you've got to hide your love away

Hi Jessica

2007-11-20T06:09:00.001-05:00

Hi Jessica. This is your daughter. You walked out of her life 10 years ago. Look at her now. She's smart, and she's beautiful, and she's got a good heart. She's about to graduate from high school. But she doesn't understand why you're not a part of her life. She thinks there must be something wrong with her. If you can't be in her life, can you at least tell her why? Can you tell her that it's because of you, and not because of her? Can you tell her there's something wrong with you, and it's nothing that's wrong with her?

this is how i would tell a woman that had abandoned her child at age 7 to acknowledge that she is fucked up, and not her daughter. and that she needs to tell her daughter that she did nothing wrong. to anyone who reads this, how would you do it?

respect, or respeck

2007-10-12T10:26:00.000-04:00

i can't count the number of times i've had a student do something inappropriate, and then when i walk up to them to calmly ask them to change their behavior, they yell at me as if i've done something wrong. i swear i'm not being confrontational, even in some fucked up kid's slanted world view, i'm not doing anything that could be viewed in that light. even better, they tell me to calm down while they're yelling and screaming and i'm talking to them in a low voice. it just happened yesterday, and again today.

also beyond counting is the number of times i've heard my students say, "someone gives me respect, i give them respect. they disrespect me, i disrespect them." they must be parroting that incredibly stupid nonsense from their incredibly stupid parents, or something, right? where do they get that idea? i want to know how some of these kids think they have ever been in the position to be owed respect. the ones that say this aren't the good ones either - they're the kids who have never done anything to merit respect from anyone.

and whatever, let's not even get into the teacher-student relationship, or what it should be, or what it is in longmeadow and what it is here, and so on. they can get away with that stupid fucking chip on their shoulder in schools because we have so much worse things to discipline. but they won't be in school for the rest of their lives. we are required to teach them and tolerate their behaviors. it's not the same "out in the real world."

the saddest part, because i do feel sadness for these kids, not anger or dislike, but the saddest part is that these children will grow up to be "adults" who think that the world owes them everything. welfare and all these social assistance programs only validate that feeling of entitlement, too, and will for the rest of their lives. and that's another debate too. but anyways, there is no way these types of students will get a job with an actual boss, because as soon as they do the slightest wrong (which is a certainty), their boss will say something - however innocuously - and that kid will believe they are being disrespected instead of being given the respect they are somehow due, and here come the self-destructive fireworks!

escher's "relativity" in lego

2007-09-04T19:32:00.001-04:00

this is awesome. i got it from geekologie (hedonistica)

there are men who call, and men who don't call

2007-08-31T21:56:00.001-04:00

and i'd much, much rather be one of the latter. they are _proper_ men, the sort of men that women have in mind when they moan about us. it's a safe, solid, meaningless stereotype: the man who appears not to give a shit, who gets ditched and maybe sits in the pub on his own for a couple of evenings, and then gets on with things; and though next time around he trusts even less than he did, he hasn't made a fool of himself, or frightened anybody...

2007-05-25T14:40:00.000-04:00

memorial day weekend! mohegan sun on sunday. and tonight we're getting seafood and then going to see the conclusion to pirates. yaaaaaaaarrrrrr.

sedentary and ambitionless

2007-05-24T19:40:00.000-04:00

other teachers at my school are dumb. today, a math teacher insisted that a whore and a hooker are different, in that whores don't charge money. he insisted. i was very firm that they did, and he was just as adamant that they did not. i looked it up on m-w.com right in front of him and he still wouldn't change his stance.

i still remember a science teacher who refused to believe that conch is pronounced conk. i maintain that conch being pronounced phonetically is only due to people pronouncing it wrongly so much that it became correct. i could be wrong on that one though.

also, today, i went to lunch with this teacher. we have a running dialogue where she asks me why i am not making way more money as an electrical engineer. and i explain i don't want to. this is paraphrased.
her: what was your major, mech eng?
me: electrical.
her: i don't understand why you don't make loads more money with your degree.
me: that's because you don't know what motivates me.
her: nothing motivates you.
me: (kind of surprised at being found out so easily) oh, i guess you do understand.
her: i know you have no motivation, but why?
me: ...

later that day she said that i had a sedentary, ambitionless lifestyle. that was genuinely a bit upsetting.

so either she overestimates me or i underestimate myself. i would pay money for a scale that measured my total worth as a human being and simply gave me a clean, objective number.

2007-05-22T11:42:00.000-04:00

damn i was poised to write a lot of meaningful, life-changing material right now, and someone just pulled the fire alarm. during lunch! what kind of idiocy is that? honestly.

more to come - i'm in the blogging mood, or i've been possessed by the blogging spirit, or however the idiom should go. hopefully i will still have it in 10 minutes or so.

does anyone have a poster for howl's moving castle?

2007-05-06T23:17:00.000-04:00

i ordered a signed copy of "the name of the wind" from patrick rothfuss. i spent at least a half hour leafing through the book trying to find a suitable quotation for the personalization. after rejecting,

"it's a goddamn huge dragon and it's going to come over here and eat us!" because it's the most ?casual? line in the book and it might have seemed i was poking fun at him for picking it out. not casual, exactly, but out of character? low language? i'm not sure.

"valaritas" because for all i know it means shitface.

"may you find the name of the wind," or some variation thereof, because he would be writing it on a book named the name of the wind, and that seems silly to me.

i settled on, "may your pizzle never fizzle," because it's funny. also one of the more ?hokey? lines in the book, but oh well.

i watched she's the man today. i enjoyed it much. it was genuinely funny, and at almost any point in the movie there's a pretty face on screen. i might even acquire the dvd. i have a soft spot for teen-oriented "shakespearean-inspired" films. as long as they have beautiful girls in them, i'm sold.

i also watched howl's moving castle, which started me on a wall scroll search. there are none in existence. it makes me sad. does anyone know of a way to capture shots from a DVD on the computer and then to make one's own posters out of it? i've always wanted to do it for princess mononoke since for some reason the only posters/wall scrolls are san and her wolf, and NONE of ashitaka and san together.

anyways, the howl search led me to nausicaa.net, which i browsed until i came across some interesting articles concerning "gedo senki" (tales of earthsea). interesting stuff, involving race, racism, and especially reverse racism. stuff like racism, abortion, or the war in iraq just make me tired. they're too big for someone like me to think about.

interestingly, howl's pacifist attitude toward the futility of war was not really in the book, and came more from miyazaki's own feelings as he worked on this movie as america went to war with iraq.

the name of the wind

2007-04-26T00:16:00.000-04:00

george r r martin is a bastard. terry goodkind is a pervert. robert jordan is the mayor of boston and the wheel of time is a monstrous, living big dig.

patrick rothfuss is a bard.

i remember loving the first of jordan's books. i remember the childish excitement when i went to the bookstore and saw SIX more novels in the series, some with spines as wide as my clenched fist. i remember that excitement slowly dimming, dulling. i don't know. insert analogy here. something about my excitement turning into a sense of betrayal, we'll say like a delicious steak turning to shit in one's gut. diarrhea fucking shit. bloody, even. i'm just searching here, but it was a terrible feeling. maybe time has dulled that pain. or my brain has blocked it. but it was bad. i remember being vaguely excited when i heard book 8 was coming out. i remember the disappointment, again, like an old acquaintance. i remember the reason i bought book 9, out of some weird notion that i ought to finish what i started. i remember buying book 10 because i was leaving for the Hong Kong airport in a few hours and i had nothing else to read. i remember shaking my fist at the sky, at jordan, when i heard book 11 was on its way. the big dig doesn't do it justice. even though it killed a woman.

martin is a fucking asshole. simple and true. nothing else needs be said on the subject. reading his books is like slowly, so slowly lowering oneself into a hot tub that used to be comfortable. it's too goddamn fucking hot, but i remember when it felt real nice, so i keep waiting for it to be bearable again. but it just stays hot as shit and burns the fuck out of you.

goodkind is a hack with some strange anti-socialism agenda hidden in terribly conspicuous parables that can sometimes span AN ENTIRE FUCKING NOVEL. that kind of did it for me. i liked books 1 and 2 very much, up to 5 was ok, but #6 pretty much shut the lid on this one. how someone passes that off as a legitimate book and still gets _any_ sales on his next is entirely beyond me. him being a perv with his fingering and his overtly misogynistic attitudes towards women and his shoutingly obvious desire for personal sex slaves with magical powers doesn't help.

which brings me to rothfuss. i remember loving many first books in series. series es. eh? anyways, i remember the excitement. like coming back home after meeting someone new and interesting, and thinking it over. how she was too pretty. too interesting. too interested. something's wrong.

i know that feeling. sometimes i think i've spent my whole life waiting for the other shoe to drop. what the fuck does that even mean? is dropping only one shoe a good thing? it's that second one - dropping the pair is a bitch.

shit! fuck!

2007-01-23T09:58:00.000-05:00

i came into this school in feb of 2005. i was picking up where this terrible teacher had left off - resigning after slamming a kid into a locker. the kid probably deserved it, but from all accounts, this teacher was inappropriate and not doing his job. in between the teacher resigning and me starting was a month of substitutes, so not a great condition. i took over 5 geometry classes in a 7 block schedule. it was kind of hellish.

i came into the school as kind of a golden child, i think. the principal and the math dept head loved me for being intelligent. i think he was telling other principals that he had picked up a columbia engineering grad. i was promised good things.

fall of 2005 - i had an ap stat class, a stat class, and a geometry support class (because there weren't enough kids for another stats section). we switched to a block schedule - as opposed to a rotating 6 of 7 blocks every day for a year, we now had 4 90-min blocks every day for half a year, and new kids with the new semester. most teachers had only TWO classes one semester, and three the other. i was apologetically informed that i would be three and three, because AP stats was yearlong. it was ok.

ap was wonderful. stats was pretty all right. geometry support was hellish. both semesters
of geometry included that one asshole kid that just tries his or her damnedest to be a shithead.
i can deal with one shit class for two decent ones. barely two months into the school year our principal leaves us for a higher-paying, easier job. who wouldn't? we get a new principal. i didn't trust her then and i hate her now.

we voted pretty early in the year that all meetings besides PD were optional. optional - our choice. faculty meetings, department meetings - we didn't have to go. we had to stay in the building and work, as per our contract, but where we were and what exactly we were doing was up to us. i missed a faculty meeting to meet with a student. he had to change his ap stats course into an independent study and take some form of physics because of a conditional acceptance to wpi or rpi or some pi. i figured a solid use of my time was the independent study with this student.

i got a long and rather strongly worded letter from my principal about skipping the meeting. her expectation was that all teachers would attend all faculty meetings. there is lots of information that we need to hear from her at these meetings. she expected me to be at all meetings from now on. all that shit.

i never missed a department meeting. those were worth going to. faculty meetings were and still are a giant waste of fucking time. never mind that i live with two fucking teachers from the same fucking school, and i can just ask them what happened and get it in less than 5 minutes.

about a month earlier i had given feedback on the most worthless pd in the world that taught us how to open our laptops, log in, and check email. i am not kidding. we spent an hour learning how to do that shit. and this was extra PD time, above what we normally needed to do. what the fuck. in response to the pd survey i had filled in, she said that the pd was a faculty meeting, and as such was optional. let that sink in. that PD was conveyed to us as PD, and mandatory. it was an extra PD, so contractually i guess we didn't have to go, but who would fight it?

she says it's PD so i go. i say it sucked and her response is that it wasn't PD because it was a faculty meeting, and therefore optional. i then miss a faculty meeting to tutor a student individually and i get a fucking letter telling me i have to attend all faculty meetings.

in addition, i brought the letter into the teachers' cafe immediately after i got it. i asked other teachers, and i talked to two teachers right there in that room who were puzzled. they were puzzled because they had skipped the same meeting and received no letter. that was two teachers who happened to be in the teachers' cafe when i was. how many others skipped the meeting? what the fuck.

it's only gotten worse since then.

fall of 2006. no ap class. not enough people signed up. no one tells me until it's too late to do anything about it. instead i get another, NEW prep (intermediate math, or algebra and geometry again for retards), giving me three different preps AGAIN, which is technically against union law. i roll with the punches. the kids actually aren't that bad. wonder of wonder, the repeaters in both remedial classes i have are actual repeaters. they're older, and for the most part they want to pass this time. this is opposed to the repeater geometry i taught the previous year full of freshman who had FAILED algebra 1 and NEVER taken geometry before. explain to me how a kid stupid or lazy enough to fail algebra 1 will pass a course that might as well be called, algebra 1 but with shapes. so, not terrible.

instead of 3 classes and a block-long prep, i now have a half a block of prep and half a block of duty. this is worse than before, but relatively less worse compared to teachers who went from 2 blocks classes, 1 block prep, 1 block duty, to this. now every teacher has 3 classes and half prep half duty. my duty consists of watching the bathroom and the surrounding hallway. kids are not supposed to be there, so i ask them to go back downstairs. they either listen, or they ignore me. if they ignore me, i can do nothing about it.

a string of bathroom fires prompts the "lockdown" on bathrooms. officially, all bathrooms are locked and no passes are to be issued. in reality, it is not enforced, like every other rule at this school. whatever. i now have to unlock and lock the bathrooms after every student uses it, and record their names in a logbook. fine.

i get my schedule for spring 2006. normal stats is gone now. in its place is another geometry support section. what the fuck. i check with the administrator in charge of scheduling. somehow, it was decided last summer that there would be no stats section in the spring. i didn't find out until november. also - "There's no class because no one signed up! No one signed up because you didn't recruit anyone! Didn't anyone tell you that's one of your responsibilities?"

what the fuck. no, no one fucking told me. this school has been phasing out higher level maths ever since Jara (the old principal left), and now a normal, nonhonors section of stats needs to be RECRUITED. what the fuck. ok. i got my new duty schedule this morning. i now have duty in the cafeteria. i can't get shit done in there. i have to walk around among way more screaming loud fucking obnoxious teenagers than should ever be allowed to exist in one place in one time. what the fuck. before, i could bring my shit into the hallway and do work, at least. christ.

in addition, i started out floating. floating means i have no room. i don't mind it terribly; it frees me from a lot of responsibility and accountability. by now, every math teacher that has started even a little before me has a room. and, let's see, johnson, tripoli, usova, nguyen - i can name four teachers right now that started after me and now have rooms. two of them only started this year. they are in 9th grade teams, which means they need rooms. by the way, "9th grade teams" is code for "they're still going to fail."

i want to resign right now. i want to walk out of this building and never look back. but, there are a few things holding me back.

