Night mayonnaise

Had a slow morning. Up at 5:00 AM to drink tea, watch the news, and read a bit. That’s my general morning routine but, as I’ve posted about before, I don’t often sleep well. Sometimes I snooze until around 6:00, sometimes I randomly wake up at 4:00.

This morning, Good Morning America actually had a brief report stating that the Melania documentary was doing well based on ticket sales, which is an astounding thing to hear on the news. (First, that is an absolute lie. Nobody cares and nobody went to see it, probably including the first lady herself. Second, even reporting on this visual diarrhea is the result of coercion.)

The struggle continues to find a news station that isn’t complete garbage. Or, at this point, I suppose I should say that the struggle continues to find something to do with my time in a post-news landscape, because I doubt I’ll find any news channels that are worth a damn.

I mean. Were these news shows always trash but I just never noticed? I feel like the news used to have integrity. Or, at least, some broadcasters did. Now, though, I feel like I’d be better off hanging around a public toilet, jumping into stalls right after people flush and demanding of the swirling water, “TELL ME HOW THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS DOING!”

It shouldn’t be this tough to find reliable news to watch.

Last night I stayed up late (again) to try and finish Twelve Months, but I only made it to Chapter 53 (of 55). As frequently happens in Dresden books, there are several climaxes all lined up right near the end. Each of the sub-plots has its own little ending that all fire off right in a row, which makes it really hard to put the book down. I’d say the only reason I didn’t finish was because I literally fell asleep in the midst of it.

I’m anticipating some kind of twist at the end. Not an M. Night Shyguyamalan type of twist, but some unexpected thing right in the last chapter that comes into play in the next book. It happens all the time in the Dresdenverse — It’s like waiting for post-credit scenes in Marvel movies at this point. You’re sure it’s going to happen, but you aren’t sure how much you’ll care.

Every hose has its corn

A Court of Thorns and Roses is almost finished. I suspect that the “Rose” is the main character, Feyre, and the “Thorns” are the boundaries she’s had to put up that prevent her from forming long-term relationships until being whisked away to a magical world allows her find the courage to open up and experience true love, which, so far, seems to consist of people doing tonsil inspections and ripping off each other’s underwear.

Perhaps I’m wrong, though.

(There is a literal court and there are some literal thorns and literal roses in the book, so maybe the title is referring to them instead of being metaphorical.)

I’m also soooooo close to finishing Twelve Months that I stayed in bed this morning just a little longer so I could listen to more of it. The plot lacks the urgency of previous books in The Dresden Files. Whereas the Hero, Harry, used to pretty consistently work against a ticking clock, a lot of chapters in this book start with transitions like, “Three weeks later I was at the gym again when X happened,” or, “My next date with the succubus wasn’t until February…”

It gives the book not quite a cozy vibe, but something like it. Plus, I think it is doing a fantastic job of representing trauma. It’s not easy to capture a such a laborious recovery process in a book that still holds your attention, but it all goes with the slower-paced plot.

It’s February now and I am tired of this weather. It’s not even bad where we are — the southeastern U.S. is apparently getting hit by some hefty winter storms while we’re just sort of vaguely chilly.

Sarah and I went to Costco today and discovered that the world needs another plague. Either that or a better system than crowding people into aisles to wrestle with big boxes and huge shopping carts and telling them, “Have at it!”

There are only a handful of times that we are able to get to Costco during off-peak hours, but it makes a huge difference. If you go, say, early Tuesday morning, it’s easier to get around and you can get out of there a lot faster.

It’s one of the up-sides of summer vacation when you’re a teacher — the ability to go to stores whenever you want. (The down-side, in case you were wondering, is the slow, inescapable descent into madness.)

Jolene, our cat, just got spooked by the sound of my PC turning on, tried to run, bumped into my cup of tea, and then fell off the desk. Poor blind kitty!

Are there volleyballs in Spicetown

Yesterday was a long one and my social battery, if there is such a thing, is completely drained.

We had some car trouble, which is always a pain. I hate cars to begin with and wish I didn’t need to own one, so having to go to a mechanic seems to me to be like getting kicked while you’re already down.

After we got the car fixed, Sarah and I went to a professional volleyball game with some friends of ours who have season tickets to the Omaha Supernovas. The game was swanky and lasted long into the fifth set, which is essentially volleyball’s version of overtime. We didn’t get home and in bed until well after 10 PM (gasp!) and, let me tell you, we are feeling it today.

