31 May 2006

for inga -- an explanation

Why we love fried foods! Inga and I wondered today why it is that, for nearly every food we can think of, we know someone who doesn't like it. Shrimp? Watermelon? M&Ms? Chicken? Beans? Sourdough bread? Corn? Apples? Cheese? Yup: we've got a hater for each and more. The exception is fried food. I have never met a person who didn't like, say, french fries.

Sure there are plenty of us who recognize that fried foods are relatively unhealthy, that they cause some folks some indigestion, that our moms tell us they cause pimples, and all sorts of things that make us reasonable around them. But who doesn't, in their heart of hearts, like french fries?

and the hits just keep on comin'

From the Chicago Tribune today, Wednesday, 31 May:

" WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court restricted the free-speech rights of the nation's 21 million public employees Tuesday, ruling that the 1st Amendment does not protect them from being punished for complaining to their managers about possible wrongdoing.

Although government employees have the same rights as other citizens to speak out on controversies of the day, they do not have the right to speak freely inside their offices on matters related to "their official duties," the Supreme Court said in a 5-4 decision.

"When a citizen enters government service, the citizen by necessity must accept certain limitations on his or her freedom," said Justice Anthony Kennedy, rejecting a lawsuit brought by a Los Angeles County prosecutor.

Lawyers for government whistle-blowers denounced the ruling as a major setback.

"In an era of excessive government secrecy, the court has made it easier to engage in a government cover-up by discouraging internal whistle-blowing," said Steven Shapiro, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union.

However, lawyers for city and state agencies said the decision will prevent routine internal workplace disputes from becoming federal court cases.

The decision threw out most of a lawsuit filed by Deputy District Atty. Richard Ceballos, who said he was disciplined after he wrote memos alleging that a police officer may have lied to obtain a search warrant.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed he was entitled to a trial on his lawsuit because he had spoken on a "matter of public concern." But the Supreme Court reversed that ruling Tuesday.

"The 1st Amendment does not prohibit managerial discipline based on an employee's expressions made pursuant to official responsibilities," Kennedy said.

The court's newest justice, Samuel Alito, cast a crucial vote to form the pro-government majority. In October, the justices first heard the case, but they were apparently split 4-4 when Justice Sandra Day O'Connor stepped down in February. Also joining Kennedy were Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Because Tuesday's decision interprets the 1st Amendment, it applies to governments at all levels, including federal and states agencies, public hospitals and public schools and colleges.

The dissenters said they would have left the courthouse door open to such 1st Amendment suits. "I would hold that private and public interest in addressing official wrongdoing and threats to health and safety can outweigh the government's stake" in running an efficient office, said Justice David Souter."

Good luck with that free speech thing, y'all.

29 May 2006

this explains it all

Apparently, we may be hardwired to be tone-deaf. At least in ourselves. Especially if we're trying out for American Idol.

27 May 2006

from dev

to quote: "so snark."

a study in contrasts

who are we to believe? (hint: this is NOT a serious question)

Former next-president Gore's movie:



or CEI's ad:



hint 2: CEI is a conglomeration of companies including exxon, dow chemical, american petroleum institute, and other major corporations. not that they'd have a bias, but i'm jussayin'.

speaking of african exports

driscoll, a vegan friend, and i once had a tussle about the ethics of my food choices. i choose to avoid eating things that contain gum arabic, which includes altoids, the source of the disagreement, but i eat meat. after dinner, he passed me an altoid, i turned it down, and he asked why. i explained: gum arabic is harvested by child slaves in sudan who are often murdered for poor production, illness, or sport. in fact, until recently, the u.s. banned the import of all sudanese products including gum arabic, but congress passed an exemption for the gum arabic because its loss would cause too great economic hardship on americans. (scroll down to "no more punishments?" heading.) i explained that i chose to try to avoid supporting slavery when i could.

at this point, he seemed almost offended. maybe he thought that i judged him as immoral for eating altoids. i didn't. that's silly. he shot back that i ate animal products. how could i avoid altoids but each animal products?!?

i understand the motivations that drive people to adopt vegetarianism and veganism. our house is notorious for its vegan-friendly dinner parties. personally, i work hard and spend excessively to buy animal products that are produced humanely - grass-fed beef, non-factory farmed, cage-free/free-roaming poultry (all hopefully from local farmers), organic produce, and so on. the thing is that i don't have a problem with killing animals for food. i do have a problem with torturing them while they're alive and during their death.

that torture is the problem i have with products that support war and slavery in africa. and not only is it torture of a living creature -- it's torture of human beings. if i were starving and had to choose between killing a stranger and killing my pet to eat, i would choose my pet. and i love my pets. they make me happy, and i work hard to make them happy. but they're still not people. (of course, i'd probably try eating the pages from books on the shelves before i submitted to either of those choices.)