-it's really not that bad. the worse the job gets, the worse of a job i do, and i still collect the same paycheck.
-money. i fucking hate it. all these commitments tying me down. all i want to do is float. i want to drift along like some useless floatsam, but i have rent, utilities, student loans, car loans, and all that shit tying me down.
-the future. walking out of one's job can't help in future applications. why did you leave your previous job? the school was complete shit and still getting worse. why did you leave in the middle of the year? ...

shit. fuck.

spiderman, or vomit-face

2007-01-09T20:54:00.000-05:00

i was channel-surfing and spiderman 2 was on fx or tnt or tbs or something. and i was enjoying it, but there were all those goddamn commercials. they managed to annoy me enough that i went upstairs and unwrapped my spiderman 2 dvd that i bought a while ago for $3.

the movie's fun, but fucking kirsten dunst looks like someone shit out her fucking face. and it was the nasty rhea shit. goddamn i fucking hate looking at her. and so much of the fucking movie is closeups of her nasty vomit shit-face. what would have been a pretty enjoyable movie is pretty soured by having to look at her troll-vampire fucked up fuckface. putting red hair just makes her look like a shitface with red hair. it really doesn't help.

god i hate her.

the mad ones

2006-11-08T12:15:00.000-05:00

i haven't posted in a while. no particular reason, just a lack of inclination. why am i here now?
i'm at school
i needed to charge my laptop so i sat down at scott's desk (only 2 of the 12 desks in this room have access to an outlet)
scott has jack kerouac's "on the road" on his desk

i picked it up, read a few pages, and saw a passage that i was inclined to put up here because it sounded interesting. i need to kill time and typing an excerpt from a book requires no original thought, so here it is.

... the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everyone goes 'Awww!'

cool passage, i thought. but i don't think i know anyone like that.

what's new?

ff12 is insanely good. two things made me start over from the beginning: 1) the four chests that you can not open, and 2) the grand serpentskin that you can not sell.

i hate shit like that. i think it's plain poor design when a person loses something forever in a game unless they have some secret prior knowledge. i'm absolutely fine with secrets that are retrievable at any point in the game, but things that are locked and closed off forever make me sad.

anyways the game is so good. it's incredible.

i'm in a raiding guild in WoW. the guild killed patchwerk for the first time on the night that i officially joined as a member. he's a major milestone in measuring guild progression.

i'm sick. i don't know what's wrong with me, but it's unpleasant.

dvr conan + daily show + colbert report is worth $10/month, easy.

the departed is the best movie i've seen this year. i need to see borat.

i hate underworld, and by extension, the covenant

2006-08-25T10:18:00.000-04:00

i remember hearing or reading at some point that this new movie, the covenant, was produced by the same folks responsible for that travesty underworld. it did strike me as omnious.

craig, steiner, and i were sitting downstairs and watching tv and a trailer for the covenant came on. it opened with - guess what - some douchebag landing after what i assume to be a jump from a large height.

steiner's face lights up in a huge grin and he says, "did you see that? did you _see_ that!? you know who produced this, right?"

not five seconds after he says this, in the SAME FUCKING TRAILER, the trailer cuts to _another_ clip of the same fucking guy exercising the same exact landing "superpower."

what the fuck is wrong with the producers?? who is the fucking asshat who forces these falling/landing scenes into these fucking movies? it is not cool. it's an ok, auxiliary sort of power. if a hero has super strength or an adamantium skeleton, a side effect of his resilience is that he can fall from pretty high up and not care. it is not a power in and of itself. it should not define any kind of hero. what the fuck!?!

i fucking hate the people responsible for these movies. who in fuck's name daydreams about being able to jump off high places without ill effect? who?

why i hardly post anymore

2006-08-16T22:37:00.000-04:00

before, i would write little things - movies i'd seen and liked, funny thoughts i had. now, i mostly think about bigger things, which, if i wanted to write about, would take a real sitdown and some decent amount of time to ensure i wrote about them well. so i just put it off because, as lazy i am, when i do something i like to make sure it's done correctly. the only time i halfass things is when a deadline forces me to.

all that diary type of blog - i went to the supermarket, and i talked to this person, and i cleaned my room for a bit. why do people even bother?

let's go mets!

2006-08-07T01:10:00.000-04:00

good game today. reyes with a grand slam. 7 runs in the bottom of the fourth, 5 of which were unearned. check out the 4th inning stats.

raj and hayle met us there. we had some good talking about relationships and such. it's fun to talk with raj about that sort of thing. i might get into it later, but i'm pretty tired.

i really strongly identify with banky in chasing amy, and randal in clerks (moreso in the second one).

"and you? what's your agenda?"
"to watch your back."

at least i've kept my options open

2006-08-04T21:14:00.000-04:00

i've actually been fairly busy, i think. whether or not i've been busy with things that anyone else would care about is a different matter.

i watched two movies for the first time today.

the descent fucking owns. it is totally sweet and awesome. so gory and sick. the best horror movie i've seen in a long time. i missed the first half hour, so i got there right as the women became trapped and missed all the character development and setup and so on. didn't really need it, although melissa filled in some of the connections for me after it was over. i'll have to catch those on dvd.

i remember going to see eternal sunshine of the spotless mind with amanda and - wow, who was it? - we were about 15 minutes late. missing those 15 minutes did make a difference in that case.

date movie had its moments. funny, and a little cute. the having a thing for alysan (that can't be right) hannigan made it ok. i remember being only partially entertained throughout the movie "red eye" but being content to just drink in rachel what'sherface's beauty. same thing here.

was her hair natural through the whole thing? it is amazing. especially at the last wedding scene, with the flowers. i never had a thing for redheads, not like a lot of guys do, but goddamn that hair was so great. it could even give straight shiny totally black asian hair a run for its money.

other things:

virginia
wildwood
otherland and tad williams
i owe austin a call
i owe dave an email

i might buy "the boondocks" and "mind of mencia" after seeing a few episodes at jillian's and leon's apartment.

what the fuck?

2006-06-30T07:35:00.000-04:00

it's 7:30 in the fucking morning, and i am awake. this is my summer vacation, and i keep waking up earlier and earlier.

annie hall

2006-06-19T22:13:00.000-04:00

before i realized that no woman can be trusted and that i'm better off alone, i tried dating girls. one of them wanted to watch annie hall. the saddest thing about this story, and that's probably a pretty hard prize to win, is that i can't remember who it was. and this is out of two girls to choose from.

i remember liking it a lot. it was always on my list of dvds to get at some point. i've never seen it at a store, but when ddd had their 20% off sale i remembered and ordered it.

so far i've only put it in while playing some game on the computer or as i'm going to bed, but i can barely pay any attention to it. this is twice on the computer and twice before going to bed, and both bedtimes i've fallen asleep right away. both times i put it on while on the comp, it barely registered. i think if i sat down and gave it my undivided attention, i wouldn't even like it at all.

i wonder why i liked it back then? or maybe i only thought i did, back when i thought relationships were "worth it."

comedic romances

2006-05-30T01:45:00.000-04:00

for some reason, when i'm looking for a movie to fall asleep to at night, i'm usually choosing from my romantic comedies. more due to the first half of the genre than the second. are there flat out romance movies that aren't comedy? this is a little weird, because i put up a pretty good front (what's the word for putting up a front when you're not sure if it's a front or real?) about how bitches are bitches and relationships are a lot of trouble. i wonder what it is.

what makes this selection a difficult one is i want a romcom (do they call it that? if they do, whoever started that should be shot, and if not, i should be shot) that doesn't have that shitty part in the middle. of course every relationship in the movie world and thus real life is predicated on a deception of some sort, and it is inevitably discovered, and there invariably follows the period of lonely moping and walking around and staring at stuff while bad music plays. i want a movie witout that. keeping the faith has it. 50 first dates has it. every one involving teenagers always has a couldn't-possibly-come-back-to-bite-you-in-the-ass bet that is discovered. chasing amy has it. eternal sunshine is almost entirely made up of the shitty period. that's it for my actual stock of romantic comedies, which is probably a good thing. but annie hall has it. i would never own it because i don't think it's comedic or romantic, but how to lose a guy in ten days has it. i could probably go on, but i don't want to embarass myself more than i already have.

someone give me a movie that's nice and sweet and happy the whole way through. do they exist? are there movies that tried this and failed miserably at being a movie, or making money, or whatever criteria movies are judged by?

inarticulate

2006-05-10T20:18:00.000-04:00

i can't do it. i sat down today with a hundred different threads that i wanted to put down into coherent phrases, sentences, and paragraphs, and it's just too much. there's so much wrong, so much glaringly obvious, that it's like that saying involving the elephant in the room that everywhere does their best to ignore, or some such. how is something this obvious ok with everybody?

the situation in short:
i went to wnec on saturday. bill cosby was speaking at an educational summit. a bunch of teachers in the union went, an hour before the summit began, to get signatures for postcards to send to the mayor asking for binding arbitration for our contracts, and to hold up signs saying "support springfield teachers." a small group of us, standing along the edges of the sidewalk, in no way making noise, in no way impeding traffic, possibly bothering some parents a little bit, but for the most part they were more than happy to give us their signatures. the people at wnec called their security guards and made us leave their property.

wnec is short for western new england college. this is a fucking COLLEGE. it is a school. a place of EDUCATION.

that's not all. the only paper in springfield has a regular blurb type segment called thumbs up, thumbs down. today, the editor wrote about us in his thumbs down column! he gave us a fucking D-. he _graded_ springfield teachers and gave the thumbs down to teachers who went to wnec and "protested." because we care about our fucking lives, when obviously, as teachers, our lives are worthless, and are only something to be sacrificed for the fucking kids.

i was angry after wnec. not angry enough to do anything, because i am lazy, and i am apathetic, and i still hold to the belief that i can make no difference. i was angry after that editorial. not angry enough to do anything, because of all of the above reasons, plus the fact that one can _never_ win against fools, and i know a teacher who has written to this paper, and has had his letters ignored or edited.

i'm more angry than ever now, because i just tried to commit some of my thoughts to paper, and i _can't_. i think i'm pretty good with words. i would call myself wordy. maybe i even have the quality of wordiness. but there's so much to say, and there is so much wrong with the events i just described, and i can't even begin to know where to start.

this problem is too immense for me to make the slightest difference. i'm going to drink a beer, and then another beer after that, and then probably another.

maybe i'll write better after that.

fever pitch

2006-04-12T22:22:00.000-04:00

was on demand, and seeing as i loved 50 first dates so much, i figured another drew barrymore date movie was worth seeing at least the first 10 minutes. i ended up really liking it. the style of it was kind of strange, and i was trying to figure it out. it intrigued me enough that i might look it up later, at least that's what i was thinking at the time, until the credits rolled, at which point i received three surprises.

directed by the farrelly brothers? what? i did not think this was their cup of tea.

based on the novel "fever pitch" by nick hornby. oh right, i had heard something about this back when the movie first came out. at the time i had dismissed it as a red sox fan movie. i've read everything by nick hornby that's out, i think, and i've liked the other two screenplay adaptations, so if i had known this ahead of time, i definitely would have watched it. which i did anyways, so i guess it all worked out. funnily enough, fever pitch is about football, or soccer as we call it, and turning it into a baseball movie adds another, if simplistic, entendre.

ione sky? whoa. i did not know she was still, you know, existing. she was one of drew's friends or sisters, not sure which. another surprise, which is really surprise 3b i suppose, is that she was the reverend's wife (anne's mother) in arrested development.

goddamn

2006-03-30T23:33:00.000-05:00

lindsay lohan. i just watched mean girls, and she's so past-hot. so upsetting. so upsetting. i was thinking of relieving some pressure earlier, and i don't even have the heart for it anymore. that's how bad it is.

that would be a good note to leave it on, but now i'm curious, is there a term for chicks who have been plain ruined? there really ought to be. right now there's seriously an epidemic of hot celebrities becoming pregnant or anorexic like it's going out of style. that reminds me, today in the top of the front page of USA today there was a picture of pre-k-fed britney spears mentioning her comeback tonight on will and grace. i stated several times that that was prime irresponsible journalism, using a past-hot picture when she's really a bare-foot one-woman trailer park now.

last one

2006-03-29T11:47:00.000-05:00

i don't have the ability to go back in time and edit what i said, unless one counts editing old posts. but i can clarify, which is what i'll try to do here.

i wasn't hurt at the time. i _still_ don't care. i said that i didn't feel offended. what i _should_ have said after that was, if my feelings had been hurt, austin's concern would have taken care of it. and austin, without really knowing what happened, told me that whatever had happened he hoped i was ok about it.

i didn't post a public critique. or i didn't mean to, at least. at dinner, after natalie finished fucking with me or blowing random smoke up my ass or whatever it was, there was definitely a distinct awkwardness that someone tried to dispel by saying, "i don't know what just happened," to try to move past it. people were confused and i thought i could explain what i was thinking.

sorry.

teachers

2006-03-28T23:04:00.000-05:00

a new series premiered tonight? the oh so cleverly named teachers. how many different interpretations are there for "arrested development?" how many different interpretations are there for "teachers?"

the main character annoyed me as soon as he appeared on screen. as the show went on, the way he dresses and the way he talks only made it worse. i am, however, a fan of the two love interests, miss spicy latin cleavage, and miss priss british accent. and the overweight middle-aged bald man whose wife took away his internet privileges reminds me of swanson in a good way.

i proceeded to lose all respect for the main char when he confessed to miss priss, hypothetically, what if there was a teacher who loved teaching so much it embarassed him and so he made light of it, that he couldn't wait to get to school every morning so that he could see the light in their eyes when they "got it," and so on with the vomit-inducing homo emotions stuff. that is bullshit.

being the kind of teacher that lives to nurture that tiny spark within a student only encourages more students to turn themselves off so teachers have to work 3 million times harder in order to reach them. every time teenagers get more fucking stupid and lazy, and the educational system blames itself and bends over backwards in a futile attempt to fix it, they just get fucking stupider and lazier. fuck engaging lessons and colored pictures and different activities.

kids should fucking sit at their desks and be receptive to learning. they shouldn't have to be lured there with whatever fucking activity took the teacher 2 hours of her free time at home to plan. they should sit there, they should pay attention, and if they don't they should stop wasting the education that our tax dollars paid for. i'm not saying they need to be taken out back and shot, but they ought to go into a shit minimum wage job right that second and be made to understand that THEY WILL BE WORKING THERE FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES, assuming they don't get fired for being retarded.

the jess school of thought

2006-03-28T22:55:00.000-05:00

in honor of everyone's favorite hawaiian, i'm posting this here. i probably should not have posted anything about it in the first place, but they were just thoughts, and i got a response in kind, so here we go.

natalie - i probably should have remembered that you read this.

it's either demoralizing or it isn't. either way, you were trying to respond in kind, and from a number of phrases you wrote right here it sounds like you were hurt and you were trying to hurt back. it doesn't sound like you were just fucking with me, or blowing random smoke up my ass. it sounds like you snapped back and said exactly what you meant to say, and then felt bad later.

i'm really glad you don't bitch and whine, or any other crap, because if you did i would be right about the soul sucking. i never thought you were that kind of person; i wouldn't even talk to you if that were the case.

it is an old line and i am at fault for expecting you to recognize it as such. i'm sorry. i play by a fairly specific set of rules and you have no way of knowing them.

i already said i don't care. and unlike you, i don't contradict myself with every other sentence. although me mentioning austin and remorse does seem contrary to me not caring, doesn't it? what i should have said is that it was nice austin was concerned about my feelings being hurt, even though he didn't have to be. remorse wasn't the most apt word either. damn.

austin did not apologize for you, or anything along those lines. he was making sure i could in fact take what you were dishing out, and i think he was worried when he asked me that i couldn't.

what _would_ you do without him? he's a good person and a great friend and everyone would be worse off without him. well, maybe there are some people in the world who hate him, but they're in the minority. i think.

at school

2006-03-28T14:19:00.000-05:00

these are notes i've jotted down in notepad on my laptop while at school. at some point they were intended to be seeds for larger posts and then i don't know what happened.