I’ve decided to spend most of the day reading, napping and watching PBS documentaries on YouTube.

I’m almost finished with Twelve Months by Jim Butcher. It’s good to be back in a world of characters that I’ve known for so long, and the audio version is tremendous. It’s hard to believe, but the last book in the Dresden Files series, Battle Ground, came out in 2020, about five years ago.

Wacky!

At that rate, the series should finish up sometime around … 2050?

Twelve Months seems to be mostly about characters getting over the events of previous books and Jim Butcher getting things set for next books. Twelve Months is introducing a lot of new concepts and characters who will likely come into importance sometime in the … seven remaining books?

I think there are seven left, at any rate. Four more “regular” books and then three books in a Big Apocalyptic Trilogy that will be the end of the series.

I’m also plugging away at A Court of Thrones and Roses, which has only grown on me only a little since I’ve started it. There just isn’t anything … special about it so far. None of the characters really jump out at me, the setting and tropes are all common fare, and there isn’t anywhere near as much romance (“spice“) as I was expecting.

I haven’t ever been a tremendous reader of romances, but going into a book expecting some romance only to find hardly any at all has been a let down. I mean. It’s a story about a human girl brought into the realm of a High Lord of the Fae. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume they’d be taking a carriage to Spicetown, if you catch my drift.

But all the horses are still in the stable!

Fresh printz & bell air

My students are reading The Crucible by Arthur Miller right now, which means I’m coming up on my … 25th reading of the play? I’m not entirely sure, but it’s a high enough number that my mind is numbed by it.

I don’t think Gandalf intended us to read things that many times.

Anywho, I almost never give quizzes over things we read in class, choosing instead to do project-based activities for most units. For The Crucible, though, I give a total of 4 quizzes — one over each act. They’re the only 4 quizzes I’ll give in a year, and the reason I give them is both simple and hard to believe: Variety.

Students don’t want to do acting or socratic seminars or posters all the time. Believe it or not, a lot of students will respond to a quiz more positively than they will an art-related activity. Why? Quizzes seem more serious, more “official.”

In my last class today, which is full of some very challenging students, I managed to get nearly 100% of students to give the quiz a try. Did they ace it? No, but they went along with it, they treated it seriously, and I think it’s because of all the solemnity and formality of a quiz.

Like it or not, students react to quizzes. They’ve done so many of them that they know the expectation: They’re supposed to sit quietly and complete all the questions. No phones, no talking, just a paper and a pencil and 30 minutes to do your best. It’s easy to grasp.

Are quizzes great? No. Not at all. But they are useful, and I’m not going to abandon a tool that works just because it’s boring as hell.

If we got rid of everything that was a snoozefest, then everyone in Idaho would be in a lot of trouble.

I did accidentally print about 200 of the wrong quiz, though, and I have no idea how it happened. I’m usually pretty good about this — I have about 200 students in my academic English class, so that’s the number of handouts I generally make whenever I need handouts

Somehow, I printed 400 copies of the 2nd Crucible quiz and I … well, I can’t explain it. Where did the extras come from? It’s like they just appeared in my quiz file. At first I thought I might have typed a “4” when I meant to type a “2” in the print window, but I certainly would have noticed that I’d printed twice as many when I got them from the printer. Then, I thought I might have had a bunch left over from last year, but that’s equally as unlikely, since I recycle all my leftover paper right before summer break.

Anybody out there want to take a quiz over act 2 of The Crucible? 200 times?

Troublesome times & behavioral defiance

At the end of last semester — just before winter break — a troublesome student of mine handed in his final assignment and told me, “I’d better pass this class. Otherwise, I’m coming for you.”

I didn’t feel particularly threatened by it. This student talks a lot, but they’ve never been violent, so I didn’t think there was any substance to what they’d said. However, you don’t get to threaten people.

So, I took the student into the hallway and explained it to them. “You can’t talk to teachers — or anybody, I guess — like you just did. Making threats like that is very serious.” I sent the student to his admin and wrote them up.

All of this happened literally 15 minutes before school got out for winter break.

I took some time before leaving for the day to speak to administration about it; I wasn’t sure what the protocol was for threats, so I wanted to cover my bases and make sure I’d informed everyone who needed to be informed. Admin told me not to worry — that particular student was being moved out of my class. So, I thought, problem solved. Hopefully the student will be put someplace where they can find success.