it seems silly to begrudge someone for their moral stances on one front just because s/he doesn't accept or commit to each of the the moral stances you take. doesn't it?

our mother theresa? my ass.



now that we know what oprah's legends ball was all about, i've got a whole new reason to dislike oprah: she gave each of her guests diamond earrings worth about $200,000. Every single guest.

my pissed-off-ness is this. oprah spent the year planning a weekend for what seems to be every african-american woman ever to live. and then she gives them $200,000 worth of diamonds. the irony? celebrating women of AFRICAN descent with a precious stone that was likely harvested by modern-day slaves in southern africa. the united nations stresses that diamonds coming out of africa (and that's nearly every diamond on the planet) help to drive slavery, human rights violations, and war.

i wouldn't accept an engagement ring, for godssake, with a diamond in it. how can oprah spend so much of her time preaching reform and awareness on her show and be so oblivious to the suffering she has just contributed to through this weekend? so yes, mariah carey, she has changed the world, but not for the better for millions of the people she lamented having missed out on on PBS's African American Lives.

short response

to definer's (make that thesaurus's) old, old post about self-reflection in griping teachers.

i agree that every teacher worth his/her salt will constantly reflect on his/her methods in and out of the classroom and on the impact he/she has on students, and he/she will revise those methods to reach the most students in the ways that work for various groups of learners. it's true that if most students in a particular section are consistently failing despite trying hard, it is time to reassess the expectations and practices of and in the class.

i disagree wholly, however, with the notion that all the failures of students should be internalized by instructors. it is that mentality, i think, that has led to the grade inflation and unprepared students we see today. students are young adults who should be expected to reach a certain level of performance, whatever their backgrounds or motivations, and we as teachers should not give too many A's for effort. we should provide all students with the chance to learn, try to encourage and foster a curiosity in them that facilitates life-long learning, have the skills and insight to see that something might not be working and the malleability to make changes, and worry when more than the usual number of students don't do well. but we shouldn't make it all our own fault. it's alright to acknowledge that some students (some people! for godssake -- some managers, investors, musicians, etc.) want to take shortcuts, want to go out instead of reading, want to watch tv, or want to put in their time for four years. if we can't reach those kids and if they don't excel in our classes, it's not our fault. it's theirs. and i think we tragically short-change students when we take that responsibility away from them rather than taking the opportunity to teach them about the consequences of their choices.

the operative phrase in the first paragraph is "despite trying hard." when our students see us for help, turn in homework, read assignments, and generally are active in their educations, most succeed, at least to their own degrees. those who choose not to succeed usually do not. those choices are theirs to make.

the choices that are mine to make i do make. i have revised a syllabus that worked beautifully one semester halfway through another because it did not work with the next group of students. i have created alternative assignments for students who needed to learn differently from their peers in class. i have thrown out assignments when nearly none of my students completed them properly, assuming (probably correctly) that my instructions were unclear, and am always happy to listen to the complaints, concerns, and advice of students in my classes. before semester-end evaluations, i always ask students to consider beforehand what worked and what didn't in class so that i have a chance to reflect on the semester from their perspectives rather than having only the scantron likert scale responses to decipher. it's not a lack of introspection you see here, definer. it is a lack of willingness to take responsibility away from the people it rightfully belongs to.

mmn

by the way, chipotle's website is a super-duper example of bad design at work, what vincent flanders would call mystery meat navigation. notice the way you're not sure what to click on that main page -- the giant floating burrito? the tiny, avocado-popping pepper? the avocado slices that i touch only by accident to find later are the navigation tool? wtf?

pretty does not equal useful.

file under grodie

so, i'm watching cash in the attic on bbcamerica and the nice wife selling her heirlooms (see: crap) for a painting to hang in the living room strolls out of the kitchen with what she thinks is a gravy boat. turns out, it's not a gravy boat at all (the telltale lack of a spout should have given it away) but is instead a victorian piss pot.

chauncy (my eighteenth tv boyfriend) tells alistair (my nineteenth tv and twelfth gay boyfriend) that it was so dearly painted and shaped like a gravy boat because it would have been displayed and used (!) in the dining room. why get up from the table to piss when you could hold this pot down there and do your business without missing a thing?

those poor servants. if i had to travel back in time, i'd beg for my sense of smell to be taken away first, i think.

house wines

inga and i have been looking for a house wine for ourselves. our criteria: (a) versatile, (b) tasterific, and (c) under $8/bottle. we think we have a winner.

pepperwood grove pinot noir. supergood. very drinkable. from a good winery. and cheap, cheap, cheap. with a mail-in rebate and our cheap liquor store, we figure we can get a case for under $40. which is obviously crazy, and so we're excited!

don sebastiani & sons winery seems to have a good sense of humor, and we enjoy their aquinas, smoking loon, and screw kappa napa labels as well.

