Syllabus #29

There's a lot to unpack this week.  Happy Halloween and, this being the morning in which many of you will do a Post-Mischief Night damage assessment, may your vehicles and personal property be free of smashed eggs, toilet paper, shaving cream, silly string, or feces.  You never know how wild things will get.

Pick your poison

Because we can always use a good laugh.

I didn't even read this one, I just glanced at the headline, raised two middle fingers, and said "and here are two things you can do to yourself as soon as you get home."

Everybody calm down, nobody's giving away free edibles this Halloween.  But if you want me to inspect your kids' candy, I guess I can take one for the team.  If you don't hear from me for 48 hours I'm either working my way through all the good candy and leaving only the Tootsie Rolls and Smarties, or I'm rocking back and forth in the fetal position wondering if it's too late to apologize to everyone I've ever met for cheating on a test in 4th grade.

And don't worry, even if your kid does end up with a Hershey Kush or a bag of Reefer's Pieces, they can still be Cali Sober.

Amen to all of this.  I'm on board with 100% of what Roxane Gay has to say about air travel and checking a bag, except I am too cheap and impatient to actually check a bag if it can be avoided.

Imagine my surprise when the questions, "How old are you?" and "So, you like...stuff?" weren't on the list!

They like me, they really like me.  

Yea, that checks out, but you know what, it's the circle of life.  

Speaking of tacky reasons for a party.

An exploration of our collective hatred of vegans.  I have a hard time trusting someone who can turn their back on cheese, but otherwise they're aight.  "Vegans might well be vociferous and annoying, holier-than-thou, self-satisfied and evangelical. But as their numbers grow beyond the margins, perhaps the worst thing they could be is right."

Take me out to that ball game.

This article was worth reading for the following detail: 
Though the details of Eminem’s answers have been redacted, the documents do mention that he started to “rap along with the interviewers as the verse was read.” Apparently his answers were sufficient to convince the agents he did not present a serious danger, since the Secret Service took no further action.

On the female comedians who called out Harvey Weinstein at an event in NYC recently.  The event organizer defended Weinstein's presence by saying, “I welcome all walks of life into my space.  I protect them by freedom of speech.” Girl, wut?  Rape and sexual assault aren't freedom of speech.  No champion of that right would have had those comedians removed from the event.

Analog Reading:

The New Yorker's October 14th issue, specifically the Joyce Carol Oates short story - Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God

There There by Tommy Orange

Sick in the Head by Judd Apatow

Oprah Magazine - November issue  

I ate this very life changing sandwich pictured below on our Thanksgiving trip to New Orleans last year.  I think about it on a weekly basis.

That's it and that's all.  Keep your nose clean, friends.

Mischief Night

Image via NJ.com

Do you have a special name for the night preceding Halloween?  Is it just October 30th to you?  Diabetes Eve?  Perhaps, if you're a teacher, it's the night you drink yourself into oblivion if the next two days happen to be school days?  There are no worse days to be an educator than the day of and the day following sugar-centric celebrations.

If you answered with any of the above, clearly, you are not from New Jersey.  Along with Wawa, good pizza, hoagies, and the Jersey devil, I grew up assuming everyone knew about Mischief Night.  How little I appreciated my good fortune, taking for granted so many regionally specific South Jersey/Philadelphia-area treasures.

According to a linguistic study, most of the country has no particular name for the night before Halloween.  A miniscule (and wrong) minority of people in Michigan and parts of New England refer to the night as Devil's Night or Cabbage Night, respectively.  The rest of the country outside of the New Jersey/Philadelphia area remains pitifully ignorant of this bit of folklore cum rite of passage.

So what is it, exactly?  It is exactly as advertised - a night for those of us perhaps too old to trick-or-treat but too immature to appreciate the sting of vandalism or other forms of petty property crime to unleash our Ids and act like complete assholes.  Described thusly, it is actually not the least bit surprising that this is a New Jersey based tradition.  The other 364 days of the year, we keep our assholery to a low simmer on the back burner.  One night of the year, we move that pot of rage to the front of the stove and crank it up to medium high and let that sucker boil over.  

Where did this tradition come from, and why New Jersey?  It may have roots in the Pagan celebration of Samhain, a time when spirits would come and play tricks on the living.  Some say the origins extend back a mere hundreds of years, as the first known documented incident took place in Oxford in 1790.  Others link the practice to the remembrance of Guy Fawkes, and the burning of bonfires on November 4th.  Still others tie the October 30th date to the pandemonium following the Black Tuesday stock market crash of October 29, 1929.  

Classic Mischief Night pranks include the irritating but not outrageously destructive toilet-papering of a neighbor's trees, egging cars or houses, or spraying silly string on every imaginable outdoor surface.  The pranks often escalate quickly, as things tend to do in New Jersey.  More serious vandalism, like spray painting property, throwing bricks through windows, or setting fires, has been a problem in the past.  In 1991, Camden had an especially extra Mischief Night when several shootings and 133 fires were reported.

I don't recall specific incidents in my town, beyond casual reports of toilet paper in trees and maybe some cars getting egged.  Mischief Night was just in the ether; it was a foregone conclusion.  Local news channels cautioned us to beware.  Better park your cars in your garages tonight.  Better hope it doesn't rain before home owners have a chance to clean the TP out of their trees.  

I recall feeling each October 30th the acute disappointment of living in a rural area with no easy access to prankable neighbors.  It sounded like the thrill of a lifetime to run down the street smashing jack-o-lanterns, throwing eggs, ringing doorbells and running away.  I'm sure that given the opportunity, I would have wussed out.  I'm a slow runner, so of course out of all my co-conspirators (whoever they may have been...none of my friends were out doing these things without me) I would be the one to get caught and punished.  

One year, I had a real YOLO moment and decided I didn't want my years of peak adolescent assholery to pass by unappreciated.  I must have been maybe 15 or 16 - too old to trick-or-treat but too young to fully anticipate the consequences of my actions.  I found a small paper bag and surreptitiously harvested a healthy selection of dog crap ranging in texture from petrified fossil to fresh and malleable, which I secreted beside the garage.  I slipped a pack of matches from the kitchen drawer where my grandmother kept her cigarettes.  I waited until nightfall.

When it was time for me to let the dog out after dinner, I was ready.  I clipped the dog's leash to his run, grabbed the crapsack, and mustered up all my courage.  I remember it was a windy but cloudless night with a nearly full moon, which was the only source of light as I picked my way through the dark forest of pine trees between my grandmother's front yard and the closest neighbor's driveway.  The whole way there, I tried to suppress irrational thoughts of The Wolf Girl with the anticipation of hiding in the trees and watching this neighbor stomp on a flaming bag of dog crap.  I patted myself on the back for being so visionary as to select both desiccated feces that would ignite, as well as fresh turds that would defile ones shoes when stomping out the flames.

Once I found myself standing in my neighbor's driveway, I felt overly exposed to the sporadic traffic passing by on the main road.  I crouched down on the far side of the car that this poor bastard had left exposed to the egg-throwing hoi polloi, and whipped out my pack of matches.  I struck one and held it against the paper bag, which had grown somewhat damp from sitting outside as the seasonably warm day turned to a chillier dusk.  The match quickly shortened as I fumbled with the bag, and I shook it out just before it burned my fingers.  

No matter.  I lit another match and a gust of wind blew it out immediately.  I tried lighting three matches and sheltering the bag and matches from the wind between my body and the car.  No luck.  This pitiful attempt at juvenile arson continued unsuccessfully until I ran out of matches and settled for depositing the not even remotely flaming bag of poo next to the driver's side door of the car and crept home, defeated.

I've since engaged in many asinine actions and pranks, but none specifically tied to the calendar as on that ill-fated night.  Looking back, I'm relieved to have failed.  As windy as it was that night, if I had succeeded in lighting the bag on fire, I would have either ended up in the burn unit or torched the neighbor's house to the ground by accident, or both.  Probably both.  Mercifully for everyone involved, my Mischief Night candle burned out long before the legend ever will.

Syllabus #28

Last week/weekend was the first annual Eastside Comedy Festival!  It was the jam.  It was so much fun, everyone did a fantastic job, and it was super organized (my favorite trait in an event - no Fyre Festival up in here).  I personally feel like I crushed my set on Sunday, and even Andy deigned to say it was good...but dude, I forgot to record it.  It's nothing more than a fart in the wind now.  And I'm exhausted.

Which is unfortunate because this week is...Book Fair Week!  Which means it's also 'Scream into a pillow at regular intervals' week and 'Reapply hand sanitizer with enough frequency that it raises my blood alcohol level' week, because money is vile and disgusting and so are most children.  Except your kids.  Your particular kids are great, I love 'em.

I'd be willing to bet an entire paycheck that if either of these astronauts is married, one of their husbands at least thought about calling them on the space walk to ask her for a favor or inquire where a common household item is stored.

"Hey honey, next time you go to the store, can you get more pretzels?" 

"Are you fucking kidding me?  Yea, I'll get right on that as soon as I re-enter the Earth's atmosphere after completing THIS HISTORIC ALL-FEMALE SPACE WALK.  I would go right now, sweetie, but I DON'T THINK THE TETHER ON MY SPECIALLY DESIGNED LADY SPACE SUIT REACHES THE 250 MILES BACK TO EARTH."

What kind of tipper are you?  I'm a solid 20%er unless the service was truly terrible in a manner that is obviously under the server's control.  Watching my mom wait tables for years and working numerous service industry jobs myself (tipped and un-tipped) made me aware of how piss poor the pay is and how much bullshit those people have to smile through.

With celebrities that died in notorious ways long before our time, it's easy to forget that their death by whatever means was shocking and difficult for the people who cared about them.  This meditation by Allen Ginsburg on the occasion of Kerouac's death was strange and fascinating.

The thirst is so unquenchable we have to build bots to do the drinking for us.  I don't post a lot of stories, but got excited to share comedy festival info with the perhaps 5 real life humans who might legitimately view my jawns.  It was very weird that random influencers and music producers appeared to be viewing my stuff, but I figured it was some accidental poop scroll rabbit hole people were falling into based on my hashtags until I read this article.

I'm not the most cunning linguist, but the exploration of how language develops and changes, and varies across dialects, regions, and cultures is fascinating.  This article about the origins of "you guys" kind of blew my mind.  The current shift in the usage of pronouns (for example, they as singular rather than plural 3rd person pronoun) has ample precedent.  Apparently, up until the 1600s, English used to differentiate between singular and plural 2nd person pronouns.  Thee/thou/thy were used for the singular and you was strictly plural.  Directly addressing someone using the plural form came into fashion as a sign of respect, but then it was confusing because nobody could tell if 'you' meant just you, or collective you.  There's a big difference between saying, "I'm going to murder YOU (just the one of you right there)," versus "I'm going to murder YOU (every single last goddamn one of you)."

What this company is doing to bring more affordable connectivity and information access to Cubans, not to mention revenue streams for some, is pretty cool.  We went to a two-day Spanish immersion workshop a couple weeks ago and listened to a Cuban exile/expat/immigrant (?) talk about conditions on the ground there, and it's shocking how almost everyone lives in these dire straits while tourists can visit and live the high life.  One interesting thing he mentioned was how everyone remarks on the amazing old cars in Cuba.  Obviously we know that's the case because of embargoes, but he said few people realize what hideous Frankenstein monsters these cars are, because buying and selling even the existing vehicles is highly restricted so people have to keep repairing these 50-year old cars with whatever components they can find.

That's all.  If you are a religious sort, please pray for me this week as I suffer the trials and tribulations of another book fair.  I'm an atheist, so I basically just want you to unproductively waste your time thinking about me instead of some orphans halfway around the world.  Oh my god, I'm so sorry, that came out wrong.  I mean, I typed it, and have full control over this situation that's happening where I just was really rude and dismissive of your faith, whatever it may be or not be.  I respect your choices and beliefs (as long as they don't make you do or say bigot stuff), I'm just making jokes, at my own expense, because I am the jerk here!

Afternoon Delight

Today's the last day of the first ever Eastside Comedy Festival!  

GA tickets available at the door for $10!

