seanshannon.org

Inhuman

2009-06-09T14:52:00.002-04:00

Although I don't live in Monroe County, I make an effort to stay up-to-date on news from the area since I work there, and I try to integrate my students' immediate environment and news into my classroom teachings as best I can. Most of them hate writing -- and after hearing about their high school experiences, I can hardly blame them -- so if they have to write, I try to at least steer them towards topics that they care about, to help them with the difficult task of writing.

This past month, the biggest news story to come from Monroe County was the disappearance of a five-year-old girl by the name of Nevaeh Buchanan. Within the past week the body of a little girl matching Nevaeh's description was found in a shallow grave near the River Raisin. Although autopsy results are still pending to determine whether or not it is Nevaeh's body, the press and others are talking about the matter as if it's already been determined that it is Nevaeh's body. Monroe County is already a tight-knit community as it is, and the recent economic downturn has hit the region very hard. Under ordinary circumstances, Nevaeh's murder would be a county-wide tragedy. With the region devastated in so many other ways already, her death has been nothing short of crippling.

All of this would have been bad enough in and of itself. I can't even begin to imagine how Nevaeh's parents have felt these past few weeks, questioning every little thing they said and did before Nevaeh's disappearance, and trying to come to terms with the possibility that their daughter was dead, a possibility that grew as each horrible day passed and they heard no word on their daughter's whereabouts. The loss of any family member is devastating, but when the family member is so young, it is all the more painful. It is hard to believe that anyone would ever want to compound a grieving family's death by heaping abuse and scorn on them, especially when the loss is still so fresh, the wounds still open.

Unfortunately, it appears that no one told the Buchanans about Nancy Grace, because they went on her show last night, and Nancy Grace ripped them a new one for what she perceived as their "mistakes" that led to Nevaeh's disappearance and presumptive death. That Grace has done this before is not news; in fact, in 2006, shortly after Grace pilloried her on national television for supposedly not being open enough about the recent disappearance of her two-year-old son, Melinda Duckett committed suicide. I don't watch Grace's show, but I heard of the Duckett incident on other news broadcasts, and I can remember thinking back then that Grace's conduct was, to say the least, reprehensible. Now it's hitting home in a way that it didn't back then, and I can't recall being this angry at a public figure in years.

That the parents were already second-guessing their actions goes without saying; in the face of any great tragedy, nearly all of us can't help but question if the tragedy could have been avoided if we'd done even the smallest thing just a little bit differently. It should also go without saying whenever a little boy or girl disappears, the police have to treat the parents as suspects and interrogate them, as best as the circumstances allow, to rule them out as potentially being involved in the disappearance; we have seen it happen enough in the media in the past two decades, and while we recognize that it is a necessary part of police work, that doesn't mean that we have to be comfortable about it happening. That the Nevaeh Buchanan tragedy serves as a lesson to parents of young children to be more careful about monitoring their children and teaching them to be vigilant about strangers also, quite literally, goes without saying; in all the news stories about Nevaeh's disappearance, parents and children have been quick to say that they would be a lot more careful about these things from now on.

I do not know what possesses Nancy Grace to think that she should use these tragedies to shout out the lessons to be learned from them that are so obvious, let alone to do so in a way that abuses and humiliates parents who are just coming off of the worst possible tragedy one can imagine young parents could go through. As much as I desire to understand the human mind and all of its facets, there are simply some aspects of it that are too dark, too sadistic for me to want to understand. What Nancy Grace's motivations for her actions are, I won't dare to guess and won't comment on. What I can say beyond any doubt, however, is that her actions themselves are, to put it mildly, monstrous and inhuman. That Nancy Grace was allowed to continue hosting her television show after Melinda Duckett's suicide is incomprehensible. Now that she has repeated the same actions that led to Duckett's suicide on another grieving family, I think it is the obligation of every American who has even half a heart to demand that CNN pull Nancy Grace off of its airwaves immediately and permanently. Nancy Grace has the right to say whatever she wants to say about the Buchanan tragedy, but that doesn't mean CNN, or any other television network, has an obligation to televise such abusive, disgusting behaviour towards grieving parents.

Gaming Vicariously

2009-05-12T16:32:00.002-04:00

After getting my Wii last autumn, I played it a fair bit, especially after I got Wii Fit for it. (Like with my dance games, though, I really don't think of Wii Fit as "playing a video game" because for me it's exercise.) As much as I don't like using my Gamecube controller to play Virtual Console games, there's no denying that the downloadable games were one of the main selling points of the system to me. I've bought more than a handful of Virtual Console and WiiWare games, whereas apart from Wii Fit, the only packaged game I've bought for my Wii so far is Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Not only are the downloadable games a lot less expensive, but they've been a lot more fun for me as well.

Unfortunately, video gaming just isn't as enjoyable for me as it once was. I hardly played any video games at all from February through April -- this included breaking my use of Wii Fit, much to my chagrin -- and my systems are, quite literally, collecting dust in a corner of my room right now. After ending this past semester, though, I fired my Wii back up and downloaded a few new games, most notable Dr. Mario Online Rx. Dr. Mario wasn't exactly my favourite puzzle game when I was younger, but it was definitely up there. I've really gotten back into it -- I've had some games go close to two hours long -- but at the same time I've tried playing online, and I keep getting slaughtered. (Worse yet, when I am about to win games, quite often my opponents disconnect, rendering the game a draw.) I know that I should expect that my video game performance should degrade as I play games less and less -- I've blogged about this before -- but for some reason there's still a part of me that feels sad, and sometimes gets irritated, over this fact. Even if video games don't matter that much to me any longer, it still bothers me that I'm not that good at them. (Not that I was ever in any contention to be a video game champion in my prime, but at least I was a lot better then.)

What I've found myself doing lately is gravitating towards videos of people playing video games on YouTube. In addition to just watching people play through the games, I've become fascinated by tool-assisted speedruns, or TASes, where players literally slow the game down frame-by-frame and exploit every bug in the game to run through a game at superhuman speed; they're quite astonishing when replayed back at "normal" speed. I've also enjoyed videos where the players add their own commentary, although, like so many other things, Canada seems to have cornered the market on quality in this regard, with Proton Jon and Azura being the two who entertain me the most.

At the same time, though, the fact that I've been watching people play video games more than play them myself makes me wonder about how I've changed these past few years. Although I still play video games, it seems that by focusing more on watching these videos, in a way I'm kind of saying to myself that my video game-playing days are over, and video gaming is something more for "other people" to do now. Granted, I have much more serious things to worry about than video games now, but it wouldn't be that hard for me to make more time for video games if I wanted to. I don't want to, though. I've found many other things I'd rather do than play video games, and while some of them are quite enjoyable (stop snickering), most of them aren't as meaningful to me and my past as video games are. It seems like everywhere I look, I find more evidence of how I'm changing as a person, and although I know that change is a huge part of life, I still want to fight it, especially as I'm watching the trees I played on in my childhood be cut down day by day right now. I guess it's only natural that under these circumstances, I'm pining for other things from my childhood right now.

Satan Enters Through Your Loins

2009-05-08T13:36:00.003-04:00

Ohio Christian school tells student to skip prom (AP via Yahoo! News)

Just when I thought this part of the country couldn't get more bad press after dealing with "Joe the Plumber" for the past six months, something like this has to pop up. In all seriousness, this is a news story I would expect to see in a newspaper from forty or fifty years ago, not in 2009. I'm not trying to be disrespectful of religious beliefs here, but at the same time, there is no doubt in my mind that, in this instance, Heritage Christian School is severely overstepping its bounds here by threatening to suspend Tyler Frost for engaging in legal activities on his own time. If the school wants to ban dancing or rock music on its own property, as much as I may disagree with their reasons for doing so, I can respect that as their right. When they threaten to punish a student for things he does off of campus grounds on his own time -- again, this is rock music and dancing we're talking about, not illegal drug use or drunk driving -- and even withhold him from his class' graduation procession, then I get angry and nauseated.

This was kind of a big issue for me growing up. I began having political leanings around the time I was in my junior high years, and some of my classmates from those years stopped going to the private school I went to after junior high, transfering to the various religious high schools around here. In almost every instance, when I saw the students later, they had become severely withdrawn, and their willpower and self-identity had nearly vanished. (One of the schools some students transfered to, Notre Dame Academy, was the same school Katie Holmes went to, to give you a reference point.) Children's rights became a big issue for me then, as these episodes cemented in my mind that children should have the right to practice their own religions, irrespective of their parents' beliefs. I was lucky enough to live in a household where my parents never pushed religion on me, except to learn about what was out there and make my own determination about what would work best for me. I think that's a right every young person should have, and this news story just reinforces, to me, the reasons for that.

Although I haven't thought too much recently about the episodes from my own youth, this is a topic I definitely deal with as a teacher. I try not to talk about my own beliefs -- religious, political, or otehrwise -- when I teach, and I always make a point to say on the first day of class that I grade based on the strength of an argument, irrespective of its position. I've assigned countless As to papers whose positions I wholeheartedly disagree with, because even though I disagree with the positions, the papers were written very persuasively, and deserved As. I often argue against my own beliefs in class when the need arises, because I want to encourage my students to think through opposing viewpoints, the whole Socratic Method thing. What I've noticed, though, is that for many students who come from these religious schools, who have had religion pounded into their heads from such an early age, when confronted with beliefs that are contrary to their own, not only do they show the same refusal to accept that people can hold different views that so nauseates me about modern conservative discourse, but some of them are even blown away by that fact, and get a glazed-over look in their eyes as I or other students explain the rationales behind the opposing viewpoints.

This just makes me worry all the more about our future as a country, because right now our education system is failing on all levels. No Child Left Behind and the rash of state proficiency exams that started twenty years ago have taken education out of the hands of the teachers, with education's goals and the methods taken to get there being put in the hands of people who have no training in education at all, no concept of how young people learn and what they need to know to function in our society. The financial "race to the bottom" has not only destroyed the arts programmes of countless schools to give students no creative outlets (because, after all, creativity encourages free thinking), but to cut costs students are often evaluated only by Scantron tests; you don't want to know how many students I've had who literally were never expected to write anything in high school. Corporate America has already trampled public schools with its sponsorships, further taking control away from teachers and further indoctrinating young people into consumer culture, and the charter schools that some (including President Obama) promote are about a thousand times worse in that regard.

One of my missions as a teacher is to open my students' minds to the realities and possibilities that are out there in this world. On the secular level, that's already being made painfully difficult by how high schools are turning into places where students are expected to do nothing but rote memorization of rules and nuggets of information deemed important by people who have no connection with the reality of today's youth, and hardly any connection at all with greater reality. Religious schools are even worse, as many students from those schools actively resist being exposed to beliefs and views that are in opposition to those they've been indoctrinated in for all of their lives. If we don't allow young people to vote until they turn eighteen because we don't think they have the capacity to make sound decisions until then, how can we say that they have the ability to choose their own religion? We need to take a serious look at the role religious schools play in this country, because it seems like a strong case could be made to banish those schools. How am I to be expected to open the mind of a young person whose parents, church, and teachers have been welding that mind shut for eighteen years?

More than a toy?

2009-05-07T18:30:00.002-04:00

Back when I first got a cell phone in September of 2001, I got it mainly for emergency purposes. To that end, my cell phone service has more than paid for itself, based solely on an incident in October of the following year when Dad called to tell me that my car was leaking transmission fluid, and that if I'd tried to drive it I probably would have wrecked the whole transmission. There have been other times over the years when I've had to use it for emergency purposes, although I did use it for social purposes a few times back when I was at UT. More recently I've been using it for work purposes -- although I still prefer to communicate by e-mail whenever possible -- and now I'd like to start using my phone to keep in touch with someone I've been spending a fair amount of time with lately. (Tease me about it and I'll delete your comments.)

Unfortunately, I'm once again at the point where I need to buy a new phone. I first bought a real brick of a phone from Verizon, but a couple of years later the battery contacts on the phone went out, and it kept powering down out of nowhere. I switched to Virgin Mobile after that -- they cost less to keep active -- and my first phone from them served me well, until I broke the pin in the phone where the AC adaptor hooked up, and Virgin Mobile told me that it would cost less to buy a new phone than to repair the old one. My current phone is one of their flip camera phones -- I figure having the camera feature qualifies as an "emergency" application since, for example, I could use it to snap photos if I get in a driving accident -- but now the battery just won't hold a charge, and it doesn't always detect when I plug in the AC adaptor. I've had the phone go out on me suddenly during non-emergency use, and the last thing I need is for it to die when I really need to use it.

I'm probably going to stick with Virgin Mobile for now, if for no other reason than because I have a huge bank of rollover minutes built up, and it still only costs me eighty dollars a year to maintain. However, I can't deny feeling a bit of tech envy when it comes to the phones that other carriers provide. All throughout the year I've been hearing that phones that don't have full keyboards are "so three years ago" or what have you, and I still text more than I place calls on the phone, so a full keyboard would be nice. However, Virgin Mobile only offers two phones with keyboards, and both of them only hold fifty text messages. If I'm going to get more active with texting here, then I probably need something with more storage. At the very least, though, I'd want to use up my accumulated minutes on that phone before switching to a new carrier, which makes me wonder if I shouldn't just get one of the ten-dollar phones Virgin offers to use before switching providers.

Realistically speaking, I shouldn't get one of the new super-phones, as they cost so much more to maintain, and I'd have limited use of the extended features. Still, I've been looking at T-Mobile's Android phones and experiencing a good bit of tech envy. I've seen them in use more lately, and as much as I don't necessarily all the cool features they have, I've seen them in use enough to know that they wouldn't just be toys for me; some of the applications have very useful purposes that mesh in well with my needs. Still, I would be looking at $75 a month at least for my service, when I'm not even spending a tenth of that right now on my current plan. My brain tells me that I should just stick with Virgin Mobile for now, put up with the relatively small inconveniences of having a phone that doesn't bake bread and trim my fingernails, and wait until the prices and plans for the super-phones go down. Paying my student loans off and finding a full-time teaching position in the meantime would be nice as well. Still, I can't deny there's a part of my heart that's eager to get something new and shiny and all whiz-bangy. I thought I'd moved past this phase of my life. I guess I'm feeling like a kid again in more ways than one right now.

Let the Colourful Metaphors Fly

2009-05-05T14:57:00.002-04:00

When the first trailers of the new Star Trek movie came out, I noted to myself that I wanted to say something about them. I guess that I was kind of nonplussed by the trailers themselves, except for at the end when it began to play the four-note sequence that started the classic Trek theme songs, played over a modern reenvisioning of the logo of the original television series. For a long time, that part of the trailer sent a chill down my spine. Watching episodes of the oriignal television series with Mom is something I recall quite vividly from childhood, and my parents took me to the openings of the second, third, and fourth movies. I suppose I identify more with Next Generation since it was one of the few good series I could get back before I had cable in my bedroom, but I guess I was a bit of a "trekkie" back in the day. (I use trekkie as opposed to the more "serious" term "trekker" because I wasn't that into Star Trek.) I remember the audio/visual lounge at Antioch being filled for the premiere of Voyager, which was around when my love for all things Trek began to decline. I was in college, I had cable in my bedroom at home, and there was this new thing called the Internet that was giving me access to all sorts of new worlds that I could explore on my own.

Anyway, I did my best to remain cautiously optimistic that the new movie was going to be something that I could be happy about, and perhaps something that Mom and I could bond over. As we've drawn closer to the release date, though, and as I've seen more of the movie and its promotion, I've already reached a deep level of disappointment. I've read all the news stories about how trekkies and trekkers feel about how closely the movie will follow Trek canon, but to me, looking at what I've seen so far, there really isn't anything Star Trek about Star Trek. It feels to me like you could take out the names of Kirk and Spock, and the names of the various races and planets and organizations, and no one would be the wiser for it. It feels like the generic, prototypical 21st-century science fiction blockbuster movie, just with a few names added to give it a false sense of historicity.

I realize that new generations reinvent series like Star Trek, and that Star Trek itself has gone through a good deal of this; no one can deny the gulf of difference between the original television series and the films, let alone the later television series. At least with those early films and Next Generation, though, Gene Roddenberry was at the helm, and you had the feeling that Roddenberry still conveyed that Trek essence in the newer material. (Roddenberry came from a time when an artist's vision still meant something in big commercial productions.) It seemed like the later series, like Voyager and Enterprise, not to mention the later films featuring the Next Generation cast, seemed to stray away from that vision, and now it feels like the only vision J.J. Abrams had in this new movie is the vision of his bank account increasing by tens of millions of dollars.

What gets me is that I'm beginning to have more and more of an emotional response to this, when I haven't really cared that much for anything Trek for over a decade or so. (I'd like to get some of the Next Generation DVD sets eventually, but I've been horrible lately when it comes to buying DVDs and then never watching them.) I suppose that because this touches on what to me was a touchstone of family bonding, and it's coming not that long after Dad's death, that it's provoking a very emotional and irrational response from me. I mean, yes, wincing at a car chase in a Star Trek movie makes sense, but I shouldn't be jumping to the conclusions I am based solely on the trailers I've watched and stories I've read about the movie. I really should watch the movie all the way through before I have this kind of visceral hatred of it. The thing is, I've never been one to watch films in the theatre (the last time I did that was eight years ago when the Final Fantasy movie came out), and, well, it doesn't feel like there's much of a point in getting the DVD when it comes out, given how many other DVDs I need to watch here.

Two Perspectives

2009-05-02T15:45:00.002-04:00

We have finally gotten to that point in this part of the country where we are seeing a substantial amount of green outside. I always seem to misremember just when to expect the leaves to start growing on the trees; I think that starts earlier than it does. Now, finally, trees are beginning to grow leaves, and the grass is turning a healthy shade of green, at least where it's being maintained. The paradox of Michigan's highways -- that the grass beside them can look so vibrant while the roads themselves are scarcely maintained at all -- never hits me harder than it does at this time of year. I'm teaching an online course this coming term, though, and I won't have classes up in Monroe until 2010 at the earliest, so if I want to ponder that paradox in person, I'll have to make a special trip to do so. With gas prices climbing back up, I doubt that's going to happen.

Right now, though, I'm kind of struck at how the trees in my backyard are blooming. In my bedroom I basically have two stations: Here at my computer, where I work, do recreational Internet stuff, and eat most of my meals; and my bed, where I sleep, write in my longhand journal, read, and play video games. From my computer here I'm looking to the northwest, and most of the trees in this direction have either not started budding leaves yet, or are doing so very slowly. From my bed I'm looking to the northeast, and there all of the trees are very much in bloom. I've noticed over the past few days that my mood seems to improve if I'm doing stuff on my bed as opposed to here at my computer workstation; I suppose that could just be because winter term is over and I finally have more "bed time" available, but I don't doubt that seeing more fresh leaves on the northeast of our property probably plays a good part in that as well.

Earlier this week, Mom brought someone over to estimate how much it would cost to remove some trees from the north of our property. We have this one huge tree in our backyard that has been dead for several years, and Mom is worried about the tree either being hit by lightning and coming down on us, or falling down on its own accord. If that were to happen, anyone on the second floor at the time would likely be crushed to death, and the tree might generate enough force to crash down into the ground floor as well. I guess I don't feel too strong of an attachment to the tree because I grew up in a room with windows facing the north and west, so I didn't see the tree that much from my room, and the tree is also very far back in the backyard, farther than I used to play when I was younger. I think Mom's also going to have smaller trees, also dead, removed from the property at the same time as the big tree is removed. As much as I know that this will make us safer, I still can't help but wish that we could keep the tree. It's the only tree I can see from both of my stations up here, and as scarily big and high as it is, I can't help but feel like the tree, in its way, watches over us. Its presence reassures me in its own way, and I don't like to think about what the view from my room will be like when it's gone.

Digital Artifacts

2009-04-28T19:34:00.003-04:00

One of the things that has made it easier for me to put off posting to the .org is the fact that hardly anyone else I know seems to post very often these days. I've subscribed to nearly every blog I follow in the Google Desktop Web Clips app for Google Desktop on the side of my desktop, and over the past year or so I can't help but notice that so many blogs that were once updated two or three times a week are now updated only once a week, if that. Granted, a lot of these people now use Twitter, as do I, and I make it a point not to go a day without tweeting, but things are different for me because I'm a writer, and I can't very well market my writing skills without writing more often than I have here for the past four months. Now that my winter classes are over, I'm going to try to get better at posting regular updates here.

However, as I was thinking about how rarely I see a blog update on the RSS feed on my Google Desktop, I couldn't help but think about how rarely I even use Google Desktop any longer. I like having the time and temperature on my desktop at all times (I auto-hide my taskbar so I have more desktop space), but right now those are the most useful parts of my setup. I used to use the built-in MP3 player, but when I started using last.fm I had to switch to Windows Media Player because last.fm doesn't support the Google Desktop player. (Winamp once fired Bonnie, and Apple products are right out for me, so don't try to get me to switch over.) Worse yet, the Google news feed has only been sending me stories from ESPN.com for the past couple of months, and most of them are days if not weeks old. Given that I don't make much use at all of the indexing feature of Google Desktop, it seems to be a real waste for me at this point.

What makes matters worse is that I'm using an older version of Google Desktop, and I'm guessing that switching to a newer version might correct this problem. However, the new version of Google Desktop on the Google Desktop site only supports 32-bit Windows, and I'm running 64-bit right now. I don't understand why Google wouldn't choose to support 64-bit Windows, and why they would just drop it like they have when older versions of the software used to work fine for me. I'm used to seeing this kind of behaviour from other companies -- Hewlett-Packard refuses to release a Vista driver for my old scanner, so I'm stuck having to buy a new one some time soon -- but this isn't the kind of behaviour I'd expect from Google. Google Desktop was a great product for me at one point, and I feel like it may yet be of some use to me, but right now it's just taking up space on the right side of my desktop and not really being that useful. Maybe I should just get rid of it and start visiting the blogs I like manually; it's not like they update that often these days.

Suteki

2009-04-26T20:36:00.003-04:00

Among the other things that have been put on the back burner of my life lately is video games; after treating myself to a Wii after slogging through that miasma of an election cycle, I pretty much let it collect dust from early February until this past weekend. I'm finishing up my "weekend off" where I didn't have any real work to do for teaching; tomorrow my classes end and I get final portfolios, and of course those will keep me occupied for the next week as I get final grades for the semester calculated. Since I had a few days off here, I busted the Wii out, nought a couple of new Virtual Console games (I don't understand how my gaming skills on so many other games can die so easily, but for some games, like Super Mario World, it's like I never stopped playing them), and tried to decompress. As with sports, however, I feel like video gaming may be something that's becoming much less important in my life, as I have other things to do that I feel are of more importance and are more fun to do.

(Of course, when I say "video gaming," I'm not counting dance games, which for me are about exercise. To that end, this past month I finished collecting and assembling all of the items for a PC-based setup, which means that now I can add the songs I want -- if I want to play Björk and Tori Amos songs now, all I have to do is rip the tracks and make stepcharts for them -- and I don't have to deal with the deficiencies in all the home versions of the arcade games I'd been collecting for so long. I haven't had a chance to use this setup as much as I'd like lately -- I've been busy, and the weather and other factors haven't been cooperating -- but it's finally rekindled my passion for that, so I hope I can get back on my diet soon and start taking all of this weight off.)

I guess that as fun as the Wii is, though, I'm still just fascinated by the general design of it. I'm not the Japanophile I once was, but there's still something about the general aesthetic of some Japanese goods that appeals to me. Too often, Japanese video game stuff that has come here has been "Americanized" and, I feel, made worse; I'm specifically thinking about the redesign that the Super NES went through from its Japanese roots. The Anerican Wii's menu retains the soft curves and somewhat ethereal background noises of its Japanese counterpart, though, and I really appreciate that. I understand that this is probably a small thing for most people, but honestly, if I'd had to put up with generic nu-rock every time I turned my Wii on, I don't think I'd be half as likely to play it. The same holds true for the design of the various channels; there's something distinctively Japanese about them, and not only do I find it more soothing than the kinds of menus that American designers develop, but it's a nice change of pace from what I'm used to on my PC and my other video game consoles.

When I first got Wii Fit, I was especially pleased with the voice that's used during the body test. I've always been fascinated at how differently female Japanese voices sound compared to female American voices -- something I've attributed to various factors, such as lower rates of female smoking in Japan and different cultural expectations -- and the difference means a lot to me. I guess this may be due to me getting into anime in the mid-90s, back when the English dubs that were being done were mostly horrible. Anyway, I really like that Nintendo put a similar voice in Wii Fit (although the non-body test voices are definitely more American), and I like that it keeps with the Japanese aesthetic of the game's visuals.

Can't be bothered

2009-04-10T19:30:00.002-04:00

There have been some pretty big changes in my life so far this year. Part of the reason my posts here have slowed to a trickle is that I just haven't had the kind of time to devote to the .org that I've had in the past. I've still got lots of potential topics on my trusty whiteboard, but finding the time and focus to write a proper entry on them has been difficult lately. It probably doesn't help that I've been Twittering more than usual, but that's kind of unavoidable under my present conditions. I really need to post here more often -- I still view the .org as an extension of my professional career, so it reflects poorly on me when I don't keep it updated -- so I hope to remedy that soon. Too many parts of my life seem to be falling by the wayside, and I need to correct that.

As a case in point, my interest in sports seems to be dwindling to almost nothing. Normally I make a point of catching the first Tigers game of the regular season, but I really didn't feel like watching it, and then I had a dinner date pop up at the last minute. I figured that I would catch another game after that, but the only time I've been home and able to catch a game was Tuesday night, and I just didn't feel like watching past the first couple of innings. I'll probably catch a game sometime next week, but I'll be doing so more out of a sense of obligation than because I actually want to.

I don't think I need to say too much about the Pistons or the Bengals here, except that I'll catch the NFL Draft later this month, as usual, because I like watching thirty-two-sided chess matches where I have no idea what the pieces do or who the players are. The only way the Bengals were going to be interesting this year was if they'd signed Terrell Owens; I loathe his homophobia and egomania, but trying to see him and Chad Johnson, er, Chad Ocho Cinco trying to function on the same team would have too intriguing of a trainwreck to ignore.

I don't even feel that attached to hockey any longer. The Red Wings will either get knocked out in the first round, or they'll lose to San Jose in the conference finals; there's no way they can repeat as champions this year given how erratically they've been playing. It says something that even I want the Red Wings to start Ty Conklin in net instead of Chris Osgood; I love Ozzie dearly, but he just hasn't been dependable this year. If nothing else, it would give USA Hockey a chance to audition Conklin for Vancouver 2010. I'll go ahead and give my pick for the finals, as much as it hates me to say it: Sharks over Devils. Worse yet, I'll even be rooting for the Devils, if only because they have Brendan Shanahan. I don't mind if Shanny doesn't get his name on the cup again, but it'll be worth it to me if he cheap shots Claude Lemieux and takes him back out of the NHL. (I'd also love to see Shanahan knock Sean Avery's lights out if they meet in the conference playoffs.)

It's not just Red Wings hockey I've lost interest in; I really don't care to watch Hockey Night in Canada like I used to. The show used to be a staple for me, but I've missed it more times this season than I can remember, and I don't really care. I still love Don Cherry dearly, but between the new presentation, the loss of the old theme song, and my general lack of enthusiasm for sports in general, I can't bring myself to care for the show like I once did. I'm making a point of catching the final broadcast of the regular season tomorrow night, but honestly, I'm kind of hoping the Red Wings get knocked out of the playoffs early this postseason so I have an excuse to stop watching. I wouldn't have even entertained these thoughts one or two years ago, but now I just want to stop feeling so tied to the Red Wings and the NHL, so I have time for other, more important, things.

Fire Them All

2009-03-29T20:03:00.002-04:00

GM CEO Wagoner to step down at White House Request (AP via Yahoo! news)

I have the vaguest of recollections of Ronald Reagan firing the air traffic controllers in 1981; I remember it happening, but I had no idea what it all meant. (I was five years old at the time.) I do remember that Dad was deeply upset by it, and it was one of the many things Reagan did that eventually drove Dad to avoid politics and become bitterly cynical about them. I still can't help but wonder, had Dad lived to see the election of Barack Obama, if maybe he might have picked up some of his old enthusiasm again. Needless to say, as my own political journeys and self-discoveries have gone on through the years, I've come to realize what an important event this was in American political and labor history. I know that some on the right will say that Reagan did not, in the strictest definition of the word, "fire" the controllers, and that his actions were legal under the Taft-Hartley Act, but neither of those factors mitigates the fact that what Reagan did was morally reprehensible, and perhaps the single most destructive action in American union history. This was one of the biggest bombs the Republicans have dropped in their open warfare against the lower and working classes, a war that has gone on now for nearly thirty years with little mitigation from the Clinton and Obama presidencies so far.

As the avarice of the upper classes has caused the rapid dismantling of the foundations of our economy, I haven't been able to stop myself from daydreaming about a president -- the daydreams usually involve a President Nader, since I know Obama is both incapable and unwilling of doing so -- who comes out to deliver a nationally televised speech on the lawn of the White House, saying that all of the bank and financial and automotive and other CEOs whose greed caused this financial collapse -- were fired, effective immediately, and ineligible to serve in management jobs for the rest of their lives, just as Reagan barred the striking air traffic controllers from serving in other federal jobs. Granted, there are no laws on the books enabling a President to do this, but that doesn't make the proposition any less absurd than what Reagan did under Taft-Hartley. If nothing else, the fact that we, as a country, now have an 80% stake in AIG, should mean that we get to pick who runs the company.

It sickens me to hear pundits say that we need to keep the executives who ran the banks and financial markets into the ground in their current positions because "no one else is capable of running the companies." If they were capable of running their companies, then why have they all cratered, taking the rest of us along with them? Say what you will about the responsibilities air traffic controllers have for making sure that planes don't crash into one another, but already this financial crisis has hit middle- and working-class America in a nearly catastrophic way, and we're probably not yet at the worst part of this crisis. This country's universities churn out MBAs at an alarming rate because if there has been any growth industry in this country since the Reagan days, it's in unnecessary corporate bureaucracy. Don't tell me that we don't have enough people who possess the skills needed to run these companies.

The problem is not a deficit of skills; it is a deficit of morals. No matter how many studies are done to debunk the myth of supply-side economics being good for all classes, the upper classes, and the venal politicans they help elect through their massive infusions of cash and distortions of the public dialogue, continue to push through this idea that helping the rich get richer benefits everyone, despite all of the empirical and anecdotal evidence of how it crushes the wallets, the homes, and the spirits of the working class. If we are going to rebuild our economic foundation, if we are going to climb out of this very deep hole that the upper classes have dug this country into, then we need to take the shovels away from the people who dug the hole (and made themselves plenty rich doing so), and put in charge people who aren't going to build themselves mansions off of the money they could make charging us for ladders to climb out of the hole. We need moral, responsible executives in finances, banking, and every other industry, who will put the needs of their workers, their customers, and their country, above the needs of their families, their boards of directors, and their shareholders. The executives still in charge of these failed companies have already proven that they cannot do that, so we should throw the whole lot of them out.

It's Always Something

2009-03-22T16:22:00.003-04:00

Although I'm not the strongest believer in numerology and related sciences, I do think that they deserve paying attention to, and that made this past week and a half so odd for me. It started with the second Friday the 13th in as many months a couple of weeks ago, then moved straight on to Pi Day (remember, I was always much better at maths than English growing up, so I still note Pi Day and Mole Day and all of those things), and then a week ago today was the Ides of March. The 16th was the anniversary of my parents buying this house, and of course St. Patrick's Day was the day after that. I turned 33 on the 18th, and then I couldn't think of anything that special about the 19th except I vaguely remember it being the birthday of an elementary school crush whose name I've long forgotten. The 20th was the equinox, and then yesterday Dad would have turned 63. I'm out of that series of days now, but it was definitely odd to have so many of those days all in a row.

My birthday itself went okay, although I had to cut short a meeting with some friends after work so I could come home for the big party; in the past, spending the birthday with non-family members usually hasn't worked out so well, so I'm making a point of having birthdays at home from now on. The birthday booty was kind of big, including several CDs, a couple of books, Wii Points (although I haven't had a chance to play on my Wii in forever) from the family, and the deluxe Pulp Fiction (I'd only ever bought the original DVD release, strange to relate), and a Barnes and Noble gift card from friends. Unfortunately, I've been so busy with other things, my book and DVD piles are both back to being absurdly large; even if I make extra time for reading here, I doubt I'll get through all the books I already own by the end of the year, and I've still got more on the way.

Although I'm not blogging as much as I used to -- something I've noticed with everyone else whose blogs I follow -- I am trying to keep my Twitter account up-to-date at the very least. (I need to put a Twitter feed on the .org, I know.) It doesn't help that I've got a social life again for the first time in about four years, and I've got all sorts of special stuff coming up. Part of me wonders if moving to tweets is part of the natural evolution of the Internet, but it's probably something I should resist, given that I'm trying to make a living, at least in part, on my writing. It's not that I don't have things I want to talk about here -- I still have a huge list of potential blog topics on my whiteboard -- but finding the time to blog these days is very, very difficult, even with a reduced teaching load this semester. Someone needs to prod me to write here more often.

So Long Ago

2009-03-04T17:26:00.002-05:00

One of the stories I've been reading recently is set at a dinner party. It's not exactly Mrs. Dalloway, but it is good, and I can relate to it better because it's set in America, albeit 1950s America. There is something about the 1950 American dinner party that seems so remote to me; at first when I was reading the story, it was hard for me to identify with the kind of upper-class people being depicted in the story, the whole idea of "summering" away from home, and most of the things they were talking about. (There was a brief debate about literature, though, which was accessible for me.)

As I kept reading, though, I realized that, well, I used to be involved in this sort of thing. My paternal grandparents had a cottage on an island south of Mackinac Island in Lake Huron, and when I was younger I would go up, sometimes with Dad and sometimes with the entire family, and spend a weekend or a week up there, and while I was up there we usually did have dinner parties two or three times a week much like the parties being depicted in the story. It's no wonder that I blocked out the memory of those dinner parties -- they're one of the main reasons I've been a teetotaler my entire life, and that island was where I was raped when I was thirteen -- but even if I hadn't been blocking out those memories, I guess they really wouldn't have helped me that much because those dinner parties mean much different things to children than they do to adults. Apart from everyone (save my parents, thank Goddess) getting drunk, the main thing I remember about those parties is everyone talking about boring, boring stuff.

I hardly ever think of myself as belonging to the kind of social class that has those kinds of dinner parties. Although my family wasn't without its financial troubles over the years, by and large we've been fairly well-off. At the private school they sent me to, though, our family was one of the poorest families there, and the students there loved to lord that fact over my head. (It wasn't like I didn't give them other things to pick on me for, believe me.) When I was a student at the University of Toledo and I visited other students' homes and apartments, though, I was reminded that, yeah, my family wasn't all that bad off financially. Still, we live in a part of town that isn't exactly upper-class, and there are a lot of union families here, and I certainly identify more with them than I do the upper-class families I went to school with when I was younger. I guess I feel a kind of dysfunction when it comes to identifying my own social class, and stories like the one I've been reading make me think about this stuff a lot. I can't really figure out how to clear up this mess in my mind, though.

I mean, I've kind of been a hermit for the past four years or so, although I'm getting better at that. I'm trying to figure out why these dinner parties I read about are drawing so much of my attention right now. How are they that different from the "pizza and video games" parties I went to in college, or the meetings at restaurants I've been doing lately? If anything, the parties I actually go to should be holding more of my attention, simply because I don't have to worry about booze at them. Maybe it's that discussion of literature in the story I've been reading; it would be nice to have someone with whom I could discuss literature and similar topics. I don't see myself hosting, or going to, any "dinner parties" anytime soon, though.

Mikeneko, ????.??.??-2009.02.25

2009-02-25T11:23:00.002-05:00

When we took in Spookytooth last year, we also took in his mother, a calico cat we alternately called Cali, Hobbes, and Mikeneko. After Spooky's death, Mikeneko took on even more importance in our lives. Sadly, recenly she had begun to show signs of the same disease that claimed Spooky (Feline Infectious Peritonitis, or FIP), and last night we finally took her to the vet for tests. When the vet said this morning that Mikeneko had either FIP or a severe brain tumor (most likely FIP), the decision was made to put Mikeneko to sleep.

The worst part is that it doesn't really seem to be affecting us like it should. Due to the proximity of the first anniversary of Dad's death, we're all feeling so numb right now, and with having to deal with Spooky's death in between the two, I fear that we may, in a sick way, be getting too accustomed to death.

Waiting for the Light

2009-02-21T12:25:00.003-05:00

Monday will be one year since Dad died. In a lot of ways, though, today feels like the anniversary, because the 23rd fell on a Saturday last year. Having his death on a Saturday afternoon was especially painful for me, because when we were younger he'd always take me out to the mall to shop and play video games. (I'm only now beginning to realize that this was mostly done to get me out of the house for a few hours so Mom could have some peace and quiet.) It's disconcerting for me to think that it was about a year ago that I was pacing back and forth in the lobby of the hospital, with so many thoughts racing through my head. I'm watching Hockey Day in Canada on CBC right now, which is helping me to take my mind off of things, and I have a full day of teaching on Monday to distract me as well, but the shadow of the anniversary is definitely weighing me down right now.

I hadn't expected that the anniversary would hit me as hard as it has. I thought that the other "firsts" -- our first birthdays without him, the first Christmas -- would be harder to deal with, but I don't think it's been this hard for me since the first weeks after Dad's death. I've been having stomach pains on and off for several days now, and my energy levels have been fluctuating like crazy. (Ironically, this is happening at a time when I've gone through a lot of good personal growth, and I have a social life again for the first time in nearly four years.) All of us who remain have been crying more than usual lately, and the memories of that Saturday a year ago are becoming more vivid for all of us. I'm hoping that these feelings become easier to deal with once we get past Monday, but I know that getting to Tuesday isn't going to be a "magic bullet" that makes everything all better.

It probably doesn't help that we're at that same time of year when Dad died again, and I see that every time I go outside or look out of my bedroom window. We'd had a pretty extended thaw here lately -- it got rid of the huge amount of snow we'd had the month prior, but melted it so fast that several rivers in Ohio and Michigan have been overflowing -- but now today we're getting a few inches of fresh snow, and I can remember we had a fair bit of snow on the ground when Dad died. Really, though, since the start of the year, I've been waiting for Daylight Savings Time to come. As much as I was a creature of the night in my younger years, I've found myself affected more by Seasonal Affective Disorder these days, and having that extra hour of daylight in the evenings should help me feel a little better. In the meantime, it's grey and snowy outside, and I can only hope that a full day of hockey helps me take my mind off of how quickly we're approaching a year since Dad's death.

Look, a Diversion

2009-02-13T23:42:00.002-05:00

I caught President Obama's address to the Lincoln Society Banquet last night, and amid Obama turning the address towards his efforts to get the stimulus bill passed -- something that I thought was kind of risky and unnecessary -- it was hard not to be struck by his mention of how after the Civil War, Lincoln ordered that no Confederate soldier should be punished. The parallel with liberals' feelings about prosecuting the possible crimes of the previous administration didn't need to be said, and like clockwork a number of allegedly liberal commentators dropped their recent insistence on charging Bush and his administration members with crimes, and gushed over how great of a speech Obama gave. It was a tremendous speech, yes, but on this particular point about how Lincoln pardoned Confederate soldiers, Obama's logic is flawed.

As many commentators have pointed out in the celebration of Lincoln's 200th birthday, as dire as the crises our nation faces now may seem, they are miniscule in comparison to what Lincoln faced in his presidency. The attacks of 09.11 may have brought the horrors of foreign hatred of the United States to our soil, but the Civil War killed about two hundred times as many Americans over a much longer period of time. The war eviscerated this country -- North and South alike -- in a way that none of us could even hope to imagine, and to further punish the Confederate soldiers who had lost so many of their brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, would have been abject cruelty. The Confederacy and Union alike had suffered enough, and the important business of rebuilding the country and assisting the newly-freed slaves needed to be done.

As bad of a drubbing as the Republican party might have taken in the last election, and as unpopular as Bush and Cheney might be right now, there has been no real suffering, either on their part or on the parts of the other people in their adminstration who were responsible for everything from the gutting of civil liberties to lying us into a war that killed thousands more American soldiers. For all their unpopularity, these men and women still have their supporters, particularly in big business, and will be able to lead cushy jobs sitting on the boards of Republican think tanks and companies, and giving speeches, for the rest of their lives. Contrast this to the misery that millions of American families are going through right now in the wake of the global economic crisis, brought about in large part by their mishandling of government and the role it should take in helping to regulate the market to prevent catastrophes like the one we find ourselves in now. Perhaps we should not worry about punishing the Bush/Cheney "soldiers" -- congressional Republicans and the propagandists who advanced the Bush Doctrine on television and the radio -- but for the Bushes and Cheneys and Rumsfelds whose actions led to the deaths of so many Americans, and so many innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians, for the profit of companies that gave right back to the Republican party, justice must be served. If these men and women have committed crimes, then for the sake of our collective moral conscience as Americans, then we must not give into the Obama rhetoric of "looking forward instead of getting mired in the past," and bring those who have committed criminal acts to justice, so that future leaders of this and other countries will not be tempted to repeat the malfeasance of the previous administration.

I still remember after the invasion of Iraq, when the Weapons of Mass Destruction were not found, and voices began to be raised about the conduct of the invasion, and support for the invasion began its precipitous drop. At a time when Congress should have been investigating the war, its eyes were focused on the Super Bowl halftime show that featured Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction." At a time when our American soldiers were giving their lives in the deserts and streets of Iraq, Congress instead inflated a relatively benign and altogether stupid MTV-influenced visual into a national moral outrage. I don't question that it was great politics -- it played well to their base and helped energize them -- but it was an obvious and nauseating diversion from what was unquestionably more pressing and relevant business for this nation. After the nipple slip wore thin on everyone, instead of turning to the war, we got congressional investigations of steroids in baseball, which served to again divert us from the questions that should have been asked about the invasion of Iraq.

As the first hundred days of the Obama Administration tick away, and little is done to investigate not just the previous adminstration but also the corporate fatcats who were equally (if not more) responsible for crashing our economy, let's look at who is being investigated by the authorities right now. Perhaps the most scrutinized public figure right now is Michael Phelps, as South Carolina police have arrested and questioned several people to try to press charges against Phelps for the bong hit he was photographed taking. Ignoring the futility and stupidity of putting this much effort into trying to nab someone for smoking weed -- I could understand this much effort to punish him for his drunk driving, but trying to put potheads in jail is possibly the biggest waste of law enforcement resources of this generation -- do they really think that they're going to find someone to narc on Michael Phelps? Whoever drops the dime on Phelps is going to have nearly every Hannah Montana fan in the country saving up their allowances to put a hit on him or her. In addition, instead of going against all the corruption on Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether or not Apple lied about Steve Jobs' health to try to shore up Apple's stock price. In addition to being wasteful of SEC resources, at a time when we desperately need to root out those people responsible for this economic crisis and get rid of them, I think this is also highly disrespectful of Jobs and his fight to stay healthy. Fans of Jobs and Apple should be on the streets protesting this action, even if the protestors' signs are likely to cost twice as much as other signs, and not work nearly as well, but they'll still get lots of praise for being so ergonomic and pretty.

I realize that President Obama and his administration are not behind either of these diversions, but they're still diversions from what should be the single most important government investigation since Watergate. Just as those of us outside of the political and media mainstream were responsible for getting the media and some brave politicians to finally ask the questions that needed to be asked about Iraq, we must be vigilant in making the mainstream media and politicians of all stripes answer the questions that need to be answered about the conduct of the previous administration and their big business friends, and to bring to justice those who have commmitted crimes. Reconciliation and forgiveness are noble concepts, but for those who have lost their jobs and homes in the economic crisis, and friends and family members in Iraq, justice demands that those who have wronged this country be held accountable for their actions.

"Wasteful and Non-Stimulative"

2009-02-10T16:20:00.002-05:00

Feinstein joins Senate majority in excluding arts from stimulus package (Mike Boehm/Los Angeles Times blogs)

I'm not sure I quite believe that we are already in the worst financial crisis in my lifetime, but if we aren't there yet, we're damn close to it. At times like this it becomes hard for artists like myself to push for increased arts funding, especially those of us who live in the part of the country getting hammered the most by the collapse of the automobile industry. People in the arts community are used to being undervalued by society at large, from the moments our negative teachers/parents start telling us "there's no money in art" when we show our first serious interests in it, to when we get out in the real world after completing our education and learn that lesson first-hand. Although we may complain about this, though, we try to pursue the arts to the best of our ability because it is, in every sense of the phrase, a labour of love. We're used to the hardships, so when another group that's used to comparatively stable conditions gets hurt, many of us feel that the right thing to do is to rush aid to the other groups first, and hold off on asking for support until a time when our pleas are more likely to be heard.

Right now, however, is no time to be silent on this issue. The Republican assault on the arts began long before I was born, but I was in high school when schools began en masse to eliminate arts classes (music, the visual arts, dance, and so on), and then Newt Gingrich and congressional Republicans began a sustained campaign to bankrupt the National Endowment for the Arts and destroy PBS when I was 18. Under the iron fist of Republican rule of the legislative and executive branches earlier this decade, PBS was forced to carry right-wing propaganda like Journal Editorial Report. George W. Bush was undoubtedly a zeitgeist of the post-Clinton years, as he has been described from people of all persuasions as a profoundly incurious man, the most dominant politician from a political family where, as has been noted so many times, introspection is seen not as a healthy part of rational decision-making, but as a character flaw. Even now, efforts to restore arts programmes in schools are often stillborn, while we artists clench our teeth as the National Football League and its behemoth of a marketing arm flood the airwaves with commercials to stop physical education programmes from meeting the same fate. This is the absolute worst time for the arts community to have our needs stymied by Democrats in Congress and the White House, no matter how well-aware we were that their promises of handling things differently were no more than the usual Democratic lip service to progressives and liberals.

That funding for the arts would be verboten in the stimulus bills is, by itself, hardly newsworthy, and not entirely unexpected. However, to call funding for the arts "wasteful" and "non-stimulative," and to lump in it with gambling establishments, is a profound insult to the arts community. The financial merits of a strong arts community have been debated for generations, and I doubt any arguments I might make will swing popular opinion on the subject in one direction or another. However, when we, as a community, are so deeply insulted and belittled, particularly by those who pledged to make things better than they were for the previous eight years, we must respond. President Obama may have removed his campaign platforms from his Website, but his campaign pledges to resuscitate the arts community are archived forever. More than ever before, the arts community must speak up, to politicians in Washington and to the American people, and stand up for the good things we do for this country, and the resources we need to keep doing those good things. We cannot afford to remain silent when we are so insulted and denigrated. If we do not speak up now, when we are already so enfeebled from the last decades' assaults on the arts, will we ever have the opportunity to speak up again?

Our School Most Dear

2009-02-03T20:22:00.002-05:00

I don't really advertise the fact that I keep pages on MySpace and Facebook. Yes, I put the links on the sidebar of my Website, but I don't talk about them that much because I don't have a real interest in "recruiting" new "friends" on either site. The only real reason I have accounts on them is because some of the people I've met over the years have taken to them so much that messaging them on those Websites is often the only reliable way I have of getting hold of them. I've dressed up my pages on them a bit, but that's mainly because I know that potential employers and clients might see them, and I figure it's for the best if I have something that looks nice. I've had a few strangers get hold of me through there, reconnected with people I knew long ago, and even had a number of my students friend me. (They even stay friends after they get their final grades, too, so I must be doing something right there. Either that, or they're all really lazy.)

However, several months ago I began to have ex-classmates from the private school I went to start to friend me on there, which put me in a bit of a dilemma. I have said repeatedly that I believe that school messed me up in more ways than I can count, and I still feel that way; a visit back there in 2002 for a University of Toledo commitment (on a Saturday, so I didn't see any old teachers or anything like that) was very troubling for me. The treatment I received there, from administrators, teachers, and students alike, was beyond intolerable, and I honestly believe that everyone there knew that they could get away with treating me like crap because my parents weren't as rich as the other parents, so we couldn't outlast them in a lawsuit. The wounds from back then have dulled in pain, but I doubt they will ever fully heal. Thus, hearing from so many of my old classmates from back then was not exactly comforting to me at first.

That being said, the classmates who have gotten in touch with me were not people who treated me poorly, at least not once we got to high school. They scorned me at times in high school, but, well, it was usually because I was acting like an idiot, so I deserved it. We haven't really messaged each other beyond the friend requests, but I wouldn't be opposed to talking with them over the Internet. Face-to-face encounters might be too awkward for me at this point -- I'm never going to any reunions -- but I guess that maybe now that all these years have passed (more than I care to think about), I'm finally able to put things in context, and I can do a better job of separating my feelings about the school and my time there from my feelings about them. I'm not going to make the first move to initiate conversations with any of them, but I guess now I'm not as opposed to talking with them as I once was. (Maybe one of them can get in touch with the school and tell them to stop sending me snail-mail addressed to "Mr. Sean Shannon." Better yet, maybe they can get the school to stop sending me mail, period.)

There is one thing that bothers me, though. I did a lot of really dumb things when I was there, albeit things that people my age tended to do. (At that school, though, you were never supposed to act like a kid, even when, you know, you were a kid.) Those of you who remember my Internet experiences pre-.org know that I did a lot of stupid things back then, and even in the .org days I've still managed to act like an idiot at times. I like to think that I've learned how to act better, but there are times when I wonder about that. Sometimes I think that maybe I am still the same idiot I was back then, and I've just learned to hide my mistakes better. Even if my old mistakes have been forgotten by the people I knew back then, or if those people have the decency not to bring them up, I still worry that if I ever meet up with them, I'll just make some new mistakes and things will go back to the way they were for me in my hardest years at that school. I've gotten past the point where I'll care that much about what they think of me, but if I do something like that, then I'll feel like it will be confirmation that I really haven't changed in the years that have passed, and that I'm still the same idiot I once was. That's why I'm probably going to remain passive about contacting them, at least for now.

The Day the Music Stops

2009-01-30T15:49:00.003-05:00

One of my biggest worries as Yahoo! has continued to garner more and more bad press relating to their financial situation is that I would lose access to their services. I doubt that a situation would come up that would result in all of Yahoo!'s services simply ceasing to exist, but I do worry that their services would get folded into another, inferior service. (For example, I worry that, if Microsoft ever buys Yahoo!, Yahoo! Mail would be absorbed into Hotmail, which I find far clunkier to use.) I don't want to say that my experiences with Yahoo! have been perfect over the years, but I've been using so many of their services for so long that it would be supremely difficult to move over to another company's services.

Unfortunately, the move has already begun. A few weeks ago Yahoo! announced it would be selling its Launchcast music service to CBS. For a few years now I've been a subscriber to their Launchcast Plus service, which makes their Internet radio services far more robust than their free offerings. I spent a very long time getting my Internet radio station customized just the way I like it; it still plays too much Simon and Garfunkel for my liking (I like Simon and Garfunkel, just not that much), and when CBS takes Launchcast over, they're going to discontinue the custom radio stations. In all honesty, I haven't used the custom radio station so much lately because I tend to need a certain genre of music at a particular time (new age, folk, etc.), but on the whole my station was a great place to turn to when I just needed music, and I even directed some of my students to the station when they asked me for recommendations for music.

In order to make up for the upcoming demise of my Launchcast station, I've started a last.fm account. I started moving my CD collection to my computer over the winter break, and as much as I don't like listening to lossy MP3s, I guess that the compression doesn't really bother me unless I'm paying particular attention to the music. (Believe me, these days I hardly ever have free time just for listening to music.) I'd heard good things about last.fm for a while now, and I guess that for now it's fun to tinker with, but it looks like the custom radio stations aren't as easy to tinker with as Launchcast's were. Anyway, I'll switch my radio station link in the right-hand bar once Launchcast moves to CBS over to my last.fm link, and in the meantime I'd invite you all to listen to my last.fm station if you'd like, and add me as a friend on there if you have an account too.

Fads Fade Fast

2009-01-23T17:56:00.003-05:00

Because the majority of my students fall between the ages of eighteen to twenty, I spend a fair amount of time on YouTube and Websites oriented towards that young adult demographic, so I can get a bit of a handle on what is popular in that age group. I'd watch television, but I just can't stomach American Idol and its ilk, and the radio on my stereo -- like so many parts of it -- just isn't working that well right now. I really need to catch up book-wise, though; I still haven't read any Harry Potter, and so many of my creative writing students are fans of Chuck Palahniuk that I feel obligated to read at least a couple of his books. Anyway, on the balance I find myself more aware of certain Internet fads than my students -- I had to explain to one class last semester what LOLcats were -- which is probably a sign that I shouldn't spend so much time researching this stuff on the Internet. (Hey, it's free, it's readily available, and I have an itchy mouse finger if I ever find something truly revolting.)

I had certainly taken note of rickrolling when it started a while ago, and yes, I've been hit by it more times than I care to count. It had seemed that it was a fad that had run its course long, long ago, but when Cartoon Network rickrolled the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade last year, all of a sudden I heard people who had declared rickrolling blasé long ago say it was the greatest thing ever. Since then I've been wondering just why so many Internet people switched tunes on the Thanksgiving rickroll; certainly it was rickrolling on a scale that no one could have ever anticipated happening, but there was something more to it than that. Perhaps Cartoon Network gets a pass because of their image thanks to stuff like the Adult Swim block and their other cult shows (Powerpuff Girls' tenth anniversary, anyone?), or because rickrolling such a huge event as the parade was truly unexpected, or because they actually brought Rick Astley out instead of just cutting to the "Never Gonna Give You Up" video. Whatever the case, none of my students last term brought it up, so I never mentioned it to them; the last thing I need is to seem even less cool than I already am (which is to say, not cool at all).

That being said, Nancy Pelosi rickrolling everyone on her YouTube account ... no. Just no. This is why you leave political comedy to the masters like Stephen Colbert and Rick Mercer; very few politicians know how to make jokes, particularly in relation to their own work and images. President Obama manages it well, which may make his presidency more bearable to watch these next few years, but he is one in a million here in America. (Seriously, everyone should watch Canadian political comedy television shows and see how much better both the comedians and the politicians are up there.) Pelosi inserting a rickroll into an already banal video smacks of a bad joke told months after everyone stopped caring about the joke in the first place. I know the Democratic press ate this up with a spoon, calling it yet another sign of good change in Washington, but I just shook my head when I heard of it and wondered if we could President Obama to write the Democrats' jokes for the next four years. He's got more important stuff to do right now, though.

20, January

2009-01-20T20:41:00.002-05:00

I believe that I have watched every inauguration that featured a transition between presidents in my lifetime. (Okay, my memory's fuzzy on 1977, but I was less than a year old then.) I'm sure that I didn't catch Bush in 2005, but I remember watching him in 2001. Although my interest in politics has certainly waxed and waned over the years -- to be honest, I feel it waning now -- there is something about these transitions of power that I guess I feel obliged to watch. Obviously, this inauguration was more special than any of the ones that came before, with the historical significance of this one magnified for this family by the fact that Dad didn't quite live long enough to see this moment. Even though Dad got disillusioned by politics after Walter Mondale got blown out of the water in 1984, I believe that he would have taken great pride in what happened today. I never asked him if he thought that we would break the colour or gender barriers in the presidency in his lifetime, but I suspect that his pessimism when it came to politics would have caused him to say no. This would be one instance, though, when he would have been glad to have been proven wrong.

Although I caught most of today's proceedings up here in my room, I did go downstairs to watch the pivotal moments with the rest of the family. I never had the crying jags that I had on election night (and later watching clips of that night's celebrations on YouTube), I did tear up a few times; Mom got emotional seeing a lot of old faces there, including Ted Kennedy, Muhammad Ali, Aretha Franklin, and Itzhak Perlman. It seemed like for all of us, our normal business got put on hold for the whole day, as we watched the inauguration festivities and talked about what will happen in the next four, possibly eight, years.

I did not vote for Obama; long before he secured the Democratic nomination, I knew that his opinions and worldview were too different from mine, particularly compared to more progressive candidates like Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, and Cynthia McKinney. I was worried that the progressive rhetoric we heard from him early on would soon give way to the same stultifying Democratic centrism I've seen from my teenage years and the rise of the Democratic Leadership Council, and so far, given how he's pulled back on topics from drilling to prosecuting the last administration for war crimes, I fear that I am bring proven right. Unlike with our last president, though, I can look at President Obama -- there is still something surreal for me in using that phrase -- and believe that he is, deep down, a decent man who truly wants nothing but the best for each and every person in this country he now leads. I can only hope that in the weeks, months, and years ahead, he will prove my fears wrong.

Returning

2009-01-16T20:08:00.003-05:00

My apologies for going dark on the .org for the past few weeks. By mid-December I had already become quite frazzled, and the confluence of the semester ending (and me having sixty student portfolios to grade in a very short period of time), Spookytooth's death, the holiday season, and a cold on top that all, just left me feeling out of it. The combination of emotions resulting from Spooky's death, going through Christmas without Dad for the first time, and feeling lonely since I didn't have classes to teach, put me in a position where I felt like I needed to shut down and deal with my internal issues before I started writing here again. (I did keep Twittering over my break, but Twittering and blogging are two very different animals.) In the eight years since I launched the .org I don't think I've taken an updating break longer than ten days, so perhaps I was overdue for a vacation from here.

As far as what happened in the interim, we survived the holidays somehow. I got about ten different video games, a few books, and some new cookware for the holidays; I gave Mom enough sweaters and sweatshirts to get her through the winter. (Speaking of which, aside from one sixty-degree day in December, it's been unbelievably cold, with temperatures below zero most of the past twenty-four hours.) I didn't have my car for a week, as a small, routine repair took forever thanks to the incompetence of the repair shop. I've also been buying an unbelievable number of CDs off of Amazon because they have so many classic CDs of artists whose material I crave (Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen) between five and seven dollars. I pampered myself a bit while I was sick, and now I'm trying to get back into the old routines here. I can't say that I'm feeling 100%, but at least I'm feeling better than I was four weeks ago.

The new semester started this past Monday; I'm only teaching two classes this term, but one of them is creative writing, my first time teaching the creative arts. It's a once-a-week class, so I don't want to make any assumptions based on just teaching a single class, but so far the teaching and the planning have made me think a lot about my future career, and whether I want to focus my teaching on creative writing or composition. Unfortunately, I'm moving past the point where I can really afford to take my time making these decisions, and I don't have that many people whom I can turn to for help. I'll have more to say about this later, but for now I'm just trying to get a better feel for my creative writing class and how well I think I can teach that class (and what good teaching it will do for me).

Spookytooth, 2008.??.??-2008.12.18

2008-12-19T15:13:00.002-05:00

Spooky was in bad shape when my sister came to the house yesterday, so she had her husband take Spooky to the vet right away. Spooky's brain problem had gotten to the point where nothing could be done to alleviate his pain and make him better, so my mother and sister agreed that he should be put to sleep.

Needless to say, the last thing this family needed when trying to deal with our first holiday season without Dad is yet another death.

Thoughts and Prayers Needed

2008-12-17T16:49:00.002-05:00

This past summer, shortly before we took Skooter to a shelter, the calico cat who had been hanging out on our property (alternately called Cali, Hobbes, Mikeneko, and Momma by the rest of us) gave birth to five kittens, who eventually joined their mother getting food on our porch. Four of the kittens eventually stopped coming here, presumably going their own way, but the fifth cat, an all-black boy, kept hanging around with both his mother and his presumed father (Lion King). When the weather got bad and the mother got pregnant again, we took the mother into Dad's old office (after getting her fixed and aborted) with the intent to eventually take her to a shelter as well. (She hasn't been that cooperative, though.) The black cat we named Spookytooth (Spooky for short), and took as our own to fill the void left by Rowan's death in 2006, Spyder moving out of the house with my sister and brother-in-law late last year, and Skooter.

Over the past couple of weeks, though, Spooky's behaviour kept getting stranger and stranger; she was losing energy, losing her appetite, and appeared to have gone blind. This past weekend we took her to the vet, where she was diagnosed with some kind of disease that affects the brain; I forget the exact name, but Mom kept calling it "FTP." (I've tried looking it up online but I haven't had much luck.) Apparently the disease could potentially take Spooky at any time, although there was the possibility that he could still lead a normal, healthy life. The disease is also communicable by other cats, so anyone in contact with other cats (namely my sister and brother-in-law) has to wash his or her hands thoroughly before leaving here. It was impossible to know how the disease would affect Spooky, but we all agreed that we would give Spooky the best life we could, and that if we couldn't relieve his pain then we would put him to sleep so he didn't have to suffer any more than he already has.

When Spooky came home from the vet on Monday, everything seemed to be okay; his energy hadn't completely recovered, but he could see again and he was eating again. However, today he had been totally lethargic as soon as anyone in the house was up. He was still responding to physical stimuli and purring, but he just didn't want to move anywhere. About a half hour ago, though, as Mom was taking Spooky to the litterbox, he began to spasm and twitch. It was momentary, and he seemed tired-but-okay after that, but he's going to the vet right now. We think he might have had a seizure, and that they'll be able to give him steroids -- like they did over the weekend -- at the vet's office to restore his energy. Needless to say, though, it's hard to avoid assuming the worst, especially after the horrible, horrible year this family has had in terms of deaths. If you all could please keep Spooky in your thoughts and prayers -- whatever you do -- over the next little while, my family would be most appreciative.

Holiday wishlist/affiliate plug

2008-12-14T22:18:00.003-05:00

I'm taking a short break from grading my students' portfolios here to do some begging. For those of you who are doing your holiday shopping on Amazon.com, please visit them through this link so I'll get a small percentage of whatever you buy back in gift certificates. Alternately, you could always get me something off of my Amazon.com wishlist if you'd like to go the direct route. Either way, your support is greatly appreciated. We now return you to your previously scheduled lack of blogging.

Damn it, too many good people are dying

2008-12-12T14:32:00.003-05:00

1950s pinup model Bettie Page dies in LA at 85 (AP via Yahoo! News)

I don't think the influence of Bettie Page and her work with Irving Klaw in the 1950s on BDSM and BDSM culture can be overstated; in many ways she was the first mainstream BDSM/fetish model. However, as seen by her Playboy centrefold, her beauty and charm transcended BDSM and fetish culture, making her one of the most enduring counterculture icons of the 20th century. If you haven't read up on Bettie's life, either of the two biopics that came out earlier this decade would be a good place to start.

Dad, George Carlin, and now Bettie Page ... this just isn't a good year. In memory of Bettie, now, the friday5.org Friday Five.

1. When did you last sleep in a bed outside your home?
This past September when I spent a couple of nights in hotels after getting a small case of wanderlust. I do not sleep well when I'm not in my room.

2. When did you last drive someone else�s car?
If rentals count as "someone else's car" then March of 2006 when my parents rented me a Kia to take to North Carolina for the In the Groove tournament I participated in on my thirtieth birthday; otherwise, I make a point of not driving other people's cars for fear of doing something stupid in them.

3. When did you last cook in someone else�s kitchen?
Surprisingly, I don't think I ever have. Given that I'm a pretty good baker and cook, I would have figured someone would have conned me into cooking for him or her at some point.

4. When did you last care for children who aren�t yours?
Never. I don't deal with children.

5. When did you last do someone else�s job?
Given how government bureaucrats have messed up our high schools so much, I feel like I'm do high school teachers' jobs for them every time I teach. (This is not to slam high school teachers; most of them are doing the best jobs they can under the ridiculous conditions right-wing politicians and their corporate bedfellows put them in.)