either about the Church, or about why I should run the other way, I'd like to hear what you have to say.

Is it wrong to listen to my blog playlist while writing my next post? It feels a little perverse.

Once again, I know I say this every couple days, but you should really listen to The Good Word playlist. Each post is named for a song and those songs grace the sidebar of the page. You can't really know me without knowing my music and I'd like to think that you wouldn't mind adding some of it to your own personal collection.

I laid off coffee this week so that I didn't end up getting jittery in class. But in the future I'll keep this in mind:

There are probably about a thousand episodes, but I really should start getting together a complete collection of The Red Green Show on DVD. It's one of the few really materialistic goals I have in life - along with having a secret part of my house that you can only get to by swimming through an underwater tunnel.

Do You Sleep?

2008-08-28T18:15:00.000-05:00

My students all have to wear uniforms and I'm required to wear dress slacks and a tie. The students attempt small modifications like wearing short white socks with their blue Dockers and trying to hide the fact that they've got on a white belt when the dress code calls for black or brown. So far this week I've worn a sport coat or a suit every day, but yesterday I wore my Pi Phi boxers and my FBL t-shirt underneath it all. I felt pretty rebellious.

The Trouble with 'Tillas -or- The Great Blog-out of '08

This is just a slightly cleaned up version of a post I decided not to use a couple days ago, but since I'm no longer able to steal wireless dependably from my home you'll find this post to be distinctly mono-media. I'll try to get to a coffee house tomorrow and perhaps get some official internets in the coming week again. For now this is the best I can do:

I feel 100% wiped out at the end of every day. I've been keeping the Ramen to a minimum lately and trying to eat healthier, despite the fact that I'm still waiting on Friday and the arrival of my first paycheck.

In my search for healthy and cheap food, I figured out that tortillas cost less than bread and since they are used in wraps I figure they are more healthy. However, yesterday I realized far too late that I had eaten tortillas for all three meals: a PB&J tortilla for breakfast, a turkey tortilla for lunch, and burritos for dinner.

When I finally got around to asking the internet whether bread or tortillas were the healthier option, this is the conversation I found on Yahoo Answers (my commentary is in italics):

Question: Are tortillas fattening? Do they have fewer calories than bread? Are they a low calorie snack?

Response #1: depends on if they r baked or fried
read the facts on the sides of the products and it also depends on the type of bread

This answer was deemed 'the best' by the person who asked the question originally; it is the least assertive and furthest away from an actual answer of any sort.

Response #2: no. actually, tortillas are more healthier than bread. so no, its not fattening. if i were you, i would throw out my bread and get some tortilla wraps.

This person states their opinion as a fact, then cites their opinion as authoritative, then gives some personal advice.

Response #3: no tortillas have a few calories but not as much as bread does, tortillas are actually a good diet food just not too many.

Again, this person says nothing.

Response #4: nahh..more fattening than bread.way more carbs & calories

This person disagrees with everyone above and decides that they don't need to cite any authority to do so.

Response #5: yes i believe they are better than bread, as they are thinner.

This person believes that they are better, because they appear to be thinner. I would have liked to have responded that they were more fattening because of their more round shape.

Those wonderful people are why I am a teacher, so that no person I ever meet will spend their time answering objective questions on Yahoo answers without actually looking into the subject at hand, or really even understanding how to have an argument in the first place.

Rant over.

My first week of school is officially over and for the first time I'm really celebrating Labor Day. I feel as though God has given me this extra 24 hour period of weekend-goodness to spend it in giving my body a constant supply of beer and nachos. I kicked that off this afternoon at "happy hour" at a local microbrew with some colleagues.

Reasons Why

2008-08-27T22:34:00.000-05:00

Today as I reached into the inside pocket of my suit jacket for a pen, I felt something strange and pulled out Katie's garter from Brian's wedding. Good thing all my students were working intently on their writing labs.

I have been utterly exhausted the past few days. Basically I'm tired and I miss you guys.

Here's why:

And to a hundred others: Thanks.

Heart Songs

2008-08-27T10:40:00.000-05:00

My second day went much more smoothly than the first, so much so, in fact, that I decided to run the Jack Quinn 5K last night. That would be the weekly 5k with the local running club that begins and ends at an Irish pub. The idea is that you run and then drink. Not exactly my favorite combination, but I'm sure I'll take full advantage of the amenities offered by Jack Quinn's to the runners some other night. They also feed you pasta, salad, and bread, and after 10 runs you get a free shirt. It doesn't cost anything to run so it's pretty much the best deal this side of the Mississippi.

Good move on Jack Quinn's part. I won't have to pull a Panino's on them to feel like I'm getting my money's worth.

Also, I not only got encouragement from several of you by phone and via comment, but I also got some surprises today.

Something to Blog About

Throughout today I received four packages from faraway friends. First of all, midway through my school day, I received a mysterious package from Stephen Wood at the Family Life Center in South Carolina. My first thought was "Huh, I wonder if Karen told someone I was teaching Latin and they sent me something." But, it turns out that Karen just used company mailing labels to send a bag of pretzels to my school.

Then, when I got home I not only had a gigantic package (like 5 inches tall) placed oh-so-subtly under my doormat, but I also had two smaller parcels in my mailbox.

These are credited to Jose, Kendra, and Maggie respectively. From Jose, I have a copy of G.K. Chesterton's Life of Saint Francis, from Kendra a copy of Joy of Cooking, which looks amazing, and from Maggie (via the Money Saving Mom blog) a month's supply of multi-vitamins.
Also, I got a shout-out from Jennette on her blog, for which I am also thankful.

You guys really made my day today and I wanted to thank you for it. Really I'm just glad I'm not a bee with AIDS.

This blog's for you.

Wow. I really crossed a line with that one....

You've Got to Hide Your Love Away

2008-08-26T12:15:00.000-05:00

Wow. In the words of Mike: "oh my kittens." That was a crazy day. Not so much because of the day itself, but because I have to do it again, and while I spent two weeks preparing for yesterday, I only had 16 hours to prepare for today.

The Three Step Plan

Class went well, it really did. The kids were quiet and well behaved. I didn't stutter over my material, I didn't forget to mention anything too major and the worst part of the day was when I accidentally saved over my book check-out document with a temporary attendance spreadsheet.

In our second session of English class today we read the poem "There is no frigate like a book" by Emily Dickinson. These kids are going to get their fill of Dickinson, but I thought beginning with that poem was especially appropriate because of the subject matter and the fact that it is ingrained upon the deepest part of my gray-matter in the voice of Mr. Tobey who read it in my own 7th grade English class.

The poem is as follows:

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

I loved telling the kids about how Emily Dickinson slowly developed into an incurable recluse, and how her poems were only gathered and published after her death when they were found stuffed into her desk and even into the walls of her bedroom where she spent most of her adult life. For my money she is one of the greatest minds that ever lived and perhaps it was because she confined herself to the small beauties of her hometown and childhood home. Emily only traveled further than a few miles from Amherst once, and that was to visit her father who was serving as a congressman in Washington, D.C.

It was the simplicity of Emily Dickinson's life that really allowed her to become a great writer and thinker. She knew very little of the world, she had very few books to read, but what she knew she knew exceptionally well.

It occurred to me the other day that to be fully human - to be really living the human experience - only three things are essential, and that our models of humanity, from Shakespeare and Dante to John Paul II and Ronald Reagan, have shown us what this progression looks like.

1. Know Yourself - The truth is often so incomprehensibly simple that it can take us years to wrap our minds around even a small aspect of it. From our birth, our education should not be centered on "doing," but on being. It is not and has never been our job to find a profession or to learn a trade, but it turns out these things happen naturally as we learn to see the native beauty in ourselves and the world around us. But how does this education take place? Well, as I see it, if you are given access to formal education then the best way is through the masterworks of Western literature:Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton. When you are done with them: raking leaves, swimming, taking long walks, stargazing, playing with children, cooking your own meals, building a fire. That's how we become human. Neither the means nor the definition of humanity have ever changed, we've just developed an increasing number of inventions to distract us.

2. Make Yourself - As we digest the beauty of the universe and the produce of minds who have devoted their lives to pursuing the highest truths of the nature of man, we slowly begin to see the disparity between what we are and we ought to be. Between Jesus, Socrates, King Arthur, Odysseus and Atticus Finch, we have no excuse for wanting to stay the way we are and not conforming ourselves to a higher standard.

3. Make Yourself Known - "Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree rotten and its fruit rotten, because a tree is known by its fruit." - Matthew 12:33. Most literature, poetry, and culture in general today is a result of men forcing their way past self-knowledge to making themselves known. I can't imagine that a mind like Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson could do anything but write. You can see in their words that no matter how intricate and layered their meaning and intent, the composition was the effortless and natural consequence of comprehending real and abiding truth. I don't want to make this sound like reaching nirvana or anything like that, but I can't imagine how such understanding and comprehensive souls could do anything but provide, out of their abundance, signs and symbols that might act as intermediaries for the rest of us. Much like the atoning sacrifice of Christ, these giants of intellect devoted their lives and often their deaths to building a bridge between us and the truth.

Time

2008-08-25T12:00:00.000-05:00

Today I demand that you all listen to the song of the day. It's so good and so 90's.

Monthiversary/First Day of School

Today marks a couple milestones. First, is it the monthiversary of my blog. I've managed to post every day since July 25th, which was a big goal I set for myself at the end of the summer. It's also my first day of school. Today I'll finally begin the year that has been in the back of my mind since I was old enough not to want to be a zookeeper when I grew up. It seems surreal that I'll actually be doing it.

I'm nervous and excited. I've told myself again and again how I want to carry myself. How I want to interact with the students. I know that if I walk with integrity and convey an earnest love for what I'm teaching, then if I fail it will be because teaching is not my vocation. We'll see what the first day brings. As prepared as I am for the exhaustion, I don't think there's any way I can be prepared for experiencing my first day with the middle schoolers.

I love that some of these kids will be in my class for three hours a day. All 7th and 8th graders at CMCA have two English classes per day and about 15 of my students will be back again for Latin.

