headlines

Favorite local headline of the week: "Officer Tasers Agitated Lawyer."

Funniest ambiguity: "Piece of the Past Returns: Through an Unlikely Series of Events, Her Grandmother's Fur is Found."

by special request: (p)update!

Fanny Lou (aka Monkey Paw, Fan Fan, Fanners); Louie Atlas (aka Boop, Little Louie, The Boy); and Roxy Brown (aka Squid Eye, Rox, The Little One). Taken this afternoon in the back yard.

dreamy

Since I usually do not remember my dreams, I like to jot them down here in case someone wishes to hazard an interpretation. The dreams I remember are usually of two kinds: either I am being chased by something like a large alligator and I feel like I'm running waist-deep in tar or the setting is utterly mundane with some random weird element. This dream was of the latter sort. What I remember is the imagery. I am at some kind of social event because it is a crowded setting. People are milling around, chatting, walking by. Then I start to see that every time I stop to look at someone, I see they are wearing an article of my clothing. At first I think it's a coincidence, but soon I realize that everyone is wearing my clothes. No one seems to recognize me, or to express any shame or discomfort that they have been found out. Oddly, I recognize most of the people, but I do not know any of them. These are people I see around campus, the gym, the neighborhood, or the pub--but whom I have no relationship with at all.

lazy, hazy, and dozing

out of context

I just finished Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke. I'm not sure yet what to make of it, though I'm compelled to place it in one of my favorite categories of fiction: post-apocaplytic. Johnson's Fiskadoro belongs there, as does McCarthy's The Road. Each is brutal in its hopeless beauty.

Anyway, I marked three pages because of brief little passages I found compelling. I do this all the time, but never do anything with it. So, for a change, at least I can share the quotes, completely out of context.

"There's no traveling side by side in the narrow places. In the narrow places you climb alone. It has to be enough to believe there's somebody behind you."

***

"What comes is the coming thing. I just look on it like whatever madness takes a dump on me, it must be a lesson, man, a lesson some random-ass sadistic Hitler-God wants me to learn. That's why I don't like it."

***

"Why must we have any legacy at all? Things are destroyed over and over, the good things and bad things. [...] The same thing for all of us--ashes, dust, poof, that's our legacy."

wisdom from 'zines

From Burn Collector 13, a most prescient observation about real estate:

"Location, location, location:" these are the three principle tenets of real estate, a modern pseudo-science that combines the more forward-thinking aspects of eugenics with the common-sense economics of a compulsive gambler on crystal meth.

low-brow toilet humor

I couldn't help myself from giggling when someone handed me a flyer that read, "Vote NO on number 2."

Heh heh.

alternative grading systems

I'm trying a different grading system in a reading-intensive course I'm teaching this semester. I've adapted a sort of "step" model grading structure sometimes used in self-directed learning. Basically, I let the students choose the level of engagement they want to in terms of choosing the grade they will strive for. So, for example, students who wish to earn an "A" will have to, among other things, turn in reading notes every class period. (This assignment simply asks them to type a summary of that day's reading, quote a favorite/exciting/troubling passage or two, and provide optional commentary). Students wishing to earn Bs or Cs still have to turn some of these in, just not one every day. 50% of the class did not do it for the first reading assignment, essentially conceding during the second week that they do not wish to earn an A for this course. I did not expect that right at the beginning of the semester. There may be a lesson here. I hope I am patient enough to figure out what that lesson is.