SSB

Hey folks,

It's been a while, so I thought I'd let you know that my new post just went up on http://www.severalsuchbuildings.com/. Check it out. It's called "Pogo for Pyros."

Cheers,
Me

Insincere Confessions

This probably comes as a surprise to no one, but, as it turns out, I am a bad person.

This semester I'm teaching two different sections of my Intro. to Academic Writing course (something that I am feeling less and less well-qualified to do) back-to-back on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I am coming to realize that this is ridiculously complicated. It is complicated because I am an idiot and I cannot recall what I've said or announced to which section at which time. Among other things.

On the first day of class, last Monday, in my second section, while I was taking role, I happened upon a very strange looking, very foreign name that I could not for the life of me even begin to fathom how to pronounce. I looked up, helplessly, and - to my eternal embarrassment - a lovely young woman, originally from China, intuited my dilemma and pronounced her name on my behalf. I asked her, twice, to repeat it, in a vain attempt to master it myself through audible exposure, only to be forced to drop my head in shame and admit that it was beyond my best efforts.

"You can call me 'Elle,'" she said patiently - the kind of patience that announces to the audience, I am being patient with this sad, mildly offensive man. Or maybe that was just her accent.

"Elle? As in E-L-L-E? Elle?"

"Yes."

"I will. I know it's a cop-out, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to call you 'Elle.'"

"It's OK."

"Thanks."

On Wednesday I arrived early to class and attempted to make small talk with the students who were already there. We talked about how exciting Tuesdays are (they aren't) and whether anyone had Big Plans for Thursday (no one did) as the rest of the students arrived, slowly, already broken by the imagined weight of a semester that had only just begun. All at once, as the class was now quite full, I stumbled upon an opportunity to impress upon them the fact that I care about who they are as individuals (which is not entirely bull-shit) and seized it:

"Elle, right?"

I had recognized her immediately and, due to the length of our exchange on Monday, I assume, recalled her "name."

The girl looked at me, shocked. I looked at her, confident. The rest of the class was going about their business, unloading bags and checking their phones, until she spoke:

"Um, it's 'Ella,' but that was a really close guess.... We haven't met before?"

She looked at me, enquiringly. I looked at her, confused. Confused as hell. The rest of the class was paying attention.

"'Ella'? Not 'Elle,' as in E-L-L-E?"

"No." She laughed - a sincere laugh, but betraying a hint of nervousness and perhaps irritation at not being let in on a joke.

But the joke was on me. I looked at my role, frantically searching for the indecipherable name, and realized in an instant that Elle was in my second section. This was my first.

I looked up again at Ella. She was probably of Chinese decent, at least. Maybe Korean. Or Japanese?

"I'm a good guesser, I guess. Weird! You ... uh.... You must just remind me of someone else." I laughed, uncomfortable, and began to shuffle papers. The class chuckled, good-naturedly. Or did they suspect?

"That is weird," said Ella, already forgetting my super-human ability to conjure a stranger's name from the ether as she unzipped her bag. She had a perfect American - Utahn, at that - accent.

And I bailed. I took role and added Ella to my list of not-yet-registered students and pretended as though nothing had ever happened.

As though I'm not a racist. Because I'm not.

Just a bad person.

Elle didn't even show up to my second section.

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.

A Haiku for Mike

All the while

I pray to Buddha

I keep killing

Mosquitos.

by Issa

(translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa)