October

Hypothetically, if my blog had any loyal readers, they would no doubt be thinking, the Phillies became the new NL division champs two weeks ago! Of all things October, how could this have gone unblogged by one of the biggest Phillies fans out there?

Well, I am admittedly a little late with the news, but do not doubt that I lived the ups and downs of a phan in the first week of this holy month of October. I could go into the exhilaration of seeing Jimmy Rollins' early season "team to beat" comment come true in the east on the last day of September, or the humbling fall back to earth after the red-hot Rockies' 3 game post-season sweep; but after all this time, what I wish to relay to the reader is the coming together of that mixture of emotions on October 11, just before Colorado's first NLCS game against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Just minutes before the game started on television, I fell into a funk that I was not expecting to come on. All through the last days of summer I had been fearing baseball withdrawal - or, rather, Phillies withdrawal. And I thought I was lucky to have avoided it, as bland as the feeling was after the defeat by Colorado. But it hit me last Thursday evening, and as the opening of the Rockies/Diamondbacks game showed clips of the Phillies defeat, I found myself utterly unable to watch Colorado battle on.

Oh, how I hated that team at that moment. Suddenly, their underdog status, their young players, their uphill battles against the giants of baseball, all fell to the wayside. All I could think of were my beloved players in red pinstripe, of whom I think I've spoken quite dearly on this very blog. I wondered if Carlos was already back in Panama. I wondered if I'd see Aaron Rowand in our colors again. I thought about looking over our balcony for the next six months and seeing blackness in the evenings where the Citizens Bank Park lights had been. All this came out in a little tantrum, and yes, I cried. I mourned. I realized that while I had feared an offseason of no baseball, what was lonelier was the postseason without the Phillies.

But this last 2007 baseball season entry can only end on an up note, for - at the close of all this - it is not even an option to cement into writing any memory or feeling other than the pride to have known a team that played hard, honest ball, and came out on top in their division. After all, I was there the whole season, from the freezing opening series, to an hour-long rain delay against Chicago, to the ubiquitous white rally towels in the last week of September. While the citizens of Philadelphia have waited 14 years for this Phillies victory, I was lucky enough to be welcomed with it in my first year in the city. And there could not have been a better team to help me settle into baseball in a new place. Rollins, Howard, Utley. Hamels, Kendrick, Moyer. Carlos.

You are the 2007 NL East Champs, and don't think I'd ever forget it.

Why My Job is Difficult

The supermarket can be a pretty strange place if you go when it's busy. You're basically in a confined area for up to an hour, running into the same people aisle after aisle. And not only are you running into the same people, you sometimes get uncomfortably close to them, squeezing between a pair of wide-load buttocks and the ethnic canned goods shelf. It's a good place to check out the demographic of the area in which you live (for Merion, that would be Jews and upper-middle class white families).

It's also a good place to see how kids are raised to behave, especially in an environment that is not specifically designated as kid-friendly. This has become particularly interesting to me as a kindergarten teacher. I kind of like to scope out what parents have to offer me. Today, the results were not particularly encouraging.

One of the Acme customers that I kept running into was a woman and her son, who was probably around 6 years old (prime kindergarten age). For a while, they did not particularly catch my eye, but when I did happen to glance in their direction a few times, the little boy seemed pretty annoying, grabbing at his mother's hair when she was stooping to get some bread and bouncing it up and down. But that I was able to chalk up to antsy little kid stuff. (Yeah, when I was a kid, bread was boring too; I liked Trix.)

But then, a bit later, I was walking up the snack aisle when that same little kid came running towards me and carelessly knocked over a few boxes of Ritz crackers. He glanced up at me for a moment, before darting past me toward his mom who was further down the aisle. This pissed me off immediately. One of my classroom rules is about cleaning up after oneself, especially in a communal space, and this kid had obviously never been spoken to about personal responsibility. (Trust me - kids are never too young to learn about it.) So I said to him firmly, "You should put those boxes back, especially since you knocked them over."

Well, the little #!%&er completely ignored me, which wasn't completely unexpected. Upon hearing what I said to him, his mother kind of half-assedly asked him to put the boxes back (because I was still within earshot), but when I started walking away she just dropped the issue and started walking away with him! There was no reprimanding her son, no asking him to clean up the mess he made. And I'm sure there will be no whupping when they get home. That's right, young people of America - somebody else will always cover your ass; Mommy and Daddy will always be there to make sure everything is okay. That was basically the lesson the woman just taught her son in a simple minute.

And what that kid learned in a quick moment of lazy, irresponsible parenting is what will take a teacher months, or even years to undo. And if that doesn't do the job, think about what kind of person that kid will be when he enters society as an adult, or as the parent of another child. Am I being overly dramatic? Well, that is for you to judge. But I know that every person who reads this knows at least one inconsiderate jerk who is a drain on the people around him...and his mom probably never made him pick up after himself at the supermarket.

Even More Baseball...

You're cringing now as you find yourself reading yet another baseball post. Don't worry, the season will soon be over...

But in the meantime, I have to brag about the Phillies’ amazing sweep of those kings of the NL, the filthy New York Mets. Each successive game in this series just got more and more intense, and I swear I almost peed myself tonight (I taped the 1:05 day game) when Chase Utley hit that walk-off RBI that sent Iguchi home for the win. Game 1 on Monday was a blowout, Game 2 was tight but low-scoring. Game 3...well, don't think we didn't catch you trying to cheat, New York (*cough* Reyes and Wright *cough*), but you lost anyway. As for tonight, all I have to say, giddily, is: Billy Wagner, you sucked, and bad. You forget that when you are an ex-player, we know all your secrets, and that really came back to bite you in the butt tonight. Enjoy the ride back up I-95, suckers (as well your cross-town rivals’ sweep of the Red Sox)!

Aug. 28: Wright, Heilman, and Lo Duca stare in disbelief at a swinging bunt that's rolled fair.*

Aug. 28: Ryan Howard after his winning homerun.*


Aug. 29: Marlon Anderson freaks after interference is called on him and the Mets lose.*


Aug. 30: Shane Victorino jumps on Tadahito Iguchi after Iguchi comes home for the win.*

In other baseball news: Yes, I am still madly in love with Carlos Ruiz. In the exciting aftermath of today’s game, I imagined Carlos rushing into the dugout and, in the heat of the moment, kissing me passionately. I sent the rookie catcher a fan letter a few weeks ago (no comments please), in which I suggested that sending back an autographed picture would be good karma for the playoffs. Now that the Phillies are behind the Wild Card and division leaders by only two games, I think Carlos has no choice but to show me some love. (Picture at right: "Bay and Carlos")

Last but not least, I have decided to….quit my job and aspirations and become a professional baseballer. After going to the batting cages for the first time in my life this past weekend, I now see the light. And it has nothing to do with educating little black kids or winning a Pulitzer. It’s all about bending your knees and wiggling your butt in the summer sun, and swinging a bat to the euphonious crack of a well-hit liner. No matter that I was just facing the slow-pitch softballs – that feeling is pretty damn good all the same.

*Photos courtesy of Yahoo! Sports.

...Most Verdant?

While watching the Phillies take out the Dodgers tonight (let's go Wild Card!), I started pondering: Who would win if MVP stood for...

Most Voluptuous Player:
Rod Barajas. By far the fattest player on the team. Guy, you lost out starting catcher position to a rookie, and during your single at bat in the last several weeks you strained a groin muscle. Weak.


Most Vivacious Player:
Shane Victorino. Be it his shaving-cream-pie-in-the-face antics or goofy but lively run-garnering trips and falls, Shane is not only fun to watch but just plain fun.



Most Vociferous Player:
Jimmy Rollins. "The Phillies are the team to beat this season." Comments such as this have earned JRoll the honor of being the team's most outspoken player. Sure, it pisses off our rivals, but he just tells it like it is.


Most Versatile Player:
Carlos Ruiz. This is the rookie player who replaced Barajas. He's got a 100% fielding percentage, 40+ RBIs, 5 homers, and is an overall dependable player. Ruiz is also my personal favorite (hubba hubba), which counts for more than all his stats combined. I love you.

Most Visible Player:
Ryan Howard. This one's a no-brainer. Being last season's actual National League MVP and winner of the Homerun Derby, Howard is the household name of the Philadelphia Phillies.


