Spring is always a busy time for me and to add to that my wife and I have been house shopping because with the addition to our family we have been feeling a little cramped at times and are looking for some more elbow room. House shopping and more importantly house selling is time consuming and tiring so I haven’t had much to say.
Until tonight when I read Chris Marchand’s post about the finale of Battlestar Galactica and decided to comment. Since I have been so negligent on my blog I will post my comment to him on here. If you are linking to this from his site and have already read my comment stop reading this now.
If you haven’t been there go there because he writes some good stuff.
If you haven’t watched Battlestar Galactica yet go to your nearest rental place or torrent tracker and get the four seasons; watch them then come back here and read the following ,
“I was just wondering if you’ve watched the finale before I checked your feed and lo and behold you have. I wasn’t going to post a comment at first but I think a happenstance like that is no happenstance and is orchestrated by the Gods. I needed to write something. Plus I sensed a need for feedback in your post and I couldn’t leave you hanging, especially since I begged my wife to watch the finale with me because I felt an event such as it was deserved some kind of discussion.
It’s been awhile since I watched it so it’s faded a little, but I remember thinking how clever the writers were by ending it with Baltar’s and Six’s comment on commercialism and vanity and the MSNBC report about robots in the present.
I don’t read a lot of Sci-fi but when I do I am always amazed and terrified about how prophetic sci-fi writers can be. Orwell’s endless war, Gibson’s matrix, and Ray Bradbury’s army of ‘Mildreds’ virtually lobotomized from watching wall-sized televisions and drowning their thoughts in oceans of music and talk from sea-shell radios. I actually think of Fahrenheit 451 the most when I stop in the middle of a lesson to ask someone to lose the iPod.
Battlestar warns us about where we can end up, but it carries a greater message about humankind’s ability to survive despite its own vulnerability. This is best symbolized by the whiteboard in President What’s-her-name’s office. One of my favourite moments in the series was when she was able to add one to the survivor count because of the baby that was to the injured and limping fleet.
I just noticed by the blogroll on a blog that I frequent that I haven’t written anything on mine for over a week. So I am trying out Write or Die right now. It is a neat little tool that forces you to write toward your self appointed goal or it will punish you. The first punishment is a flashing salmon coloured background. I am actually going to pause for a bit to see the progression of punishments. The next punishment, my wife just informed me is “mmm bop” by Hanson. Annoying enough to get me moving and to add another twenty words to my stream of conscience style writing. Although easily erasable text makes it too easy to self-censor. I actually want to apologize to anyone reading this post because it really is about nothing and is really only a “hey check out this cool site” kind of post.
I watched Role Models tonight with the Fox (my wife). It was pretty good I am going to put in the genre of warm and fuzzy with tits and taurine. I know that is not an official film genre, yet, but I like the alliteration.
If you have read my about page you would have seen that I am a teacher and because of that I have, and society has placed a few restrictions on what I can say on here and live up to expectations that I know everybody has. Since everyone has been to school everyone has an opinion on it. Anyway I deleted my post and I feel like I let myself down. It was deleted to remain professional. In Alcoholics Anonymous there are twelve traditons that travel alongside the better known steps and were created from the trials and tribulations during AA’s infancy.
Tradition four states, “Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole” (please see the earlier link). What this tradition means to me is that I am entitled to do whatever I want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone close to me. After some recent email and a second look at my post I decided to delete it because it could have had the potential to harm my profession as a whole.
To switch topics, I travelled to Manitoba this weekend to witness the streamlining of items that have amassed over a sixty-year marriage to be put into a uhaul. For me that would be a daunting task. I over pack for a weekend. Once the Uhaul was filled, I watched as my mother-in-law helped my wife’s Gido choose his coats and hats from the closet. It took awhile, we didn’t mind though, we knew that it was much more than the picking the most stylish, it was about saying goodbye to a home that he built for his family. I am grateful that I have a close enough relationship with my in-laws that I could have taken part of such a personal event.
My dad and I had a great day skiing today. My only regret is that we didn’t go skiing in December because we both have the bug now. What an awful time to get it, the last weekend the ski hill his open. Skiing used to be such a large part of my life, in fact I used to look forward to winter I have forgotten about it. I also forgot about how much skiing with my dad means to both of us.
I know skiing means a lot to my dad because in the recent years he has been the one that brings it up the most. Whenever he mentions skiing and I am too busy I feel like I am living the “Cat’s in the Cradle” song.
Dad is one reason why skiing is so important to me. Another reason skiing is so special is the serenity I feel while I ski. Skiing seems to transport me, it is spiritual. I made the decision to become a teacher while I swung my feet in the suspended stillness of a lift ride in BC. While I write this now I remember the feeling of ascension and the sound of the skiers below being muted by the falling snowflakes blanketing the trees.
Here is a video that captures that gives me that serene feeling, especially 46 seconds in.
Swearing. I am good at it. Eloquent in fact. Most swearers believe they are. My son is now seven months old, getting close, I suppose to developing language, he is uttering sounds that sound distinctly like mom, spelled out the sounds are mommomomomomomomom, seven too many syllables to qualify for a word though. Anyway, I am getting it from many directions right now to ease off on my expletives for fear that my mini-me will load them into his word bank.