v for vendetta - excellent

a history of violence - joey

going to new york. i don't really understand what happened when natalie tried to lay into me. what did she say? the total failure of my love life? i must have hit a nerve when i remarked on the soul stealing and the destroying of austin's identity as her ultimate goal, the achievement of which being marriage. i suppose i could be offended if i was so inclined, but i don't think it's worth it to muster the necessary indignation, or whatever it would be. also, austin seemed remorseful enough on her behalf. still, i think i was telling the truth when i said, if i wanted a girlfriend that badly, i'd get one. that could be some excuse, never trying so i don't fail, but i'm pretty sure it's not.

i'm absolutely fine with my statistics class and my ap statistics class. but my hatred for my geometry support class only grows. it doesn't wax and wane. there is only waxing. there used to be a time when i could distance myself from it and not care how fucking stupid they are, but lately every single facet or component or form of their massive ignorance only makes me hate them more. part of the problem is that their comeuppance is too long in the upcoming. i think that if i could hand them their fat F's right now ( as opposed to when they get their report cards in May) i'd feel a lot better.

i'm extremely happy with dell right now. in my senior year of college, i ordered a fragbox so i could play elder scrolls 3: morrowind. it was a solid buy and good value, but goddamn the fan was loud. i couldn't sleep with that thing on in the same room. march 21st i went to gamestop on the way home from school and picked up elder scrolls 4: oblivion, only to find that my video card did not support it.

steiner went and bought a new computer from costco immediately. it was a gateway, though, so i went home and checked on dell. the day i checked, i got $400 off, free 3-5 day shipping ($99 normally), and i bought a $35 off dell home coupon from ebay for $2 (i actually got 4 coupons but i don't think i'm going to use the other 3. they expire tomororow, if anyone wants one i have 3 codes left), so my system was a sweet deal. i ordered mine wednesday night and it shipped friday morning. and i got it yesterday (monday) at 5pm. dell rules.

i love how quiet it is. it's the little things that don't seem like a big deal but are always around that mean so much in the end. like having a plant in my room. making jasmine tea from tenren with the little infuser ball using the hot water kettle i ordered from amazon. having my tv on a lazy susan so i can turn it to face my computer desk or my bed. once i set up the blinds in my window so i don't wake up due to sunlight stabbing through my eyelids, and put a floor lamp in so i can read in bed without the ceiling light blazing in my eyes, i will be one with all.

wikipedia

2006-02-27T16:46:00.000-05:00

i love wikipedia for its level of detail regarding things that no one ought to care about. it is absolutely incredible that a person would take the time to sit down and type up pages-long entries about fictional characters from the marvel universe. possible sequitor into that whole fictional world the creation of which gabe and tycho set into motion being avoided here.

that being said, i'm going to weaken what i just said just two sentences ago and say that i spent about an hour and a half today (and not at school, either. this was right when i got back, which is prime time) just thumbing (not in a literal sense, of course, although that would be fun to try) through different entries on comic book characters that i had never heard of before today. i suppose if i lived in my basement and lived on a diet of mountain dew and cheetos, the idea of just one person someday reading my work would be irresisitibly attractive. anyways -

hyperlinks are just so incredible. the time it would have taken to actually find the appropriate volume of a physical encyclopedia and look up a character whose name was referenced by an article i was reading at the time, compared to how long it takes to right click and select open as new tab - i would have given up on "learning" (if you can call it that) after the first 2, maybe 3 entries.

i can now call myslf, with a reasonable degree of confidence, knowledgeable regarding the origins and extents of juggernaut's powers, which was my main reason for checking into wikipedia in the first place. from there i undertook a fantastic voyage that included such stops as onslaught - a psionic combination of xavier's repressed darker subconscious and magneto, amber hunt - a pyrokinetic one-time host of the phoenix force, nocturne - nightcrawler's daughter in an alternate reality with the ability to possess people, the house of m story arc that reduced the population of mutants from millions to nearly extinct (several hundred) because the scarlet witch used her reality warping powers, dark beast - beast from the age of apocalypse, nate grey and franklin richards - the two most powerful mutants ever, the living monolith - one of the twelve that apocalypse planned to absorb, and a ton more that i've already forgotten about. i also know a lot more about mr. sinister, apocalypse, gambit, emma frost, and magneto than i'll ever need to know. ever. emma frost just walks around all day in lingerie. i don't even know why female superheros bother designing costumes with that option right in front of them.

other tidbits that i came across - decimation technically means the elimination of every 10th person (does it only apply to people? doesn't say in this article; it's actually an entry for the comics crossover of that name). i see a screenshot of the football (soccer) star set to play juggernaut wearing a metal neck brace armor thing so maybe i was wrong about the shirtless leather jacket costume. here's hoping that i am. apparently there's a term for bosses that are so pointlessly hard as to make glitching almost essential to beating them - snk boss syndrome. also, marvel vs. capcom 2 has four "god-level" characters" - not sure what the criteria are exactly.

also, someone who writes about comics must have at some point brought up how the x-men are beautiful to a fault, while the bad guys are almost always entirely unphotogenic. if you can look at a villain without vomiting, then he'll probably turn good at least once in some story arc. and if a villainess is hot, then she's really, really evil. unless she turns good. how much must that suck for the few x-men who aren't aesthetically perfect? not only is beast a beast and does nightcrawler have a tail, but they have to stand next to jean grey and storm and, oh yes, kitty pryde. if that's not a porn star's name then i have not seen porn. two guesses whether or not i've seen porn.

fortune 2/26/2005

2006-02-26T21:53:00.000-05:00

"Think of the danger while things are going smoothly."

what the fuck? did that cookie just _threaten_ me?

the west wing

2006-02-26T00:18:00.000-05:00

i finally finished watching season 1. i had purchased it from costco a long, long time ago and returned it after being unable to watch lord john marbury due to some kind of defect with the disc. i ordered it from amazon.com after it dropped down to $20, and finally had the time and the inclination to pick it up again.

i like the show. i never liked sports night, although maybe i didn't give it enough of a chance. and it's not because of the setting or subject, because i would be hard pressed to tell you which i care less about, sports or politics. wait, no, i care less about politics. that really wasn't very hard. some thoughts:

i have friends from columbia (i specify from columbia because, keeping in mind that most of my friends are from there by now, i've never heard anything about the show from the friends i made before college with whom i still keep in touch) who are in love with the show. it's a little upsetting; i think some of them like it because they wish they were the mental giants shooting down the feebleminded dwarfs as a career (even though that can be a pretty accurate description when it comes to republicans). one scene comes to mind during which two lobbyists (i think) are meeting with toby regarding pbs and they name the wrong people as the authors of oklahoma and death of a salesman, which sends toby on an i'm-smarter-than-you-are-and-i'm-going-to-rub-your-face-in-it rampage. i know people who pride themselves on their knowledge of trivia and love nothing more than to correct people when they're wrong about the littlest thing. i'm more than a little guilty of hypocrisy here - about the correcting, but i don't know enough trivia to be hypocritical about that - but that doesn't make it untrue.

other thoughts - (note: i'm not sure of the spellings. i can either a) go with the actors' names, b) guess on the characters' names, or c) actually go to some website and look up the spellings. i'm going to go with option b. i don't know all the actors' names, and (c) is too sad even for me.)

mallory - or allison smith, i _did_ look her up, is smoking. plus she has a real good angry look. the attractive kind, unlike the angry expression that the terrifying victoria secret model is always wearing.

i resonated with sam's position on public education. fucking right, give me a palace to teach in. assholes. here i could go off on a whole thing about the expeditionary school, but i won't.

boo, and double boo to whoever wrote (i think aaron sorkin wrote all of the episodes, so he would be receiving the three boos total) the lame hack season finale. that cheesy shit belongs in 24, whatever tired season it is in by now. ending the episode, much less the season, on the "who got shot, who is going to die" cliffhanger is so beneath the ordinary level and genre of the show. not to mention the fact that they introduced the "who is _going_ to get shot" cliffhanger in the opening and made us sit through another 45 minutes to even watch the shooting take place. fucking skinheads.

it's strange to think that the show was originally conceived to center around the deputy communications director. i do think he is the funniest character, both directly and indirectly. i wonder what the show would have been like if it had stuck with that.

vacation

2006-02-22T14:35:00.000-05:00

i think as of noon today vacation reached the halfway point.

accomplished: i bought some food. from costco. i now own two enormous bottles of grey poupon, an industrial size carton thing of kikkoman soy sauce, 6.32 lb of chicken breast, SIX peppers of varying coloration (2 yellow 2 orange and 2 red. beat that), too many slices of muenster to count, and so on. using said purchased food, i made two _delicious_ turkey sandwiches, one not only a single, but a _double_ decker, with grey poupon. the next day i boiled up one half of the two pack (costco scorns your puny single pack) of chicken and cheese ravioli and that lasted me the whole day, forcing me to push back my plans for making stir fry. with 6 peppers and over 6 pounds of chicken breast, nothing can stop me. if i knew the volume of soy sauce sitting on the wheely thing in the corner of my kitchen i would list it here as well for good measure. my goal, this week, is not to go out for food once (or more than once). all sustenance must come from the kitchen.

i'm sitting in my longmeadow home now, with a boatload of laundry. i am washing _three_ towels right now. i previously had purchased two towels from costco upon moving into the duplex in springfield. i immediately left one in josh's apartment in virginia and purchased a replacement. however, two towels is not enough reserve when one's washer and drier are twenty minutes away. what's the normal number for people? i really found that two were insufficient.

with the clearing out of dirty laundry from my room in springfield i am well toward my other goal of cleaning my room. i think i might move the lipstick plant out of my room and back down to the kitchen. i have a whole hook suspension setup for it, but i could not screw it in above the window, and as a consequence only about a third of the plant gets indirect sunlight (meaning it comes through the window and shines directly on the leaves).

other things i plan to do before this vacation ends:
grade many papers for statistics
figure out where the hell my ap stats class is and where we ought to be. we must be so behind.
use minitab at least once.
create some practice exams for stats and geometry that they can take before they fail the real thing.

i have enough laundry for easily 3 or 4 more loads but after these towels dry i am out of here for today. next time i really need to bring a book with me, or something to pass the time. as you can see, i'm reaching for topics.

entourage. that emannuelle chriqui (i can't havce spelled that correctly), as sloan, with her hair pulled back, looks a lot like sai. anyone else see that?

oh, one thing worth mentioning. house party march 4. if i haven't invited you, my bad. you should come. it will be totally sweet. if you have read craig's slightly homoerotic evite, don't let that dissuade you. we will be playing beer pong. on a DOOR. just let that sink in.

i could mention winter league and the party, but i did nothing of consequence at either.

king of the hill

2006-02-09T23:06:00.000-05:00

i love this show. i just got seasons 4 and 5 from amazon.com. under $32 for them both!

i particularly enjoyed this exchange between hank and his son.

bobby: i think khannie’s gonna break up with me cuz she hates me

hank: she doesn’t hate you

bobby: yes she does. she’s no longer the girl who fell in love with me. now she’s just the woman who yells at me.

hank: bobby, every woman has a period… of time, every month -

bobby: even mom?

hank: bobby, if we’re going to get through this, you can NOT ask me questions like that

bobby: my bad

hank: now, every month, a woman has this time when she gets very angry. at everything. and usually men are the everything. it’s like a tire fire - trying to put it out only makes it worse. you just gotta let it burn. grab a beer and let it burn

i went through the first 3 seasons a long time ago, and i can't remember the episode when bobby and khan first started going out. i'd like to see that again. they are a cute couple.

such a great show.

just now:
dale, the odds of winning that contest are one in a million.
yeah, if you only drink one beer.

eva or rah xephon?

2006-02-07T22:26:00.000-05:00

which one's better? i can't decide. they're so similar in so many ways but in some very important ways, they're really not all that alike.

i like rah xephon's theme song better. must be because it's by yoko kanno.
the visuals in rah xephon blow eva away. not exactly fair though; how much older is eva again?
i do like how rah xephon is essentially a love story. and it's based on a nice and good short story.
eva in comparison is just depressing.
you can tell which is the flatteree and which is the flatterer by looking at their wiki articles. so much information in each, although i think i'd go with rah xephon's.

i started rewatching eva after blowing through rah xephon in maybe 3 days. both series are the same length, but jeez, eva seems soooo long. i watched the first disc in 2x speed since the subtitles are still visible.

i think overall eva is the deeper show. with more meaning. and it ultimately makes more sense, which is kind of mind-boggling, but i guess its like comparing the kettle to a super black pot. a lot of stuff in rah xephon doesn't even try to make the pseudo sense that eva goes for.

in the end, even though rah xephon is superior visually and musically, i'd go with eva. the whole love story and "happy" ending behind rah xephon is almost enough to tip the scales, but still. you have to respect a guy that creates the three main characters to represent three different personality disorders. you could write papers on eva, and i don't think you'd find a comparable amount of material to dig into for rah xephon.

this has to mean something. and i don't think i could be the only one. and this doesn't only apply to anime series. tell that to video game developers. i don't care how nice the graphics are; what i want is gameplay/story. i still go back and play might and magic 4+5, which is tiled and turn based and all this other old school outdated shit. the shift to realtime and 3d environments was the death of the series for me.

if you have any interest in anime, these are two shows you should not miss.

heh, in my ap stats class, one student mentioned fullmetal alchemist, and i went into a 10 minute rant about how formulaic (actually that is somewhat appropriate for a show based on alchemy, punwise) that show is. brothers meet nice alchemist, brothers slowly learn that all is not as it seems, brothers discover that aforementioned alchemist is really the most evil fucking person they've ever met. EVERY TIME. EVERY FUCKING TIME.

nice priest who performs miracles to heal the sick and feed the poor? this young woman, who admires and looks up to him, works for him in his church. for no fucking reason, he resurrects her dead boyfriend as a bird monster. SHE HAS DONE NOTHING TO HIM. she doesn't even give any hint that she could do something even _slightly_ annoying in the future. she just loves and respects him right up until he pulls that shit. and then he laughs at her.

loving father who performs his research in a quiet town? he has an adorable young daughter who misses her mother very much ever since she left the father, but at least she has her big cute dog to play with. oh wait, he COMBINES HER WITH THE FUCKING DOG. he turns her into a DOG GIRL. and why? he needed a human subject to transform, and he FUCKING FELT LIKE IT. how can someone that evil be too lazy to abduct a fucking homeless person? he's so fucking casual about it too when he explains how evil he is to the brothers.

and somehow the brothers are shocked and horrified every time. somehow they haven't learned to expect every single fucking alchemist they meet to be incredibly evil. the worst part, for me though, is the complete and utter lack of even a cursory attempt to explain the bad guys' motivations for being bad. they all just feel like it. they even say that in the fucking series. [paraphrased, but i swear to god, not far off from actual conversation]: "how could you transform your daughter into a dog/human chimera?" "she was around."

wow i typed a lot more than i meant to about that show. casey, you know what i'm talking about.

the constant gardener

2006-02-04T09:44:00.000-05:00

trying to get anyone to watch the movie just by title is not easy. i imagine that the book dealt a lot more with justin's gardening pasttime, in the movie, it was a sidenote of no relevance that somehow was also the title.

my impressions:
tessa was a raving bleeding heart loony. what a bitch. why did justin love her at all? and the movie rating promised brief sexual content/nudity. movie ratings need a separate category for nausea-inducing pregnant nudity. and of course she was rich. no one can care so little about money unless he or she has always had too much of it.

overall, i liked it. started out too slow for my taste but net the movie came out in the positive. very disturbing, its portrayal of pharmaceutical companies. disturbing enough that i took a minute out of my boredom filled morning to google "constant gardener accuracy." one website came up that seemed worth looking at, for anyone who has seen the movie and wondered how much of it is loosely based, or inspired by, and how much is true.

of course, how accurate or colored that article is i can't say. it makes sense to me, the part about how americans and other civilized nations expect new drugs while refusing to participate in the trials that are essential to the process. kind of reminds me of the slogan "no blood for oil." if we're always taught not to deal in absolutes, shouldn't it apply there as well? exactly how much blood are we talking about for how much oil?

unrelated: curb your enthusiasm. hilarious. larry david must have had the most unimaginable childhood, in terms of everything that could be bad about one. i can't see any other way for him to have become the way he is now.

lipstick sadness

2006-01-29T18:35:00.000-05:00

i am overflowing with sorrow. the beautiful lipstick plant that i tend to lost the only two buds that had blossomed while i was away this weekend. it has a lot of buds still, which gives me hope for the future, but exactly the two buds that had blossomed fell off, and no others. and one of them had just opened up too. sad. i've been keeping it down in the kitchen, but i think i'll move it to my room.

catherine, i've let you down. i'm sorry. i understand if you don't want to be friends with me anymore.

the dandelion girl

2006-01-23T22:52:00.000-05:00

real life blows.

no contest.

seriously, read it. also, buy rah xephon from ddd for $60, then read the wikipedia entry.

journal entry for this course i'm taking

2006-01-18T23:53:00.000-05:00

since it is so much easier to just paste thoughts i was forced to have and then record, i figured i'd get twice as much bang for my buck and reuse it here. the entry is horribly aimless, i start on one thing then go off on another repeatedly. but i don't think i could write all my thoughts/frustrations about teaching/these goddamn kids, given infinitely much paper and/or time. it would just go on, forever.

the way education is "reforming," they're only going to get stupider.

Building Math Understanding from the Ground Up!
Eric Chang
Journal entry 1, 1/19/2006 - readings 4 and 6

I teach a geometry support class, support being a euphemism for kids that failed geometry already and have to retake it. In addition, I have students that failed algebra I and have inexplicably been assigned by our most capable guidance counselors to take both algebra I again, as well as geometry for the first time, in the same semester. Sci-Tech is on a block semester schedule, which means these unforunates have been taking math classes for 3 hours of each day, every day, since September. So I deal with a lot of children that hate math, have always hated math, have parents who hate math, have probably been told by teachers at some point that they'll never be good at math, and so on.

I also teach a probability and statistics class, which up until this year was a joke course for seniors. I have students whose counselors signed them up for it even though they failed algebra II, because they (the counselors) think statistics is a class for kids who are bad at math. Although these are decent kids willing to do work, some of them are not exactly naturals when it comes to this subject.

My third class is AP stats, but I have very few issues with them regarding their math backgrounds. I'll mostly be talking about my geometry class in this entry.

The readings bring up a lot of frustrating points for me. I look at myself, and all I had to do in high school was memorize processes. I believe the thinking at the time was, learn the process first, get the big picture later. As in once we got the details, the nuts and bolts, the why of it would eventually appear in our brains, kind of like enlightenment? And that all worked for me. Now I don't know why it did - maybe I'm an atypical case.

Reading 4 talks about fluency, and how learning the standard algorithms will not help students develop fluency. That's true on some levels but I still think the algorithms are needed. I don't see how one can expect a student to be proficient, or whatever you want to call it, in math if they can't memorize simple processes. And long division (the how and why of which I could explain, by the way), which some people would choose as the poster child for unnecessarily difficult and unnecessary algorithms, is simple. It might look long and arduous but it's really just the same few steps repeated over and over. Like it or not, I really believe that some memorization skills are required for proficiency in math. Without memorizing that V = B * h, how is a student supposed to realize that he or she needs to find the area of the base of the prism first, or in the case of a pyramid, they need to solve for the height using the pythagorean theorem with the cross section of the pyramid as a right triangle? I have kids who have learned how to do exactly that, and I try to emphasize that it only applies to this specific situation, but they zero in on the process and don't place importance on the why of it. Then when they get to a pyramid where the height is already given, they're lost because this time they're already one step closer to the solution than in the previous problem, but they don't realize this.

I try very hard to give my students multiple approaches to every problem I give them. For example, Any time we deal with circles, I tell them that they can keep it in terms of pi or multiply the 3.14 in and round to the nearest tenth. I don't care. I know some like it better one way or the other. I don't even try to force them to learn both, even though a student fluent in this topic would understand that there's no difference. But to my students they are completely unrelated. When I show them that the only difference is muliplying the pi in as a decimal approximation, though, I see only blank stares.

Reading 6 talks about estimation, and the importance of evaluating reasonableness of results. In statistics this is everywhere. Since almost all of statistics deals directly with real-life situations, and most statistics problems are modeled on these situations, the answer can always be evaluated on the basis of whether or not its reasonable. Whenever the students are doing classwork and bring me their work to ask if they got the correct solution, I always ask them if that answer makes sense. Whenever I have to re-explain a concept to a student one-on-one, I find myself asking, "does this make sense," repeatedly as we talk about the reason for each step in the process. They usually nod their heads; I have no idea if they're being truthful. Overall I get positive results from this, though.

Lately we've been working with expected values, and there's all this stuff about whether or not a probability is less than, equal to, or greater than a certain value. And it's not theory or anything like that, it's concrete, real stuff. There are multiple ways to get which one it is: >, =, or <, one is straight-up calculation and another is testing for reasonableness and working backwards from there. I showed the class both methods, but it's only taken hold for a few of the kids. I don't want to describe the actual process here though, that would take too much space.

I try very hard to give my students that understanding, to tell them how or why this formula is accepted as true. When teaching the formulas for area of a parallelogram, I showed how it was derived from the area of a sliced up rectangle. For a triangle, I showed how its area was derived from half of a parallelogram. For a trapezoid, I showed how its area was derived from two parallelograms. I told them that they didn't NEED to know it, but it would help them remember the formulas if they understood where they came from. On the test for that chapter, I asked them to explain any of those three as bonus questions, and not one kid even tried to answer it. Even the brighter ones in my class left it blank.

There's so much more I could say about my geometry class and my mostly failed attempts to get any one of multiple methods to stick in their heads for any given topic. But it would just turn into a rant about how kids these days expect everything handed to them on a silver platter and we can only spoon feed them so much before we're just ensuring our own downfall as a society.

Oh, and I will never get used to going over a whole problem on the board, and after having solved for whatever the problem said to find, having four kids raise their hands to ask, "what's the answer?" I just said it, for crying out loud. And if I was a student, even one who was not paying attention, I think I'd be not stupid enough to go with the number written at the bottom of all the work.

i know what it is

2006-01-13T01:18:00.000-05:00

it's this damn response. the fact that people are talking about it, and gay people think that nongay people won't see it because they hate gays, or are scared of gays, or are scared of becoming gays, or scared that their children will become gays. the idea that all over the country, people are asking other people if they want to see it, and when they say, eh, or no, or not really, they are asked, jokingly or not, if they're scared that they might like it.

oo, it's so daring. oo, you're homophobic. oo, who would have thought, let's take an american icon and RUIN IT. think clint eastwood? you're fucking right i'll think clint eastwood. i'll think of him kicking ass and banging dirty female hookers and not wearing a condom because a) condoms would be anachronistic and b) dirty harry fucking raw dogs it all day and all night. it makes me angry that i have to add female to the front of hookers now because people might think i mean male hookers when i'm talking about COWBOYS. jeez.

now i think i'm making it out to be a bigger deal than it is. but the fact that it's so easy to find these articles (given, it is the internet) talking about the _impact_ of this movie. it kills me. i think i hate anything that garners attention like this. what a fucking slut of a movie.

more on the gayness

2006-01-13T01:12:00.000-05:00

goddamn, this is bugging me. now look at this.

"The amazing thing about "Brokeback Mountain" is its willingness to make that threat, directly and overtly. These are not cute gays, funny gays, "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" gays. These are "cowboys," and there is no figure in American lore more iconically male. Think Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, the Marlboro Man. The cowboy is our very embodiment of male virtues."

cowboys aren't gay. you look at a cowboy, part of the fucking cowboy way of life is having sex with those prostitutes in the saloons. female prostitutes. that constitutes almost 87% of cowboyness. gay cowboy is basically an oxymoron.

gay men don't threaten my concept of masculinity. they don't even apply. it's like saying fish threaten relativity.

what's the big deal with this gay mountain business?

2006-01-13T00:56:00.000-05:00

judy imed me and told me she'd just seen brokeback mountain recently. also, that it was good. not much to go on.

i'm not going to see it. when i said that judy brought up larry david's little piece. his article is funny, but i'm not seeing it for different reasons.

1) i don't want to see it. it just doesn't sound interesting to me. why the fuck would i want to see a love story about gay cowboys? i don't care that they're gay, if that's what you're thinking. it actually doesn't matter. why would i want to see a love story about 2 non-gay circus clowns, or 2 down on their luck old tires? i wouldn't.

i guess that's just one reason. but really. gay cowboys. that's all i've heard, from previews, from critics, from every source of information. there is NOTHING ELSE TO THE MOVIE. why would i want to see that?

other things:

ang lee? what the fuck? how do you go from crouching tiger hidden dragon to brokeback mountain?

larry david mentions 2 straight friends that loved the movie, one of whom fucking GUSHES. i mean come on. the moment a guy gushes about something, he has come out of the closet. the other one, while david does not explicitly say he gushes, definitely gives a very gushy speech. something tells me that those 2 friends are not straight.

"One of the best love stories ever," one gushed. Another went on, "Oh, my God, you completely forget that it's two men. You in particular will love it." [taken from that link above. i hope this isn't copyright infringement or some such]

oh, my god. you are gay. i don't think it's possible to watch a movie about two men falling in love, cowboys or not, and forget that they are men. and this has nothing to do with them being gay guys. if i watched a movie about two women, i wouldn't forget their genders. i mean, they're right up there on that giant screen the whole time. similarly, i could watch a movie that used the conventional pairing of a man and a woman, and i think i'd be able to answer a quiz on how many men were in the relationship, and how many women were in the relationship, afterwards.

this bothers me. i'm not sure why. it must be because i'm homophobic! boy is that overused.

chuck norris

2006-01-11T21:43:00.000-05:00

here are the top thirty facts, as sorted by me: (followed by its rank on the hedonistica link, done by voting apparently)

1) Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried. (1)

2) Chuck Norris sold his soul to the devil for his rugged good looks and unparalleled martial arts ability. Shortly after the transaction was finalized, Chuck roundhouse kicked the devil in the face and took his soul back. The devil, who appreciates irony, couldn't stay mad and admitted he should have seen it coming. They now play poker every second Wednesday of the month. (5)

3) As a teen Chuck Norris impregnated every nun in a convent tucked away in the hills of Tuscany. Nine months later the nuns gave birth to the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the only undefeated and untied team in professional football history. (14)

4) Chuck Norris built a time machine and went back in time to stop the JFK assassination. As Oswald shot, Chuck met all three bullets with his beard, deflecting them. JFK's head exploded out of sheer amazement. (10)

5) Chuck Norris appeared in the "Street Fighter II" video game, but was removed by Beta Testers because every button caused him to do a roundhouse kick. When asked bout this "glitch," Norris replied, "That's no glitch." (23)

6) Chuck Norris once ate three 72 oz. steaks in one hour. He spent the first 45 minutes having sex with his waitress. (21)

7) Achilles was supposedly the greatest warrior of all time, but he died because of his weak spot, the Achilles tendon. There is no Chuck Norris tendon. (22)

8) They once made a Chuck Norris toilet paper, but it wouldn't take shit from anybody. (13)

9) When Chuck Norris sends in his taxes, he sends blank forms and includes only a picture of himself, crouched and ready to attack. Chuck Norris has not had to pay taxes ever. (11)

10) Chuck Norris has already been to Mars; that's why there are no signs of life there. (12)

11) Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs. (8)

i think they get noticeably weaker after this

12) To prove it isn't that big of a deal to beat cancer. Chuck Norris smoked 15 cartons of cigarettes a day for 2 years and aquired 7 different kinds of cancer only to rid them from his body by flexing for 30 minutes. Beat that, Lance Armstrong. (15)

13) According to Einstein's theory of relativity, Chuck Norris can actually roundhouse kick you yesterday. (26)

14) At birth, Chuck Norris came out feet first so he could roundhouse kick the doctor in the face. Nobody delivers Chuck Norris but Chuck Norris. (30)

15) If you can see Chuck Norris, he can see you. If you can't see Chuck Norris you may be only seconds away from death. (6)

16) Chuck Norris is not hung like a horse... horses are hung like Chuck Norris. (19)

i don't even like the rest. not much agreement between me and the voters, either.

also interesting: chuck norris has responded to these "facts" on his official website. what a guy. remember, without him the average joes would have been forced to forfeit to globo gym. "fucking chuck norris..."'

also, i love how conan is over a year ahead of everyone else with his chuck norris fascination. when vivendi universal acquired NBC he was at the forefront with his patented walker texas ranger lever. good times.

happy new year

2006-01-01T22:51:00.000-05:00

so many blogs have been inactive. i think it's the winter slowing everyone down. although, this goes against my theory that more blogging is a sign of depression.

as for me, i haven't blogged lately because whenever i get to the composition page, the only thing that comes to my mind is how much watching love hina has affected me. i've seen a lot of movies and i've watched a lot of tv shows, but nothing has ever made my life seem as plain and dull and unremarkable as this one.

how embarassing and sad is that?

i must admit i am a fan

2005-12-14T22:04:00.000-05:00

cable is fucking expensive. nevertheless, i do like my on demand. never mind that i pick quite a few movies that i actually own on dvd, which are better quality and widescreen. there's something about it being only a click away...

i just watched the first hour or so of in good company. i remember steiner being very excited about the movie, and myself being very excited about scarlett johanssen (is that right?), and then steiner expressing his sizeable disappointment with the film. i would have to agree with him on most points. it could have been so much more.

still, i had to stop because i think i connected with topher grace's character. what the fuck am i doing? how am i actually responsible for the education of _anyone_? how long will i be doing this? i don't want to do it forever, but i'm also terrified that someone will walk into my classroom one day and point out that whoever entrusted actual living growing minds to me must have been out of his. my chest finally got so tight from watching topher's character being so fucking aimless that i had to stop.

the title referred simply to the on demand service. i went off a little bit wondering what the holy hell i'm doing with my life.

i heart i heart huckabees

2005-12-14T16:54:00.000-05:00

what a wonderful, wonderful movie.

nothing's ok!
so everything's ok.

exactly.

don worry yuself bout it mon

2005-12-10T10:56:00.000-05:00

greetings from jamaica. holy shit. it is warm and sunny and beachy here - basically it is everything that massachusetts is not.

we sat in the plane for an extra 3 hr 20 min before we took off because of the fucking snow.

nevertheless i am here and it is amazing. if you want a postcard email me your address. although i might not send it until i get back to the states.

suckers.

i've been had

2005-12-06T20:13:00.000-05:00

this blog would still be mouldering if not for the laundry drying in my basement right now.

never, ever buy a bed without talking to somebody first. or having one's mom negotiate for one. that sounds odd. anyways, trust me on this.

the rule of four

2005-11-21T01:30:00.000-05:00

i borrowed this from my new roommate and colleague, craig, because i have not brought any books over yet. a nice read. i always heard that the da vinci code was cheesy, in a trashy romance novel turned into a puzzle book sort of way. kind of like how r a salvator is cheesy fantasy. but craig tells me it's better than the rule of four, so maybe i should give it a shot.

the style of the prose is what got me. wordsmiths, the two authors are. a passage i enjoyed, in particular.

nevermind. the book is downstairs. i'll edit this later. or never.

there's a passage about the true meaning of the phrase, love conquers all. i liked it.

and one about the science of loneliness.

housewarming

2005-11-21T01:29:00.000-05:00

what a fucking night. holy shit. the people i work with are really generous.

i am now one of those guys. i have joined the ranks of, as far as i can tell, fernando, zhu, and don. a proud crew, to say the least.

post more

2005-11-19T10:16:00.000-05:00

first quarter is over. no real disasters.

i've moved out of my house. i now live in a duplex in indian orchard with jon and this new teacher at sci-tech named craig.

i've seen the fourth harry potter movie. incredible. ralph fiennes is my new anti-hero.

we're having a housewarming party tonight. lots of teachers should be coming.

i've written my first college recommendation for a student.

we should be having a new principal on monday. we still don't know who it will be.

i've upgraded my cell phone. no camera (good), no external display (i do miss this), no antenna (which makes it look so much cooler), and a speaker phone (which i will never use).

name that reference

2005-10-22T18:14:00.000-04:00

title, two posts ago. i was hoping someone would pick up on it before, but now i'm actively asking.

addendum

2005-10-17T15:31:00.000-04:00

the subject of the previous post is evidently made of pure malice. good luck with that, buddy.

yes, yes, you got his number

2005-10-16T23:51:00.000-04:00

many stories added to the annals this weekend. one of note:

tao, casey, rubes, and i are sitting at road house (i actually typed lion's head there first before realizing my error). i am scrolling through casey's phone to find people to call and berate until they agree to come. i get to esther. i hit send, and show casey the phone because i know he'll be embarassed. the phone rings 6, 7 times. i say, "great job casey. this is what you get for not moving your ass. she's probably fucking some other white guy from wisconsin right now."

she picks up. the table around me explodes into laughter (i am not laughing). there is no saving this. i jump fucking ship and end the call.

i call 2 or 3 other people, with mixed results. then i call esther again. i say i dropped the phone and the battery fell out, which i feel is a reasonably good save, considering. i tell her to come to roadhouse. the conversation runs something like so:

come to road house.
where?
road house.
why?
casey said he misses you, and he wants you to come.
no he didn't. casey wouldn't say that.
yeah you're right, he didn't. i was just fucking with you.
so why should i come to road house?
it'll be fun. come on.
are you really at road house?
what?
are you actually there?
what do you mean? where else would we be?
you're not just fucking with me?
[i give the phone to casey at this point, he confirms, some other stuff happens, she says she'll "stop by"]

at this point i ask my friends what that even means. who would tell someone to go to a bar they weren't even at? what kind of petty evil would that be? wow.

she arrives at some point, takes a seat. i ask her if she was serious when she asked that question. she asks what i mean, and i clarify. "who would do that? what kind of a person would tell someone to go to a bar they weren't even at?"

she considers for a moment, and looking right at me, answers, "an asshole."

well, shit. here's a person i met only one week ago and have had, we'll say, 3 hours of being in the same room. she has sure got me pegged though.

now this is what i was talking about before. what am i, really? an asshole? a nice guy pretending to be an asshole? an asshole pretending to be a nice guy pretending to be an asshole? i don't think i could possibly be a nice guy pretending to be an asshole pretending to be a nice guy pretending to be an asshole, because that would just be far too confusing.

i will die alone. this really is mildly upsetting, no matter how i look at it.

no grading done today. my geometry kids are failing, and i don't have the numbers to show them. so whose fault is it when they fail at the end of the semester? this whole hand holding thing... but how can we do sink or swim when we KNOW that they will sink?

oh antonia

2005-10-16T23:07:00.000-04:00

how much is a signed picture of anna wainscoat worth? let me know if you're interested. and don't forget the value of the crushed dreams of many little children.

i had a blast this weekend. i was on fucking fire. except at the bar, a little. i could be a blazing inferno and i'd still be an embarassment to the ladies.

lotta fun. i'll talk about it more later.

ddd

2005-10-16T20:36:00.000-04:00

deep discount has, among others, these titles for buy 2 get 1 free. each costs 8.97 so it's $6 per movie. not bad.

10 things i hate about you
25th hour
bicentennial man
clerks (animated series)
from dusk til dawn 1 2 or 3
grosse pointe blank
high fidelity
iron monkey
keeping the faith
nothing to lose
reign of fire
shanghai knights
shanghai noon
shaolin soccer
she's all that
signs
simon birch
swingers
the cider house rules
the rock
the waterboy

history

2005-10-13T23:38:00.000-04:00

i'm having this problem. last night i could not go to sleep so i put in a movie to fall asleep to. ended up being more awake through it all the way until the end. i got 3.5 hours of sleep last night. i feel exhausted now, so i put in a movie to fall asleep to, and now it's 2 hours later. i'm mostly worried about how tired i will be during the drive to new york and how worthless i'll be friday night. oh, i might as well admit it, last night i stayed up until 2:30 in the morning watching love, actually. tonight was punch drunk love. it was interesting how much i forgot from both of them. i actually was thinking of writing something about selective memory. i remember, and this is a slight spoiler, when the guy bought the gold necklace, that he ended up giving it to his wife, even though we were _supposed_ to think he was going to give it to his secretary. way off. he flat out gave it to his secretary, the bastard. i wanted him to give it to his wife, and so i remembered it happening that way. i wonder if there's giant chunks of my life that i've rewritten, beyond movies that i've viewed. that leads into a whole thing about how i barely remember my childhood at all. whatever, i'm exhausted. i'll just lie in bed until i fall asleep. which i have trouble doing, because of the idea of wasted time. but that's yet another topic entirely.

happy birthday, casey!

2005-10-11T21:47:00.000-04:00

i had a fun time in new york this weekend.
columbia cottage, where i refused any terrible wine and simply enjoyed my diced chicken with peanuts and hot peppers. that esther the molester was cute. casey needs to hook that up.
lion's head, where i bought a round of car bombs (those are expensive! people offered to pay but i didn't mind. special occasion and all) and drank some yuengling because i can't drink natty. when will the pbr be back? what do i remember especially? joni sitting against that mystery building when her face in her hands in the pouring rain. i always wonder how people just disappear from a bar. a lot of people who were at dinner were just gone the next time i looked around.
stealing amanda's bed in ec. i swear to god she practically threatened me if i wasn't in her bed when she got back. i don't remember the exact wording but it was something along the lines of be in my bed when i get home bitch. it worked out well for me. in that i got a bed to sleep in. not in any dirty sense. honestly, get your mind out of the gutter.
feeling pretty shitty the next day. seeing good night, and good luck. good movie! watching serenity again and catching a nap through the middle (3rd time seeing it).
running into casey at m2m on the way back home and deciding to stay another night while steiner caught a ride with his parents. playing some old fashioned halo with stoops and tao in casey's room.
going downtown to some expensive fucking bar because of fucking judy. $4 for a bottle of rolling rock, goddamn. going to an expensive (fun, but expensive, and kind of malfunctioning) karaoke place nearby and not knowing any good karaoke songs. rock lobster got shot down. the i-i-i part from crazy train was incredible though. i thought i'd die from being so wet and cold. umbrellas are still for fucking women.
staying at raj's place. damn it's nice. i remember being so happy for the warmth.
dbq the next day with tao and casey. always fun.
then home.

my principal just announced today that he is resigning at sci tech to take a position with the college board. that shakes up my plans as far as staying at sci tech for at least another year after this one. still don't want to apply to law school. what else is there...

serenity

2005-09-30T21:50:00.000-04:00

i watched serenity, and it's amazing. i have gripes, of course, but that's the way of the verse. fuck, though, i really wish i could unwatch it. i am a leaf on the wind. fucking whedon is such an asshole.

do you see movies in theatres, and watch movie rentals?

i remember being pissed when i saw the preview for narnia. all the fans who read the lord of the rings before it became a trilogy, who read the chronicles of narnia, who read his dark materials (i hope that movie is still happening, austin), who liked the x-men and spiderman comics or cartoons, and so on and so on, that is to say, all of us with GOOD TASTE, should get some reward more tangible than some vague smugness over being right all of these years. and all of the tools who only got into this shit after it got the silver screen treatment should receive an enema. huh, i left serenity off this list even though it is a shining example. i deserve something for being right all these years. i mean, christ, who are the movie executives that took 20 years to realize fantasy and comic books sell as movies? i guess someone could say something about movie technology and how some things have only been made possible recently, but then, those people could suck a dick. and fox... don't even get me started on fox. as soon as they cancel a show and put it on dvd, the sales go through the fucking roof. meanwhile, what kind of shit do they keep on the air. wow that enrages me.

i was thinking on the way home about how this life is not my life. teaching math at sci tech is not my job. my room that i grew up in is not my room. i posted about this before, but honestly, i feel like i'm still waiting for my life to really begin. back when i was in college, i knew it was going by, and i knew i would always miss it, but i had no idea how right i was. this town, with my one friend still here, in this job that makes me feel like i'm pretending just well enough that no one realizes, in my house that i don't feel like i really live in because i'm really just sleeping in the one space not filled with my possessions, none of it is my actual life. and what happens if i wake up and i'm 29 and i'm still teaching at hsst andliving in a small dinky apartment near work and that's my life and i've wasted it. terrifying.

slick

2005-09-22T18:13:00.000-04:00

is anyone looking to buy a new computer? slick deals has a pretty slick deal @ http://www.slickdeals.net/#p6528

if anyone takes it up, add a 2nd 19 inch for 260. i'll pay you back. i'm still using the same 15" flat from my freshman year of college.

so tempting... i could get the cheapest component setup with the 24" (24!!) widescreen and the 19" for ~1600, before the coupon. not sure if the 20% is still up or if it's 15% now. even with 15%, that would be 1360, which is cheaper than the sum of the 2 monitors off the website.

we loves it

2005-09-21T18:44:00.000-04:00

we love katamari is sitting in my lap, sealed and waiting for me to load it up. all i could think of on the drive back from the store was holding it close to my heart while i sleep, caressing it and calling it my precious. kind of like butters and backdoor sluts 9.

the real world: midgar

2005-09-20T22:44:00.000-04:00

a couple of things that i can think of.

i wanted to say something a few days ago about how there is a demand for footage of hot people just doing stuff. i would pay money to watch jessica alba going about her everyday routine. all the nudity could be cut out, too, i wouldn't care. watching her comb her hair, or drive around in her car, or picking up fruit from the grocery store. i would watch that. all the time.

the problem is that hot people like their privacy (i just realized this must be why reality shows are so addicting. maybe i don't like them because the stars aren't hot enough. if the real world is any indication, the producers recognize that and are enthusiastically fixing the problem). like it's their right or something. whatever. regardless, this is what makes fake people so great. as in cgi people. as in tifa. i could watch an animated tifa drinking her coffee without losing interest. more importantly, i would pay to watch it. the problem here is that animating her costs money. when is there going to be self-sustaining cgi? once you have a model and a setting, you can just give it some guidelines and have it go about its routine. and if that model is a beautiful video game character and the guidelines are beach volleyball, so much the better. is that even a project anywhere in any company? the broader model, although the beach volleyball with beautiful characters is already reality.

i'm sure it must have applications beyond what i've suggested here. is what i've suggested perverted? i don't think so, but it's definitely creepy. austin, help me out here. are you considered an authority on creepy, or are you like those kids that are so innocent they don't recognize racism?

i had an actual dream, last night or the night before, about a friend who has been worrying me. the thing is that i'm not sure if i'm worried about this person because i ought to be or i think that it's funny to be. and that brings up the whole idea of acting as a certain person until you become that person. and i'd hate to really become the person that i've been acting as for these past couple of years, because he's kind of a jerk. even though he can be pretty funny.

my saving grace has always been that people overall say that i'm mean on the outside but nice on the inside. so if i decided that one day i wanted to be good, i'd have my inside reputation to fall back on. and if i decided one day to just fuck it, i could be a real jerk without really shaking up my routine too much. wow, that's amazing that i can't even commit to a basic personality.

i wonder when i will stop drifting. heh, i even float at my job - meaning i don't have my own classroom, but still.

oh, that whole watching celebrities thing came from watching red eye. the movie is not bad at all. i don't think i have to be gay to be intensely bothered by cillian's unshaven mess of a face throughout the entire movie. to get to the point, even though the movie was not too bad and overall entertaining, i kept thinking to myself, "even if this movie sucked, i'd be happy." goddamn, that rachel mcadams is a looker. she really puts the beauty in beauty mark. how many does she have? that's rare in an actress. i think she looks the best in this over wedding crashers and especially mean girls. i really could have sat through one and a half hours of her sitting on a stool in an empty white room and reading her lines. but of course, if i stake out her home with a pair of opera glasses, it's not art.

i started this post to say something about how i just wasted maybe an hour and a half at home grading papers, and how i'm disgruntled that i actually got the raise that made me happy enough at my job to work hard, which is why i have to grade shit at home and not at school, but it's pretty pointless to complain about something as silly as that, but i thought i'd stick it in the end since i said a couple things, and we all know a couple is 4 or 5.

analogies

2005-09-17T10:19:00.000-04:00

i really love analogies. maybe it's the fact that they have the word anal, maybe it's the fact that they have the word log, who knows. although now that i've titled it i'm not sure if it's as much an analogy as a metaphor.

one that really sticks out was describing how steiner and eunji hooked up at the halloween party. that whole guided missile thing for steiner came from the party when matt isanuk brought his friends to a party of at EC. i still feel bad because i asked his friends for money for a beer run, but i didn't know at the time that they were about to leave. where did all that beer go? they must have thought me a jerk... although you need a jerk to shake the guests down for beer money. asian parties must be so much easier to supply. anyways, at some point steiner was gone, and someone suggested to him that he go over and talk to one of isanuk's female friends. he just took steiner and pointed him in a direction, and he was off. guided missile.

so usually at a party there's just one missile aimed at some target. pick-upper, pick-upee. that's why it was so great that steiner was fired directly at some sort of slut-nuke. no offense, eunji. two guided missiles! the dance, tao, the dance.

i suppose that i'm about to draw an analogy right now, between guided missiles and train wrecks. so normally you need two people to be a train wreck. what happens when an individual qualifies as a one-person train wreck? and what happens when that train wreck hits another person, which would under normal conditions create the two-person train wreck? is it some sort of train pile-up? heh, are there missile trains, or am i thinking of bullet trains? cuz then you could have a guided missile train wreck.

advent children

2005-09-15T18:45:00.000-04:00

i have no idea what the actual release date is, but i just watched it. tycho's advisory does not come close. this movie is incredible. beyond incredible. there aren't words in any language to describe how fucking great it is. each scene is beyond gorgeous. each fight is beyond breathtaking. i'd like to think of something to go with the rule of three, but i don't need to. oh my god.

plus, tifa is the most beautiful thing i've ever seen, real or cgi, across any medium. not to mention she could own neo, john preston, aragorn and especially that pussbag legolas, and any other character from any other movie i can think of. yuffie's not too bad either. i think raj would be a yuffie man. not sure though.

every other movie ever made needs to emulate this movie. well, romantic comedies can keep using diane lane and drew barrymore. but every other kind of movie should be exactly like this one. hell, there don't need to be any more movies besides this one. maybe that's what i'll do. after i see serenity, i could abstain from all movies besides cgi based on the final fantasy franchise grounded in an actual game. i think that covers me. funny because i just bought final fantasy: the spirits within last week, and watched it last night. the difference between these 2 movies is like... two things that are really really different.

job satisfaction: high

2005-09-13T19:19:00.000-04:00

i think i might actually love my job right now. sure, we've only had 6 days of classes, and sure, my kids are only going to get stupider and lazier, and sure, the workload will only get heavier, but right now, i'm feeling pretty good. amazing what an extra 8.5 grand can do for one's outlook.

something missing

2005-09-03T23:13:00.000-04:00

i don't feel anything about new orleans. i didn't feel anything about the world trade center, and i was just a few miles north of that. right now, i know it has happened, i know people are suffering, but i haven't lost any sleep over it.

there's some disconnectedness here. after reading other people's blogs, i wonder if i'm missing some piece of emotional equipment that everyone else has.

i stood in line at st. luke's to donate blood until we were told that they would not be able to use all the blood they already had. i did not see the site until i happened to take a PATH train to new jersey. i'll donate money to red cross after i deposit my paycheck, after reading the suggestion on christian's blog. because it's the right thing to do. but i don't feel invested. what causes that, or doesn't?

i cried once at a funeral. uncle fred, a good family friend, had passed away, and he had always been really nice to my whole family. what a guy. he was so cool. when we walked up to his family, i looked into auntie lily's face and my heart kind of just surged with this sadness for her, knowing that they were such good people and that they should have had a lot lot more time together. i felt embarassed about it afterwards, because who the hell am i to cry at his funeral like that? when his family was being so brave and so strong. but i can't really go back and explain myself to everyone there, and hopefully they understood why exactly i did cry.

i knew him. i know her. but i don't know the people in new orleans. is that a different kind of empathy? is there some part of the human psyche that empathizes with people one knows and a different part that empathizes with people one has never met?

classic ed

2005-09-02T23:13:00.000-04:00

this past week has been 8:30 to 3, and today was 7:05 to 2, so i took a long nap that just ended.

i wake up to my brother, screaming. he's back again. after the worthless shit couldn't find housing for his final semester of law school (he only had all summer to look, and he didn't start looking until the week before going back), he spent the past 4 nights in a ymca and came back, i don't know why. i wake up to him screaming his lungs out, my mom asking him to be quiet, and him saying, i can't, i can't!

when i was in college ed would come into my room and take out books or movies or so on, and use them in whatever fashion. and then they would get left wherever he was finished with them, and lost, scratched, or ruined in some way. i'm very picky about the condition of books. but just because only a few people would care if a book's spine was creased doesn't mean it's ok to crease it. the owner might belong to that subset of people. the example that stays with me is that he took all of my jd salinger books, and i found one of them in the trunk of my car, months later, with a hole punched through the cover. a fucking hole! straight through the entire book! how the fuck does that even happen? what level of disregard does that take? i still can't figure it. i only see someone with a drill fucking working away at the book to make a hole. hard work had to go into that!

i would ask mom to keep him the fuck out. i don't have a lock on my door here. she more or less harped on ed long enough that he would rather leave my stuff alone than listen to my mom if i had to complain again.

so i get out of bed, and ask what the problem is. his clip. a giant wooden fucking clip. $90. $90?? from linley, or some shit. ashwood? what the fuck? when i was moving my room around, i moved my bed. under my bed is a drawer of porn. i put that drawer in his room, on top of a plastic container thing. i'm not done moving around so it was still there when he got back. evidently there was a clip thing that got scratched (as in one scratch) by my drawer o' porn when i placed it in his room.

anyways, he's waving a bigass wooden clip around in my face, like the ones you use (oh, it's a clothespin) to hang up laundry on a line, and screaming about how it was a gift, and although it cost $90, it would cost way more than that to replace. when i bring up all of my stuff that he has screwed with, he says, how much is a book? max $20 (as if he's only ruined one book of mine in my lifetime). then he makes the claim that the value of his big wooden clip thing makes the value of any of my stuff that he has fucked up over the years worthless. after naming a figure for their worth, he goes ahead and says they are in fact worthless. that's his law school edumacation talkin. then he actually says, all of my stuff is more valuable and more important than your worthless books and movies. that's pretty much verbatim.

at this point i started laughing in his face. i wasn't faking or anything. i called him a stupid fucking moron for spending $90 on a giant wooden clip. and something about, you see a valuable item, i see a giant fucking waste of $90. i mean, christ. for a wooden clothespin? what the fuck is wrong with him.

he goes on to make the claim that his giant ash wood clothespin is art. he asked me if i knew what a picasso was. i started laughing harder. when i looked at him like _he_ was an idiot, he thought he'd drawn blood and followed up by asking if i knew what a monet was. wow. wooooow.

this whole time the kids are in the hallway also, asking him to stop yelling. mom is asking him to stop yelling. mom finally loses it and starts screaming about how tired she was (very valid) and that she needed to sleep. he throws his priceless clothespin on the ground, and tries but fails to slam his door. what a beautiful example of impotent rage.

he came in here afterwards, much calmer, and asked if we had an understanding. much more reasonable. accepting of the fact that i probably didn't realize that any of the crap strewn about his room (the place is a dump. there's shit all over the floors. literally no floorspace visible. and not in boxes or bags. just all over the place, like an actual dump) could be valuable. i don't know why he didn't do that in the first place, instead of uncontrollable screaming in front of his two kids right before they went to bed.

my brother, the biggest waste of everything in the entire world. the prepositional phrase in the entire world modifies waste of everything, in case you're not sure which way to read it.

you can't disrespect the dark knight

2005-08-31T07:36:00.000-04:00

i hope dc comics cleans this motherfucker out for this

resolution

2005-08-30T20:33:00.000-04:00

i am going to be the worst teacher ever.

grokking laughter

2005-08-24T15:44:00.000-04:00

here we go... p311

I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.

I looked at a cageful of monkeys and suddenly I saw all the mean and cruel and utterly unexplainable things I've seen and heard and read about in the time I've been with my own people -- and suddenly it hurt so much I found myself laughing.

those are just the 2 parts i felt like typing here. from strange in a strange land, by the way, so no sueing me. the whole passage is worth reading.

i feel like this gives too much significance to gabi's posts (i'm not trying to offend here, truly). i don't think she's quite a microcosm of the human race, with war and death and starvation and so on, but she does suffer, unless i'm misinterpreting her posts. at least this makes me laughing at her blog less bad. right?

laugh it off, people, and it will be ok.

music

2005-08-24T12:20:00.000-04:00

it really bothers me when i recognize a song in one movie from another one. i feel like the latecomer is trying to mooch or leech off of feelings inspired from the first movie, by association of music, and that's not right. i recognized that iggy pop song, the passenger in a trailor before the 40-year-old virgin, and i'm pretty sure it was in the trailer for in good company as well.

sidenote: i saw the trailer for serenity.

there are other cases that specifically bother me, but i can't remember them.

one association that i can't quite place is the opening theme to edward scissorhands. i'm not so mad because i think i recognize it from another tim burton movie, and directors can probably steal from themselves. but does anyone know what i'm talking about? is there some online database of movie soundtracks or themes and overlaps?

i was skimming through channels and there was a buffy the vampire slayer rerun, the one wherein dawn falls in love with the high school quarterback. and they're playing the shins during this one scene. i remember being a little miffed at garden state because, while i really liked the movie, i wasn't sure if maybe i just liked the soundtrack. but that's not fair, because it is a skill to pick the songs in the soundtrack. maybe. also, i remember being perturbed when the shins were playing at some venue when the gilmore girls went on spring break. way to become mainstream, playing live on the WB...

apropos of movies and soundtracks, go see the 40 year old virgin. it is amazing. is it a sleeper? what is a sleeper hit? i think it is one. and without any soundtrack at all, it would still be amazing, i'm just saying some of those songs are the icing on the fucking cake.

shit on

2005-08-23T11:43:00.000-04:00

can anyone give me a job? i don't want mine anymore.

what does that mean, exactly?

2005-08-23T11:41:00.000-04:00

i was reading gabi's blog, and i just started laughing uncontrollably. i'm still laughing now. it's this dry guffaw that comes straight from the diaphragm, and i can't stop. just thinking to myself what the fuck am i laughing for makes me laugh harder. wow. something is wrong, here. ow.

ash?

2005-08-21T17:02:00.000-04:00

pom poko is out on dvd in the US.

bone - all the comics in one volume is out. i remember austin telling me about this. he was contemplating buying the limited edition hardcover for his collection, and the softcover for actual use. makes sense.

go here. watch the video til about halfway through. raj, this asian girl is a dead ringer for yuna, and she does the napoleon dynamite dance. in a ridiculously short skirt. it's not even a skirt it's so short. it's a shirt? no, that's taken. how about a skort? just watch it. over and over and over.

i just watched that part 3 more times, and the person with the mic says, "Hey, we're here with Lisa. She was Ash in the masquerade ball." who the hell is ash, and if the video game character is hotter than lisa, damn. goddamn.

anyone looking for a good read should find the riftwar saga by raymond e. feist. steiner turned me onto it. i just finished book 3, and the stupid holyoke barnes and noble didn't have book 4. i'll have to go to the enfield one tomorrow.

the simpsons: season 4

2005-08-10T01:25:00.000-04:00

such great presentation.

such great episodes.

homer to bart - you couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine.

L - there's only one reasonable way to settle this: rock, paper, scissors.
L (thinking) - spoor, predictable bart. always takes rock.
B (thinking)- good old rock. nothin' beats that.

they pump twice and shoot.

B - rock.
L - paper.
B - doh!

stoops and tao know how this works. a true contest of champions will stalemate; rock pitted against rock for all eternity.

"well, i don't want to!"

2005-08-07T13:11:00.000-04:00

jade and ivy are in my brother's room. he stepped out for a bit and he is logged into world of warcraft. he comes back and asks them to get out of his seat. they want to stay with him. they step on something, and it explodes? i think (his words)? he gets mad and orders them out of his room.

his room is disgusting. there is not a bare inch of floor. all around his desk and chair are coke cans and bottles strewn about. some in explosive condition. as in they still have disgusting days-old soda gunk in them. on the floor. in piles mixed with papers and clothes. what a sty. it's been like this for years.

"you really should clean up your room so your kids can hang out with you."
his answer...
given with all the authority of a 12-year old.

austin sucks

2005-08-06T14:21:00.000-04:00

natalie, are you back from wherever? i assumed you and austin had gone on some sort of road trip dork conferences sort of deal. the resumption of commenting leads me to assume that you are returned from your endeavours.

how the heck do i get in touch with austin? he's become one of those guys that is, you know, kind of hard to get in touch with.

oh, if you're looking for a read, try the Amber series by Roger Zelazny. what a sweet name. zelazny, that is. not amber. amber's just ok.

sky high

2005-08-06T14:07:00.000-04:00

disney needs to stop discovering these disturbingly hot girls under the age of 18. or girls under the age of 18 need to stop looking hot. it's messed up.

i liked it a lot. pretty trite and predictable over all, although a pretty decent twist near the end. kelly preston - no complaints. kurt russell - as super as ever. some unexpected but not unpleasant surprises were farva as the bus driver, bruce campbell as the gym teacher, the lead guy from newsradio as the "hero support" teacher, and that other kids in the hall guy whose name i don't know as the mad science teacher. it was interesting how the movie drew the not so subtle analogy between the popular kids and losers in everyday high school and the heros and sidekicks in sky high.

layla - way too hot. how old is she? i'm not going to check because i don't want to know. what a pretty name, too. i could see naming a daughter Layla. although i'd probably drown my daughter as soon as she was born, or lock her up in a floating castle guarded by manticores dragons sphinxes and chimeras. oh and griffins too. what other amalgamation creatures can i utilize to protect my daughter's -who will never please god exist - virtue? we'll say gorgons lamias centaurs and hippogryphs. and i'd be horrified of the imagined nicknames when if she sleeps with some jerk in high school who starts calling her easy lay-la or some such. however, that would justify my purchase of a shotgun and a hunting license and a grenade launcher when i blew up the fucker's house.

in short, i will never have kids. unless i can be sure they're boys with no virtue to speak of or protect.

new york and wildwood

2005-08-06T13:48:00.000-04:00

i didn't post about new york at all. i'm lost as to what to post about here. ever since finding thesuperficial, i realized that the world has enough causticity even without my personal contribution. spit in the ocean, as they say, although i prefer pee in the ocean, in light of my past weekend at wildwood. and i hate those mundane day-to-day ramblings. those who write such always apologize for not having anything better; they _know_ that it's wrong. i liked expressing my feelings about movies i'd seen recently, but i've run out of steam. i wouldn't call them reviews either, and lately i haven't seen anything bad enough to warrant a rant, which is probably the only thing that would get me fired up enough to go at it again.

i haven't written about my week in new york from july 15-22. it was amazing. seeing my friends again... it's the only thing that has felt real since i moved back home in february. the rest of the time, i feel like i'm in a dream and i can't wake up. kind of like spike, in a not corny way, i hope. all of this... teaching, earning a masters in education, staying at home - it doesn't feel solid. there is so much i could post about that week that i was actually too busy at the time to do.

highlights -
going with rubes and judy to meet my mom at joe's shanghai ginger restaurant. i'm sorry i missed the mets game afterwards.
going to grimaldi's with rubes and judy and walking back into manhattan over the brooklyn bridge.
talking with krischelle
going to toast with zoe (she so nonchalantly suggested it)
going to dbq right before i left for home
the only thing i missed was a chance to see mary. my fault.

i finally watched all the way through cowboy bebop that week. not too happy about the ending, but i can't actually dislike it.

then wildwood. so much fun. right now i'm molting (do snakes do that? i'm not talking about the bird molting, i mean the snake kind). i was explaining to steiner how it's like having one's very own physiological bubble wrap, except more fun (i know, more fun than bubble wrap!) AND disgusting. giant strips come off every so often. they retain wrinkles and little holes (for hairs i think?) and everything.

the whole trip was a blast, minus carrying that fucking cooler! what the fuck, tao. that thing sucks. yun seems like a cool guy. he handled getting his nose broken pretty well. playing was fun, as was scoring. i even threw for one goal, never mind that it was a godawful throw and i was lucky that the person guarding kelsey whiffed it and kelsey somehow caught it blindly. 4 inches of water on the field = best tournament ever.

i finally finished that 2 foot tuna salad on tuesday. i purchased it sunday morning. that sandwich was a fucking beast.

oh, other minor gripes. the cops harassing me for being ageless. the fucking waitress at fucking tony's not serving me fucking beer, pitcher or pint. they don't want people to have fun in that town. or kill innocent pedestrians while driving drunk. either way - fucking fascists!

so i guess i did post about both trips. right now. here. eh... it was pretty much the only time of substance to my entire summer. maybe even year. not that i don't have fun with zhu back at home. but still, it's tough to spend 4 years with the same people and then - not.

twenty-four

2005-07-28T21:47:00.000-04:00

high octane. this series is aptly described by all the cliche terms in the rainbow. a thrill-ride lightning-packed rollercoaster of action that never slows down and keeps you on the edge of your seat and the balls of your feet.

my only complaint is the women in this show. this writer must be so misogynistic. terry bauer - stupid ho. kim bauer - stupid ho. sherry palmer - stupid ho.

spoilers now. terry makes a decent escape then stops the car so that it rolls down a goddamn hill and explodes. she falls down and gets fucking amnesia. christ. then she refuses to find help, and wanders around in an amnesiatic stupor while an assassin hunts her.

kim sneaks out of the house to go party with her friend and gets kidnapped. then she falls in love with the guy who kidnapped her. then after the car explodes, she goes to his fucking house, where the other kidnapper's crazy brother won't let her leave while a drug deal goes down.

sherry palmer just plain sucks. she's evil and power hungry. and she looks like satan, if satan were a middle-aged black woman.

the guys are so capable. but the women - they're exactly the characters that you want to fucking scream at to not be stupid fucking moron bitches. i really do hate them.

saving face

2005-07-26T12:38:00.000-04:00

i had a great title and intro worked out for my latest post. then i forgot it.

i used to write here what i thought of movies i saw. i'd be so behind if i tried to catch up that i'm not going to bother.

i missed my chance to see howl's moving castle in northampton. guess i'll have to wait til it comes out on dvd.

this looks interesting. i don't know how i'll get to see it though.

wedding crashers was purely awesome. what chemistry. that part at breakfast when they quietly reaffirm their love. it went straight to the heart.

i still need to see charlie and the chocolate factory and dark water. to a lesser extent, i want to see the island and the bad news bears.

that russian movie, night watch, looks incredibly creepy. and it's the first in an epic trilogy. spider baby coming out of the eye?

serenity is on the dropdown menu under -upcoming-! i'm going to see if the trailer for harry potter year 3 is up yet.

untitled

2005-07-06T21:15:00.000-04:00

i don't understand how people can watch flcl and not feel moved. every time i even think about that series, i feel my life shift perceptibly. same with miyazaki's films. nothing i have ever seen in american film has come close.

wet floor

2005-07-06T21:13:00.000-04:00

tao has been "ruined." he let a girl "get to him." don't let this happen to you.

go canada

2005-07-03T11:07:00.000-04:00

gay marriage!

i don't get it, but i'll never condemn it. or hate it. or try to tell them it's illegal.

if men want to marry each other, doesn't hurt me. if women want to marry each other, i suppose that lessens the pool of available women for me, but i doubt they'd be too interested in yours truly. unless gay people are going around kidnapping children and eating them, or flying around in invisible gay planes shooting gayrays at people and turning them gay, let them be married! i mean, COME ON. how is this an issue?

i'm still on the fence about man-box turtle marriage. although i do love the icon for it.

are celebrities nerds, dorks, or geeks?

2005-07-01T10:37:00.000-04:00

since they're celebrities they are probably a whole new category. celenerds or some such.

dave chapelle loves World of Warcraft

vin diesel "never" played d&d

i don't know about this

rock on.

i think i'm done

2005-06-21T11:44:00.000-04:00

DONE!

DONEDONEDONEDONEDONEDONEDONEDONEDONEODNDOEN

howl's moving castle

2005-06-15T02:20:00.000-04:00

so worth it.

on saturday, i drove to the U of Hartford in W Hartford to take the praxis ii, mathematics content knowledge. damn it was hard. much harder than the mtel. all this crap about sets and vectors and matrices and trig and inverse trig (what is the name of the group that consists of secant cosecant and cotangent?) and stuff i didn't really study. a lot of pictures of graphs that i was supposed to decipher, and a lot of _real_ _thinking_. which i have not been used to, sadly, at my school. on my first run through i think i answered 25-30 of the questions. thankfully i got a lot more the second time around, and i think i made good guesses on 5 questions and shot in the dark on maybe 5 more. the rest i'm pretty sure i got barring stupidity. it was 2 hours for a 50 minute multiple choice exam, by the way. strange that it's not available on computer since there is no SA or OR to speak of.

i drove back home afterwards instead of going straight to NY because it was only 11:30 and the drive took less than 30 minutes. i then last minute recruited zhu and susan to come to new york with me. it rained on the way there, which blew, and when we got there, which blew more.

dinner from saigon grill. delicious as always. i ordered 2 extra cartons of rice, which cost $1.25 each! by far the worst item on their menu value wise. but it paid off because i needed more than my single carton to go with my meal. how do you guys in new york not make saigon grill a tradition?

the movie! we arrived not early enough to get 8 seats together in a real nice spot. by that i mean in the center with an unobstructed view. we took the right side column, and i sat in the aisle, so my view was pretty centered. i wonder if it was worse for whoever was at the far end. by the way, i always enter a theatre from the farther door. it just seems obvious that it will be more crowded when one enters from the closer door, as people are sheep and atoms and follow the path of least resistance which their leader is on. stupid sheep atom people.

i overheard someone on her cell phone trying to explain to someone else what the movie was, in what i think was a last-ditch attempt to get him or her to join, and she said something along the lines of, i think it's howl's magical castle or howl's flying castle. i hated her instantly. what was she doing on its opening weekend watching it without knowing the legacy behind this movie? not to mention its fucking name. for shame...

when the totoro logo for studio ghibli came on, i broke my own inviolate taboo and involuntarily joined in the clapping. i caught myself, but i didn't even mind that other people were clapping. i guess if anyone or anything could hear (and appreciate, which is the important part) clapping in some theater, it would be an imaginary totoro.

the movie was great. from the very beginning, the visuals blew me away. that castle was awesome. i will live in a castle like that. or a mobile home. which is really the same thing, in spirit, if one considers it.

i really did think sophie was a little off-looking at first. and to me, she became more and more beautiful as the movie progressed. i wonder if they actually drew her any differently. besides the real obvious changes, that is.

christian bale did a great job as howl. he can not disappoint me. billy crystal is an odd choice for calcifer, but he was still pretty funny. yes, the ending seemed kind of rushed and pat, but maybe that's how it ended in the novel? by the way, has anyone ever read the novel that the movie is based on? i do like how they never explain the cure for sophie's curse.

the movie was absolutely worth the drive to NYC, the cab ride to loew's lincoln, the 10.75 for a ticket, and the subway ride back. and i suppose the drive back to longmeadow as well. when does it come out on dvd?

lion's head was a blast as well. thanks to the scruffy faced guy who gave us a round of irish car bombs on the house. i only ended up paying for 10 PBRs and i only tipped him $3 on the $15. i feel like a dick, but i was drunk and out of actual cash. i forgot to write a tip on the actual tab receipt, so i had only two bucks and one i borrowed from susan to tip him. i'll get him next time.

it was fun talking to raj. oh and i got his cell, again, and his aim name, again.

it's too hot

2005-06-15T02:19:00.000-04:00

i can't sleep. thank god for catherine's fan, which i stole. it is fhot in here. which is short for fucking hot. window open does nothing. central ac makes the downstairs nice and cool, but does _nothing_ for my oven of a room. maybe i should move to the dank, spider-infested basement. i can't sleep. must wake up in 4 hours for work.

every time i

2005-06-08T09:21:00.000-04:00

watch tv
go outside
get ready for work in the morning
talk to a friend
talk to a stranger
see a movie
go to sleep
read a book
listen to music
take a shower

i become more and more convinced that i am a bachelor for life.

thesuperficial speaks only the truth

2005-06-07T19:18:00.000-04:00

his words are like honeyed sugar, or sugared honey, spilling over a melodic waterfall of honey (or sugar). he could charm a basket out of a snake with that tongue of pure silver (or honey).

the last straw that pushed my camel's back over the line and made me post about this site was an article that, though not about kirsten dunst, mentioned her. and by mentioned her, i mean decried her as the embodiment of all that is evil in the world. i did a search for "kirsten dunst" on this site, and look at how much i found. my lord, just the headlines alone...

this is the one that clued me in to how much of a genius the thesuperficial poster is
Tara Reid gives up partying.
People magazine has an article about Tara Reid giving up the party lifestyle, but that's about as believable as Kirsten Dunst giving up the ugly troll lifestyle. Which, in case you're a moron, isn't very. Although I will admit that Tara Reid is way more attractive than Kirsten Dunst, she's still terribly ugly. If you're into drunk pudgy party sluts then I'm sure you disagree, but I just like to set my standards a little higher. I need my women to at least have a chin.

from Kirsten Dunst is ugly.
If I had to choose between slamming my penis into Kristen Dunst or slamming my penis in a car door, I would at least request that car be American. Then maybe my penis could get buried in a national cemetery. And soldiers would hand me a folded flag while I cried at its funeral. I would miss my penis, we’ve had a lot of good times together, but I would respect its sacrifice. It would be the Pat Tillman of penis. I like to think it would never take the cowards way out and go east-west in that pale brittle troll, even for a minute. And I’m pretty sure I’d rather get a hand job from those hooded things in Lord of the Rings than that nicotine stained talon she’s got.

i stopped italicizing. it's definitely still his material and not mine.

oh my god. i love this guy.

from Kirsten Dunst is tough to look at.
A buddy of mine has an older brother who is a cop and once there was this serial rapist going around town and my buddy was privy to a bunch of details that weren’t common knowledge, so, of course, he used them to place an anonymous call to the police and tell them I was the rapist, and sold the whole thing with the details they were after; specific times he saw me leave, specific things he saw me wear, so on and so on. And after they released me 41 hours later, I had to admit it was a pretty good joke. Anyway, I was sorta thinking about pulling the same kind of thing on Kirsten Dunst. But this time, the game is real. Because I hate her. Wouldn't it be bliss to turn on the news and see: “KIRSTEN DUNST IS THE ZODIAC KILLER!” - “D.A. says : ‘You’re gonna hang for this Dunst!’”

Jennifer sent this pic in about a week ago, but I didn’t put it yet cause I choke on my bile every time I open it. Kirsten really is hideous. And please don’t think I mean that as an opinion, cause it’s not. It’s a provable fact, like Fermat's Last Theorem. With her giant Garbage Pail Kid head and creepy scarecrow legs, she looks like she should live in Halloweentown. I'm not really sure where this picture is from - other than my reoccurring nightmare - but it really is unnerving.

(just to recap, the reason I hate Kirsten is cause she’s a hideous talentless hack who is also an insufferably arrogant bitch. One or the other would be fine, but the combination is just too much to take.)

from Kirsten Dunst is in love with herself.
God I hate her so much.

from Kirsten Dunst is a vampire.
It may or may not be illegal to kill people when they’re as awful as Kirsten Dunst. I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer. But if it is, I’ll just roll up in court with this picture, and when the judge says, “why did you do it,” I’ll walk over to the jury with the picture behind my back and say, “Because your honor, Kirsten Dunst … was a Werewolf!” And I'll whip the picture out and everyone will gasp, and the judge will say, “Don’t you mean Vampire.” And I’ll say, “hey look man, whatever.”

from Kirsten Dunst is ugly and cheap.
You may think that since the pictures below are of Kirsten Dunst giving money to a homeless man in a wheelchair, surely I could set aside the seething contempt I have for her, at least for one post. But you’d be wrong, since the cheap bitch gives the man a dollar. One dollar. I tip the inbred at Starbucks more than that and all he does is say, “my bad, you wanted skim?” Just for the record, Kirsten’s asking price is 6 million a film and she makes 3 movies a year on average. She’s clearly not throwing money away on fancy makeup and her outfit here from the Fashion Bug couldn’t have cost more than twenty dollars, but it seems there’s still not enough wiggle room in the budget to spare a five for the hungry paraplegic. God I hate her. Seriously, she’s disgusting. If I had to choose between the best sex of my life with Kirsten Dunst or jacking off in front of my parents … lets just say I hope that never comes up.

from Kirsten Dunst nipple slip.
I guess it would be impossible for me not to post the Kirsten Dunst nipple slip so here it is. My apologies beforehand, as seeing Kirsten Dunst's nipples is probably pretty low on your list of things to do. I think it's safe to say that she is officially the most disgusting celebrity on the planet. I could get past the whole troll face thing if she at least had an attractive body, but she's got the saggiest most disgusting breasts I've ever seen. And believe you me, I've seen a lot of breasts in my lifetime.

from Kirsten Dunst.
Kirsten Dunst claims her and Jake Gyllenhaal broke up because "he's a stay-at-home boy [and she's] an out-on-the-town girl." We prefer to believe they broke up because she's a disgustingly ugly human being. She looks like a boy gone terribly wrong and her teeth are like tiny little pebbles. And when she tries to look sexy? Well, that's about the time we start vomiting all over the place.

thesuperficial

2005-06-07T18:30:00.000-04:00

stoops, you have not logged on all day. which is a good thing because i had a virus earlier and was trying to send it to everybody on my buddy list. not that i had the virus exactly. it's a long story. actually, it's not long so much as not worth telling.

you say hedonistica articles seem to resemble my flavor? go to thesuperficial. first of all, it's all about celebrities - mainly the hot female ones. the guy is so caustic, he does something that would signify the epitome of acidity. let's say he bursts into flame if exposed to sunlight. unless they're maintained by the same person or people, and then i'm just an idiot.

i could quote lines from there that made me cackle with misanthropic glee all day. in fact, i will.

Britney Spears is having a baby girl.
in reference to britney spears and whoever her husband is raising a child.
This kid would have a better chance being raised by hungry wolves, but if Britney and Kevin have to get one, thank God it’s gonna be a girl. They would have screwed up a boy or a girl, but at least a girl will act on her emotional emptiness by stripping in 18 years and four months. As opposed to them torturing a boy with their insane, spoiled antics, in which case he would be the one carjacking me in 15 years or approaching me in a truck stop bathroom and asking if I wanted to “party”.

in the same article, after showing some pictures of saggy britney.
Just a little reminder of what Kevin has done to this girl. And why you need to throw a rock at him if you see him before I do. But if you do see him, and he's rubbing his head as if he just got hit by a rock, it's cool, I found him.

From Paris Hilton is not that rich.
It would be easy to call Paris Hilton a money hungry tramp. And fun too, so here I go: Paris Hilton is a money hungry tramp who has every advantage at her disposal and still only manages to look like a tarted up hussy. At best. At worst she looks like something from the valley in the 80‘s whose hair was stiff and sticky and not because of hair gel. And by “at worst” I mean “every day of her life”.

i could have written this same paragraph, just not as well. it's about miss universe 2005.
I meant to post this last week when it was actually relevant and timely, but I was too busy getting distracted by insanely hot pictures of Jessica Simpson in a bikini and Jessica Alba in a see through dress. And by distracted I mean masturbating. And by masturbating I mean masturbating furiously. [the furiously was already in italics before i italicized the passage. he was masturbating _hard_]

from The Superficial Interview: April Scott, a smoking chick with a 4.083 gpa in college.
Quite frankly, I could have done without that. It’s charming as hell that April is so damn smart and genuinely sweet, but it wrecked the original idea which was to just ask her if she would have sex with me over and over and over until she caved, or at least ask wildly offensive and inappropriate stuff like “I heard your gynecologist sent you a dozen roses one time. Is that true?”

Britney Spears not in Playboy. Yet.
Playboy must have spent my subscription money on a time machine because Britney has pretty much looked like hell for two years now. Playboy could just open a thing of poppin-fresh dough, dress it like a tramp then put Britney’s picture and a lit cigarette at the top and it would pretty much be the same thing. I’d rather see my grandfather naked then Britney. The girl in the pics below is gone. She could have glow-in-the-dark tentacles and a forked tongue now and not look any worse, so how about we turn our focus to new hotties like April Scott. I was on April’s website and I saw a picture of her ass, and then I stabbed myself in the eyes so I could go out with one perfect image. Totally worth it dude. Uhh, wait, I mean … tigksisdfdfj kgkqweokdgkgo.

Lindsay Lohan removes freckles
Star Magazine, the bastion of all that is true, is reporting that Lindsay Lohan may have gotten her freckles removed as part of her plan to change her appearance and be taken more seriously as an adult. Also part of her plan, losing her once fantastic breasts and looking like a crack-addicted whore.

I don't think we even need to report on Lindsay anymore. We can just release periodic updates that say "Lindsay Lohan still insane" and move on with our lives. Which, if you're anything like me, means having sex with hundreds of supermodels. At once. [why can't i unitalicize once?]

i am a fucking fraud

2005-06-07T01:15:00.000-04:00

after buying 6 of his movies yesterday, i find out that he released a movie in 2004 in japan. and from rottentomatoes, no less. i'd never even heard of it. why aren't i trolling anime forums? am i too cool to dress up like a furry and engage in yaoi? i am a poser. my self-loathing right now is palpable.

howl's moving castle. it looks incredible. the art of the castle itself is breathtaking. that is wall scroll or movie poster worthy. the premiere (i think) was last night, or tonight, depending on if you're technically minded or not, and i think hayao himself attended. it is opening on limited release in select cities (cambridge, ma being one of them, and new york not, somehow) june 10. hopefully the ticket information for new york simply has not yet been released. i have the CT teaching exam on saturday, but i will go into new york that night for the movie, however much over $10 a ticket might cost.

and here's the kicker: guess who is the voice talent for howl? none other than homicidal maniac and tetragramaton cleric of the first order billionaire playboy bruce wayne.

studio ghibli @ media play

2005-06-05T20:43:00.000-04:00

i just bought princess mononoke, spirited away, castle in the sky, kiki's delivery service, porco rosso, and the cat returns for 15.99 each from media play. that's by far the best deal around. i already own princess mononoke and spirited away, so i have no idea why i bought them. i recently bought the cat returns from target for 20 but i'll return that. unfortunately, i bought nausicaa from best buy just long ago enough that i can't return it. i'm honestly thinking about buying extra copies because they're so cheap. yeah i'm insane.

if anyone wants me to pick up any of these movies for them, drop me a line. $16! what a deal. i had an overlong conversation with the cashier about the movies, i don't know why. i guess she was trying to pitch the media play rewards membership. from what she said she clearly thought i was a weirdo anime freak, but was trying to be inoffensive about it. i think. it sucked.

ssfosswhspwposv & psobbob

2005-06-02T20:31:00.000-04:00

in other news, i downloaded the pso:bb ob client. for those of you unversed in acronym speak, that's phantasy star online: blue burst open beta. it's fun, but it's fucking hard. i need some backup. who will play with me?

newsradio is out on dvd!

2005-05-25T18:37:00.000-04:00

season 1 and 2 in one collection. oh man... what a great show. if only my deepdiscountdvd login would work.

more from therepublica

2005-05-25T18:00:00.000-04:00

wow this site is amazing.

this guy changed all 18,697 grades in the district to A's by accident.
this is one crazy old bitch.
that's a lot of crack babies.
hippo elephant woman.
this family is insane

simpsons s3d3 and therepublica

2005-05-25T16:25:00.000-04:00

i had a really great IM conversation last night with stoops as i watched the simpsons season 3 disc 3 on dvd and stoops followed along with his alien hive mind or some funky shit. i bought seasons 1-5 from costco when they were $20 each, skipped right to season 3 because 1 and 2 are ho-hum, and was a little disappointed when season 3 did not meet my expectations. well, disc 3 is solid gold. bart falls down a well, homer and the swear jar, bart courts mrs. crabapple (sp?), mr. burns hires an all-star ringer team for his softball game vs. shelbyville, bart and lisa switch sides. now i can't remember if the swear jar and mrs. k (i think it starts with a k) are the same episode, but oh man. homer's love postcard... i'd quote good lines as they came up and somehow stoops would follow up with the next hi-larious punchline.

in other news, i hit a ton of great links yesterday from hedonistica, and from there, therepublic. i'll put them up now. one of them is fake. i think it's pretty obvious, but don't look at the urls to make it a bit challenging.

trapped babe in toyland
2 people in critical condition from lightsaber duel
lion mutilates 42 midgets in cambodian ring-fight
photographer criticised (the headline is not good but the photos most definitely are)

followup to the fake article

also great with accompanying media is this video from hedonistica of a bus driver owning a 15-year old fucktard. that kid deserved every bit of it, i am positive. i didn't even see what he did, but i know he had it coming. i love the first sentence by the commentor.

in other news, tao has become a flaming woman. he's been blogging up a storm, one sign of a vagina and menstruation. and he's been blogging about his feelings. good god. i have to admit i loved the old tao, stoic to the point of taciturn-ness.
i remarked upon this to steiner, and he had this to say:

(16:29:14) jon@work: OMG
(16:29:21) jon@work: SHE DESTROYED TAO. GOD DAMN SUCCUBUS

there's got to be a morning after
if we can make it through the night...

beyond good and evil

2005-05-24T20:51:00.000-04:00

this has been out for a while now, for xbox and ps2. i don't think it's available for gamecube. one should be able to find it for $20 or less. it's a real gem. i read all sorts of rave reviews talking about how this is one of the best and most underappreciated games ever, and so i picked it up a long time ago, but i didn't pop it in until today. go find it now and buy it. it's legitimately awesome.

i'd say the closest well-known game that's like it is zelda. so it's like that, except the fighting is easier, i think. the moving around is better. there's a huge camera aspect in the game that's a lot of fun. i remember wind waker had a camera mini quest sort of thing but it was just for kicks. in this game you're a journalist searching for proof of a conspiracy, so the camera plays a large role in the game. and there's a hovercraft that is plain fun to fly around, enough so that one could create a whole game based just on it.

it's funny, it's cute, it's beautiful, it plays well, and the story is engaging. i love how all the military guys keep calling jade things like short cake. she's this little asian girl, but she's got a short bo staff thing and some mean martial arts skills. she's gorgeous, which isn't a big deal, but it doesn't hurt that she's easy on the eyes without being ridiculous like, for example, lara croft. a lot of characters are humanoid animals, including the orphans that jade takes care of, and her sidekick is a big pig who she affectionately calls "old ham." i really like the controls, and something as simple as the code-entering interface is amazingly executed and should be the standard from now on for all games with analog controllers. it's this crazy helix thing that works really well for scrolling through all of the alphabet and digits quickly.

the first boss battle was very reminiscent of zelda. they must have drawn influences from there. so well done.

raj you ps2 owning son of a bitch, you should still get it, but i bet you it's slower and noticeably less pretty. xbox >> ps2. although if the protagonist is a cute little asian girl you're probably already sold.

vun, two, three! three bats! ah ah ah

2005-05-23T22:37:00.000-04:00

that was a real great game of quarters. was it quarters? i liked my rule too... although i can't remember what it was. something about saying matey at the beginning and end of each sentence? arrrr? methinks?

gabi was counting clothes in her post. now i want to count things in my room. there are some slight problems, in that it would take forever. especially the books, as books are stacked upon books that are in front of other books. let's start off with the easier to count items:

video game systems - i just set up the ps2 gamecube and xbox all today. i have my dreamcast, n64, super nintendo, and nintendo all under my bed. and i have a gba sp and a gameboy color. that makes 9.

televisions - 2. the little tv/vcr combo is sitting on top of my bookshelf.

bookshelves and media shelves (the ones that are dvd sized) - 2 of the big bookshelves, 3 smaller ones, and 4 media shelves. that makes 9.

it'll be easier if i divide my books up by category. i will also count omnibus editions as the appropriate number of books (e.g. a 3-book omnibus will count as 3). for some authors i may own more books than they have actually written because i buy the paperback first and then the hardcover when it's a bargain book.

books by:
orson scott card - 16
bernard cornwell - 14
philip k. dick - 5
david eddings - 19
terry goodkind - 10
nick hornby - 5
john irving - 9
brian jacques - 8
robert jordan - 12
stephen king - 19 (some extras from the dark tower, but a lot of bargain book crap too)
c.s. lewis - 26 (a lot of his books are small, narnia is 7, and i own 3 different editions of alice in wonderland + through the looking glass)
mickey zucker reichert - 7
j.k. rowling - 6 (extras of books 1 and 2)
r.a. salvatore - 16
j.r.r. tolkien - 9 (2 sets of the trilogy and a nice illustrated hardcover ROTK)
tad williams - 6

single series:
death's gate cycle - 7 (austin told me about this one)
a song of ice and fire - 4 (an extra copy of book 2)
his dark materials - 4 (an extra copy of book 1)
madeleine l'engle's wrinkle in time series - 4
prydain chronicles - 6 (an extra copy of the black cauldron)
the riverrun trilogy - 3
fred saberhagen's the book of swords - 7(these are pretty short individually)
diane duane's wizard series (not sure of the proper name) - 5 (an extra copy of book 1)
dragonriders of pern - 3
foundation - 3
dune - 6
anne rice's vampire stuff - 6

this is funny:
calvin and hobbes books - 10
copies of the indispensable calvin and hobbes - 3 (i don't know! i think i must buy it every time i see it on sale)

this is simply pathetic:
D&D rulebooks - 13
D&D campaign setting boxsets - 4 (dragonlance, 2 addons for dragonlance, and planescape)
books set in the dragonlance world - 89 (yeah. i had a boring childhood)
books set in the magic: the gathering world - 11
michael crichton - 9
john grisham (he and crichton are such trash) - 5

books that i can't or won't categorize. these could be:
real good books from real good authors that i don't feel like cataloguing. i'm sorry, good books.
from high school classes.
from ms. burns (english teacher) when she left the school and was giving away good stuff (1984! animal farm! shakespeares that i never read).
various gifts
books i bought off the NY sidewalk, in stores, or from the scifi book club that sounded interesting but weren't (shannara, recluse, thomas covenant the unbeliever, i'm looking at you).
stuff from the sci fi book club i forgot to reject (although this has worked out really well before, especially riverrun).
by my count, and i don't think i missed anything, and i definitely didn't overcount, there are 99 books in this non-category. and at the very bottom of one bookshelf, blocked off by another bookshelf creating an L with it, are a bunch of hardcovers from the scifi bookclub. i'd estimate 15-20 down there. i'd say i've read 1/3 to 1/2 of these.

i'm counting the calvin and hobbes books, but not any other comic books. i'm not counting the D&D campaign setting boxsets... wow i think i actually got everything. let's add it up.

187 in books by.
58 in single series.
10 in calvin and hobbes.
127 in pathetic.
~115 in other.
giving us 497 books total.

i haven't read some of the lewis, cuz i just got it from costco. and i haven't gone through k. dick's short story collections from front to back. but everything else not in the other category, i have read. since that's books owned and i have doubles, it's not quite the same as books read. but still, that's messed up.

i just spent one hour and ten minutes figuring this out. i can't believe i own 89 books from the dragonlance campaign setting.

episode iii

2005-05-19T22:10:00.000-04:00

wow. good movie. redeems eps 1 and 2. i just got back home, and i wanted to put some thoughts down here before they slip my mind. there might be spoilers? so if you haven't seen it yet, you might not want to read it.

oh, and one incredible thing that's not a spoiler. as the movie came on, people started clapping. i said "no clapping!" not very loud and there was no effect. people picked it up again louder as the name george lucas came on the screen and i said, "it's a movie. it can't hear you." loud enough for everyone to hear. amazingly, the clapping stopped. not all at once or anything but it died, and fast enough for me to be sure it was because of me. then the words started scrolling and one person, defiantly, began clapping loudly and then realized he was alone, and a jackass. i _shamed_ people into not behaving like morons! it's possible! i explained to them why what they were doing was idiotic, and they got it! anyways,

the movie is fucking brutal. it's pretty awful. and a lot of what anakin does makes sense in a skewed kind of way. what kept me going through the second half of the movie was the knowledge that anakin will redeem himself. i'm going to put episode 6 on as soon as i finish blogging so i can watch him throw that fucker down the shaft and save his son.

edit: i was thinking about putting this and i decided against it, but since it's casey's away message, i'm not alone. YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE! best line in the movie. i thought so too.

some thoughts
how did the medical robot diagnose padme as having lost the will to live? is that in the medical knowledge databanks standard in all medical robots or something?
damn, those twi'leks are packing. even, no - especially the jedi twi'lek. in the words of an eloquent dog, did you bring enough breasts for the rest of the class? i swear, they took all strippers / pornstars, painted them blue, and glued some tentacles on their heads. hell, that wouldn't make a bad porno.
senator organa's wife is fucking smoking. i would filibuster in a second. get it? filibust her?
funny that obi-wan orders that c3po's memory be wiped but not r2's. that makes a lot of the dialogue in eps 4-6 better.

some unrelated ep 3 thoughts that are still in the movie category:
i've never wanted a movie poster before, but i want the johnny depp one for charlie and the chocolate factory. and batman begins.
i watched spiderman 2 last night. the dvd was sitting on the table, still wrapped, i assumed my brother bought it and opened it up. somehow i'd forgotten all the little things that bothered me in that movie. but whatever. the fighting was good. i could go on for paragraphs about all the little things wrong with the rest of it.

i saw unleashed the day before that. it's a good drama. it's hard to relate to someone who has been raised as an attack dog since childhood, and so it's hard to understand how he thinks. the action was good, when there was any, but it's not an action movie, so i won't judge it like one.

the avatar of patience

2005-05-16T22:24:00.000-04:00

i think i say a lot of weird shit that the other teachers simply don't get. while elevator-talking in the elevator with a teacher whose name i do not know, i made the preposterous claim that i was made of patience. i might have even said that i was patience incarnate. the other teacher without missing a beat agreed and said with complete seriousness that that was probably a good thing here at this school. i tried to backpedal and explain that i was in fact not made of patience but was in actuality suffering from a dearth of it. this left the teacher more confused than if i had just smiled and nodded. this all took place in under 15 seconds i think. thank god one can just jump ship on those conversations when one gets to one's floor.

2005-05-16T22:00:00.000-04:00

what am i doing here? this is ridiculous.

mr brightside

2005-05-15T23:43:00.000-04:00

i've sat here for 20 minutes trying to think of how i should write about this. i'm just not going to. but no one should ever have to go through this.

Now I'm falling asleep
And she's calling a cab
While he's having a smoke
And she's taking the drag

Now they're going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it's all in my head
But she's touching his chest now

He takes off her dress now
Let me go
And I just can't look
It's killing me
And taking control