kids and blogging

tim footman just wrote about kids and blogs and literacy on the guardian website. read it - well, blogspot won't let me do a hyperlink today. so access his article via his own blog - go to my cool links on the right, click on "cultural snow" and access the article through tim's blog.

this is connected here, because i just started a blog for my students. because, oh, how i try to get them involved!

as we read slaughterhouse five, i assign a chapter to each student. that student is responsible for getting on the blog that i created and writing a critique/summary. all the other students in the class are then responsible for reading that entry and posting a comment about it and/or the book itself. we have just started, but the comments and entries are starting to come in, and i am - as always with these waverly students - impressed with their sincerity and their intelligent discussions of literature.

wanna read the blog? leave a comment here and i will separately send you the blog address - the students are worried about "strangers" getting on their blog and commenting. oddly, they don't mind this on their other internet activities.

on itunes: how embarrassing, a song from the current season of american idol. yes, i really like david cook's version of chris cornell's version of michael jackson's "billie jean." so i bought it. and i'm playing it. so what?

over-housed

like that title makes sense.

we have been plowing through the first three seasons of House and i have discovered a "house syndrome." that is, after we turn it off and get in bed, i lay in bed and catalog all the weird pains and odd feelings i have in my body, and start to worry that i have some rare disease or syndrome, one that will kill me if i don't find a doctor like House to diagnose me. really. going through this nightly ritual for weeks is wearing me down. so i WILL have an actual syndrome and it will strictly be a result of watching House too much!

i have been reading blogs all over the internet. my favorite new ones are complete time-wasters (like the others aren't?): The Sartorialist - a guy who takes pictures of well-dressed people; and Go Fug Yourself - two women who put up pictures of celebrities dressed in especially ugly outfits. sort of the yin and yang of fashion.

listening to Elliot Smith and feeling pretty proud of myself for just having donated over 200 books to the local library.

oh, the chinese character is, i am told, the character for happiness. i trust this is accurate.

American idyll?

okay, it seems that i have to say something about american idol. why? because they did not one, but two nights of beatles songs. butchered most of them, too. how can kristy lee, who looks like the honest truth of every blonde joke, have selected "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" based on the title? then she paid no attention whatsoever to the words and chirped along like it was happy time at the debutante's ball.

my ideal american idol show? all rockers. people who know what they are singing and don't sound like cruise ship entertainers doing it . . . although you know, one of Sting's early gigs was on a cruise ship! how completely weird is that?

then there is the fave game we play: what if -insert famous name here- sang on american idol? Bob Dylan? Simon's head would explode, while Paula would tell him he was unique. Thom Yorke? Randy would say, "pitchy, dawg." Paul McCartney would make it through but John Lennon would be dismissed in seconds. what a dumb game, really, but this points to the pervasiveness of american idol that i have such conversations with quite intelligent people. people otherwise not susceptible to pop culture.

me, i aspire to be salman rushdie who is infinitely smart AND completely dialed into pop culture.

on itunes right now: everybody's got something to hide except me and my monkey.

alice in what?

wonderland? i dreamed that alice had grown up and lives in our world, but a man comes to her door and abruptly takes her back to wonderland which is not doing too well without her. a very vivid dream with quite a lot of funny elements in it, so fortunately i was able to remember it and i ran to my computer and started typing. i am just beginning, but i have lots of ideas and i'm going to keep going. oh happy dream!

on itunes: maggie's farm, by bob dylan, sung by stephen malkmus

the dizzying effects of the stomach flu, or how jane austen became my role model

first day of the flu - in bed, barely coherent.

second day of the flu - on the couch, watching tv. "Becoming Jane" was available for viewing so i viewed it. and while i am not a huge fan of Austen's novels (i don't hate them, just don't love them), i -- in my post-fever stupor -- thought she herself was a wonderful role model. although i was heartbroken that she didn't end up with James McAvoy (or "Tom"), i liked to see how dedicated she was to her writing, sitting at her desk early in the morning and scribbling and cutting and scribbling some more. so when i have a bit of energy back, i too will sit and scribble. or rather, tap away at the keyboard.

but i wish she had gotten together with James McAvoy.

loving books

a wishy-washy title for this blog, but oh well. i just returned from the book store where i bought nearly $200 worth of books. These are all books that i have used in my teaching, and i am donating them to the school's silent auction. Titled "Required Reading" I am hoping some parent thinks they MUST have all these books! Here's the funny thing: I have read them all, most of them more than once, some innumerable times, and yet as I bought them, I was excited. I wanted to get them all home and read them again.

i will also add, however, that the store was filled (duh) with LOTS of books I have not read and it was very hard not to succumb to the purchase of those intriguing titles. (I did succumb a little - i bought two books for me to read).

for the curious....Required Reading includes: Number 9 Dream, Beowulf, Grendel, East of Eden, Howard's End, The House of Mirth, Love Medicine, Kafka on the Shore, Going After Cacciato, and Midnight's Children. there might be a few others, i can't remember at the moment.

hope someone bids on it and goes home happy.

impatience of the sky

i am reading julius caesar with my students and while it is not my favorite shakespeare play, there are some beautiful lines in it, including the phrase i used as the title of this blog. and which will become the title of a short story.

speaking of short stories - in my pathetic attempt at a segue - i had "rhinos" rejected by the New Yorker, no surprise there, and by Glimmertrain WITH a nice note of regret. will try other places. i have a story out to Zoetrope, and need to get back to sending others. i found/unearthed a whole passel of stories and three of them, with some revision, could be viable. another task. why can't stories just spring from my brain onto the page without the intermediate step of typing them? ah, then we could all be great!

regarding the world outside my own head: i am thrilled beyond measure that so many young people in Oxnard have honored the 15 year old boy shot for being gay, with memorials and flowers and in all kinds of ways. that's a huge outpouring of compassion. and the best part is, the kids are doing all this on their own, without adults creating the circumstances for them.

Man of La Mancha

the school's drama class did man of la mancha today and it was quite fabulous. i have never seen this musical and didn't realize what a great story it is. i like the frame story - Cervantes in prison telling the story to the prisoners. soooo, i need to work on my own novel that is a frame story - a music journalist writing about a rock group, but it's really the story of the group and not about the journalist....

i am rooting for obama, and i can make an easy connection between him and don quixote. not that he is tilting at windmills but that he sees the world for what it can be.

this is a weak post! perhaps because the superbowl is on and i'm half watching and not really writing. so i'll post this anyway and watch the superbowl and write something better another night. maybe i'll wait and see what happens on election night.

The Pixies

how could i have missed this band? what happened to me way back then that i didn't hear them? they are so cool. i only decided to listen to them because so many new bands cite them as an influence. somehow, i thought they were the same as that other jam band (not gateful dead, the more current one.....the one whose name i can't remember right now). but they aren't - i can see their influence on Weezer, Nirvana, Radiohead, Arcade Fire, and many more.

jeez... what else did i miss?

Death and the new year

(photo: cemetary in Kyoto, Japan. August 2007)

this is how to start the new year - thinking about death. i am working on a novel about six people, all of whom had a loved one die in some way that was distressing (more so than a normal death). what a fun time i have writing this! jeez. i keep Radiohead's song, Videotape, in mind. listen to it. a sweet, sorrowful love song about one's own death. in typical radiohead fashion, it is both depressing and redemptive at the same time.

on itunes right now: Juliet Turner - an Irish folksinger - singing the britney spears hit, Toxic.