Jump to content
Registering As A Forum User? Read This Important Message!
Help Keep AwesomeDude Online! Donate Here.

EleCivil

AD Author
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    838

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

 Content Type 

Blog Entries posted by EleCivil

  1. EleCivil

    Praxis of Evil

    By EleCivil,

    The sun was hot, the breeze was cool, the music was loud, and my sleeves were short. Yes, that's right...a perfect day to have to go and take a three hour written test.
    I took the Praxis I test, yesterday. That's the first of three tests that you need to pass to get a teaching certification.
    Praxis I tests you in reading, writing, and math.
    Praxis II tests you in your specialized content areas (English and science, for me) and pedagogy.
    Praxis III is an in-class evaluation, where they come and watch you teach.
    I got back my scores on the reading and math sections, but the writing will take longer, because they have to grade an essay in addition to the multiple choice questions.
    Here's the shocker: I scored higher on math than I did on reading. I passed both, but it's still weird. Weirder still, I thought writing was the hardest part. I swear, if I pass math, but fail writing, I'm going to be double-plus-pissed.
    "Sandro came back from world travel stupider than left,
    Even good guys fight each other, even bad songs are theft.
    We walked stupied, he talked stupid, he could not comprehend,
    So everyone called him...a stupid man."
    "


    -"Harem in Tuscany (Tartana!)" by Gogol Bordello


  2. EleCivil

    American Dream

    By EleCivil,

    So, this guy asked me to write an intro to his paper on The Great Gatsby for him. I've never read the book, but I did it anyway. Here's what I gave him:
    It all started in 1942, when Private Johnny "Slick Hips" Gatsby of the 142nd Armored Tank Division awoke in his barracks and said "What this war needs is a little soul, see?" He immediately began dismantling the weapons and turning them into jazz instruments. The German war machine stood no chance against the funky acid tunes and swinging mid-tempo beats of Johnny Gatsby and his jazz band of brothers. After vanquishing the threat of the Axis, Johnny and three of his best friends, Georgie, Paulie, and Ringo, went on to form another popular band known as "The Beach Boys." The Great Gastby is F. Scott Fitzgerald's legendary chronicling of The Beach Boys' rise to fame and eventual fall from glory.
    Now, he doesn't believe a word of it, of course, but he says he'll use it anyway, because his instructor has a sense of humor. Plus, he's going to cite me as a source. I believe it's the first time I've ever been immortalized in MLA format.
    "Rappers say the darndest things
    That you'll ever hear
    Like 'I'm edgy' and 'I'm risque'
    And I say 'Better luck next year.'"


    -"Avantcore" by Busdriver


  3. EleCivil

    Brakes = Broke

    By EleCivil,

    This is an older (true) story, from when I was in high school. I was 16 at the time. I was thinking about it as I was driving home this morning, and thought that you guys would appreciate it.
    I was driving to school in my Dad's Cadillac. It was a piece of junk - older than I was, on it's 5th or 6th owner, beaten all to hell, but I was 16, so I thought it was awesome. It was raining heavily. I was going up this huge hill when my brakes cut out. Mind you, I didn't notice that the breaks were out until I was on my way DOWN said hill at 50 miles per hour. At first I thought I must have driven through a puddle, so I started pumping the brakes. When that didn't work, I hit the emergency brake. That did nothing. As Mitch Hedberg once said, "It shouldn't be called an Emergency Brake. It should be called an Emergency Make-The-Car-Smell-Funny Lever."
    I'd never used emergency brakes before, so I figure, hey, maybe THOSE need pumping, too. So, now each leg is pumping. Because of the position of the emergency brake, I have to rise slightly from my seat in order to pump it. Now, pumping both legs while in a half-squat position, semi-restrained by a seatbelt, results in a series of repeated, rhythmic hip-thrusts. I don't know if you've ever seen someone thrusting their hips while hanging off of a steering wheel, screaming obscenities with a wild look in their eyes, but let me tell you...it looks a lot like they're making violent, passionate love to their steering column.
    I noticed that I was coming up on a red light, with other cars already stopped, so I moved into the turning lane and started blasting my horn. Keep in mind, I'm too terrified to take my hands off of the wheel, so, yes, I had to hit the horn with my hips. Now it not only looks like I'm engaging in intercourse with my steering column, but it sounds like it's enjoying it.
    As I roll through the red light, thrusting, screaming, and hump-honking, I can only imagine what the people lined up at the red light are thinking as they look over and see me. I have visions of old people shaking their heads in disgust, turning to their passengers, and saying "Damned crazy teens."
    I keep this up for a while before I finally realize that all the pumping isn't getting me anywhere (with the brakes, that is), so I say "Hell with it, this car's toast, anyway," and throw on the parking brake just as I take a turn into a parking lot. There's a huge THUMP sound and the tires squeal. Smoke comes pouring out from under the hood as I jerk to a sharp stop, with one last full-body thrust against my seatbelt. I fall back against my seat, sucking in air, and considering my position and feelings of mixed exhilaration and relief, I'm forced to wonder for the first (and possibly last) time in my life...did...did I just fuck a Cadillac?
    "Rejoice! Although this world will probably hurt you.
    Rejoice! Despite the fact this world will kill you!
    And rejoice! Despite the fact this world will tear you to shreds...
    Rejoice! Because you're trying your best!"


    -"Rejoice!" by Andrew Jackson Jihad


  4. EleCivil
    I'm home for Easter. Today, my mom showed me two pictures: one that she'd taken this morning, when she found me asleep in the computer chair, and my school picture from sixth grade - age ten, exactly ten years ago. Interesting.
    It got me thinking about how different I am, now. It's easy to forget about how much you change, since you see it from the inside, as a slow progression. When you look at it in terms of a big gap, like ten years, though...
    Ten years ago, I had long hair. Now it's really short.
    Ten years ago, I pretended to like football because all the kids at school did. Now, I'm fine letting everyone know that I'm weird.
    Ten years ago, I was a fundamentalist Southern Baptist. Now, I'm a non-theist.
    Ten years ago, I knew that I was straight. Now, I know that I'm not.
    Ten years ago, I hated middle school more than anything. Now, I can't wait to get my degree so I can go teach in a middle school.
    Ten years ago, I only listened to the Oldies channel on the radio (everything else was "devil music"). Now, I listen to punk, hardcore, hip-hop, folk, indie, and all kinds of "devil music".
    Ten years ago, I was afraid of the dark. Now, I'm a night person.
    Ten years ago, I had not yet touched a computer, and had no idea what the internet was. Now, I'm a tech geek working in a computer lab.
    Ten years ago, I was rarely allowed to leave my house. Now, I'm barely at home except to sleep.
    Ten years ago, I liked to write stories in my free time. Now...well, not everything changes.
    Ten years ago:

    This morning:

    And now, I wonder - ten years from today, will there be nearly as many changes? Any that are as big as some of these? I think I'm pretty secure as to who I am, right now, but ten years ago, I thought the same thing. Ah well.
    "Of course, tomorrow morning if our whole system collapsed,
    We?d divide ourselves again on lines of gender, race, and class.
    But tonight I don?t care if we win a million hearts,
    Unless we rip them out their chests and start throwing them at cars!"


    -"Johnny" by Tom Frampton


  5. EleCivil

    Orange Assassin

    By EleCivil,

    Some shady dude offered me a job a few days ago. Okay, not shady, but extremely polished and corporate-looking, which always comes off as shady to me (he was wearing a TIE). I'm pretty sure it was some kind of scam. He walks up to me in a store and starts chatting me up - what do I do for a living, am I "keeping my options open", etc., and tells me that he's in charge of expansion for his company and that they're looking for some employees. "Not worried about the knowledge part," he says, "We can teach you that. What we can't teach is honesty and integrity." And, obviously, I'm full of honesty and integrity, because he's known me for all of four seconds and can see that I'm...purchasing an orange (oranges - the fruit of integrity!). Anyway, he says he'll call me and fill me in on the details later, so I give him my number.
    He calls me later, and says that they'll only give out the details in person at some meeting that they're having on Thursday. Those details? Pesky little things like "Job title", "Job description", "Compensation", and "The name of the company that you'll be working for". In other words, EVERYTHING.
    Now, I'm going in for training at another job on Thursday, so I'm pretty sure I'm not interested, so I decide to mess with him a bit...because, hey, these are my phone minutes, and if I'm going to use them, I want something I can laugh at later. And, after all, I never gave him my full name.
    I ask him what kind of job he's looking to give me. He says they're not going to give out the details over the phone, that I need to come to the meeting.
    I lower my voice and say "Is it a hit?"
    "What?"
    "A hit. An assassination."
    He laughs. "No!"
    "Oh. I just figured that that's why you won't give me details over the phone. You know, because of the Patriot Act, and the domestic wiretapping and such."
    He gave me a nervous laugh and neither of us said anything for a while. Then he hung up on me without even saying goodbye. What a dick. I bet he WAS looking for a hit man.
    "The only silver bullet they use is that TV in your living room,
    And all we've gotta do is pull the plug.
    Don't go to the store today, no, don't you dare buy anything,
    Instead go out and try to fall in love."


    -"The Moon Will Rise" by Ghost Mice


  6. EleCivil

    Periodicals.

    By EleCivil,

    There's a big Periodic Table of Elements in the science wing of my school. Having not pranked anything recently, I decided that it looked like a good target. I printed up a fake element square, using all the accurate information for Aluminum, but changed the name to Al-Bundium. I made the switch a few days ago, taping the fake square over the real one, and it's still up there. I'm thinking of replacing an element with a sitcom character every couple days, and seeing how long it takes before someone takes them down.
    My school made it on the news because of our new GBLT club, Prism. It's getting protested, even though its faculty adviser is a nun and it's being backed by the Diversity Awareness and Action Committee. Here's hoping it causes some kind of ruckus. I love ruckuses.
    Also, I got a cheap used car to replace that one that I smashed. Hopefully I'll get the hang of driving a standard transmission again, because right now I suck at it. My last stick shift was in my Ford Ranger, which I referred to as my "Pick-up Full of Sweet, Sweet Love" (+10 cool points if you catch the reference) that I drove years ago.
    Finally, I've signed on for NaNoWriMo again this year. Last year I dropped out around the 10,000 word mark, so let's see how far I can get this time. I'm placing my bets at around 20,000.
    "Everyone tells me they're crazy.
    Crazy people aren't so fucking boring.
    Wake me when you're through being cool,
    'Cause I'm snoring."


    -"Unlisted Track" by Jawbreaker


  7. EleCivil
    I swear, Ohio sucks at holding elections. We just make it hard on ourselves every single time. Miscounted votes, glitchy machines, too-close-to-call margins, extensions, and now running out of ballots at polling sites? Jeez.
    A friend of mine (a registered independent) was actually told that he wasn't allowed to vote, even though it's an open primary. He argued with the poll worker for over an hour before he gave up and found another polling site. You know, one where the workers read the newspaper. Or watch the news. Or glance at the "How To Work a Polling Site" brochure. He's wonky...er, devoted enough to drive around the city looking for a place where they'll let him vote - I've got to wonder how many independent voters just gave up, instead.
    We Ohioans sure do screw up the democratic process. Er, no, wait. I mean, we make democracy more sporting than those other states. On purpose. Yeah, that's how we roll.
    Also, I found out that my mom's boss snuck into the VIP section of a Hillary campaign speech the other day. Secret Service and assorted security teams wouldn't let her in, but then she noticed that the people in the VIP section all had drinks, so she grabbed a drink from a nearby tray and strolled in as though she belonged. She turned to the nearest group and said something like "Hey, I forgot to bring my sign. Anybody have a spare?". One of them gave her a sign to hold - only later did she actually look at it and realize that it said, in huge letters, "HOMOS FOR HILLARY". After a few minutes, Secret Service guys escorted her out of the VIP section (back to hang with the rest of the proles, I guess). Oh, this speech was in my old high school's gym, by the way. It was weird to think that a presidential candidate was speaking in the room where I once hurled a beach ball at a teacher and called him a fascist (ah, the good old days). It seems...strangely fitting, actually.
    And if you were wondering, I did go out to vote. I was the first ballot cast in my district, in fact. That and three-fifty will buy me a gallon of gas. Hey.
    "If a person uses a non-offensive vocabulary,
    That person is CONSIDERATE, not 'PC'.
    If a person has a heavy-handed agenda,
    That person is NARROW-MINDED, not 'PC'.
    In fact, unless you mean Providence College, 'PC'
    Is as meaningless as the president's apology for slavery."


    "Anarchist Bookstore (Part One)" by MC Paul Barman


  8. EleCivil

    Mr. Clean

    By EleCivil,

    A friend gave me an early Valentine's Day present today. Simpsons fans should appreciate it:

    "It says 'Choo-Choo-Choose Me'! And there's a picture of a train!"
    Ah, classic Simpsons.
    I was in Biology class, learning about organic chemisty, when all of a sudden I realized something: I'd never shaved my head before. Not once. So after class, I went home and did it, then came back for my next class. There's a couple people who are in both classes with me, and they were pretty shocked. I wasn't sure if I'd like it or not, but I think it's pretty cool, especially since I now better resemble one of these guys:
    [image removed]
    "Oi! You stupid skinhead."


    -"Mouseteeth" by This Bike is a Pipe Bomb


  9. EleCivil

    The "H" Word

    By EleCivil,

    I'm on hiatus from writing.
    Well, not completely true - I'm writing stories for my remedial reading students. I hate, hate, hate the books provided by the school. They're either too high-level for the kids to understand or they are too kiddy and uninteresting, or they're all about rich, suburban white kids that my kids can't relate to, so I'm writing my own.
    In other words, work is kicking my ass all over the place, and I'm kicking it right back. My 8th graders read like 2nd graders, and I've only got a few months to change that. I've got to make words more appealing than the street corners, and that's taking all my time and creativity. I'm tapped.
    In other news, I'm going to a private premier screening of "Waiting for 'Superman'" - a documentary about inner-city charter schools (like mine) - and I was invited to attend a conference/discussion afterward. Presumably because I'm a badass. You know, in an educational way. Fun times!
  10. EleCivil
    I was working on Leviathan Rusts earlier today, after watching The Big Lebowski and splitting a pot of coffee with a local DJ (Yes, it's always a wacky adventure!). So, amped up on caffeine and with a head full of surreal scenes and strange dialogue, I had one of those Eureka Moments. The entire plot became clear to me. The beginning, middle, and end all aligned before my eyes, and the characters' arcs all fell into place.
    I had some basic ideas and a first chapter written, but now it's all pieced together. And I'm thinking this might be my best story, yet. I'm excited. I love it when a plan comes together.
    Of course, now I've got to tweak the first chapter some more. Remember when I said in a previous post that it would be released in December '09? Don't count on it. I mean, there's still a couple days left in December, but I'll still need to get it edited, and then it'll probably be a few days until The Dude and the CW Web Guys get it upped. So, January 2010. A new story for a new year.
    After all, anyone who's followed my stories before knows better than to believe me when I mention a deadline, right?
    If you want some hints about what it'll be like, read on. If you'd rather be surprised, stop here.
    ----
    Last chance.
    ----
    No, seriously this time.
    ----
    Don't say I didn't warn you.
    First, a recap:
    Leaves and Lunatics - My first attempt at writing a novel/novella/serial story. At the time, I was aiming for Nifty Archives quality, because that was about the extent of my experience with net fiction. I started writing it when I was 17 and fresh out of high school. It was a somewhat sappy romance story with a lot of editing mistakes and some plot points that still make me cringe. The story didn't really go anywhere. But it did have some characters that I like. I rushed the ending because I had the idea-seeds for Laika and I wanted to get started on it.
    Laika - My second serial novel. As I explained in the Afterward, I played around a bit with symbols and theme (socks = freedom). It fits a lot of the characteristics of a screwball comedy - A central romance, romance across cultures/socio-economic strata, fast-paced dialogue, false identities, some physical comedy, etc. I wasn't as happy with the ending as I could have been - I kind of ran out of steam, and the last couple chapters fizzled out and included some scenes that didn't really go anywhere. Still, I'm happy with how it turned out.
    Now, my current project...
    Leviathan Rusts - The third in the "L series", it takes place in the same "universe" as the first two stories. Keep an eye out for returning characters. It takes place about six years after L&L, and about two years after Laika. The main characters are college aged. It does not take place in Curson, MI or Gordon, OH, but in a new city - the college town of Milkthistle, OH. The protagonist may be difficult for readers to relate to (except for one or two of them, who might get him right away).
    As for genre...well, it's different. At some points, darker than Laika. At others, lighter than L&L. That's as much as I'll say - you can see the rest for yourselves. Here's some hints.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Anthropology
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebus
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan
    ***
    Update: First chapter has been sent to a (potential) editor.
  11. EleCivil

    Jetset

    By EleCivil,

    I came to a clearing in the woods, a small sunlit patch of rabbit-bitten blades, over which the blue was struggling through the insatiable leaves. As a branch broke under my foot, there was an explosion of birds, feathery shrieking shrapnel sent flying across the canopy gap. Further up, jets from the nearby airfield scurried across the sky, bushy tails dragging behind them. Jets, surpassing the birds in speed, size, efficiency, capacity...every category but beauty.
    Whispered "Why are you migrating, you jealous, straining beasts?"
    The birds made sense, but from the humans, no answer. Never any answer.
    "Where are you running, great-and-mighty self-escape artists?"
    And they fled from my questions, fled faster than the birds as they moved to escape the violence of my errant step.
    "Why do you fear me, oh self-made masters? Have you, too, mistaken me for your predator?"
    "Am I your predator?"
    Am I...
  12. EleCivil

    Untamed, Untranslatable

    By EleCivil,

    Plans for celebrating New Year's Eve:
    Step one: Strip to the skin.
    Free yourself of the trappings of the dying year. To have nothing between you and the fresh embrace of the new solar cycle.
    Step two: Throw open a window.
    Feel the breath of the new year on your skin. Also, ventilation for step three.
    Step three: Set fire to the previous year's calender.
    Part with the previous year, setting it to rest on your own terms. All anxieties, fears, doubts, and sufferings of the previous year are set ablaze.
    Step four: Tilt head to the sky and howl.
    Clothed in nothing but December's embers and January's breeze, let your first utterance of the new year be an unintelligible vociferation. A cry of victory over the previous year and a challenge to the year to come - a proclamation of intent to live loudly and love intensely, letting no impediment overcome such august ambitions.
    Step five: Sleep.
    'Cause it's late and I've got work in the morning. What? I can be practical, sometimes, too.
    "I must create my own system, or be enslav'd by another man's."


    -William Blake


  13. EleCivil
    My dad's funeral was on Saturday.
    Our relationship was...unusual. If you've read Fistfights With Flashlights, you know what I mean. Beyond that, we just didn't "get" each other. Over the last few years, the longest conversations we had were arguments. We could go at it like you wouldn't believe, for hours at a time. It was really our main mode of communication. But...that worked for us. Most people didn't get that, but that's how it was - we'd always come out of those arguments with more respect for each other. I never did end up converting him to a raging radical leftist, and he never converted me to a conservative biblical literalist, but we did manage to somewhat mellow each other.
    For the last six months, he'd been sick - using oxygen machines and taking a pharmacy worth of pills every day - but he was still able to walk around, talk, do stuff. He was still himself. Then, all of a sudden, last Monday...he just wasn't. He couldn't walk under his own power. He would fall asleep at random times - in the middle of a sentence, while taking a drink, whenever - then he lost his voice, then lost control of his bodily functions. By Thursday, he was no longer conscious. Two Hospice nurses were here. Around two pm, one of them turned to my mom and I and said that we should come and sit by him.
    My mom whispered things into his ear and held his hand. I stood off to the side, silent. I counted the seconds between his breaths - one, one-thousand, two, one-thousand. At two thirty, he stopped breathing. I had counted up to fourteen one-thousand before I realized that that was it. It was over. My mom was crying. I wasn't. I still haven't. I don't know why that is. Maybe the six months of advance warning prepared me. Maybe I'm a bit of a heartless bastard. Maybe it's a bit of both.
    Today I took my mom in for surgery.
    I skipped class the last few days. My grades are going to hell. Whatever. I'll figure something out, later.
  14. EleCivil
    It's been a while since I've posted here, so I've got a few stories.
    More relatives have been coming to visit my dad. Second cousins and great-uncles from the hills and mountain towns who I've never met before. I've never fit in with my dad's side of the family - they're from the mountains of Pennsylvania, really small-town, rural places. Their main interests and talking points are sports, intra-family gossip, and God, in that order. Three topics that I can't really say anything about, since I don't follow sports, I don't know any gossip, and I don't believe in God. As such, I usually just stay quiet when they're around and shrug off their criticisms-disguised-as-questions ("You're such a handsome young man - why do you go and shave your head like that?" "Why don't your socks match?" "Why do you have that pirate flag flying from your window? What, you think you're tough?" "Why don't you play football? What do you mean, your college doesn't have any sports teams? What kind of a school is that?" "You want to be a teacher? Isn't it mostly women who do that?").
    Some relatives from my Mom's side have been visiting, too. That's the side of the family I've always fit in with. One of my uncles is a systems-admin and a juggler/unicyclist. One works for NASA and writes poetry. My Grandpa on that side died before I was old enough to get to know him, but I understand he was some kind of working class hero who marched with the unions and read Shakespeare to his fellow migrant rail-workers, teaching them English as they sat around the campfires. I only got to hang out with them for a couple minutes, though, because I had to go to work on the day they came.
    ---
    Something weird happened the other day. My mom tells me that she was outside when one of the local girls came up and started grilling her about me - "Is that your son? How old is he? He likes punk music, right? And he juggles, right?" And then, this girl who I've never met tells my mom - MY MOM, the preacher's wife - that she thinks I'd look pretty hot in chains and leather. GOOD. LORD. So now my parents are laughing about me being some kind of secret bondage freak going around corrupting the local high school girls. Eh...heh.
    ---
    I was out walking during a thunderstorm earlier tonight. I like walking in the rain. It kicks all your senses into overdrive - listening to the static of the raindrops, feeling the little wet explosions all over your skin, smelling and tasting the water on the air, watching the bubbles erupting from the gasoline rainbows on the pavement - it's the best. But today, it was raining so heavily that the storm drains started to back up, and before I knew it, I was knee-deep in water. Now, as soon as I felt the cold water sloshing over my shoes, I started up a nicely flowing stream of profanities that only intensified as it deepened, while I slogged through in search of higher ground.
    Somewhere in the midst of my soaked swear-storm, I changed gears. I shouted to the trees that there was now enough water in my shoes to form at least two new Great Lakes - Lake Shoe-perior and Lake On-toe-rio. I then looked around, and told the streetlights that I hoped that the swearing had scared off any listeners, because I'd hate to think that someone had just heard that terrible, terrible pun.
  15. EleCivil

    The 4th

    By EleCivil,

    Ever completely forget that other people were in the house, and start doing something that even you think is kind of weird?
    Yesterday morning, I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, shaving my head, when I started singing:
    "Shaving my dome,
    Shaving my big white dome,
    I don't get razor burn
    Because I use a lot of foam!
    I wake up and shave my dome
    At the break of dawn,
    Yes, I'm shaving my dome,
    With my bath towel on...."
    I was about to start in on a second verse when I realized that, since it was the fourth of July, everybody was off of work, and waiting to applaud as soon as I stepped out.
    That night, some friends and I chased each other around with sparklers and traded protest songs. It was cool, but a couple people kept trying to get me to drink.
    "Dude, you'll be 21 in, like, four days. We're not going to turn you in or something. It's four days!"
    I was dumbstruck - they actually thought that the reason I don't drink is because it wouldn't be legal. I had to explain, like, since when do I care about the law? Fuck the law. I'm not going to be one of those posers who blunts their edges the day the law says that they can.
    Oh, yeah - I turn 21 on Sunday.
    "I learned all about Liberty.
    It's a statue near a harbor in a city called New York.
    And I learned that statues are things that we build
    To remind us of things that have died."


    -"Liberty is a Statue" by Evan Greer


  16. EleCivil

    Rivalry

    By EleCivil,

    Santa came to my school the other day to eat lunch with the kindergarten class. They borrowed one of my bases-of-operation (I don't have my own classroom, so my materials are hidden in various caches in three or four different buildings around campus) for this event without telling me. I walk in, looking to pick up some books I need for my next class and see Santa. I say hi. The kindergarten kids look over at me, gasp, and shout "HI, MR. CIVIL!!" then run over to hug me and ask me to do magic tricks/juggle for them.
    That's right. Surreal as it sounds, in one small corner of the world, a simple reading teacher can rival Santa Claus.
    Of course, now I'm paranoid that the man himself has a hit out on me. I keep turning around, expecting to see tinsel-covered piano wire stretched taught between two fur-lined gloves.
    ---
    I think it's been right around a year, now, since I've written anything outside of school work. I don't know if that's going to change any time soon. I'm starting to feel the muses jabbing at me, again, but I'm not there yet. I don't know.
    It's Christmas break, and I'm sitting around in my coat, gloves, and hat because I'm too damn broke to turn on the heat. I can see my breath in my apartment. I swiped a few bags of mint tea from the teacher's lounge before leaving, and I'm sipping that to stay warm, too. Just four more months 'till Spring.
  17. EleCivil

    Fielding

    By EleCivil,

    I spent the last two weeks in the field - student teaching, that is. Loved it. Kicked asses and took names...in a professional, educational kind of way.
    I've been on the edge of self-destruct mode for the past week. Between two jobs, night classes, student teaching all day, lesson-planning, and other assorted homework (TONS of physical science essays - I've done 30 pages so far, with no end in sight), I've been getting less and less sleep, leaving me to maintain consciousness by force of will alone.
    Today was supposed to be my last day of student teaching. On the drive over (it takes me a solid hour of driving to get there), I sneezed, suddenly and violently. When my eyes opened, I had jumped the curb and was driving on grass. I ran my car into a giant concrete block. The air bags went off in my face, giving me a black eye, a bruised jaw, and a bloody nose. The windshield shattered. The engine died. I'm pretty sure it's headed toward the scrap heap, because the car more-or-less landed on the block before driving over it, scraping it across the entire underside of the car.
    The cops came and took my statement - didn't cite me, marked it down as "loss of control". They offered to give me a ride, either to my house or to the place where I was going. Problem was, since it's such a long trip, both places were too far out of their city limits for them to drive me there. They took me to their station, instead. They patted me down on the side of the road and had me ride in the back, on the plastic seats with the thick bulletproof glass between us. I must say, that's not how I imagined my first ride in the back of a police car - I'd always pictured cuffs and flashbulbs, my collar pulled up over my face, and the sidewalks packed with supporters chanting "FREE CIVIL!". The black eye and bloody nose were in my fantasies, but I always pictured them being caused by police brutality rather than an airbag. Needless to say, I'm disappointed.
    You know what kills me, though? I didn't get to go in to teach. I had a great lesson lined up, and I really wanted to say goodbye to the kids, you know? I mean, yeah, I'm not happy that I have to find a new car with my no money, and I didn't appreciate having to wait around in the police station for four hours, but not getting to go to school really pisses me off.
    "Rick Santorum's got his shirt off,
    I think he's grinding Michael Chertoff.
    We'll play dress-up with Obama,
    He looks good in Bush's pajamas."


    -"The Party Party" by Attica! Attica!


  18. EleCivil
    I got my Praxis scores back:
    Reading - 186 out of 190
    Math - 182 out of 190
    Writing - 182 out of 190
    Passed!
    I was hanging out with some friends the other night, playing some Geometry Wars. We're all really competitive with each other, so it's the perfect game for us. It was my turn, so I went to sit on the couch. There was one other guy on the couch, and he was sitting right in the middle, so I had to squeeze in next to him. I turn to him and say "Move over a bit, man, this is awkward." He grins and moves over, but toward me instead of away from me. So now he's full-on leaning against me, trying to make me feel uncomfortable. I think to myself "Oh yeah? I'll show him who's uncomfortable!" so I drop an arm around his shoulders. At this point, the other guy in the room sees that we've started an Awkward Moment Contest, and joins in - he runs over and sits on my lap. So to one-up him, I rest my other hand on his thigh.
    One of them finally says, "You know, seeing as we're all way too competitive for our own good, we shouldn't play this game. Knowing us, it could actually progress to one of us fucking the other one, shouting 'Hey, this is so wacky! I bet I'm making you feel uncomfortable right now!'. And then the third one's going to want to top that, somehow, and it'd turn into a real life Aristocrats joke before any of us would give up." We recognized that he was probably right, so we broke it up and went back to Geometry Wars.
    "Some say monsters died out before I was ever born,
    But I think they're still around now, so could you please walk me home?
    'Cause they're tearin' tearin' tearin' through the streets now,
    And tearing's never as good as I recall."


    -"I Know Monsters Well" by Punkin' Pie


  19. EleCivil
    So, you might have noticed, but I kinda vanished from the face of the internet for the last couple of weeks. Couple reasons for it. First, the semester's coming to a close, which means all those projects/papers that I've been putting off...well, they can't be put off any longer. As such, I'm working double-time in the research department, and have more or less established one corner of the college library as mine. To the point where people go there to look for me, before trying me at home or calling my cell. My corner kind of resembles a cell, actually, but not the portable kind.
    Speaking of cell phones, that brings me to the other reason I've been seemingly vaporized. For about two weeks, I was worthlessly, bedriddenly sick. Like, wearing a pile of winter coats under an electric blanket in 70 degree weather, unable to do anything but shiver and cough sick. The docs said it was strep, but I know better.
    Joey Gumb, of Forever on a Tree fame, sent me a picture via cell phone. This picture was of a plastic action figure shaped like (supposedly) an angry syphilis germ. Attached was a caption along the lines of "I just gave you syphilis, bitch." The next day? Sick.
    That's right, ladies and gents. Biological warfare on the net-author front. He's obviously trying to take out the competition by infecting his contemporaries with e-syphilis (compatible with iPus). I got back at him, though. I made that picture of the syphilis germ his custom icon. This means that whenever he texts me, a little syphilis germ pops up to let me know. Heh.
    Bad news is, since it's a Textually Transmitted Disease, anyone I've texted since is at risk of contracting the e-syph. I suggest taking peni-cell-in.
    In non-syphilis news, I found out that, if all goes according to plan, I'll be graduating at this time next year. Huzzah for getting into the job market right when there's a huge recession! But I've got a secret weapon. That's right: macaroni necklace. Oh, yes, I'm bringing out the big guns. Nobody turns down an applicant with uncooked pasta around his neck. Know why? Shows I'm prepared. "Yeah, I see you eyeing my noodles. Go ahead and laugh, but when the great Midwest Earthquake hits, and we're trapped under a pile of rubble, then we'll see who's laughing: the guy with no food, or the guy with a string of carbohydrates strewn 'round his clavicle."
    Keep the sails high, pavement pirates.
    "And that?s the reason that we came and add a twist-ah.
    I thought that punk was all about the freedom, mister!
    Don't want to be the sound to tick off your list,
    We're bigger than this punk rock!"


    "Bigger Than Punk Rock" by Sonic Boom Six


  20. EleCivil
    So, I got out of school last week. Looks like I'm still maintaining a 4.0.
    I started summer semester this week. I need to take five classes over the summer and 5 over the fall to graduate on schedule. I've never taken a full load over the summer, before. It's insane. All the summer classes are accelerated - a whole semester's worth of work, compressed into ten weeks. Papers and projects and gobs of reading due every day. One of my classes is double-accelerated - two four hour long classes a week, with all the work squeezed into five weeks. Matt Lauer, it's the first week, and I'm already behind on work.
    My summer classes:
    Theoretical Approaches to Reading and Writing
    Teaching Reading Through Literature to Young Adolescents
    Integration of the Arts in Education
    Introduction to Theological Studies
    Spanish Guitar 2
    Heh. You can tell I'm nearing the end of my degree - most of the classes have really long names.
    Also, on the chest-bursting front, I went in to get an EKG. As I'm checking in, they ask for my religious preference. In case I need a quick funeral or something, I guess. I tell them I'm a Druid (reformed, not orthodox).
    Some samples of dialog from the preparations leading up to the event, as I was lying nearly nude across a table:
    Nurse: "You look kind of tense." (*squirts goo all over my chest and begins to stick electrodes to me*)
    Me: "I don't do this very often."
    Nurse: "I do!"
    Me: "Is it more fun on your end?"
    Nurse: "Oh, yes. Hey, your ribs are too bony, I can't get this thing to stick. Speaking of which, when I take these off, it's going to rip out a bunch of your leg hair."
    Me: "...Neat."
    Then they get to the actual EKG part. It's the same technology used for ultrasounds, to see babies while they're inside the womb. Which gives credence to my "incubating an alien" theory, I think. Anyway, they stick this dealie to my chest, and I can see my heart on the screen. It's incredibly detailed - I can see all the little valves opening and closing, the different parts pumping and flexing. The sound is amplified, too, so I'm clearly hearing the funny "squish-POP-thump" and thinking "Holy hell, that's the thing that's keeping me alive."
    Weird experience, over all. I get to find out the test results next Friday.
    "And hearts aren't made of glass,
    They're made of muscle, blood, and something else.
    And they don't so much as break as bend and tear,
    But we have what it takes to keep it together."


    "Bikes and Bridges" by Defiance, Ohio


  21. EleCivil

    Magical History Tour

    By EleCivil,

    I've been driving around to various historic locations, getting pictures for a travelogue I'm writing for an Ohio History course. It's a lot of fun. I'm seeing a bunch of towns, cities, and even parts of my own city that I never usually see.
    Here's a picture of me at Fort Meigs, watching suspiciously for the British Navy (Camy, I'm looking in your direction - you'd give me a heads up if you guys were going to give it another go and put us colonists in our place, right?).
    [image removed]
    Also, I've been given a student teaching assignment. Looks like I'll be driving for more than two hours every day for four months. So, that'll suck, but once that's done with, I'll be done with college. For a while, anyway.
    My placement is way out in the boonies in Michigan. It's weird. I'm used to the Big City ™, with our graduating classes of 600+ and our businesses that are open past nine. To get to my placement, I have to leave the city, then drive through roughly thirty miles of corn. Fun stuff, right? But it'll be cool to see how a rural school differs from the urban and suburban places that I'm used to.
    Funny story, though - I'm at the school with my adviser, waiting to meet with the cooperating teachers. We're both dressed in black suits, and I'm wearing a black fedora, cocked jauntily to one side. A student walks through the room, sees us, does a double-take, and just mutters "Whoa." I think she thought that we were there to erase her memory to cover up extraterrestrial activity. Or maybe sell some bootleg gin at the school's floating craps game.
    Anyway, I've gotten a look at exactly how much work I'll be doing for these next few months, and it's not pretty. Don't expect to see much of me between January and June.
    "Wisdom, it comes, but age don't unlock it:
    You've got to spend all the passion you've found.
    With more change in their heads than in all of their pockets,
    Some can show you the way to slow down."


    "Bones" by Christians and Lions


  22. EleCivil
    I'm trying to give up swearing. It's not that hard - it's not like I was a big fan of the profanity, anyway - but I figure that it'd cut down on my chances of saying something that could get me fired once I'm actually teaching. As such, I've been throwing around some rather colorful euphemisms, lately. They tend to make bystanders do double-takes (which, I'll admit, is true for a lot of the weird stuff that I do). Here are some stand-outs:
    "Matt Lauer!" and "Mothra Faulkner!" were both mentioned in previous blog posts, but they're worth repeating.
    "Grinnin' Bedlam!"
    "Horsemonger!"
    "Gorbachev!"
    "Dopefish!"
    "Andrew 'Old Hickory' Jackson!"
    "Smooth Endoplasmic Reticulum!"
    ---
    On the writing side of things...
    -Wrote the first two and a half chapters to a "Laika" sequel, but I absolutely hated it. Consider the project scrapped indefinitely.
    -Wrote three poems, currently posted in the poetry board. Used one of them to win a local poetry competition (the prize was a blank book with the words "Carpe Diem" inscribed on the cover).
    -Wrote the first six chapters of a sci-fi/urban fantasy story. It has two secondary characters that are probably my favorites out of everything I've written, and I'm having a lot of fun with building a plot around a home-made mythology. I don't know if I want to post this one, though.
    -Wrote a few pages and a decently workable outline for a new AD/CW story. Don't expect to see anything of it for a while - I'm still kicking ideas around.
  23. EleCivil

    Standard Opening Post

    By EleCivil,

    Putting a Title Here Might Look Good
    A friend of mine describes personal blogging as, elegantly enough, "the text equivalent of peeing on the internet itself". This, of course, made me want to give it a try.
    This post is basically here for me to get more familiar with the system and see what happens when I play around with the settings.
    Images work like this:

    Aye...that was easy enough. Looks like it's just bbcode.
    Anyway, I'll be back to post something more interesting later. Well, I can't guarantee it'll be interesting...but it'll be longer.
  24. EleCivil
    I got my first teaching job two years ago, right out of college. At the time, I posted this:
    "The school has no art, music, gym, recess, or extra-curriculars. These were all shut down because of low test scores.
    The school itself is on the verge of being shut down by the government (depending on this year's test scores)."
    Bruin Fisher replied with this:
    "Cool. You will hit the school like a tornado. Its grades will shoot through the roof, the kids will become well-motivated, the arts courses will be re-established."
    I have my suspicions that Mr. Fisher might be a psychic. Or a witch. Here's what's happened:
    The incompetent teachers and abusive administrators were kicked to the curb.
    We now have art, music, gym, and an after school program.
    We put on school plays every six weeks.
    Our test scores have shot up, making us one of the best performing public schools in the area.
    I don't have the data from other teachers, but my kids went up an average of two and a half grade levels in the last year.
    I'm happy about the test scores. But seriously, who cares about test scores? Any educator you ask will tell you how ridiculous standardized tests are. Until kids have standardized lives, standardized parental support, standardized health, and standardized neighborhoods, standardized tests will always be BS.
    Yeah, I teach my kids to read. But you'll know which ones are mine because they'll be smiling. They'll be the ones juggling and performing slight-of-hand tricks. They'll be the ones wearing goofy hats and reciting poems while standing on one foot. They'll be standing on tables and role-playing characters from fiction and history. They'll be singing their answers and reading aloud in different accents every day.
    Officially, I'm going against the curriculum. The administration and the government say that I'm supposed to take kids who can't read and teach them how to fake it well enough to bluff their way through a standardized test. But when no one's looking, I close the door and teach them to read.
    Screw the tests. Screw the standards. Let's teach.
  25. EleCivil
    This might be a long one. I'm going to preface this by saying that this is all the opinion of EleCivil, the eccentric weirdo whose advice you probably should not heed for any reason. It in no way represents the views of the site admins, etc. etc. legal stuff.
    I recently got an email from someone telling me that they enjoyed my short story, Fistfights with Flashlights - this was a short story that I wrote while in the middle of Leaves and Lunatics, when I was about 18 years old. To be honest, I remember almost nothing about it. It's about 90% autobiography, 10% fictionalized. I wrote it in one quick burst and then submitted it without going back to edit or even re-read it once. I then deleted the file and have never gone back to look at it again. As such, I can't speak for the quality - it was pretty much just an hour of catharsis. I haven't thought about the story in a LONG time, but this email brought it to mind, and I wanted to reflect a bit.
    One of the major themes of this short was religion, and how it can mess with one's perceptions of the world. Specifically, it was about how, when I was a kid, I believed in things like demons, possession, and the apocalypse, and how that screwed with my head to the point where I was deathly afraid of the dark, carrying a flashlight with me at all times to scare away any demons that might try to possess me. I used to read the book of Revelations and compare it to current events, searching for signs of the coming rapture and subsequent end of the world, which I was eagerly looking forward to. Yes, I was six years old and my main hobbies were Eschatology and awaiting the end of the world.
    But the part that I wouldn't - couldn't - admit to anyone was that I was a skeptic when it came to the existence of God. I felt it, but couldn't even admit it to myself. I didn't think God was real. I didn't think that he sent his son to die for me, and in fact I found the idea of parents sending their children to die for them to be terrifying - if God, the source of all morality, sent his son to be tortured and killed by the bad guys, would my parents do the same to me?
    Now, there's some cognitive dissonance there - I fully believed that Satan and his demons existed and were out to get me, but I was skeptical about the existence of a God that wanted to save me - but come on, I was six. And let's face it - it's easier to believe in perfect evil than perfect good. You can SEE perfect evil every day. Perfect good is something far rarer, and there wasn't a lot of it going on around me.
    So to summarize my childhood beliefs:
    There is a devil who wants to get me.
    There are demons who work for him who are roaming the Earth looking for me.
    The world is going to end any day now.
    God can save me, as long as I believe in him.
    I believe in God a little less every day.
    Therefore, my only hope is that the world ends or that I die soon, while I still sort of believe in God, so that he won't condemn me to an eternity of torture for not believing in him all the way.
    This is what was running through my brain every day, every night. I couldn't turn it off - everything reminded me of it. And keep in mind, this is all before I started thinking that maybe I was gay, and even MORE of an abomination in the eyes of the only entity that could save me. Holy shit, no wonder I attempted suicide as a child.
    I still called myself a Christian and told myself that I believed until I was about 17. I wrote Fistfights with Flashlights when I was just starting to admit to myself that I was really an atheist, and that WANTING to believe in something can't make you start believing in it. Making that admission - giving myself permission to admit that I didn't believe in the religion of my parents - was the biggest relief I have ever felt in my life. Why? Because if I didn't believe in God, I didn't need to believe in any of the things that scared me - the devil, demons, hell, and the apocalypse - I didn't have to spend my life waiting for death. I didn't have to seek to end myself to please a God that could never be pleased with me. (This is a theme I revisited in the later chapters of Laika.)
    Back to the reader response - the writer of this email wrote that he assumed I was a non-believer, and identified himself as an atheist. This gave me pause - I haven't sat down to really consider my religious beliefs in quite some time. I try to make it a habit to "re-draw my map" - attack my own philosophical and intellectual views with logic to see if they hold up, or if they need to be reconsidered...but I haven't done that with religion in a long time. So, what's the best way to sort out one's beliefs? Stream-of-consciousness writing! Hence, this blog post.
    I suppose I am an atheist, in the dictionary definition - I do not believe in any gods, and do not follow any religions. But at the same time, I don't fit in with the "New Atheist" movement that's been gaining traction, lately. I've read the likes of Hitchens and Dawkins, but I don't really agree with their view that, as Hitchens wrote, "Religion poisons everything." If you read my above experience of being driven to self-hatred and suicide by religion, you might be thinking "What the hell, EleCivil?" but hold on.
    I don't think religion makes a big difference one way or another in day-to-day life. I tend to see human goodness on a whole as a bell-curve distribution - about 5% of us are completely evil psychopaths, 5% of us are completely good-natured saints, and the other 90% are somewhere in between. And I believe that there are religious people and non-religious people in every segment of that progression.
    The religious guy who gives half his income to charity and goes on "missions" to distribute medical supplies in disaster zones? If he wasn't religious, he'd probably be doing the same thing, but in the name of "humanism" or "personal conscience." The atheist who is found with a pile of torsos in his basement, who claims he went on a killing spree "just for kicks"? If he were religious, he'd be doing the same thing, but instead claiming that he killed them in "a glorious cleansing for the Lord!" The religious guy who hates gays because "the bible says it's wrong"? If he were an atheist, he'd still hate gays; he'd just say he hates them "'cause it's gross!"
    I don't think religion (or lack thereof) can turn people "good" or "evil" or "open-minded" or "bigoted". I don't think it has that much power. I think we are drawn to our beliefs and come to define them by our innate qualities, not the other way around. There's a saying that if you ask ten preachers to interpret the bible, you'll get twenty different interpretations. Thanks to a blend of archaic language and confirmation bias, we will always see what we want to see in religion. If you read the holy text of your religion and see a call to help your fellow man and live a life of service, then you were probably going to live such a life even if you had never seen the text. Likewise, if you read the holy texts and see a list of people you should dislike, you were already looking for a reason to dislike them.
    Or, to put it more simply - Douchebags are gonna be douchebags. Amen.

PayPal

Help Keep

AwesomeDude Online

Scan to donate

QR code
×
×
  • Create New...