The West Wing

For Christmas, my dear wife gave me the complete series of "The West Wing". This is the best dramatic TV show I have ever watched. I really enjoy watching it. It has great story lines, interesting, realistic characters, and hilarious dialog.

Sam: I am dumb. I usually act smart.

The set consists of 45 DVDs of all 142 episodes. It will probably take me three years to watch it all, but it will be an adventure. If I am able to watch 2 episodes tonight, I will have completed the first season, and will have only 6 seasons to go.
One of the aspects I "enjoy" about the show is the liberal perspective. No other show so clearly portrays the liberal world view, and the arrogance and certainty by which they hold this world view. It is provokes me to think about all kinds of current issues. Many of these issues I will review on my other blog. I hope you will check it out, if you dare.
That is all.

Irritations too

4. Pot-holes--Because of the snowy winter we have had, and because of all the snow plows removing all the snow, the roads in Denver look like the roads in Baghdad (except fewer camels). This makes driving, which is normally a non-challenging activity, a challenging activity. It takes great dexterity and tremendous memory to navigate without hitting any of the 7,000 potholes. When you do hit a pot-hole the size of Rosie O'Donnell traveling at 35-40 mph, your blood pressure increases dramatically. I don't want to imagine what is happening to my suspension.

5. Light bulbs--We go through light bulbs in this house faster than Wayne Knight goes through deodorant. The last apartment we lived in was 1/20th the size of the house we now live in. We could have fit the entire apartment in our house's bathtub. Thus, we had a total of 5 light bulbs in the entire place. In this house, we have 43 light bulbs, and roughly 3 of them go out every week. We usually wait 3 weeks to change the light bulbs. During the interim the other bulbs are kind enough to wait for us the change the expired ones before expiring. There is never a time when we do not have at least 3 light bulbs out in this house.

6. American Idol--I take every chance I get to state that I do not like American Idol, Sam I am.

Editor's Note: In the last "Irritations" post I stated that 8th graders irritate me. I forgot the disclaimer that this does not apply to any girl who has ever played basketball for me. They are angels, and I cherish them.

Duke game

In case you missed the Duke game on Thursday night, here is the final few seconds.

Irritations

1. Radio commercials--I listen to talk radio everyday as I travel to and from work. I enjoy listening to talk radio. I do not enjoy radio commercials. I have never heard a radio commercial that did not annoy me beyond all human comprehension. I do understand why commercials that seek to be funny have the effectiveness of chocolate tires. None of them even come close to being funny. They are all extremely stupid.

2. Traffic--I should be able to drive across town on a road designed specifically for me. This road would have no other cars on it, and would take me to where ever I desire. The other night my family and myself were driving to my sister's condo, which is on the far east side of town (somewhere close to New Jersey). We left our house at 5:15. Traffic is normally heavy at this time of night, but moving. Every single street in the Denver Metro Area was a parking lot, all because some stupid person got in some stupid accident, causing a shut-down of stupid I-225, resulting in every stupid driver in the tri-county area being on the same stupid road I was on. There should be laws against this.

3. 8th graders--Nearly everything nearly every 8th grader does pushes me dangerously close to a multi-state murder spree. They are entirely devoid of manners, courtesy, sound reasoning, common sense, coordination, humor, insight, coherent communication skills, taste, self-awareness, self-discipline, self-respect, humility, compassion, respect, and dignity. They lack even an Aboriginal level of person hygiene. I know I am generalizing, but that is because I have never met the three 8th graders in northern Minnesota that fail to meet this discription. There are only two things that 8th graders do that do not annoy me, and I do not know what they are because no 8th grader I have ever known has ever done them. I wanted to leave myself a small opening.

Where shall sickness be found?

Remember this song next time you go to the hospital. You might want to be prepared.

House hunting.

If you are planning on purchasing an apartment in London, you are in luck. Let's hope that IKEA is having a sale.

On football

David Letterman says that Bill Belichick "for one reason or another, dresses like a sherpa."
I am amazed that the Saints lost. They had Drew Brees as their quaterback. Drew Brees had statistically the best season ever for a quaterback who moved to another team in another conference after suffering a shoulder injury in a playoff game at the end of the previous season. And no such quaterback had ever lost the NFC Championship game. They should have had a lock on the game.
I am glad that two good coaches, Tony Dungy (a Christian) and Lubby Smith, are taking their teams to the Super Bowl. I could care less that they are African-American. What difference does it make? How is this a significant event? We are so far from where MLK dreamed that we would one day be. Why do so many people, primarily civil rights people, have to continually make ethnicity an issue? Why do so many people have to point out that Dungy and Smith are black? It seems so silly to me. Why can't we all just get along?
That is all.

What do you want?

Watch this short film. Then watch the short film below.

Ask yourself, "What do I really want? Do I really want what I want?"

Where is Brady to be found?

Peyton can now cancel the 6-foot sub he had ordered for Super Bowl Sunday.
I am quite impressed. I left watching the game during half-time to take my wife to work. The score was 21-6 in favor of the Patriots. I thought Peyton was getting another visit to his favorite locale, the woodshed. When I came back, the score was Pats 28, Colts 21. I was so shocked I threw up every meal from the past week. Something must have been wrong with our satellite signal. When it snows, the snow accumulates on our dish, resulting in the loss of signal. I had cleaned off the dish earlier in the day. Maybe I needed to do it again. I must have been dreaming. Perhaps I slipped in the kitchen and hit my head, and was now unconscious. There was no way the Powerful Pats could give up such a lead, and to such a person as Peyton the Powerless.
I continued to watch the game, knowing full well that what had happened was a fluke, and that the Peerless Pats would soon exert their will and put an end to this foolishness. Yet, they never did. They allowed the Cowardly Colts to stay in the game. They even allowed them to attain the lead with less than a minute left. I worried not, for the Caped Crusaders of New England had a weapon mere mortals could not stop. They had Brady the Brave, champion of a thousand battlefields. Yet, somehow (probably demons of some sort), Brady the Beau failed.
How could this happen? How on this side of Shiloh could Belichick, the Patriot Prestidigitator, lose? How could the Pusillanimous Ponies of Indy, without help from a nuclear arsenal, stop Brahmin Brady? Is this the first sally of the Apocalypse? Is Dungy one of the Four Horsemen? Whatever shall we do?

How to be a good teacher.

Teaching is a difficult profession. Some people might think that anyone can teach. Some people might think that teaching is as easy as getting out of bed in the morning. These people have never tried to get out of a bed that is resting on top of Mt. Everest. Some people have absolutely no clue.
Teaching is an art. Not just anyone can create a masterpiece. Not just anyone can be as much of a genius as John Cage or Jackson Pollack. It is a gift.
Teaching involves several rare qualities. To be a teacher you need to have a near clairvoyant insight into students. You need to understand what makes them unhappy and unexcited, for a teacher's primary function is to squelch every ounce of enjoyment out of school. You need to be able to squeeze all the juice of joy out of the lemon of laughter so that all that remains is flesh of funlessness. You are not a successful pedagogue if any of your students feel any inclining of enjoyment while at school.
A good teacher is entirely devoid of emotion. They possess a Spokian level of stoicism. The sorrowful and distressful pleas of the pupils bounce like fleas off the teacher. He doesn't care if they are happy or sad or perplexed or upset or ecstatic. He is completely nonplussed by their emotional state. This is not to say he hates his students. He thinks of them merely as pods who must listen intently and complete homework on time.
A good teacher has no life outside of school. Teachers should arrive at school directly from the pampas of Paraguay. They ought to have no clue about the culture that surrounds their students. This gives them all the more reason not to care about the culture that surrounds the students. Since the headmaster has no "real" life he will naturally assume that the students have no real life. This will help the teacher care nothing about any non-school related aspect of each student's life.
That is all, for now.

Everyone wins

No one loses all the time. Every loser has at least one winning day. The Caltech basketball team hadn't won for 11 years. That is over 200 straight loses. Yet, for those of you who were watching and hoping they would win someday, be glad. That day has finally come. The Caltech Beavers have finally won. They can add this basketball victory to their pavilion of awards, which includes 31 Nobel prizes. Finally, they can get some credibility.

Peyton's plans

I, like most People Magazine subscribers, am interested in the what the stars do. I am especially interested in what athletes do when the are not athleting. I was excited to find out that Peyton Manning is planning the same activity as me on Super Bowl Sunday.

Where is talent to be found?

I did not watch "American Idol" last night. Those that know me will not be surprised. I do not watch AI. I have never watched AI for more than five minutes (cumulative total). Unless a completely unforeseen change takes place in my life, I will never watch AI. I find the show to be banal and boring. I do not care about the bad singers on the show. I do not care about Simon's carefully constructed and Britishly delivered insults. I have a more sophisticated sense of schadenfreude. I do not care about the people that get to go to Hollywood with the chance to make it big. I do not care that some girl who grew up singing in her church, or some boy who was taught to sing by his now diseased grandmother, will get the chance to see her dreams come true. I simply do not care about anything that happens on the show. I think there is more talent in mayonnaise than there is in the entire show. I find Ryan Seacrest to be nothing. I can not see anything about any part of the show that would give me any reason to watch it for any length of time.
I know people that love the show. Some of these people watch the show with an near Islamic dedication. Some of these people watch the show with a far diluted yet still sustained interest. Some of these people watch the show just to watch the show. They can watch the show. It is their choice. Their decision to watch the show says nothing about them. I will not look down on someone who watches the show I look down on. Life can get pretty lonely on this lofty perch. I do not want to completely alienate myself. I will, however, always wonder why anyone could watch this show, much like how these people will always wonder how I can watch 50-year-old Japanese films. To each his own.
It is amazing to me how much time Americans (I am drawing an enormously large stroke here) spend watching, and discussing, and fretting over AI. It is not enough to spend however many hours a week watching the show. Many people have many discussions over the contestants--their singing, their song choices, their clothes, their hair. They enter into endless debate over which contestants will proceed, which contestants should proceed, which will get axed, and which should get axed. They will discuss Simon, Randy, and Paula. They will discuss Ryan Seacrest and his amazing ability to exist. They will discuss everything there is to discuss about the show, and when they are done, they will invent new things about the show they can discuss. I suspect that if Americans spent half as much time thinking about other things, like cancer and poverty, as they do thinking about AI, we would have the other things, like cancer and poverty.
I will assume that these views will upset some people. Yet, I cannot but speak the truth. Feel free to comment as you would.
That is all.

Dear TC Students, Vol 15:

Congratulations on receiving an extension to your "You-are-allowed-to-wear-Patriots-paraphernalia" Week. I knew that the Patriots would win, even though I can't stand them. They have no class whatsoever.
I started work at my new school last week, hence the disruption in posting. It will take some acclamation. I spend most of each work day overseeing the computer labs. Some of the students do most of their work on the computer through a State-sponsored On-line education. I get to reprimand the students for not working, which they do often. I also get to assign them work packets to do. I am working solely with upper elementary and junior high age children. And trust me, they are all very much children. It is , for lack of a better word, exciting. It makes me wonder why I did not study elementary education. Then it gives me encouragement as I remember that I am not clinically insane. There is a fine line between working with students this age and working with primates. Thankfully, for me, there is less poop throwing.
I am also teaching some electives. I "teach" Rocketry and Health and Conditioning, all these to classes made up of junior high guys, or jhgs. It doesn't really what the subject is. Teaching junior high guys anything is like trying to inflate a bowling ball. I would have more luck teaching a box of Cheerios (Honey Nut). These kids, like all kids their age not born in Singapore, have the attention span of a gnat. My only hope is to schedule a dentist appointment at the end of each school day as a means of relaxation.
Sonya has started crawling, which also means she has started putting all sorts of unimaginable items into her mouth. We set her on the floor with no less than 14 toys around her, and she immediately sets out for the dust bunnies and week old fruit bar pieces under our coach. I don't get her. I understand the merits of an occasional dust bunny, but I think I would chose the colorful squeaky toy. Aidan and Addie love entertaining her. Unfortunately, their idea of entertainment consists mostly of screaming, so this causes much frustration to Jenni and myself. Pretty soon, my kids will all be trained to sit quietly reading Shakespeare or Plato as a means of entertainment.
That is all.

Dear TC Students, Vol. 14:

The other day I had a brilliant idea. At least, I thought it was a brilliant idea. It was yet to be determined if anyone else thought it would be brilliant. Unfortunately, or more properly, regrettably, now no one else will be able to verify whether or not it was brilliant, though I am fairly confident it was. The idea that I had the other day was to create a post with all kinds of crazy predictions for the year 2007--such as the fact that this year a total of 28 people, not including myself, would care about the NHL Finals, and that some black guy named Kristopher from Ohio would win American Idol, and that Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson would resign because of a Teapot-Dome-ish scandal and would be replaced by Deputy Secretary Roy A. Bernardi, and that on the new season of 24 unflappable Jack Bauer would get a cold and be unable to save the world from certain destruction, and that Brittney Spears new marriage to Ryan Seacrest would case such a stir that Google would overload with searches for "Spear-crest." The other day I had all these great ideas that would completely change the lives of my dear readers. Unfortunately, like Jake Plummer, I held on to these ideas too long. Unable to survive within the womb of my mind, they died. When I finally gave birth to these ideas on cyber-paper, they were still born. Ideas without life are like Barry Bonds without steroids, completely useless. The moral of this experience, and the life lesson that I would want you my dear reader to embrace, is that procrastination never pays. An idea is like a match, it burns brightest as first strike. Yet, like a match, it can quickly burn out. Unless we use that quickly-burning flame to ignite the kindling of expression, it will be as though the flame never burnt. What good is a burnt-out match? All of us have ideas. More broadly, all us of have opportunities. Yesterday's opportunities do us no good. They are about has helpful as Rosie O'Donnell to your flag-football team. Use your ideas when they come. Take advantage of the opportunities when they arrive. Many times we only get one chance.