Friday, March 07, 2003
Roadblog:
HA, there's a pun for ya'll.
Remember the G.I. Joe "Roadblock?" I think he was a big fellow, of World's Strongest Man stature, who did demolition stuff.
Anway, I'll be travelling across American's chest for the next few weeks, so any posts will be of the rogue-nature. (One of the incredible upsides to working at The Boarding School is the insane amounts of paid time off; it's one of the most compelling reasons to stay for another year.)
Considering I'll be in Reetu's appartment during some weekdays while she teaches kiddies about the theatre, I may have time to blog extensively from Chicago and my reactions to that for-me-yet-unvisited city of fame. Seeing as how I communed daily with Ferris Bueller's Day Off in the winter months of freshman year at Colgate, it will be satisfying to walk among such landmarks as that Seurat painting, the ballparks, and maybe even Chez Quis.
I'll be there for St. Patty's day, when they dye the water green.
(p.s. this might be catalyst for Collablogration: the fugue phase)
HA, there's a pun for ya'll.
Remember the G.I. Joe "Roadblock?" I think he was a big fellow, of World's Strongest Man stature, who did demolition stuff.
Anway, I'll be travelling across American's chest for the next few weeks, so any posts will be of the rogue-nature. (One of the incredible upsides to working at The Boarding School is the insane amounts of paid time off; it's one of the most compelling reasons to stay for another year.)
Considering I'll be in Reetu's appartment during some weekdays while she teaches kiddies about the theatre, I may have time to blog extensively from Chicago and my reactions to that for-me-yet-unvisited city of fame. Seeing as how I communed daily with Ferris Bueller's Day Off in the winter months of freshman year at Colgate, it will be satisfying to walk among such landmarks as that Seurat painting, the ballparks, and maybe even Chez Quis.
I'll be there for St. Patty's day, when they dye the water green.
(p.s. this might be catalyst for Collablogration: the fugue phase)
Thursday, March 06, 2003
Guido says...:
Happiness is being able to tell the truth without causing anybody to suffer.
-Fellini
Happiness is being able to tell the truth without causing anybody to suffer.
-Fellini
Collablogration
III. The Wait
“brain” is an unmusical word
from which are sung the island lullabyes:
night dad, white dad
goodnight dad
I pray you wake up white again
only before the fan stopped the humidity
came you to say it to me:
“night son”
“night dad” white dad
goodnight dad
I pray us to holonic ends
That buried composer is swelling to pain
Like a prisoner in solitary, it wills out of
“This fucking bone cave near the shore....”
we chase not the dream but the state of liquid
with time for tennis and Samuel A.
can we write our history for background music
can we beat geography
III. The Wait
“brain” is an unmusical word
from which are sung the island lullabyes:
night dad, white dad
goodnight dad
I pray you wake up white again
only before the fan stopped the humidity
came you to say it to me:
“night son”
“night dad” white dad
goodnight dad
I pray us to holonic ends
That buried composer is swelling to pain
Like a prisoner in solitary, it wills out of
“This fucking bone cave near the shore....”
we chase not the dream but the state of liquid
with time for tennis and Samuel A.
can we write our history for background music
can we beat geography
Barthes on "Adorable":
I used this word recently (and I probably shouldn't have, but somtimes the truth is unhealthy), and then today came across this because I was bored and started reading Roland Barthes:
"ADORABLE!"
Header: Not managing to name the speciality of his desire for the loved being, the amorous subject falls back on this rather stupid word: adorable!
1. ...After an impression of the night before, I wake up softened by a happy thought: "X was adorable last night." This is the memory of...what? Of what the Greeks called charis: "the sparkle of the eyes, the body's luminous beauty, the radiance of the desirable being...
3. I encounter millions of bodies in my life; of these millions, I may desire some hundreds; but of these hundreds, I only love one. The other with whom I am in love designates for me the speciality of my desire...Why is it that I desire So-and-so? Why is it that I desire So-and-so lastingly, longingly? Is it the whole of So-and-so I desire (a silhouette, a shape, a mood)?...The way a nail is cut, a tooth broken slightly aslant, a lock of hair, a way of spreading the fingers while talking, while smoking? About all these folds of the body, I want to say that they are adorable. Adorable means: this is my desire...Yet the more I experience the speciality of my desire, the less I can give it a name; what is characteristic of desire, proper to desire, can produce only an impropriety of the utterance. Of this failure of language, there remains only one trace: the word "adorable."
Why is it that all my anxieties regarding anti-americanism, abandonment, single life, and poetic expression seem to coalesce around the text of a smokey French post-modern writer?
The brilliantly pointed-out paradox of the word "adorable" applies to that folly of so many anti-Americanists: macro-blame. Being unable to synthesize all the details they notice (the micros, the smaller pictures) and detest, their default criticism is "the us sucks." Here, the emotion of anger is merely substituted for that of love.
And yet "adorable," as vague and ill-applied it always is, it IS valuable because of how it fails. This is the sentiment of many inane love songs; in fact, much of what I've read so far in A Lover's Discourse can be simplified into a history of showtunes/pop-balladry. Maybe that will become my new pet project?
Then are agitated my anxieties about the "failure" of language, seeing as how it's the medium with which I attempt to make art. Being a writer, I don't think Barthes (or any writer) is so down on language to deny its potential for impact, so I'm somewhat encouraged that being able to write eloquently about the failure of language to contain love is a victory for written expression.
I used this word recently (and I probably shouldn't have, but somtimes the truth is unhealthy), and then today came across this because I was bored and started reading Roland Barthes:
"ADORABLE!"
Header: Not managing to name the speciality of his desire for the loved being, the amorous subject falls back on this rather stupid word: adorable!
1. ...After an impression of the night before, I wake up softened by a happy thought: "X was adorable last night." This is the memory of...what? Of what the Greeks called charis: "the sparkle of the eyes, the body's luminous beauty, the radiance of the desirable being...
3. I encounter millions of bodies in my life; of these millions, I may desire some hundreds; but of these hundreds, I only love one. The other with whom I am in love designates for me the speciality of my desire...Why is it that I desire So-and-so? Why is it that I desire So-and-so lastingly, longingly? Is it the whole of So-and-so I desire (a silhouette, a shape, a mood)?...The way a nail is cut, a tooth broken slightly aslant, a lock of hair, a way of spreading the fingers while talking, while smoking? About all these folds of the body, I want to say that they are adorable. Adorable means: this is my desire...Yet the more I experience the speciality of my desire, the less I can give it a name; what is characteristic of desire, proper to desire, can produce only an impropriety of the utterance. Of this failure of language, there remains only one trace: the word "adorable."
Why is it that all my anxieties regarding anti-americanism, abandonment, single life, and poetic expression seem to coalesce around the text of a smokey French post-modern writer?
The brilliantly pointed-out paradox of the word "adorable" applies to that folly of so many anti-Americanists: macro-blame. Being unable to synthesize all the details they notice (the micros, the smaller pictures) and detest, their default criticism is "the us sucks." Here, the emotion of anger is merely substituted for that of love.
And yet "adorable," as vague and ill-applied it always is, it IS valuable because of how it fails. This is the sentiment of many inane love songs; in fact, much of what I've read so far in A Lover's Discourse can be simplified into a history of showtunes/pop-balladry. Maybe that will become my new pet project?
Then are agitated my anxieties about the "failure" of language, seeing as how it's the medium with which I attempt to make art. Being a writer, I don't think Barthes (or any writer) is so down on language to deny its potential for impact, so I'm somewhat encouraged that being able to write eloquently about the failure of language to contain love is a victory for written expression.
Toilet Humor: For those missing The Glass:
Try your luck peeing. This brought tears to my pants as I recalled any saunter to the back of The Hour Glass, the only establishment where dual-man peeing in a single-compartment bathroom is an universally-acknowledged norm. (This game comes complete with realistic backrounds dance-thumps).
Try your luck peeing. This brought tears to my pants as I recalled any saunter to the back of The Hour Glass, the only establishment where dual-man peeing in a single-compartment bathroom is an universally-acknowledged norm. (This game comes complete with realistic backrounds dance-thumps).
COLLABLOGRATION
It's a new dance in poetry; tag, you're it.
I. Before We Forgot To Leave for the Cities
An origin in three dimensions:
A cubicle in vitro
The space of an empty dormitory,
A basement bunker television phase—
Our mitosis.
I'll say, "I'll have a beer" with lye,
Blow the foam on the futon or the dirty spot;
Fives and tens and twenties
Our denominations.
continui
It's a new dance in poetry; tag, you're it.
I. Before We Forgot To Leave for the Cities
An origin in three dimensions:
A cubicle in vitro
The space of an empty dormitory,
A basement bunker television phase—
Our mitosis.
I'll say, "I'll have a beer" with lye,
Blow the foam on the futon or the dirty spot;
Fives and tens and twenties
Our denominations.
continui
Gradations of Hell:
21 four page papers to react to, 28 illegibly scrawled blue-books with exam answers to decipher and correct, 3 detailed advisee comments to write, 30 term grades to calculate, and miles to go before I sleep x 2
21 four page papers to react to, 28 illegibly scrawled blue-books with exam answers to decipher and correct, 3 detailed advisee comments to write, 30 term grades to calculate, and miles to go before I sleep x 2
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
Eggs-Am:
In nine mere hours, my English students will encounter their Winter Term finals. Muhahahahahaha.
In nine mere hours, my English students will encounter their Winter Term finals. Muhahahahahaha.
an attempt at prose poetry:
Old Boy
____It was summer on the whicker, and it was our living room. We were family with the internet and fantasy baseball to excuse silence, and just Dad and I were listening to the Yankees when he farted improvisationally. Had I glanced, or tilted my head in his direction, I knew I could have commanded a laugh from him, but I focused on the computer screen. Instead he changed stations to find Shannon Tweed in a white-lit soft-core arch and asked me without shame, "Who is she, she's always in these movies?" and I answered, "That's Shannon Tweed." A year later, in our same room and chairs, he would ask about my girlfriend and sex and safety with the same confidence he asked about the thick, tan actress.
When I think of wasted love, I see a film of my father for memory, I smell my teenage shower for distance, I feel a night's relief from humidity for pace, and the future is as foggy as her face or the cadence of our lips recalled.
Old Boy
____It was summer on the whicker, and it was our living room. We were family with the internet and fantasy baseball to excuse silence, and just Dad and I were listening to the Yankees when he farted improvisationally. Had I glanced, or tilted my head in his direction, I knew I could have commanded a laugh from him, but I focused on the computer screen. Instead he changed stations to find Shannon Tweed in a white-lit soft-core arch and asked me without shame, "Who is she, she's always in these movies?" and I answered, "That's Shannon Tweed." A year later, in our same room and chairs, he would ask about my girlfriend and sex and safety with the same confidence he asked about the thick, tan actress.
When I think of wasted love, I see a film of my father for memory, I smell my teenage shower for distance, I feel a night's relief from humidity for pace, and the future is as foggy as her face or the cadence of our lips recalled.
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
Others out there...:
If you blog, do you ever click on any of those "most recently published blogs" that always appear to the left-hand side of the blogger.com homepage? It's kind of like following a stranger down a train station hallway for a minute, knowing you'll probably never see them again. Well, in this case, I guess you could read them everyday if you had a mind to.
The blog I just read for a few minutes was of a Clarkson University poetry professor (aged, I'm guessing from evidence, about 50). It contains a lot of the discussions I have and one I wish to have about poetry and life. His life IS the life I am basically pursuing, and it was coincidentally enlightening and en/dis-couraging all at once. And, in typical convoluted web style, he had links to other pages by university poets spouting equally supple and intelligent raphsodies on language and passion and drive and politics (often using ampersands (sp?)).
It's just odd to be rubbing shoulders with these strange people called "professors," or even "poets," considering I hope someday to be both of these, and to be the soul of these words and not just their titles. Or at least to understand the honest directions to strive.
If you blog, do you ever click on any of those "most recently published blogs" that always appear to the left-hand side of the blogger.com homepage? It's kind of like following a stranger down a train station hallway for a minute, knowing you'll probably never see them again. Well, in this case, I guess you could read them everyday if you had a mind to.
The blog I just read for a few minutes was of a Clarkson University poetry professor (aged, I'm guessing from evidence, about 50). It contains a lot of the discussions I have and one I wish to have about poetry and life. His life IS the life I am basically pursuing, and it was coincidentally enlightening and en/dis-couraging all at once. And, in typical convoluted web style, he had links to other pages by university poets spouting equally supple and intelligent raphsodies on language and passion and drive and politics (often using ampersands (sp?)).
It's just odd to be rubbing shoulders with these strange people called "professors," or even "poets," considering I hope someday to be both of these, and to be the soul of these words and not just their titles. Or at least to understand the honest directions to strive.
Monday, March 03, 2003
Dances with Economy:
Bravo's unintentionally revealing series Page To Screen is not a favorite program of mine, but little else is on and the subject tonight was Michael Blake's Dances with Wolves. I fell in love with this film when I was in 5th grade; it was the first movie that really hit me visually and cerebrally. I didn't know why I loved it so much, but I knew I hadn't seen anything like it before (granted, my usual diet considered of Van Damme and Arnie flicks). It changed the way I thought about movies. I don't today think of the movie as a personal favorite, and with my amateur investigations into Indian American cultures, my judgments are more complex (although inconclusive).
Anyway, the program was about as dumbed-down and "no, really?" as the source novel/screenplay, but no less enjoyable. That's the thing about Dances With Wolves: it's obvious, it's tepidly controversial, it's behind it's time cultural-wise; BUT, it's a beautiful movie, it IS a statement in THE most economically driven medium, and it can be a moving experience.
Blake was a failed screenwriter when he concieved of the idea for the script, but friend Costner advised him to write a novel. Blake left his Hollywood appt. and lived out of his car for a year writing the novel. This is what weirds me out the most, that this story set in such a virginal ecosystem about the death of a culture was written by a starving screenwriter out of his lemon in Los Angeles.
I read the book in 6th grade and do not remember anything about it, except for some dream sequences that are missing from the film. Blake, in the program, claims he removed them so the film would "not be confusing to audiences." Again, I'm faced with a choice. Part of me reacts "insipid pandering for money" but part of me admits that the film is enjoyable as it stands. I have the same reaction in regard to the film's Native American politics: no, the film is not a facile, revisionist "indians good, white bad" movie, but it isn't a vehement, extremist vision, either. So, yes they didn't make it "too" pat, but they didn't say things they might have tried to say in such a public medium. What leaves me queasy is the need for the main character to be white (and Kevin Costner), but such are the concessions. The film is about as "authentic" as is possible, I think, given the massive amount of culture lost in the past two hundred years, and it is cinematographically beautiful, in a more classical sense, and the music I remember particulary touched me.
So, I guess I'm not about to buy the DVD, but I can't really unleash any beef against Dances with Wolves since I have derived pleasure from it, even if I pick at it's possible social/political issues. It doesn't seem to have been written and made by ignorant, meanspirited people, just people who are ignorant enough and within the means of making it. No of the filmmakers, in interviews, seem pretentious enough to suggest that they were capturing the past with uber-authenticity (all Native parts were played by Indian Americans, but most were not actual Sioux; the Lakota language was used; costumes were educated guesses, but not celebrated as "perfect"); nor were they radicals simply shallowly decrying the evils of the encroaching European culture. The film is sorrowful because the truth of the subject matter is sorrowful, historically and spiritually, and nothing probably could have stopped it.
The Page to Screen program, on the other hand, is just too "duh" to be believed. Who writes the narration for these shows? The same people who thought the unit in Hom Ec where the teacher made a point by asking you to write directions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was more clever than it actually was.
Bravo's unintentionally revealing series Page To Screen is not a favorite program of mine, but little else is on and the subject tonight was Michael Blake's Dances with Wolves. I fell in love with this film when I was in 5th grade; it was the first movie that really hit me visually and cerebrally. I didn't know why I loved it so much, but I knew I hadn't seen anything like it before (granted, my usual diet considered of Van Damme and Arnie flicks). It changed the way I thought about movies. I don't today think of the movie as a personal favorite, and with my amateur investigations into Indian American cultures, my judgments are more complex (although inconclusive).
Anyway, the program was about as dumbed-down and "no, really?" as the source novel/screenplay, but no less enjoyable. That's the thing about Dances With Wolves: it's obvious, it's tepidly controversial, it's behind it's time cultural-wise; BUT, it's a beautiful movie, it IS a statement in THE most economically driven medium, and it can be a moving experience.
Blake was a failed screenwriter when he concieved of the idea for the script, but friend Costner advised him to write a novel. Blake left his Hollywood appt. and lived out of his car for a year writing the novel. This is what weirds me out the most, that this story set in such a virginal ecosystem about the death of a culture was written by a starving screenwriter out of his lemon in Los Angeles.
I read the book in 6th grade and do not remember anything about it, except for some dream sequences that are missing from the film. Blake, in the program, claims he removed them so the film would "not be confusing to audiences." Again, I'm faced with a choice. Part of me reacts "insipid pandering for money" but part of me admits that the film is enjoyable as it stands. I have the same reaction in regard to the film's Native American politics: no, the film is not a facile, revisionist "indians good, white bad" movie, but it isn't a vehement, extremist vision, either. So, yes they didn't make it "too" pat, but they didn't say things they might have tried to say in such a public medium. What leaves me queasy is the need for the main character to be white (and Kevin Costner), but such are the concessions. The film is about as "authentic" as is possible, I think, given the massive amount of culture lost in the past two hundred years, and it is cinematographically beautiful, in a more classical sense, and the music I remember particulary touched me.
So, I guess I'm not about to buy the DVD, but I can't really unleash any beef against Dances with Wolves since I have derived pleasure from it, even if I pick at it's possible social/political issues. It doesn't seem to have been written and made by ignorant, meanspirited people, just people who are ignorant enough and within the means of making it. No of the filmmakers, in interviews, seem pretentious enough to suggest that they were capturing the past with uber-authenticity (all Native parts were played by Indian Americans, but most were not actual Sioux; the Lakota language was used; costumes were educated guesses, but not celebrated as "perfect"); nor were they radicals simply shallowly decrying the evils of the encroaching European culture. The film is sorrowful because the truth of the subject matter is sorrowful, historically and spiritually, and nothing probably could have stopped it.
The Page to Screen program, on the other hand, is just too "duh" to be believed. Who writes the narration for these shows? The same people who thought the unit in Hom Ec where the teacher made a point by asking you to write directions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was more clever than it actually was.
almost a poem #5/2nd post-Flynn draft/1st post-Misha
Incubated
To look for flowers under her feet is more tragic
Than tracing the soft straightedge of her mandible,
But neither gesture winds you against the headboard
In a ball of fear by the sweat-register and cracked window
Like her iconic gaze paralyzing your mind's traveller at night,
A defiance unshared as she ascends a new set of shoulders,
Shoulders that you've seen jump across backyard dares
____and read Vonnegut: a friend's betrayal.
Jumpcut: along comes a toddler with acid powder on his face
And the first itching of burn becomes your goddamn plaid comforter
I'll recommend the tranquil buzz of sitcom in your ears,
Your eyelids catching the bedlamp light for sun
And a beachy place to dream in blank chemical memory.
But before your join in our sleep again,
Do not let this truth escape:
You are the friend, the once loved, and the burning child.
Incubated
To look for flowers under her feet is more tragic
Than tracing the soft straightedge of her mandible,
But neither gesture winds you against the headboard
In a ball of fear by the sweat-register and cracked window
Like her iconic gaze paralyzing your mind's traveller at night,
A defiance unshared as she ascends a new set of shoulders,
Shoulders that you've seen jump across backyard dares
____and read Vonnegut: a friend's betrayal.
Jumpcut: along comes a toddler with acid powder on his face
And the first itching of burn becomes your goddamn plaid comforter
I'll recommend the tranquil buzz of sitcom in your ears,
Your eyelids catching the bedlamp light for sun
And a beachy place to dream in blank chemical memory.
But before your join in our sleep again,
Do not let this truth escape:
You are the friend, the once loved, and the burning child.
Sunday, March 02, 2003
Chumley's:
I was in Manhattan all day yesterday/night with Emily, Gary, Amanda (em's twin), Natasha, and eventually a potentially bitchy, but ultimately sweet and classic Derek Hom.
Before our Thai food experience (notice how it's never "Thai cuisine or "Thai fare"), Derek and Natasha led us to an amazing hidden bar called Chumley's (somewhere around the Christopher Street station). No sign, no indication of bar-ness. You just have to know, I guess. (the place was once a speakeasy, so I was told). Inside, the ambience is old-wooden, plastered with book covers, and with an accumulated importance. The beer, I'm guessing, was made locally since there were no brand names, and it was ALL incredible. Nothing beats incredible beer. Despite all the great (and somewhat vapid) stuff we saw at the Whitney, the pleasure of the city itself, and being in the best of company, GREAT BEER MAKES ANY DAY LEGENDARY. The Bulldog Bitter was the best pale ale/bitter style beer I've tasted since the glory days of the London Study group. It might be the best beer I've had since the UK, period! Take me back, soon (to Chumley's, or London)!
I was in Manhattan all day yesterday/night with Emily, Gary, Amanda (em's twin), Natasha, and eventually a potentially bitchy, but ultimately sweet and classic Derek Hom.
Before our Thai food experience (notice how it's never "Thai cuisine or "Thai fare"), Derek and Natasha led us to an amazing hidden bar called Chumley's (somewhere around the Christopher Street station). No sign, no indication of bar-ness. You just have to know, I guess. (the place was once a speakeasy, so I was told). Inside, the ambience is old-wooden, plastered with book covers, and with an accumulated importance. The beer, I'm guessing, was made locally since there were no brand names, and it was ALL incredible. Nothing beats incredible beer. Despite all the great (and somewhat vapid) stuff we saw at the Whitney, the pleasure of the city itself, and being in the best of company, GREAT BEER MAKES ANY DAY LEGENDARY. The Bulldog Bitter was the best pale ale/bitter style beer I've tasted since the glory days of the London Study group. It might be the best beer I've had since the UK, period! Take me back, soon (to Chumley's, or London)!
The Sunday:
I've got my "calculator" program open, various jazz and rock cycling through the computer cd player, a combination neck-and-back crink from both yesterday's train rides and today's hunching over the gradebook/students' drafts at the computer postures, too long hair, and a lot of more freakin' work to do before I sleep.
I feel like all the nights I slacked off watching NCAA hoops and/or Nick @ Nite/ blogging have caught up with me. How did so much work accumulate?
