The smell of sleep deprivation

ets see, I’m sitting in the campus’ main building on the first floor.  Murmers from the students echo off the sandstone walls and buttresses making it quite loud in this dimly-lit slightly austeir grey cave and I smell burnt starbucks wafting up from the basement every time the metal doors open about twenty feet away from me.  It’s warm,  I smell like salty-sweat and I can barely keep my eyes open.  Grand reminder of the days I’d work midnight-8am then would have to somehow hold on until my 12:30 pm class.

Good times.  Trying to stay awake for Greek tragidy.

Thoughts on academia

Once I bitched long and hard about this professor who insisted on using all those worse that help you win at scrabble in every day conversation, and said he wasn’t going to talk slower or use smaller words to make up for deficiencies in our previous educational experence.

I could say that at least the mean or average student should be able to keep up, if you’re going to be doing your job as a teacher, which is to empart knowledge, not show off just how freakin’ smart you are.  I could say that your students are paying to learn here and now, not to be criticised for things they didn’t learn in high school, I could say that you should make a certain vocabulary proficiency a prereq for your class, if you’re going to verbally preambulate though every single five syllable or above word to be contained in the whole of the OED.  I could go on about you being a bloviating prick.

I won’t.  I’ll just leave you with this adorable apothegm, you over-educated git–twenty-five cent words are a dime a dozen.

I put myself to sleep just thinking about it.

here’s exactly how not-well.

moo.

nanowrimo’s not going well, kids.

Brad raises a good point.

All those zombies in zombie movies arn’t really zombies–they’re ghouls. Zombies are the drugged out people working in the salt mines. Ghouls need to eat human flesh to sustain themselves.

Either way–beheading is a surefire way to kill most things.

Anyways, getting to be nanowrimo time. Oh happy day. I’m thinking of doing four short stories this year (or maybe five!) instead of a novel since short stories are actually sellable. I know of one mag that’ll take it, depending on what the story covers, so there’s actual potential there, instead of just writing a novel to write a novel (as educational as that’s been the last few years). I have absolutely no ideas other than that.

Prose: the devil’s playground

Ok, teaching kids about prose isn’t that bad. But I’m a bit stumped. I have about a week to come up with a cool but short prose project for them. We did a miniature 4 paragraph “creative non-fiction” story. Setup, statement of problem, attempted resolution of problem, the end. Short, sweet and we did it in class, too.

So… I am going to have to broach the subject of structure a little more in-depth. I’ll make a handout! Everybody likes handouts. Only I’ll print them on colored paper, so they’re not dumb like school is dumb.

But… do I have them do another personal story, or have them start in on fiction? Fiction’s a whole nuther ball o’ wax with its own problems and issues. If so, what approach? I like to keep stuff small and managable so we can do it in one class, and so they have a semi-finished product by the end of the class.

Also need a few short poem/prose readings for the class. I’ve hit the Neil Gaiman two weeks in a row and I don’t want to be like that one teacher I had for criticism that was obsessed with Walt Whittman (it was like some kind of disturbing fetish.  The only thing I can liken it to is nechrophelia, but with an early 20th century writer’s work)  I think I want to focus on poetic-esque (like, just non-clinical! The kids’re cute, but they’re a little clinical sometimes) description, since we’re sort of only hitting this in a round-about way (I may come back to it once we have something to edit.

Ooh. I’m only going to see them one more time before Nov. 1st, probably, unless we do a seperate session for NaNoWriMo. Gotta broach the subject of constructive criticism as well. If I can figure out if they’re reading the blog or not (haha) then maybe I can slip some of that stuff in there.

Only thing I have to say is… these kids’re awesome. They’ve got a lot of talent and interest. If I could get them to be a little less shy, it’d be perfect. And a few more kids wouldn’t hurt either. As long as they’re at least half as awesome as my core group.

Number seven

7) NOT related to the previously-linked articles: He or she is NOT an ALLEGID SUSPECT. Stop saying it, it makes my brain burn, you stupid wanktards with no clear grasp of the English language. Of course, their understanding of English…it depends on who you ask. It’s WHOM, you idiot. Yes, you can say it once in a while. It’s an objective noun. WHO is subjective. Now, boys and girls, what is the root of subjective? Yes, subject. Who is used in reference to the subject of a given sentence. An objective noun would therefore apply to the OBJECT of the sentence.

I seriously, SERIOUSLY sometimes want to strangle people who, in allegedly “professional” communications, misuse “I/me” “he/him” or “who/whom.” These people of course, and individuals who pride themselves on how fricking clever they are, how well they communicate, and how much damned smarter they are than you. WHAT THE HELL IS SO DIFFICULT ABOUT GRAMMAR?? ESPECIALLY WHEN WORD UNDERLINES YOUR FREAKIN’ MISTAKES IN GREEN!! IF IT’S GOT GREEN SQUIGGLES UNDER IT, MAYBE, JUST MAYBE TAKE A MOMENT AND REVISIT THE SENTENCE AND FIGURE OUT WHAT’S WRONG!! BUT i BET YOU CAN’T DO THAT. BECAUSE YOU MIGHT ACTUALLY FIGURE OUT WHAT THE FREAKIN’ CORRECT WAY TO WRITE IT WOULD BE.

I will almost always (unless you’re speaking in public and trying to show people how freakin’ smart you are) forgive misplaced words and shady grammar when you’re speaking. But for the sake of my painful noggin, please, PLEASE, just freakin’ double-check what you’re typing if Word underlines it in green. Word isn’t always right, and god knows it’ll never be able to handle reflexive use of himself/herself but at least check.

Another thing I find utterly agonizing is that no one in this region uses the ‘to be’ verb. The word “which” seems to be permanently stricken from their vocabularies. Everything is “that.” Sometimes a sentence needs a little “which.” Sometimes even a “that which.” But they don’t do it. Ever. It’s far less painful to listen to than to read. I get SO angry when I read it in print.

But ultimately, it’s the misuse of the “to be” verb (all of ’em… it’s not just ‘to be,’ y’know), that is the thing that causes me more seizures than “that which.” I seriously. Seriously. Seriously. am going to have a brain explosion some day. My left eyeball is going to come shooting out of my head from the pressure, and my brains (which have since been liquefied by the misplaced who/whoms) are going to come spraying with such force they’re going to hit the offender in the back of the head. And then they’ll be sorry.

I don’t know why I’m so uptight about grammar in print. I say this as someone incapable of spelling 62.4% of the words I use. Sometimes I get so flustered by what I see in print, I’m sure I’m going to have an anurism. It’s not like I go to bed at night with a leg strewn over a volume of the OED. but… just… uurrg…ahh…AKKKK!!!!! I mean… I get personally offended when I see that stuff. I usually can’t rise up enough caring to give one fig, much less two about most things, but this is like a knife in my chest, like they’re doing it to me, personally. Then they stir the knife around, just for good measure. Just talking about it is making me uptight and tense. Don’t even get me started on dashes. Some two-word combinations just need hyphenated. Just do it. Please, for me. Please hyphenate the damned word, especially if it’s a number, and help me to survive in the world one more day.

Maybe I need to see a therapist about this.

Anyhoo. I [heart] Captain Jack and Daleks.

 

Dear Texbook Authors…

Do you think your words are SO important that they’re worth $175??
You are very mistaken.

Today’s useless fact:

Shakespeare invented over 1700 words that are used today by turning nouns into verbs and verbs into adjectives, combining words, etc.

(yes, another interesting fact that’s nice to know but won’t save you in case of a zombie attack)

What’s my motivation? Part II

ADD’d right out of whatever it was that I was trying to say. Yeah.  So, I was like, ok, gotta get this person here, to do what I want to do, I need some kind of motivation… And I was digging through the stack, mommy issues, daddy issues, hates self, hates world, loves world… I was throwing spaghetti at the wall and nothin’ was sticking.  Finally I found the overboiled bit, and it stuck.  And this is thanks to an acting teacher in undergrad. When in doubt, your motivation is sex.  Character follows member of oposite sex.  And who hasn’t done a stupid thing for lust? Oh yeah, and we figured out how to get zombies in there this morning after James had a weird dream.  I [heart] zombies.
PS… and then I crapped my pants.  Put on Bad Wolf.  seriously.  I mean, I [heart] daleks in some kind of sick way (fantacy fulfillment, I think.  Who doesn’t want to just go around exterminating everyone they’re annoyed with?) And I [heart] captain jack, so when I was watching Parting of the Ways after that, and they left him on satelite 5, I was bummed. I like captain jack because there’s something really Office Space about him. He just doesn’t give a flyin’ fart. And because of this, he is gewd.

When in doubt, your motivation is sex.

I don’t talk too much about writing  because really… who cares? My publishing career is short and not exactly the street cred I wanna go flashing all over the place.  Mostly, I lack submission self-esteem. Though a friend is bugging me to submit something to a new lit mag that a friend of a friend of a friend’s Uncle Bob is publishing  (How do ya like that!!? Bob really IS his uncle!!), and if I can finish the damned thing, I just might. I’m SO close. He just… y’know… needs to behead the guy next to him at the poker table.  This mag might be just the thing too.  I mean, what the hell do you do with a monster-horror/western story??

What the hell was I saying??

I think it’s time to hit the adderol again.  Wonder if I remembered to bring it.

So, anyways… I was scoopin’ poop (man do kittens shit a lot) this morning, and I solved a logistical issue in a story I haven’t even written yet.  Which is so cool–my typical amount of planning it just shy of nil.  If I’m doing a series, I say ok, here’s where this’ll end up.  How I get there is entirely up for grabs.  I have no idea where this story’ll end up (and it’s still two or three down the road in the series), but dammit, I know WHY they’re where they’re at.  I’m so frigging smart, and there’s no one around to share it with, Internet! **pats self on back**

Seriously–I am the smartest smartypants to ever walk the face of the earth at this very moment, especially when you add on the fact that I was writing this mystery, and everyone’s like… wow, you’re such a great planner… but really I just throw stuff out there and hope I can tie it together again, and I actually found a way to do it.  I think I was cleaning out the sink or something when that happy little accident popped like a zit of creativity in my widdle mind (Don’t you want to shake Postulio’s little hand?!).

(Pustulio’s on the left)

So, anyways, I’m feeling really smart right now.  I’m totally backlogged on homework, and It’s like four days into the term, but I’m brilliant.

Oh yeah, and I’ve aquired a new bad habit… reading books on the circuit at the gym.  I’ve finished a second book while there now. I have to say, I [heart] those Doctor Who novels.  Especially the ones with Captain Jack.  Mostly because I [heart] Captain Jack, cuz he just doesn’t give a crap.  Anyways…I only have two more to read and I’ll have read all the ones that’re currently out for the new series.  Took me like, three weeks. So anyways… Sorry, hon, if the pages are a little warped when you get the book.  It’s just my sweat, so it’s clean.  Or something.

ADD Moment: DUDE, SO bummed about them cancling Stargate.  I hope the fans manage to save it.  I think they could milk another year or two out of it.  I actually LIKE the current cast, etc. Figured I’d hate the new characters, but they’re just too loveable to not love ’em.  Daniel and Vala will make cute babies together.  *snicker*