too much of a good thing?

the other day, inga and i were driving down what counts as our main street and pulled up at a stoplight next to a kid driving a honda. the kid was not remarkable. his car, however, was. he had tiny tv's on the backs of each headrest for his backseat riders and a fold-down tv in the middle behind the roof light for the backseat rider in the middle. inga and i gawked a bit.

then. THEN! he started opening his mail. and he had a package. so we watched. covertly in our ninja way, of course. what was in his package??!? a present from home? cookies? a new pair of pants? a love letter? a cd? a dvd for one of those tv's? a textbook?

no.

it was another tiny tv.

and is that good enough? NO! he started holding it up the way i would hold up a skirt in front of the mirror. up to his own sunvisor. safety first? i think not.

it must be from carrying all those godly moneybags

Pat Robertson is apparently the strongest man ever to live. He claimed on his 700 Club program that he could press 2000 lbs with his legs (what's that move called?). After reasonable people scoffed, he posted this video. With skillz like that, he should stop asking for donations to save Katrina victims and go down himself to carry whole houses out of the danger zone.



Am I the only dirty bird who's grossed-out giggling at those noises?

diet tips

inspired by shakespeare's sister, i hunted down nutrition facts on some of the food choices we have 'round here. and "round" seems to be the best descriptor of here, considering these "nutrition" facts. a sampling:

in case you need a touchstone, a 2000-calorie diet calls for less than 400 calories from fat, less than 65g fat, less than 20g saturated fat, and less than 2400mg sodium.

1. chipotle burrito with rice, chicken, corn salsa, cheese, sour cream, and guacamole: 1294 calories, 512 calories from fat (cff), 62g fat, 20.5g saturated fat, and 3021mg sodium
2. 4 chipotle crispy tacos with fajita vegetables, rice, red tomato salsa, cheese, sour cream, and lettuce: 1173 cal, 467 cff, 53g fat, 19g sat fat, and 2852mg sodium
3. qdoba cheese quesadilla: 915 cal, 510 cff, 56g fat, 26g sat fat, and 1940mg sodium
4. qdoba beef and bean burrito with sour cream, salsa, cheese, and lettuce: 1020 cal, 430 cff, 37g fat, 18g sat fat, 2320mg sodium
5. quiznos club sub with no dressing: 799 cal, 216 cff, 24g fat, 0g sat fat, 2568mg sodium
6. 1 slice papa john's cheese pizza: 310 cal, 108 cff, 12g fat, 3.5g sat fat, 770mg sodium
7. panera cream of chicken and wild rice soup: 200 cal, 108 cff, 12g fat, 6g sat fat, 970mg sodium
8. panera bacon turkey bravo: 740 cal, 225 cff, 25g fat, 9g sat fat, 2910mg sodium
9. jimmy john's beach club turkey sub: 819 cal, 40g fat, 9g sat fat, 1584mg sodium
10. jimmy john's gourmet veggie club: 1084 cal, 65g fat, 23g sat fat, 1665mg sodium

damn.

it's telling that chipotle doesn't display their nutrition facts openly. you have to click in the faq's and download a pdf that shows only the facts about individual ingredients. thanks, chipotle, for the forthrightness. but they're right -- factory farms do suck.

i used chipotlefan's calculator and calorieking.com to come up with these numbers if they weren't readily available on the company websites.

ywaah.

i realized a few months ago what it is i hate HATE about the alterna-emo-"punk" bands of the past few years.

it's that goddamned accent. those long, whiny, fronted vowels. yech.

its likly two bee won you loose at school

i can think of a few people who need this book

catharsis for all of us

Post Secret online.

And the book, which I flip through every time I'm in any bookstore.

what the sh**

megan, an old grad school friend, sent me an email with photos of this julian beever character's street art. it's amazing, really, what some people can do with some colored sticks and a lot of time.



speaking of bands

dynamite hack. you might remember their cover of "boyz 'n tha hood" from a few years ago. the link above starts playing music immediately, so watch out.

also interesting, in a smallish sort of way, is the trend towards myspace pages by real-life bands. i'm so behind these times.

arctic who?

the arctic monkeys have been being hailed as the new musical messiahs, but i just don't see the appeal. a few weeks (months?) ago, npr's music critic tuned us in to a british band called clearlake, whom he says deserves the hype the a.m. are getting today. i think he might be right.

no deal!

alright, so on some monday nights, i've been known not to change the channel when deal or no deal comes on. it's the epitome of gameshowness: no talent is required; excess greed is punished by increased risk of failure; suspense is totally manufactured. see exhibit one:



who has something to say about it?

catch-up

Inga will be so proud. Stella is finally catching up on her blogging. And procrastinating on the deadline she missed yesterday. I've kept notes, sadly, so some of these here posts will be a wee bit anachronistic. But so what?

24 May 2006

AMEN

from http://gazpachot.blogspot.com/2006/05/it-was-fun-while-it-lasted.html :
Dude, it's time. Girls, you too. Time to pack up the whole in-your-face, raw, hyper-sexualized, porno, skater, white trash, open wounds, self-effacing, Jackass, loose ethics, 80's bar mitzvah disco, and party-till-you vomit movement, aesthetic and attitude. Go on, scram. Beat it. We don't want you hanging around anymore.
[...]
But it's all over now you beautiful losers. The schtick just comes off as stupid and done. Your hip, modern, rough-hewn, brainless, urban nihilism has been handed over to marketers and sold to the suburbs. Tired. Tired. Ti-erd.
[...]
Try to have the decency to fade into the night and be remembered by your own kids in twenty years. God knows you took enough pictures. They'll be yawning at yet another flash-saturated shot of you getting your boobs sucked by strangers in a crowded Brooklyn bar.

Please. Go. Stop clinging on. Make way for something new. Evolve.

22 May 2006

huh. or: inga speechless. again.

Agatha is my best friend. Over the weekend we realized we've been fast friends for (gasp) 16 years. She lives in the Big City, thus she is one of our many life lines connecting us from small uni-town to the real world. I spent the weekend in the city visiting Agatha and her beau. Stella was in town for part of the time, too. On Saturday, we went to our favorite restaurant. This restaurant is Spanish. It's known for its tapas. Tapas, of course, are small dishes of food meant for sharing. Tapas rock. Seriously. Queso de cabra? Heaven. Jamon serrano? Awesome. Manchego, olives, calamari, croquetas? Do I even need to explain? Tapas in Spain date back to medieval times. The dishes are often passed around family-style. Any tapas restaurant serves food in this manner. At our favorite Spanish restaurant, they're known for the best tapas around. Many articles have been written about them. The restaurant is well-known.

So, sure, I imagine there are people who come in off the street without a clue as to how to enjoy tapas. I remember being a little overwhelmed the first time I ate at a traditional Ethiopian restaurant, but I took my cues from my date and from people around us. And, yes, yes, yes, there are times at the sushi place I resort to not using my chopsticks. But the display we witnessed Saturday afternoon takes the cake.

Scene: the restaurant bar.
Witnesses: Stella, Agatha, myself

We are sitting at our table, drinking sangria and sharing various tapas - we have croquetas, jamon iberico, ensalada mixta. We have little plates in front of us. There's fresh bread and olive oil. We're listening to poppy Spanish videos. Life is good.

And then...the door opens and in breeze three college-aged girls, maybe in their early twenties. They've got lots of make-up and oddly unfashionable suits. They order sangria. Then one orders calamari. One orders gambas. One orders a chicken salad - "but I want ranch dressing," she says. The waiter leans in close. "I'm sorry?" he asks. "Ranch. Give me ranch on my salad." He smiles, sweeps away, his face contorted into a mask of confusion.

The girls drink their sangria. They smoke. They look around, zone in on the older couple at the bar, roll their eyes. They're looking for handsome Spanish boys. It's about eight hours too early for that. The salad comes out.

"Can I have an extra side of ranch?" the girl asks. The waiter disappears. He returns with a side of dressing and the calamari.

"We're waiting on the shrimp," one girl says impatiently. The waiter nods, sweeps away again. Salad girl dumps the extra dressing on the salad, begins eating. With her mouth open. And while they all continue smoking.

The waiter brings us another plate of tapas. As he turns to go, one of the girls motions him over. "Shrimps," she says, "we're still waiting on that shrimp." They look impatient. They don't understand tapas at all. Just when we wonder if it can get any worse, Stella kicks me under the table.

"Look," she hisses quietly, non-chalantly motioning towards the girls with her head. "The salad chomper is picking her nose."



censorship ~ alive and well in the suburbs!

Phew! Thank god there's someone in the suburbs willing to take a stand against all that awful literature that seeks to destroy the minds of today's youth! why focus on the real problems when we can focus on word play of kate chopin, tim o'brien, and toni morrison?

seriously. are we going to have to launch footloose redux?

14 May 2006

the high life

so inga is a high school drop out. i have no shame. high school was boring and i didn't like it. happily, i had parents who realized dropping out would not be the end of the world. so i left school at 16 and worked part time at an ice arena (in those days i was a competitive figure skater) and took college classes. a couple of decades and two university degrees later, and i'm doing quite well for myself.

my high school memories are hazy, considering how long ago it was and the fact that i was there for like an hour and a half. what do i remember? my first high school crush was a kid we called mr. recovery, mostly because he was just, uh, out of rehab. i ate little debbie zebras and had a coke every day at lunch (how i managed to weigh under 100 well into my 20s i'll never know). lunch from the cafeteria wasn't special or good. the principal and vice principal were allowed to paddle the bad kids. drinks and food were banned from classrooms. my freshman english teacher supposedly wrote porn under a nom de plume. no one was allowed in the halls between classes. i dated the undercover narc (that's a story for another time). teachers and administrators seemed strict. since i grew up in __________, my high school was in a well to do neighborhood.

why do i bring this up? because stella and i went back to high school last week to do some writerly-type outreach. the high school, in ________________, an affluent suburb of _________________, has only been open for 5 or 6 years. it's huge. it takes forever to get from one end to the other. we were there on behalf of our friend Lang, who is an english teacher there. we were talking with his college-prep students about writing. nice kids. insane school. i mean, if my high school was like this one, maybe i'd have stayed all four years. maybe i'd be married to a dentist or something now.

so what's up with this school, inga? you ask.

visitors can roam around the halls without worrying about getting stopped. sure, we had on badges with 'visitor' written in marker stuck to our chests, but seriously. who can't fake one of those?

the cafeteria is open ALL DAY. and students can stop by ANY time, ALL day and get a snack or coffee or a soda. and the coffee? gourmet. eight flavors to choose from. designer creamers. five kinds of sugar.

the students kind of showed up, chatted, showed us their work (happily, many kids displayed the critical thinking/writing skills they'll need when they reach college...sadly, many kids did not), chatted some more, wandered off. some with hall passes, some without. yes, yes, Lang totally reprimanded the kids without passes, but still. it was crazy. unlocked doors everywhere. more than adequate student parking. there was lots of prom talk. lots of totally expensive purses on the girls' shoulders and expensive 'worn' jeans on the boys.

dress code? ha! there were shorts, mini skirts, tank tops, t-shirts with beer logos.

the only rules? no cell phones. no tobacco. at least not anywhere but in the BMWs and SUVs in the student parking lot.


fiction for sure

classes are over. my grades are in. stella is a little snarkier than usual, as her grades are due tomorrow at 9 am. my creative writing students, for the most part, turned in really nice portfolios, except for the dude whose final story involves a girl in a bathrobe, disheveled and drunk, who we spend three quarters of story worried about, as the plot points seem to lean toward her having been raped. but nooooo. she's actually humiliated and aghast with herself for trying to masterbate with a drill and getting her clitoris stuck in the drill bit. uh huh. the story ends with her alone in an examining room, the laughing stock of the hospital. happily, it was a terribly written story, with little to no character development, no real conflict/resolution, and poor word choice, thus i was able to give it the grade it truly deserved.

stella posed a good question - why didn't dude decide to workshop this particular story? why did he save it for the portfolio?

and here's my advice for would-be fiction writers: just because your instructor is a girl who is relatively young and cute, don't assume you'll SHOCK and CONFUSE and INTIMIDATE her with stories about (gasp!) characters having sex!!!!! chances are that she's been having sex longer (and better) than you have and, given her exploits of the past, she won't be shocked by anything.

unless, of course, you turn in a badly written/conceived story about a girl masturbating with a drill. then your instructor will be shocked, but only because of how bad the writing really is.

10 May 2006

ha!

this morning at work, as i was reading the news before my morning session, i note, aloud, that britney spears is 'officially' pregnant again. stella laughed and rolled her eyes. and sonja, our boss, said, in all seriousness, 'well, i hope she doesn't drop this one.' awesome.

but seriously. she slept with k-fed again? that's just wrong. don't get inga wrong. inga loves those boys with tats. and jewelry. but k-fed? good lord.

por favor

in the words of our favorite gay spaniard, por favor, stella! i would just like to say that while i agree whole heartedly with stella about boots in winter, i must disagree with what she announced last week she was going to do: wear socks and sneakers to walk to work, then change into her cute shoes once she got there.

uh, guess who will be walking alone?

socks and sneakers? who are we, middle-aged women livin' in the city?

ick.

sleepy stella does not a good police-caller make

early this morning, i was woken from a sound sleep by what sounded like someone kicking in a door or beating something and by the repeated shouts to "STOP IT!" i sleep in the front bedroom, which is usually inundated with sounds from the street but relatively immune to the sounds from the back of the house, where inga sleeps. the beating was coming from the back. it was loud enough to wake me, so inga was obviously up as well.

so, in the wee hours of the morning, i stumbled out of bed and down the stairs and called the police. from the reaction and repeated questions of the dispatcher, i was apparently not as coherent as i'd like to believe. apparently, i'm not good at saying numbers out loud when disoriented by sleep. or at saying street names. or at describing sounds. and apparently i sound bitchy.

when i finally got it all out and woke up enough to hear myself talking, i tried to explain that i'd been sleeping and that i was sorry if i'd been unhelpful or short. the dispatcher sort of chuckled -- i'm now thinking the sleeping explanation was unneccessary.

the good(ish) news is that we're giving a good neighbor point back to the hot-tub house. when inga snuck to the corner to determine where the altercation was, she saw the hot-tub-house guy on his cell phone too -- we'll assume it was with the police.

a final note: neither of the dogs made a sound. i'm feeling so protected.

