Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited – New York Times
July 5, 2005
I just wanted to have an entry that said: “a team of psychologists directly measured genital arousal patterns.” If that’s not a euphemism, I don’t know what is.
Dear Blog: Today I Worked on My Book
July 3, 2005
The New York Times > Technology > Dear Blog: Today I Worked on My Book:
Okay, so it’s not really about me and the book; but it could be. That is if you count cutting and pasting things together 18hundred different ways instead of actually typing anything new writing.
For children and technology
July 3, 2005
I’m certain that this Calvin and Hobbes comic fits into my children and technology collection :-)
Exceptionally Productive
June 30, 2005
I’ve been quite busy getting work finished for our first ReadWriteThink content report of FY06. We added several Web sites to the Web Resources Gallery:
- Ohio Center for the Book
- Dickinson Electronic Archives
- NYPL Digital Gallery
- The Walt Whitman Archive
- Publishers’ Bindings Online 1815-1930: The Art of Books
- Newseum
I composed a lesson plan, which actually includes a List of Ten. The 9–12 lesson Star-Crossed Lovers Online: Romeo and Juliet for a Digital Age includes a list of Modern-Day Interpretation Projects (It’s a PDF). I plan to add it specifically to the Lists page, but I’m just listing it here for now. I have some additional ideas to add to the list of interpretation (e.g., create the cell phone address book of one of the characters, complete with icons and custom ringtones). There may be a second list of interpretations eventually. While the lesson plan uses Romeo and Juliet for the examples, I’ve written the Projects so that they use the word “text” rather than name the work that is involved—that way anyone can use them with any “older” text.
Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction | lesson plan | Lists of Ten |
ReadWriteThink | Romeo and Juliet |
Odd layout problems
June 28, 2005
There’s something odd going on with this layout on Firefox/Win. I first saw it last night, but won’t have a chance to try to figure out what’s going on for a little while. Bear with me please. Thanks.
It’s not a toilet seat
June 28, 2005
The Washington Post has a story today on computers as nostalgic collectibles: “Geek Chic: Old Computers As Collectibles” (bugmenot login: youareidiots@mailintor.com / password).
And okay, I readily admit that I have some old technologies lying about because I just like old technologies. But the article libels my cute Mac iBook: “He keeps his circa-1999 iBook — the one that looks like a toilet seat — in the basement, next to one of those tiki lamps that repel mosquitoes.” It’s not a toilet seat, Jose Antonio Vargas, and I hope you get boils on your butt for your evil lies.
Tags: computer collectibles | iBook | technology news
Writing like a writing teacher
June 26, 2005
Perhaps this will interest no one other than me, but I think it’s a reminder of how we sometimes forget who we are and what we know. I struggled for weeks with the text I’m trying to write. I’m still trying to write it, and in many places it is crappy extraordinaire. I’ve just been unable to write anything useful and equally unable to figure out why I can’t write anything. I mean. Look, I’m a writer. It’s what I do. While I was stuck, I was writing lesson plans and Inbox entries and even a conference presentation—but I couldn’t write my manuscript.
I was sitting on the Selfes’ porch last Thursday, writing and rewriting the same damned pages. Gracie was lying nearby, but she wasn’t any help at all. Cindy was even sitting across from me for a while, writing like the writing fiend that she is. There’s something really odd about trying to write when your role model/idol is sitting across from you. But that’s a different entry.
The point was that I couldn’t write, and I had over the course of the weeks blamed a million things. The desk wasn’t comfortable in the apartment, so I rearranged things and even got a lightweight TV-type table to solve that problem. The chair wasn’t comfy, so I bought a folding chair that was better. Still stuck. I rearranged my writing and set up so that I was writing in the comfy stuffed “living room” chair. Still blocked. I tried writing in the CCLI. I tried writing at multiple machines, Mac and Windows, different locations. I still wrote crap or couldn’t write at all.
So here I was on the Selfes’ porch. I had a good chair and a large table. I had writing stuff all around me. I had doggies to pet. I had a great view of woods and wildlife. I was hoping for a moose, but one never showed up. Still, I was stuck writing crap. Okay, it was thickly humid and 90+ degrees and I was dripping like a popsicle in hell; but I knew that the heat wasn’t the problem. I hadn’t been able to write anywhere, after all.
