« February 2004 | Main | April 2004 »
March 30, 2004
Vacation
On a much less depressing note (and I know it has been depressing lately), my spring break starts on Friday. I plan on building my LiteBrite table, repainting the remaining floor, and building some doors. I plan on seeing Hellboy at the cinema. I plan on taking a cooking class, as Aunt Kathy recommended. I plan on hanging with friends, hopefully have lots of sex. Maybe DC, maybe Vermont, maybe Massachusetts.
Any takers for any of the above?
Posted by G at 08:12 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Teaching breakdown
It's been a really scary long week. I haven't been in the mood to blog. My mind has been spinning in a lot of random directions. The problems in the loft, the attack on the street, financial miscalculations, and now the revelation that I've thrown away another year teaching.
Last Friday my school sent me to another school in our district to observe classes. This school has been doing our program for three years, and my principal was supposed to send us over there at the beginning of the year. The fact that we didn't do this until 7 months passed is moot. This school has the same students, the same ethnicity, the same problems. Yet it was different. Kids were learning, first year teachers were effective, the hallways were clean and orderly, and the staff believed in their kids. Their staff development was amazing, organized and clear.
Going to this orderly haven crystallized my frustration with my job and myself. Their teachers are using good techniques, their enforcement of rules and discipline is consistent, and the administration supports them. The chaos of the neighborhood stops at the entrance. I've been working my ass off, watching the kids jump off scholastic cliffs. For yet another year, they won't do better on their tests, I haven't really been able to reach the majority, and the whole reason I'm teaching seems vague and worthless. Endlessly yelling at kids wasn't my reason for teaching. Talking with my math coach later, I was almost in tears. She told me to blame the administration, as they are demonstrably incompetent. A teacher in the room told me to blame the students, as she felt that their ethnic group will always stay in the same cycle of poverty.
I blame myself, because I'm the one in the classroom. I see these kids every day, I know their weaknesses and their strengths. I know I'm only a second year teacher, and I'll get a chance next year to improve myself. My kids don't get that chance. It is very likely for SIXTY PERCENT of them that this year was their last chance at education. I'll get the chance, they won't. My experience will not be retroactive, many of their lives will continue on their downward spiral, and their only future will be to attack stupid white boys as they leave the subway stop.
Something has to change. Every year, there are 25 new teachers at my school. Teachers make all their mistakes with these kids, then move on. I want to move to this other school, and the cycle continues. People will tell me that I have to look at the "help just one" philosophy to get through the day. I'm a math teacher. Help 1, fail 89 doesn't add up.
Posted by G at 07:51 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
March 24, 2004
East Crapass
That is the name of my neighborhood, as named by Luis, a good friend. I'm a bit tired of East Crapass.
Two thugs attempted to jump me coming out of the Morgan stop on Monday night. I already had an extremely long day at work, followed by an extremely long night at university. I was not in the mood to be sucker-punched by some little punk and his really big friend.
Not that they succeeded, mind you. As soon as I saw them approach, alarm bells started going off. Just as the first one passed me, he took a swing at me. I jumped back (thank you, boxing lessons with Kieran) all the way to the street, as the other one was also headed for me. I think their goal was to knock me into the dark corner next to these stairs and beat me up. I continued backing up, cussing up a storm, using my really angry teacher voice.
They skulked off a bit, I went down a block to my home stretch, and realized that they were trying to catch me from both sides on a totally deserted street. I ran to my building, only to discover that the idiot landlord changed the locks again. I was pounding on the window, screaming, as I could see my roommate watching television, but he couldn't hear me. Just as they were crossing the block to get me, I remembered I have the mail door key, opened that door, and slammed it on their faces.
No loss of wallet, no injuries, just a loss of security again. Today I felt the whole fight/flight mechanism roiling up my system as I walked home, just because some guy walking the opposite direction got too close to me. I don't like feeling that way.
Posted by G at 11:30 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
March 23, 2004
Good news for Central Asia
Many friends who read my blog know about Ruslan Shapirov. He's been imprisoned for some time on trumped charges, but apparently has just been released. Thanks to everyone who made any kind of political noise for him.
I think the worst thing to do in our present circumstances is to be silent. He was one voice protesting against a repressionist government. Every American should be that brave.
Posted by G at 09:09 PM | TrackBack
March 21, 2004
My cars
1966 VW Beetle
1968 VW Dune Buggy
1981 Pontiac Station Wagon
1978 Dodge Aspen
1982 VW Rabbit Convertible
1977 Fiat X1/9 (Three extra copies to keep the primary one running)
1986 Ford Mustang
1976 Ford Courier Pickup
1984 Chevy 21’ Cube Van
1978 International Scout
1979 Datsun 280Z
1985 Dodge Daytona Z
1989 Geo Metro LSI
1992 Dodge Dakota Pickup
1993 Geo Metro Convertible
Cars have been such an integral part of my life. Learning how to work on cars was so nightmarish when I first started. I would rail at my dad, griping about how much I hated working on cars. Other families bought their kids brand new cars. Why did I have to buy my own piece of junk? It wasn't fair! Slicing open my hand while trying to pull the engine on the VW would send me into a rage, screaming and cursing.
So I learned to control my temper better, as socket wrenches usually don't survive being pounded into the concrete. I discovered the joy of reassembling an engine and hoping that one extra bolt wasn't important. I discovered I can rapidly escape from under a car during an oil change when a snake appears next to my head. I'm really quite good at working at cars now, I love cars, and some days I think I missed my calling. I don't have many photos of boyfriends or girlfriends, but tons of pictures of my cars.
Posted by G at 12:13 PM | TrackBack
March 20, 2004
Back in the Days
I was looking for photos for another entry, and came across these:
My calorie intake was entirely devoted to growing hair.
Posted by G at 09:12 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
March 16, 2004
Dan Savage's take on marriage
A nice take on what a sham and 54 bucks gets you.
Posted by G at 09:24 PM | TrackBack
March 14, 2004
Bad week at work, honey?
Last week wasn't bad like some of the weeks (months, years) of last year, but it definitely enters the pantheon of bad teaching weeks. Here's the first day:
Our school is under registration review, as our test scores reek like month old soy milk. We have ten people visiting our school from wealthier white districts in the state to tell us how to fix our school. Unlike previous years, schools under registration review this year get no extra moneys or support, just loads of advice.
Two of these observers come into my 7th grade class just after lunch. They get to observe my worst class, directly after a playground time. Things that go wrong-
1) My lesson plan involves new rulers that have hinges. Children view them as toys and slap each other with them.
2) My lesson plan involves basic elements that should have been taught in 4th grade, such as measuring angles, making triangles, etc. My children were in comas at that point of their development.
3) My lesson plan assumes that children have pencils, papers, and medication. I am pretty sure that the observation isn't going well when V jumps up and begins screaming 'duck, duck, goose!' while simultaneously smacking the other childrens' heads. The new rulers are flying around the room, children are cursing and fighitng, and I've decided that I REALLY NEED TO RELOCATE TO ANOTHER SCHOOL.
Posted by G at 11:18 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
In Defense of Gay Marriage, excerpted
Lost in Orange County: In Defense of Gay Marriage
So Just Shut Up and Buy Adam and Steve a Nice Present Already
by Jim Washburn
A Massachusetts court ruled that gay marriage is legal in that state, providing new fuel for conservatives who are gearing up to make gay marriage the wedge issue of the presidential election.
President Bush has already hinted that a constitutional amendment, for
crissakes, may be necessary to stave off this gay threat.
Responding to the Massachusetts ruling, Bush released a statement saying, "Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. If activist judges insist on re-defining marriage by court order, the only alternative will be the constitutional process. We must do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage."
Before we all go into knee-jerk paroxysms of knee-slapping hilarity over this non-issue being hoisted by these moral morons, consider their side for a minute: Does allowing gays to marry threaten the institution of marriage?
If you really think about it, the answer is an unequivocal yes.
If you're straight and married, you've almost certainly got gay people to thank for it. Wedding planners, florists, clothiers, hairstylists, caterers, priests: it's no mere stereotype that these professions abound in gay folk, and your wedding would have been drab if not impossible without them. Add to that the gay friends and officemates who make such a pleasant and positive fuss about your nuptials.
And TV's Queer Eye spiff-up squad is only a distillation of what gay people have been doing for ages: making straight men and women look desirable, or at least survivable, to each other so that they might hook up.
If gays were busy getting married themselves, do you think they'd have time to preen the rest of us? We'd all be back in the trailer park in our overalls, picking scabs off our unmoisturized faces and wondering why the phone doesn't ring. It is only because gays can't marry that they get caught up at all in the romance and filigree of heterosexual marriage, and they'd be off us like fleas off a wet dog if they could go to weddings that didn't depend upon our breeder antics.
It's not just marriage, but the very survival of the species that depends upon gays being forcibly kept--by constitutional amendment, if need be--in their role as our eternal best men and bridesmaids.
Now on to the knee-jerk paroxysms: aside from the above, every gay man and woman in the nation could marry five times over, and it would not affect you a whit. Why the hell should you care? If Eskimos marry, does your wedding bed grow cold? If gays marry, does your wife grow a dick?
It does not affect you! Remember one of the founding tenets that made America great: mind your own goddamn business. That goes double if you're the government prying in between the sheets.
I've known some gays who are real jerks. That's because they're like everybody else, except for the making your wife grow a dick thing. There are gay jerks, gay Samaritans, gay plumbers, gay machinists, gay bums, gay war heroes and gay Sept. 11 victims. They get to pay the same taxes, do the same jury duty and die in the same wars (albeit with a sense of service and secrecy that straights needn't muster) as every other citizen. Why shouldn't their love and commitment be accorded the same respect and protections in the land to which they contribute and defend?
But gay marriage would make a mockery of marriage!
And that's the job of heterosexuals, right? Can they possibly screw it up worse than straight folks? The divorce rate's higher than 50 percent, and couples are bailing out of marriages quicker than ever; something like 60 percent of married men and 40 percent of married women have extramarital affairs; and their kids who aren't busy shooting their classmates are packed with so many pills they sound like maracas when you shake them.
An 86-year-old sleazeball can marry an 18-year-old dominatrix, and that is sanctified. Larry King can marry for the seventh time, and it's sanctified. Britney Spears can get married and annulled quicker than you can say "publicity whore," and it is sanctified. Yet a gay couple that has stuck it out through better and worse for 40 years, being exemplary neighbors and citizens the whole while, pose a threat to marriage? It is legal for them to marry, of course, just not to each other. They could go out this afternoon and marry a total stranger, so long as it's someone of the opposite sex. That's the law. What's left to mock?
But for all of history, marriage has meant the sacred bond between a man and a woman! Except for when it meant a man and several women, or a man and a woman and his deceased brother's wife, or a man and his slave, which wasn't significantly different from being his wife since women were chattel with no say in their own lives and certainly no vote. Let's be guided in all things by historical precedent, shall we? I'll go lock up the slaves and child laborers while you go get the horse--but don't hook no buggy to it because that ain't how we done things--and we'll go downtown and shout down those apostates trying to introduce antibiotics, electricity, pavement, baseball and all that other newfangled nonsense.
But what about the Bible?
Oh, you mean the part where Jesus chased the gays from the temple with a stick? Hold on, I read that wrong: it was the money changers Jesus was after, suggesting that today he'd be whacking heads on Wall Street not Christopher Street. But what about the time he berated the mob of gay people? Oops, sorry, it wasn't gays; it was a mob of judgmental zealots that he told off, remember, then he admonished that only he who was without sin should cast the first stone.
Unlike the fearmongering preachers spewing bile on the airwaves today,
Jesus said a lot about love and acceptance, but he never uttered a single syllable about homosexuality. Ah, but he did give a blanket affirmation of Old Testament law, where a man laying with a man is an abomination punishable by death. But that exists alongside so many other abominations and admonitions that there aren't enough goats to sacrifice to keep every one of us sinners from being put to death.
There are bans on premarital sex, adultery, lust, sleeping with a woman during her period, eating three-day-old meat, eating shellfish and,let's not forget, "You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard."
Forgot about that one, didn't you? Ha-ha, you're going to Hell. So why not take a tip from Jesus and put your own house in order before you go tearing down your neighbor's?
But what about the children?
What about them? If you're worried about gay parents molesting their children, bear in mind that most molestations, even same-sex ones, are done by heterosexual adults. And when parents go bonkers and set their kids on fire or starve them in basements, it's usually because "God" told them to, not Mr. Blackwell. Sure there are gay monsters, but probably in no greater percentage than there are among straight families. And stable gay couples could adopt some of the unwanted children born to the unfit parents of more sanctified marriages.
But won't having gay parents cause children to turn gay?
Sure, just look at the gay offspring of Dick Cheney, Sonny Bono and Phyllis Schlafly. Gay. Gay. Gay.
But what would gay marriage do to American values?
You may have a point there. Look at Canada, where gay marriage has turned them into such a nation of faggots that they couldn't even see the clear and imminent danger posed by Iraq. They've gone soft loading up on universal medical care and cheap prescription drugs, while we're left holding the line against Saddam and sodomites alike.
Repeat after me, with gusto this time: "Gays getting married does not affect me."
Please keep that in mind in the months ahead because the American Taliban ensconced in the White House will be doing all they can to bang the anti-gay drum, to distract from issues that do affect you, like: your job going bye-bye overseas; your decline in real wages; the health-insurance crisis; the deficit that will hobble your children's future; the children left behind by No Child Left Behind; the willful dismantling of environmental protections; the subjugation of our energy policy to corporate interests; the unbridled corruption of White House cronies like Enron and Halliburton; the runaway military budget; the abrogation of our civil rights; the lies told to us to fabricate an unnecessary war, costing hundreds of American lives and billions of dollars, with no end in sight.
You know, issues like those, the kind grown-ups talk about while the kids and feebleminded are out obsessing over their neighbors' wee-wees.
Posted by G at 01:35 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Strange Dreams
I'm discussing the state of the world with the seven gods of nature in an old growth forest. The sun is shining against the limbs of trees, I'm sitting against some moss, and wildlife is frolicking in the forest. We're discussing how Bush's environmental policy is going to accelerate global warming, poison the watershed, etc.
The whole time I'm talking with the seven gods, I'm mentally floundering. Each of the gods has a specific aspect of nature. One is cervine, another is lupine, one is arborescent, and the others represent the four elements. Their forms are fantastic, but I just can't keep thinking one thought.
Am I in some kind of Mountain Dew commercial?
Posted by G at 01:14 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 06, 2004
Honolulu, Part Tu
The Hawaii pictures are up over on Ron's site.. He's much more organized than I am. I'm a bit horrified of my chest in some of them, but I guess that means incentive for the gym. I have a tan, and that is what counts.
Highlights of the trip:
Acupuncture for the first time. Ron's friend Mark suggested this little Chinese guy, and it was really cool. I was really feeling under the weather, and so he treated me for my immune system and appetite. This involved sticking me with these two inch needles that went way down into my body. I was nervous as hell, but it didn't even hurt. One of them began to hurt once he had walked away, but it was because my shirt had slipped back down, pushing against the needle. They were all over my scalp, my face, chest, hands, and legs. Since I am already shaved, I did look like Pinhead from Hellraiser. Afterwards I was voracious and felt much more energetic.
Hawaii really is a great place. The matching of clothes for gay men is not really an issue here, which would have made my coming out process much easier. The weather seldom fluctuates from 80 degrees. Everyone was wearing floral prints and shorts, or even more fun, NOTHING AT ALL. There is a nude beach on the North Shore that I really enjoyed. Ron took me up there on the first day, and it was this vast shimmering stretch of white sand receding into an azure blue. I was enthralled, and not just by the cute nekkid guys. There were horses racing along in the jungle/forest along the beach, kite surfers bobbing across the horizon, and nekkid boys. Every day I was out in the sun, preventing rickets and SAD.
Ron is the hostess with the mostest, and he has a spectacular view from his lanai. His Achilles heel was his need to make me drink this god-awful concoction every morning for health reasons. I don't know why, but health drinks never taste good. Aside from the horrifying drinks, he really should open up a bed & breakfast, as he really is a great cook, local tour guide, and truly skilled at making someone feel welcome. He introduced me to some very interesting friends, took me to see Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, and even did my laundry.
I was also able to meet up with Jay D, one of my first gay friends. The last time I saw Jay, it was about 9 years ago in Houston. We had become friends at the Metroplex Nazarene Chapel in their really spiffy music program. Both of us had bad hair, his with too much mousse, mine with too little hair. This church brought in decent Christian bands, and Jay was the director. He also happened to be gay, my racquetball buddy, and a really nice guy. His coming out of the closet was a pivotal moment for me, as he was the first basically normal guy I had ever met who also just happened to be gay. I kept in touch with him and his psycho boyfriend Brian, even when they moved to Houston. I don’t remember this (I usually don’t remember things like this because of the fight or flight mechanism), but he asked me if I was gay. I apparently told him no, which prevented a really good friend from taking me to my first gay bar. Even with my bad hairstyle and oversized shirts to hide my chest, everyone around me should have been pointing directly at me, the little closeted gay boy. It would take moving over to London for me to come out of the closet, drinking myself silly just to get the courage to talk to a guy. Jay took a more direct and difficult route, and I’ve always admired him for that path.
Jay and I are both very different now, yet strangely the same. You can take the boys out of Montana and Texas, but you can’t take Montana and Texas out of the boys. Aside from the obvious improvements for Jay (lots more musculature, better hair, much nicer boyfriend than the psycho from Texas), he also just seems happy. He also can sing the entire Gilligan’s Island theme in 20 seconds, as shown in this downloadable movie. He has a Seadoo ski boat that skips madly across the ocean at breakneck speeds. We did that for an entire morning, and I felt just like a massive breasted woman sitting in a two piece like the Popular Mechanics photo shoots. His boyfriend Kimo introduced me to apple bananas, a species of banana that doesn’t taste like ass, plus apparently he can hula. As far as friend’s boyfriends go, Kimo gets the “Official Glennalicious Seal of Approval.”
It was a great week, tons of beaches and relaxation. Being a tourist gay is a bit weird, as the meat market feeling is a bit intense in Honolulu. However, I think I could handle this version of Paradise much better than the biblical one.
Posted by G at 10:32 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Geeky New Lust
I just switched from Verizon to Sprint, and I also just spent FOUR HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLARS on the new super cool Treo PDA phone.
It takes pictures, acts as a pda, stores 500 phone numbers, and syncs with my ibook. Terribly exciting.
Posted by G at 06:39 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack