A Krampus Carol by Anthony Bourdain

FCN Smut Elves w/ Guests Jen Thym and Grace Huang 12/14 by FearCast Network | Blog Talk Radio

While Cory is simultaneously peeing, shitting, and jizzing his pants in the front row of the John Waters show, Jonathan Dixon and I will be interviewing some seriously badass gals. Chat room will be open!!!

FCN Smut Elves w/ Guests Jen Thym and Grace Huang 12/14 by FearCast Network | Blog Talk Radio

My place

I didn't know what to write....
......................I never do........
...........its my fear that keeps me back
I don't ever want to get embarrass it's just something I adapted too....
I constantly make mistakes, When I wake up I don't even bother to smile, it's just another day I have to go through
I pray one day I will leave this place and explore somewhere else.....
..where happiness is found.........in every corner, in every single strand of that fluffy green grass, The People will come to me and rejoice that I have come......that I found them....There will be fountains that spout water of every color, the streets would never be dirty and shiny like Batman's car...Everyone would have an abudance of books and no one would be lazy....we would all learn and help each other........The trees would be everywhere like California and humongous like Obama is to Danny Devito .......The Food OH MY GOSH THE FOOD would be of every culture and fill with chocolate...
..............My life and everyone else's would be so happy, we would dance and isolate ourselves from the world and its problems..they are of no use, we would just flush them down the toilet......
...................But until I can make that reality I wake up and just do what I need to do until the day is over and I can sleep again

Hi, yeah, wow, this blog isn't going well.

Is anyone still here?
-tumbleweed bounces across cyberspace-

Well, I just decided to post to signal boost (hardly) my blog http://quickgrabmyexchangeprogram.blogspot.com/.

Read the first (and only post) to see what it's about.

Or don't, I don't actually mind.

/shrug

Back to inactivity.

I don't know what to title this post.

This is marcy and me in Mr. Stewart's class doing nothing like always because 7th hour is such a waste of time.

THIS CONCLUDES MY FIRST POST.

Until next time when I feel like taking time off from my busy life ;3

Pi Is (still) Wrong.

Hmmm....who does this remind me of?

I don't suppose it could hurt to post again

People people are people and not-people people are people too.

Pray for Japan.

Everyone's talking about the tsunami in Japan...a vast majority is pushing the message "Pray for Japan!", but there're some saying that all of these people care just because it's Japan. Not because there was a natural disaster that could kill hundreds. Or...you know. "Don't pray for Japan, pray for the people!" or "You only care because it's Japan!". There's an outcry of "I'm sick and tired of people worrying about their favorite seiyuu or their favorite mangaka!". I felt slightly guilty, because the last few hours of yesterday I spent worrying about whether Hidekaz is alright, and looking at lists of people that have reported in, feeling relief for each name I recognized.

But...is that really such a bad thing? Caring for Japan because of all of the people that make the shows, or games, etc., that we love? It's not like people don't feel the pain of the nameless that have died. I doubt many people think, "Oh, well I don't care, at least it wasn't [insert name here]."

Honestly, this is affecting me more than the earthquake in Haiti, which was a horrible disaster. All there was were nameless victims, though; I didn't personally know anyone affected. I didn't impersonally know anyone affected. It doesn't mean that I didn't care, it just means that I didn't have much emotional attachment to any of the victims.

However, Japan is the home of many people that produce things that completely changed my life. All of the close friends I have now are my friends because we have something in common; anime. They're works of art, and if the creators of any little piece were harmed, we would be upset.

Even if it's just a little, people have an emotional attachment to actors, artists, producers, that make the works that affect them. Every time you read a manga or watch anime that makes you feel something, you become that little bit closer to the amazing person, or studio, that is able to do that.

I know I, for one, wouldn't first have the thought, "Oh no, no more Hetalia!" if I found out that Hidekaz had been harmed, or any other manga for their respective artists and studios. My thoughts would be with their family, and all of their fans across the world. Someone great that brought thousands of people together through their works of art would have been lost; is that not something to mourn?

Someone whose voice can reach our hearts, someone who moves us with images on screen.

What's the harm in worrying about the loss of people who do great things?

Pray for Japan.

Pray because it's a great nation that's hurting.

Pray for all the victims across the world that are attached to anyone there.

Pray for your favorite actors, animators, artists, producers, directors--pray for the people who do great things.

Pray for their families, and pray for the nameless victims.

State of Fugue

She wakes up in Mexico at a huge resort.  Casinos, bars, shopping stalls all under the cover of one roof.  The view from her room is open and faces the ocean.  It roars.  Someone comes to get her from her reverie on the balcony.

Time to go to the circus.

Is that her husband?

She puts on her school clothes and heads out into the melee.

She passes several bars where several boys from high school give her the eye.  Red lights flash.  Someone, somewhere, has won the jackpot.
Sirens.

Crushing press of massed moving flesh.

The circus.  Brad Vincent is performing poodle tricks.  She sits up at the top and takes off her good shoes and puts them under her seat.  She's wearing her pink striped socks.

She watches.

It's time to go.  She digs under her seat for her shoes.  The floor is now grass and she's sitting on it.  Her shoes are nowhere to be found.  They are her best shoes.  Mom bought them for her at Dillard's to save her back and feet from the pain caused by zooming around her classroom for nine hours per day.  They are comfortable and fashionable and Italian and cost over 200 dollars.

Instead she finds cheap lingerie on a hanger.  She grabs it and starts walking down towards the ring, complaining the whole time about her shoes.   She sits on a bleacher towards the front.  She has the lingerie on the hanger in her hand. It is matching baby blue boy shorts and a camisole.

The man over from her complains about how her feet smell.

Brad sets himself on fire. 

She keeps walking back down the increasingly winding and busy streets.  She is accosted by a group of older Mexican women dressed in bright scarves who believe she is someone famous.  They want her to buy silver.

She wiggles away and tries to make her way back to her room but cannot find it.  More bars, more drunken boys from high school leering at her with red eyes.
She is lost and has no shoes.

She wakes up in the desert.  Earl McGraw is standing behind her messing with an electrical line.  A broken down hotel is behind her. She is on the sand.
She's supposed to be there.

Earl speaks but she can't make out what he says.  He ties two ends of the broken electrical line together.  He's only four feet away.  She is scared.

She feels something sharp under her. She sits up, brushes away the dust and sees a spinal column and pelvic bone.  She has been lying on top of  a skeleton.  Earl laughs, still holding the live electrical wire.

Where are my shoes? she asks.

He points with the wire.  In a bag are three shoes.  The left shoe of the expensive Italian pair, the right of an old pair of topsiders, and a white pump.  

These aren't my shoes.  One is, but I don't know where the others are.  Where did they come from?

He shrugs. She grabs her bag and heads towards the hotel.

Where is her other shoe?

The hotel has a pool with many people in it.  She walks around the pool to the back of the hotel where she meets a skinny, bikini clad young woman with long blond hair whose belly button looks like a white smiley face but the eyes are and mouth are xes.  She drops her bag in a puddle by the door and the lingerie and  two white pumps fall out. The blond girl smiles but does not help her.  Everything is wet but those aren't her clothes anyway.

  She needs to change.  She goes in.  She passes the desk.  The hotel is nicer on the inside than it looked outside.  Two black women smile at her from reception.   They hand her a key and tell her to walk towards the back.

She goes into a room with a bed and a telelvision.  She walks towards the bathroom and sees she's in the spa. Mirrors and pedicure chairs and lounges go back for seemingly miles.  In the front, on a table, is a large jar of cotton balls. Is this her room? She doesn't think so.  She digs in her bag to find something to wear.  She now has several bags around her.  

She has nothing to wear.  What does she even have on?  Is she dressed?  Is it raining now?

It's raining.  She's not in the desert.  There's a knock at the door.  It's Jim and Steph.. 

Come to the pool.

Wearing what?

Doesn't matter.  Come on.

They get in a car and drive to the next hotel.  Many have joined them.  

They enter the room.  

Five people are in there already whom she does not recognize.

Champagne?

Jim pours her a glass and puts his arm around her.  It feels good.  

Is she safe?

She goes to where she thinks the bathroom is.  It's a balcony.  Jim suggests she kiss him.  She pretends she doesn't hear.  She liked the safety of his arms but knows it should go no further. 

They go back into the room.  It has grown in size and number of people.  Steve McCoy is on the bed.  She hugs him tightly and they talk intently though she can't hear him or remember anything he says.

She wants more champagne.  She sends Jim.  

It starts to rain.  It starts to rain in the room.  They sit in the raining room and discuss what they should do about sitting in the raining room.  Should they get another room?  They all sit and stare at the telelvision in the raining room.

She gets up.  She can't take it.  She goes out the backdoor  and finds a fully equipped tool bench that belongs to the custodian.  She finds a mop and has a tough time untangling it from a long handled scrub brush.  

She goes in and starts mopping.  It's still raining.  She mops. She has nowhere to wring out the mop but she keeps mopping.

She runs out the back door.  It's not raining outside. She looks back and sees that all of the doors look the same and she has no idea which one she came out of.  She doesn't know which one to choose.

She is reminded of being lost in Mexico.  Steph comes out and gets her and takes her through a different door. 

We're leaving.

It's still raining in the room which has expanded in size and number of people.

They leave and get into all kinds of cars.  She stands and watches as they leave.  Nobody offers her a ride.

She walks.

A bell rings.  She's at school.  In her room.  Classes change.  She has never seen any of these kids before in her life.  

Her room is huge and made of brick.  The kids sit down and start to talk.  The television on the wall comes on showing Lemmy from Motorhead using a champagne bottle to fuck a woman lying on her back.  That's what was on at the hotel room, she remembers. The lady on her back seems to like it.  The kids pay no attention and keep on talking. She tries to turn off the television but it won't go off.   The kids won't stop talking.  

She tries to get order.  It's time to write in their journals.

I want to get to know you, she says.  I will write a few question s on the board. 

 Her mind is as blank as the chalkboard.  There are about eight of them across the wall.  The one she was about to write on is now full so she moves to the next one in the far corner where only a few of them will be able to see.

She tells the emo chick who is talking to her friend to move.

But, we're, like, family, the emo chick says, snarling.

Move, she says.

A door opens in the back and a preppy looking girl with a long blond spiral perm leads several young women up the staircase at the side of the room and out the door.

Excuse me, she says.  You're interrupting my class.   

What the hell?

The woman ignores her and keeps going.  The class won't shut up.  She has no empty chalkboard to write on and can't think of any questions to write anyway.  She grabs the desk of one girl in particular and tries to assert her authority.  She leans in close and threatens to call the girls mom.

The girl shrugs and says, do it.

People keep entering and leaving her classroom, needing things, making announcements.  The room gets bigger and bigger and more and more people are seated at more and more desks.

She wakes up.

In bed.

It's 3:37 AM.

Fuck.

(I found this in my email this morning while searching by name for correspondence from an old friend who recently found me through my blog. As I read it, I was like, who the hell wrote this? I'd woken up in the middle of the night in August of 09 and immediately written it down, emailed it to myself, and forgotten about it. No wonder I always woke up tired back then.)

Why I Quit Teaching

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/

I have much to say on this, and like the link I posted above, I will soon when not completely worn out from prepping children for tests that in no way render a true evaluation of their skills or knowledge level. As a teacher, (and believe it or not, a pretty damn good one) I am disgusted with the present state and future path of education in America today. The first letter in the above linked article  from Education Week is excellent. The description of the Title 1 school in the middle of it could be my school.
 I love my kids.
I love my smoked salmon classroom with its stage and red polar fleece curtains.
I love being a teacher when I get to teach.
I don't get to do that much these days, and just like a frustrated sex drive, a frustrated teaching drive combined with threats of job loss and constant criticism from multiple and at times seemingly omnipresent sources (I put a fake ad on craigslist for research -read:  writing material to amuse my friends- and was told, via anonymous email,  that people like ME are the reason public schools are in the state they are.  I corrected his grammar, spelling, and sentence structure and sent it back to him. Dumbass.) can send even the most devoted and idealistic teacher out of the classroom and into a less draining and more respectable job, like Wal-Mart greeter or high-end prostitute.
 I am a constant seeker of new (to me) concepts, language, and mentors to improve my own understanding of this ludicrous life and the people and systems that exist within. If we want to stop paying lip service to future leaders of tomorrow (I hate that phrase and all educational hoo-ha that gets thrown around like it actually means something.  I got your accountability right here, Asshole...Easy.  Not now.  Later...breathe), we must first begin to instill respect for learning and the learned and for being learned and then revise our educational system accordingly. Also, we must remember when comparing our "scores" with other developed countries, we are the only country that educates everyone and does our damndest to make sure that all children receive equal access to the degree that we tend to focus on our slower learners while short-changing our more gifted students. Other countries start weeding out lesser performing students in their early teens, sending them to work or vocational training. 100% of our students (75% if you account for the dropout rate;  another subject entirely) compete with the top 25% elsewhere. Math totally gives me a rash, but this is so simple, even this mathematically not-so-cunning linguist can see the problem.
Read this.  Call me.
Don't kill the messenger. I'm in the trenches fighting this battle over and over again every day as are many other stalwart and idealistic souls who were fighting long before I got here and will continue to do so long after I am gone.  

I'm pretty sure if Don Quixote had a day job, it was as an American public school teacher. 

Education is not test scores. Testing and textbooks are a business. If you don't believe me, then please explain to me how some ignorant Texan with a Jesus agenda could get Thomas Jefferson removed from history books. Could it be that Texas is the largest purchaser of textbooks in the United States? Or, how a Biology book bought by a college student for $100 one semester has become obsolete by the next semester and can now only be sold back for a fraction of the price. Or, how attendance and test scores, not the actual outcome of the students' lives, determine funding and success rates. Follow the dollar every damn time.
Freeze. Dried.  Bullshit.
I understand science is a dynamic field, but every semester?  Seriously?  We're still trying to get people to accept Evolution as a valid theory.  It's been 150 effing years all ready!  Maybe when that occurs, science will finally move at a pace that demands new textbooks each semester, but for now, it just reeks of greed to this jaded old cynic.
I heard Texas wasn't doing testing this year through a teacher who knows a teacher in Texas. I will investigate and get back to you.  California better get its bankrupt ass together or Kaplan and its ilk will go under.  I need a minute...that was such a pleasant thought.
Speaking of pleasant thoughts, I have to go prep to teach "Twelfth Night" tomorrow to 100 14 year olds with screaming Spring Fever. I spent all last nine weeks doing test prep (8th grade writing test and 3rd quarter benchmark) and we were all miserable. Whereas we used to do a pre test and a post test, I've now had to do quarterly benchmarks which means my kids haven't gotten to do half of the projects I've done the last few years that, based on the feedback I still get from former students, were memorable and rich learning experiences they've taken with them and developed into Youtube channels and writing habits.  That pleases me.
I haven't even looked at their 3rd quarter scores yet, and frankly, I don't care.  For the next seven or eight weeks (when we're not testing), we're going to hang out with Will and Viola and Malvolio and Duke Orsino and Countess Olivia and we're going to hurl Shakespearean insults at one another and have insanely silly sword fights and wear, if possible, even sillier hats while we do it all. Maybe we'll read and write a few sonnets while we listen to Incubus and Public Enemy and enjoy the sheer magical poetry of immortality through art. Yeah. That's it. I like it.
P.S.  If you get a chance, check out The Reduced Shakespeare Company's "Complete Works of William Shakespeare:  Abridged.  Best intro to Shakespeare ever.  The kids totally dug it.  They may remember Othello as a brother who liked white women and who liked green jello, but at least they'll remember.  And, they want to learn more.