almost disappeared

well I'm almost off to the islands. this is weird. too weird, and getting weirder. and so exciting. oh come on! so exciting, sun, mangoes and well grandparents. yea grandparents! I'm going to swim and eat and relax, and wait for things to fall out and fly off to the next thing. and next thing i know it will be time to dance and sing and watch the summer disappear, and play games and at least photograph rugby. Oh come on! and relax and eat some cheese and crackers. and write. well rewrite. and write. I'm rewriting It's thursday to be restaged. and im working on something kind of exciting. something new. it'll will be up on ethok in part probably. and time to read something good, for me and not for an A. ooo.

ps

Whirpool has the weirdest commertials ever.

thinkgs i like on wednesdays

Rumsfeld is reporting to the President and the Cabinet. He says,"Three Brazilian soldiers were killed today in Iraq." The President says, "Oh, my gosh!" as he buries his head in his hands. The entire Cabinet is stunned. Usually George Bush shows no reaction whatsoever to these reports.
Just then, Bush looks up and says, "How many is a brazilian??"

things i dislike on wednesdays

First Every must go t Big Dicks tonite at 10 pm to say fairwell to Windsor Icon and longtime phenomenal woman, Michelle Baker, who will soon be leaving this fair city after her extended love in with its various departments and institutions over the past near decade (just kidding miss baker, 7 years is hardly nearly a decade;). So lets send her off instyle (or as i like to say..really drunk) Tonite at Big Dicks

now to the topic on hand...things i dislike on wednesdays
1. registering for conferences
2. booking hotels when i don't know where the conference is taking place...toronto somewhere
3. take home finals
4. dinner meetings that make me miss coaching
5. free food (it sounds crazy but the office smells like stale muffins its getting a little sickening)
6. Coffee
7. coffee.
8. thinking about packing
9. packing
10. cleaning or not cleaning or thinking about not cleaning
11. undergraduates (i may be one, but my goodness they can be irratiting "how was your last placement" " oh you know, i had to teach the kids how to make triangels, like omg its totally new to the curriculum this year and my associate expected me to be able to teach it, i had to like fully teach it to myself first" "thats outrageous"

i think thats all... well for now.
have a beautiful day and come say fare the well to Miss Baker tonite

hi monday

the problem with waking up at the crack of dawn (if not a few hours before) is that by 8:00 in the evening im getting pretty tuckered out. But not tired, not ready for bed, cause im still ready to start stuff, but achy and cranky...or maybe thats just the fever. yeah thats right fever...of course. you know who else is going to be gone this summer? Oliver, my only family connection down here. and tara...she makes me nuts, but she keeps me doing things i like to do...and besides as i am clearly demonstrating right now, i thrive und pressure and with stress. And danielle, though she will still be around, but things are all changed and baaahh! okay time to stop complaining and start whining. Im really excited to reapply for my scholarship, its such a nice package. its like a 10 page reflection paper, but it asks useful questions and makes for a very useful and productive reflection on the year. wow it was a year. It was about this time last year that i found out my hand was broken. and next week last year that i was sick (i almost forgot about that sick...it freaking sucked). Now, im a year older and like 17 years wiser...that was exhausting. what a ride.

Spring Book Launch and Reception

Of course this is what i get for complaining. Sorry, i didn't mean it.

So i made new pants yesterday, they are pretty sweet. they definitly make me more happy...but about this book launch.

Its super cool and exciting. The two books being launched are Touch the Dead by Mary Ann Mulhern and How Beautiful we Are by John B Lee. I was part of the editorial team on both; the first one is written by this woman whose father was a gravedigger, and cemetary caretaker (what!...i know neet eh). The whole collection is about her whole growing up and her experience and thoughts on things like life and graveyards. (plus the cover design..oh yea right here;) Its a follow up to her last book The Red Dress which is about her experience in the convent...yea she's a former nun too. The other book is also super cool, John B Lee, the must be most prolific writer in canada, my goodness this guy has like 50 books out there. Anyway both super cool collections of poetry, everyone should come anyway.

Mackenzie Hall 3277 Sandwich St Windsor, ON. Thursday, April 27th, 2006

Summer of CFL

CONGRATS TRISTAN (big brother number two)!!

He was drafted by the Saskasktewan Rough Riders! With Sebastian back with the BC Lions i think this is going to be a busy summer for CFL watching. (Huzzah!)

It's pretty exciting.


Anyway, as i was saying before the storm...possibilities...infinite fucking possibilities. Well maybe not so pejorative as that, in fact they things are looking pretty optimistic. I'm almost done this year, i have one more take home to write, and a presentation (book Launch) thursday, 7:00 at Mackenzie hall (3277 Sandwich). Then its pack up and clean up and off to the islands for a few weeks to decompress. And then... working full time this summer, (maybe getting a second and third job), school in summer session, rugby (im not sure in what capacity though...if any [crud]), Canadian Mental Health Association volunteer writing workshop coordinator (hmm...interesting), roommate searching, play writing, i swear i'm going to have a book to edit for 498 next year, and what else...no tv, no car, no internet at home, lots of sewing (ooo so much sewing i could cry for joy), what else i dunno, having some semblance of a life, though michelle is going back to toronto soon, and i bet i'll have surgery at some point...hmm i had forgot about surgery...damn. i dunno. i feel like too much toast already. well lets just focus on a good decompression in the sun with the grandparents (im so excited to see them) and mr briffa. (hmm...agreed;)

okay, times for laundry.

Infinite fucking possibility

i don't know what reason i have to be grumpy with the sudden explosion of possibilities that have descended into my life, but lets be honest, i think it must be exhausting me. oh...thunderstorm, danielle wants me to log of the computer...power surges dont you know

peace

lets call them all roses

Interesting article Canada, maybe check it out:

Scientist Silenced; 15 Kyoto Prgrams axed

I have one qualm though, and this is a serious one: Human impact on global climate change. We never refer to it as the human impact, only as global warming, or gcc. but Global climate change is a part of the geologic cycle it is inevitable, it is a natural part of the changing cycle of the earth. If we look back to the devonian, and the don river deposits there is suggestion that toronto averaged 3 or 4 degrees centigrade higher than current average temperatures. If we check out deposits and growth patters from the 1820-1850 we see average temperatures 3-5 degrees cooler than current temperature levels. Clearly there were entire ice ages in our geologic history. So what am i going on about then? im concerned about the HUMAN IMPACT, what am i doing that is impacting this cycle, and what can i do to impact it less, let it follow its natural geologic timeline.

some will argue that humans are a part of the equation now and so we don't have to do much in either direction, we just are. but come on...we aren't alone here. we have the knowledge and technology to minimize our footprints on this planet. i mean most other species do their part to minimize their respective impacts (except for maybe the pig...discusting creatures...j/k) but it begins by taking possession of what it is. It isn't just a grand happening, or a geologic process that we want to hault or slow it is OUR IMPACT on those processes. So Stephan Harper should be slashing money to programs that reduce how humans affect gcc, or programs that allow humans to produce more fossil fuels and destructive toxins for the environment.

all i can say is go ahead, lets turn this planet back into a reducing environment, that was the best time in natural history, endless chemical potential.

Call me Monty Python

my goodness look at those pythons...what ...

so my brother is becoming a social activist! im so proud. He's written a violent letter of protest to the school about a terrible course! yea transformative pedagogy! i think i want to write some letters to people, a letter writing campaign. maybe i will wirte open letters to no one in particular. it would be nice

but im here today to think about civic design and city planning, and subdivision construction. Namely, why are subdivisions not built with the modern pastiche of their outward appearance? i mean they look freeking sweet, all uniform and tidy (okay my distaste for subdivisions aside) they hav the potential to be total bastions of modern, progressive, sustainable design, and yet they are still all built with waste and sewage systems that are modeled after the same post revolutionary french cities...like my freeking goodness. the french have some pretty sweet ideas, but like that was one idea 300 years ago, i think its time to stop paying homage to the brilliance of the french. [in case you were wondering this whole argument and idea comes from my proto-revolutionary brother...but i think its a good idea and so im talking about it now]. Anyway, imagine a whole subdivison with grey water systems already constructed into sewage systems, with solar development and garbage processing tanks that can synthesis and transform garbage for either more effective transport and disposal or into composted waste. sweet. it could be so sweet. (sigh...so sweet)

okay im going to go see a play, cause i like plays now.

yeah for plays.


ps i put my knee out at practice yesterday, so im going to get my ears repierced...im not playing rugby this season *weep like a baby*

peace

yes i am a jerk, more proof

so i was out with some lovely English strangers last evening, really friendly group, quite ecclectic. anyway, we were chatting about my favourite subject, education. and this one girl starts on 'like in first year, i mean i only took grammer in grade 7...' and i thought she was going to say something like but whatever, i learned and am more interested in training my engagement in cultural studies... or something, but she was saying that she thought there should be a first year grammer class...sadly i had already started my diatribe on how its such bullshit that students expect everything to be spoon fed to them and that there is a thing called independant learning and that its complete crap these kids who come in with substandard educations and demand that the standards be lowered so that they can get in too...because i means that those of us who go a highschool education have to sit through three years of mundane spoonfeeding before we can take our topics and directed readings and blah blah blah... of course its about the time that im whining about stupid people lowering standards that i realise that she had made an argument to lower standards...shit. and of course she's a sweet thing that wanted to chat with the others present, and there i go being an asshole.


but it is true isn't it? the problem i mean of lowering standards, saying i don't understand this because i wasn't trained to do this, so you should train me to do this...rather than me saying hey i don't understand this because i never learned this...maybe i should go do this to catch up with the rest of those people who already have an elementary school education. I'll be honeest, i would tell a student who wrote a shitty paper that it was shitty, their ideas mundane and unoriginal and unspurning. i mean even if its not an original idea, your argument for it should be engaged and interesting...come on.

but whatever, im mostly an epitome of the antisocial.

and another thing. someone was trying to tell me that they didn't think that grad students should be expected to know literary theory "i mean its hard stuff, they should have classes on it" WHAT! what is the post undergraduate degree that most english majors get after the BA called...oh yea and MASTERS...implying perhaps that they should in someway be a master or something ridiculous like that...okay im just ranting now. its too beautiful in the sun for this

oeace

something about fours and tens

I dunno what april 10th is such an attractive date in my eyes. but it is. there is just something about the date that is pleasant to look at. and well, thats all i have to say about that.

But about the subject i was on earlier, before deciding that a brief sojourn in the promotion of my own expansion of epistemy...what does that mean. before i did my home work, i think...hmm too vague. anyway. before i did my homewoek i was voicing my frustration with the university of Windsors "learner Centred" perception of education.

Okay, what exactly is learner centred? it sounds like education that is formed around what the learner wants to gain from their engagement in their education. it sounds like independant study with group collaboration, it sounds like a pedagogical system that grants merit to cheeting...what? cheeting as merit ful...well yea. cause to cheet you have to decided what you need to know, then take steps to bullshit...to cheet you just have to claim your grandmother is dead...then pull crazy shit and the sympathy card. what a stupid education.

on this note, im sick of being graded. i've been getting A's for the past 17 years, and im sure that they haven't helped or spurned my education any further. So enough with grading and ranking my ideas. lets discuss them. i want every class to be a conference, where one student makes a case, presents a paper or giv a talk on a subject of the class. then we have discussion around that case paper or talk. then we go eat and retire to read for the evening. wouldn't that be marvelous. and so classes could only have thirteen at most people in them...it makes for a real environment of learning and generation of knowledge (what is the word for that... i don't recall, well anyway).

it would be nice to really generate something real. Something less mundane than slideshows about knowledge lost on girl childs strung out for attention.

Hmm...again

i find it ffrustrating to sit through biology lectures while the prof tells me that we are just going to do this superficially, and we aren't going to look at the important implications, we are just going to memorize a few terms and vomit them up again in a week or so. And then to demonstrate that she is doing a good job, she asks questions and when a student answers she gives them a candy (good job student, eat up).

but the worst part about it is that it only just occured to me today the real falacy of this pedagogical construction. What on earth is she trying to accomplish? i don't think she has a goal in mind for the class. what a waste of her life. i mean poling is a very sweet woman, and i think very intellegent. so way would she concent to wasting like 15 hours a week in such mundane and ultimately fruitless lectures. I hope i am never in a position to waste so much of my life on something that i have the power to make productive, fun, interesting challenging...

i was also talking with the brother/father/family about these false pedagogies...oh i should do some work before i finish this.

peace

mill

why say anything? why not just remain silent, in contemplation of this most distressed relation, estranged from close fashioned friendship. lost. losot. losta.

meet me at 3 and we can cry together. be at peace by 4 and we can rise together.

goodnight little sister.

i feel estranged

hello blog. i hope you are well. i feel as though life is so interesting that you are no longer interesting. id like it is life wasn't so interesting just now. im full and would like to sleep, but instead i just keep being awake doing things. i am going to sleep from good friday to easter monday and i am so excited for it!!!!

i am also so excited for the play this weekend it is terrifying, i have stage fright and not only am i not even on stage, but i don't even get stage fright when i am on stage. bizare no?

the janitors are cleaning the library garbage. i wish they would clean these gossip mongers beside me too. but they never doo, just the empty tim's cups.

okay i suppose i have to work instead of whisper sweet nothings to the silence...

Eliots April

Happy birthday Mandy Sherman
and a happy half birthday to you miss clovis... thank you. not at all.


isn't that marvelous, so bullox to you mr eliot, you and your cruelty