Tuesday, August 29, 2006

free bird

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird (pops)

This post is a love/hate edition, mainly because I don't feel like actually explaining anything this week.

LOVE: Columbus, GA's Little League World Champions.

HATE: Kawaguchi City's team was just as good, but for whatever reason, didn't play as well on the given day.

LOVE: The kittens are finally old enough to get flea collars. No more scratching.

HATE: They also wreck everything they can get their little paws on.

LOVE: Chinese food.

HATE: Arthur magazine. Suck it up, hippies. I'm fairly liberal (socially) and I think you've got your heads up your asses.

LOVE: Short lab sessions.

HATE: Going around Athens the long way because my ride wants to go by his house and pick up his phone.

LOVE: Getting to go back to the high school to do my field observation.

HATE: Forgetting to do my homework in my education class until I walked in the door.

LOVE: Throwing something together in the five minutes between me getting in there and her collecting it.

HATE: Science classes in general. Has anyone actually had a good science class? I can't think of one I've had. Biology sucked, Chemistry sucked even worse, and Physics was extremely hard but tolerable because of the people I was in there with.

LOVE: Film and Culture class.

HATE: the Spanish language. If English is the international language of commerce, why do we have to learn anything else? Esperanto I could understand from a theoretical point of view (no one has the advantage of being a native speaker), but why the same old Romance languages?

LOVE: That special someone.

LOVE: That other special someone.

HATE: Being the cowardly lion when it comes to the two above.

HATE: Most of society.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

I'll be around

Cee-Lo - I'll Be Around (pops)

Cee-Lo, everybody.

Remember kids, Atlanta and Athens are weird places, and strange stuff happens there. Outkast, Goodie Mob, Danger Mouse, and AdultSwim all came out of the same general area. I truly think there's something in the water. How else could such defiantly anti-mainstream art be produced in what is otherwise a stifling, conservative area?

Anyway, I started back to school. It's going well enough, I guess. there's only a few people left at the school that I know, much less in my classes. With such a relatively high turnover rate for the school, I shouldn't be surprised.

My ESCI class is already a little too tree-huggy for me. Now, I'm as concerned as the next guy about the environment (unless the next guy is Al Gore), but I'm also a confirmed free-market capitalist, and I also have come to embrace civilization in all its forms. If it's down to saving human lives or saving an acre of rainforest, let me get my chainsaw and I'll help cut down the timber myself, biodiversity be damned. Darn it, we clawed our way to the top of the food chain, we're the alpha species, we make the rules.

Spanish is, so far, surprisingly painless. I get to mark another space on my College Bingo Card, namely "Unintelligible Foreign Accent", but I can get the gist of what she says most of the time.

Film and Culture seems to be easy. We watch movies, we write about them, we get out with our two credit hours and are done with it. Plus, there's a nice balance between foreign/indie movies (Monsoon Wedding, Fierce Grace) and more mainstream/"big studio" movies (The Matrix, Brokeback Mountain). Four papers to write, and that's the class.

Intro to Teaching will be either great or horrible. I expect a lot of Dana White-style "Do you wanna be a f*ckin' fighter teacher?!?" speeches, mainly because we've already gotten one in there. But there is an upside to it:

I get to go back to WBHS and torment the little ones again. And I get class credit, too! Essentially, I spend four days with Coach Perry and bothering my cousin (who happens to be in one of his classes).

That's my schedule in a nutshell, plus the Science lab which involves a lot of driving to eco-sites and filling out charts. Whee.

So how were your first few days of school, my loyal college-age readers?

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

london bridge

Fergie - London Bridge (alternate video) (pops)

What's up, my loyal readers?

Today I haven't really done anything.

I woke up at 7:00AM to get ready for getting up that early the rest of the semester, and did my internet business (email, news sites, etc.).

Then I played Scrabble for a while. I've been playing regularly for a couple of weeks and I've gotten to about 300-350 on average. I hereby throw down the gauntlet for anyone who wants to challenge me. Name the time, name the place.

I also finally broke down and ordered a trial subscription of the Wrestling Observer through email, but I haven't gotten anything back from Dave yet saying he got the information. I love what Dave does, but he's a bit scatterbrained sometimes. I know if I had as much to do on a daily basis as he does, plus put out the weekly newsletter, I'd be much worse than he is about being scatterbrained.

Tomorrow I've got to go get my scholarship money and buy my books (hopefully they're not cleaned out at the campus bookstore). Thursday I'll go deposit the check and maybe make a wild, unexplainable purchase that I'll regret shortly. Friday I drag myself into class and try not to freak out that my summer is already over and I did almost nothing the entire time.

Monday is going to be a long day. but at least I get Tuesday off to recover.

I just hope no one gets cute and tries to actually assign work the first week or so. I hate the "let's jump right in!" teachers. If I'm ever one of those, please take me down clean. I plan to just mellow out for at least a few days before hitting my students with the inevitable mountain of work. Hey, I can lie on a lesson plan just as well as anyone can.

Well, that about does it. See you next week, if I'm still alive, for another rousing rendition of "A Day in the Life".

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

saving grace

Tom Petty - Saving Grace (pops)

Where shall I begin?

Well, (former, not-quite) Airman Jon-Boy came to visit Friday night. Seeing as he's back in the Land of Cotton for the time being, I expect to raise more than my share of hell with him for a while. We mostly played guitar, talked video games, and criticized each other's choices in music. (And You Will Know Us... suck. Bottom line.)

What was funny was the kittens loved him. One curled up on his lap and went to sleep, having never met him before.

Oh yeah, we're down to just two kittens. Maybe, just maybe, I can convince the family to keep them both. Two of the kittens went to Kayla Roberts' mom. The mama cat is now exiled to the outside permanently, since she's been cavorting with the kittens' father again. We'll be having none of that in this house again. We'll throw food and water out there, of course, but she can't be inside again. She'll bring in fleas, ticks, and most importantly, new kittens. None of those three are desirable.

The old sense of dread is returning. I've got ten days before I go back to the salt mines, and I'm in that state of "looking forward to it"/"not looking forward to it". On one hand, I would like to get out and maybe see some people I haven't seen since school ended, but on the other I want to keep sleeping late and staying up late.

Either way, I can't wait until nine days from now, when I get my scholarship money. Most of it is going straight to the bank (bills, bills, bills), but maybe I can hold out a few hundred for something new and nice, like an instrument or a new gadget.

Who that reads this has an iPod? I'd like to hear an unbiased summary of the pros and cons of getting a 60GB video, from someone I can relate to. I currently have about 30 to 40 gigs of music on my computer, and it would be nice to actually listen to it somewhere other than my computer.

Of course, all that music was purchased by legal means and electronic storage of such media is merely an extension of the rights guaranteed to consumers by the Berne Convention of 1955. Of course.

Anyway, I guess I'll see you around next week, if not earlier. Later.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

prototype

OutKast - Prototype (pops)

Hey, it's August!

Wait a minute, you mean it's already August?

Dammit.

You know it's almost time to get back to the coal mines when you start preparing the looseleaf and binders for the next semester. I did that today and it was depressing as hell.

Also, when I emptied out my old folders, I realized something: for a person with negligible artistic talent, I sure doodle a lot. I have one folder (World Civ) that is almost entirely doodling.

Then again, I have one (Communications) where you can see the exact point in the class where I realized that I was wasting time taking notes, because I stopped mid-sentence and left the rest of the notebook entirely blank.

We've made a hard and fast decision on the kittens. If they're not gone in two weeks (they'll be nine weeks old), we're going the Wal-Mart route and putting them in a big cardboard box, camping out in the parking lot, and getting the attention of a lot of little kids. Hopefully it won't come to that.

The big cat's already got a new owner lined up. She's going to be a mouser in my cousin's new house in McCaysville. I have a feeling she'll do just fine, seeing as she has no qualms about getting her paws dirty with hunting and such.

I want to buy a new musical instrument, but I also feel like I should be saving my money. (I want to be able to put a sizable down payment on a house as soon as I can, hopefully a only year or two into my first real job.) I can't decide whether I want to get a banjo or a twelve-string guitar. I already know how to play a normal guitar, which is no different in playing method, and I like the sound of a twelve string. I also want to branch out and maybe learn some new techniques, which would coincide nicely with the banjo. I'm not completely clueless about banjo technique, but is a definite adjustment between that and a regular guitar.

I'd love to get an autoharp, but there's no way I could justify the expense of one (hint, hint, for Christmas gifts). I also have a bizarre urge to buy a cheap violin and learn how to play the fiddle. It'd at least be funny to see me try. I know the fingerings (same as a mandolin), but I have no experience whatsoever with a bow.

Well, that'll about do it for now. Bye.

 

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