Wow.

No teaching for three more months. I can hardly believe it. Packing up my classroom was honestly surreal; I actually felt sad as I locked the door. It's been a rocky first year, for sure--especially with the budget problems and endless talks of staff cuts and expenses--but the ultimate verdict is that I actually love my job, especially now that I'm not working 90 hours a week.
Yay for teaching. I think.

In other news, Little Jesus, my iPod of 5+ years (which revived itself heroically after an accidental water-bottle drowning that left its interior absolutely full of H20) finally died in its sleep on June 9th. The morning of this discovery was, of course, tragic, because iPods (especially old-school, clunky ones that only a mother could love) are literally ever-present, there on every roadtrip and apartment-unpacking and A.M. arise-weary-soldier. I briefly considered burying mine in the backyard, before remembering that the battery chemicals would probably render the land completely barren for a 10-mile radius. Perhaps not, then.
I also felt this sense of loss for my 1987 Chevy Celebrity, Betty Spaghetti, when she got brutally crunched by another driver on a rural highway. Betty had no ceiling interior; her passenger-side door didn't open, her windshield wipers didn't work, her heating system belched out insect carcasses, and her cracked muffler ensured that you could hear her coming from fifteen miles away. Old and crusty? Yes, she was, bless her little alternator. But Betty was also full of character that no newer car can surpass.

I like things that show a bit of history, I guess.
I'll miss the black-and-white, pixellated GameBoyish appeal of Little Jesus, despite the fact that I've already ordered a Third Coming (the prospect of a tuneless commmute was just too much to bear).
That's all I can say.

I am now on Goodreads. Brace yourself.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Great Gatsby is basically a literary cocktail party teeming with overgrown, overprivileged, and ultimately disenfranchised boys and girls who are uncertain of how to define themselves in a climate in which social and economic expectations and roles are constantly evolving. I think what I like the most about this story is how each and every character (minus, perhaps, the narrator) is absolutely abhorrent on some level. F. Scott Fitzgerald's characters are truly fascinating: they're glamorous yet uncultured, hardened yet vulnerable, seemingly simple yet deceivingly complex, spoiled and pampered yet discontent. In short, they're wonderfully, repulsively American, straight to the core. You'll love, hate, and most likely recognize at least a few aspects of yourself within them.



Short of a few choice excerpts, I didn't find this story particularly extraordinary in terms of content. The themes of social disenfranchisement and the delicacy of the American Dream are kind of old news after growing up with early 90s MTV (bahaha)--though I'm sure that during its time, The Great Gatsby probably felt fresh and unspoiled. To me, the true redeeming quality of this story was in the nuance of Fitzgerald's descriptions of mundane scenes and settings. Chiggity check:



"The lawn started at the beachand ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens--finally when it reached the house, drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run."



"He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening fora moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struckc upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower, and the incarnation was complete."



"So engrossed was she that she had no consciousness of being observed, and one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture."



"There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went, like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."



The book is certainly worth a read for its lyricism at the very least.


View all my reviews.

Summery things.

I wonder if any other Corvallians/Philomathoneans else would get into the idea of building homemade pushcarts and having a crazy hilltop pushcart derby in mid-July-ish. I know a neighborhood where we could race them and work up a crowd. Everybody from kindergarteners to the local geezers and geezerettes could watch from their front porches whilst sipping lemonade. I could put up fliers at various pizza establishments around town.
Ooh, and we could all have fluorescent flags attached to our creations. Maybe we'd wear some flight goggles, too.

Yes?


(All of this without consideration that I've never built anything mechanical in my entire life, of course.)

(I'm serious, though.)

A gnome on the porch

A couple of weeks ago my impulse-purchasing habit sank to a new low: I bought (yes, forgive me) a plastic garden gnome. It took a while to pick him out of the crowd, because there were so many delightfully kitschy designs available on the shelf: A cantankerous-looking gnome, grimacing whilst dumping a rustic-looking wheelbarrow; another, rather drugged-looking little fellow standing under a mushroom, gazing skyward with eyes that were ever-so-slightly crossed. Finally, after spending about ten minutes oscillating between gnomes in the gardening section (and wondering if anyone was watching this process in utter revulsion and/or pity), I chose a winner--a small, red-capped gnome who is evidently trying to appear innocent as he wields a blunt-edged hatchet. With my gnome under arm, I headed to the check-out.

While waiting in the queue, a middle-aged lady, placing her own, more classy garden decocrations on the check-out belt, wordlessly cast my gnome a curious sidelong glance.
"I had to choose the one that was brandishing weaponry," I explained.
She nodded silently.
"I think he's compensating for something."
The lady and the elderly female check-out clerk cracked up.


My garden consists mostly of weeds and a few pots of gangly lavender and rosemary, but my little armed sentinel seems very serious about guarding it from oncoming intruders. Ain't nobody gonna fuck with my chives now.

In recent news

Yippee for longer days and warmer weather and cheap reclining 1970s-reminiscent lime lawn chairs--one of my most recent investments (thank you, Bi Mart, for being the only business still stuck in the 70s). You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a damn lawn chair for less than fifty bucks, but Bi Mart didn't let us down--for just seventeen bucks, you can get the kind of recliner that allows you to flip over onto your stomach and (if you're as white as me) toast your pathetically pasty hamstrings in the sun. Splendid stuff.

Other good newses:
- We're moving back to Corvallis in June. Why? Because the commute will be about the same time, if not the same distance to drive. I will simply floor it on a rural highway. I am really looking forward to moving back. Eugene is lonely; I never met the right crowd around these parts.
- I'm learning how to sew using my mom's cranky old Husqvarna Viking. So far I've made a flock of pillows (if pillows traveled in groups, they'd be called 'flocks'), as well as an (admittedly rather armpitty) tanktop and about five truly smashing elasticized peasanty tops. The scary part of this newfound artform, though, is that (despite myself) I am ALWAYS attracted to tacky, kitschy-ass Americana or Japanese fabric in colors no human being over five years old should wear. I gravitate toward fabric covered in little illustrations of cupcakes or birds or grazing deer. I make shirts out of electric orange silk that threatens to sizzle onlookers' corneas. And last weekend, I made a seafoam green shirt covered in J. Otto Siebold-ish illustrations of cars.
I fear I may start looking like a kiddie quilt with limbs.
- My film class is really (really) fun. We've looked at race, gender, and film conventions with The Fifth Element; we've examined color and symbolism with Pleasantville; we've examined motif and theories of identity and memory with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; we've made Claymation movies and a documentary about our memories of color... it's really a good time had by all, and I'm learning a TON about film production, including all of the tricks of cinematography and editing. The class is full of seniors, and I am a big fan of them. The other teachers say they're a bunch of slackers, but actually, they're really openminded and into experimentation, which is more than I can say for most high schoolers in our rural community.

It's been interesting teaching the seniors this year. I am very attached to them, and in a sense, I feel really responsible for helping them get in to college. Most come from families without a history of attending college, and most are very (very) low-income--with families that make about $30,000 a year, total. I got all of the seniors started early on scholarship applications and college research, and finally some of it's paying off--I had a HUGE victory this week, actually, when one of my most talented students (whose family had kind of resisted college due to monetary reasons) brought his mom to school. Together we applied for the FAFSA and for a local university. It was extremely exciting, because I don't think they would have done it without some intervention... and now he can go to art school, where I know he'll go far. He's more talented than anyone I know.

Still no news about my job status. But apparently Ted Kulongoski wants teachers to work without getting paid anyway, so maybe it won't matter if I get laid off due to budget cuts. I'll be poor whether I work or not. Koo.
Here's my beef with the whole Kulongoski thing: Why single out teachers instead of just having ALL state workers "work for free" for a single day (instead of the week teachers are supposed to sacrifice)? To imply that teachers are expected to be so self-sacrificial completely deprofessionalizes the field of teaching--a field that requires a goddamn masters degree and a heck of a lot of skill (not to mention compassion for humanity). Telling us to "work for free" implies that we're peons whose jobs are less important than other state jobs (what about fish and wildlife, for chrissakes?). It reinforces that teachers should simply martyr themselves for the good of the cause--when most already put way more of their own money, energy, and thought into their jobs than the average person. GARRR. I used to like Kulongoski, but now I would just like to tear him a new one.

Oop, it's dinnertime. That's all I's gots.

Sorry if it's random.

Miller's best moments in lecturing this month: Top 3

1. Teaching parts of speech to remedial kids*
"If I were to say 'we hid from the principal behind the shop building,' then 'behind' is which part of speech? Yes, John?"
"It's a preposition."
"Yep, brilliant. It's a preposition. But dude, look at this: If I were to say 'the lady's behind was truly enormous,' would the part of speech remain the same?"


2. Later, teaching short stories to remedial kids:
"I will spare you the task of pointing out that our author's last name is Gurganus. Let's take a minute to laugh at him in a school-sanctioned manner. Repeat after me, everyone: ANUS! ANUS! ... Good. Now let's move on."

3. Teaching about the history of American cel-animation in Film as Lit:
"What I'm handing out to you are flipbooks created out of old cards from our library's Dewey Decimal card catalogue. I hastily stole these from the library when nobody was looking, and as luck would have it, I'm pretty sure I grabbed the 'sex education' section, so if you find the word 'syphilis' in your book, please don't take it personally or consider it a divine omen of what's to come..."
"Each flipbook has approximately 45 pages, in which you'll create 45 separate frames of animation. One word of advice. Keep your animation attempt simple: don't try to make 'Die Hard: The Flipbook,' even if you're tempted."


Sigh. I was struggling earlier in December, but am growing to like my teaching job again, mainly because my classes changed entirely at the semester mark and are now more fun to teach. My first semester was pretty hellish due to the content of the classes that I had to teach.
Of course, my reconciliation with teaching (and my excellent yearly reviews) coincide with the fact that our district has no money, and I've been told that my job might be cut because I am one of the lowest on the seniority totem pole.
I'm hunting for work again.

But I got major Valentine gifts from the kids today, which was validating at least. Embarrassing, but nice. I was serenaded, actually. And I am becoming a local grocery store celebrity. Better not be hitting up the beer section any time soon.

Attack of the Fruit Bats

On Tuesday evening I took a break from my mundane life of English-teaching drudgery and went to John Henry's, where Andy and I watched Fruit Bats (one of the best and most underappreciated bands of all time) gently rock multiple small planets from an overcrowded stage with bad acoustics. To see them play in such a small and seedy local venue was was surreal. In my mind, this band has been elevated to such a Lennon-esque status for so many years that the little greasy pub didn't seem worthy of its presence.

I love this band so much that I literally have to resist destroying their old albums by over-listening to them; they are really that good (and that few and far-between). I live in dread that someday their songs, after thousands of plays, will lose their resonance... so I monitor my monthly intake. No shit.

Anyway, it appears that a new album is in the workings, and based on what I've heard, the band seems to have branched out substantially, sampling from a wider array of genres than are heard on Spelled in Bones. But despite the new music's more experimental sound, it's still unmistakably Fruit Battish in spirit and lyrics, which is encouraging. Seems like a lot of bands on Sub-Pop eventually become bastardized former shadows of themselves, but I think Fruit Bats will hang on to what makes them themselves.

One of the things I like about this band is that the progression of its albums plays out like a musical storyboard to Eric Johnson's emotional life. The earliest two albums are strangely haunting in both form and lyrics because (I think) Johnson was going through an existential funk when he wrote them, and was unable to separate his art from his mindstate. Spelled in Bones had a slightly more hopeful and romantic tone, and the upcoming album (based on what I've heard) is more upbeat yet, like a soundtrack to approaching the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel (except far less cliche than that expression, of course).
Anyway, I like that the frontman's emotional life is inseparable from the music, because in my own art I'm never able to repress my own mindstate. Too much music isn't as genuine as Fruit Bats, despite the fact that it is supposedly one of the most potent forms of expression. (That's why I refuse to listen to standard radio.)

Bought the little $5 tour EP and have been listening to it in the car since Tuesday.
Yippee for some good tunes.

Promises, promises.

Resolutions for 2009.

OUI (Yesyesyes):
- Train in karate twice a week with different instructors; also 1-2 times a week on my own.
- Get at least half an hour of solid exercise EVERY DAY (as I used to).
- Re-balance my body (physically, emotionally, hormonally) and get physically fit.
- Go to more shows.
- Take more pictures (using my NEW CAMERA! Weehee!).
- Finish my Masters degree, even if I don't plan to use it.
- Make more time for my relationship.
- Drink more water and less malt brew.
- Laugh more.
- Do something spontaneous every week.
- Actually put away some money.
- Find a steady 9-5 job that doesn't eat me alive, if I decide not to teach again next year.
- Listen to my ipod in the car every morning instead of settling for crappy rural radio stations.

NON (Nonono):
- Crying over my job every weekend.
- Signing my contract again for next year (if I still find, by June, that my job continues to bury my entire life).
- Dressing like a 50-year-old all the time just because of work.
- Listening to ignorant baby boomers about being complacent with sucky circumstances.
- Being afraid of brief unemployment and/or the future in general.
- Spending frivolously on my credit card.
- Road raging (esp. in the morning on the way to work because of lateness).
- Eating excessive junk-food.