You know those TV commercials that start with biking in the park, and a happy couple together, and the suddenly the voiceover announces the guy has genital herpes…but it’s all just perfectly fine! Both partners feel safe and secure and it brought the relationship closer together and so on and so forth. Then comes the […]
I got to thinking about homemade protein brownies as they compared to cost, labor, and nutrition, compared to cooking out of a Pillsbury box. Finding recipes online can be a real frustration. I recently went looking for a homemade brownie recipe, as an alternative to typical store-bought “Box Brownies” that are both not necessarily available […]
Well, here I am, a month after beginning my “not really a workout” workout routine and “not really a diet” diet. It really has not consisted of anything more than doing crunches, push-ups, and pull-ups, as I think to do them (2 minutes of my life a couple of times a day). I’m eating smaller […]
Last week, I was lucky to get through a few push-ups, and couldn’t even do a pull-up. Today, reps of ten push-ups aren’t straining and I can do a half-dozen pull-ups (not chin-ups). I have no idea how many crunches I do a day, but it has to be over a hundred. My current […]
I have to go to a wedding in a little over three weeks. It’s with family I never get to see, so I like to look my best when I do. This means that the next three weeks of my life are predominantly occupied with getting tan and getting fit. It’s been a sad winter […]
Being a substitute teacher at Pulaski County Special School District boils down to one thing – you are a per-diem employee that can be dismissed at any time for any reason. However, given that there are so few substitutes available, most schools simply ban bad substitutes – it’s rare that you hear of one get […]
When I was in high school, which was only a decade ago, it was a better time than today. While I wasn’t enrolled in the district I currently teach in, I’ve seen pictures of kids then and I see them now, and today is clearly more oppressive. We thought we had it bad in high […]
When I was in middle school, which was around the time modern high school students were born, there was a new phrasing of an old word that had really taken over the scene. For a long time the word meant happy and then, later, the word changed to mean homosexual; by the year 2000, the […]
This blog has been operational for about a year. Last spring, I decided to put all my old work on here, for people to read – everything from when I was in high school up until my late 20s. I put a lot of academic writing on there and a lot of personal writing from […]
It is as clear to me as it was to Fred a hundred and fifty years ago: the concept of divinity that the majority of humans share is incorrect and must be adjusted. He said, “God is dead,” and has caused quite a stir when people have taken that line out of the context of […]
Having lived in Little Rock for a while, and always cruising Craigslist in whatever location I am in (even in Taiwan, where no one uses it), I posted the following reaction to the ads I was seeing on there. This is what I wrote: Honestly, ladies, it’s not that I don’t […]
Back in 2008, I voted on of a proposition here in Arkansas called The Unmarried Couple Adoption Ban. The concept was pushed by a group called The Arkansas Family Council (AFC), who are quirky in their homophobia: they freaked out about California’s Harvey Milk Day, saying kids would be required to dress in drag and have mock […]
I think when people are forced to write, they often don’t do it well. I believe people can write in a very “tunnel-vision” manner when they are very focused on their writing, and quality suffers for the sake of content. I hate writing poorly, but sometimes, I can’t avoid but to appear to write badly. […]
Substitute teachers have a few different brands. You were a kid once. Maybe you still are. You know the drill. There’s a reverse bell curve, with “insanely strict substitutes” on one end and “totally aloof substitutes” on the other end. The minority find themselves in the middle – 90% of subs are super strict […]
Teaching has its various merits and drawbacks, for me. First of all, no matter what educational bracket you are in, academia is the lowest income bracket you are looking at. This is why most teachers do lots of extra stuff – anything from coaching sports teams to staying after school to monitor kids getting […]
I’ve come to realize, over the last few months, that I’m in a unique position. Since returning to the USA in December on 2011, I began substitute teaching at Pulaski County Special School District at the end of January. I have worked the last 45 out of 55 working days, the majority of my work being at […]
People talk a lot about World War Three. A few years ago, I realized that World War Three, the way we all imagine it to be, is not going to happen. Nations secure in economy and military have no reason to launch war in the manner seen in the 1940s – actions like that were […]
For those unaware, BTJunkie closed down a few days ago, “voluntarily,” which is to say they closed down before the US government could close them down. The more I look at it, the more I see it all as innevitable. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief a month ago, thinking there was some victory over […]
YouTube, while being the most popular video hosting/sharing website, has some extreme failures that are frequently overlooked by the majority of users. The benefits of YouTube can not be understated; its value to the internet is unparalleled. If the advent of internet is equivalent to the invention of interchangeable type, then YouTube is the creation […]