A toast

"Here's to fire. Not the fast and furious kind that burns down shacks and shanties. But the slow, seductive kind that takes down pants and panties." 

Sláinte!

Rap-battling hobos

As pointed out by Parsons today, ESPN has Chuck Klosterman blogging all things Super Bowl on location in Detriot. It's pretty funny, if you like that sort of thing. But a portion of one post from Monday was eye-opening for me.

Chuck is going on about how everyone in the makeshift ESPN newsroom knows each other, but he knows no one:

...I have nothing to offer; all I can really do is look at the Internet and check the results from the SAG awards. I see that the big winner was "Crash," a movie designed for people in Los Angeles who just figured out that racism was "complex" (and must therefore be secretly central to every conversation any two Americans ever have). I wish one of the bears from "Grizzly Man" would eat Matt Dillon and Ludacris.

This is exactly what I've been trying to say since Monday! All week. To people who don't really want to listen. Well, maybe not the Grizzly Man part.

Anyway, this can only mean one thing. I am Chuck Klosterman. Or at least his doppelganger. Which I guess means I'm going to die soon. Karla, if you are reading this, please go through the house and hide the drugs.

For Christ's sake

My train of thought while grading, and soon after
"I looked beyond the empty cross/forgetting what my life has cost/and wiped away the crimson stains...."

You know kid, that really doesn't sound like your writing. Forget that it appears to have little to do with the Yousef Komunkakaa poem you've supposedly been inspired by. I wonder what would happen if I Googled just that first line....

Shit. Kid, not only did you rip that "poem" from the lyrics of a song, but you have bad fucking taste. Jars of Clay? Really??

What, you didn't know it was a song? Your parents and your friends helped you with it, but you wrote it yourself? Wait a second, let me print this out. See, that bottom part there. It's the same. Yup, word for word. Oh. So you say you got this in your confirmation class? And you say they didn't tell you it was a song and was written by someone else? You say they just gave this to you, unattributed, as a source of inspiration? That is irony.

Well, plagiarism is still plagiarism, regardless of whether you knew it or not (or how bad the original work was in the first place). I'm sorry, but I have to give you a zero. And now you have a 59 percent in the class. I guess you'd better study hard for the final next week.

Be
Common's latest was one of my favorites from this last year. I'm listening to it again right now. You should be too.

Didn't we just leave this party?

It's another powder day all over Colorado. And where am I? Back in St. Louis. My brothers don't get home till Friday and my sister has mono, so things are a little boring here at my parents' house. But at least we'll all be enjoying Mt. Warner in one week's time.

I fought the law
Kudos to these students for fighting the good fight, but unfortunately the law is probably not on their side. My newspaper students were thinking of suing our principal and school district after similar prior review/restraint problems last year. Colorado gives my students more legal standing than these kids out in Seattle. Still, I'm glad it didn't have to come to this. Ugh.

Ho ho ho.

Not the same as a powder day
Fifteen shopping days till Christmas. Time to buckle down (knuckle under?) and hit the stores. That's where I'm headed in mere moments. But really, last Saturday was much better. I made it up to Winter Park for my first turns of the year, and frankly I'll be shocked if I ever have a better first day the rest of my life. The resort had reported 13" of fresh in the previous 24 hours. Al and I stuck to the Mary Jane trees to skier's/rider's right of the Sunshine lift nearly all day, which is shocking for early December. I was regularly in the soft stuff up to my knees, with no bottom to hit. Once I was up to my hips. I only hit two rocks all day, which would normally be remarkable on groomed runs this time of year. It was fan-fucking-tastic. So my body will be driving circles in parking lots today while my mind is up around 9,000 ft.

Sags are cool
Speaking of the Headmaster, it's his birthday today. And there are only four shopping days left until my own. Don't just sit there!