yippee skippee

I got a hot pepper on ratemyprofessors.com

This is awesome.

Check it out.

BTW, Go Heels.

Okay, I'm willing to go a certain distance, but really.

This is an email that came across "swapshop," our campus e-flea market. Look at the bottom for the punchline.

Posting for my brother-in-law. Please respond to email address below if interested.

I have a Nintendo Wii. I bought it from toysrus.com and it just came in the mail. It is one of the bundle sets that came with games so here is a list of what is included:

console
1 remote
1 nunchuck
256 memory card
stand/organizer
sensor bar
all cords and cables
7 games
sports disk game(comes with system)
zelda
madden 07
call of duty 3
mavel Ultimate alliance
monkey ball
tony hawk DownHill Jam

asking $925.00

meh. gots nuthin

• Good Thanksgiving, though The Little Boy did manage to fall and bust his lip pretty good. A trip to the ol' Emergency Room assured us that he's fine.
  
  
• Thanks to all the grandparents for making it a good time.
  
  
• It's 65 degrees today. Tomorrow morning it'll be about the same. Tomorrow night: in the 30's and headed downwards.
  
  
• Irritation: The woman whose office is next to mine is the most supercilious, condescending english teacher I've ever been around. In her world, anyone who hasn't attained her level of education clearly shouldn't ever be expected to know anything of value or even have the ability to reason morally. Example: today she referenced the manager of our campus bookstore by saying that the woman has no college degree, so she probably doesn't even know there's such a thing as the New York Times bestseller list. It's obviously this woman's fault that though managed by Barnes & Noble, our campus bookstore doesn't have a browsing section. And so on, about the way people vote, about textbook and pharmaceutical companies, about gun control--each conversation is a new harangue. And never mind what she says about the students.
  
  
• The period between Thanksgiving and Christmas Break (or "Winter Break," I guess we're supposed to call it) is a cruel joke: we're supposed to be having a Holly Jolly, but in reality most of us are having a Festival of Fatigue and Crankiness. This is the time of year when all the grand plans for the semester wheeze their last pitiful breath.
  
  
• There is at least one thing I look back on with great satisfaction: in my british literature survey, I had students do in-class summaries/assessments at the end of every period. It allowed me to see what was working and allowed them to write any questions they had. I found it a roaring success. Wondering how to expand this one--any ideas, Blackbuzzard?
  
  
• Lastly, for now, I'm worried about my posture and my face. I've got this feeling that I'm walking around with a look very similar to that on Mike Shula's face: vague worry mixed with a fair measure of "whhaaaa?"
  
  
• Oh, and one more: I'm scared to death of this basketball game tonight.
  

Life With a Toddler, Vol 19. Special "Mom's not home" Edition

One of the things about having a Little Boy around the house: the parents have grown accustomed to constant chatter. This sometimes gets the father in trouble. For instance, while making dinner tonight, I had opened a package of loaf bread and left it sitting on the counter. As I busy myself with the stove, I hear behind me a little voice: "oooh, brrreaaaaaad!" By the time this registers--bread? Why is he commenting about the br--and I turn around, he has already taken two big bites out of a slice, and he's standing there looking at me, appreciatively chewing away.

I guess it's bread for dinner, then.

Shakespearean Insult of the day

Thou spongy full-gorged pignut!

Missing Friends

On Saturday, W and I watched a videotape from last year around this time, labeling its contents. It was from The Little Boy's first birthday and other doings. The most poignant part in a considerably poignant exercise was seeing and hearing footage from our trip to Chicago. I especially enjoyed hearing Blakbuzzard's comment on the sloth: "awwww yeah, that's what I'm talking about."

Some people come to occupy places in one's heart that time, space, and circumstance cannot shake or alter. Thank you, Buzzard and Hambone, for being irreplaceable, even if it means a stab of the bittersweet every now and then.

In Which Piers Dreads his Gradebook

Ah, late November . . . when one sees the last leaves falling from the trees, the frost nipping the shrubs in the back yard, the absences piling up in the gradebook.

It's painful to see promising students fall off the wagon. I've got two or three students that will fail their composition course because they just stopped coming. One of them was extremely promising--or at least talked a good game. The other two were going to get by (one of whom is already taking this class for the second time, if that tells you anything). I don't want to hand out those F's, but they've left me no choice.

Convalescing

Having caught a Catarrh from The Little Boy, I spent the entire weekend at home, sleeping and reading and playing (gently) with said Little Boy. W attended to a couple of social calls, but I was unable to get up and out. It gets this time of year, and I tend to be overly vulnerable to Agues, Rheums, and various other Afflictions.

Here's the thing about weekends like this: I am so much better afterward, and not just physically. The work I'm involved in is pleasurable in just about every aspect (grading papers notwithstanding), but it wears me out. Furthermore, each week offers two or three other activities that I feel the need to attend or participate in. Part of it is a sense of responsibility, but part of it is also my desire to be a full member of this community. Going to concerts, plays, lectures, sporting events, and church functions is important because it shows that I care about the people and the institutions around me.

But it drains me severely, and at times I find myself wishing for nothing more than to be left alone "in foul weather at my book to sit," as Wyatt says. My soul needs that time, but accommodating that need without feeling like I'm shirking my responsibilities--that's tough.

Anyway, the Affliction this weekend was actually a good thing--it gave me the time I neeeded.

Birthday Music

The new album from Hem arrived in the mail on Friday--one of a couple of purchases I indulged in upon getting a little disposable income for the birthday (thanks to Grammie and Pappy). I've listened through it a couple of times, and I've got a couple of comments.

1. If you'd told me, when I entered grad school, that I would not only listen to but actively seek out this type of music, I'd have laughed in your face.
2. The last couple of albums this group has put out begin with beautiful, autumnal songs. And their frequent use of clarinet, bells, string arrangements makes it even more striking. This is music for cold, quiet evenings.
3. Thanks to R & S for introducing us to "Rabbit Songs."
4. When I imported the CD into iTunes, the "Genre" came up "Unclassifiable." Apt description, I think. Maybe "Americana"? And the good thing, this album isn't just more of the same--it's like, but unlike, the earlier albums.

This is a band of true musicians. If you've got the cash, and don't mind country/folk-tinged "grown-up" music, you won't regret the purchase.

10K

I'm happy to report that W won 3rd place in her age division in the Reelfoot 10-k over the weekend! That means she's placed in every race she's run this year--while pushing an extra 35 pounds in a stroller. I don't know about y'all, but I'm amazed that she can do stuff like that, especially when it's windy and cold--40 degrees cold. We're going to have to find a spot in the house for all her trophies. . . they're beginning to pile up.

How NOT to recruit English Majors

We had a "reception" today to recruit some majors for our department--major recruitment is a big watchword these days. I told some of my promising students that it'd be a meet-n-greet, no big deal. Well, I walk over about 20 minutes into what I thought was a relaxed education, and I discover that professor after professor is giving a little 'blurb' about this or that.

Boy, nothing like recruiting students by subjecting them to more droning by their professors. What would be wrong with a welcome, a handshake or two, and some free brownies? What made anyone think that the students would want to sit in a dim room listening to speechifying when they've already been in class all day?

Life with a Toddler, Vol. 18

Voting Day yesterday. We had to go with Jonathan, so when we arrived at the church, we told him we had to go vote. His reactions: "I mote too!" When we were done, we asked him who he voted for.

"I mote for the trees, I mote for fire chief, I mote for trains."

Pinoy Joke!

Thanks to the Fark, and in honor of our family gathering this past weekend, I present a Monday Pinoy Joke:

"What is this?" (make your hand do a squid like motion to the right)
"Pusit"
Yes! Now make your hand do a squid like motion to the left.
"What is this?"
"Op-pusit"

galing na galing!

From today's CFP list

Now here's a journal issue everyone will want to read. I love being an academic, especially when our work makes the world a better place!

"Membranous Topographies"

Special issue of *Discourse: **Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and
Culture ***

An upcoming issue of *Discourse* will examine the ways in which membranes
both expand and delimit the operation of frontiers, borders, and margins by
engaging the interplay between permeability and impermeability. These
literal and figurative membranes also suggest the return of the corporeal or
the animal, thereby inviting reflection on questions of visuality, disease,
third spaces, and sexuality, among others. For example, what happens to
the viability of the membrane when it is radically crossed, probed,
inhabited, or violated? *Discourse* seeks articles that address the
membrane's movement of crossing over or translating through the realms of
literary, filmic, and other modes of cultural production, in addition to
law, politics, history, philosophy, queer and gender studies,
psychoanalysis, interdisciplinary studies, physics, M-theory, etc.

Oklahoma OK

I'm happy to report a roaring success in McKenzie. This weekend, my brother directed his first production (see title above), and it was a roaring success. Every show was sold out, and word of mouth meant that they actually had to turn away people for some evening shows. W and I and my parents all went to the Saturday matinee and enjoyed it tremendously. And I say that as a person who's never been a huge R&H fan.

I mention this because I'm proud and excited for his (and the students') success, but also because he and his wife have had a difficult time with the town and the college. Their adjustment to life in West Tennessee has not been as smooth as we had hoped it would be. But hey, hopefully they can build on this momentum.

By way of Chicago, a new awesome food

"eh?" you say, in response to that incoherent title. Well, I got an email from my beautiful and brilliant friend SWS a couple of days ago that featured this news item:

new fair food

her comment: "don't you think this is taking things a little too far?"

my comment: are you kidding? There is no taking things a little too far when it comes to state fair food!

In Which Piers Revels in the Irony

Unintended gaffe of the week, from a student paper:

Sure, there is nothing wrong with people speaking a second language or even foreigners speaking in their native tongue at home, but if a foreigner wants to come to the U.S. to live and work, he should have to not only have to become a citizen, but also learn to recognizable English.