Comic for Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Posted: 6:30 am, Wednesday, January 27

I believe someone asked for Lissa to join them?

I can't tell you how much I wish this was Rush Limbaugh's line of thinking. Terrible admission: In ... ninth or tenth... tenth grade, before I had any real political existence whatsoever, I bought a copy of "The Way Things Ought to Be," by that terrible asshole, for my good buddy Starky. Starky is a great person (I will not tolerate dissent on this issue, so no comments) but his politics are not and have not ever been what I would now qualify as enlightened. So, yeah, I have contributed five bucks to that motherfucker's cause. I'll add another five bucks to my Haiti donation to counteract it. Please forgive me. I was in tenth grade. (I did, to my defense, realize that Limbaugh was bonkers, I just didn't know that he was also *dangerous*.)

Zelda 2 sucked (what jarring translation?), but, man, the manual sure was awesome. I hate that as video games have become more advanced, the manuals have become more sucktastic. No game ever came with a better handbook than Final Fantasy (I believe the box actually *bulged*, the books were so thick), and no GTA came with a better handbook than the third one. (Amendment: No console game has ever had a better handbook than FF1. The Dagger of Amon-Ra for the PC came with, like, an 80-page booklet on the fictional museum in the game, packed with actual information on the art and architecture of the 1920s.)

I haven't mentioned this yet, because I'm a jerk, but almost immediately after posting my Donors Choose project on this site, it was filled almost immediately, and largely by the readers of this site. To which I say thank you, thank you, thank you. I think I've said it before, but I love, I absolutely love, teaching, and I can't thank anyone who donated enough for doing so. 2.0 can verify, but I really do bust my ass for these kids, as bonkers as they are, and I am super-grateful for everyone and anyone for helping me at all in getting a book that - hopefully - my kids will tolerate if not enjoy. I got the books in the mail yesterday, and we'll be starting The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in Mr. Bullfrog's class on February 22nd. I'll keep you guys posted on it (unobtrusively).

Speaking of the kids, which I try not to do too much, day 1 of the English Regents was yesterday. The listening passage was on the importance of city parks, and the reading and chart in task II was on organic food. Both of these things, the kids have heard of. "The expanding market for organic food" tripped some of them up - they thought it was about bodegas - but I'm optimistic. Hey, we had 90% attendance, so that's something. Here's hoping for an easy controlling idea and critical lens...

I'm watching a show on black holes right now. Is anybody out there like me? Did anyone read about how the sun would burn out in five billion years and freak out about the sun burning out? In five billion years? Black holes freak me out the same way. Hell, the Disney movie, the Black Hole? Terrified me. I remember hating it, but that looks like maybe it had something to do with it being poor in quality as much as me being terrified by black holes. But how can something be so dense as to even suck up light and planets and everything, and not ever stop sucking things up? Shouldn't a single black hole spell eventual death for the entire universe? In which case, why should it even be? Is the universe nothing more than a t-shirt, to eventually be worn (even if lovingly) to the disastrous end of Old Orange?

Stacked - I refuse to refer to him by his preferred handle, for some reason - tweeted about this, and it's so juvenile and awesome that I also need to link to it. Back during the junior-senior year deluge of college shit, I got a mailer from a school called Beaver College in western PA, and I really wanted to at least visit, because I found its name hilarious. Because I was the king of all dorky virgins in high school, I did not even know "beaver" meant anything other than the pelty mammal who built dams. Seriously. I started to figure it out when Primus released Wynona's Big Brown Beaver after my junior year. (Full disclosure, I kind of thought that was about a penis, because of the adjective "big" and the lines, "Wynona loved her big brown beaver/ And she stroked him all the time./ She pricked her finger one day and it/ Occurred to her she might have a porcupine.") (This is a lot of full disclosure, isn't it? I had something ready to go about Stacked and his original site's name and that's why I insist on calling him that, but it just seems so long ago at this point.)

I'm reading an absolutely spectacular book right now called The Rape of Europa. There's a documentary of the book out there and available on Netflix, which is good, because the book is extremely dense. If you're interested, it's an awesome account of the Nazi quest for art in WWII, and then the Allied efforts to protect and recover that art. It's made me realize how little I know about the actual military movements of WWII, and it's the first time I've ever become really interested in military history of any sort. Hitler apparently regarded the foundation of St. Petersburg as one of the worst days in Europe's history, and intended to bulldoze rather than conquer Russia. I had no idea. The Degenerate Art show is put in a new light, since the Nazis were (somewhat successfully) auctioning off Modern artwork to Americans, and using the proceeds to fund the war machine.

I'm talking a lot. I'll go. Here, check out this trailer for the Insane Clown Posse western that's coming out soon. No, really.

bullfrog

2.0 -- Wednesday, January 27 2010, 06:34 am

Something my dear husband forgot to mention:

When he walked in to give the listening passage the students applauded! That's how much they love him.

Good luck with the testing gauntlet--no fun for teachers or students. But I'm sure it helps all of them that they've got you in their corner.

But organic food, really? Good for your kids for talking about bodegas, though I hope the test readers get it. One more bit of proof that no one who writes those tests considers that shopping at Whole Foods might not be an option for everyone. We're headed into that same season here in Texas soon, which means we throw over all real education for test prep, so I'm a bit agitated about the whole affair. Okay, I'll stop ranting and wish you good luck, again.

Yeah, black holes scare me too. And quasars and super novae. Anything from space. Except asteroids - they don't really scare me. Lots of people were afraid that when those knuckleheads at CERN started up their machines, they were going to create a black hole when they smashed atoms at such high speeds. Or something like that. But I guess that wasn't too realistic and they said that even if they did, it would basically be a sub-atomic black hole and it would eat itself away almost as fast as it was created. I really don't know what i'm talking about but i think it went something like that.

I was in Canada a couple weeks ago and listening to some talk radio (seriously), and other than saying "eh" and "aboot" a lot, there were some people up in arms about the changing of The Beaver's name. I guess it's one of the oldest - if not the oldest - continuously published magazines in Canada. But it really was a problem with spam filters and such blocking it's online content because of the "Beaver" name. Awesome.

Bullfrog, I meant to compliment you on your comic on Monday. Since you know my humor, you're probably not surpised to hear that it made me laugh out loud.

I'll be coming to NYC more often since my little brother committed to Columbia on Sunday. Instead of staying in and watching bad football on the TV, you can come watch some bad football in a stadium with my family. Apparently they give you four free beers with the price of admission at a Columbia game.

Bullfrog... did you get a chance to see the Spaceman Lee documentary on MLB Network? Pretty good stuff, it's shows him barnstorming in Cuba interspersed with some great footage of him in action and even more entertaining, giving interviews back in the day.

western PA is big on the beav. on the way to the pittsburgh airport, there are big signs that signal that the highway is about to split. you stay left to go to beaver and stay right for moon. always makes me giggle.

Ondy, I Netflixed that a while ago, actually. Loved it. Thanks for thinking of me with it. Spaceman's book - the Right Stuff - isn't terrible if you ever see it at a library or used book shop. It was one of the slew of post-Ball Four "tell-alls" that didn't come anywhere close to the brilliance of Ball Four.

Over 520 essays down, another 500 or so to go tomorrow. A few kids didn't show up on day 2. My world is pain. By and large, the kids are in in pretty good shape.

Geez, check out of the interwebs for a day and everyone's tweeting the fuck out of the iWhatever from Apple. I could not be less interested in this device. Part of it is because I don't do first-gen anything, and second is because I'm at least two years away from a new computer, so why get in a tizzy?

/my two cents

Sweaty: I am proud to say that I have two degrees from Columbia and have never attended a Columbia football game. I have seen the infamous Marching Band only at Barnard dorm fire drills. But no one told me about the four beers included in the price of admission. That could change everything. What will I do? What will I do?

Sadnomor! It would be a large Victorian cottage on a cliff overlooking the sea, or maybe Long Island Sound. It would be supposedly an Indian word. Men in suits with waistcoats, women in voluminous dresses, on the porch feeling the breeze, free from care.

Oops, that was me.

OH MY GOD, Joe B., your first post just gave me total inspiration for what to do with my feelings of stagnation on the strip. Head asplode.

Pour one out for a great American. Out of all the pour-one-outs I've ever posted, this is one that's completely not sarcastic and instead one hundred percent serious. People's History is one of the best books I've ever read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/us/28zinn.html

You will be sorely, sorely, sorely missed, Howard Zinn.

Here's a better obit.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/01/howard_zinn_his.html

salinger's gone, too - died yesterday, i guess. hated catcher, but still.