Boycott Black Thursday

For the record, I'm not opposed to Christmas shopping. I'm opposed to wage slavery. I'm opposed to employers telling their employees, "Your holiday doesn't matter as much as people who get paid enough to buy these Black Friday deals."

It pains me to think of the shoppers, oblivious to the situation that they are condoning in those kept up all night to serve them. If there must be Black Friday at all, can't we keep it on Friday?

R.

America's 5 Biggest Low-wage Employers - MSN Money

Choose empathy over apathy. 

C. S. Lewis Makes Me Cry

But not in a good way. R.

Revising Aloud, Anyone?

My recent posts reveal my secret identity as one who goes through their days helping others to write coherently. I can't help but get peeved when professionals publish the kind of things that I expect from my ESL and developmental English students. Like this snippet:

"The Giants also were able to shake off Kevin Boss' early fumble and kept the woebegone Seahawks from gaining any life from it." — From an article by Vinny DiTrani in The Record(Bergen County, NJ), November 9, 2010

I know weird things happen when we write. Isn't that why we revise? An out-loud reading of this demands, it seems to me, keep instead of kept. That's how I feel about it.

R.

Why Determiners Matter II

From msn.com:

Pope calls Egypt church attack vile gesture

Do I need to say anything about this one? Is msn.com letting volunteers write and title their articles? Is it really costing them a great deal too much to put the "a" where it belongs?

R.

Why Determiners Matter

I found this headline. It sounded like an interesting story, one that could provide fodder to my insatiable inner-author. It wasn't. A simple "a" could have saved me the trouble of reading the story. And writing this post, for that matter.

"Neighbors Save Elderly Man from Burning [Insert a City Name Here] Home."

The word "burning," in this case an adjective referring to something on fire, is easily mistaken for the verb "burning" that suggests the lighting of a fire. You can see why it almost looked interesting. Maybe they did it on purpose to lure in someone like me. However, I just read an article in the Washington Times that said many news companies are eliminating copy and type editors to cut costs. They justify it by saying that the tech generation doesn't use standard English anyways, so they're not going to care. What awesome logic.

I've digressed. "Neighbors Save Elderly Man from [a] Burning [Insert a City Name Here] Home." That would clear it up.

R.

Old Grudge

I try not to be prejudiced against John Dewey, even if separating kids out into groups of the same age and sticking them in an isolated room with an adult teacher was one of the dumbest ideas of all time with repercussions felt by every clique-loving socialite, outcast, and wannabe educator even to this very day. But when a composition scholar throws the name John Dewey out there and says that according to John we learn by action and reflection, it makes one wonder what the hell else is there?

R.

P.S. I've been awake way too long working on papers to restrain myself. I promise that we can still be friends, even if you are a Deweyite.

My First Novel

Today at exactly 4:10 pm, I finished my first novel. It felt good. It is technically only a novella right now at somewhere between 40-50k words. It is saved in chapters at the moment so I don't have a total word count. I've written over 40k since I started keeping track, and I can't recall how many chapters into it that was. Easy to look up, hard to muster the motivation to do it. I hope both of my readers are having success in their writing endeavors as well.

R.

Happy Thanksgiving

This time of reflection leads me to mention some things I am grateful for. The top of the list includes my wife and children, my family, her family, our home, my job(s), being on the cusp of having a draft of the novel. I'm going to skip farther down the list and hit on some of the things that might not make it into our lists, but should. Even if it's at the bottom.

- Increasing my vocabulary through muzak. Just the other day I heard a new word (slizzered). Listening to pop radio can be so educational.

- The mystical power of four-wheel drive. You would think that if two wheels couldn't budge you on an icy hill that four would make it barely manageable. Yet with magical power, the four-wheel drive dissipates disaster in the most surreal way.

- Beanies. Because you can't go without them when you've got the head of hair that I do.

- Grilled Salmon Tacos.

Happy Thanksgiving.

R.

"Who is Elijah?"

I know that back in the day a person had to own a set of encyclopedias or go to the library to find information, but we live in the misinformation age. When I'm reading and I come across a word, be it a person, place, or thing, that I don't know, I look the damn thing up. Come on people. Learn to use a search engine.

R.

Fly Away Time

It was inevitable that I would fall behind on my blog as I have on everything else. Here's an update.

We held my dad's memorial the first weekend in August. It was beautiful.

I'm too lazy to label all of these pictures, but as long as it doesn't get screwed up when I post it, my descriptions will at least be in order.

Our guides.
A shot of the San Juans.
Dad's view from his cairn.
Artsy pic of the landscape reflected in Riotimus's shades. Before you talk smack consider that it was done from the back of a moving horse.
That line of strata is called Table Mountain.
Bones of the earth.
Dad mounted up for his last ride.
The two amigos and one amiga (amigoas?) that made it possible.
Above the clouds. From where this picture was taken we kept going up and up and up well past the tree line.

Things have been going well in my writing tutor endeavors. I'm improving as a writer and as a teacher.

My fiction writing is going well. I just finished a complete rewrite of the flawed first chapter of the novel. I'm pretty pleased with it at the moment. Of course, I workshop it tomorrow, so Wednesday I might be singing a different song.

That's all I've got for now.

R.

Labor Day

To celebrate Labor Day I thought I would post this quote by Tom Morello. Have a nice holiday. R.

"The problem is wage slavery. America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you've lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn't belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don't care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve." - Tom Morello, Guitar World, February 1997

Stratification

So on a previous post Ing brought up the old classic Stratocaster. I happen to love my strat, even it it is hardly classic. I purchased this back in '99, towards the tail end of my massive music spending days. It was used and I didn't care anything much about it except that it looked cool and had humbuckers. It had a ding in the paint, but other than that it looked and played great. I ended up with an American Special strat with two humbuckers and a Floyd Rose double-locking tremolo.

I paid about a third what the guitar would cost new. It apparently is even more special than I've thought all these years because I tried to find a picture of anything similar anywhere on the net and failed miserably. These pictures are taken by me of the actual strat.



After I'd had it a while, I was telling a friend who'd played bass in a couple of bands with me about it. When I told him about the Floyd Rose he looked skeptical. "How does that sound?" he asked with this look on his face.
"It sounds fine. Why?" Riotimus said.
"Oh . . . I've just heard that those really screw up your tone."
Who ever would have guessed? Whoever threw that out into the universe hasn't ever heard this guitar. This is a really hard rocking guitar. I mostly use the neck pickup and it is so hot that I practically don't use any gain for my distorted sound. Lackhand has seen it first hand. It really is a hot pickup.
My brothers and I have talked on more than one occasion about started little jazz/fusion trio. I have another great guitar, an Ibanez Artstar. (I found this picture online. I actually pulled the pickguard off of mine.)


It is a good guitar and very versatile. As you can probably imagine at a glance it sounds good whether playing "Stranglehold" or "Take 5."

It is my oldest guitar and the scale by which I measure every guitar I meet. But I digress. The Artstar has a lovely jazz sound as might be expected with the semi-hollowbody design.

It was my plan to use the Artstar for our little jam-borie, but one day I was jamming on the strat and someone wanted to hear one of the tunes we'd been messing with. I said, "I don't know what it'll sound like on the strat, but here it goes."
So I switched to the neck pickup and went to my custom jazz setting on my amp . . . and it blew the Artstar away. Some things just aren't fair. The Artstar is a specialized tool, generally misused by rockers like myself, a jazzy sounding beast. Why should the strat be able to rock so hard and still sound so pure, so rich, so magical? It doesn't look the part, but if I recorded both of these guitars playing jazz and then asked just about anyone to identify which sound went with which guitar, they'd want to put the best sound with the Artstar, the obvious jazz implement. Let it be known that, even though I would enjoy having any of the guitars I've talked about here, I love my strat. It rules.

R.

Ascending Trajectory

Amid the tumult of life that is surrounding me I am happy to report that I've been hired to teach Literature and Composition this summer to high school kids in a special program that helps them prepare for college. The pay isn't much, but it is a national program that will hopefully look good on my resume.

On the writing front, I am five chapters into my novel, hoping to knock out another today. Or at least get started on one.

R.

Ashes

Dad was cremated yesterday. It was a crazy hard day. He lived with so much vitality; he was too young to go, to suffer as much as he did. It's strange to think that after the intensity he lived with that all is left is some dust and a few trinkets. No more stories, too-sweet breakfasts, or debates solely to get someone riled up. No more horse rides through the mountains or belated lessons he'd intended to give when I was younger. Indeed, resting in peace seems to be held by the dead. I miss you Dad.

R.

Standardized Education, er, Tests, er, Teachers, er, etc.

People always know how to fix the problem with American schools. You can see that in Obama's new standards approach and in this attack on teachers. In the first article, Obama wants to throw some of our grandchildren's money at the problem. By bringing the states together to adopt a universal standard which the federal government would enforce, he will fix our issues. In the second, the weight of academic success for the entire country should be the sole responsibility of the teachers as if they are assembly line workers.

They are both swell articles.

But who is talking about the real problem?

The problem isn't one of money. Money is only as useful as those spending it are creative and wise - a rare combination in my experience.

It isn't teachers. Teachers are people, and like people in any field some are talented, lazy, brilliant, passionate, disinterested, and self-interested. There are those teachers that help us to love learning, and those that cause us to hate it. If someone compares their list of which is which with Joe-down-the-street, they might find that their lists are completely opposite.

The truth is that learning is the responsibility of the learner. Every parent has probably learned (whether they admit it publicly or not) that you cannot force knowledge (education, skill, or values) on someone who is unwilling to do the work to acquire them. The learner must decide that acquiring the knowledge will be worth his or her while in some personal, material, or social fashion, and then keep at it until the knowledge is their own.

So we reach the root of the problem. Acquisition of knowledge is not an American value.

Acquisition of wealth is valued by Americans. Some people try to claim an association between acquisition of knowledge and acquisition of wealth. I won't make such a claim, even if the odds are better for someone with education than for someone lacking.



Acquisition of entertainment is valued by Americans. That's why someone will shell out big bucks (theirs or their parents') for college, then sit in class and text or watch YouTube or play games. That's why the graduating generation is looking for companies that allow employees to use social networks on the job.

As parents, we may or may not make our kids do their homework. We may or may not help them do their homework. We may or may not expect a certain grade performance from them.

But when was the last time our children saw us turn off tube or step away from the game console or computer and learn something, anything at all, that didn't have an entertainment payoff (like the instructions for the Wii) or have dollar signs attached (like a book on how to become a millionaire by reusing your old toilet paper)?

Improving American education, like improving American work ethic, American morals, and American anything else, will depend on our families. No amount of government money or misplaced accountability can help our children to value their education. What we can do is develop and demonstrate our own love of learning and hope that our children can be convinced to emulate us.

R.

The Orwellian World

Newsweek posted this article about big brother and our dwindling freedom of movement. It discusses the way government agencies can track us by our cell phones using broadcasting towers to triangulate where we are down to a city block, or if our phone has a GPS feature, our exact locations . . . and not even need a warrant to do it. In fact, if not for resistance among the judicial community, it might never have come to light that we could be followed in such a way, either in real-time or in saved data.

One of the instances of cited abuse occurred when an agency tried to get records of all the people at a union labor protest. The exciting thing about that is when you feel like engaging in a peaceful demonstration against publications that only print stories and poems written by their own editors or against skinny jeans or against pop divas or against tracking people by their cell phones without their knowledge, you can do so knowing that your name, conveniently pulled from your cell phone records, will go on a list. Everyone loves to be on a list.

R.

Merrily Christmas

My family is at my in-laws for Christmas. It was a traditional Eve and Morn--short night and early morning--but well worth it. The kids had so much fun. I had fun too; in my stocking was a five-function survival whistle that included flash mirror, compass, and lanyard, amongst other things.

Hope everyone is having a Merry Christmas.

R.

Do You Know Where Your Make-up Comes From?

In the wild lands to the south, an epidemic has been discovered--the slaying of fat people for the bountiful treasure within. This human lard is then sold to European cosmetic companies for up to $60K a gallon.

R.

Zanpakuto

There are them as that don't know what a zanpakuto is, and that's a real shame.



Don't cut yourself.

R.

"Do try my stew . . ."

The scene I would like you to watch starts at about 7:30 and may be the greatest scene ever laid down on film. Yes; yes it is. It goes until around 8:07 or so.



R.