Here's how my room looks at the moment. If all goes well the blank spaces on the wall will soon be filled with poems that we read and discuss in class, artwork from the Latin students as they illustrate vocabulary words, and the quotations which we will discuss at the start of each class.So, think of me today. Remember how your 8th grade year went and let me know what to look out for, what to do, and what not to do. I'll owe about half of you a call when I'm done for the day. Hopefully I'll still be standing when it's over.

Mexican Wine

2008-08-24T10:43:00.000-05:00

Last night I was invited to a house-cooling party (the opposite of a house-warming) and while it sounds like something you might do after someone dies, it was just a pretty chill end-of-summer bash. The party was populated primarily by teachers and employees of Focus on the Family, but don't let that fool you, it was pretty rocking. Also, it was fiesta themed which meant that I was supposed to bring a snack el Mexicano, so thanks to all of you who gave me recipes throughout last week. What I came up with in the end was kind of a combination of those suggestions plus a little personal flair.

How to Make Man-Nachos

Before going to the grocery store I wrote out the entire recipe that Maggie gave me, added elements from about three others, and wrote in big letters at the top of my list "CROCK POT???"

I did end up buying the crock pot and while it might not have been necessary, it sure was fun and I'm sure I'll get my $15-worth out of it (I think they were all on sale for college students returning to school).

I'll give the full list of ingredients at the end of the post, but for now I'll just give you the play-by-play on the creation of the ultimate Mexican dish.

1. Prepare the meat: Brown 1 and 1/2 lbs of ground beef (or whatever) in in the biggest frying pan you've got. After meat is mostly browned add in 4 or more of the biggest cloves of garlic you can find. Then add as much jalapeno pepper as you can stand, remembering that the longer jalapeno cooks the stronger it gets. I added two peppers, cooked it on the stove for about twenty minutes and then in the crock pot for about two hours and it was plenty hot enough for my tastes.2. Prepare the salsa: While your meat is browning you can take the time to prepare the salsa that will end up topping this monstrosity of a meal. I bought one big jug of Pace and, using an near-empty salsa jar, combined it with several healthy scoops of crushed pineapple. This way you can get a good fruit salsa and still be able to buy the cheap bulk stuff. The more fruit you add the sweeter it gets. 3. Stove to crockpot. At this point your meat should be pretty well browned. Take one 160z can of Hormel chili and one packet of taco seasoning and add these to the mix. I gave this another couple minutes on the stove and then transferred the whole lot to the crock pot. This stuff can hang out as long as you want it to. Like I said earlier, the longer it sits, the stronger the jalapeno gets. You be the judge.4. Final prep. When you're down to about 30 minutes until serving time, begin final prep. This includes cutting up fresh tomotatoes to sprinkle as a garnish, preheating the oven for melting your cheese, heating up a 16oz can of refried beans, and realizing that the head of lettuce you thought you bought was actually a cabbage.
5. Putting it all together. In a large Pyrex pan, or whatever, place a layer of your favorite chips. Try to set up chips all around the perimeter so that they can easily be used for dipping. Spread the refried beans as the bottom layer on top of the chips. Sprinkle a ton of cheese all over this and put it in the over for about 5 minutes to melt. Then add the meat from the crock pot over the melted cheese, pour a healthy (I used a whole 24oz can) amount of your salsa over the meat.
6. Finished product. Top the salsa with another layer of cheese and your sliced tomatoes and you've got pretty much the most hardcore Mexican meal ever devised.
Final stats:
1 and 1/2 lbs ground beef
1 large bag of chips
16oz can of refried beans
16oz can of Hormel chili with beans
2 jalapeno peppers
4-20 cloves of garlic
1 small can of crushed pinapple
1 large container of your favorite salsa
1 packet of taco seasoning
At least 2 cups of cheese
2-3 Roma tomatoes
1 medium head of cabbage

Cook time: Anywhere from 40 minutes to 4 hours depending on how long you want the meat and spices to stew.

Thanks again to everyone who sent me recipe help. Feel free to advise me further on how to put my crock pot to good use. And seriously, this stuff went like hotcakes at the party (why doesn't anyone ever bring hotcakes to parties) so you should try it. Like I always say: garlic makes the meal.

Take A Chance on Me

2008-08-23T14:37:00.000-05:00

Friday night is date night, and if you're anything like me you spend it writing blog posts.

Unbelievable Dating Advice from the Unassuming Bachelor

-or-
I Spent All Night in a Ramen-Induced Coma and Slept Through Today's Movie Review

I've got a lot to say about things. Lots of things. Important things. But mostly I confine myself to a few platforms: the relative nutritional virtue of Wheat Thins, the impact of Science Fiction as a literary genre, and obscure cultural references in Barenaked Ladies songs.

What I don't know anything about thought is dating. In the divinely inspired works of the Old Testament book of Proverbs:

There are three things which are too wonderful for me,
Four which I do not understand:
The way of an eagle in the sky,
The way of a serpent on a rock,
The way of a ship in the middle of the sea,
And the way of a man with a maid.

- Proverbs 30:18-19

So, like most of the time, I'm going to be speaking to you about a subject on which I have no authority, and probably (statistically) the worst record of anyone I know (do the math). Without further ado three helpful tips on dating, the first installment of an ongoing series on the art of love.

Concepts to Know:

1. Net self-esteem differential.

The cruelest reality of the dating world is this: we all have our place. You have a certain range of eligible members of the opposite gender outside of which you will never successfully date. Now, contrary to popular belief this "target range" isn't determined by the amount of money you make, your social circle, how sweet of a car you drive, or even your looks. No, while all that stuff does matter, and it matters much more than most other factors, it doesn't actually determine your range.

The only thing that actually determines your range is the self-esteem of your target. Make sure you determine during the first hour of any first date a rough idea of what your date's self-esteem percentile score is.

While an individual's self-esteem typically is based on things like money, friends, possessions, and physical appearance, it isn't necessarily based entirely on these things. Sometimes a person comes along who didn't really grow into their teeth until like senior year of high school, so, despite the fact that this person is probably in the top 15% for looks and money, their self-esteem is stuck in the 45th percentile because of the nickname "molar monster". This person is prime real-estate.

Ultimately a really successful couple will have a max self esteem differential of 15%. These are the cases where one person actually has a reason to be down on themselves and the other just had an emotionally scarring experience which results in an 88th percentile person thinking that the 67th percentile person is doing them a favor.

Really, the only way to keep the magic alive is mutual self-doubt. As long as you both think you have to do everything you can to hold onto the other person, you'll do great.

2. Man-points.

Ever play Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Donkey Kong, or Coinworld? Well in these games your only real job is to get in, complete the level, and get out. Dates are kind of like these games. There are lava-pits to avoid, enemies who will compete for your princess, moving platforms, and clouds that disappear like 1/100th of a second after you land on them. While it seems like the best idea to just run, jump, and swing your way through the date there is actually an alternate goal worth pursuing.

In all of these games, including dating, there are tons of instances where you can go out of your way to collect bonus points. Usually in the form of coins or bananas, these don't actually win the game for you, but they sure do help. Getting these bonus points in the game of dating usually involves things like bringing an umbrella, cleaning that spot in your apartment that you're sure she won't see, not mentioning the names of any other girls or even actresses under the age of 40, hiding your Magic cards. Whatever.

See and seize these opportunities.

3. The Fluid Assumption. That sounds almost dirty and almost theological.

Stereotypes are stereotypes because they're true. No, not every girl wants you to open the door for her. There are some who will be offended when you do, but a much higher percentage (varying on your geographic location) will be offended if you don't. Know your crowd. Even if you're on a blind date you have at least a little bit of information. You know the girl that set you up has read Purpose Driven Life 10 times. This means you probably should open doors, pay for things, and look offended when people around you spit, swear, or wear t-shirts with the names of metal bands.

Never act like you don't know what you're doing just because you don't. Make up a general set of likes and dislikes that a date probably has before you even meet them, and then tweak it as you get more information. Your goal is to act decisively in the way that has the highest probability of working out in your favor.

But don't take my word for it.

Well, it's Saturday afternoon here and I've just gone grocery shopping. For my next trick I plan to make a Mexican concoction with the help a newly purchased crock pot. You'll see how that went tomorrow.

Your history lesson for today:

Serendipity

2008-08-22T15:36:00.000-05:00

ser·en·dip·i·ty Audio Help [ser-uhn-dip-i-tee] Pronunciation Key –noun

1. an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.
2. good fortune; luck: Ex. the serendipity of getting the first job she applied for.
3. a song by the Barenaked Ladies from the CD "Are Me," which was reworked for the companion CD "Are Men"
4. a failure of movie starring Jon Cusack and either that one girl who married Tom Cruise, or the one from Resident Evil, or was it Underworld...

As much as I hate to double-post I have to tell you all:

How Blogging Nearly Killed Me

1. I was REALLY behind this morning. Probably because I spent an hour and a half trying to format that darn Star Wars post so that it didn't look totally jank.
2. Because I was late getting ready I put on my favorite shirt (I didn't have time to look for anything else) and instead of making myself a wrap for lunch I threw 2 bananas and a cup of yogurt into a bag and headed out.
3. Because I was running late I got to school, threw my lunch bag into my room and headed to the opening presentation from the school's executive director.
4. In throwing the bag down I made the yogurt explode and destroyed one of the bananas.
5. When lunch came around I found out what had happened to my food just in time to have a co-worker come by to let me know that a bunch of people were eating at Chipotle for lunch. Good deal.
6. But, because I was hasty in the morning I didn't transfer my wallet into my jeans and therefore I didn't have money for lunch.
7. I told the co-worker I had to run home first and asked if they were going to the Chipotle downtown. She said she didn't know and that I should call her and find out. She asked if I had her number. I said yes and left.
8. After arriving at home, and (luckily) remembering to grab my wallet, I pulled out my phone to call about Chipotle. Turns out I didn't have her number.
9. I decided to eat lunch at home, listen to yesterday's song of the day a couple more times, and then I headed back to work with plenty of time to spare. I grabbed a Flavor-Ice Popsicle and left.
10. Four blocks away from my house a woman went through a stop sign and crashed directly into my driver's side door, knocking the ice out of the popsicle and make it appear as though there was blood all over my car.

This afternoon I got in a car accident. Don't worry, Gretchen is fine, but she'll need a hell of a face-lift. I'm a little scratched up, but I'm alright too, though if the ol' biddy was driving about 10 mph faster the direct impact into my driver's side door wouldn't have been pretty...

I wasn't at fault for the accident, in any way, and the woman who hit me has insurance so it'll be fine, but nearly getting killed and destroying my car is not my idea of a relaxing lunch break. Also, it was my last day to prep my classroom, so guess who's going to be working all weekend.

The interesting part though is the series of circumstances that led up the accident, and the ten things that I could have done differently to avoid it. Pretty funny if I do say so myself.

Oh well, I guess that's just one more old person who has had their license revoked for hitting me. And if you add that to the two times I've already been hit by a car while on foot in the Springs, I can say with surety that Colorado drivers are worse than Michigan drivers.

Here are the real victims:

At least I know where I can buy the same shirt for $10.

P.S. To add insult to injury (I feel like I use that phrase every other post) my favorite pen exploded in my hand while I was filling out the accident report.

Grand Theft Autumn

2008-08-22T07:47:00.000-05:00

"The Russian offensive on Georgia continues, turns out there was another war nested in that treaty." -The Colbert Report

Give yourself a minute on that one.

The Pirate Menace: How Lucas Stole 98% of Star Wars

-or-
How To Make a Multi-billion Dollar Empire off One Original Idea

I'd like to just start off by pointing out that I love Star Wars. It could turn out to be a gigantic re-working of a teletubbies episode and I'd still love it. But with that being said here are 5 sources to which Lucas is indebted and a tribute to his one original idea.

5. Westerns: Not only is Han Solo basically just a John Wayne-esque cowboy, but the Mos Eisley Canteena scenes are pretty much a staight up rip off of a shoot-out at a saloon. Try this on for size:

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Star Wars Episode 4

4. WW2: An evil empire tries to take over the world (galaxy) with an entire race of soldiers designed to be genetically perfect. Am I talked about Hitler's Aryan race or Emporer Palpatine's Clone army? Either way they're called stormtroopers. Whether he's attacking Poland or Endor, it comes down to pretty much the same thing.

Whether it's a B-17 or an X-Wing,

Or a coal-scuttle helmet, or Darth Vader's signature cap,

Or just the way you dress your soldiers,

It's pretty clear that evil minds think alike.

3. The Bible: Virgin conceives a child destined to change the course of history and the fate of the entire universe; turns out that's not an original story either. While Darth Vader was no Messiah, he was that long awaited, much prophesied hero.

2. Wagner: In Wagner's classic opera Der Ring des Nibelungen a good son must fight an evil father, along with his pirate-type friend and his twin sister, in order to ensure that the evil father doesn't destroy the world with his extremely powerful spherical object (Death Star). Read all about it here. And I won't subject you to it now, but if you are ambitious get on YouTube and compare Wagner's "Flight of the Valkyries" to John William's "Star Wars: Main Theme."

1. Ivanhoe: It's a long boring book, but it's where the story of Robin Hood comes from, and since I'm teaching it this year, I figured I'd throw it in. If you've seen the Disney movie, you'll probably get all the parallels anyway.

Ivanhoe/Luke Skywalker - Estranged son rises to prominence again through prowess in battle.
Robin Hood/Han Solo - Rugged outlaw, despite cool, rebelious exterior is always fighting for the good guys.
Friar Tuck/Chewbacca - Big guy, the muscle of the outlaw group. Robin Hood's sidekick and life-long friend (Note: this doesn't apply to the Disney movie, only to the book).
Maid Marion/Leia - Would be, should be royalty, removed from the throne by a cruel despot.
Sheriff of Notingham/Darth Vader - The muscle on the side of evil, who pretty much does all the dirty work.
Emporer/Prince John - The brains of the evil operation. The mover and shaker behind all the empire's work.

I know all stories are based on earlier works, but it's funny to know what we are actually saying when we say we like Star Wars.

But he did come up with one idea on his own.

The Lightsaber: Pretty much Lucas' only original idea. I know, I know, it's just a sword right? Well, why were you watching Star Wars? For the rigorous exploration of the Sci-Fi genre? It's pretty bland as far as Sci-Fi goes. For the Old West feel and the wacky special effects? Well, most of that stuff was claymation, just like Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. Really, the only reason anyone loved Star Wars was for the lightsaber battles. "Not as clumsy as a blaster; an elegant weapon for a more civilized age."

I've often thought about either becoming filthy rich and funding the research to build a lightsaber or just freezing myself in carbonite until somebody makes one for me. Either way, I don't think I'll live to see it... naturally.

Intergalactic

2008-08-21T12:08:00.000-05:00

BoyScout got me an ice cream scoop! Rock on.

Help Me Obi-Wan Kenobi, You're My Only Hope

I'm fairly out of touch. One way that this was recently pointed out to me was when I went up to the ticket booth at the movie theater earlier this week and saw that the new Clone Wars movie was out, and promptly purchased a ticket to a musical.

I neither knew that Clone Wars was out, nor had I kept up on the internet hype enough to even be excited about it. I finally watched a trailer last night, but I do think it's suspicious that I haven't heard anything about the movie at all.

That's definitely one of my standards for culture: if it can't get to me in cultural isolation (no T.V., no radio) then it probably isn't worth finding. So, has anyone actually seen this movie? Is it any good? Give me the skinny and I'll try to find someone nerdy enough to see this one with me.

Progress Report:

We talked last week around this time about what goals we had for the near and far future, and how unless we get some accountability we're never going to achieve them. Well, it's accountability time. So, if you posted last week, let us know how you're doing and if you didn't, just go ahead and post your new goals.

Last week's goals for me were:
Day: Week's worth of lesson plans.
Week: Hang out with someone.
Year: Be able to run 10.5 miles.

How'd I do?
Well, I've probably done that same week's worth of lesson plans about five times since then, but I did have it finished that day. We'll check that off. As I posted on Saturday, I hung out with Jose and did some spelunking.

But, what about my year-long goal? Well, I've made progress. I can now run about 3.5 miles without actually passing out somewhere along the way, but, as exhausted as I've been from working in my classroom for 9 hours a day, I've only been running every other day. I'd like to kick this up a notch, but I'm waiting for my body to get used to it. I'll let you know.

New Goals:

The general idea of this isn't that we have one sweet day or week where we get a lot done, but that we are making continual progress in measurable ways. So, here are my new goals for the day, week, and month.

Day: Nail down my finances well enough so that I can make a list of home improvements I want to make and the order in which I can do them.
Week: Cook. I need to increase my culinary repitoire, so that means cooking this weekend. Possibly cooking bread...
Month: I would like to say I just want to make it through the next month. Kids come back to school on Monday and surviving would be nice, but that's a little weak as far as goals go. What I'd really like for the next month is to be able to keep my content on this blog up to quality, to stay in contact with all you guys, to start planning the high school reunion for the class of 04 (yup, it's that time already) and to find Brad Hall (thanks Big E for the lead on that one).

So, if you posted your goals last week, give us an update and your new goals for the day, the week, and the next 30 days. If you haven't posted before, feel free to jump on in.

Also I'm going to need help with my goals so:
1) If you know a Mexican dish that would be a convenient party-type dish, give me the recipe.
2) If you are a member of the Carson City-Crystal graduating class of 2004, then e-mail me your mailing address and any information you might have about people who are going to be harder to find, like Brad Hall (though I know he didn't graduate with us).

Thanks, and thanks.

And now, your moment of zen:

I Want to Break Free

2008-08-20T12:46:00.000-05:00

Last night I had a dream that I was hanging out with Pope Benedict. We walked all the way from the new cathedral he had just built to my grandma's house. On the way he expelled a demon from a homeless person and turned a rotting trout into rice crispy treats when we were hungry. Not even kidding.

Don't Go Wasting Your Emotions

So, I was debating with myself on whether I should be blunt and just name this post "Mama Mia!" (it is a song after all) or if I should be a bit more subtle and make the song of the day "Closet" by Pete Yorn, but I decided on the middle road and gave it the title of a Queen song.

And, not that you'll listen to me, but this is another post where you should actually listen to the song of the day on the sidebar playlist.

I've decided I don't want to make it a movie review, but I do want to just come out (every pun intended) and say that I watched Mama Mia! the other night. Not only was it the best movie I've seen in a long time, but I actually might go out of my way to see it again, which is nearly unprecedented (the only movie I've seen in theaters more than once is Spiderman 2).

Mama Mia! Was weird for a number of reasons. First of all the movie (I know it was a Broadway musical first, but I haven't seen the musical so I won't mention it) was written around the soundtrack instead of the other way around. Secondly, I went in with very little information. I don't have a TV so I hadn't seen a preview of the movie, and so I only knew two facts going in: 1. On the movie poster is a girl in a wedding dress. 2. They are going to have to work about 15 ABBA songs into this movie.

So, I was surprised to find that not only was this movie not set in San Fransico or New York in the early 70's, but, for some inexplicable reason, they thought ABBA would be more appropriate to modern day Greece.

I won't give away any plot details, but I will tell you that since it's a musical there is very little plot, most of which is driven by the strangest conflict I'm ever seen in film: Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth competing over the same woman. Never since Bridget Jone's Diary (wow, I'm even making myself a little suspicious of my orientation) has Colin Firth really come up against a worthy opponent (I really don't know if I could do three posts in a row without alluding to Hugh Grant).

Really though, nothing about this movie would even be tolerable if you didn't like ABBA. And so, if I want to recommend it to people I have to begin by asking if they like ABBA, and if not I first have to talk them into listening to about 500 hours of disco.

On a manlier note: I put together a bookshelf last night. I'm pretty sure all my floors are crooked.

Also, in my never-ending quest to enrich everyone's life who reads this blog, I give you xkcd.com:

It's kind of what we're all waiting for: a person born in the 80's who grew up in the 90's writing jokes that are funniest to our generation. I'm excited for when these people kick out the baby boomers and finally take over T.V.

These comics come out 3 times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which makes them about 3/7ths as cool as my blog, and since they're only spot-on about 70% of the time that puts them down to being about 9/25ths as cool as my blog. The other 30% of the time they are about complicated principles of physics, math, or Linux. But, check 'em out.

That was a little disjointed, but I'm fairly sleep-deprived.

Have a good one. Tomorrow is goal-day. Time to update everyone on how I did with my goals last week and share some new ones for the week to come.

P.S. And reminiscent of last week's post on Will Smith I've got a couple songs for you to compare. Try to decide if Reba McEntire subliminally ripped ABBA off (especially compare the note sequence of "Waterloo, couldn't escape if I wanted to, Waterloo, finally facing my Waterloo," with "Little Rock, think I'm gonna have to slip you off, take a chance tonight and untie the knot, there's more to life than what I've got"). Either way trying to find stuff like this is like trying to decide if thigh-high, flame pattern-boots go with David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust collar: No one should really be doing it.

Career Day

2008-08-19T12:47:00.000-05:00

Part of growing up is finding out that most things are trite because they are true. The number one stereotypical "to-do" item on any T.V. show or movie is "pick up the dry-cleaning," and after dropping off my dry-cleaning for the first time ever I totally forgot about it. So, last night I picked up two pairs of pants that had been deserted there for going on two weeks.

T-minus 6 Days 'Til Kids...

This is gonna be quick because I don't have much time, but I wanted to update everyone on how the first week of training at Cheyenne Mountain went.

First of all, they have a sweet alternative to social security called PERA. That's right, I won't be paying ANY social security this year. Pretty nice huh? Instead I contribute to a PERA retirement fund that pays me when I turn 65 regardless of (though in proportion to) how long I've worked, and would pay me sooner if I were to keep teaching in Colorado.

Also, instead of paying a couple hundred dollars a month for health insurance I'll be getting a health savings account through the school. That means that I pay only $30 a month and the school puts $100 (tax free) into my a savings account in my name. As long as I use this account for health-related items they too are tax free. But, if I choose to use the money on something else, I can. All that happens is the money that I want to use gets double-taxed (once for being income and then again for sales tax). So, provided that you're young and haven't spent more than 10 years in the Social Security system all this a pretty good deal.

Now for the fun part: some pictures of my classroom.

Here are my classroom rules. They are all Shakespeare quotations. Just click on the image to make it big enough to read.

And here's a shot of the front of my classroom with my sweet bookshelf border (with about 100 actual titles of great books).
And finally my time-line. At this point it only had Emily Dickinson on it and no actual numbers, but it's progressing.
Those pictures are from last Thursday so I've made some progress since then, I'll be sure to post some more before kids arrive next Monday.

Group Participation: I'm planning on doing a famous quotation every day as a class warm-up, so if you've got a favorite you should post it as a comment. I can use all the help I can get.

Breakfast...

2008-08-18T15:02:00.000-05:00

The following post is not for women, children, or anyone else who either prides themselves on their domestic abilities or will be eating in the next hour.

Top Five "Bachelor's Kitchen" Moments of Summer '08

There's absolutely no way that I've really remember the best of the worst of our eating habits this summer, but here's a wrap-up to keep Leroy and Brad reflecting on just how good they have it back in the civilized world.

5. The Spaghetti Quick Fix: This is probably a pretty good trick, though I never intended it to be one. After making a big batch of chicken alfredo for Brad and I there was a pretty sizable surplus of noodles. Wanting to eat the food while it was hot, I left the noodles in the pan and headed to the party porch (which really deserves it's own post). Approximately two days later I rediscovered the pan of noodles (about 1/8 full), and when I stabbed the starchy mass it came out all at once leaving the pan totally clean. Now, this probably was just because it was teflon coated pan, but I like to think that I did something clever to save myself some clean-up.

4. Magic Bread: This bread (pictured below) was purchased for Jose's birthday dinner. About half of the loaf was used for garlic bread and the other half was, for some unknown reason, put into a Wal-Mart bag and thrown into the refrigerator. That would have been about a month and a half ago. After re-discovering this bread on Friday I ate it for dinner last night. It wasn't even hard. Turns out that bread keeps for an extra month or so in the fridge. But, then again, if you aren't a bachelor, your fridge is probably already full.

3. Ice Cream Cubes: Since I didn't have an ice cream scoop, when it came time for Brad and I to finish off the cookies and cream we had gotten earlier for a desert I had made (which consisted of a cake-pan of freshly baked cookie dough topped with ice cream), there was only one way to dish it out. We simply ripped the cardboard box off of the ice cream, dumped it in a bowl and used a steak knife to cut it into two equal halves. No waiting, no unnecessary melting, no need for proper utensils.

2. Bradcakes: For the first couple weeks (read: months) of summer we didn't have a frying pan, but we did have an abundance of pancake mix. One day Brad broke down and decided he would use whatever he could find and, by Hercules, he was going to make himself some pancakes. What you see below isn't some intermediate stage. It's actually the finished product. A pile of syrup-covered mush we like to call Bradcakes.

1. The Banana Solution: Okay, so it's kind of a lame number one, but "The Banana Solution" is really just a hypothetical event. Let me set this one up for you. The Bachelor, as we all know, is by far the most versatile homemaker because he is by far the most flexible. No matter what the problem is he can solve it with only two sets of salad forks, a bread-knife, and a family sized bottle of seasoned salt. The Bachelor also has only one motivation in his domestic endeavors beyond basic survival and that is being able to disguise the squalor he lives just quickly enough to deceive any member of the fairer sex that might accidentally stumble into his hovel. So, without further ado, "The Banana Solution": the other day Brad, Jose, and Leroy were talking and I, walking past the bathroom, spoke my immediate thought "something smells...unfortunate" and instantly my mind raced to figure out what I would do to cover up such an offensive odor if at that very moment an actual girl were to walk into my apartment. I inventoried my house: 4 computers, 268 books, 38 pairs of unwashed socks, an entire pack of freezer pops, left over garlic bread and... of course! I would flush a partially rotten banana down the toilet. Problem solved.

My food situation greatly improved on Friday when Brad and Leroy left a hearty stash of tasty snacks for me as a thank-you for letting them entertain me this summer. Included in their gift were: Wheat Thins, Oreos, milk, Gatorade Rain (otherwise known as water 2.0, the only real modification God has made to our planet's elemental make-up since Genesis), ground cinnamon and hazelnut coffee.

I've come to the conclusion that there must be something unnatural in Wheat Thins. There is no way that a un-enhanced "whole wheat snack" could so cripple my resolve that I would pass up Cool Ranch Doritos, Oreos, and chilled Peanut Butter M&M's and eat an entire box of Wheat Thins before Brad's sleeping-couch was even cold.

So, these helpful anecdotes should get you all set for first and second breakfast, brunch, lunch, elevensies, supper, and dinner.

And remember, if the women don't find you hansome, they'll at least find you handy.

- Podo Danderfluff of Willowbottom

Good People

2008-08-17T02:50:00.000-05:00

I was browsing facebook today and I came across a post on someone's wall and I was like "who's this joker with his rectangular-framed glasses and goatee/beard facial-weasel". Then I realized that I'm not the twelve year old with a bowl cut that I see in my mind's eye. I'm a 22 year old with rectangular-framed glasses and a goatee/beard facial-weasel. Huh...

Just My Shoes

When I got home Friday from school to an empty house I was ecstatic. I cranked some tunes, grabbed a trashbag and the vacuum and attacked Brad's former room with hurricane force. After vacuuming and dancing around in my underwears for a couple hours I realized that I was alone. No Brad. No Leroy. It was Friday night, it was pouring rain, and I had no idea what I was going to do with myself.

I woke up about 2 hours later when Vivian called and luckily at the same time I got a voicemail from Jose saying that he wanted to come down for the day on Saturday.

We ended up going to the Cave of the Winds to do a lantern tour. It was a good day. It would have been a great day if we could have just explored the caves by ourselves, but at least with the guide there we got to hear about what sort of a life someone has who violates Native American superstitious taboos and keeps a mummy in the cave he found. Afterwards we went for pizza at Poor Richard's (a combination bookstore, pizza-place, toy store, and chocolate and wine bar). Emily Dickinson's poetic wiles finally got the best of me and bought her collected poems. That should tide me over for the dateless couple months that lie ahead of me. Good pie, good scenery, good company, and good conversation, not a bad way to complete my goal for the week.

But now Brad and Leroy are gone, Jose left this afternoon after lunch at Chipotle and he'll be headed home after this upcoming work week, and BoyScout will hopefully be visiting the Springs this Wednesday and then heading back to Hillsdale. There go all my summer buddies. Time to get friendly with the locals.

On that note:

Jose and I did the Sunday circuit today, attending, once again, both Divine Redeemer Catholic Church and New Life. Divine Redeemer was pretty good today: a nice mix of music, a homily about being patient which included a rebuke against those people who just walk out after Communion, and a special presentation from a couple who recently moved here from, of all places, Michigan. New Life also had a special guest, also from Michigan. The music was a bit too fast for me today and the sermon a bit too slow, but that's the way it is.

So, here's the rub: New Life small groups (there are about 100 different groups to join, not kidding) start next Sunday and Divine Redeemer's RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) classes start Sept. 6th, and, being the over-achiever that I am, I want to do both. Again, I'll be going to RCIA for the Trinity and to small group for the fellowship, but twice as much church, that can't be wrong, right? Let me know your thoughts on this. I just don't know if you can cheat on Jesus with Jesus. I mean if you were to have your wife...okay, we shouldn't make an analogy of that.

It occurred to me today as I left the sanctuary at Divine Redeemer and looked at their "max. capacity" sign that at some point this church placed an order for 8,419 interlocking chairs.

P.S. Who wants to go see this movie with me?

And the winner is.....

2008-08-16T18:11:00.000-05:00

Time to announce the winner of last week's celebratory contest.

Here's the original photo:
And the winning caption:

"Instead of going to the hospital and having the big staff and serpent heal the sick and weary the EMTs decided it was faster to have the messiah cure them."

Thanks Quinn. Hit me up at zogood@gmail.com with your address and your wonderful prize will be on it's way.

Also, there are couple honorable mentions:

First, from Michael, a photoshopped version entitled "You Shall Not Pass":

And secondly, Varduga with his Onion-esque entry:

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO. PATRICK KILCHERMANN, ASSOCIATED PRESS (14:00MST, 8/12/08): Barrack Obama campaign officer Mr. David Hathaway finally succumbed to malnutrition today, after trying to bring to the forefront of the public's eye, one of the biggest issues of Senator Obama's campaign: Hunger.

"It just doesn't seem fair to me, that if a person in America doesn't feel like getting up to fix something to eat, she or he isn't spoon fed by the government," Mr. Hathaway was quoted as saying.

"When I realized that nobody was outraged by this other than me, It occurred to me that the public at large probably doesn't even KNOW this. And that is why I am doing this- I want everyone to see the kind of country you live in. I want to show America the kind of government the U.N. gave us."

Mr. Hathaway refused pleas from his family and friends to seek medical attention, even as he grew too weak to get up from the couch that he sat upon. All except his fellow Obama campaign officers- people like Jessica Rousch.

Prior to Hathaway's death, Ms. Rousch told us, "Um, I think it's awesome what he's doing. I don't 'member how old I was when I found out that not ev'ryone has their meals fed to them. But I think it was when I moved out of my parents house when I was 35 or 40. I mean, what's the point of even having a government if they aren't going to feed you?"

Hathaway's death is seen by his loved ones as an unnecessary tragedy in the war on hunger. David was 24 years old, and was a recent graduate from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a bachelor's degree in Fecal Arts.

Thanks for participating everyone and be sure to start spreading the good word about The Good Word and be prepared for an AMAZING prize for the next contest, which will begin the day after our first 100-visit day.

P.S. Jose is in town and tomorrow he and I will be double-dipping, be prepared...

August and Everything After

2008-08-16T10:28:00.000-05:00

The title of this post isn't technically the name of a song, but it is the title of the best CD ever made so I'm going to count it. And since I just got the call that Brad and Leroy are back in the state of abundant life I figured I would celebrate their journey by making "Omaha," one of my favorites from August and Everything After, the song of the day.

August Runs: Unless "August Rush" refers to some horrible gastric infection which results in chronic diarrhea, I don't get it.

I already mentioned August Rush once this week but since I've had to go another week without seeing Mama Mia, you're going to have to get the full lecture.

Movie Review #4

AUGUST RUSH - Dianna's Pick (Sorry that I have to pin this one on somebody, but it might as well be Brad's Colombian Princess).

We knew going in that August Rush was supposed to be "a little girly," but when has that ever deterred my taste in movies, music or fashion? Once the movie started though we realized that by "girly" they didn't mean it had Hugh Grant in it or that The Cranberries and Enya supplied over half the soundtrack. What they actually meant by "girly" was that the people who wrote this movie have a much lower IQ than the rest of society.

August Rush is about a boy who can "hear the music" and despite growing up at an orphanage in New York he can "hear" his parents, who since they were so cruelly ripped away from each other by Keri Russell's dad have given up music and moved to San Fransico and Chicago. Not only was the writing atrocious (they actually used the line "run August, run"), but the plot was either under-developed or overdone, like when a baby spends 11 months in the womb. Not only did characters enter and leave the plot without any real explanation (the kid's best friend at the orphanage, the bully, the little black girl, the caseworker), but in the time it took August to be born without his mother's knowledge and age 11 years his parents didn't age a bit. They didn't even change their clothes or get a haircut. Other especially believable moments include: Robinwilliamsinacowboyhat attacking a New York City police officer in the presence of about a dozen other cops and living to tell about it, and a truck driver picking up August outside of NYC, driving him to Times Square, and then leaving him there alone so that the caseworker could pick him up in a couple hours.

The only four characters that made it through the whole movie without mysteriously disappearing were the kid, his parents, and RobinWilliamsinacowboyhat. Now, in your average movie, novel, short story, children's TV show, Johnny Cash song, etc. there is an element called "rising and falling action". This is generally the reason you watch, read, listen to, any given piece of media - it's the plot, the character arc, the heroic rise, the tragic fall, the deus ex machina. In August Rush, however, the plot looked something like this:As you can see there is no part of this graph that looks at all interesting. The yellow line, representing August, pretty much just slowly goes up as he goes from knowing for sure that his parents love him to leaving the orphanage, becoming a musician, attending Julliard, and finally performing his rhapsody in Central Park. His parents, who haven't aged, changed occupation, or thought about anything but each other in 11 years, yet seem not to have discovered the internet, phonebook or any other way they might contact each other, both, through a series of mundane events, go to New York and find each other and their long lost son. But, that's all to be expected of a Disneyesque movie.

RobinWilliamsinacowboyhat, however, had potential. He was there on the night when August's parents met and made their musical little baby (probably why Disney didn't pick this one up), and he was there for August's rise to prominence in the New York City music scene. Something should have happened there. Maybe he was a real jerk because he too was orphaned and August could have showed him hope and taught him something wonderful about the nature of music. Maybe August's playing could have made RobinWilliamsinacowboyhat examine himself and learn to love music the way he did when he was playing his harmonica on that streetcorner 11 years ago. But, RobinWilliamsinacowboyhat had pretty much just as flat of a story arc as anyone else. One time he got mad and one time he was real nice, but that's about it.

Overall the music was pretty good (except the time he played the organ, that was a waste), but there wasn't a single minute of the movie where I didn't want to just stop watching. August earns, and I truly mean earns, a D+ from me.

Wow, that was harsh...

LATER TODAY: CONTEST WINNER!!!!

UPDATE!

2008-08-15T22:11:00.001-05:00

There is no internet at my house.

Tomorrow I'll head to a coffee shop early and get tomorrow's post up along with the contest winner.

Also, all text on the blog should be visible now. I hope that problem wasn't happening all day. Thanks Pat for letting me know about it.

Everyone: In the future when something doesn't look right, just feel free to e-mail me at zogood@gmail.com and I'll fix it. Blogger is a little temperamental, I won't be using it much longer.

Good Riddance

2008-08-15T12:17:00.000-05:00

Today is Brad and Leroy's last day in the Springs. As soon as Leroy gets out of work they'll be loading up his car and drag-racing back across the country to the beauty and simplicity of "the wolverine state". Lucky punks.

It's not what you do... it's who you beat.

I've always said that it's not what you do, it's who you beat. The Olympics are the perfect proof of this. Why would it ever matter that some guy could run real fast, stab a stick into the ground, and use it to throw himself over a tree-branch? Why would it ever matter that someone would string up a couple of rings from the ceiling and twirl around on them? No one would ever watch these things... that is unless it was to see someone from our country beat someone from Russia at doing these things. Anyone ever watched curling?

Colorado has been hard on us this summer. Here are some play-by-plays of our toughest match-ups and a summary of how we fared against each opponent.

Jenn from Leasing

The Opponent: A 98lb blonde leasing agent. Our first and greatest enemy. Not only was she unhelpful and rude during our housing search, but she made us sleep on the ground in a state park without a tent for four days after our application was approved so that the apartment could be cleaned. When we arrived in CSprings after our involuntary camping trip, which was terminated early due to a snow-storm, we showed up at Sunflower Inc. to sign our lease only to find that Jenn had forgotten that we made an appointment with her and had taken the day off. When we moved in we discovered that not only had the apartment not been cleaned, but we had to move the refrigerator and stove from the center of the kitchen to cover the filth that she was supposed to take care of while we were cooking Ramen over a fire in bear country.
The Battle: After vowing revenge we only actually saw Jenn once this summer, in a bar downtown. But, because the alcohol was so watered down (thanks again CSprings) Brad never got up the courage to go hit on her (the plan was that he would date her for awhile, marry her, divorce her and ruin her life).
The Winner: Jenn. Not only is my apartment still unfurnished and slowly falling apart but my utility bill quadrupled between the month of June and the month of July.

Downtown

The Opponent: We decided on the apartment we have because we wanted to be near downtown. It appeared to be exciting and friendly, filled with quaint little shops, bookstores and restaurants. Turns out the place was entirely out of our league. Not only was everything expensive but the people were rude and sometimes naked (one night we were passed by three, seemingly unrelated bike-streakers). The only place that was really on our side was The Corner Cafe which, as I've said before, had the best food and the best people the Springs has to offer.
The Battle: We did a lap around downtown almost every night. Never once were we ever engaged in conversation by someone who wasn't asking for change or telling us to vote for Obama.
The Winner: Brad and Zach. We learned our lesson about downtown early on, we defeated Panino's in open combat, we got in good with Uncle Wilbur and the rest of the locals, and never gave CSprings an inch.

Dumpster Divers

The Opponent: The homeless of CSprings come in many varieties. There's the faker, who you see getting out his car before he goes to his begging corner. The backpacker, who seems to be voluntarily homeless and is just passing through. The oldtimer, who is pretty well set up with either a grocery cart or several double-reinforced plastic bags. The prophet, who gives sermons in the park or is just generally always mumbling to himself. And finally, the dumpster diver.
The Battle: We never did give in and empty our pockets, but I did give a guy a piece of pie once.
The Winner: Dumpster Divers. We thought we had the upper hand until a dumpster diver (after asking if he could have my bike a couple days before) cut the chain and stole it. He'll make about $7 selling it as scrap metal. I hope those bolt-cutters cost him....

Women of The Springs

The Opponent: Armpit hair
The Winner: No one wins with armpit hair. Draw.

Employment and Cost of Living

The Opponents: The Corner Cafe, The Cleaning Authority, and College Pro Painters.
The Battle: The Corner Cafe treated me very well. It fed me, clothed me, and loved me as its own. But at $300 per paycheck my earnings were only about 75% of my expenses every month, which was okay. I knew what I was in for. Leroy had a pretty good set up with the Vinyards and The Cleaning Authority. He worked for the family business (maybe not as many hours as he wanted), lived in the family's bunkhouse (read: shack) and, on top of that, they fed him. The downside was that The Leroy Shack was about 100 miles from anywhere and between gas costs, flying home for a wedding, and eating out just enough to break the monotony, he'll probably break even. Brad, however, got the shirt ripped off his back by College Pro. They took a couple weeks to hire him, paid him unfairly, forced him to wear white pants (a fashion sin), and ultimately laid him off with three weeks left in his summer. Despite living as frugal of a life as possible: surviving on only hotdogs and dreams, while relying on hulu.com for entertainment, Brad won't only be down the cash that he lost not working all that time, but also his dignity.
The Winner: Poverty.

As we sit here, sipping our victory Jones Soda (blue bubble gum if you must know) that we've been saving from the travel package Mike and Maggie's put together for our trip out here, we realize that we were saving them all summer for a time when we would have something to celebrate. I guess Brad heading back to the land of trees and freshwater is as good of an occasion as any.

You win Colorado. But know that no one would care about your hollow victory if you weren't beating Michigan's finest.

It's been a long summer. A long, sweaty, sticky summer

P.S. Thanks for the cookie Jose.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

2008-08-14T12:10:00.000-05:00

I'm not obese. For my height I'm probably technically overweight, but most would call me "cuddly". Or at least most people in Michigan would call me that. But, unfortunately, I've moved to the most ripped state in the Union, from, by far, the most pleasantly plump. While I can't back that up with authoritative data, I can say that living amongst these people, despite their boisterous (doesn't that word have to do with sound?) armpit hair, I've developed a bit of a complex. So the other night Brad and I went for a run.

I haven't run regularly since my internship at Grace Church (where running was mandatory), but when I was doing it I loved it. We ran as a group three days a week and in the course of the summer I went from being the second slowest person to the second fastest of the eight interns. I was even running on days when we didn't have mandatory runs. I even started running twice a day about half way through the summer. Then, one Saturday, I decided I was going to do a homemade half-marathon. I had run 10 and 1/2 miles during my long run the week before that and I knew that I could do it. The only problem was that during the course of my run, which took a couple hours, the temperature rose from low 80's to the high 90's. I got dehydrated, pulled my ACL and haven't really run since.

Today, as sore as I was from running with Brad, I got up at 5:45 and ran again. Two miles has never seemed so long. But I did it.

Since mid-July I've been waking up five minutes earlier every day. My goal is to be able to execute a morning routine which includes running, showering, shaving, ironing, making a lunch, and arriving at the school before 7am to get done whatever I need to do for that day. 5:45 is definitely not early enough. I'm guess it's going to be more like 5:00AM.

What's my point?

To function in this world, to be an effective teacher, doctor, pastor, construction worker, nurse, artist, writer, whatever, you need to be a little bit better today than you were yesterday. But, like most, I'm seldom on track. Sure I get a couple boosts of resolution during the year: New Year's, first day of school, my birthday, etc. but I've never been able to really succeed at progressing unless it was in a situation like running with the interns at Grace Church. With the interns I always had someone to measure myself by, someone to compete with, and 8 someones (including our running coach) to keep me accountable.

My goal with this blog is 50% communication (of ideas and thoughts with people I care about), 50% blatant and shameless self-promotion, and 50% just loving to be able to stay in contact with the people who read it. People who I otherwise might talk to once a month, once a year, maybe once again before I die.

So, today's 'reader response" isn't for people who are witty, well-read, or especially into some niche of pop-culture. It's for whoever wants to stay in contact with me in a meaningful way and do something today about making yourself a little better today than you were yesterday.

If you'd like to do this (and if you're reading this I would like you do this), just leave a comment telling me one goal you have for today, one goal you have for the week (before next Thursday) and one goal you have before New Year's.

Here are mine:
Today: I will have a week's worth of lesson plans done for at least one of my English sections.
This Week: I will hang out with someone this weekend, despite the fact that Brad and Leroy leave tomorrow (I have made approximately zero friends in this land of 5% body fat).
Before January: I will be able to run the 10.5 miles I was able to run before I attempted that half marathon two years ago.

I'll keep you guys updated. Do the same for me. And if you don't want to post your goals for the whole wide web to see. E-mail me at zogood@gmail.com

Oh, and if you really want to do something to improve your life, never watch August Rush.

Everything You Know Is Wrong

2008-08-13T12:09:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: Sorry dudes, I didn't change the code for the playlist earlier. It's fixed now.

Turns out if you like pop music, it's only because you like disco...

Debunk the Funk: A look at how Pop ripped off Disco and Will Smith ripped off everybody.

Madonna vs. Abba

Gym Class Heroes vs. Legitimate Success

Turns out that not only do they need the lead singer of Fall Out Boy to break the top 40, but these guys also have hijacked the hooks from some forgotten pop hits.

Will Smith vs. Everybody

If you take a close look, or just happen to listen to a lot of Soul Train, you soon find out that the beats of the artist formerly known as The Fresh Prince are neither fresh nor kingly...

See if you can identify which of these golden oldies were ripped off and turned into which of Will Smith's biggest radio hits.

To compare these videos with any of the Will Smith versions just use the playlist on the sidebar which has been switched up completely today just for this post.

Sister Sledge - "He's The Greatest Dancer"

If you guessed "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" (how could you not?) you'd be right.

How about this one?
Patrice Rushen - "For-Me-Nots"

Yup, it's "Men in Black."

The Whispers - "The Beat Goes On"

That would be "Miami."

And finally...
Stevie Wonder - "I Wish"

At least he let Stevie Wonder in on the action and got to play the music he wrote and Will Smith sampled for the song "Wild, Wild West."

Of course we all know that "Just The Two Of Us" was a remake of a Grover Washington song and that "Will2k" was just Smith singing over "Rock the Casbah." But what you might not know is that he stole the lyrics to his eponymous tune too. Check it out.

Take a Picture

2008-08-12T12:05:00.000-05:00

CONTEST TIME!
TheGoodWord got 50 hits yesterday and it's time to celebrate. I'll be mailing a sweet unique prize(which probably means something I found at Goodwill plus some modifications and a personal message from me, plus fame and glory)* to the winner of today's contest.

Rules: Caption the picture below in the way that you think would most tickle my fancy. Nothing dirty or hateful (Pat), but feel free to press the boundaries of clean humor with euphemisms and allusions. Your have until Friday to leave your caption in the comments section of this post, then I'll e-mail the winner and post the pic again with the winning caption (and then you'll all Digg, Stumble and Facebook the crap out of it).

Here's the photo:
Please note that Brad took this photo yesterday, it is neither staged (how could I even do that?) nor photo-shopped.

So have at, and again: leave your caption as a comment and I'll post the winner on Friday.

And just as a bonus, I leave leave you with this.

*As if I could actually mail you fame and glory.

I Miss Buffy...

2008-08-11T14:00:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: Sorry if you listened to the song that was on the playlist earlier. That was most definitely NOT the song I meant to choose. The correct one is up now. Sure picked a great day to remind everyone of the playlist...

Don't worry the title of this post is an actual song. Check the music player if you don't believe me.

And yes, this blog is meant to be read while listening to the corresponding tune. If you aren't doing it the only person you are hurting is yourself.

Whedonism, like Hedonism... Yup, just like Hedonism

If you haven't been taking part in culture lately you probably haven't heard of Joss Whedon. But if you've been using your T.V. or computer for anything worthwhile, chances are you've run across him and his band of cohorts.

Whedon is the writer and creator of Buffy, Angel and Firefly. Both Buffy and Firefly, now off the air, have developed huge cult followings and have spawned entire movements, of varying success, to get the funding and interest together to enable Whedon to expand their storylines. Minor successes include the production of Serenity, a feature length movie based on the Firefly storyline, and the creation of the Buffy comics, which pick up where the 7th season left off. The Buffy animated series, however, never quite took off.

More recently though Joss has been teaming up with some of the best in the biz for a new project: Dr. Horrible, a three part web-series starring Nathan Fillion (Captain Malcolm Reynolds of Firefly), Felicia Day (from the web-series The Guild), and Neil Patrick Harris (Barney from the CBS series How I Met Your Mother). Basically each of these actors has more starpower in their pinky-finger than any other B-actor out there right now and in Dr. Horrible they put it to good use - musical style. Felicia Day, I might add, is not only cute as a button, but also played a slayer called Vi in season 7 of Buffy.

Firefly, HIMYM and The Guild should each independently be recognized as some of the best entertainment offered to the American public in the last couple years, and when you take the most beloved character from each of these shows, and stir in a healthy shot of Whedon, you've got a hit. You've also got servers crashing from the overwhelming number of fans watching Dr. Horrible repeatedly on the day of it's debut and a #1 ranking on ITunes sales because people would rather buy the show than wait a few hours for servers to bring back up the website where they could watch it for free. Originally in three parts, Dr. Horrible is now hosted on Hulu (see end of post) in a single, uncut episode.

What's most exciting though is the fact that this fall Joss has something new in store: a weekly drama called Dollhouse. This new project stars Eliza Dushku who also played a slayer named Faith from the Buffy series (so much for "one girl in every generation"). Dushku plays one of the "Actives," a group of people who have "voluntarily" given up whatever lives they had before to become Matrix-breaking superhumans who forfeit their memories and enter into the employ of a shady organization who rents them out as assassins, personal security guards and arm-candy. I think the premise of the show is great and that Joss is doing something he hasn't done before: make us think. While Buffy and Firefly were immensely entertaining they lacked substance. This new show should raise some really important questions of ethics, morality and definitions of humanity. It's just a shame it'll be on FOX.

One of the great advantages of science fiction is it's ability to show us potential moral difficulties in society and give us a chance to work through them before we even have to deal with them. Often, with a real visionary, like Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov or George Orwell, the distopian future they depict begins to become reality before anyone takes sufficient notice. Sometime before the new season of Heroes begins I'll write a defense of Sci-Fi, but for now I'll take your objections.

Check out Dollhouse:

Hopefully the next couple weeks will give you just enough time to get hooked on HIMYM before this blog becomes entirely devoted to it (and Heroes) when the new fall line-up begins in a couple weeks.

So long Scoobies.

Also, if the ol' blog gets 50 hits today there'll be a contest starting tomorrow, with great prizes for all!!!!*

Watch (Legally!):
Dr. Horrible
The Guild
Buffy (Seasons 1 and 2)
How I Met Your Mother

*By "all" I mean the one person that makes me like them the most.

The Middle

2008-08-10T13:30:00.000-05:00

This guy on the far side of my block has a weekly garage sale entirely directed towards selling one highly overpriced item for his weekly food budget (or so I'm convinced). Today I saw him selling one of those plastic see-through drawer things with wheels, but it didn't have wheels. And he wanted $18.00 for it. Wal-Mart charges $15.00 for the same thing brand new.

On Double-dipping - or - The Art of The Churchathon

Double-dipping: 1) After already dipping a chip, veggie or other food item into any form of dip, salsa or caso, and after taking a bite out of said food item, dipping that same food item a second time into any condiment whatsoever. 2) A little-known practice in which an individual attends multiple church services of different denominations on the same Sunday. 3) Deep frying anything, waiting for the greasy outer shell to dry and then deep frying that bad boy again.

While none of these practices are particularly well-regarded by society and while I do indeed practice all of them, I want to talk today about #2.

For almost my entire last semester at Hillsdale I woke up early on Sunday morning, went to the earliest possible mass at St. Anthony's, slipped out with only minutes to spare before a C.S. Lewis adult Sunday-school class, and then proceeded to a church service at the local United Brethren church. Today I attempted this for the first time in Colorado Springs. After attending the 8am mass at Divine Redeemer, taking a short break to play this game, I took the drive out to New Life Church on the “Jesus side of town" (home of the headquarters of Focus on the Family).

But why would I do this?

Well, that's a very complicated question. Mostly when I was double-dipping last spring it was for the sake of Traverse City sweet-cherry coffee, a heavenly brew served weekly at the C.S. Lewis class. Secondarily though, it's because I wanted to be comparing as critically as possible Catholicism and whatever I can find that closely resembled Grace Church (the church I first attended after becoming a Christian) Protestantism. So, after leaving Hillsdale fairly satisfied that I would be starting confirmation classes when I found a Catholic church in the Springs, I cut out the Protestant side of things for a couple months. So, why am I going back now? Three reasons: coffee, girls, and coffee (originally reason #3 was music, but I've since changed my priorities). To illustrate just how radical of a shift I have to undergo to pull off the double-dip, let me outline the day I've had so far.

Divine Redeemer: Walk in, find a pew, decide if I want to cross myself and genuflect or look more like the wannabe that I am. Look around, find the one person my age amidst the flocks of families who were here being Catholic since before this state was part of America and old Irish grandmothers who have the misfortune of following their grandkids from the east coast out to the desert wasteland of the American West. Sing a couple songs. Homily. Feel weird being the only person who doesn't go up for Communion, and we're done.

New Life: Drive around for 15 minutes trying to find a parking spot. Park in section K row 15. Try to figure out which building on the New Life campus is the one where worship actually happens. Walk through a lobby big enough to hold four Divine Redeemer's into a sanctuary which is probably capable of seating more people and pumping out more decibels than any concert venue in the state. Sit in the one open seat I can find in the 7^th section. Realize that not only does this sanctuary house seven projection screens, a flag for every country and a twelve person band (including a guy with two turn-tables), but also a mosh-pit (not even kidding). Sing a couple REALLY LONG songs. Feel weird being the only person who feels weird about taking Communion, and we're done.

So Zach, after the concert did you sip some hot latte and talk about Purpose Driven Life with a flock of eligible young Jesus-freaks? Nope. I walked around a bit, realized that there was no coffee and that I was a quarter-mile from (though in the same building as) the Guest Center and then once again, for the 12^th Sunday in a row, no one at church spoke to me (outside of the obligatory “good morning” or “peace be with you”) and I left. It's not that I mind that most people I interact with in daily life are trying to get me to join a cult, vote for Obama or give them my loose change. I would just like to talk to some guys my age who aren't cult-leaders and maybe some girls who shave their armpits. Such is life.

Coming this week:

A helpful product and/or website review (I haven't decided yet).
A tribute to Joss Whedon and his lovable cohorts.
"The Bachelor's Kitchen"
More talk with volunteers at the Obama camp and a trip to McCain headquarters.
A look into exactly how wild (and by wild I mean relatively behind in freedom crushing legislation) the west really is.
And finally...Some funny stuff.

Got a blog or a personal website? We should trade links. Just link me on your page and leave a comment here with your URL so I can do the same for you.

Love is all Around

2008-08-09T14:00:00.000-05:00

Chips and salsa is a breakfast food right?

Movie Review #3
LOVE ACTUALLY - Karen's pick

If you have ever liked any movie with any British actor, chances are you'll put up with 2 and 1/4 hours of Love Actually.

This movie has, I think, eight different story lines each composed of a love-agon between a love-triangle and a love-dodecahedron. It has Qui-Gon Ginn, Elizabeth Swann, Professor Snape, Mr. Darcy, that one guy from Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy and even Mr. Bean. Plus cameos by Claudia Schiffer and that guy who did the voice of Sebastian in The Twelfth Night episode of "Shakespeare: The Animated Series."

Do you know how hotdogs are made? How the butcher just saves the scraps and leavings from dozens of legitimate cuts of meat and then at the end of the day puts them all through the grinder and sells them as though pork liver and chicken fat were meant to be together? Well, it seems like that's what happened with Love Actually. They took the scraps from a dozen different movies, put them together without any care towards a common and cohesive theme, spiced it with stars galore and it sold like franks at a ballpark.

Some people try to stay away from romantic comedies. Those people are usually in loveless relationships or have been single for so long that they have to do their best to forget that Hugh Grant exists at all. Not me. I'm a big fan, and despite its ignorance of all conventions of cinema and standards of quality film, I liked Love Actually. From the "All You Need Is Love" cover in one (of eight) of the opening scenes to the cheesy conclusions of each and every unconnected storyline. It... wasn't bad.

While I would have rather watched a movie about how Hugh Grant is the prime minister of England and how he falls in love with a page, or a movie about how Liam Neeson has to help his step-son hold onto the hope of finding love in the wake of his own wife's death, or even one about how Collin Firth falls for his Portugese cleaning lady despite the fact that neither of them speaks the other's native language. Love Actually was all of these and none of these and if it hadn't pulled the wool over my eyes with a great soundtrack and Hugh Grant's devilishly good looks, I probably wouldn't have made it through.

Overall Grant, Firth, Neeson, Thompson, Knightly, Nighy, Rickman and Linney earn an A-, B+, B, B, C-, B, B+ and D, respectively.

Apathetic Way to Be

2008-08-08T20:12:00.000-05:00

Dear clipboard guy,
If you can't hear yourself talk over the sound of Blue Oyster Cult's "I'm Burning For You" blasting out of my ear buds, then chances are I can't hear you either. And to answer your question: Have I registered to vote? Nope. Will I register to vote? Yes. Will I wait to do it until that cute girl with the clipboard that I saw here last week is back? Absolutely.

Last Sunday at Divine Redeemer there was no homily. Instead a deacon read from a document recently issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops entitled "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship." After church I picked up a copy and the next day I gave it a thorough reading and determined that, to some degree, I would use it as a guide by which to measure McCain and Obama in the upcoming election, and to find out where I stood politically in relation to The Church and to the candidates.

This resolution has turned out to be a lot more difficult to follow through with than I imagined.

After figuring out that Obama had a campaign headquarters less than a mile from my house I decided that I couldn't really have any better shot at learning about his policies than going right to the source. And I did. The first time I stopped by Obama-central I did so at 11 o'clock at night with a carload of passengers who had no idea why I was making this random pit-stop. I decided just to make a quick stop to pick up campaign literature. When I entered the door I was greeted by half a dozen of the most friendly, young, clean-cut Democrats I've met in this town. It really would have been great to sit down and talk to them, but I was just there to get some background reading. Turns out all they had was a biographical pamphlet that read like an obituary and a copy of Obama's "More Perfect Union" speech.

I was disappointed with the lack of reading material, but I went over the speech as carefully as I could and prepared myself for what I thought would be the first interview session in a series, addressing key issues like abortion, gun rights, universal health care and Obama's immigration policy. After reading an article in Newsweek about Barack's upbringing and incredibly diverse faith-background, a review of the speech already mentioned and the speech itself, I was geared up to hear more and to try to raise some challenging questions to some of his most avid supporters.

What I got was a waste of 45 minutes of my time and what Obama got was strike one.

At 8pm the main office of Barack's barracks was manned by two paid employees. One was a woman in her early 40's with the voice of a secretary and the political drive of a butterfly. After welcoming us and asking if we wanted the volunteer all we heard out of her for the rest of our visit was this: "Well now, that was just the nicest man there on the phone. He was a McCain supporter, but he was just so nice. Told me upfront that he was on the other side of the fence and said that I sounded so nice he wished he could change. What a nice man."

The other employee was a younger girl, probably fresh out of college, who, at an average of 4 words per minute, and while welcoming interruptions whenever she could, managed to tell me NOTHING about Obama except that he had a really sweet website. And to her credit, he does. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi there, I'm Zach, I was just wondering if you might be willing to talk with me for a bit about where Obama stands on some key issues (my intent was to talk about some life-based issues like abortion, stem-cell research, the death penalty and euthanasia).
Probama: Umm.... are you from a Newspaper? Uh... or T.V. or something.....
Me: Nope, just want to be informed.
Probama: ....Uh...Cuz you have to tell us if you are from...the uh...media...
Me: Nope.
Probama: (Turns to a person leaving the phone bank room) Uhh...did you...put in all your...uh...data? 'kay... Uh...huh... Haaaaaaaa.... (that's her laugh). (Turns back to me) So...have you checked out the uh...website?

That's pretty much how it went. She told me nothing. She refused to give me any information (she called someone to get ahold of voting records once, but they didn't pick up). In the end all she ended up doing was e-mailing me Obama's "Blueprint for Change," which, despite the fact that it is the most important document of campaign literature Barack has put together, she neither had in hard copy, nor had she even downloaded it before I asked for it. She couldn't even find it on that darn website that she talked up so much. This, might I remind you, is a paid campaign coordinator.

I'll probably head back there this weekend sometime when I'm pretty confident she isn't around, but having my first visit in earnest to Obama headquarters go so poorly put a serious damper on my enthusiasm for this project.

P.S. Tomorrow is movie-review Saturday. If you've got a pick go ahead and leave me the title of the flick and a spoiler-free blurb about it in a comment and you'll probably see it reviewed in the near future.

Send Me On My Way

2008-08-07T00:32:00.000-05:00

I've decided to save my interview with the friendly cats at Obama headquarters for tomorrow in favor of a more timely post. For those of you who are sick of waiting for the first in my much alluded to Campaign '08 series, just listen to the song "Apathetic Way to Be" by Relient K and rest assured that it will be up by 10am tomorrow.

For those of you who don't know already I've been working at a small cafe in downtown CSprings this summer and after previous summers spent working at a car auction (now closed due to severe cocaine-related bankruptcy), a moving company, and campus security, I can say that washing dishes, waiting tables and deep-frying the crap out of whatever crosses my path at The Corner Cafe has been, by far, my favorite summer job. And today was my last day.

After arriving in CSprings this summer I spent a half a week just waiting to move into my apartment during which I slept on the ground in a state park. But, after I finally moved in it only took one day of job searching before I got a call from Bob and Virginia at The Corner Cafe and before I knew it I had been interviewed and fitted for a shirt. I was working the next Monday, two days after moving in.

I have an almost miraculous tendency for finding good people wherever I go (maybe there are more of them than I thought) and Bob and Virginia are thus far my favorite Coloradans (Colorodians, Colodites?). They gave me a great job that allowed me to spend a lot of time reading and getting to know the city, they let me eat breakfast and lunch every day on the house (they even sometimes fed me on Saturdays), but most of all they asked daily how I was doing, had I talked to my family, what was my apartment like, etc. They have been no less than surrogate parents this summer and today they really went above and beyond and got me a going away present:

A nice card, a coffee maker, filters and coffee.

I mentioned to Virginia about a week after I started work that I hadn't had coffee a couple weeks. What followed what a mom-like one-sided argument about why me being happy and having coffee every once in awhile was worth the money I would be spending on it. I, however, being the cheap, loan-encumbered teacher-to-be that I am never did get around to buying a coffee maker.

Their gift was a total surprise and it really showed me how even two months spent with someone can really have an impact on them. For better or for worse. While I will miss Bob, Virginia, Steve and Marquina, I won't have too much time to bemoan the loss of my apron: tomorrow is my first day of training at Cheyenne Mountain Charter Academy. If you didn't know already I'm going to be teaching 8th grade English and an introductory Latin class to a combination of 7th and 8th graders. So, if you've got any sweet classroom ideas, leave 'em in a comment.

And now, your moment of Zen:

Since I'll be officially starting at Cheyenne tomorrow it's going to get harder and harder to keep daily posts coming. So, if you're actually reading this stuff, give a shout out in the comments and let me know that I'm not just throwing around the bits and bytes for my own narcissistic enjoyment. Also, if you're sick of me talking about myself feel free to give me something to talk about. Just leave a comment that says "Zach, what do you think about Nutrigrain bars or human/unicorn relationships?" and I'll be sure to give you my 2 cents.

Too Much Food

2008-08-05T16:05:00.001-05:00

Last Friday Jose, Brad, Leroy and I decided to go out for dinner. Italian was on the menu and we were hungry. Proceeding foot-wise towards downtown we stopped at a little place called Panino's. We had pizza on the brain, but a good looking menu and CSprings Independent choice award changed our minds. One by one we selected from a list of their signature "Panino Sandwich". Pizza, Hawaiian, BBQ, Green Chili - we each made our pick and we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Not only was the service slow, the lighting subpar and the atmosphere downright vampiric, but also it turns out a "Panino Sandwich" is just a piece of pizza folded onto another piece of pizza. The sides: a bowl of soup that we almost got charged $2 extra for, a 2 ounce container of coleslaw and three potato chips left nothing undesired. To add insult to injury we paid roughly $12 each for these paltry pint-sized pizza-droppings. We vowed revenge, and last night we got it.

The Scene: Panino's

The Game: All you can eat pizza for $5.95.

The Players:

Zach "the devastator" Good: As the leader of this crusade I set an example for my soldiers by fasting all day, forcing each man to set a goal and achieve it, and generally demonstrating an unbridled hatred for the Colorado Springs restaurant scene and what it had done to us.

Brad "the pit" Osborne: Second in command of the operation. He showed up (as did I) over 45 minutes before "the clean up crew" arrived. Putting away two medium pizzas by himself and consuming only half a glass of water during battle, Brad was a force to be reckoned with.

Jose "the sleeping giant" Orozco: Jose demonstrated his commitment to the team by grabbing Leroy and driving down from Denver right after getting out of work. Despite his mild-mannered appearance we learned during the course of the onslaught that Jose was a veteran "aggressive eater" and, though his specialty is the hot dog circuit, his signature "jalapeno sandwich" move proved that he has was it takes to hold his own in the world of competitive pizza-wrecking.

Leroy aka "Eric" Louis "Crazy Eyes" Mary-Beth Phipps: Check out this crazy mug. Weighing in at roughly 25.7 newtons/square inch this guy can really pack away the 'za. Leroy was quick on his feet, never let a waiter go by, and, like his "bash-brother" Jose, absolutely trumped his own pizza-pounding-predictions.

The Score: In toto we consumed 6 medium pizzas plus change. We ordered new rounds of pizza every time the waiter got within 20 feet of us. Below is everyone's "predicted" and "actual" count in number of slices. We got 'em... We got 'em good.

P to the S: Last night, in an effort to alleviate our gastric discomfort, we sought out the soda springs of Manitou and on the way happened to see that Obama's CSprings campaign headquarters was still open. I stopped in, chatted it up a bit, and picked up some literature. I'm headed back there tonight to talk turkey. Hopefully (unless time is just too short) you'll hear more about that tomorrow.

Invincible

2008-08-05T16:03:00.000-05:00

This post was originally supposed to be an in memoriam for my bike. After receiving, by charitable donation, a bike rack (mine was misplaced sometime during the two uninterrupted years it spent in Hillsdale), hauling it 1500 miles across eight states (I count Michigan and Ohio twice because Brad and I accidentally re-entered Michigan about an hour into our cross country road trip), and having it put two sizable dents and a monster scratch in the back of my car when I backed into a tree with it still attached, my bike, despite being immobile (due to a bent wheel) and locked to a fence, was stolen last Thursday.But that's not what this post is about.

It's about something much more important. Something I think is better worth remembering. What I'd really like to commemorate today is something that came to my mind yesterday after talking to one Mr. Phipps and has consumed the better part of my thought since. Not many people that I've come to know in the past several years will recall that glorious institution and few who do remember can think about it without a tear in their eye. While the name "Samurai Warriors of Resplendent Justice" probably would have been a more fitting, it was simply called FBL - The Fraternal Brotherhood of LAN (Don't worry the fraternal/brotherhood redundancy is intentional. It's just that manly).

My idea of FBL was always a bit romantic. While it wasn't exactly the band of rugged crusaders I liked to think it was, I don't hesitate to say that it was one of the best things to ever happen to those of us who were involved. And, though my shotgun wasn't as feared as Czar's sniper-rifle or Oz's rocketlauncher, I enjoyed playing my part. I hope the slideshow below brings back some memories and impels you all to aspire again to such heights of manliness and brotherhood.

There are over 100 pictures in that slide show, so be patient.

Finally, here's my favorite picture by far: a group of some of the core members of The Brotherhood in their class-As.
FBL'ers: leave a comment with your favorite memory or an update if we haven't heard from you in awhile. Also, feel free to throw up some pictures on the new Facebook group.

Long Distance Call

2008-08-04T17:30:00.000-05:00

AIM missing the mark? Yahoo! lost its pep? Been crapped on by Pidgin?
(I've got about seven more of those, each higher up on the pun scale than the last)
Well, whether you are dissatisfied with your IM client or not, Digsby can do a lot to clean up your crowded desktop and lighten the load placed on your internet browser. After an easy five minute installation Digsby rounds up your GMail, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Jabber and ICQ data and incorporates it all into one client that allows you to chat with fellow GMailers, Facebookers, and anyone on your IM buddy list all without opening a web browser. It also notifies you when you receive e-mail, get a new wall post or get tagged in a photo. With more reach than Meebo or Pidgin, Digsby can be as comprehensive or as unobtrusive as you'd like. Each chat client connects separately and every type of notification can be blocked. Also, unless you change the default settings, it has no irritating blurps, beeps, door slams, "uh-ohs" or typewriter noises.

Here's an unusually fitting example of one of the pop-up windows telling me that Brad is sending me a message via GMail Chat. These windows linger for just a couple seconds to tell you what's new and, if they are indicating a newly received message on chat, they give you the option to reply in the pop-up itself.

The finished product looks something like this.
If you are obsessed with density of information, Digsby is where it's at. For me, and for my Frankenstein of a computer, having every chat, e-mail and social client running at once is a bit much, but Digsby always gives you the option to see more or less depending on your preferences and legal restraining orders.

Digsby is free for now, but only available for Windows.

This post brought to you by Brad's incessant pestering.