the state of the teaching thingie iv--being a lit guy

When I was younger, if you would've asked me, I would tell you I always envisioned myself being the popular culture-oriented professor in a literature department. This is why I got both a BA and an MA in Lit.  Literature courses, however, are very hard to come by.  Grad students in the English department usually get thrown into writing classes.  So do adjuncts.

 This semester, however I got a literature class.  It was only the second time it happened...and I only was assigned this class when one of my other classes got cancelled.  Rather than doing an organizing theme, I decided to just load it up with stuff I wanted to read...so that was cool.  We've had:

• The Hunger Games
• World War Z--Terkel meets Romero!
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom--this was the surprise of the semester, as it's both a monstrously fun read and brimming with ideas all at the same time
• Gun Machine--Warren Ellis brings his fiction mastery to prose.  All cop thrillers should be this much about information
• 1984--while I've been a big fan of Animal Farm, I had never gotten around to this
• Glasshouse--perhaps the biggest head-spinner
• a ton of cool short stories, including stuff from Gaiman, Zelazny, McCarthy, Welty, Assimov, Clarke, Sheckley, O'Brien, and tons more.

 The students, though, are the best part.  They are fearless.  I've given them some pretty weird readings, and they've always plunged right in.  I started giving them basic lit terminology, and they took it in.  Then I started slowly with the theory.  They took it in.  Then I started ramping up the theory, and they kept taking it in.  I was, on occasion, holding near graduate student level conversations.  I'm really going to miss this class...because it's exactly how I always imagined teaching would be.

the state of the teaching thingie iii--urchin

One of the advantages of the night-heavy schedule is that I do get to spend a lot of time with my wonderful daughter...and don't need a sitter very much.  We get to hang out, read, play, occasionally go to our predominantly deserted mall so she can run around untethered.  It's cool...I get to be a productive member of society at my job and be with the coolest person ever.

As I'm back in the day shift for the Fall, though, we're gonna have to arrange two full days of day care for her.  Yes, it will be more of an expense.  I'm gonna miss her tremendously, though.  Gotta make the most of the summer.  Parks, here we come!  That is, if the weather ever stabilizes.

the state of the teaching thingie part ii--food

Along with said lateness of teaching, the schedules have made it very difficult to keep my family in a good supply of food.  When in the hell can I cook?  Particularly this semester, where I would get home at 7pm two days and 10 two other days.  This means that I've had to go to a lot of casseroles and other big meals...which in turn means that starches have played a larger role by necessity in my cooking.  This is, of course, not the healthiest thing for someone who is (let's admit it) not exactly svelte. 

It's also meant I don't cook as much chicken as I would normally, which means much less stock, which means much less frequent (gasp) red beans and rice...my favorite dish.  I don't get to do nearly as many sautes.  Nope, everything is casserole or soup.  I don't mind cooking such things, but with so much of my culinary efforts going becoming individual leftovers or freezables, I'm beginning to feel like an industrial kitchen.  I'm an educator, damn it, not a Hungry Man Frozen Meal subsidiary.

the state of the teaching thingie part i

First in a series of posts on my thoughts at the end of the semester on teaching.

Ever since I brought forth Sylvia (with a bit of help from my wive), I have been teaching a primarily night schedule.  I have (amongst my other classes) taught Comp I from 7:30-9:10pm.  This is pretty late for "welcome to college" students, and the class numbers have, as the semester goes on, dwindled.  One of them went down from twenty students at the beginning of the semester to a mere three at the end.  I'm down to 7 in my late class, but that's okay...it is admittedly easier to learn their names this way.

Starting in the Fall, I'm back on the day shift.  It will be weird walking out of the university and still being able to see the sun. I will also feel like less of a vampire....not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you.

on kid television and sci fi

I see much more kid's tv than I ideally would like.  It's changing me.  This morning, I woke up with a Fresh Beat Band song in my head...and as much as I have a crush on Kiki, I don't really want their music to start invading my slumber.

As I've experienced all this kiddie entertainment, I have also started to analyze it in an attempt to understand it.  I can't help it...there are parts of my mind which haven't gotten the "hey, you're not a scholar" message.  And I think that, during today's session, I might've actually had a breakthrough...of a sort.

We were watching an episode of Blues Clues, where a neighbor came over.  She looked around, and said "wow, this place is bigger than it looks on the outside."

Suddenly, enlightenment came.  The people in kid's shows?  They're all time lords!  They gotta be...that would explain how they operate with next to no understanding of adult thought or customs!

Of course, they gotta be the "B" team, because they're generally not all that bright.  They must've been the time lords the daleks looked at and said, "Destroy!  Des....oh, what's the point?"

I never said it was good enlightenment.

the naive notion of the day, 4/14

If there's something I would (naively) like, it would be honesty.  I would like everyone to be a bit more honest to each other.  I would like:

• people who are bigots to just admit they are bigots.  Don't hide behind your views.  Don't try to justify your bigotry through intellectual dodges such as, for example, "the traditional definition of marriage" (which is, traditionally, more about property and control than anything else).  While I don't like bigots, I prefer an honest bigot to bigots who deny their bigotry.
• selfish people to just admit they are selfish.  Don't hide behind others as justification for your selfishness.  If you're only interested in satisfying yourself rather than compromising and occasionally listening to other people's wants and desires, then just say so.
• people to admit it when someone is doomed rather than filling them with false hope.  Sugar-coating one's situation doesn't help anyone.  If someone would've actually told me getting a doctorate most likely would not lead to a job, I could've lived my life differently.  Similarly, if the people who were supposed to prepare me for the job market would've just told me they weren't really interested in helping me be marketable...I'm not saying I wouldn't have done the same thing, but it would've been nice to at least make informed decisions.
• people who don't like someone to just say they don't like someone.  Don't withdraw.  Don't "play nice."  That only leads to confusion.

People like to talk about social niceties.  Personally, I hate most of them. Politeness often just becomes another word for "dwelling in confusion and potential misinterpretation."  Let's just quit the games, the pr, the social niceties, and just be honest.  I bet the world would be a better place.  I know my world would improve.

(yeah, I did say this was a naive notion)

on connectivity

There are some scientists and philosophers who believe that, at the quantum level, everything and everyone is connected to some degree.  In this world-view, every action affects everything else in the world.  We are all part of one super organism, and thus, at some level, we are all one.  If you've ever heard of the Gaea Hypothesis (that we need to think of our planet as one massive, connected ecosystem), then this view shouldn't be unfamiliar.

I don't know if this is true or not.  I know that on some level, I'd like to believe it...it would lead to some justification for being a good person. Cosmic justice based on sound science rather than hierarchy-obsessed moral indoctrination would be nice.

However, if this is true, we have to talk.  This means that yesterday, you all were a collection of miserable bastards.  I should know, because I had a day full of depression bouts and life kicking me in the face.

In short, y'all need to straighten up.  You didn't think about how your moods would affect me, did you?  Selfish jerks....

on wanting to constantly interrupt

I have a lovely kid.  She is utterly awesome, and I realize I am incredibly lucky that I get to spend most days with her.  We play and have fun.The days, however, come with what I have to admit is a fairly sizable drawback:  it means that I have to watch a certain amount of children's programming.

Don't get me wrong.  It's not like we just sit around glued to the television.  And it's not like all the shows are terrible.  Jack's Big Music Show is actually quite awesome.  It's well-constructed and a little off-the-wall.  It's surprisingly clever...it kind of has a little bit of a Muppets vibe.  So of course it was canceled after three seasons. 

(Incidentally, this is an example of what I call the Firefly rule:  the quality level of a program is inversely proportional to how long said show will be on the air before being canceled.)

Many of the kid's shows, however, are quite nerve-wracking.  How would you like to sit through a program featuring British pigs who snort every ten seconds, accompanied by the world's most intrusive narrator, with opening credits every five minutes?  That, friends, is Peppa Pig, and it is even more horrible than one might expect.  Sadly, though, it is not the most annoying show on the air.

Regardless of the overall program quality, they all usually share some fairly annoying traits.  For example, the characters will frequently ask the kids watching questions about the action.  This I understand;  interaction is good.  The questions need to be at a toddler level of difficulty.  I also understand this point, as the kids need to be able to answer the questions.  However, it still inevitably makes all the characters act like complete idiots...and this is one of the (many) things I have to just grit my teach and bare.

This requires a lot of patience on my part....and if you know me, you know that patience is not one of my highest virtues.  I really don't want to be a father who mocks his kid's favorite shows.  This would make me an ass when I would rather be a good parent.  So instead, I hold it in.

Lately, though, I've been thinking I need a release.  Maybe I could start a Mystery Science 3000-esque show, but one focused on kids shows rather than bad films.  There is certainly no end to the potential for mockery with kiddie programs.  I can also (believe it or not) be quite humorous if I want, so this is something I could really pull off. 

On the downside, though, I'm not really sure there's a market for a parent being a tremendous jerk. 

on the future of higher education

I just saw a commercial for one of those on-line universities.  Having taught many on-line classes and having published work on on-line teaching (in The Chronicle of Higher Education, no less...when I was a scholar, I did not suck), I am enough of an authority to say that on-line education is a pale imitation of person-to-person teaching.  Better than a kick to the thorax, maybe, but not an adequate substitute.

This particular "university" had an interesting twist to the formula.  It pointed out the perils of higher education nowadays, and pointed out that these problems were really "opportunities"...for college administrators.  So you should go to their on-line school, earn your "degree," and then become an administrator....so you would be able to have a good career creatively dismantling higher education as we know it.

Kinda like training at an abattoir school so you can become a barber, I think.

discovering Pink Floyd's problem

I've been a fan of Pink Floyd for a long time.  When I first discovered them, I was near the end of elementary school, and at that time, they just struck me as trippy radio music...not that I really understood what "trippy" meant, but you get the point.

Later, as I entered high school, my hormones started to race, and I started to think about altering one's mind, Pink Floyd really clicked for me.  I listened to a lot, but I kept coming back to Wish You Were Here and The Wall.  I even bought one of those hi-fi gold cd sets of The Wall.  I don't know if it actually did sound better (having never done the comparison/contrast), but it was worth it for me as a symbol of my...I dunno...dedication, maybe?

When one is suffering through teen angst, one gains a certain affinity for angst-ridden music.  I did, at any rate.  I even went so far (at the suggestion of my brother) as to listen to The Wall on headphones as I fell asleep.  The results?  Let me tell you:  if you think side 3 is depressing, just try experiencing the nightmares it will induce.

Later, as I had more aspirations of being a "serious musician," I gravitated toward Animals.  It was more trippy (which I understood more fully, being a little bit trippy myself).  It was also a bit more literary, more metaphor-based. Plus, if I'm to be honest, I was mostly drawn to the awesome guitar solos in "Pigs" (which might just shred more than any other solo ever).

I haven't listened to Pink Floyd all that much lately.  Part of it was going to see the magnificent Polka Floyd Show...after seeing them, it's hard to hear the original without thinking something is missing.  But this is not the dominant reason.

When one is happy, what purpose do depressing words serve?  And when one is not happy, will they do anything other than make the situation worse?

Earlier, when my current depression fit hit (I'm beginning to understand they're never completely going to stop), I got a lyric from The Wall stuck in my head:  "Nobody Home"'s "I got a grand piano to prop up my mortal remains."  A cool line, to be sure, but it's from one of a depressing album's more depressing songs.  And as I become more and more aware of my own depression, I realize turbo-charging it with even more depression really isn't what I need.

I do fine with the gloom on my own, thank you.

output

So I've been away, yes.  Although I haven't blogged very frequently, rest assured I have wanted to write more.  Of course, I also want to take more photos, write more lyrics, and so forth. I could say that time is of the essence. And this does have the advantage of being true;  between my daughter dragging me around the house to play (which, for the record, playing with her is awesome and amazing and something I wouldn't trade for the world) and then trying to fit actually doing my job and trying to do housework in the rare moments where she actually naps, I don't have a lot of leftover time.  How on earth do I have time to write?

I don't, really. But I've determined I really cannot let that stop me.  Why? Several reasons:

First, a good friend is putting me to shame by blogging fairly regularly at The Great Concavity. His output is putting me to shame. I cannot be such a sluggard by comparison.

Second, my daughter is getting increasingly adept at expressing herself. About a week or so ago, I was holding her after she woke up, and she leaned forward, put a hand on my cheek, and kissed my other cheek.  And it's not just her joy which is inspiring. As of late, she's also been pushing us.  One way is by pushing boundaries, and her favorite way to do that du jour is by putting her feet on the table when we eat.  After correcting her four times during Wednesday's lunch, she looked at me, got quite serious, and said "Daddy's mean."  Well, if she can express herself, why can't I?

So, sorry if this ever gets monotonous or depressing or whatever, but I plan to put a lot more time over here.

It's time to bring the gloom!

on social skills

Self-awareness is an interesting thing.  As of late, I've started to realize many things about myself.  However, out of all the things I realize, I understand very few of them.

For instance, I realize that the thing which sets me off the most on the road to a bout of depression is feeling unskilled.

After years of work, I'm beginning to feel pleased with my skills in many areas.  I think I finally have the teaching thing down better than ever before.  Last semester, I got the best student evaluations I've ever received....and since "how much the students like me" seems to be the basis behind my annual evaluations, this is a good thing.  I'm teaching a Lit class this semester, and it's completely awesome....in spite of it being a 2000 level class, the conversations often border on senior/grad level.  I am now 95% confident in my teaching skills.

Ditto on my music (the band's going great, and I can acquit myself just fine in a solo performance).  I'm also fine with my parenting ability to date (which is helped out by having an amazing kid) and my ability to function in a relationship (which is helped out by having an amazing wife).

Why, then, am I so inadequate at having a social life?

My weekends inevitably run the exact same way.  I hang out with my wife and kid until my daughter's bed time...then I sit on the couch by myself until I go to bed.  Saturday, I get up, feed and then play with my daughter.  When I eventually get the time to check the internet, I inevitably find several friends posting about the great time they had the night before, the people with whom they spent the evening, and how hung over they became.  Then the evening comes, and the cycle repeats.  There will be no calls or messages, but I will inevitably find out the next day about all the massive hi-jinx which happened in my absence.

Then there are the weekends where my band plays.  I love playing music...it's one of the best parts of my life.  Yet although it's fun, it's not really relaxing.  I have to work to get my stuff in and out of the bar, on and off the stage.  I will have to get myself in the mood to perform (in other words, keep focused and not freak out), and then, after playing, try to get myself to come back down to where I can reasonably interact with others and maybe eventually sleep when I get home.

Don't get me wrong.  In the final balance, my life is great.  Yet I wonder what it is about me which makes those in the area not want to hang out with me. Have I offended them?  Have I started to bore them?  Is there some other reason why they've moved on from me?  It makes me wish I didn't need to be around people.

My kingdom for social skills!

on bagels and genetics

When my wife was pregnant, I used to go with her to her OB appointments.  For reasons too confusing to get into, we ended up with a doctor in Toledo rather than one here in Bowling Green.  She was pretty nice, even if she gave off the vibe of being the busiest person in the world.

After the appointment, before Lori would go to work and I would either go back home or to my job, we would stop at a bagel place.  There isn't anywhere here in BG to get a halfway decent bagel, and we both seriously lust after them from time to time.  We'd eat bagels and talk about the appointment, our plans for the delivery, and coping strategies.

Then Sylvia was born...and we've had very little occasion to be in the vicinity of a bagel place around breakfast time.  We could, I suppose, buy some and keep them in the house, but the bagels in this town all kind of suck, and frozen bagels are an abomination unto God.

Yesterday, I stopped by Costco on my way home to pick up an industrial pack of paper towels and other stupendously over-sized supplies.  When I went past their bakery, I noticed they had pretty good looking bagels...supplied to them by one of the national chains, I believe.  So I picked up some.  When I got home, Sylvia spotted them and demanded to try one.  We gave her one...and she (as you can see) went to town on it.  By the time she went to bed, there was a mere 1 1/2" fragment left.

This is, of course, one of the ways we know for sure she's my kid...the other being her abnormally long toes.  It does, however, bring up an interesting question:  is her bagel lust inherited, or did we program it into her with those post-appointment stops?

The answer, if ever discovered, might just revolutionize science.

on coughing and comedy

One of the true perils of being a teacher is that, as you have to handle stuff from a slew of students, you tend to get their germs and get sick a lot more often than does the normal person.  In my case, this naturally leads to stand-up comedy.

I thought I avoided the various student plagues when I started making all my students turn in essays electronically.  This semester, though, I'm teaching a literature class, and I decided to give quizzes again.  Last time I taught some lit, I had complaints from the good students that the evil students weren't actually reading.  So now they get the pop quizzes and more students read the material.  However, I now have to touch their germy papers and, true to form, I started coughing last Friday...and unfortunately, I have yet to stop.

For some reason, this coughing is always worse at night when I'm trying to sleep.  This does not really bother my wife all that much...it just means that I'm waking her up instead of that task being accomplished by my girl.

Last night, I woke up coughing around 5ish.  I quickly chewed up a Ricola, which did quiet down the throat.  However, sleep did not come quickly.  My mind started to race, as it tends to do when I can't sleep.  I started to think of a comedy sketch I wrote and performed on a friend's radio show.  Then I started to think of an article I read about the art of writing jokes.  Next thing I knew, I was deep into writing a stand-up comedy routine...which I'm pretty sure would take at least half an hour.  Great.

Don't get me wrong.  I love creative bursts, and I love the feeling of creating my own little chunks of culture.  It would be nice, however, to actually have the spare time to take advantage of my ideas.  Right now, I'm trying to balance being a father, being a husband, being a teacher, being a guitarist for my band, being a songwriter for my band, and being a solo musician.  I'm also constantly looking for more chances to be a photographer. I'm deep into doing the artwork for my band's album and related merchandise. I have three or four solo songs which need lyrics.  This all on top of the piles of grading I perpetually have waiting on me during the semester. 

After last night, though, I now have a burning desire to find an open mic comedy night and try doing a set. Gee, just what I need...something else to do.

Beats coughing, I guess.

on shifting realities and acoustics

Lately, I've been contemplating the transience of life.

Transience is something I've had to deal with for some time.  I grew up as a military kid.  While my dad made a point of trying to stay in the same place for as long as he could--meaning we only moved only every five years or so.  Most other people were gone after two years.  As a result, every school year meant finding new friends...even getting a new best friend each year.  Strangely enough, I had two different best friends named Greg two years in a row.

When I was working at Little Caesars, we were happy if someone lasted six weeks.  We would hire six people, hoping that one of them would still be there in two months.  We used to joke that we would only start to try to remember their names after two weeks...only we weren't really joking. I still remember an awful lot of people with whom I worked.  Many more, however, are utterly lost to me...they never made it past my short term memory.

My life in college is also marked by constant change.  Friends move onward every year.  Students go away every four months. Even people who stay in the area regress as their lives change.  One can go from having great friends one year to having no social life at all the next.  I know...as this has pretty much happened to me.