I'll be at Dino's at 1:00.  Come hear me pontificate on Dolly Parton's boobs, rant about pumpkin spice, and make fun of children.  

The bigger the tits, the less shirts that fits.

Syllabus #27

Let's dive straight into it this week.  Face first, just the way I like it.

50 Shades of Beige

Last week we learned about Cat-vent calendars, and I'm not trying to rush the holiday season or anything, but this hot sauce advent calendar is almost certainly going to happen in my household.  I put cayenne pepper in my oatmeal (pictured above, with kefir, peanut butter, apple chia seed jam, and a liberal coating of cinnamon) just to give you a picture of where I stand on spice levels. 

I agree with everything this article says, including designating Walton Goggins as a national treasure.  That man is the Billy Bob Thornton of supporting actors.  There's always an edge of uncomfortable, cocky, creepiness that is consistent across his roles, but otherwise he becomes so fully absorbed into his characters you forget he's an entirely different human playing a role.  Also, I dare you to hear the song Misbehavin' even one time without getting it permanently and irretrievably lodged in your brain on an endless loop.  I'm two episodes behind, so I really need to get my ass in gear before I'm exposed to a spoiler.  I'm guessing it ends with the rapture happening, but Jesus is actually Jonathan Van Ness and he just fixes Judy's awful poodle hair and everyone walks away with a lot more questions than answers.

Just reading this article made me tired.  It made me grateful for labor unions that advocated for a standard 5 day work week for so many workers, for one.  It also made me profoundly glad that I've chosen to spend the majority of my working life in the public sector, specifically in education.  I know that many, if not most, classroom teachers work well past dismissal time as well as on weekends.  Also, we don't get paid nearly enough, so many teachers with families to support have 2nd jobs or summer jobs.  But as I read this article on the last day of Fall Break, I have to acknowledge the amount of downtime we enjoy relative to other industries.

This hits me where I live.  I want the big piece, the corner piece.  Do I ask for it?  No.  Do I pretend I don't like cake and turn down even a sliver so I don't start with a few bites and end up eating 9 more slices?  Yes.

Yes, but have you met MY dog?  The article closes with the suggestion that cat ownership is also correlated with positive cardiovascular health outcomes, so "if you're really serious about living a long life, you should get a dog and a cat to cover all your bases."  If that's true, then I hope having two cats cancels out the deleterious effects of living with Charlie so at least I'm at a net zero here.

Alright, that's it for this week.  At the time of writing, it's Tuesday night and I'm scheduling this to post on Thursday morning.  So when (not if) something insane happens in the world in the next two days and I fail to mention it here, it's not for lack of awareness or giving a damn.  It's just a very busy week and I don't have time to dwell on whatever nuclear holocaust almost certainly went down on Wednesday, ya dig?

P.S. If you live in Nashville, it's not too late to catch part of the Eastside Comedy Festival, now through October 20th!

An Exhaustive (And Exhausting) List of Products That Have No Business Containing Pumpkin Spice Flavor or Aroma

It appears that SPAM Pumpkin Spice wormed its way into our lives for but a fleeting, regrettable moment. Pumpkin Spice should have issued a DNR for itself, because it died a long time ago and we keep reanimating this corpse just to kick it down the stairs and kill it all over again. It was fun while it lasted, but in keeping with the corpse metaphor, you don't see them still cranking out Weekend at Bernie's movies, do you? The stopped after the sequel, because much like a dead body, after a while, this PS business starts to reek.

Are any of the following products real? Probably. Is time a flat circle? Only Matthew McConaughey knows.

It's probably a can of Pumpkin Spice White Claw

1. Pumpkin spice feminine deodorant spray
2. Pumpkin spice insulin
3. Pumpkin spice synthetic motor oil
4. Pumpkin spice cat litter
5. Pumpkin spice saline solution for contact lenses
6. Pumpkin spice Nashville hot chicken
7. Pumpkin spice anti-venom for rattlesnake bites
8. Pumpkin spice rosé
9. Pumpkin spice asthma inhalers
10. Pumpkin spice enema fluid
11. Pumpkin spice kimchi 
12. Pumpkin spice catheter insertion kit 
13. Pumpkin spice genetically modified farm raised tilapia
14. Pumpkin spice Italian hoagie
15. Pumpkin spice bong water
16. Pumpkin spice breast milk
17. Pumpkin spice copy machine toner
18. Pumpkin spice napalm
19. Pumpkin spice custodian vomit absorption powder
20. Pumpkin spice urinal cakes

The Very Thirsty Caterpillar

I always wanted to ruin a children's book.  I'm so pleased.

Image via McSweeney's

Syllabus #26

You heard it here first.  Summer is really and truly over and I have the photographic evidence to prove it.

The party isn't over until the unicorn taps out.

What are we reading this week?  This week happens to be Fall Break, which is exactly like Spring Break, in that it allows educators to have a few extra days to feel like real humans and revel in the type of freedom (to eat and perform bodily functions at a reasonable pace, mostly) we typically enjoy only in the summer months.  Fall Break is exactly the opposite of Spring Break in the way it says, "Hey, do you remember summer?  Well it's a long way off, so buckle up because it's gonna be a long, cold, rainy ride and you better get your flu shot or you might actually die."

---

Sometimes I read advice columns because, like all of us, I'm a glutton for schadenfreude, which is precisely why such columns exist in the first place.  Sometimes, though, I read them just to make sure people I know aren't so disgusted with me that they have to ask a stranger for advice on how to deal with me.  This is the first time I've ever found a letter that is 100% accurate but about a decade late.  Kate, I'm sorry!  At least we have one syllable's difference between our names, but this explains why you've all been calling me horse-face for the last 11 years.  Or is that because I'm also the person in the letter who breeds online horsey avatars named after her real life friends? 


This article about the invisible labor of feeding your household has been flying around my internets for the past week, and I have some feelings about it.  Not to throw Andy under the bus, but the lack of understanding about the time and emotional labor it takes to feed just the two of us, even with frequently disappointing results, is astonishing.  And I actually like cooking, yet I do often resent the amount of largely unacknowledged effort it takes.


In other food news, the internet figures out a thing I have been doing like it's normal for over a decade.  I'm expecting the peanut butter and pickle sandwich craze to drop any day now.


And here all this time, I thought the rise of getting real was what happened when 7 strangers are picked to live in a house, work together, and have their lives taped.



Two words you don't want to hear in conjunction with a condition you allegedly have:  Medical Mystery.


Looks like we narrowly avoided going 3 for 4 with experiencing riots while visiting other countries.  I really hope the people we met in Quito through the language school and tours are safe.  If you're keeping score, we were caught in a teachers' union protest-turned-riot in Lima in 2012, and multiple Euro 2016 soccer-related train disruptions and brawls in Paris and Lille in 2016.  We didn't encounter anything in Madrid in 2018, despite some of the separatist demonstrations going on elsewhere in Spain.


As a non-parent but also a librarian, I have a different perspective on the question of what audience is really the intended demographic for any kind of children's book.  Any book for a non-reader or emerging reader, such as a board book, is meant for the adult and child to read together.  Books that virtue signal or espouse certain values, like the feminist books the article discusses, are obviously a way for the parent to start exposing their kids to certain ideas, many of which will be over the kid's head for years to come.  In that way, the books are for the parent moreso than the child, but some of those lessons will start to sink in after a while.  Beyond that, any amount of relatively age-appropriate reading you do with your child is beneficial for both of you.  That being said, if you come across the Baby Hitler board book, "Mein Mein Mein, Nein Nein Nein!" maybe skip that one and just read "Goodnight Moon" for the 987th time.


Yea, but chanting "PODS PODS PODS PODS PODS PODS!" at the bar isn't as satisfying.


I mentioned these Cat-vent calendars (is that what they're called, if not, missed opportunity, dudes) to Andy and he said we should get one for Ajax but not Hadley.  They are currently locked in a real life Jack Sprat and his wife battle, in which she may not be able to physically get any fatter without exploding, and Ajax is but a shadow of his former self.  Still, that seems a little mean to me unless we can convince Hadley that she doesn't get one because she's Jewish.

And finally, on a serious note, you might feel like you're stuck between a cock and a work place rock and a hard place, but you can DO THE RIGHT THING, NEIL.  Don't be on the wrong side of history.  The only people who deserve to be discriminated against are bigots.  When I become a congresswoman, I'm going to pass Title LXIX, and the text shall read, "Everybody just be cool, okay?  Unless you're a bigot, then GTFO."

---

Analog Reading:

Doxology by Nell Zink.  I snagged this from Andy's stack of library books and need to speed-read it to return it on time, as it is on a wait list.  I'm about 30 pages in, and I'm hooked.  Andy has a lot more free time for reading than I do, and I tend to scavenge the most appealing scraps from his reading materials.  Maybe I'd have more time if I wasn't trapped in the emotional and physical labor cycle of the modern hunter/gatherer, as discussed above.  I bet I'd get a lot more reading accomplished if I just hunted cereal and gathered milk.  Bowl meals are all the rage, right?

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Alright everybody, let's recap what we've learned.  Read to your kids, lie to your cats, and don't keep your Tide Pods on your bar cart.

Cat-tivia

The terrible thing about possessing self-awareness is the burden of realizing that your mannerisms and habits are surely the object of someone else's mockery or pity.  Maybe not even you, specifically, but you as a composite character along with all the other people who are similar to you.  Most of us like to flatter ourselves that we, as individuals, occupy any mental real estate in the minds of people outside our immediate orbit, but that's simply not true.  That being said, sometimes you just know that you, or the composite you, are a target.  It's an awful experience to be the recipient of jeers based on things largely or entirely outside of your control:  your socioeconomic status, academic abilities, physical characteristics, to say nothing of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.  It is heinous to make value judgements about a person based on those kinds of characteristics, let's be perfectly clear about that.  Don't be a racist, don't be a bigot, duh.

However, it can be strangely exhilarating to be the butt of someone's jokes for choices that are entirely yours to make:  your interests, statements you make, sartorial or lifestyle choices, luxury items you purchase.  I know I'm moving up in the world because the things that I assume people think about composite me have shifted from the former category to the latter.  As a grown-ass, comfortably middle class adult, I'm in control of most aspects of my life.

In high school, disfiguring acne made me the very real, not at all imagined, target of verbal abuse by hot people with otherwise low self esteem.  Living in a household with two active smokers made me a smelly kid.  Thanks to pedagogical practices that are probably now illegal, I regularly had crumpled up exams thrown at my head in AP History for wrecking the curve.  I learned then the power of making deliberately weird choices to distract from the unfortunate things I couldn't control.  In 10th grade, I received a literal ticket from the fashion police for wearing my jeans inside out, among other things:

         Yes of course I saved it, no I have no recollection what "jeckles" are. 

Today, nearly 20 years after receiving that ticket, I realize I'm too old care about what other people think.  When you grow up as an only child, introverted and very much inside your own head, you give lots of fucks about what other people might think.  By the time you realize that was a colossal waste of fucks because most people aren't thinking anything at all, you have no fucks left to give.  But then, mercifully, you are weightless.  The sense of lightness and freedom is almost more than you can bear!

It is then that you can look at yourself with a detached, ironic perspective and realize how insufferable and self-indulgent you are becoming.  You reflect on your choices and habits, and realize what a place of privilege you occupy, with your head up your own ass.  Except you don't feel bad about it, because you spent so much time worrying so much about what other people thought of you that you feel that you've paid your dues.  Now you revel in all the ways your deliberate choices might make you a caricature, as you carry your New Yorker tote bag into Aldi. 

You often catch a glimpse of yourself becoming the asshole you always wanted to be, and you laugh at your great fortune.  You discuss, without a hint of irony, the terroir of a piece of single origin dark chocolate.  You casually mention the sailboat you used to own.  You provide your rescue dog with a prescription SSRI.  You treat your cat's digestive system as well as Jamie Lee Curtis treats her own.

It's only those last two that I actually feel a little weird about.  Charlie is the mistake that keeps on taking, as far as life choices are concerned.  I don't want to harm him, and we certainly don't mistreat him, but if life were like Photoshop, I would definitely like to delete his layer and move on like he never existed.  We only medicate him so that he doesn't injure himself or us with his erratic behavior. 

Ajax, on the other hand, is the OG pet of our family.  He's surly yet loving; he's the good one who actually obeys most of the rules.  He deserves nothing but the best.  As long as the best doesn't cost hundreds of dollars.  For a couple months, he was intermittently blowing up the litter box with unspeakable diarrhea, so we finally took him to the vet.  We waited longer than we should have, because we are cheap but also merciful.   Historically, going to the vet has been Ajax's least favorite activity on earth.  To our surprise and relief, he behaved like a champ and $300 later, the vet could find no problems on his bloodwork or physical exam.  The vet recommended either a $400 abdominal ultrasound or some $30 probiotics mixed into his food.  Which one do you think we chose?

Ajax can't decide if he's living in an Activia commercial or a Fancy Feast one, but he's dining like a Rockefeller and pooping like a Curtis now.  Also, we only use that cut glass bowl because at the time all the other normal bowls were in the dishwasher, and full disclosure, I found it being used as an ash tray when cleaning out my dead dad's apartment so don't get all, "Oh, we fancy" on me about it.

Syllabus #25

How has your week been?  Have you seen, heard, read, watched, or done anything interesting?  I hope the answer is yes to at least one of the above, or my follow up is, have you checked your pulse lately? 

Honestly, I love Slate but I wish I could diversify my readings a little bit more this week.  The thing is, I don't subscribe to The New York Times or The Atlantic and I've already blown through my free article allotments.  Beggars can't be choosers, although Andy once had a dude hit him up for food in a fast food joint, and when Andy offered him fries, dude turned them down and kept pushing for the chicken tendies.  That wasn't my story to tell, but let's not make it weird.

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Here's the good, the bad, and the aesthetically displeasing from the past week:

This just in:  Raffi is still alive and laying down fresh beats, and if memory serves he said a bad word in this article. 

This line of gender neutral/inclusive dolls is amazing.  I remember when it was a big deal that there was a doll named Kenya with dark skin and curly hair, but it was still reinforcing oppressive white beauty standards because a major selling point of the doll was that you could straighten her hair with magic lotion.  We've come a long way.

In other news of products created by people who meant well, are labradoodles canceled now?  I have no opinions on them, but whatever combination of breeds charlie is, is the true Frankenstein monster.  The worst, most jacked up labradoodle pales in comparison to his complete and utter lack of chill. 

 Dewey Dewey Dewey, can't you see? Sometimes your moves just victimize me.  Librarians cleaning house.

Daria is everything I ever wanted to be.

The struggle is real relative.

I think we're running out of ways to express dismay about the actual state of things.  Stranger than fiction.  WTF.  This can't be happening.  Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?  Is this even real?  I give up.

Reading:

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance.  I have mixed emotions about this one.  I'm about three quarters of the way through it, and it has been eye opening to learn about his specific chaotic upbringing and the types of situations he observed first hand.  I know a lot of my students experience similar situations and hope that they have positive forces in their lives the same way the author was able to lean on his grandparents for stability and support.  I do feel like he waffles back and forth with the way he frames the problem of the white working class, though.  At many times he seems to place all the blame on individuals for their poor choices, while at others he acknowledges the systemic and cultural problems that give rise to those choices.  I guess it truly is a combination of both, and it's hard to talk about the macro-level and micro-level problems in the same breath, which is what makes it such a thorny issue to address in the first place.

Chances Are... by Richard Russo.  Actually I haven't yet started this one but it's cued up in my Kindle.  I can't even remember what compelled me to put it on hold at the library, but I'm excited to be surprised.

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Until next time, [insert calligraphy font vinyl decal trite motivational quote on your kitchen wall here].

Eastside Comedy Festival

Tickets now on sale for the first ever Eastside Comedy Festival!

Get 'em while they're hot!

Or just get them whenever, because it's apparently never not going to be hot and the world is on fire and we're all going to die so we might as well go down laughing, right? 

I've always wanted to see my name on a show poster.  & More used to be my stripper name but the ampersand didn't really resonate with the clientele.

As of right now, I'm on the following shows:

Wednesday, October 16th at The Cobra 6pm
Sunday, October 20th at Dino's 1pm