Wallace & Gromit

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Well, in honor of Oct. 7, I showed my freshmen and sophomores "The Wrong Trousers" today.

Those of you who have not seen "The Wrong Trousers" should mosey along until you have done so.

Gromit, I must say, is the greatest silent actor of this generation. Isn't it fascinating that we have two characters, only one of whom talks, yet we pay little attention to what he says because we are riveted to the silent partner?

And the penguin! Greatest silent villain of the last half century?

(Apology: My freshmen used the film as an exercise in looking at character development and my sophomores to look at dramatic and situation irony, and setting. Unfortunately, a cursory glance suggests they all did a great job and there is nothing hilarious to report. If you're looking for student-sown hilarity, go here again.)

Anyway, I watched it four times today and loved it everytime. My favorite moment is when Gromit confronts the penguin and the bird pulls a gun on him. I swear, if that doesn't make you laugh....

Point: Wallace & Gromit are terrific. We're considering taking the Big O to the theater to see it--he already likes them so maybe it's time to give him a chance.

Those of you who are missing out (who, come to think of it, I already sent away...) need to repent.

ddetda

A reasonably good-looking and disease-free individual

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I have been accused in the comments of another's blog of being falsely unaware of male beauty. While it is true that I rarely notice the lovely physical points of my own sex, there is one notable exception:

Myself.

Now, maybe it comes of spending hundreds of hours in front of the mirror making faces*, or maybe it's objectively delightful, or maybe I'm blinded by optimistic self-love, but I think I have a very nice face, thank you.

Of course, any of you may feel free to disagree with me, and by no means am I suggesting you all should call me Adonis and fall at my feet. Just wanted to say that I am happy with me.

Having said that, I do worry that there is something unhealthy or unrighteous or prideful about this.

I worry because, for instance, yesterday, buying French bread and ice cream, the fellow behind me had a face covered with a birthmark or a burn scar or something. I don't mean to say he was ugly, no, but his complexion isn't going to put him on the cover of GQ.

I didn't think, "Hoo! Glad that's not me!" but I have had, oh, three? bitty panic attacks in my life where I worried that something would happen and I would become a little less pretty.

In theory, I think physical appearance is about as meaningful as the length of my appendix, but underneath that conscious thought, somewhere deeper and more primitive, I must feel a need to be attractive. I never worry about it because I look terrific and it would take an ax removing my nose and jaw to get me to rethink that opinion--however....

Has anyone read Chuck Palahniuk's "Invisible Monsters"?

I wonder if we are addicted to our beauty.

What's wrong with fish

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1. They smell.

2. They're wet.

3. They're subversive (haha!).

4. They're scaly.

5. They live in an environment inhospitable to me.

6. They make dumb expressions.

7. They don't get jokes.

8. They lack proper play initiative.

9. They're prone to gender confusion.

10. Salvador Dali

Copying Master Fob copying Editorgirl copying.....

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(I'm pretending linking to Master Fob's copy of the instructions counts as following the instructions.....)

Tehachapiltdownman 23:5

"
Of course, being a man and spending six to eight hours a day laughing at such trivialities as pain, I find all this bemusing at best.
"

Boy. I don't like how that makes me look....

If I counted the ones I never did post but still exist as unpublished drafts we get:

"
"

(Post did not have five sentences.)

(I guess that means I'm unredeemable....)

My reputation

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In my freshman classes, we have been talking about flat and round characters. I mentioned that one sure sign of a human being (and thus a rounded character) is contradiction.

Thus, in support of my own humanity, I present the following elements of my budding reputation here at Bedrock High:

Mr. Theric is fun.

Mr. Theric is boring.

Mr. Theric doesn't have a sense of humor.

Mr. Theric has a great sense of sarcasm.

Mr. Theric is mean.

Mr. Theric is too nice to last.

----------------

Postmodern postscript:

I was stuck for a while on what to call myself in the above post.

On this blog I go by either Theric or Thmazing, although most people refer to me by th. However, not one of those appellations is or has a last name.

Anyway, as you can see, I settled for Mr. Theric.

---end ps---

pps: spellcheck just rejected "blog" which I find amusing

Bored

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I was speaking to one of my students today. She is bored by everything. Nothing in this life interests her. Nothing.

Somehow, when I am talking one-on-one with students, I become a master of metaphor. For instance, you've heard of rose-colored glasses. I accused this girl of wearing boring glasses.

She said she is slow.

I said that doesn't matter because it isn't who gets around the track quickest, it's who does it right. That's crap of course, but that's the sort of genius idea my brain and I can come up with on short notice.

