Month: April 2014

I wish I had had a teacher like me in High School, I’d have thought I was hilarious

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It’s the end of the year for teachers and students.  Inevitably, irrevocably, ineluctably (whatever that means, I just wanted another “i” word [okay I just looked it up; basically it means the same as inevitable, GOD English is a silly and redundant language, I feel silly and cheated but also my vocabulary has increased by 1 so yay]), things are spinning down and wrapping up.

We’re all tired, kids and adults alike.  Summertime ennui is creeping in at the edges of our vision and it’s becoming plain that, soon, there will be nothing to fill our long days but the sound of our own thoughts and the hum of crickets in the night.  And the screaming of children.  Don’t forget the screaming of children.  (That’s mostly for the adults.)

It’s creeping in at work, too.  Things are so nearly finished that it’s hard to put the same zeal into creating assignments and leading lectures and discussions.  That’s the challenge, of course, and the job, no doubt, but some days it’s easier than others.

In creating the last project grade for the year, (I wanted to make it easy in the interest of giving my students an opportunity to improve their grades before the final, but I also want them to know that I KNOW it’s easy and that they should feel silly if they don’t do it) I found traces of my Pavorisms voice creeping in.  I felt it, and I went with it.  Then I went back and rejiggered the whole assignment so that it would have a bit more flair.  It just felt right.  And it feels like it belongs here.  In fact, I think I may start presenting all of my assignments this way.  (In this voice, I mean.  Not here at the blarg.  I’d like to keep my handful of readers.)

So here it is, copy-and-pasted for your pleasure.  The better bits are toward the end.  Enjoy, and if you have any questions, see me after class.  I’ll be in the parking lot, headed for a barbecue.

For the record, I teach Seniors.  And yes, I’m giving them this assignment, pretty much as you see it here.

 

 

End of the Year Macbeth Project

  • Yep, there’s a project.  Yep, it’s a bit involved.  But don’t worry, IT’S EASY.  As long as you’re not a slacker.  This project is presented as a dialogue between you (in italics) and me (in the bullet points).  This line is me speaking.  The next line is you.

Why would you give us a project NOW?  You stink, Mr. P.

  • I know.  But one day you’ll appreciate the fact that I made you think about this story, and that I didn’t let you take the easy way out, and that I reached into your brain and pulled from its squishy depths the kind of thinking that…

All right, all right.  FINE.  What do we have to do?

  • Select and Illuminate 4 key moments from the text.
  • Explain in a paragraph of 5 sentences or more how each of your illuminations exemplifies both the plot (what’s happened) and the mood/theme of the text (the feeling).  (That means 4 paragraphs, y’all.  One for each illumination.)
  • Why explain?  Just because YOU think it’s obvious DOESN’T MEAN it’s obvious to EVERYBODY.  And don’t say “I drew him like this because he’s crazy.”  You can do better.

What do you mean “Illuminate”?

  • It means you’re going to create something that sheds light on the text (the story, the characters, etc.).

Okay, so what should each illumination look like?

  • I’m glad you asked!  Each illumination should have its own page (or slide, or square, or whatever) in a clear Moment -> Illumination -> Explanation format.  Say you do some art!
  • —  Moment: Act 2, Scene 1: Macbeth sees the ghostly dagger.
  • —  Insert your own Illustration!
  • —  Explanation: We drew Macbeth mostly in shadow because his thoughts are turning dark in this moment.  The hallway is bare and foreboding, symbolizing his decent into evil… (extrapolate to your heart’s content, but make sure your heart’s content is five sentences at minimum.)

How can we present our ideas?? We are delicate snowflakes, each unique and wonderful!

  • —  Yes, and you are all delightful.  Be creative.  Here are some ideas:
  • —  Soundtrack (choose songs to suit your moments)
  • —  Storyboard / Illustrations (illustrate a scene or key moment)
  • —  Original raps / poems (write something that sums up the moment or one character’s take on it)
  • —  Maps of key locations (use details from the text)
  • —  Character Biographies (again, be specific and text-based)
  • —  Artifacts (for example, the dagger they use to kill the king – just make them school safe)
  • —  Family crests (what images would symbolize the characters?)
  • —  See me if you have another idea – I will probably say it’s okay!
  • —  UNLESS YOU ASK IF YOU CAN USE IMAGES FROM THE INTERNET.  NO INTERNET IMAGE COLLAGES – THAT’S LAZY

But how will we be graded?

  • —  An EXCELLENT project (A-B) will show lots of detail, color, neatness, and evidence of thought, because you care about your work.  It might even be typed, or even (be still, my heart) run through a spell-checker.  Your explanation will be grounded in the text with CITATIONS (the knife is covered in blood because in II, i, 46 Macbeth says “on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood”).
  • —  A PASSABLE project (B-C) will show some detail and evidence of thought.  It will be reasonably neat because you worked reasonably studiously on it.  Explanations will be grounded in the text, but you will forget to cite your specific textual connection, because, really, who wants an “A” anyway?
  • —  A CRAPPY project (read: failing) will show little detail or evidence of thought.  It looks rushed and messy because you put off working on it and then rushed to finish it at the last minute.  It will not bear much connection to the text because there is not time to do your work properly when you rush it.  You will turn in a crappy project because you are either passing so strongly that one bad grade won’t hurt you, or you’ve been failing since September and you just don’t care.
  • —  By the way, don’t turn in a crappy project.

Why should we bother?  I mean, the year is basically over, right?

  • —  Well, who knows?  MAYBE this assignment will be worth so many points, Mr. P feels ashamed even talking about it.
  • —  MAYBE it will give you the chance to eke out a few more points before the final coming up soon (Oh, by the way, your final is worth 20% of your overall grade, can your grade survive that?  NO?  Then think of this assignment as a few extra pillows at the bottom of the Grand Canyon you’re jumping into.)
  • —  MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, if your project is extra-awesome, you can earn some extra credit points.  MAYBE.
  • —  I am obligated by my conscience to tell you that you can substitute the word “Definitely” for the word “Maybe” above.

Fine, we’ll do it.  But when is it due?

  • —  Even classes: May 6
  • —  Odd classes: May 7

Holy crap, that’s a lot of time!

  • —  Yes, it is, so you have no reason NOT to finish it and turn in something awesome!

Will you accept it late?

  • Yes.  BUT.  (There is always a but, just like there is always a butt.)  The closer to the end of the year you turn it in (the last day for grades being May 16th) the less likely I am to get around to grading it.  I can’t help it, I’m lazy.  Make my job easier if you don’t want to sweat it.  Get it done on time.

Do I have to do this alone?

  • —  Heck no; I don’t want to grade that many projects.
  • —  Grab three of your closest friends (well, don’t grab them, you know what I mean) and knock this thing out together.  Maybe you’ll learn something about each other as you work toward a common goal.  Maybe there will be a sappy soundtrack played in the background as you work.  Maybe you’ll have cake when you’re finished.  (Don’t bring cake to my classroom.)

But what if my friends are lazy?

  • —  BETTER YET, grab the smartest people who will work with you and make NEW FRIENDS.  Nobody smart will work with you?  WORK ALONE.  Better you do a decent project alone than a crappy project with the kids who will be here next year.

What should we do with the extra blank space on this paper?

  • I don’t know.  Smart money says use it to make some notes!  Or doodle a spaceship hauling a cow into deep space.  Or cover it entirely with penguin stickers.  The world is your oyster!

You’re weird, Mr. P.

  • Sorry, I didn’t hear you.  I was busy jumping in my spaceship so that I can haul this cow into deep space.  (I’m making Astro-Burgers.)

 

 

 

 

 

Yup, Summer’s here soon.

Tone it Down (Pun intended, but I regret it now)

Pavowski2 Comments

I’m struggling a lot with tone today.  No, not my shower- or car-singing (always pitch-perfect, thanks very much).  That is, the way I’m saying the things I’m trying to say.  Or maybe it’s a struggle with voice.  The two are interrelated but not interchangeable, which is irritating in practice and maddening to try to teach.  Point is, the howler monkey of doubt is all up in my business about the words I used today and I can’t shut him up.

Accidentally Inspired is a whimsical kind of story about a whimsical kind of guy in a whimsical kind of situation. (See, that sentence right there is the kind of thing I’m talking about.) The story itself is playful and fun, so it needs to be told (correction, it BEGS to be told) in a playful, at times ridiculous kind of way.  BUT (There is always a butt, and there is also always a but).  The rules of proper writing, and good writing, and especially of intelligent and, probably, consumable writing, dictate that playful, whimsical, overworded writing gets treated with an axe rather than a razor.  When I go through and edit, I’ll be cutting off limbs, not whiskers.

But I love my playful, too-verbose tone, the Id-Writer protests, it works for the story and it works for me and I LIKE It GOLDFINGER IT DON’T MAKE ME CHANGE IT.  And I’m at war with myself, because on a lot of levels, I agree with him.  However, the Id-Writer and the ego-writer will eventually have to sit down and share a conversation, and I’m afraid that when they do, I’ll need to hire a cleaning crew to get the blood off the walls.  The ego-writer wants the book to be read, and to be accessible to everybody, and for people to love the story and the way that I tell it, but the Id-Writer only wants to tell the best fargoing story in the best fargoing way I know how to tell it.  The Id-Writer swears a lot more, and is (probably) more likely to bludgeon the Ego-Writer with a keyboard or a hammer or in fact anything else that may be handy, including my own precious pseudoganglia.  Are there pseudoganglia in the brain?  I don’t know, I don’t do Science (see below).

The more I think about it, the more it dawns on me that this is probably a problem (a probable problem, whee) best left for Future Me to deal with, not that Past Me and Present Me aren’t adding to the steaming pile that is (will be) is inbox on the daily.  Nonetheless, it’s bothering me now, and if it’s bothering me now, it’s gonna end up on the blarg, and here it is.

So how do I deal with voice and tone in the here and now?  I have no fargoing idea.  I hate to cop out, least of all on myself, but I really am at a loss as to how to fix this problem.  The tone of a story isn’t just window dressing.  It’s an integral part, a functioning limb in the Rube-Goldberg machine that is story.  The story-bone’s connected to the tone-bone.  (ahuh, huh.  I said tone-bone.)  Change the tone and you change the story.  The Tell-Tale Heart, if told in a humorous fashion, could very well be a humorous story.  Take the rhyme and meter out of Doctor Seuss and you’re left with a sharknado-ey yarn about a couple of bored kids and an asgard-hole of a cat and his two asgard-hole pets.

I guess that for lack of a better idea I’m just going to have to do with this problem what I do with 98 percent of other problems that have cropped up while writing this thing, which is make a note of it (see this blog entry), chuck it in Future Me’s landfill of an inbox, and allow my Id-Writer to toss back another creative beverage, press on writing, then run screaming madly into the night, leaving a trail of ink-blood and rent pages in his wake.

Say what you will, but that guy knows how to party.

If you’re reading this, help (Future) Me out.  Any thoughts on how to clean up my tone and get all my overstatements under control without totally changing the feel of my piece?

(Sidenote).  On the topic of I don’t do Science:

This weekend, while sharing dinner with my family, my engineer sister related a question from a very difficult engineer’s exam that she has just taken (results pending, but considering her average level of achievement, I imagine they’ll not only pass her but ask her to write the next version of the test).  I’ll do my best.  Say you have to replace 100 light bulbs in an apartment building.  Each bulb has a 1 percent chance to be faulty before it’s plugged in.  Say you take a random sample of five bulbs.  What is the likelihood that the bulb you chose will be faulty?  (I fully own that I may be remembering the question wrongly in order to make my answer seem righter.  Sorry, sis.)

Easy, right?  1 percent means one in one hundred.  Five bulbs means five one-in-one-hundred shots, which is to say five-in-one-hundred, which is to say one in twenty, which is to say, FIVE PERCENT.  This math I did in my head quickly before announcing my findings to the table.

My dad, a math teacher, just shook his head.  My sister, the engineer, did the same, and then said, “That’s cute,” before sharing a laugh with my dear, loving wife.  (NOT THAT SHE KNOWS MATH EITHER.)  Hear me now, and believe me later.  You don’t tell a thirty-year-old man that he’s cute.  That’s a good way to get a dirty look and a sternly-worded blarg post written about you.  If said thirty-year-old man does or says something that is so oversimplified and ridiculous that it doesn’t make sense to explain to him how he’s wrong (I’m not saying this is ME, okay, I’m just SAYING), the way to handle it is by nodding politely at him and telling him yes, not only is that correct, but you’ve brought a new level of simplicity to what I wrongly assumed was a very complicated problem.

Take that, sis.  You may be smarter at every turn (including the turns I haven’t thought of yet, because you took Calculus in college while I took creative writing) but you’ve now been lambasted in the immortal turns of the internet.  LAMBASTED I SAY.

Run in the Rain, or don’t, it’s only the Awesomest Thing Ever

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Runners are strange birds.  Not only do we enjoy an activity which most people in the world really, really hate and, in fact, avoid at every opportunity, but we find some of the most painful and most bizarre aspects of the activity to latch onto.

For example: yesterday’s run.  Nothing special about the run itself, except for the fact that it was raining.

I love running in the rain.  I love it, love it, love it.  I don’t know why.  I shouldn’t.  I stink even worse after a rain run, my shoes have to be retired for a couple days until they dry out, there’s mud, it’s cold… It’s dumb as haberdashery that I love it so much, but I can’t help it.  I love it like a fat kid loves cake.  I love it like my dog loves to run under my feet when I walk down the stairs in the morning.  I love it like my son loves the goldfinger Tigger movie, and that’s a lot, probably an unhealthy amount.

Here are just a few reasons why running in the rain is awesome.

1.  Especially in the spring and summer, it feels brilliant.  The weather’s getting warmer here in Atlanta, and before we know it, it’ll be overnight lows of 70 or better for months at a time.  That sucks.  Running in the rain is like when you were a kid and hooked up the hose to a sprinkler — or, if you didn’t have a sprinkler, you just poked a bunch of holes in the hose — and ran through that thing for hours and hours and hours.  It feels like happiness.  It feels like bottled joy being poured over your head.

2.  It makes you feel bad-Asgard.  Know what non-bad-Asgards do?  They don’t run.  Know what non-bad-Asgard runners do?  They run when it’s convenient, when it works for them, when it’s easy.  Bad-Asgard runners run when they fargoing want to run, when they need to run, when they have to run.  Long run day and it’s 90 degrees out?  You’re running.  Speedwork day and you have a brick of fettucine alfredo in your stomach from the overindulgence of a dinner you ate last night because you totally deserved it?  You’re running.  The typhoon strikes?  El Nino is upon us?  Atlanta is buried under three inches of snow (horror of horrors!)?  You’re running.  Something about running in the worst of conditions brings out the inner bad-Asgard in all of us.  Well, all of us runners.  Well, maybe just me.

3.  Sense of Accomplishment. You’ve heard runners say that “every run is a good run.”  Well, you have if you frequent running sites.  If not, now you’re hearing it.  But some runs are better than others.  The tough runs make you feel like you did when you first started running, like when you first started breaking down those barriers that you didn’t think you could break.  Running in the rain is awesome because it’s something that even a lot of runners just won’t do.  But not you.  It was nasty and gross out there and you ran anyway.  High-five.

4.  It’s Primal.  Primitive man was probably a distance-runner because he had to be to survive.  You think primitive man, running to survive, took the day off because it was raining?  Fargo no, he didn’t.  He laced up (footed up?) and threw down because if he didn’t, he’d starve.  Or the lions would eat him.  Or something.

5.  You connect with nature.  On any run, you get to breathe deeply of the great bounty of our planet’s slightly toxic atmosphere.  Feel that burning in your lungs?  That’s nature, son.  That burning in your legs?  PAIN IS WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY.  That burning in your eyes?  That’s god peeing on you to cool your overheated loins.  Or it’s the acid rain.  Seriously, wear a hat, that stuff burns.

6.  The looks you get.  Know that look you get when you see a monkey waddle past, juggling kitchen knives while balancing on a bowling ball?  That look that says, “what the haberdashery did I just see?  It was crazy and probably ill-advised.”  That look on your face is hilarious, and I love it, love it, love it when you make it at me as you drive past in your warm-comfy SUV and I’m plodding through puddles.  Please make it again so that I can keep laughing for another mile.  (Whether I’m laughing at you or myself depends on how far I’ve run.)

7.  Steam.  Something about the moisture in the air and the heat of your body on and after a run creates a witchcraft of chemistry, and if you look closely, you can actually see the rain evaporating off your body in wisps of pale smoke.  That’s right.  You just worked out so hard you ALMOST BURST INTO FLAMES.

8.  Just kidding, running in the rain sucks.  Seriously, why would you want to do that?  Just stay inside where it’s warm.  You can get your miles in when it dries out.  Let those other lunatics get soaked.  They look almost happy out there – they must be crazy.

Ornithoscillation

Pavowski5 Comments

Chuck’s challenge this week:  The Opening Line Challenge.  I used the opening line posited by a member called, simply, Nikki.

This was a fun one, and not nearly so dark as some of my other flash fiction.  But still pretty weird.

1000 words exactly.  Enjoy!  As always, I welcome feedback and comments if you’re out there reading.

 

Ornithoscillation

There was a dead bird on the porch again.

When the first one had shown up, Gerald thought that the family tomcat had simply started bringing him gifts again.  Trouble was, the second day there was another, and the day after that there were two, and tubby little Snuggles had never been much of a hunter.

Flummoxed, Gerald had called Animal Control.  The man who answered the call had poked around the property for thirty minutes, inspected the crawl space, and stuck his nose under some of the bushes before telling him that he had no idea what was causing the deaths.

On the Monday that followed (and the eighth bird) Gerald had bagged a few of them up and taken them down to the University, where a raccoon-eyed grad student named Samir met him at the veterinary building and took them in for testing.  Tuesday arrived (birds nine and ten) and Samir called back to say that physically the birds showed no signs of illness or trauma.  They certainly hadn’t been killed by any cat.

Now, Wednesday.  Bird number eleven.  Burying them had gotten too tedious, not to mention all the unsightly little patches of dirt on his immaculate lawn in back of the house, so Gerald took a shovel and dumped it in the corrugated trash can next to five of its little feathered friends.

That night, in his dreams, Gerald heard the sound of a deep humming.  It penetrated the walls of his mind, it reverberated behind his eyes, it pulsed deep in the soft tissues of his brain.  He woke to a ringing in his ears.  The clock read 2:30.  A disoriented minute followed, in which he realized that the ringing was outside his head, not inside it.  He followed it, to the bedroom door, down the hallway, to his son’s room.  His son, twelve years old, fascinated with trains and clocks and electric things.  A dim light shone underneath the doorway, brilliant against the dark of the night.  Gerald cracked the door, making as little noise as he could, planned to see little Simon snoring away, tuck him in, and return to bed.  Instead, he saw Simon silhouetted against the tiny desk in the room, hunched over the makeshift desk of milk crates and plywood, earphones clamped to the sides of his head, scribbling madly on a notepad while he fiddled with the dial of a radio with the other, twisting it this way and that, a lunatic safecracker dialing until his fingers bled.

“Si,” Gerald whispered, but Simon did not waver in his work.  “Simon!”

Simon stopped, but not because he heard Gerald: the noise-canceling headphones made that nigh impossible.  No, he had stopped because he had heard something.  A phantom wavelength, a rogue echo of a noise which should not have been there.  It had only been there for a moment, an infinitesimal crackle of static in a sea of white noise, but it was there.  He stopped writing, craned his neck, and twisted the dial back in the other direction.  There, again, and gone, just as quickly.  He focused his entire being on the noise, gripped the dial as delicately as his clumsy adolescent fingers would allow, and ticked it by the tiniest of degrees back toward the noise.

Gerald had crept up behind Simon, his hand outstretched to shake his boy’s shoulder, when Simon found the frequency, and this time he held it, letting go of the dial as if it might shatter.  Behind him, his father clutched at his head as a lance of sound seared his ears and burned his vision hot-white.  He fell to his knees, and the noise was gone.  Simon, still oblivious, tapped and banged at his receiver, checked his notes and began to spin the dial again, chasing the lost frequency like a rabbit into the brush.

A thump at the front door.  Fatherly instinct pushed all else aside and Gerald dashed downstairs, stopping at the side door to the garage to grab a worn and polished Louisville Slugger off the wall.  He crept to the door and peered through the keyhole.  Nothing.  Flexing his fingers on the bat, he unlocked the door with his free hand, stepped back from it, and used the end of the bat to shove it open wide.  Nobody there.  He stepped out, in bare feet and boxer shorts, ready to swing for the fence at the sight of anything moving.

Squish.

He jumped back in horror.  Another goddamned bird.  This one had hit the door so hard its neck was bent in the wrong direction, as if it had been built of Legos and put together backwards.

Then it clicked.  Simon had brought his science project about radio frequencies home from school the night before the first bird showed up.  Something about how sound frequencies, properly amplified and directed, could alter living tissue.  Gerald hadn’t really paid it that much attention — it was a sixth grade science project, for god’s sake — but Simon had been engrossed.  Obsessed.

Breaking out in a cold sweat, Gerald ran back upstairs, taking them two at a time.  “Simon?” He called, rounding the corner into Simon’s room — where the boy jumped in circles, pumping his fist and shouting, the headphones still clamped to his ears.  Gerald yanked them off.  “Stop it!  You’ve killed them!”  And if the sound had killed all those birds…

But Gerald caught a glimpse of the radio equipment, as Simon stared at him, open-mouthed.  It wasn’t a receiver.  It was a transmitter.

“Dad,” Simon said, tugging at his sleeve, “I’m not killing them.  I’m saving them.”  Simon pointed to the window.

With trepidation, Gerald peered out the window.  Something had set off the motion sensor in the driveway.  The light was on; he saw a cloud of birds spilling from the trash can and from his lawn like swarming bees, twisting and writhing as one like some great dark winged beast, spiraling out of the light and ascending into the darkness.

Keep Calm and…

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Time, as they say, marches on. Yesterday’s roadblock felt like a monstrous one.  I am happy to say, however, that as with all things, a bit of time and a simple willingness to return to work and keep moving forward have righted the ship. I am sure that it must unnerve some writers to think […]