Spaghetti is food, right? Even Spaghetti monsters?
If you are not yet acquainted with the wonders of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you’re missing out. I especially like the bit about pirates & global warming.
…by celebrating Repeal Day on Dec. 5. Because America must never forget.
I seem to be building up a literary debt that I may never be able to read myself out of. I actually realized this in May, and declared a moratorium on the purchasing of books until I was caught up on the ones I had. Except for Harry Potter, of course, but that was only because I knew I’d probably read it in a weekend.
Then I found out that the long-awaited sequel (The Dark River) to a book I enjoyed in 2005 (The Traveler) was due out at the beginning of July; obviously there was nothing to be gained by putting off that purchase, so I pre-ordered it.
And then, toward the middle of June, a colleague who also enjoys dry British wit and a good fantasy yarn got me excited about a book called Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I was going to put that off, too, but then I heard several people refer to it as “Harry Potter for grown-ups,” and finding myself currently caught up in a state of painful anticipatory yearning over Deathly Hallows, I went for it, thinking it would tide me over until HP arrived at the end of July. Maybe I shouldn’t have ordered it online, but I did; being a 780 page hardcover, it did fetch a fairly hefty price for a book, but it didn’t quite break the $25 free shipping mark, leaving me no choice but to throw in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in order to reach the $25 free shipping mark. Besides, I reasoned, this Murakami fellow is supposed to be a freaking literary genius.
But shipping takes time, and so, I reasoned, I would just pick up The Name of the Rose, because I’d wanted to read it for years, and it would pass the time, and it seemed so convenient, sitting right there in front of me on the bookstore shelf…
…Better not to address the question of what I was doing in a bookstore at this point to begin with, I think.
I actually lasted a while after that. And I did read Harry Potter, The Dark River, and The Name of the Rose. And I even started reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, although that was five months ago and I’ve now read maybe 150 of its daunting 780 pages.
Then the gift cards came, and naturally I had to spend them. So add to that House of Leaves, Shadow of the Wind, and Stardust. And also add How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter, which I got sucked into reading online. Every single one of which I’ve now read ten or fifteen pages, even while poor Norrell languishes on my nightstand.
Beneath The Right to Learn.
Oy. If there is such a thing as literary ADD, I believe I may have it. Then again, I suppose it’s not really all that strange. When you think about it, reading single books all the way through one at a time is a little like ordering several tasty dishes at a fine restaurant and refusing to taste any of the others until you’re completely through with the first. Maybe books should be treated more like dishes in a meal — a little of this, a little of that, appreciating and enjoying how the different flavors complement each other.
Mmmm…tasty… 
If you’re deeply wedded to the idea that intelligence is biologically intrinsic, heritable, and immutable, this may make you unhappy. But it might also make you think.
“What made you want to become a teacher?”
I get asked this question maybe half a dozen times a year or so. I know it’s a perfectly legit and innocent question, especially for someone who has just learned that I’m a teacher, but I hate answering it, because there only two options open to me: either I try to answer it honestly, which takes a very long time and ends up delving into aspects of myself, my life, and my profession of which most people would prefer to remain blissfully unaware; or I try to answer it conversationally, which means I oversimplify the truth to the point that it hardly resembles the truth at all.
Over the years I have developed several stock answers that fit into the second category that represent elements of the whole truth, some quicker than others. One of my longer-winded (but still conversational) responses is that I read a book when I was in college called The Right To Learn, and this is what made me want to be a teacher (but can you spot the half truth already? Why the hell would anyone read a book called The Right to Learn unless she was already interested in teaching to begin with? I was already on the path; all TRtL did was seal the deal and determine where I was going for graduate school). Galvanized by the book, I googled its author, Linda Darling-Hammond, to find out where she taught, because I was determined to attend graduate school there. I’d been having trouble figuring out how to pick a school anyway, and knowing there was a professor there that believed what you believed and had done a bunch of research on it seemed like a better reason than most. (I think I cursed a little when I found out she was at Stanford, because I didn’t think I’d get in; on the other hand, at least she didn’t teach somewhere like Minnesota or Illinois, because after five years in Ohio I was sooooo done with below-freezing, snow-laden winters.) (more…)
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has approved issuing a municipal identification card to any resident who requests one, mainly as a response (we think) to congress’s failure to approve a comprehensive immigration bill. The ID card program is good because…
“I think it’s admitting the reality of the situation that we depend on, our tourist and hotel industry depends on, a labor force that’s supplied by, for lack of a better term, undocumented residents.” ~ Tom Ammiano, the supervisor who sponsored the bill.
Yay for living in the real world! Yay SF! 
“’We don’t talk about [abortion],’ [Dr. Susan Wicklund] said in a telephone interview. ‘People say, “Nobody I know has ever had an abortion,” and that is just not true. Their sisters, their mothers have had abortions.’
“Dr. Wicklund, 53, said that at current rates almost 40 percent of American women have an abortion during their child-bearing years, a figure supported by the Guttmacher Institute, which researches reproductive health policy. Abortion is one of the most common operations in the United States, she said, more common than tonsillectomy or removal of wisdom teeth. ‘Because it is such a secret,’ she said, ‘we lose sight of how common it is.’
“According to the Guttmacher Institute, about a quarter of pregnancies in the United States end in abortion. Dr. Wicklund says that is why she believes far more people favor abortion rights than are willing to admit it in polls. For example, she said in the interview, an abortion ban that seemed to have wide support in South Dakota was put to a vote and ‘when people got behind those curtains and nobody was watching it was overwhelmingly defeated. Unfortunately, people are not willing to say what they really think.’”
~ Telling the Stories Behind Abortion, by Cornelia Dean, 11.6.07
Not enough sleep +
Too much stress +
Too much caffeine =
“My guitar is angry at me for some reason I don’t understand, and that is why it won’t play right. GUITAR! Why are you so ANGRY!”
…
It is time to turn the mixer off.