Just think! If I keep doing this for forty years, I could make a best-selling $18 chapbook! I could call it....Life Is High School, High School Is Life: Observations of a high school English teacher.

Oh yes. I should hold off on any dreams of literati until I put out that bad boy.

New tires

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I am about to leave campus and go get tires, after which I will go pick up the Big O from my parents.

And I realize,

I named my son after a chain of tire stores.

Huh.

Significance?

Frightening my students

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In order to teach literary ideas, I have tried incorporating some songs this past week. Songs by King Missile, Beautiful South, Marcy Playground, and Ryan Shupe & the Rubberband. Songs with a high potential to offend and thus, I hope, grab students' attention. Songs that include some of the following lyrics:

Love is beautiful
Like the sunshine
And the dancing wind
Love is not ugly
Like puss
And lice
And tobacco snot
Love is beautiful

The perfect kiss is dry as sand and doesn't take your breath
The perfect kiss is with the boy that you've just stabbed to death

And all the whores on Blecker Street
They wear the blissful grin
Caused by the drugs they take
To relieve them of their sins

the best looking girls I see are driving in the fast lane
because I don’t find out that they’re obsessive, psychotic insane
the best looking girls I see,
oh my yes
because I don’t have to deal
with their PMS

(I hope I don't get fired.)

By popular demand

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By popular demand, here comes some student writing.

My juniors read a bit of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography (his arrival in Philadelphia and his list of attributes to improve) and some aphorisms from Poor Richard's Almanack.

The textbook also included a section from Robert Fulghum's All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.

Since next year is the tricentennial of Franklin's birth, we imagined a B. Franklin Tricentennial Committee. I assigned them to read the page of Fulghum and then to write a letter to the committee for one of two purposes:

1. The committee is considering Fulghum to speak at the festivities and the letter is in support of that idea because Fulghum is his intellectual heir.

2. The committee has chosen Fulghum to speak and the letter is recalling a change of mind because Fulghum is simply not an appropriate choice.

The students were to pick whichever scenario fit their feelings and write a letter, using supporting quotations from the text.

Here are two of those letters.

****************************************

To whom it may concern

Hi. My name is [...name...] and I am writing this letter to let you know my opinion about Benjamin Franklin and Robert Fulghum. I think Benjamin Franklin should be voted for the parede thing. The reasons why I picked him was because he is in the one-hundred dollar bill. The other reason is that he is a smart person, so is Robert Fulghum but picked Franklin cause he's in the bill. I heard alot of things about Franklin. I read something about Fulghum and I like some things in the story like how to behave. Thank you for reading my letter.

Sincerlly

[...name...]

****************************************

Dear B. Franklin Tricentanial Comitee,

I think you shouldn't hire Robert Fulghum. Why? Because he sounds cynical. He thinks that life is about cooperating with rules you learn during kindergarten. He doesn't know that everything eventually changes. Also not everyone in this world is kind. There will always be a bad person. So you can't expect the whole world to hold hands. We can't all take naps in the afternoon cause there is more important stuff in the afternoon than any other time. These man is probably mentaly retarded. With the mind of a 6 year old kid. It would be a mistake to hire. So think about it really good. Benjamin Franklin has really discovered other, more important things, so he is so much better. On the other hand, B. Franklin is so much better cause he understands that if we wanna get civilized, we need to change. Get mature. Then he also added that lightning is electricity. He made many theorys & he made them facts. He discovered a lot of things. He also knew how to speak in kindda of a riddley way pretty good. Thanks for the cooperation.

Sincerely,

[...name...]

Unclear antecedent

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(As heard on NPR.)

(Warning, not for the delicate.)

A public official was fired because he told a woman that he would not give her husband a job unless she had sex with him.

Choo choo!

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Yesterday afternoon after dropping Lady Steed off, the Big O and I heard on NPR a story about the Ruby Slippers and how they've been stolen. Very sad, I'm sure.

Personally, I have never really liked The Wizard of Oz, but I was suddenly in the mood so when we got home I put on the DVD for the Big O (equals Bad Parent).

I started it up and Dorothy opens her door on Oz. O loved it. Loved it loved it loved it. Until the Tin Man was oiled and began to move and talk. Then he screamed and began to sob and came running to me. He collapsed in my arms and I had to take it out.

To console him, I put in Wallace & Gromit, The Wrong Trousers, the action-packed train sequence, on repeat.

The Big O loves trains. He'll be two in December, but already, I've had to take him train watching a number of times (lucky we live in Tehachapi). He plays with his wooden toy trains. Whenever we're in a toy store or waiting room with a Thomas the Tank Engine set he goes nuts and will not leave. His favorite things to watch right now are:

1. Casey Jr. singalong from the Dumbo DVD (on repeat).
2. The above mentioned scene from Wallace & Gromit (on repeat).
3. Old, old, silent footage of trains on our Intolerable Cruelty DVD's extras (on repeat).

And our home is filled with the constant sound of a little boy saying "Tsoo! Tsoo!"

What happened after I stupidly turned off my alarm this morning

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It is the height of narcissism to share one's dreams. No one cares that I was in Denver only it was Des Moines only we were going to Mars. And yet I am now going to share a dream. It was not a scattering of random images, but had a definite narrative structure. And it disturbed me greatly.

I was standing at a street corner in an indefinite American city. A mother was in her SUV with her children. A large green pickup with a white sign on its door squealed around her and left a huge dent in a rear fender. I ran to the edge of the sidewalk to see the license plate as the truck continued down the street, but it had no plate.

I jumped in my car and took off after it.

I hit a red light. When the light turned, I drove through the street slowly, looking down both directions. I could not see the truck.

I continued to the next light where the street ended and I would have to turn right or left. I wagered right and, as the UPS truck ahead of me moved, I could see it parked at a Korean market just a short ways down the street. I pulled in and went to the truck. It had no license and a white sign on the door, so I knew I had it. The sign was magnetic and had a phone number in the corner so I peeled it off and started to roll it up.

An old Korean grandma who was at the market came up and started hitting me with her purse because I was stealing the sign. My Korean ain't so hot these days so it took a while just to get her to understand that I was speaking Korean. When she did, she heard my story and supported me.

Then, above us, we heard a sound. We all looked up and saw three lifeflight helicopters falling strangely above us. The disappeared behind the building, there was a sound like glass bottles tinking together, and three distinct explosions as they hit the ground about a mile from us. Followed by the sound of machine gun fire.

Then another lifeflight copter fell in the same way, along the same path. The sound of glass knocking together. An explosion. More guns.

It occurred to me that the tinkling sound might be an oil refinery, the huge steel containers banging together.

Then another helicopter, this one at least ten times the size of the other Hueys, came into view. It was on fire and twisting sickly in the sky. And falling, very

very

slowly.

It crashed.

I woke up at this point.

My feelings were not of relief nor gladness at the thought that it could never happen in America.

I felt like I knew what it was like to be helpless, a citizen in a war zone. I knew that whatever had shot ambulances out of the sky would spread and I would not be same, the Korean grandma would not be safe, the mother and her children would not be safe.

And I also felt a sense of inevitability. A sense that there was no way to prevent this from occurring. Eventually.

And now, hours later, I still feel a dread pessimism--someday we will face death and mindless violence and mortal uncertainty and fear.

Fear.

What a pleasant thing to spread around.

On rain

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Today, desert rain.

Scores of students were delayed getting to school, a major highway was blocked by an accident, my last class of the day was missing a third of its students. I haven't heard any weather reports in some weeks so I have no idea where the rain came from, but here it is and it's not taking no for an answer.

What you just read was a rather generic and falsely clever description of rain in the desert.

Here's another, inseparable from a thousand other vignettes:

I remember as a child coming back from Utah. After passing through Vegas and as we came into California, we hit the most ferocious downpour. It was like driving through a bucket / a car wash / a mongo garden hose. Traffic slowed and wipers were worthless. It was like driving through a shallow lake. If the lake were crawling over you.

Another, in a different climate:

When I was in Korea, I remember one Saturday morning, lightning. Our house was rock-throwing distance from the ocean and out on the water, flash, flash, lightning reaching down and stabbing the water and the roar of Thor rattled our sliding door. For 180 degrees, lightning was striking, faster than it could be counted. I tried to record the thunder with my tape recorder but it failed to capture the majesty.

Another:

Also while in Korea, in Chinhae, during the falling-water season, I remember walking with an umbrella at all times. Whenever the rain would stop, I would leave my umbrella on a bus and get caught without it when it started back up again. I developed a system of when to open and when to close the umbrella, ie, when the volume of rainfall was worth the bother and when it wasn't. My shins, which ventured out from the safety of the umbrella's canopy, were always soaked. When the wind blew, I was lucky to keep anything dry. Walking miles in a drenched suit is a fine way to spend an afternoon.

Another:

My friend MyM and I were in Idaho, fleeing a camp site as a thunderstorm moved in. We skittered down the dirt road in my Dodge 600. A branch ripped off the passenger side mirror. Back on the highway, a bright bolt of purple lightning slammed into the road ahead of us, maybe maybe 100 feet away, its breadth the same as the highway, turning the world an electric violet.

(sigh)

Rain. It's too universal. No matter how unique an experience seems at first, ultimately, it's just another clichéd rain story.

Dancing around (or through)

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My alarm went off at three this morning and I arrived at work around the time I usually am kicking myself for not already being gone.

I was accompanied into the desert by sky-splitting sheets and daggers of lightning.

I stopped to wait for a train, turned off the car, tried to sleep for ninety seconds but at every change in sound quality I opened my eyes to see if the train was ending.

I arrived at Bedrock High and the wet ground did not smell pleasantly of grass or rain or negative ions, but like the sky had taken a piss over the landscape. I was apalled. What in the world kind of rain falls in the desert?!

I let myself into the school and began entering grades.

Just as first period began I was wrapping up.

I have not entered one class.

Over half their assignments have vanished.

Grades are due tomorrow.

Huh.

And so I swung back my arms and walked into the air and set my stacks of books on a passing breeze and stretched. and yawned. and slept.

The Learning Curve

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I had No Idea that grading was such a draining, time-consuming, soul-sucking, life-draining, hour-dissolving pursuit.

I think I now know the real reason some schools do away with grades in name of students' self esteem.

And it has all to do with teachers' social lives.

Learning from example

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I don't know about the rest of you, but when I get in my car to go home after work, I'm excited to hear NPR's hour-long wrapup of the Judge Roberts hearings. I'll miss them now that they are all over.

But on my way to work today, I realized they have a relevance in my own life that I had not yet appreciated.

Roberts likes to talk about being a modest judge. I realized this morning that I am a modest speeder.

Yes, I drive well above the "legal limits." However, I don't behave as some speeders, acting like the road belongs to me. I figure that since I am the one disobeying the law, I should always be the one to yield. I should be polite, avoiding passing on the right or hogging the fast lane from those even quicker. I strive to be the most exact in legal obeisance when it come to things like using my blinkers or coming to complete stops at stop signs.

I, Theric, am a modest speeder.

Thank you.

On "Testing Two"

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It came through, yes, but looks to be a mess.

What a waste.....

Testing Two

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Hello, class.

I'm testing the option Blogger proffers of posting from an email
account. I'm curious to see how well it all works.

For purposes of this test, I will be discussing that essential
American experience, sexual harassment training. You know, where you
watch a video filled with awkward actors necking or putting
pornographic calendars in their workspace only to get recommended by
the <a href="http://www.SeniorDatefinder.com">Kindly Old Manager</a>.

Actually, having just joined the middle class, this was my first time
to be sexually harassed <a
href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fc/Vhs_cassette_bottom.jpg">with
a video</a>. In the past, I have had to make do with reading a long
list of stimulating but forbidden activities and signing away my right
to engage in them on company property.

I knew the video was going to be awesome from the getgo because of
this exquisitely written opening line:

"
You have probably heard of the term 'sexual harassment'.
"

(pause)

(complete change of pace)

From reading <a href="http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/esl.html">Lynne
Truss</a>, I have learned that the Brits follow the punctuation rules
regarding commas and periods and whether they should go inside or
outside what they preciously call <a
href="http://www.bartleby.com/68/12/3412.html">"inverted commas"</a>
that I invented for myself and followed until I allowed The System to
drag me down and force to adapt what I now know to be a purely
American form of noninstinctual punctuation.

I apologize for that sentence.

Here's what I mean. When I quoted the video, I put the period outside
the quotation mark. That seems appropriate to me, as the quote only
refers to the two words enclosed and not the terminal punctuation.
Brits allow that. We Americans are not so tolerant.

Anyway, blather.

<a href="http://www.art.com/asp/sp-asp/_/PD--10115761/SP--A/IGID--893584/Nat_Reiss_High_Wire_Artists.htm?sOrig=CAT&sOrigID=14470&ui=8DC0E6EF7DCF4E8F8549F798D40795D3#">Ta
da!</a>

(test complete)

Complaint #45

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Today I received a memo from the district saying that a student I have never met has left the school and that I should not give her a grade to take to her new school but I have to contact the district and tell them I am not giving her a grade.

By the end of the day.

Using a program I do not have access to yet.

(end complaint)

Testing....

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I just posted and the new post is hidden for some reason. If you hit the archives for this month, there it is, right on top. But it doesn't appear on my front page for some reason.

This is a test to see if this post will appear atop Tehachapiltdownman and, if so, if it brings the last post with it. If not, I guess My Loyal Fans will have to hit September 2005 to read the post....