Music has been a constant in my life, but even that has change.  Bands break up.  Musicians move away.  People quit, drop out, just plain stop being there. Conflicts arise, turning friends into acquaintances, acquaintances into strangers.

Sometimes, though, you just need something that no one can take away.  You need something where you don't have to prove anything to anyone.  You need somewhere where you don't need anyone's opinion.  In short, you need something of your very own.

This is, I have realized, what I need.  I have a great band (album coming in one week), but I still need a musical outlet which is 100% my own.  So, for a part of my musical existence, I am going it alone.  It means stepping out of the shadows, abandoning my support structure, leaving behind even my dear effects pedals and distortion, relying only on my acoustic guitar and my voce...but it is what I need.

I've already done two open mic nights.  For my first performance, I got a cold two days beforehand.  I had a brand new guitar cable freak out on me, causing my guitar to cut in and out.  I broke a capo.  My kazoo flew out of my holder.  A friend told me he never heard anyone have so many technical difficulties during a solo acoustic set.  But I got through it and even got some complements. The second time, none of my friends came, and the only people I knew in the bar were the bartenders. My set, however, went much smoother. I got good applause after each song  Two people danced during one song.  And the song that got the biggest reaction?  One of my originals.

It's an amazing feeling to know I can be self-sufficient.  Doing the occasional brief set, though, is only a step.  So I am moving forward.  I am now booked for a full evening at our local Irish-esque pub.  I will play for three hours.  I have been prepping an amazing array of cover songs and am polishing up some originals. I am getting banter ready.  The flyer is made.  The invite has been sent.

There is, of course, some risk.  My voice could give out.  My originals could bomb.  Frat boys could come in and laugh at me.  I'm not going to say this does not scare me.  But the reward will be something I really need.  I will know 100% that I'm good enough to do this by myself. And I will know 100% that I have something that no one can take away from me, that will last as long as I want it to last.

I've had enough change.

on "My Fake College Syllabus" and other lies

There's been a piece going around called My Fake College Syllabus. I've seen many discussions of it, but I've tried ignoring them...under my policy of "ignore anything which just drives you crazy yet has no hope of changing or resolving" (which, overall,is a pretty good policy for anyone hoping to maintain some modicum of sanity.  However, I've decided to break that policy in this case...it's simply being overwhelmed by events.

So go ahead and read it. I'll wait.

Done yet?

Hurry up, damnit!

Okay, sorry about rushing you, but there is something that bothers me about the original piece.  It assumes worst intentions on everyone's part...at least those mentioned.  And that, based on my experience, just is not the case.

I've been teaching since 1998. While it is true I've met my share of idiot professors, it is also true that they are the minority.  I know far more who care deeply about instruction, about helping students learn.  They, however, are also not the majority.  The majority of them?  They are people who started out caring deeply but have had that care and dedication beaten out of them.

This beating is not, however, always at the hands of the students.  True, there are many of the little bastards who have no initiative, who feel they deserve grades regardless of how hard they work, and/or just want to be left alone and not challenged at all.  There are more who want to learn very much, who go out of their way to do a great job.  Most of them, though, seem to be like the teachers:  they cared deeply at one point and then have had that beaten out of them.

When I was a student, I was one of those who cared way too much.  The main thing that disillusioned me were two-fold.  I hated the various hoops through which I had to jump.  Why, for instance, did I have to Linguistics?  Still never used that skill.  More importantly, though, I hated dealing with the disillusioned faculty.  Why, I always wondered, were they just playing politics and going through the motions?

As a teacher, I understand why many of them are going through the motions.There are many reasons why previously dedicated teachers would do this:

• High levels of grad school enrollment.  I got into grad school, and I foolishly thought that would lead me to at least a decent chance of finding a job.  Don't get me wrong.  I knew it would take more than simply graduating, doing my work, and getting good grades.  So not only did I work hard, I also did everything else I could think of.  I presented at conferences, I served on committees, and did everything else I could.  But it didn't help.  I failed on the job market, mostly because the odds were stacked against me.  No one told me the extent to which academic employment is a buyer's market.  With the amount of Ph.D.s graduating and the horribly low number of jobs out there, there's a very small chance of anyone finding a job.  It's a crap shoot.
• The insanity of the job market.  The best phone interview I ever had--where I was told my course ideas were something the fellow faculty would like to take and that what I could add to the department was exactly what they were thinking of when they wrote the job description--did not yield a campus interview.  Hell, the smartest two people I've ever met have job market issues.  The first still doesn't have a job, and the second only got one interview on his first year in the job market.
• Part time work stress.  See the first year of this blog.
• Uncertain expectations.  You think this would be easy.  You think that you would be expected to make sure the students learn.  Nah.  Instead, buzz words like retention get used.  One of the reasons I wanted to teach college was that I thought I could hold to my standards first and foremost.  Yet whenever I get evaluated, "how much the students like me" is always the first and biggest determining factor.  I've fought this for years, but finally, I got tired and ditched things which yielded better results.  Why?  The students didn't like them.

Finally--and most importantly--the overall impression that the press, the administration, and most of the world seems to have is that the crisis in education is...whose fault?  My fault!  Who does the state legislature blame for all the woes of the state?  Those damn teachers, because all they do is abuse their job and politically indoctrinate students.  Who does the administration think should take the brunt of the crisis in higher education?  Those damn teachers, who have it too easy, what with their retirement and health care and all.  Why cut the ever-growing administration (at my institution, Arts & Sciences got divided into 5 separate colleges because our university president thought "5 is a good number"....which means 5 more deans, 5 more staffs, and so forth) when you can just cut the labor force or increase their workload?

This finally brings me back to the article.  The picture of a teacher there isn't certainly complementary in any sense.  Nor is the picture of the students or what the teacher expects from them. School certainly seems like a pointless, "academic" exercise in this article.  And who is at fault in this image?  Both the teachers and the students.

Never mind all the systemic faults of the system.

Next time, I will post something 1) not depressing and 2) not about my work.  Promise.

the top ten albums of 2012

I'm so short of time as of late, I don't have time for much in my life.  I haven't been to a movie in ages, and I'm miles behind on the 3 or 4 television shows I still try to follow.  Let's not even get into how infrequently I blog.  However, I still have time to listen to music thanks to a long car ride to work.  So, without further ado, here's my favorite music of the last year:

1. The Dumb Easies--Love! Love! Love!  Think hard rock meets 50s girl group pop...with better songwriting than either genre.  This one is so catchy, I have to keep myself from listening too late in the day, lest their songs sticking in my head keep me from sleeping.
2. Micah Schnabel--I'm Dead, Serious.  Micah's live performances are so much more than a typical singer-songwriter act.  The same goes for this album, but even more so.  Brilliant songwriting which makes you never realized that it's just a man and his guitar...and on the songs with full backing, it's even better.
3. Branden Barnett--Verse, Chorus, Curse. Deep, layered songs...both in the lyrics and in the music.  When I heard Branden played 95% of the music himself, my jealousy increased exponentially. Get it on Bandcamp.
4. Lite--Past, Present, Future.  Prog/math rock from this Tokyo quartet.  It doesn't matter what instrument you play...these guys are better than you.  Yet somehow, it never starts to sound like a bunch of solos glued together.  Instead, it's good intellectual music...and I mean that in the best possible sense.
5. Patterson Hood--Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance.  I'm a big fan of The Drive-By Truckers.  Hood's previous solo albums were really neat.  This one is pure awesome...the most coherent work he's done in ages.
6. Redd Kross--Researching the Blues.  Power pop extraordinaire.  While they sometimes veer more toward the pop side than I would ideally like, when they hit the rock, they really hit it.  Plus one of the best guitar sounds I've heard in years.
7. The Biters--It's All Chewed Up, Okay?  This album sounds like Cheap Trick meets New York City punk rock...only better.
8. Henry Clay People--25 for the Rest of Our Lives.  Loud, bombastic rock that will bash you against the wall.
9. The Sword,--Apocryphon.  Proof that not everyone forgot the lessons of early Black Sabbath.
10. Dinosaur Jr.--Reach for the Sky.  Loud, noisy guitar heroics as always, but a bit more experimental than Beyond.  It veers just a little too close to sloppy for my tastes, but still, really, really cool stuff.

Top three songs:

1. Micah Schnabel, "Sid & Nancy." A haunting love song between two addicts.  I was hooked once I heard the line "Carve your name into my arm, I will wear the scars that tell the world I'm yours."
2. The Dumb Easies, "Fading Away."  This is the kind of killer upbeat pop rock song which will have you driving thirty miles per hour over the limit and hitting the repeat button for as long as the drive lasts.
3. Brandon Barnett, "Last Rites."  Lyrically, this will knock your heart out:  "I wanted you to stay...if only licking wounds was foreplay."  The music is equally deep and catchy

maintaining perspective

It is increasingly important to maintain a proper perspective.

It's been one hell of a couple of years for me. I had my failure at my chosen career rubbed into my face many times and, as a result, have had to rethink my life, my beliefs, my priorities. I continue to battle depression. I am unbelievably busy, with little to no time to engage in many of the creative pleasures which keep me relatively sane, such as practicing guitar or (as obvious by my volume of posts lately) writing. I have pretty severe bouts of brittleness and loneliness. I suffer many inconveniences and annoyances, all before the taking of a toast and tea (so to speak).

I'm dealing, in other words, with a lot of crap. Overall, I think I'm dealing with everything pretty well in general, may the medication be thanked. There are days, though...there are days where things just bother me...things I know I should really discount or ignore. There are days where I feel the strain. Ours is not to wonder why, ours is but to do or die...that kind of thing.