Except, of course, that wasn’t the end of it. That student simply got moved from one class of mine to another class of mine. So, I’m still teaching them, but at a different time of day.

(Thanks for the help, admin! Shuffling students around like troublesome Catholic priests is sure to solve this issue.)

Yesterday, this student got in some more trouble. They were late for class without a pass, lied about where they’d been, lied about talking to an admin when told to get a tardy slip, lied about having their phone, lied about using their phone while they were supposed to be reading, and refused to stop using their phone multiple times. All of this was within the first 10 minutes of class.

I called for security to get an escort to take this student to the administration office. The student said, “I don’t need an escort. I can walk to the admin office by myself.”

I said, “I’d like to believe you, but you’ve lied pretty consistently today and you have been caught walking the halls several times this week. We’ll just wait for an escort to make sure you get where you need to be.”

Only no escort showed up. We waited for over an hour, but … nothing. The student just sat at his desk. I carried on with the lesson and emailed admin to ask what to do in this situation but heard nothing in response before the end of class.

It is incredibly disheartening. I’m not mad at the student, just as I’m not mad at admin for keeping this student in my class, just as I’m not mad about no security escort showing up.

The cold, hard truth of it is that security was probably busy with other problems and didn’t have time to send an escort. Admin probably kept the student in my class because there was no other choice with scheduling — every student takes English and there are only so many English classes. And this student has problems of their own — I’m sure their propensity for lying is learned behavior that has helped the student in the past. They need more help; they need a classroom with fewer students and a different structure.

This is the kind of student who, if I asked them, “Please write your name on this piece of paper,” would fail the task. Not because they can’t write or anything; it’s more likely something along the lines of behavioral defiance. The student opposes anyone in authority “just because.”

I wish I could say I didn’t have other students with the same issue, but it’s actually pretty common.

Who would’ve thought a country like ours would produce so many people with behavioral disorders?

Side quests & butchering wizards

One benefit of having trouble sleeping is that I’ve got a lot more time for audio books. They help me drift off, and when I’m spending a few hours doing, well, not much, having a book to put on is helpful.

A few years ago, Sarah turned me on to Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, the most recent entry of which (Twelve Months) came out about a week ago. The series, which follows a “wizard for hire” named Harry Dresden in and around the city of Chicago, started out as a cross between fantasy and hard-boiled detective fiction. Now, though, it’s a lot more involved. (Jim Butcher is leaving the “detective” part behind in favor of more fantasy and action. In the last book, Dresden fought a god.)

We listened to the audio book versions of the series (narrated by John Marsters of Buffy fame; delightful) as we’ve travelled around — mostly in tents at campgrounds west of the Great Plains. Since then, it’s become a bit of a comfort series that we put on when we’re going to bed or whatever. Or, as has been the case recently, when we’re in bed but can’t sleep.

While I haven’t made much progress with A Court of Thorns and Roses, I’ve gotten through a lot more Twelve Months. It’s a fantastic book so far, but a lot more … listless than previous entries.

It’s to be expected, I suppose, since the last book in the series, Battlegrounds, was fairly climactic and left the main character with some trauma he’s had to work through. However, the plot seems driven by “this is what happened over the course of a year” rather than “Harry has a problem to solve.”

My side quest at work today is going to be to go back and finish the header drawing for yesterday’s post. It’s important to have side quests to focus on throughout your day.

I create all the “art” on this website by doodling on my Kindle Scribe, which is a fantastic e-reader with a quirkly stylus that is sow low-tech it is wonderful.

Because I left my Kindle on my desk at school yesterday, I wasn’t able to get the art done before posting last night. #scatterbrain

Dumb & dumber & grades

I swear I’m getting dumber and dumber as the days go on. It’s like my brain is turning into a dried up husk.

It’s not that I’m forgetting how to speak or do math (although I feel like I’m a lot slower at both of those things than I was, oh, five years ago) but that I’m feeling a lot more scatter-brained. I am all over the place.

You know that feeling you get when you walk into a room and forget why you’re there? That’s called an event boundary, and it basically happens because your mind starts a new “instance” of itself when you are in a new context. When you’re in the kitchen, kitchen-you can be perfectly aware that kitchen-you needs kitchen-your airpods, but when kitchen-you goes into the bedroom to get them, a whole new you pops up! It’s Bedroom-you, who doesn’t run the same set of processes. Bedroom-you isn’t thinking about how kitchen-you’d like to listen to a podcast while kitchen-you’re cooking; bedroom-you wonders if bedroom-your sweatpants are in the dryer or in the hamper. 

Hence, it feels like you “forgot” why you went into the bedroom just because your mind switched modes. Go back to the kitchen and, odds are, you’ll remember what you were after.

It’s like a crappy magic trick! You’re the one with the saw and you’re the one getting cut in half!

I left my kindle at work so I can’t draw pictures

See? I can remember that stuff perfectly well, but I’ll still fall victim to this psychological treachery.

The worst part of it is the way my attention span has been impacted. It’s not that I’ll be sitting and reading a book and then go, “I’m bored. I should do something else.” But I will sit down to read and find myself suddenly standing up to go do something else when I don’t even realize I’m doing it. Only when I’m elbow deep in dirty dishes will I go, “Oh, yeah, I was reading.”

This is just evidence

Anywho. I’m guessing that the problem is related to my sleep, which makes sense, since I just got done blogging about how bad my sleep patterns are.

It’s tough to decide what to do about this. Except, of course, have a cup of tea.

Of my inevitable mental decline

In other news, after a second round of grades put in the gradebook, hey, look at that, the average grades in most classes are normalizing. There aren’t nearly as many failing grades as the administration was worried about. Why? Because a student’s overall performance is no longer tied to one or two data entries.

It’s almost as if freaking out about off-track data during the first few weeks of school was a total waste of time. 

Who knew?

News flashes & routine procedures

I’ve been trying to set a bit more of a morning routine since school started back up in January. It’s always been tough for me because I’m not the most consistent sleeper in the world. On some mornings (like today), I’m able to hop right up at 5:00 AM and start doing things. On other mornings, I’m completely dragging ass and hit the snooze until 5:45. The problem is that I wake up randomly in the night and often struggle to get back to sleep, so there’s no telling if/when I’ll be well-rested.

I’m not sure what to do about that. I’ve tried to improve my sleep hygiene, but I don’t think I did that correctly (I’m still not sure what “sleep hygiene” means, exactly). I’ve tried medicine, but I’m not a huge fan of feeling super groggy. I’ve tried drinking more water, exercising, meditation, and most recently a humidifier. I’m still wildly inconsistent with my sleep.

The other problem with my morning routine is the news. I enjoy turning on the news first thing in the morning so I can see what’s going on in the country and world — my parents used to do this and I’ve always thought it was a “normal” part of getting up, but all of the news sources I can fund just … suck. It’s all either 30-minutes of “What is Donald Trump talking about today?” and/or segments on the most divisive subjects using the worst “reporting” they can muster. ABC. CBS. NBC. BBC. Their reporting is all garbage.

Not only is it bad to start your day with such rampant negativity — these bozos can’t help but spin every little thing to preserve the status quo that earns them their bread, which means treating disturbing, murderous content like it’s “just another day!” — but it’s wildly inaccurate and full of nonsense that isn’t news.

(Hill I’ll die on: Reporting on polling data doesn’t qualify as “news.” It’s a major corporation telling us how to think.)

I know I often seem flippant about current events, what with my funny little pics like this one:

But everything happening in Minnesota is so horrible I’m not sure what else to do about it. There’s video — multiple videos — of a guy being held down and executed. The Trump administration openly lies about it while the news shows the videos, and all the news will say is, “Well, shucks, fellas, it looks like we’re getting conflicting reports of what happened!” when what they should say is, “Administration officials are lying to your face.”

The whole thing does make me want to share this George Orwell line from 1984:

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

I’ve tried watching some Al Jazeera news in the morning to get more of a world perspective, but that station’s reporting is like a who’s who of starving nations, which is important but not the sort of thing I want to ponder over my morning tea. So, maybe my problem is more that the world is awful and I don’t want to hear about it at 5:00 AM.

It’s still cold and a lot of the country is buried under ice. (That sentence is true both literally and figuratively.)

Tick tock on a clock dj blow up my speakers

I downloaded TikTok a while ago (I’m awfully late to the party; sue me) mostly because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I’ve found it hard to interact with students on a personal level if I don’t spend some time checking out what they’re into. You’ve got to watch the shows, listen to the music, play the dumb phone games (and, yes, download what is possibly the most insidious app ever devised).

I’m not saying you’ve got to become all about those things — five minutes with Block Blast, I think, is more than enough — but you should spend enough time with them that, when you see little Timmy trying to sneakily make a little square jump over some spikes under his desk, you can know which particular culprit has stolen Timmy’s attention.

Of all the apps that students regularly use, TikTok is far and away the worst. Good lord it is addicting. The more I use it, the more I come to think that it is both reckless and stupid to allow teenagers unrestricted access to apps like TikTok. We’re creating an army of little dopamine mind-slaves. Australia has the right idea in banning that shit.

(Sure, that “mind-slave” bit is an exaggeration — I’m a writer, I exaggerate perpetually — but you’d be hard-pressed to find a single long-term benefit provided by TikTok.)

Sure, but what news is being delivered at laser-fast, fiberoptic speeds? What, exactly, is the content being bounced around satellites and into my little glass rectangle? That’s the problem I have with this whole thing. I ask myself the same question I ask when I watch cable news: “Who decided that I should see this?”

For cable news, the answer is easy: It’s decided by corporations who will show you whatever “news” they think will most benefit their bottom line. (As evidenced by cable news shows actually turning into the home shopping network.)

For TikTok (and YouTube and Instagram…), we’ve instead got something people are oddly okay with calling “The Algorithm.” (What the fuck kind of sideways-ass timeline are we in where our “information feeds” are controlled by “The Algorithm” and we’re all like, “Yeah, that’s fine, Imma go to Starbucks.”)

The scary part (well…one of the scary parts) is that nobody, not even the creators, can fully tell you how the goddamned algorithm works. It’s complicated as all hell and tracks so much of your information it is absolutely astounding.

So, basically, we don’t know how or why we’re being fed the stuff we see on these apps. We don’t know if we’re all seeing the same stuff, or if we’re all in little bubbles being spoon-fed what The Algorithm wants us to see. (In some cases we’re being shown different angles of the same event — actually spinning reality in real time, creating different “versions of the truth.”)

I mean. This all sounds a bit like I need to tighten my tin foil hat, but… How many more times this morning do I need to see a guy in Minnesota being murdered? How many more times do I need to zoom in on that shooting with super slo-mo?

And how many times does every teenager in the country need to rewatch it? No, really, what’s a healthy number? What do you think? They say you have to experience something 33 times for it to enter long term memory, which seems a little high to me, so maybe we can start there and work toward a reasonable number? /s

Shit’s bananas.

Tea Times & Cold Snaps

I quit drinking coffee a couple of months ago (in an attempt, I suppose, to suck out all the remaining bits of joy from life) and it has turned me into a tremendous tea drinker.

I’m not saying “tremendous” like “I’m getting larger” but “tremendous” like “jeez is that your sixth cup already? Take it easy big fella.” You know what I mean.

I’ve tried out a few different flavors and brands of tea since December, including this bad boy:

“Black Cask Bourbon!” I thought. “I bet that taste’s great!”

It tastes like someone stuck a cigar in some scotch and then threateningly waved it at a teabag.

It makes me wonder what sorts of things are going on in the avant-garde of the tea industry? I don’t mean bubble tea or any of those new-fangled gimmicky sorts of teas with thick straws and chunks, but avant-garde in the sense of tea at its purest form. Which is, I’m almost certain, “Hot water with plant-based flavoring.”

I’m planning a trip to the Asian market this weekend for some noodies and soybean paste, so I’ll just swing through the tea aisle and see if anything catches my eye. Any time there are cool new tea flavors, the usually come from Asia.

(Sorry, UK, you guys do tea pretty well, but Asia really gets out there with it. I’ve seen teas in Korea that are made of dried corn husks and grave dirt.)

In unrelated news, there was no school yesterday thanks to this storm that’s hitting a whole swath of the US. I stayed home and napped for most of the day while poor Sarah had to drive all the way across town in -25 degree temperatures to work her shift at the library. “It really wasn’t that bad,” Sarah told me. “There was hardly any traffic at all.”

We haven’t had much snow yet, but it is coooold. People are saying that trees are exploding in parts of the country, but I think that’s all just a bunch of hype.