I give my term finals on Wednesday (which means I can fruit around tomorrow and most of Tuesday), although I've only actually written one of two tests to be given. On top of the exams to grade on wednesday afternoon/evening, I somehow made the dumb decision of allowing my seniors extra time to complere their Pride and Prejudice papers (oh well, too many Colgate profs have extended me the same mercy); so this means I have super-ass-loads of grizzly red-penning headed my way soon. Tonight, I am cramming to finish grading their drafts from Friday (I didnt get them 'til today since I was in the city Friday, and then all day Saturday) so I can compute their biweekly and monthly grades (due tomorrow morning, already late). Grading these is tougher than the final product, since I have to instill direction and cut-out their mistakes closely. Oh, and this has just been my activity for the last 5 hours (minus 15 minutes for School Dinner: sausage and peppers on a roll: good but inadequate). Since this morning at 10 and all afternoon, I was putting together the mammoth English IV final.
I could have made it easy on myself, and the kids, but nNOOOOoo...I've gotta design a color-coded set of 4 mini-tests (3 to be completed by each testtaker), each self-contained with its own progressing theme (the MC questions will aid in the short and long essay part of each group). I bought the "Mr. Taylor"-pack of colored InkJet/Copier paper at Office Depot, and so the kids will have their choice of:
1. Conjugal Wit on neon green
2. Gender on pop-art yellow
3. The Truth on Beta pink
and
4. Names and Relations on nuclear-pumpkin orange
Plus I vaccuumed, straightened up, did laundry, ironed, and watched snippets of college basketball games. It's a Sunday for the ages, reminiscent of those great post-Saturdaynight-Newell-bash cleanups so zealously undertaken by me and laura whilst Flynn slept loggily and Todd was probably just going to bed.
I don't know if I've honestly put in so many consecutive hours of pure work ever, save for the one-of-a-kind marathon I endured one night to finish my Coyle seminar paper.
Phew. It can be satisfying, though, getting so much shiyitt done.
Back to work...
I've got my "calculator" program open, various jazz and rock cycling through the computer cd player, a combination neck-and-back crink from both yesterday's train rides and today's hunching over the gradebook/students' drafts at the computer postures, too long hair, and a lot of more freakin' work to do before I sleep.
I feel like all the nights I slacked off watching NCAA hoops and/or Nick @ Nite/ blogging have caught up with me. How did so much work accumulate?
I give my term finals on Wednesday (which means I can fruit around tomorrow and most of Tuesday), although I've only actually written one of two tests to be given. On top of the exams to grade on wednesday afternoon/evening, I somehow made the dumb decision of allowing my seniors extra time to complere their Pride and Prejudice papers (oh well, too many Colgate profs have extended me the same mercy); so this means I have super-ass-loads of grizzly red-penning headed my way soon. Tonight, I am cramming to finish grading their drafts from Friday (I didnt get them 'til today since I was in the city Friday, and then all day Saturday) so I can compute their biweekly and monthly grades (due tomorrow morning, already late). Grading these is tougher than the final product, since I have to instill direction and cut-out their mistakes closely. Oh, and this has just been my activity for the last 5 hours (minus 15 minutes for School Dinner: sausage and peppers on a roll: good but inadequate). Since this morning at 10 and all afternoon, I was putting together the mammoth English IV final.
I could have made it easy on myself, and the kids, but nNOOOOoo...I've gotta design a color-coded set of 4 mini-tests (3 to be completed by each testtaker), each self-contained with its own progressing theme (the MC questions will aid in the short and long essay part of each group). I bought the "Mr. Taylor"-pack of colored InkJet/Copier paper at Office Depot, and so the kids will have their choice of:
1. Conjugal Wit on neon green
2. Gender on pop-art yellow
3. The Truth on Beta pink
and
4. Names and Relations on nuclear-pumpkin orange
Plus I vaccuumed, straightened up, did laundry, ironed, and watched snippets of college basketball games. It's a Sunday for the ages, reminiscent of those great post-Saturdaynight-Newell-bash cleanups so zealously undertaken by me and laura whilst Flynn slept loggily and Todd was probably just going to bed.
I don't know if I've honestly put in so many consecutive hours of pure work ever, save for the one-of-a-kind marathon I endured one night to finish my Coyle seminar paper.
Phew. It can be satisfying, though, getting so much shiyitt done.
Back to work...
