Today I hate ( Read more... )

Last I checked, NS has been playing "Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory" roughly 50% of his waking hours-- time off taken only to accomplish work for which he is paid-- for the last week. I wonder how much longer this will persist. It's quite astonishing. Even at my most obessive, I am unable to equal this. I forget what he sounds like when he talks-- ( Read more... )

I would just like to register my annoyance with myself: I am sitting here on Sunday afternoon, cheerfully watching football, vacantly shoving flour tortillas and salsa into my mouth and drinking a nice Cape Cod (ahh) when it occurs to me to idly check the nutrition facts on the tortilla packet. Turns out each tortilla has 100 calories, and I've ( Read more... )

It's amazing how, when asked, so many Americans come out of the woodwork to defend Gen. Pinochet. I've just spent some time elevating my heart-rate by reading commentary on a BBC poll as to whether Pinochet should be tried (one of the biggest no-brainer questions of the last three decades, if you ask me), and these people from Florida and Michigan ( Read more... )

What's that thing from 1984-- the "two minutes of Hate" or something ( Read more... )

Boy. SOMEBODY needs to fix their attitude. I actually introduced Alexander Pope's "Discourse on Pastoral" as something written by a sixteen-year-old with nothing better to do, on a poetic form that nobody living actually likes ( Read more... )

This kid I teach sent me home with homework this weekend: I was to read his "favorite ever" book, the "best book he's ever read, ever!!!" (he liked it so much he wrote that on the cover in indelible marker). It is this thing published by MTV Books (oh my God) called "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." Supposedly it is our generation's answer to "The ( Read more... )

Somebody asked me to list the four great defining pieces of art in my life-- literary, cinematic, visual and musical. Took a while. Here they are ( Read more... )

The phrase I use most frequently these days is now, "OK, knock it off, y'all."

Teaching? Pshaw! Crowd-control.

Pox.

Anyone know if Bush accepted Chavez's offer of aid?