Comic for Friday, May 30th, 2008

Posted: 7:50 am, Friday, May 30th

Whooooooo, doggy. The first fifteen minutes of Lost last night were more exciting that the entirety of Indiana Jones and the Thing with the Thing Over There. I have no idea what to expect for season five, which sadly won't be starting until... God, like eight months? Lost runs on like the opposite of the collitch football year. It's four months on, eight months off, just beginning in late January instead of early September. Anyway, killer episode. (Only a B+ from the AV Club? Weird. Although it did have this, "Did you know that the real world Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, was heavily influenced by the philosophies of John Locke?", which, no, I did not know.)

CK loaned me a copy of the Year of Living Biblically the other day, and since I'm still home most the time, I burned right through it. It was less funny and more interesting than I thought it was going to be. I suppose I'm very mean-spirited, so I'm glad AJ Jacobs wrote the book and not me. The book centered much more around the Old Testament, and I found that part the most interesting, since I guess there's more about that part of the Bible I don't know, especially the literal stuff that the Hasidim follow to the letter. In fact, I kind of want to go hang out in Crown Heights for some of their parties (which I bet they would just love). Anyway, I recommend it, it's a very interesting read.

I had something else to say, too... Oh, right, the other thing I did this week (of any interest - I'm willing to discuss the handbook I'm reading right now, Teaching for Student Achievement, which puts me to sleep on average once every twenty-five pages) was play through this Sierra-style game, A Tale of Two Kingdoms. I mentioned it here a long time ago in conjunction with a 1Up article, but I only finally got to it this past weekend, and it was totally like a time machine back to 1991. The puzzles make sense, and it totally suffers from the Sierra flaw of you not noticing something in the first Goddamn room and being stuck with a shitty ending because of it (in this case, it's a rope). Graphics are close to King's Quest V level, if that means anything to you, and the music is actually surprisingly good. Kind of makes me want to try and rig my machine to play through Quest for Glory I again, except that rigging my machine with DOSBox is how I done fucked it up in the first place.

Alright, well, I've got to go run or something, and get back to reading that handbook. The handbook is full of handy (ba-dum!) stuff like, "Involve your students in setting ambitious classroom goals," without suggesting how. Great! Also, fingers crossed, we may've found the new World HQ.

bullfrog

Bullfrog -- Friday, May 30 2008, 07:46 am

In looking for the new World HQ yesterday, I got to the place a few minutes early, and was sitting on a bench waiting for 2.0. I don't have any games on my cell phone, I just download whatever free demos there are and play those in the rare instances (like three times a year) I even remember my phone has that feature. Anyway, Verizon has caught on to dudes like me, and there's barely any free demos anymore. So I was hunting and scouring for demos, and I found Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the cell phone game. There was no demo, and it's almost worth the $3.50 subscription fee for me to find out how the hell they do anything resembling Oblivion on a cell phone. That game had the biggest game world I've ever seen. I don't think they could even approximate it if they kept themselves to ASCII graphics.

i think it's cute that you are reading the teaching for student achievement handbook.

Did your man not do that? Because it's like melba toast dry, man.

no, he didn't. i think all of the 'helpful pointers' in the handbook are condensed onto a bookmark with rainbows and apple backgrounds. he read that.

Great! Back to shooting hookers.

A few selected books on teaching English to adolescents that are worth your time: Adolescent Literacy, Beers, et al. A Time for Meaning, Bomer For a Better World, Bomer & Bomer Making the Journey, Christenbury

And there are lots more where that came from. Thinking about this stuff is, after all, what I do.

Thanks, man, I really appreciate that.

Although I terrible misread Bomer for a Better World at first.

When I originally typed those, they each had their own line. I guess the board decided it didn't like my formatting.

And a good site to check out is NCTE.org (The National Council of Teachers of English). There are all sorts of useful blogs, newsletters, and actual publications you can get access to.

it amazes me that so many teacher instruction books are such garbage. i honestly remember maybe 2 from grad school, and my mom gave me one of those. you are intelligent and decent and humble enough to admit when you don't know something. you are not an egomaniac and you give a crap, therefore, you will be a great teacher. screw the books. you learn as you go.

Yeah - humble enough to know I'm going to be the greatest teacher EVER! Am I right? Fuck yeah, people, genetically different, baby.

Sorry, I kind of need another cup of coffee or something.

What grades will you be teaching?

Good question. They don't tell me that yet. I still have to actually go out and find a job.

Really nice article on Gov. Paterson's stance on gay rights in Times, The.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/nyregion/30paterson.html

When do you have to find this job by. I knew there was something else you should be doing aside from shooting hookers.

Tomorrow, honey. We are *so* screwed.

Thank Christ, Kevin White is going to Dook to install JumboTrons there. Good riddance to incompetent ADship, I hope. Let's be smart, Papa Jenkins.