Remember Piano Teacher Lesson #1 as applied to this blog and all frivolous scribblings (including my crappy, crappy poetry):  Practice!  Practice!  Practice!

It's never wasted to write shit if you're practicing voice, tone, and control of written language.  Write lots of it.  Read shit for that matter too.  Just don't eat it or take it from anyone, especially, from your mentors. 

Should I read Trolius and Cressida or a Star Wars novel?  Does it matter?  Read 'em all!  Should I write literature and high minded articles about saving the environment or just bitch on a blog?  Well--you get the point.

Understand this Howard and Nichole:  you ARE my friends, not my students anymore.  For what it's worth--if YOU care after our most refreshing and invigorating arguments--you've got the chutzpah I appreciate and value most in people I want as friends.  I wouldn't have baited (oh sneaky, sneaky me ) you or responded to you so vehemently if I didn't think so.

Cheers! 

You're right of course, Howard and SeCret 07. 

The book I gave you, Howard, I believe was my own copy that I've read three times.  I may suck at practicing it many times, but be assured it weighs heavily in most of my decisions.  Even when I kick and bite and curse and swear.  I'm sure I'll have to hold an account for that.

But with that aside, inaction is a form of action and an is an actual teaching strategy--think of what Mr. Miyagi did in Karate Kid.  You may think it's foolish, but I believe (mostly from experience) that unless the student can motivate themselves and harness the desire in themselves.  There's nothing I can do.  No song and dance.  No rhetorical tricks.  No TLC.  So I'm not going to waste energy believing or caring in "capability and worthiness" when none of that can be or has been proven.

All I can do is wait to see if there is a spark and, if it's there, allow it to grow--if that is what you mean by "inspire" then that's it.  In the long run it's more valuable than any coddling most people think "inspiring" or "believing in" means--and as it is portrayed in most movies about teaching.

I DO NOT see it as anything more than my duty to do that.  I give in return only as much as they give; the measure that you give is the measure that is given.  That's no secret.  I've said that consistently.  There isn't enough time or energy to run around trying "inspire" everyone.  Only the ones that want it get it.  It's not reasonable to "believe" in people that don't already "believe" in themselves.  And I can't create something that's not already there.

Maybe my Roman-drillmaster-like harshness makes me misunderstood about this.  So let me reframe it in different terms.  Both of you enjoyed my class and felt like you got something out of it.  Good.  You certainly felt that you were "inspired" or at least "believed in."  Was it real for you?  Did I take care of you?  Help imrove your abilities?  Sit down and work with you?  Talk to you like persons?  Made sure everything was okay, one-on-one?  Did you know a little more than when you came in my door?  Did you feel better for it?

All that's part of the package deal, sweetie.  All of that IS my job.    That was and still is my DUTY.   No more no less.  I believe every teacher has to do that.  It shouldn't be the ideal or the exception.   I knew that when I signed up.  And when I promised to do the best job I could, I meant it.  Is it just a job? 

No.  It's MY job.  My responsibility.  My duty.  My honor.  Which, frankly, means more to me than my students ever will.  I have to be able to look myself in the mirror every day with that Sword of Damocles asking me:  "Did you do your best at the task assigned?  Did you do right by them?"

If I hope, I'd hope that they'd be able they'd take their duty, whatever it is, as seriously as I do.  That's the real lesson--the thing I KNOW I have acted on and have modeled through action to my students.  To recieve and accept praise for something that is supposed to expected in all teachers is wrong.  That really is autoerotic.  To expect more when all I have is given--because I love my duty, my honor--that's unreasonable. 

I got into teaching because I wanted the free time to write and work with a subject that I like--Composition and Rhetoric.   Do I do it because I want to "inspire" and "belive in" and "help" people?  No.  If I did it for that, I'd be like so many teaching washouts  (if I counted the ones I know about personally, I'd run out of fingers and toes), because upleasant as it is, those washouts haven't figured out that people, that is students, are a demanding, ungrateful, unappreciative lot that'll break you and eat you alive if that's the all the fuel you've got to run on.  Like Mr. Leung.

I do it because I wake up every morning and choose to love and honor my duty each day.  To tell you otherwise would be dishonest of me; to tout that I got into it and do it for altruistic or "noble" reasons is fraudulent.  All I can do is my duty. 

If you got something out of it and feel "inspired" or whatnot, I need to tell you something:  It's all you, baby.  You made it happen for yourself.  Not me.  I did my job and waited.  Sure you were punks, wiseguys, and morons, but look at you--where you're at.  You IS university people--educated or getting educated.  People I don't mind cussing at me or calling me by my nick names.  You didn't get there because of me, but because you wanted it more than I did.  You proved me wrong.  That's all a Devil's Advocate can ask for. 

I don't know what Hollywood movie you got your expectations about teachers from, but I have NEVER believed in my students.  I still don't.  I don't think I have ever said that I did or acted in a way that inspires them.  I didn't go into teaching to "inspire" people or help people.   I don't pretend that I do.  I teach because I want the off-time that I didn't get corporate and that I'm willing to pay for that time.  I do my job as honestly and as best as I can because it is my DUTY to do so.  No more.

The success of my class has always been because I try to be the asshole drill sergeant that someone may want to prove wrong.   My duty is to make sure that punk-ass kids make it to whatever they're going a little less fucking stupid than when they came into my class not to "inspire" them.  I will use whatever reasources in my ability to manipulate them to that objective.

I don't believe or care that any of them are capable or worthy--all I do is wait to be proven wrong.  Sometimes I am pleasantly proven wrong.  Most times I am proven right.  Education is elitist and exclusive.  That's why we have degrees to prove our worth. 

My beef  was not about "Coach Carter" whoever the hell he is.  But that you'd presumed some sort of friendship or acquaintance with me;  that we are friends enough for you give me advice or an electronic-pat-on-the-back on my bitch page.  Especially when it isn't needed, wanted, or expected.  That's condescension.  I don't presume to do that on your blog.  Why do you do it on mine?

This is my shit dumpsite.  Where I get my kicks from bitching and moaning like an abused child locked in a closet.  Don't get in the way of my bitching or I'll bite you for the heck of it.  Like I did with that post.   I don't give a rats-ass what your intentions were--they're irrelevant and I'm not offended by them.  I just like pushing buttons--looks like I pushed some of yours.  Don't give me any buttons to push.  Still, it came off pretty condescending. 

Frankly, I'm shocked that you actually liked my class, I liked you well enough (more so now--because of your forwardness and willingness to strike back and below the belt too--I liked the mid-life crisis one--rough but good ), but  I couldn't have been happier when you and your conceited, smart-ass, friends were out of my hair.  Then again I feel that way about all my students. 

I would thank him for doing a thankless job and being the pinata for the leftist media.  I would acknowledge that wars are horrible things, this one needed to be fought, but was managed and lead with too much dishonesty toward the citizens it was meant to glorify and protect.  Perhaps not by him, certainly by his handpicked staff.

I would also tell him that democracy is not a panacea and certainly is not inherently a Christian form of government--monarchy or theocracy is the closest.  I would remind him that to democratize people who find a Jeffersonian Democracy anethema to their religious beliefs is sheer folly and just asking for more retribution--as much as ceding the United States back to Great Britain or reviving the Confederate States of America would cause violent reactions.  Moreover, uneducated Muslims equate democracy as a Christian form of government--nonsense and folly of course, but that's what they think.  It's funny that many of my Muslim students think this too and they're American (it makes me wonder: just what kind of hatred is being taught in those "Islamic Centers" I see littered throughout suburbia?).

I would tell him that maybe if he let Kerry win in '04 that this war would have ruined the Democrats and he could have pulled a Grover Cleveland.    At any rate Bush is as single minded as Cleveland too.

On a more serious note, I would rip him a new one him on his horrific mismanagement of illegal immigration.   His shameless  pandering to law-breakers and the people who support them is disgusting and dishonest.  There could have been a better solution, not perfect, but better like Ellis Island or Angel Island--across the borders and seriously enforced by the military.  We're losing too much money providing services to illegal immigrants that, contrary to their supporter's propoganda, are NOT paying taxes for these services.  It disgusts me that they are given such a free hand when my parents couldn't even immigrate legally until the Immigration act of 1965.

I find it an additional insult that the Asian-American, specifically the Chinese-American community (that includes you Taiwanese as much as you hate it--the foreign devils can't tell the difference between us Asians)  has to endure further shame of racism from the majority of these new illegal immigrants and their "La Raza" when they have never had to endure the shame of the Chinese Exclusion Act.  In fact, I wonder if they have any shame at all as they use "multiculturalism" and the civil rights that the African-Americans so bitterly fought and bled to bring into American Culture.  I remember being denied work when I was going through university because of "Affirmative Action"  I wasn't the right ethnicity--I was secretly told--there's too many of "my kind" in education.  You can guess the ethncity of the person doing the hiring.

Oppression my ass--I think it's the rest of us that are being oppressed by them through "multiculturalism"  As one of my buddy's English Language Development students succinctly put it this way: "I like America.  I don't have work to get money."

Thank you President Bush.  You make me proud to be a Republican.
  
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Howietissue, I don't need your smug, condescending, psudo-psychological, new-age, and self-masturbatory maxims!  I'm not looking for your pat advice, sympathy, OR agreement.  Go mock someone else!  There's plenty of people on Xanga.

Marriage is comforting?  From what I've seen, heard, and read, that's not a place I look for comfort.  Forget about family.  Friends, forget it.  Those things are undependable.  But they are all things that most humans do or have.  You can go live on a desert island or a box for all I care.

I wasn't even being philosophical for the first or second one, but since we're on philosophy: the self is a desolate thing.  The self is the last place to feel any comfort.  Consolation is in Christ no where else.  Even that is insanely hard since He ain't even physically present.  Even the Holy Spirit is cold comfort in this "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" life.

You know what, there is no comfort--consolation possibly, comfort none--only the silence of Calvary.  If there wasn't any for the Son of God--there's certainly none for us.  Only the silence of death.  Why do you think that Christ wept in John 11:35?  He knew there is no comfort, not in this life.  To seek it is hypocritical, self-delusional and doomed to failure.  Read "A Grief Observed" by C.S. Lewis. 

Geesh.  This is precisely the type of response I've come to expect from young, self-indulgent, American Christians.

1.  Fall in love, get married, and have a brood of children (how ordinary ).
2.  Be a successful writer/poet/satirist (dreams dreams dreams ).
3.  Be happy for who I am and not bitter about who I am not (this is too deep ).

I'm suspicious of people who would put down: "To know and love God more."  My thought is always: really?  Do you really want to "know and love God more?"  or is that a cop-out answer or an arrogant lie you tell others to make yourself look holier?

I frankly find the prospect of knowing and loving him more frightening than the Hindenburg crashing in my backyard.  It's God--the I AM--of the universe not some sickly adolescent boyfriend oh so many disgusting--and poorly written--worship songs make him out to be  (the reason why I avoid and cringe at the "worship" parts of religious services).  Loving him is like loving a whirlwind or tsunami.  A good whirlwind or tsunami granted, but still--.  He is so much more than just the "lover of my soul."  The thought of Him makes me want to genuflect, prostrate myself and cry out that I'm screwed.   I wonder how many people who dared say "knowing and loving God more" even reflected about that.

I'm not saying that it's wrong to say it, but that to say it without reflection or thought or prayer, I find, is insulting to God and that bothers me since I know a little of how much a firestorm he really is.

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The mundane:
Am I going to be bitten my mosquitos?  Spiders?

Seriously, now, I think the biggest worry aside from bills and job security, is the fear of rejection.  Not just rejection in general, but the ultimate (or basic for some) in form relationship between a man and a woman. 

Don't know why it matters so much.  Sometimes, most times, in that lonely dark I can only think about the singular loneliness of rejection.  I don't care for banal, naive, and, frankly, half-assed answer that God is there and I'm never alone.  Or that there's someone for everyone.  Those answers smack of the same type of hypocrisy that James talks about in his book about just saying without doing--retarded excuses to get out of actually caring--"fricking I don't care, but God does" excuse.  Last time I checked humans need and are supposed to care for each other. 

No, I worry about not caring and doing enough.  If I'm rejecting people out of my own fear of rejection.  I also worry about not being cared for.   That sometimes, in that darkness that sometimes goes with me during the day,  that I will die forgotten and unmourned.  Hell, that nobody will notice me today.  And that nobody but my dog loves me--but then he loves because I feed him, right? 

But feeding or not he's the only one that'll come and greet me and hug me physically, in his dog way, and tell me that he accepts me the way I am warts and all.

So, what keeps me awake:  The deep seated worry that no human will ever love me an accept me for who I am.  Who will ever care for me deeply, seriously, and intimately as I want to care about her.   And the fear of that rejection is too much for me to bear some days--like today--and all I can do is gird on that of armor bitter callousness, bury myself in work, and hide my diffidence in the library of scholarship.  Pathetic.
 

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I'm doing some more tedious editing today.  And reading some more texts for my paper.  You know there are some interesting web resources out there.  My mentor showed me the crazy Thomson Gale database on the Eighteenth Century.  There are thousands of original books scanned into the database for reference.  I was reading a scanned first edition of Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous:  Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry.  I can't believe the amount of bad poetry that's in the archives too.  How did they survive the centuries? They suck so much!  I'm surprise that some illiterate, or literate for that matter, didn't use those books as tinder or toilet paper, because, some of the works on-line are pretty aweful.  Still, it's nice to read original old books and download them for reference.

Safer too.  I remember borrowing a copy of the original 1782 edition  Les Liasons Dengereuses in two quarto volumes from the CSU Fullerton Library.  One of the copies was damaged when I returned it in the book drop and they charged me $200 for the repairs.  The only thought I had was "Hey, it wasn't in the rare book section--unless they're going to breathe down my neck like at the Huntington or the Clarke--they have no right to expect library books that go on checkout will come back unscathed."  Especially, 200 year old books--which are nigh indestructible anyway compared to Victorian or modern pulp.  Those people used cotton for paper and French binding is excellent.  It looks as if it came from the printers and binders yesterday.

Anyway,  I wasn't even expecting this long exegesis on books and their binding.  I wanted to talk about my marginalia notes I found while editing  here they are enjoy if you're inclined to:

Thought this was interesting enough for a post.  What do you guys think about this idea of the scripture?

In Lollipoop's journal entry "We Forget" she asks why do people continue to love after heartbreak and continue to search after love.  Here's my response as crazy as it sounds:

People do it because they are fools or at least foolishly wish that
there could be better, but there are NO benefits to love. None. There
are only costs tabulated by pain and loss.

Whatever
euphoria that comes in the beginning always, always goes away. And then
one day your eyes open and you realize: there is no perfect person.
None. Only good enough or comfortable enough.

If that is what you want and you're willing to still have it then go for it.

It
doesn't have to be that way. You could make it so that the heartache
never, never, never has to hurt you again. I know it sounds cowardly to
some, but the pain of loneliness is easier to bear than heartache. Just
hold everyone at arms length and hammer that pain into an armor so cold
and hard that it protects your heart and numbs whatever pain comes
along.

It's not about fear, but about choice. There's pain and
suffering either way. That's the way of it. Which pain do you want to
carry? I know my choice.

Yes!  And I didn't even need to fudge to get this result!  I've always idolized Magneto as one of my penultimate heroes.  Victor Von Doom is second too--another one of my idols.  Of course Darth Vader is the uber-hero in my book that I try to emulate at every turn.  Oh there are days when I wish I can choke everyone around me to death.    It's really too bad that he had to fall into disgrace in the end to serve the needs of the story.

Your results:
You are Magneto

Magneto 91% Dr. Doom 83% Apocalypse 78% Mr. Freeze 68% Lex Luthor 68% Two-Face 63% The Joker 60% Dark Phoenix 59% Mystique 51% Juggernaut 51% Venom 48% Poison Ivy 44% Green Goblin 39% Kingpin 39% Catwoman 35% Riddler 33%

You fear the persecution of those that are different or underprivileged so much that you are willing to fight and hurt others for your cause.

Click here to take the "Which Super Villain am I?" quiz...