For a Film

Teaching freshmen is funny as hell.

The other day I was just minding my own business, teaching my writing class (Introduction to Academic Writing or some kind of garbage like that), when a teacher in another room started a movie with the volume turned up a little too loud. The dialogue wasn't clear, but the saccharine soundtrack was, and every once in a while it would fill the room with angst and longing.

I was talking about literature reviews or something more or less useless like that, when a particularly sentimental swell of symphonic goo distracted me, and I was forced to remark that, judging by the soundtrack, the movie must be awful.

"Is that a movie?"

Justin had sat in the front row every day of class for the entire semester. He wasn't a good student, but he wasn't the worst. (After the class turned in their first writing assignment I was convinced that he was an ESL student - you know, English as a Second Language? - until the class turned in their second writing assignment in which he decided to use complete sentences and real words.)

"Is that a movie?" he asked, genuinely bemused.

"I think so?" His question was so sincerely confused that, for a moment, I thought maybe I should have been wondering the same thing, is that a movie?

"Oh. I thought I was in a movie - that this was a movie - and that that was just the music playing during it."

Dude was totally serious.

And, you know, maybe the craziest thing of all is that I'm pretty sure he was sober.

Teaching freshmen is funny as hell.

Two Bits from the Bard

116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

*

I'm almost convinced that every relationship isn't just another economy - another give-and-take - .

And I'm drowning again in my more-or-lesses.

Starving Artists

Dustin enlisted me to do some illustrations for his company Christmas card the other day. After some planning and a bit of work I came up with all of the Santas-, cookies-, elves-, and fire-related content you see here. Dustin wizarded up the rest.

Enjoy.

(If anyone can tell me how to convert a .pdf into a .jpg and get a better result than this, let me know. One tends to appreciate the visual arts better when they are visualizable. In the meantime, if you're interested, let me know and I can email you the .pdf.)

Thanksgiving Tragedy

Thanksgiving day for my friend Eric is little more than Pie day. It is the one day of the year that he dons an apron, sets aside his masculinity, and decides to bake. This year it was apple pie.

He called me at about seven. The family festivities had already come and gone and I was pacing the house between episodes of Firefly, restless for something to take my mind off of my non-Thanksgiving-related worries, when Eric called. He needed shortening.

He stopped by to borrow some and promised me we'd watch a movie and eat pie later. Sure enough, a few hours later, in the middle of the Peanuts' Thanksgiving Special, Eric called and told me that all was ready.

As soon as the special was over, I drove up to his house, more curious than I was eager. When I arrived he was just about to remove the pie from the oven. He opened the door, and Eric, his mother Maggie, and I beheld what appeared to be a perfect pie, waiting inside.

"How do I get it out of there?" Eric asked his mother, reminding us all that, perhaps, there are certain consequences (ineptitude among them) to only baking once a year. He kept reaching his hands into the hot oven and having to pull them out again immediately.

"Well, Eric," Maggie replied, wryly, "some people like to pull the rack out...."

As she said it, she did it, her mittened hand beckoning the hot rack, as it were. Almost immediately, however, tragedy struck as the pie irritably sprang forward, flying toward its freedom with a will.

Eric screamed and desperately lunged for the pie, which he caught, and then screamed again as the pie repaid his kindness with pain. He withdrew his careful hands, sending the hurtling pie into an irrecoverable tailspin which ended abruptly on the kitchen floor.

Eric was devastated. Maggie felt responsible. I could not stop laughing.

It smelled delicious.

Later, Eric was heard to utter that his heart was broken, but he would bake again....

I believe he will. And I wish him well.