09 May 2006

well...not quite

okay, so i agree with almost everything in inga's "what will i snark?" list. in fact, i helped compile it. so stella so agrees! except with the sensible shoes thing.

we need sensible shoes! wintertime is a time for boots! not ugly boots, but boots still! i have some cute-ass boots, and even if they were hideous, i'd wear them over some flip-flops or sandals in the fucking snow.

so, yes. i'll diss the kids (and ingas! ::eek!::) who won't wear weather-appropriate shoes.

yes, i will.

america's next top model words to live by

1. Stomach flu -- that's the worst pain in the world -- but I just have to model through it.

2. Being next to that elephant, I felt like I was with the dinosaurs. They are members of the dinosaur family, you know.

3. The elephants are so preposterous, so big. (This would be a good little, almost poetic, thing to say, did we not have a history of vocab faux-pas from this character.)

responding to (this next part's a link)a post by Thesaurus

so anyone in academia, or teaching for that matter, knows that sometimes you get engaged, thoughtful, hardworking students, and sometimes you get unmotivated, uninterested students who are biding time. last semester, i assigned a pretty tough reading assignment early on in the semester. it was the sort of essay in which students really needed to pay attnetion to the rhetoric and the words - and, in many cases, they needed to look up the definitions of some words to understand the context in which they were used in the essay. on the day the reading was due, i gave students a pop quiz on vocabulary. my students looked surprised. when i asked for definitions of words like 'wifery' and 'husbandry.' None of the 25 students sitting before me could define the words. i went on to explain that i expected them to look up words, define them, and understand their contexts whenever they read anything, whether for class or not. one girl rolled her eyes visibly and raised her hand. 'do you mean you expect us to do this every time we read anything for your class?' the look of disdain and utter disbelief on her face was rivaled only by mine. why wouldn't you want to take the time to learn the words and ideas you don't already know? isn't that what college is about?

for every student i have who defines his/her words, who strives to understand the concepts, who wants to take his/her learning to the next level, i have three, four, or five who don't. it's a sad state of affairs in american higher education. how many students come to school unprepared for the critical thinking and reading they need to do? how many students wait until the last moment to write their papers, visit the libraries, do their research? how many students hope to slip by and don't feel any need to strive to expand their horizons?

if i don't attempt humor to alleviate the stress or the disbelief at the state of higher education, i'll cry. and frankly, what kind of snarky girl cries for her students or admits a soft spot? what kind of snarky girl meets students one on one for 50+ hours a week? or extends deadlines for her students who are struggling to let go of gang life and who realize a college education, despite their deficiencies, is their only way out? what kind of snarky girl reads through a 200 page text, quizzing a student on vocabulary so she'll be prepared for the exam she needs to pass in order to graduate? this isn't snark. this is real life. this is life every day where stella and i work.

so seriously. i'll diss the students who show up in flip flops and use the word dis in every sentence. i'll diss the students whose sex lives rival carrie's on SITC. i'll diss the kids who flippantly ask stella why grammar matters anyways, since they're going into business. who won't i diss? the student who graduated as validictorian of her high school and couldn't spell to save her life - but who came to visit stella or me every day of every week for the four years she was in school. who else won't i diss? the mother of two whose husband has treated her like shit for the twenty years they've been married, whose self-esteem is non-existent, but who persists through two degrees and takes classes just because they might help her learn something she's not good at yet. i won't diss the grad student in counseling from China, who puts in so many hours each week going to class, stuyding, and working his internship that he rarely sees his wife, who i won't diss either, as she, forbidden from taking classes because she is merely in the states as her husband's wife, but is a published author and former teacher in both china and south korean, sits in on classes, unoffically auditing, just to practice her english.

so who will i (and stella!) snark on?

the lazy.
the unprepared.
the entitled.
the 'my frat/sorority' is more imporant than school.
the contemptuously stupid.
the actively uninformed.
the racist.
the eyerollers.
the holier-than-thou.
the wanna-be-band-kids.
the hot tub-in-my-driveway idiots.
my ex-boyfriends who suck (and no, inga is not a fem-nazi! some of her exes are quite lovely, right definer?).
the unquestioning religious.
the people who wear really ugly, 'weather' appropriate shoes.
the people over 10 who wear cartoon characters on their clothing. in public. and in the bedroom.
the people who want to leave for japan (i'm talkin' to you, dev!)
the people who watch 'the view' and/or 'oprah.'
the people who hate rye because he's a puppy.
the boys who eat shellfish and then want to kiss me (seriously, not cute. more like homicidal!).
the people who think 'lost' is dumb.
friends who act like jackasses.
people who think rent paid to me is not for my own personal spending (and that's not stella!).


oh, and stellas, who, when asked to read through for GRAMMAR! say 'oh, is okay, inga, looking good' and when we post, suddenly find lots of spelling/grammar problems! you suck, stella, SUCK!


08 May 2006

Hajimemashite



You need Quicktime.

07 May 2006

seriously freakish.

this does not make me feel very good. at all.

06 May 2006

sure do

know some people who've obviously read this soyouwanna page.

while we're at it

get a sense of humor, man.

ABC leaked a feed of the President's reaction to Colbert's speech last weekend. We linked to Video Dog last week with the speech. Here is your president. He's a buzz-kill on top of it all!

05 May 2006

huh. or: why kids like this should not strive to be economists

so a student comes in the last day of classes to work on his senior econ capstone. all semester stella and i have worked with students in this class. they've had the assignment for 15 weeks. it's a big deal. they can't graduate without it. it's a formal research paper on an economic theory. some of the papers have been pretty interesting. this particular one? scary. seriously scary.

of course dude's hat is on backwards and he's got his flip flops and mentions his frat brothers not once, not twice, but like sixteen times. i notice, in flipping through his paper, that it's pretty short and lacks any sign of documentation and integration of sources. when i ask what kind of help he needs, he says, "well, uh, i mean, a lot. it's due tomorrow." this i know. i press him for some specifics. "well, uh, the analysis. and my teacher made comments like he wants me to do more or something." i give a cursory look at the professor's comments - yep, he definitely wants more, as in 'explain x' and 'describe how z fits into y' and 'i think this paper needs to be more theory based.'

okay. dued is on board with this one, he sees he needs to develop his ideas further. great. adding sources, i suggest, would help, since it seems as though he hasn't cited at all.

"well, no, not really, i mean essentially i'm just dealing with general knowledge in my paper, and you don't gotta cite general stuff." he's getting ready to graduate and all. he's been busy.

i stare for what, i realize now, is an uncomfortably long time. many thoughts run through my head. none of them are appropriate. finally i sigh. this is your capstone, i remind him. you know, your senior research project. you really need to use sources. they need to be integrated into your paper.

"you think? really?"

i smile. uh huh. i think.

"how long is this gonna take me to do this all, do you think?" he asks at the end of our 50 minutes together. we've made it through a page and a half.

when is it due?

"oh, dude, like tomorrow."

i smile.

seriously? dude is like going to join the working world any second now? as someone with a econ degree?


04 May 2006

pop quiz

scenario: you approach a schedule book with several columns, one for each person with whom you may make an appointment. Some boxes are empty and uncolored (white); some of these white boxes have names of appointment-holders written in them in pencil; some are grayed out; none of the grayed-out boxes has a name written in it.

question: where would you write your name to schedule an appointment?

answers (choose 1):
a. in an empty white box
b. erase a name from a filled white box and replace it with my name
c. in a grayed-out box
d. who needs an appointment? i'm the king of the universe and you exist only to serve me whenever i feel honoring you with my presence. you'll be lucky if i let you "help" me.

solution:
let me tell you what the answer is not. it's not b or d. the number of people who don't seem to understand that if a person got to the appointment first, the appointment is that first person's. and the number of people who think that we should drop everything we're doing and everyone else we're helping to jump up to serve them is staggering. and offensive.

still, those "answers" are just based on general rudeness, which i can handle to some extent. rude people respond to one of three responses: (1) overbearing kindness that makes them recognize how shitty they're being, (2) retaliatory rudeness, or (3) sarcasm. my favorite #3 is this: "sure i'll squeeze you in. here: look at the schedule book, choose the name you like least, and i'll erase the name of the person who planned ahead and made an appointment a month ago so that you, who did no planning whatsoever, can get your extra credit." then, the key is to stare coldly while the wheels creak around in mr/ms. entitled's head until s/he finally says, "oh." "oh" is right, you selfish ass.

the other incorrect option is d. and this one chaps my hide because it's just based on stupidity. why would we have two different colors on the schedule? because it's prettier? why would no one else have signed up on the gray boxes? wtf?

sadly, it was d i had to deal with last night. a girl came in. she saw that we had circled her name in the book. she became irritated. i explained that she had signed up where no one was available to help her. she asked how she was to know that. i said that we thought it rather intuitive. she said it wasn't. i said that in five years we've had no mistakes. she said we should have a sign. i asked if she'd taken the time to read all of the rest of the signs in the room already. she said no. i asked why she thought, then, that she'd have read the explanation of the very complicated white-gray boxes system. she got pissed. i got pissed. (it had been my third 10+-hour day this week.) i came back to my senses and told her that we'd arranged for her to have a space with a ****. (btw, i'm the one who advocated for her to get that spot. inga and others have such little tolerance for idiocy that they said not to give her anything and to send her away. ironic, no?) she asked who her **** would be. i told her. she asked who that was. i pointed. she said, "good. because i don't want it to be you." i nearly lost it. but walked away instead. i was in the mental and emotional place to have what is commonly called a "bitch fight" right then and there, and methinks that such behavior might be inappropriate in the supervisory staff member of the night.

i'm so through with people who can't follow the most basic instructions or figure out the most intuitive (non)problems and then get pissed off that the world doesn't stop to solve the problems created by their stupidity. fuck them.

unveiling Inga's new boyfriend

Inga ~ Your new boyfriend is ... (let me have Stephen get him:)




Mark Smith! Who is that, you ask? He's the AP reporter who booked Stephen Colbert to the press association dinner. You can even take a peek -- he's the guy who introduces Colbert before his shining brilliance sweeps over the planet.

Toldja.

02 May 2006

that time of year

the semester, thank god, is almost over. it's been crazy. and now, with the year dwindling to an end, my job is driving me crazy. sure, it's something completely curable with large doses of sunning and reading and drinking wine; i fully expect to get over the semester's ill effects by mid-June. But until then, let's review, shall we?

exhibit a - a student who has been using APA her entire college career asked for an MLA handout. por que, i inquired. so she could make sure her citations were correct because she always uses MLA. what occured next was a snark fight, in the most polite terms, between the two of us. no, i said. you always use APA. no, she said. i use mla. do not. do, too. do not. and voila. look down. yes, yes. APA. stella will be proud - i held my tongue from proclaiming 'na na na na na na!'

you can graduate without realizing the citation style your discipline has required of you for all of your major classes?

exhibit b - a doctoral student came in to work. i asked what course she was coming in for. she replied, full of snark, 'it's not a class. it's for my dissertation." hmm. later, when is sat down, i coyly said, 'dissertations are part of a class. 699 is indicative of dissertation hours.' there! got her. she is indeed enrolled in a class! but for what discipline? i asked her. she shrugged. you know, i hedged, your department, your discipline, the letters in front of the numbers of your classes. i'm not in classes. i know, i know, i get it - but when you were, what were the letters? she shrugged again. there was a pause. our impasse was clear. what is your discipline? i asked again, clearly vexed. not one to be bullied, though, she shrugged again. i don't know, they changed the name of it a year ago.

so, really? you can honestly be writing a dissertation if you don't have a clue as to what department you're in?

exhibit c - stella announced to her students that if they wanted her to review an assignment before it was due, they had to call and arrange appointments with her. many of her students did. a fair amount didn't and will live with the consequences, whatever they may be. a dozen or so emailed her their papers last night to see if she'd read through them 'real quick.'

really? you can not heed the advice 'call and make an appointment to see me in person' but you can expect the same results via email?

exhibit d - my class had a work night yesterday. we met in the computer lab and the students who showed up worked hard and diligently workshopping one another's work. during the course of class three students emailed to explain why they were absent - one did not feel well and said she'd see me next class with her finished portfolio. one said she did not feel well, but would stop by to see me to discuss revision (ha! i'm completely booked through next week!). one attached her draft and said she had a sinus headache but would like my comments or a classmate's comments emailed back to her.

really? you can not show up and do two and a half hours worth of work, but expect someone to go ahead and do the work for you?

exhibit e - but beautiful gracie really summed it up well for me this morning. she called from ___________ where she is _________________. _____________, of course, is quite an A1 ______________. and she's going crazy. her students seem to need more hand holding this spring than all of Stella's grammar students put together (and trust me, that's a bunch of grammar students!). we sympathized with each other. we grumbled. then grace said the words that made my blood run cold: 'well, when students' tuition per year is more than my yearly salary, i guess they expect some handholding.'

so you can really teach at a place where students pay more to learn than you're paid to enlighten?

and they wonder what's the matter with higher education. or lower education, for that matter.

verdict: summer cannot get here soon enough.


great.

it's news like this that makes me really consider finding a sugar daddy. i mean, i'm stylish & smart. or maybe i could quit my job and go to law school? hmm. maybe it's not too late to go back in time, grow an extra 5 inches in height and a few cup sizes in the chest, and then i could be an international super model, raking in $10,000 to just get out of bed, and then it wouldn't matter if medicare or social security runs out well before i'm ready to retire. or maybe i could become a heroin addict and, you know, die young and crazy of a horrible overdoes, alone and destitute in some hellish backroom, rats scavenging off my decaying flesh, nibbling my finger nails. or maybe i could marry bill o'reilly. i bet he's got enough money to cover medical bills and the high lifestyle post-retirement. then again, maybe the heroin.

01 May 2006

why i love stephen colbert...

...or, at the very least, why i love the person responsible for getting him this gig.