rationalization

what would human beings be like without the ability to rationalize things? does that mean we would always see no other options and have to do the right thing? kind of like liar, liar but with rationalizing instead of lying, and tasteful humor instead of jim carrey's.

lost in translation

i just watched it again on dvd. i love this movie. i couldn't really explain what's so beautiful about it. but apparently some people think it sucks. especially japanese people. it's not supposed to be a portrayal of japanese people, it's supposed to be a portrayal of a gaijin's first visit to japan, and i think it does a very good job of being exactly that. i guess japanese people could be offended even in light of that, but i don't see why they would bother.

i think it's plain inexplicably beautiful. sort of like neuromancer. garden state feels kind of the same way as well. i don't understand how people could hate this movie, but to each his own, i suppose. after all, i hate bowling for columbine, haaaaaaaaaaate it, and a lot of people don't.

edit: lost in translation is definitely _not_ about two intellectual giants turning up their noses at a nation of buffoons. lost in translation is definitely _not_ about two super-cool americans laughing behind their sleeves at some backwards civilization. anyone who genuinely thinks that is projecting just a little bit.

it is so early

i like posting before i go to work. and it's 7:26, but i have prep first block today, so i'm taking it a bit easy. i'm gonna head in now and get a sausage egg and cheese on a croissant from the dunkin donuts near the school.

what do these movies have in common

big trouble in little china
donnie darko
half-baked
the lord of the rings
predator
resident evil
the shawshank redemption
stand by me
stir of echoes

the fucking man released special-er editions with more useless discs after i purchased whatever editions already.

well, with the exception of big trouble in little china; i bought the 1-disc by accident when the 2-disc set was available. and the lord of the rings i got for free from blockbuster.

but the other ones. what the fuck.

i almost purchased the wrong edition of i heart huckabees. and eternal sunshine. and thankfully i bought the new guy recently, when the director's cut had come out, and not immediately after seeing eliza dushku dancing around in a bikini last last summer. and i almost bought resident evil: apocalypse, but there's a collector's box set with both resident evils together. in a collector's box. i could keep going for many paragraphs.

buying dvds is like navigating a goddamn mine field. whenever dvds drop down in price i am paranoid that the drop is to lure unsuspecting consumers to buy them right before the dvd companies release newer editions. sort of like how the gba sp dropped right before the ds came out. although there was a lot of press about that.

i'm really mad about donnie darko. i need to get the director's cut.

what's the deal with new editions? i should be able to trade in the exact fucking price i paid for the now-crappy version as credit towards the new one. this trend only makes me not want to buy dvds, ever, because better editions are always on the way.

you really don't

i'm back from the ring two. unimpressive. i left that movie knowing what i already knew - nothing can stop the hot single mom. nothing.

i've been listening to "years" by mike ruekberg nonstop since i got it last night. evil catherine downloaded it for me from i2hub. i'll leave out why she's evil (no goatee, so it's a bit tricky) and why my song is better, for now.

this song is a warning. i wonder where i would be now if i had heard it in sophomore year of college. sure, i managed to land more or less on my feet, but i know i'm wasting a lot of my potential, or whatever.

i couldn't find the lyrics online anywhere. here's the first verse.

you don't get those years back
time you wasted sleeping late
was it wise to throw out your direction
before you knew your way

oh, and school was great today. absolutely great. i found something that works on the students. and it's not chloroform. so this post isn't some depressed introspective kick. i just like the song.

highlights

playing racquetball with catherine. telling catherine i am going to hit her with the ball, turning and aiming right at her, and then nailing her while she is frozen in disbelief and fear. evil catherine - "open season!"

eating saji's with amanda. watching ong-bak with amanda. amanda needlessly groping me while looking for her shirt.

getting shitfaced stupid with lots of people at lion's head after columbia cottage.

why don't all the cool people move to a city that's less expensive and less really not that great. we could start some sort of commune with luaus and clambakes all the time. and i could fertilize all the women.

2 hour delay!

wooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

my funnest day at columbia had to be the snow day. and the best part was of that was sledding down the hill using people as the sleds. that was a good time.

from the geniuses who brought you cowboy bebop

comes the crappiest piece of crapper crap, wolf's rain.

wow. i finally suffered through the last episode, to be left with nothing. no resolution. no explanation. no nothing. what a crap series. i don't remember if i posted about the movie spartan, but i watched that entire movie thinking, it's bad, but it's not bad enough to stop watching. i've already put this much time into it, i might as well finish it. hopefully if i watch just a little bit more it'll get better or make sense. take that same feeling, and apply it to 30 fucking 20 minute episodes. 10 hours, wasted. gone.

ok. you have 4 wolves. you have 1 half wolf that belongs to a old human hunter who hates wolves. you have a detective trying to win back his ex-wife, who is a scientist studying a flower girl. the flower girl is supposed to lead the wolves to paradise. what is paradise, you ask? good fucking question! after 10 hours of pure nonsensical babble about paradise, and what is paradise, and how to get to paradise, and if paradise exists, i still have no fucking idea. oh, and you have some bad guys, but they aren't even worth describing, they're so confusing.

wolves deceive humans by appearing to them as humans. except when humans are really drunk, or dizzy, or have just been clocked on the head, or wear some red eyepiece gear, then they can see through the deception. wolves gave birth to humans? wolves turned into humans and then were kicked out of paradise? humans are wolves who forgot themselves? the series posits a whole bunch of theories and forgets to actually explain which if any is true.

so for 10 hours, you watch this cast of characters meet up, separate, meet up again, separate some more, all while wandering through a wasteland. it's always either snowing or not snowing. and the wolves are always either hungry or eating. they fight some things occasionally. a lot of the show is the wolves losing the flower girl and then rescuing her again. what the fuck is a flower girl, you ask? i couldn't fucking tell you. she does turn into seeds at the end, whatever the fuck that means.

at the end, everyone dies. as each character dies, he or she tells the main character that he or she knew all along that he or she would not be allowed into paradise and that only the main character would survive. why did they go along then??

what a dissatisfying piece of work. come on! cowboy bebop, and then this. how does that happen.

my response

i spoke with the parent of one of my students last week on the phone. The kid is obviously bright, and he could be doing well if he cared. At one point in my conversation, i said that i did not care if Andre tried or passed, i only get angry when he disrupts the class and is being a detriment to the other kids' learning. The father said, I don't mean to give offense, but as a parent, that statement concerns me. He did it without giving offense either. He sounded a little resigned to getting calls about how his son is bright but is failing because he does no work. My answer at the time was that i need to use my effort on the students that deserve it, or something to that effect.

i was thinking about it in the shower this morning and this is my fuller, articulate-er answer.

you come into my school. teach my classes for a single day. after that day, tell me if you can afford to waste your time helping the kids who won't pick up a pencil or who throw your handouts on the floor when class ends. when you're helping a student who genuinely asked for it, and you are interrupted by some jackass kid who starts throwing things, or gets up and walks out of the classroom, or starts yelling at another student for no reason, or starts talking on his cell phone, who should you be concerned with? there is 50 minutes in each class. why would i waste time to simply coax a student to get out a pencil, get out a paper, and take some simple fucking notes or do some fucking work in the time i give them in class, when there are students who are actually trying and having trouble with the material? if a kid wants to skip my class, fine. if he won't take notes, fine. if he leaves every quiz blank, fine. if he wastes every opportunity i give him to do work in class, fine. i don't care. i'll leave him alone and let him fail. i'll discipline him if he starts disrupting class. but he will absolutely deserve that F.

lazy and stupid. and lazy.

i came into school at chapter 5. in this chapter are the special right triangles. apparently special right triangles are anathema to lazy, stupid, lazy, stupid kids who are lazy and stupid. and lazy.

i've been told many a time that mister cotton was and is a better teacher than i am. he made things easier to understand. he made it so whatever they were learning was simpler. i had an a- before you came! i had a c average! i was passing his class!

never mind that these kids who used to do so well when mr. cotton was here now sit in my class and refuse to take notes, open a book, touch a pencil or do any of the homework, even during the time i give them in class (oh, and refuse to take quizzes. how stupid can you be?). and when i suggest that, possibly, just maybe, the reason mister cotton made the material easier and simpler is that mister cotton was teaching them easier, simpler material, as he was there earlier in the year, i am shot down by the all powerful, "nuh uh!"

a lot of these kids are going nowhere. slowly. after the first week, i could already tell who was going to pass, who was going to fail, and who deserved what. this whole thing, with the homework and the quizzes and the notebooks, it's a formality. i don't need to calculate their grades to be able to tell who is going to be worth something later in life.

i'm not making this up

i don't remember what reminded me of this just now, but it's been bothering me.

jorge: by the way, mister, arleni has been asking for help the entire class.

me: oh, shoot. really? i didn't notice. i'm sorry, arleni. i'll help you next class. don't worry, this won't be due for you as homework.

tiffany: way to do your job. you know, to _teach_ people?

and tiffany is one of my better students. arleni is very quiet. she never talks. when she has a question, she doesn't ask. or at least, apparently, not that i can hear. she usually sits there and draws anime girls (really well, i might add) sailor moon style.

this short exchange occurred at the end of class, after i'd handed out 3 pages of notes on which i describe, step by step by step, how to solve for the area of regular quadilaterals, triangles, and hexagons, given the radius.

i wrote the sheets up after writing up on the board how to do it step by step (although i did not label the steps, and i probably went too fast, even though i repeated myself many times), then giving a quiz that almost every student failed, then going over the questions again on the board after the quiz.

thankfully the notes seemed to work. a lot of students hunkered down and followed the process outlined on the sheets. i went around helping students individually as they worked.

my god, you ought to hear some of these girls when they ask for help and you say, i'll be right there after i help this person. they need to be learned some manners. backhanded across the face, in other words.

jorge and tiffany brought arleni to my attention at the end of class. when it was too late to do anything about it. i'd gone over to help tiffany at least 3 times during class, and she didn't say a word about arleni any of those times. and that thing i was supposed to be doing? you know, teaching people? i spent the entire class going from student to student, and putting up with the girls who started whining when i didn't give them my immediate attention.

i should put a stop to the whining thing. it's kind of funny, but only the first time. after that the back of my hand starts to twitch. any suggestions?

futurama

poignant. like the dog incident autism book.

i recently purchased a shitload of stuff. i plan on cataloguing it here later. one of the items i purchased is futurama vol 3.

time keeps on slipping. i don't know which is more heartwrenching (rending?), this one or fry's dog. oh, and the luck of the fryrish ain't bad, either.

i don't think i realized that i spent at least half of my time at college looking for that magical thing that would make her fall in love with me until maybe the last minute of the episode.

planescape: torment

my favorite game. ever. far and away. it blows anything else away. it could be converted into a novel with ease, and maybe even a movie, although it would be all dialogue. maybe a play. a play would be good. it's so amazing. the story, the dialogue, the choices, the freedom.

in the same way i pleaded with amanda to read the golden compass, i beg austin to play this game. except with 897231432798 times the intensity. natalie, you read this, no? tell him to get this game. get this game for him. i don't care if it takes away from the free time that he spends with you. stop being so goddamn selfish!

it sells on ebay, packaged with some game i've never heard of, for less than $5!! after shipping it'd be more like $7 or 8, but everyone who likes video games, and pure awesomeness, needs to get this game.

this is a sample of the storytelling in this game.

"An elderly man was sitting alone on a dark path, right? He wasn't certain of which direction to go, and he'd forgotten both where he was traveling to and who he was. He'd sat down for a moment to rest his weary legs, and suddenly looked up to see an elderly woman before him. She grinned toothlessly and with a cackle, spoke: 'Now your *third* wish. What will it be?'"
"'Third wish?' The man was baffled. 'How can it be a third wish if I haven't had a first and second wish?'"
"'You've had two wishes already,' the hag said, 'but your second wish was for me to return everything to the way it was before you had made your first wish. That's why you remember nothing; because everything is the way it was before you made any wishes.' She cackled at the poor berk. 'So it is that you have one wish left.'"
"'All right,' said the man, "I don't believe this, but there's no harm in wishing. I wish to know who I am.'"
"'Funny,' said the old woman as she granted his wish and disappeared forever. 'That was your first wish.'"

planescape won game of the year 1999. at some point black isle was working on a sequel and the project was abandoned. so awful.

i just installed it on this computer. i'm going to play through the entire thing again, i think this will be the third or fourth time. every playthrough has taken tens of hours, and i loved every minute of it and will love it again.

jesus is chill

any possible moral grounds that pro-lifers might have against abortion are evaporated and then some by the crazies that bomb abortion clinics or shoot doctors that perform abortions. how does that possibly work in anybody's head?? i can not understand how someone kills in the name of life and feels morally justified to do so.

i remember hearing on npr on the way to work something about that, and it didn't make me angry as much as confused. perplexed, maybe. it just doesn't click. i feel like one of my students trying to understand arclength. ha, a math teacher joke. any desire or ability on my part to articulate pro-choice arguments have long since faded away, since that other blog sparked a proto-debate of sorts.

oh yes, something about a law to make it harder for anti-abortion groups to claim bankruptcy in order to protect their assets from lawsuits by the bereaved, or i guess in some cases the owners of the clinics that were firebombed. how could a law like that not have been passed yet? apparently the amendment has made it so close only to fail many times so far, and its proponents are wearying of the marathon effort involved to get it as far as it does each time.

i just don't get it. at least pro-lifers have a bit more ground to stand on in saying that no one should be allowed to take a life. anti-gay marriage people just say, it's in the bible it's in the bible, over and over. and i thought jesus was a cool dude. if jesus loves me, he can sure as hell love the gay guy who lives on my street. whatever. jesus is chill and all the gays know it. they can bask in his love regardless of what the haters think.

in other news, i think the next book in orson scott card's shadow series is out. i think 3/8. the weather has been so awful and i've been so busy lately that i haven't bought it yet, but i'm going now. i started studying for the praxis, but who am i kidding? i don't need to study. knock on wood.

that only matters to the people on the rim

i'm taking the praxis tomorrow. 8:30 am. that's early. but not compared to when i have to show up for work! it's pretty sweet, knowing that pretty much anything i need to wake up for on weekends is still later than waking up for work.

i started a goddamn tradition. i'm not sure about this, but i think that a bunch of people from the frisbee team dressed up in their best clothing and went to columbia cottage for chinese new year. they should have hung my picture over their table. my stern yet benevolent likeness should have been gazing down on them at their repast.

i can view my own blog again. i checked some of the links to the right, and yet again, so much blogging i can't or won't read all of it. i skimmed some of mara's and apparently she has pissed off some friends with the housing lottery. i don't know how it works at other schools, but if you want to see who your real friends are, at columbia you wait for the housing lottery. the people who go behind your back and secretly form groups with strangers, they're not your friends. oh, and the people who, before senior year, secretly form groups because they're afraid you're going to secretly form a group first, they are just sad. saaaaaad. in short, i disagree with mara's statement about having to be selfish and demanding what you want. strongly.

there's no such thing as water under a bridge. nothing is a straight line. it's all cyclical. the wheel never stops turning.

the file / cannot be found

what? let's see if this fixes it.

teacher student interaction #87

Misterrrrrrr!
Yes?
I don't get it!
What don't you get?
Everything!

thoughts on the teaching

i don't think teaching takes any skill. it takes natural intelligence, surely, and some knowledge of whatever subject. and it requires patience. without patience there's no chance. but as far as taking any classes on teaching, or stuff like that, i don't think it's necessary. sure i would be more efficient, and i'd definitely be able to get more done each class. but right now, i'm just winging it, and it's going pretty well.

of course i could be a huge fraud. at some point maybe i'll find out the other teachers have been working wonders with their kids, and i'm incredibly behind and all my kids will fail the mcas. but i don't think that'll happen. and if it does, it couldn't really happen til the year is almost over. heh.

it's really coming along. a lot of the kids have shaped up. unsurprisingly, many of the most disruptive students chilled out a bit and it turns out they're among the brighter kids. i guess they realized i'm sticking around, and they really do need to pass this class.

i haven't assigned detention or written anyone up in a while. i haven't called anyone's parents either, although i probably should, as followups and for parents interested in their children's progress. a lot of this lack of me disciplining students is really me relaxing a bit. i haven't checked on the kids that ask to go to the nurse, or the ones that come in late and say they were at the office, or this or that event that took place during my class. of course some of the kids that i had to discipline right at the start are backsliding, and i'll have to tighten the leashes on them. that can't be the correct adage, but i don't know. i was thinking of running a tight ship, and tightening the noose, but none of those really apply. whatever. i suspect there's some sinusoidal wave function that shows the discipline from me vs. acceptable behavior from them. something like predator prey.

i'm required to stay one hour after school once a week for extra help. i've offered to stay any day of the week that students ask, besides tuesday (that's departmental meetings). my mom keeps telling me it's unnecessary. so does my dept. head. whatever. i'm young and - not naive, but something else - earnest, maybe. i'm sure i'll get sick of doing it, and when i do i'll just stop. let the kids see how nice it was back when i cared, and that sort of thing.

i have a little box of golf pencils, and blank paper, and i have extra worksheets in case the students lose them. i've been letting kids make up homework at any point instead of sticking to strict due dates. i give extra points to the kids that actually hand it in on time, but... i don't know. i'm more interested in them doing the homework eventually as opposed to not doing it and then forgetting about it because there's no longer any point to completing it (gradewise, which is all that matters to them). i have a standing offer for kids to go over all the questions they got wrong on the quiz for half credit. i want them to learn that shit, as opposed to giving up on what they didn't get.

at some point i have to lay down the law and say, you don't bring pencil and paper, you don't take notes, you'll end up with a bad notebook grade. you lose your worksheet, you don't hand it in, you'll end up with a bad homework grade. you don't study, you get a bad quiz grade. as of now, though, they have had a tough year. they had a long term sub for the entire first half of the year. they had mr. cotton for about a month before he resigned, and then they had subs for another month before i started. some of the kids didn't have an algebra teacher last year, either. i don't mind making allowances. but i am going to have to stop eventually. i am not looking forward to that period between when i stop and when they realize i'm being serious. there will be many bad grades and unhappy students for those couple of (days? weeks? probably weeks) . i'm going to have to do it eventually though.

i'm looking for some sympathy here. who thinks special right triangles are easy? if you have a 45-45-90, the legs are x and the hypotenuse is x root 2. if the hypotenuse is in the form x, then the legs are x root 2 over 2. if you have a 30-60-90, the shorter leg is x, the longer leg is x root 3, and the hypotenuse is 2x. if the longer leg is of the form x, then the shorter leg is x root 3 over 3 and the hypotenuse is 2x root 3 over 3.

it's so goddamn easy! yet i've had to teach it, if i count every time i've taught it to the entire class, and to each individual student (some students 5-6 times), i'd say over 100 times. i've had to explain this concept so many times. but there's really nothing to it. i've gone over why and how those proportions work out, using the pythagorean theorem, and they "don't get it." i've told them to just - not even memorize, but to write down - the proportions and accept that they work, and they "don't get it." what's not to get? someone teach me how to teach it to these kids.

what sucks is there is no skipping over this section. it keeps coming back. those goddamn triangles are everywhere. oh man, the standardized tests love them.

amusing anecdote #37

so i have a kid in one of my classes named Mister Long. yeah, first name is mister, last name is long. it's pretty confusing because when kids call his name i think they're asking me a question. yes, it is very cruel. no, i don't know what his parents were thinking when they named him.

anyways, he used to talk a lot in my class. and he had some kind of phone with games on it, and the other kids would always borrow it and play with it during class. it got pretty annoying.

so i called his house, and i didn't even speak with his mother. i left a message with his uncle, for his mother, that Mr. Chang, the new geometry teacher, was calling regarding her son's behavior during class.

the next day Mister comes in with a letter of apology signed by both him and his mother. he also had a written account of what he had done in class to merit a call home, that i had to sign, because his mother didn't believe that he was just talking to be so disruptive. as he handed me both pieces of paper and explained what they were for, he said, "please don't ever call my house again. my mom'll stab me!" he looked real serious too.

he's been an angel ever since.