I don’t really want to and I don’t really know if I can. This may be just an excuse for not trying as hard as I should but my boorish language has flowed down to me in torrents from my father, his father, and I am sure his father’s father. Who am I dam(n), that river? Others might need that resource. Royal lineage aside another aversion to change comes from my disbelief that my swearing will scar the little bugger (a really awful thing to call a child by the way).
Language evolves. Swearing is just part of the evolution. In the fifteen hundreds zounds was a bad word, not it isn’t really a word. I witness the evolution everyday in the halls of Good Ole’… I am not going to be cavalier about it, sometimes it shocks me, a few years ago I lectured my class about how girls shouldn’t be calling each other bitches, and I almost always stop and make profaners aware that they just swore where it really isn’t appropriate, usually get given an apology and have never been told to “take” off. The truly obstinate will just respond with a “So?”. That in my mind is the worse offense, either those kids are just indignant of just ignorant of what they speak. That is what I aim to teach my child not to be, indignant or ignorant.
I will teach him that words are powerful and need to be respected and that people have feelings and need to be considered. This is how he will learn, he will hear those words slip from me; he will hear his mother remind me of appropriateness; he will hear me apologize to the offended, and he will listen to see if I re-offend, hopefully I won’t, in the next few minutes at least. That, I believe, will teach him about swearing without causing him to flinch, point, and shout, “You said a bad word!”
If you have the time watch the video, he is one of Britain’s beloved and will someday be knighted I am sure.
I am being assaulted with The City when I probably should be reading a book. My wife likes the show and I like her so I watch it with her and make wisecracks. At least she doesn’t watch the after show. Fahhhk! that would be painful to sit through.
She likes The City I like Battlestar Galactica. It’s almost like we are on two different colonies her from Tauron and me from Caprica, no wait me from Sagittaron and her Caprica because she is control of the remote. If Adama and Tigh can put their differences aside so can Tash and I. So much can be learned from Battlestar Galactica.
I can’t believe it is ending. I am actually trying to figure out what to do for the series finale of Battlestar Galactica. I feel it deserves a wake of some kind. I can’t imagine how the real fans, those who began watching it in ‘04, feel. They have really suffered for fans like me. I caught up last May by watching two to three episodes a night it saving me three years of lonely travel trying to find “survivors” (other fans) and defending myself against the onslaught of soulless reality TV (the Cylons). I don’t think my resilience or wife would have lasted. I didn’t talk about anything else but BSG until I caught up and then it was just…
“January 16th Fox, it returns.”
“For the love of pete!”
“It’s a good show Fox you shouldn’t react like that”
“You make fun of my shows–”
“The Hills and The City are crap shows!”
You get the point. Anyway here we are, just one more jump to discover our destiny. I moved to the left, Adama’s right, I am accepting the mission. Who else is with me?
Just finished watching W. it is pretty good. I wasn’t used to feeling sorry for, or actually liking him though. After all I have spent eight years believing that he was an evil war monger and not an insecure kid trying to follow in his father’s footsteps. It seems, according Oliver Stone, H made it to the top of every hill he attempted to climb. This wasn’t the first time I saw Bush as a human being though, as I watched Obama’s inauguration I couldn’t help but imagine what was going through Bush’s head as he looked out onto the sea of people who gathered to celebrate his departure.
Dreyfus was convincing as the evil mastermind although he didn’t really capture the malice. Jeffrey Wright played Powell came across as level headed and cool, the competent outsider we assumed he was. I think he signed up with the hope that he could temper the Bush administration and pulled the pin as soon as he realized he had no voice. Condoleezza however as played by Thandie Newton was mousy and silent. I think she hung on and got as close to the Prez as she did because she never had the capability to bully him. At least that is what I get from Oliver Stone’s interpretation.
It is a snow day (was actually) here in Dryden, so I am sitting in an empty classroom, this is actually a welcome relief because it gives me time to catch up on some marking and some of the other mundane activities that go along with the time spent in from of the blackboard. I am not marking however, I have chosen so far to wile away the morning reading blogs and webpages, and downloading pictures of my son to add to a photoframe that I am going to set up in the communications office.
What prompted this post, besides an encouraging comment to a comment I posted on a blog, was the following photo.
It was a photo linked to an article about young people clamoring to be part of “flash mobs”. The original post said something about youth behaving like lemmings to provide T-mobile with free footage for their next advertisement. I testament to the power of the cell phones to mobilize the masses.
I don’t think they really want to be on TV these kids. I think they have a need to make physical contact with one another, to stand shoulder to shoulder and rub elbows.
That isn’t what I really find interesting thought. What makes this photograph the most intriguing is the fact that so many of them are wearing headphones. That’s what I don’t really get. I like my music, I do, I listen to music walking to work most days. I even leave my earbuds in when I enter the school on some days. Particularly the days that I don’t want to talk to anyone, or more important when I don’t want people to talk to me. My point is that I find it odd that hundreds of kids would rush to a rail station to be part of something ‘big’ only to make that something smaller by plugging their ears. I guess 100 percent commitment to the moment is too much to bear.
Swearing. I am good at it. Eloquent in fact. Most swearers believe they are. My son is now seven months old, getting close, I suppose to developing language, he is uttering sounds that sound distinctly like mom, spelled out the sounds are mommomomomomomomom, seven too many syllables to qualify for a word though. Anyway, I am getting it from many directions right now to ease off on my expletives for fear that my mini-me will load them into his word bank.
