Profesora Loca: Sí, me gusta las poemas

When I revived this blog, largely for the benefit of Specialist A and the other members of his Army National Guard unit, I promised to have no political posts in it. Well, guess what. La Loca totally lied. Here are two of her very prominent political views:

• La Profesora Loca is totally against migraine syndrome. It costs workers productivity every day. It cost me two class meetings worth of productivity last week, for example, as it felt like ALL DAY, for several days in a row actually, a very angry, very specific skinhead was kicking me in the temple with steel-toed boots... but only in the right temple, never the left. This combination of aggression and anal-compulsion, La Loca feels, is dangerous to the nation. Also, La Loca is against migraines because the standard medicines on the market, Imitrex or other sumatriptan-based drugs, have a side effect nobody likes to tell you about... epic, rancid gas. This can cause a terrible sundering in basic human relations.
  

• La Loca, similarly, is completely opposed to asthma. You gentlemen who are deployed have lots of other environmental hazards, but I bet you don't have ragweed. La Loca, living in southeast Pennsylvania, has lots and lots and lots of ragweed. If you want her to send you some, she can, but will have to harvest it wearing a hazmat suit, and she doesn't know if they make them in size "59 inches tall with big butt." She is forced to consider politicians taking money from the cigarette industry -- and sadly, that's a lot of them on both sides of the aisle -- as pro-asthma. Well, bugger that for a lark.

Yo, what it is! La Loca has been absent from her Vox neighborhood for absolutely bloody sodding ages, but is back in black. Well, I'm back. Yes, I'm back in black. (Sorry. AC/DC songs frankly look kind of dumb when written out, and even Dylan has his repetitious moments, as in his song that described today where I live: "Well, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, yes, it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.")

I try to share lessons I learn with people. Indeed, you might say that's the whole purpose of a teacherly existence. So here's today's: If you are allergic to coniferous plants, like pine, then walking into a Home Depot, where people are sawing lumber -- thus creating huge amounts of pine dust -- is really dumb. Like, "haul spinal-cord-disabled ass out of store to adjacent Office Max, sit in chair, cough lungs out, use asthma inhaler" dumb. And taking Benadryl does wonders for the histamine reaction (as it should damn well do, being an antihistamine), but it also makes me even dumber, causing me to order later on, at the Macaroni Grill, a salad with "ski scallops." You know, the ones that go coasting down mountain slopes in the wintertime.

However, it's lovely getting time with my dad and stepmother, and my living-room "bookcase" made of cinderblocks and metal studs is getting embiggened. This is fab. I have a significant case of Too Many Books Disorder -- and the 'rents enabled my biblioholism yet again by bringing down three more crates of my old fantasy and SF paperbacks! Yes, because my apartment doesn't look enough like a small branch of the local library!

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dicti

Simon Winchester

Woman Jailed Over Vial of Cat Urine

TAMPA, Fla. -- Cynthia Hunter spent almost two months in jail over a vial of cat urine.

The 38-year-old woman from Lithia, Fla., was arrested Aug. 15 on a charge of petty theft after she was accused of stealing from a Brandon Wal-Mart store.

Deputies added charges of possession of a controlled substance after finding a vial containing a yellow substance in her purse. A drug field test suggested the substance was methamphetamine.

Hunter had said the substance was dehydrated cat urine for her son's science project, and that it had been purchased at an animal clinic. She was released Thursday after lab tests found the substance was, in fact, cat urine.

Hunter pleaded guilty to petty theft and a judge gave her time served.

In honor of World Teachers' Day today, tell us about a teacher who had a positive impact on your life.

John Abram Bubb, d. 1993, sculptor in stone, dearly remembered: the coolest art teacher who ever was.

Sister Patricia Binko, the Nun of Suzuki Strings. I play the violin because of her.

Bruce Weigl, poet, critic, essayist, memoirist, translator, and fucking cool guy. I had his English 213, Intro to Poetry Writing, pretty much by accident -- it fit my schedule that fall. I thought, "Oh, poetry. That should be easy" -- words which haunted me as I sat down to write my 4-hour master's-degree candidacy exam in 1997.

Carolyn Forche. My guru. I love Carolyn forever.

Peter Klappert. Peter is another poet under whose grad-school strictures I blossomed.

Chris Thaiss was the first instructor to teach me how to teach, way back in the TA days. Now, everybody I work with teaches me more about all that.

Okay, so you want to do something to make a birthday shinier. Naturally, you think, "Aha, I'll create the perfect mix CD." So what do you do when the playlist you assemble in your head turns into a trainwreck? Consider:

1. Weird Al Yankovic, "White and Nerdy"
2. Cream, "Tales of Brave Ulysses"
3. Rush, "Rivendell"
4. Annie Lennox, "Missionary Man"
5. The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"
6. Bob Dylan, "When I Paint My Masterpiece"

Six tracks in, and already the playlist is like being violently slammed around on a musical rollercoaster for most of it. And then you realize that "The Ballad of Jayne Cobb" needs to fit in there somewhere, and you just groan in despair.

Share your current favorite song or music video.

... G, A, and D -- all of which require either a guitar small enough for my hands, a capo, or some really clever Django-fication. Even so:

Yes, I’ll dance and I’ll sing and my life shall be gay
I will banish this weeping, drive troubles away
I’ll live yet to see him regret that dark hour
When he won and neglected his frail wildwood flower

Wildwood

What television show stands the test of time?

Firefly does, more than, IMNSHO, any other Joss Whedon show (although Buffy's "Once More With Feeling" is admittedly brilliant). Firefly has a detailed 'verse with well-rounded characters (Simon, Simon, Simon -- you are so beautiful, and so selflessly dedicated, and so brilliant, and this sweet young thing follows you around with the very warmest of intentions, and you then stab her by saying something amazingly offensive) whose destinies you actually care about. Sure, there were only fourteen episodes -- so it never had time to jump the shark.

But I think I can now confidently award the Earliest Appearance of a Very Difficult Student medal to someone I teach English with. Yes, I can.

My officemate gave a quiz with this question:

True or false? The following is a good, arguable thesis statement: A healthy heart is the key to a healthy life.

This was a T/F quiz question about thesis statements, right? But one guy emailed my officemate and complained. He felt that "it doesn't matter how healthy your heart is" -- that one's Lord alone determines the length of one's life, not, say, fatty sclerosis, infarcts, what have you.

This is great news, my friends. Unless you're a cardiologist, in which case apparently you're in league with Satan.

Who is your favorite wizard of all time?

No contest. Technically, his was a knight-monastic order, but he was referred to as a "wizard" by Uncle Owen, so I say that counts. I was four when the movie came out; it was the first I'd ever seen in a theater; and Star Wars was, as Obi-Wan himself put it, my "first step into a larger world." (Propaganda, I tell you, those movies. Thinly-disguised Buddhist recruiting literature! Well -- it worked!)

Yeah, sorry, Gandalf. I love you too, and I love that moment in the movie version of RotK where Denethor is raving away, just completely mad as a hatter, and you bitchslap him with your big stick because nobody has time for that. And you had the sword and you got to go ridin' through the desert on a horse with no knees. But Obi-Wan had a lightsaber. Pwnt.

Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi