6 posts tagged “job stuff”

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.

One of my students in this summer session, a really nice person, is a non-native speaker of English, and has written, touchingly:

I don't know why but I am deeply attached with the poem.

Me too, Name Redacted. Me too.

At the end of the same piece of writing:

... it is very different when you are poetry.

Amen. Preach it.

I asked the students of my 8 am composition section to list 33 things they were grateful for. Not everybody made it to 33 (this is, after all, an 8 am class), but this is a composite list compiled from those of the students:

1. Fresh air
2. A good boss
3. Gum
4. My roommate & I getting along
5. Insulin
6. Jack Daniels (Oh, dear.)
7. Chiropractor (I had this on my list too.)
8. Jackie Chan
9. 4-H
10. Warped Tour
11. My church
12. My turtle Elton John
13. My cell phone
14. My cello, Charlie
15. A warm bed
16. My nose
17. Moderate senators
18. Pierogies
19. James Brown
20. Good health
21. College... I think
22. Spending time with family & friends
23. Goats
24. Freckles
25. Machiavelli's The Prince (Should I be more worried about the Jack Daniels, or this one?)
26. Curly fries from CoCo's
27. Cute boys!
28. Hot chicks
29. Cigars
30. MST3K
31. Dancing
32. Pop Rocks
33. Being alive

Happy birthday to my allegedly "baby" sister. I think her Cabbage Patch Kid is now older than some of my students.

Speaking of all that:

• Pleased: Sister's birthday. She has an Amazon gift certificate in her email and something else on its way via UPS.
• Terrified: Semester at The Art School starts tomorrow. Hello, college students of the world! Are you ever secretly terrified the night before a new semester, wondering whether all your professors will hate you and you just won't be prepared enough? You're not alone! Your professors are also terrified, wondering whether you will hate us and we just won't be prepared enough!
• Elated: My book now has a publication date of March 3rd. I have to write some personal acks, grab an epigraph if any, call in my blurb favors, have myself shot (with a camera! What did you think I meant?), and all that. My publisher does the heavy lifting. However, I also agreed in my contract to help sell the thing, so I have to see now whether I can book some readings. But whee!
• Depressed: My mother will never get to hold a copy of my first book, or read its dedication to her. She should be here for this. She should be sharing this.

Und so fort, und so weiter. Who needs [large local theme park with rollercoasters in it] when you have my life?

Who's the hardest person to shop for on your holiday list?

Hubby. Absolutely. One, I can and do buy him books, but his actual time for pleasure reading is limited by the fact that he's a ginormous workaholic. P.G. Wodehouse, he'll make time for, but you'll note that Mr. Wodehouse is deceased and therefore not producing any new books. Two, Doug loves music -- but has a massive CD collection, and has to be firmly told to stop buying himself new releases after a certain point. So if I want to buy him, I dunno, a Smashing Pumpkins CD for some reason (he has extremely eclectic tastes; maybe some Voxer recommended an album they thought was extra-great, hint, hint), I have to go to the CD racks and look under S to make sure he doesn't already have it.

Anyway, I'm mostly posting to say: Hi! I'm not dead! I'm just buried under 15 bazillion research papers from the class I'm substituting for -- the most terrifying of which was written by a guy who wants to be a cardiac surgeon someday. After reading some of his sentences, I want to vow never to eat a French fry again in my life, if you follow me.

Grading is really, really brainwracking in a way that I think not everybody understands. My boss from one of the schools and I had this conversation recently:

Boss (female) is wearing dark red nail polish -- you'd call it burgundy. I remark on it. Boss says she'd call it "burgundy," too, except its official name is "Dark Wine."

Preparing to exit, I say, "Yeah, well I'm going to go home, have some dark wine, and grade papers."

Boss says, with look of desperation, "I tried two whisky-and-sodas, and it was like [drinking] nothing."

I hate Sundays in general. They are nominally a day off in the academic workweek, but they are full of responsibilities nonetheless. I've always hated Sundays, going back to childhood when it was filling in the stupid charts for some stupid elementary-school class or another, and the highly distasteful chore of submitting to having my hair washed in the sink (I had frequent nasty ear infections, and so frequently had plastic tubes draining my eardrums, which means Thou Shalt Not Get Water in Thy Ears, which is also how I unlearned to swim). I think there's actually a vibe. I think they're the least groovy day of the week. Once we started numbering days, one of them had to be the least groovy.

So a Sunday is a drag. An October Sunday is even more of a drag. I have no plans for Halloween this year; there is a party being thrown by and for the students at School B, which I might crash, if I want to revel in feeling even older than I do ordinarily when around college students. The poster in the elevator says "Dance With the Dead." I want to dance to the Dead. (Also -- if you're going to typeset a poster that advertises "Rad Music," please use some nice, simple, non-alternative font so a sleepy teacher doesn't board the elevator early in the morning and think that for some reason, you are advertising "Bad Music.") A dark and cloudy October Sunday is possibly the ultimate drag. I did follow my inclinations and take a nap, and the sun came out, but it's still Sunday afternoon.

On the other hand, I didn't explicitly tell the students of School A that I would have all of their papers graded by tomorrow. And I did have a non-optimal health moment on Friday night. And at least my freakin' laundry is in the wash. So if I temporarily clear aside the vital paperwork I'm not working on for Schools A and B, and just put the aforesaid laundry in the dryer and take a stab at the damn papers and write a grammar exercise on sentence fragments, maybe another one on comma splices, it could sort of work.

Now, maybe Señor Loco will actually return from the grocery store with some of the unhealthy food treats I'm begging for lately. A girl can only go so long through the despair of wet autumn without hot wings. He doesn't make the cats eat all but vegan, and my inner animal is not vegan either. It is not like innocent little Tweety Bird. It is much closer to another Chuck Jones animation: the two-headed vulture in the Halloween cartoon who hungrily watches Bugs saunter up the path to the haunted castle, whose heads chatter daintily among themselves about how tasty he looks and how best to serve him. And they don't mean "serve" altruistically.