Something about having Cindy sitting across from me made me think about the problem differently. I started quizzing myself. In my make-believe world, I imagined what it would be like if Cindy were to ask me how my writing was going and what I was accomplishing. I knew how to answer that question. My chapters just didn’t feel right. One section was all choppy lists. They read like things that I had written, since parts of them had grown out of Lists of Ten; but they didn’t fit together and try as I might, I couldn’t make them sound not like lists. The Intro sounded something like I would write for an Inbox message. The research section sounded something like a very extended Theory to Practice section from a lesson plan. That or like a self-contained article of its own. Nothing fit together, and none of it felt right.
Now, I realize that I was giving myself a writing conference. Or more accurately, I was making believe that Cindy was giving me one. But it wasn’t solving anything. All I was doing was thinking through the reasons that my text sucks big. Defeated, I started my inner voice of self-hatred and despair. I remember thinking, “You idiot. You’re a writing teacher and you can’t write. What the hell is wrong with you? This is totally wrong and you should be able to fix it. You are writing about writing, damn it. You’re supposed to know how to do this.”
In the middle of this tirade of self-hatred, I suddenly told myself to fucking stop it. The self-hatred wasn’t getting anywhere—but the writing teacher was. Again, I remember thinking, “Okay, you’re a writing teacher. If a student came to you and was this stuck, what would you ask the student to do? You’d tell the student to freewrite. To just journal away about the crap and the problem and whatnot.”
Naturally the evil voice of self-hatred perked back up. “That will accomplish nothing. You’ll waste writing time, and have useless text.” But somehow, I made all the voices just shut up. I shut them down, and I just wrote this:
I want this chapter to explain the basic parts of writing a good assignment. The point is to outline the basic things that a writer needs to do in order to get a good assignment. The tips that are included are all good by themselves, but they aren’t unified and there is no flow to the section. I could try to focus on a single lesson idea as it evolves, essentially writing down the process that I would follow to create the writing assignment itself. Perhaps the best thing is indeed to write a lesson plan and take notes on the process that I follow so that I can show that lesson as a case study of sorts–how it fits together, how the parts flow into one another and into the other parts of the curriculum, and how the piece is assessed.
I think that the problem so far in the text is that it’s all this distant, non-person voice. I mean it’s the voice of the Inbox and whatnot, but that voice isn’t allowed to have an “I” so the text is in some ways w/o its author.
I had to stop prematurely because the ECAC folks were arriving as I was writing the last bit. I didn’t have time to even reread or rethink it. I just hurriedly got the idea down. But the more I did think about it during the ECAC gathering, the more I realized that last idea was it. That was why I was blocked. Those last two sentences finally told me why I was stuck. I had hidden myself and tried to write a text where I didn’t exist. I’ve gotten so used to hiding myself in my Inbox writing, that I was trying to cut myself out of the book—and that’s why I’ve been stuck for 3 weeks. I was trying to silence my voice, and as a result, I couldn’t say anything.
Today, I’ve finally had a chance to go back to the bits that I’ve written over the last weeks, and it’s all so obvious. Every place the text is awkward or convulted, I was trying to write without letting myself into the text. Once I rewrote a bit, allowing myself first-person pronouns and giving myself permission to write about MY experience in addition to the general info and the research. It all works so much better.
I’d like to believe that the breakthrough was being on the Selfes’ porch, sitting across from Cindy. But really, I know that’s not it. The breakthrough came when I started thinking like a writing teacher and applying what I knew to where I was stuck. It wasn’t the desk, the chair, the heat, the books and articles that I did or didn’t have. It wasn’t any of those things. It was that I was trying to write with a voice that wasn’t mine.
Tags: ECAC | writing process
Like the Schwan’s man, I always deliver
June 23, 2005
Like the Schwan’s man, I always deliver. Sure, it may not be when you wanted it. You may have been perfectly happy already. But eventually, the Schwan’s man delivers. And who could turn down the tasty goodness of a juicy bagel dog with cheese when it’s there at the door, ready to come in and be served?
Yes, like the Schwan’s man, I deliver, and forwith, we have one giant, catching-up-on-all-the-details, majorly huge, and enormogimongous travelogue. So poo ot all you whinypants who are running around behind my back being all, “Why don’t you stop eating and write something?” Just hush up, and read whiner.
Now in the days of CIWIC, long ago in the land of Win, there was a boy named Bargeplay. His mother, while a sweet and gentle woman, had been a Girl Scout and she was all too pleased with that Barges song. Every night of her pregnancy, she sang to the little amphibian in her tummy.
Barges, I would like to go with you. I would like to sail the oceans blue. Barges, have you treasurers in your hold? Do you fight with pirates brave and bold?
And when the baby was born, she named him Bargeplay, because she hoped that he would grow up to play with barges and other large things. He didn’t mind so much. Sure, it was an unusual name, but so is Jori Hepart. And besides, there were sailor benefits.
Little Bargeplay grew up quickly over the next 30-some years, and he found himself at CIWIC. The important thing to note, however, is that as he emphasized, most emphatically, he just wanted to play his tunes. 
How could he be in a lab with proximity to a computer and not be able to play his tunes. “I’m not a prima donna,” he toned like Badger in HBO TV series Curb Your Enthusiasm (see image). “I just want my music.”
Little Bargeplay’s friends flew into action. On their knees, they attacked the three different machines that he huffily sat down at. “Stay down there,” he said, not for the first time according to sources, “I can use you like that.” When his tunes finally filled the CCLI, he sang out, “I’m in heaven!” and went back to the larger issue “at hand.”
See, I had shared, perhaps unwisely, that I was reading a young-adult novel called p: ¬) ChaseR (Candlewick, 2002). The protagonist in p: ¬) ChaseR is a bit over-zealous about ASCII art. In addition to the many emoticons and ASCII art of locusts (the bugs), I was given the opportunity to see in one of young Chase’s e-mails Nakedman:
{: ¬) : ·| 8=>
I shared Nakedman with Bargeplay and others in the CCLI. I even made Nakedman a friend, Nakedgrrl:
__/
{: ¬) 8 ·| --
--\
My sharing was meant to be so innocent. Nothing at all like the ASCII art that young Chase shares in the novel to portray himself at night, in bed, thinking of Maryanne:
p: ¬) \ | ---------------------------|
And yet, my CCLImates turned quickly from my innocence to their own pervy wonderings. Their question: What would Dickie’s new ASCII art signature be? Conjecture, there was plenty; but no my friends, I am NOT going to ask him. If you are truly curious, you must ask him yourself. If I had to guess, I’d say his sig will be something like this:
| | | o
,---.,---.|--- ,---.|---.,---.. ,,---.| .,---.,---.
| || || `---.| || | \ / |---'| || || |
` '`---'`---' `---'` '`---' `' `---'`---'`` '`---|
`---'
| o| | o
,---.,---.,---.. . . | .|__/ ,---. ,---.,---.| .,---.
`---.| || || | | | || \ |---' | || || || |
`---'` '`---'`-'-' `---'`` ``---' |---'|---'`---' `` '
| |
| | . .,---.
|--- |---.,---. | ||---'
| | ||---' | ||
`---'` '`---' `---'`
I had to leave the CCLI at this point. Nick was making me some wonderful paper airplanes, but the ASCII guesses were just too irreverant.
As always, there was a lovely dessert night, at which the Selfe’s served an unusual UP dessert: Brats and burgers. Cigars all around to burn away the itchy bugs. Marilyn Cooper arrived on her motorcycle—a big ol’ Harley with a sidecar for Pegeen. They roared into the Selfes’ yard, and not even the two giant poodles could convince her to park with the cars as she was supposed to. She drove right up into the house and parked in front of the fireplace. Pegeen, the singing prodigy, stood up on hind legs and belted out show tunes from Grease and Cats for 45 minutes, the beauteous melody broken only by the swatting of bugs and spraying of Deep Woods Off.
There was tequila, so it’s not clear in my notes what happened and what was simply pantomime of possible events. Several things were clear. The Super 8 is a happening place. Someone should invent Deep Woods On, then Dickie could wander into the woods and spray a tree or a rock or that pile of snow that he claims is in the woods with the ON and the bugs would go there instead of annoying everyone. And most importantly, pasty rhymes with nasty for the second year in a row. The evening ended, and I drove a friend to the Super 8 where he may or may not have met someone else.
Things Overheard at the Super 8 Lobby
- A brown bandana!!! There’ll be fun tonight!
- Random or shuffle?
- Does it dock? Dock and load, baby.
- That’s the way to get a head.
- That sucks
- FONDO!
- Check out his bratwurst.
- How do you feel about water sports?
- Smuggler, stiff upper lip, or spy machine? Tell me your pleasure.
Herbert Wainwright, well-known compositionist from the University of Vlad, stared amusedly at the drink in Gracie’s hand. He might not be one of the fifteen compositionists at Purdue in the old days, but he knew a good drink when he saw one.
Another night, another meal at Cindy and Dickie’s—and this time, I am initiated into the Secret Society of Important Rhetoricians. We play the party game that’s sweeping the nations: Name the Rhetoricians. One person at the party names a school and a time period. Others attempt to name all the rhetoricians at the school at that moment in time. It’s the kind of game that the kids will be playing for decades to come.
As the evening dwindled on, Gail the aggressive sitter regaled us with stories of feral ferrets in Japan, attacking those who innocently try to take out the trash. There were tales also of big chairs, and a short game of Do you think we can fit Gail in the woodbox? The hilarity was ended though as we all thought on Michael and the Summer of the Dead Cats.
(please observe a moment of silence)
Gracie is not a cat. She is the smartest dog. She is the one who quit doing tricks for the dog intelligence test when the snacks run out. Gracie is amazingly optimistic. When there is food, she believes it will be hers. When there is not food, she has other things to do and you’re just in her way. The only time you’re useful, assuming you’re not giving her food, is if you’re preparing food to give to her.
Bosco is less focused, but deathly afraid of running into tubes with parachute thingies on the end. So much better to leap up on top like a lumberjack. Dickie buys Bosco a cute little plaid shirt and an axe. Bosco is a lumberjack, and he’s okay! He barks all night and he barks all day!
Days sweep by. Never enough time. Never enough. Cheryl is polishing the brass with a guy. There are no speed interviews however. Many pink notebooks, but no more interviews. Houghton is a town where not even K-mart can survive as an anchor store. Diplomatically, Anne gestures and warns, “Do not park between stores at the outlet mall for it will rain.”
Aboard the Keweenaw Star we sail out into Lake Superior, passing by all the little children playing in the water. Nick and I do our duty, shouting tips and commands: Do your homework! Read a book! Write a journal entry! The children continue to pump hands in the air, hoping the Keweenaw Star’s chatty admiral will blow the horn. Reading a book would be so much more useful than blowing something, but they are children and do not listen.
The three-hour tour is relatively without marine incident, despite having to dodge the landing sea plane, which was clearly no where near a sea. I use the men’s room, just for the impish joy of it. What are they going to do to me? There are no potty police on the Keweenaw Star, and the 7 layers of the Quincy Mine, mimicking the layers of hell, are very far away. I cannot be sent to live, pasty-less with Satan. We are too far out and yet still not close enough to the Bambi gates.
The captain did lament these trips. Always. Always. People did their Titanic impersonations at the front of the boat. Leaning out over the water. Just once, he wished he could throttle the engine and knock those losers in the water. But just as this notion passes through his mind, the water-skiing Huskie zips by the ship. Who can think thoughts of evil to humanity when there is a water-skiing college mascot nearby?
“That’s the best thing I’ve seen all week,” says Cheryl, “And I was over at the Super 8 the other night, so I’ve seen a lot of things.”
As we deboat, the captain warns us: Beware the big headed carp. He may leap out of the water as you try to step to shore. Beware, or you may be eaten alive. There is no need to call in the sniper from Marquette. The six town police cars are able to corral the captain and take him in for questioning.
Another fine adventure at CIWIC completed, we all went our separate ways. Do not lament my friends if you find you didn’t make the travelogue. I hate to have to say it, but bluntness is sometimes best: “If you do not see your name, sorry. You are useless to me textually.”
Tags: tengrrl’s travelblog