Today is one of those days where the pendulum had certainly swung. But, as I get ready to retire, what do I take with me? That is the question. Not arguments. Not jealousy. Not anxiety. No, I'm going to remember coming home after another shift of night classes, opening the door, hearing my daughter squeal, and seeing her bursting into the living room, wearing a transcendent smile.

Perspective is important.

on the great outdoors and stupidity

I hate the outdoors...mostly because it conspired to make me feel like an idiot. 

As a kid, I really preferred to just sit inside and read.  I would get kicked outside from time to time, but I never really looked forward to the experience.  Still, running around through the woods was always preferable to the most depressing interaction with the outside world possible:  yard work.

I quit doing yard work for my parents pretty much the time I started working.  I certainly never enjoyed cutting grass or anything ("loathed it with a fury unsurpassed" is more accurate), but I didn't quit yard work because I wanted to. Honestly, I had no choice...within a few weeks of beginning at Little Caesars, I was already pulling more hours than allowed by law, and by my senior year, I was working 35 hours a week on top of school. I was lucky to stay awake, let alone have enough attention to handle pushing the mower.

When I came to Ohio, I lived in an apartment...so no yard work there.  Later, me and my beloved decided to move into a house some friends of ours were getting ready to leave. My wife was sold on having no more downstairs neighbors and having our own washer and dryer. Me? I was sold on the rental coming with lawn care provided by the landlord.

Now we're a full-fledged family living in a suburban (as opposed to student ghetto) environment. We have room.  We have a garage. We have relative peace and quiet...so much, in fact, that when I can't sleep, I can hear the oven clock.

Unfortunately, we also have yard work.

This sucks for a vast multitude of reasons. Our yard is a mixture of random green vegetation and dirt...so it pretty much looks like hell on close inspection.  This is mostly because the soil here is more sand than dirt...and while it probably could be amended to promote more actual grass, we're renters, and therefore, there are very low limits to how much time, effort, and money we'll invest in the property. We also have the thrill of having a hill in our back yard, which always makes pushing the mower up a 78 degree incline that much more fun. Adding to the thrill is that in half of our back yard, the mower sinks rather than pushes. Furthermore, the mower itself (which came with the house) does not help, as it neither mulches nor discards clippings. This means you have to bag everything...the lawn clippings and the significant amount of yard dirt sucked into the bagger....although to be fair, most of the dirt passes straight through to your face and into your lungs. Furthermore, as our city doesn't accept yard waste in the trash, I have to find time to dump the bags in the designated city area myself.

The first time I mowed, I remembered a friend telling me "you get a real feeling of pride mowing your own lawn and getting everything to look perfect." As I sweated and inhaled dirt the mower pushed through the bagger into my face, I cursed my friend a more than just a little...but not as much as I cursed the yard itself.

When the temperature started to drop, I looked forward to mowing less, yes. I also looked forward to the leaves turning pretty colors. However, I knew this too would ultimately entail more work. But hey, raking's no big deal, right? You've seen the images everywhere, from Norman Rockwell to Calvin & Hobbes, of the father wearing a cardigan and serenely smoking a pipe while raking. How hard could that be?

I started on the front yard a week or so ago. It took me four hours, and I ended up with a leaf pile three feet high and seven feet in diameter.  When finished, I was dripping with sweat, out of breath, and cursing...not, in other words, very Norman Rockwell-ish. This weekend, I started on the back yard.  On Saturday, I got the entire yard's worth of leaves into one mega amoeba-shaped pile (which was harder than you'd expect, as it had rained a lot this weekend, and everything was damp-ish).  But in this municipality, we have to leave all the leaves on the edge of the road, so the city can send trucks to vacuum-suck 'em up....so I still had to get the leaf pile to the front yard.

I initially thought, as I started raking, to just rake the whole pile en masse around the side of the house. Half-way through the back yard, I realized (as I struggled to move a section a mere two feet deep) this would be impossible for anyone save The Tick...let alone a frail teacher sans muscles such as myself. So I tried to rake it up bit by bit. This just prolonged and spread the misery out over many little attempts. I was stymied and feared I would pass out with exhaustion before I actually could, mini-pile by mini-pile, conquer the back yard's massive yield of leaves.  Luckily, it started raining, so I had a good excuse to go inside and pass out.

Later, as I showered, I had a eureka moment and realized I needed to get some sort of vessel to help me transport the leaves. I felt proud of myself for figuring out how to mobilize the damn leaves...and then I felt like a bit of an idiot for being so damn proud of deciding to get a bucket to move yard waste.

So, Sunday morning, I was back to the yard...this time with my work gloves (to cover the area on my thumb where I rubbed off the skin) and a nice trash can.  About thirty minutes in, I had another brainstorm...why should I try to rake the leaves into the can?  Or, even worse, physically push them in?  I am a northerner...thus, I have (wait for it) a snow shovel!

I shoveled the backyard leaves into my handy bucket, and it worked great. I felt like a genius. In no time, I had the backyard clear.  Then I re-did the front yard.  I finished moving all the leaves to just by the street (they now line our entire yard in a row about 3 feet high by 4 foot wide and is large and dense enough to where it could probably successfully house this state's population of beavers if need be). I felt happy to get everything done and pleased with my ingenuity.

Then I thought about my initial plans to just rake everything into one big pile and move that pile around the house...then I thought about how absurdly proud I was to think of carrying the leaves in a bucket...then I realized I probably wasn't the first person to think of the snow shovel trick.  Then I noticed how obvious it was, now the leaves were gone, that I would have to mow the damn yard next weekend. Then I looked at the house, saw the gutters were full of leaves, and realized I didn't own a ladder and thus had no earthly idea how to clean them.

Damn trees. Damn yard work. Damn nature. Thanks for making me an idiot.

on tattoos and science fiction

It was when I was getting my tattoo when I realized I am actually the protagonist in a science fiction story.

Someone recommended to me that I not go alone for my first tattoo because it was possible I might react badly...to either the experience or to the ink. This sounded like wise advice, so I asked a "friend" to accompany me. This "friend," however, spent the entire trip to the shop asking me such soothing questions as "Are you nervous?," "Having second thoughts?," or "Is your fight-or-flight mechanism kicking in?"

Now, coming from most people, these would be reasonable questions. However, my dear "friend" was asking less out of concern than out of personal sadist joy. However, the simple truth was I felt fine. I told him I got my initial sketch done five weeks before, and I'd had way too much time to get used to the idea. The long wait to actually get to my appointment was, I speculated, closely akin to a waiting period for purchasing a handgun...a built-in cooling off period, if you will.I was totally calm, cucumber cool, both mentally and physically. I felt fine as I waited for my artist. I felt fine as he showed me the sketch. I felt fine as he put the transfer on my arm.

Then he started the outline, and I...felt less fine. It wasn't the pain...which, at the time, resembled a cat scratching you...sometimes playfully, sometimes spitefully. I've had cats. I can deal with that kind of pain. No, for reasons I couldn't quite fathom, I was starting to black out. The world was becoming gray, foggy, and echo-y. We had to take a break, and I had to pause to regain my breath more than once, but I was borderline passing out.

Strangely enough, once a half hour was over, it was like someone flipped a switch. I went back to feeling fine. No more blacking out, even when we got to parts of my arm where the needle started to hurt more.

(I should note that while the photo to the right was not faked, the pain really wasn't as bad as it appears. It would hurt like hell when my artist started shading, but then, as he moved the tattoo gun around, the pain would vanish. This was just taken as he started on a particularly sensitive part:  the far inside of my forearm.)

For about the three weeks before (and up through the full experience of) getting the tattoo, I was fully convinced that I felt no fear or regret.  Why would I?  I had been thinking of ideas for a full three-plus years. I picked a concept which had great personal significance and which I knew I wanted on my skin forever. I fell in love with the design from the minute I saw the brief sketch, and the final design looked even better.  Plus there was that waiting/cooling-off period bit courtesy of picking a highly in-demand artist.

But there I was...close to blacking out, in spite of any awareness of why on my part.

I thought about this briefly while actually getting inked up. After the artist finished with my truly awesome tattoo, my friend drove me home, and we discussed my close-to-unconscious behavior...well, I discussed as my friend mocked. Our ultimate judgement?  My mind was just blocking out my fear. I actually did experience the fight-or-flight response...I just wasn't aware of  it at the time.

A week or so later, I was hanging out with my driver-buddy again, and he remarked that when we went to the Toledo German-American festival the year before, I was quite miserable and goading our companion that night into arguments.  This came as a bit of a shock to me, as I remember the night as being nothing but fun. It seemed, though, I had stumbled onto another instance where my mind was blocking any awareness of my emotions.

Then I thought about the beginning of my time on antidepressants, and I remembered a few instances where my wife had to tell me I was really stressed out...and me only being vaguely aware of my own level of anxiety on each occasion.  The more I thought of it, the more instances I could remember of not really being aware of my emotions.  And the longer I take the Zoloft, the more I become aware of not always noticing my moods.

Something is clearly not right. I have some problem with my own emotional awareness. Something is not right between my conscious and my subconscious. Why aren't they talking? Was I born this way, thus making me substantially different from my fellow humans on a molecular level, making me the next stage on the evolutionary (or, more realistically, de-evolutionary) ladder? Is my mental condition symptomatic of some deep physiological malfunction in Gaia? Have I been altered by some higher form of existence, either ethereal or extraterrestrial? Am I maybe a robot, only slowly becoming aware of mental programming errors in my neural net? And what magical powers exist in my tattoo which make me aware of this momentous incongruity from mankind in general?

Personally, I'm hoping for robots. Robots are cool.