Most Victimized Player:
Chase Utley. I wish I could give the closest thing to a Philly hero a more honorable title, but the man is the most hit-by-pitch player in the National League! As is, he's on the DL for having a hand broken by a bad pitch.


Most Vigorous Player:
Aaron Rowand. I'll lay it out for you: May 11, 2006. Rowand voluntarily smashes into the center field wall at high speed and comes away with a broken nose, lacerations to his face, and Xavier Nady's deep fly ball. That's one more home run robbed by AaRow. He embraces the hustle.

Most Villified Player:
Pat Burrell. Once nicknamed Pat the Bat, Burrell is on-and-off the most hated Phillie for his shameless womanizing and inconsistent at-bats. On this team of beloved players and all-around nice guys, that's all it takes to get a homecrowd to boo.


Most Veteran Player:
Jamie Moyer. At 44 years of age, Moyer has been with 7 different major league teams and is the Phils veteran pitcher.



Most Virginal Player:
Kyle Kendrick. On the opposite end of Moyer, this is pitcher Kendrick's rookie season with a 6-3 win-loss record. Not too shabby. Add to that the fact that he's the Phillies youngest player (22 years of age as of today). I'm glad to say that his MLB cherry was popped by Philadelphia. I'm sorry, that wasn't necessary.

Most Vindicated Player:
Brett Myers. Myers started out as, well, a starter for the Phightin' Phils in 2002. And the last few seasons, he has...sucked pretty bad. You'd think it was the end for this distinctive Bert look-alike, but after being placed in the bullpen this season, we made the amazing discovery that Myers is a hell of a closer. That's 11 saves out of 12 opportunities. That's routinely striking out the side. Watch out, Rivera and Papelbon.

Most Virulent Player:
Tom Gordon. I have little to say about this, except that he was placed on the DL for half the season for an unexplained illness. That is all.



Most Vermillion Player:
Kyle Lohse. Stop reading now if you are easily offended. Not the most PC thing to say, but as a person who recognizes minorities who step up, I have to call out Lohse for being one of only four Native American players in the MLB. Plus, he's hot.


Most Victorious Player:
Cole Hamels. Of course I had to save the best for last! This kid is a phucking phenom, no questions asked. The ace of the team, Hamels is giving the best NL pitchers a run for their money. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I love the Cole Hamels strikeout montages on CSN.

Honorable Mention:
Tadahito Iguchi. Okay, so I couldn't find a V-word for the clutch player, but I just want to say that when we lost Utley to the dreaded DL, Iguchi filled in like no one could. Excellent fielder, just excellent.


Did I leave anyone out? Leave a comment if you can think of anything other players, Phillies or otherwise, that would satisfy the MVP with a V-adjective I haven't yet used.

Back to School

Work started yesterday. I have been avoiding August 20th all summer, and was successful for a couple of weeks. (I know that wasn't really funny, but it's what work does to me.)

So it's one more year at West Oak Lane Charter School. I've yet to mention my teaching experience on my blog. It's difficult to know where to start talking about it, since it is a very broad and farreaching experience with a plethora of accompanying attitudes, but I will say now (for those who don't know) that at the end of last year I did join the union at WOLCS. While I enjoy teaching and love my students, dealing with the school's administration and jumping their hoops is one perk I - along with the rest of the WOLCs faculty - do not enjoy. Take the current school year, for example. The first two weeks are a slow and painful trek through hours after hours of "Professional Development", sessions which are meant to improve us as teachers but really just waste time and demean our intelligence. Today we spent upwards of 4 hours practicing analyzing student data to inform our teaching. Have we not all been to college? Do we not know how to interpret a graph? My group accomplished our data analysis in 30 minutes, and the rest of the time was just wasted as we sat around "learning" things we already knew.

The plus side to all this is that being really bored allows me to create some fun doodles. These are Alien Astronaut Kitty and Hipster Snake-Man.



But back to the union.

We have 7 or 8 members of the administration (yes, that many, and no, they are not running a small country, just a school) who enjoy pretty loaded paychecks while the teaching staff is left to subsist on a below $40K salary with a measly 2% yearly raise regardless of teaching experience or education level. The excuse we are given for not getting better pay is that the money goes into maintaining our facility as it is newly painted and does not smell like urine. (Quite a bar, huh?) While our Chief of Staff rountinely gives us lectures about how lucky we are to be at WOLCS and how teacher retention is a big part of maintaining stability in a school, in the same breath she will turn around and remind us that she sees a teacher's time at WOLCS to be a stepping stone to bigger opportunities. (Let me remind you that it is cheaper to constantly hire new teachers than to keep an experienced teacher happy with pay raises.)

This list of offenses continues, but suffice it to say that the teachers last year were unhappy enough that the union membership went from 5 to the 30s, a solid majority of the teaching staff. While the school day tomorrow will only bring more mindnumbing hours of "Professional Development", I will be looking forward to the results of the afternoon contract negotiations, in which our union rep will be bargaining for a step-scaled salary and paid maternity leave. Wish us luck - we friggin' deserve it!

Review and Then Some: The Simpsons Movie

Congratulations, Simpsons - you are finally legal!

What I mean by that is that having been the most well-known television family in history and having pervaded every aspect of American culture (pop, humor, comic, commentary, and whatever else you've got), the Simpsons have become so much more than what they started out as, to the extent that it is easy to forget that they premiered 18 years ago, in 1989. While the opinion of this reviewer (and hardest-core fan) is that the show peaked in the late 1990s and has gone steadily downhill in quality since, one must nevertheless keep in mind that by this point, it is difficult to simply think of the show as, well, just that. Even though creator Matt Groening has said that there is seemingly no end in sight for the yellow-skinned fivesome, I think it does no harm to think of The Simpsons: The Show as having come to a comfortable and dignified end by season 10 or so, and the remaining seasons as simply an extension of The Simpsons: The Phenomenon, something that has taken on a life of its own. Accordingly, then, the writers and producers more than deserve to rest on their laurels. And with The Simpsons: The Movie, they have done so.

Is The Simpsons Movie perfect? No. But ask again if it is hilarious, epic, well-written, and satisfying, and the answers are yes, yes, yes, and yes. More than just a long episode, the film definitely has a full, "movie-ish" feel to it, and it does justice to the Simpsons family that has grown and developed over the past two decades. The plot is ambitious without being ridiculously over the top (for a cartoon, at least), and with the main characters more than filling out their roles, it coheres better than expected. The celebrity guests are kept to a bare minimum (one musical group and one actor) to prevent the movie from being a sell-out extravaganza, and this helps give it a cozier, homey feel. While the jokes are certainly not as clever as they were in the early seasons of the show, they are without a doubt laugh-out-loud funny. Bart's brief full-frontal, easily the funniest part of the movie, is a good example of the writers' attempt to keep things fresh without being gratuitous. Another high point is the only curse word in the film. Once you see it, you'll see why it's funny. In short, The Simpsons Movie does a good tribute to the show without unnecessarily seeking to take it to a whole new level. And let's face it - The Simpsons have done more than their share of breaking from tradition. The writers are smart to let the movie just be itself.

So what keeps the movie from being perfect? Only one minor thing for this reviewer: not enough inside jokes. As a longtime fan who can recite quotes from heart and recognize self-references within self-references, I would have appreciated some more nods to the diehard demographic. There are a couple, but a few more subtle winks would have really been a delicious reward. Of course, the flipside is that if you've never seen the Simpsons before (is this really possible at this point?), you won't feel that anything is going over your head.

Once again, Simpsons, congratulations. You arrived over a decade ago and your self-homage is the glaze on an already tasty doughnut. Nobody else could have done it better. Kudos.

What did you think of The Simpsons Movie? Leave your opinion in the comments section.

Lightning Round: Part IV

I haven't done the Lightning Rounds in over a year...enjoy the easy reads:

For the 1st Time: Grundton and Nicholas
Haven't introduced the cats yet on the blog. Here are some pictures. Don't snicker at me. I know it's ultralite and you know you love it. Grundton is over a year old and in the marble stripes; Nicholas is almost 10 and looks like an owl.





Absurd Thoughts on Baseball
They say that baseball is a gentlemen's sport, but it's also the only major sport* in which the players are required to wear caps and they chew and spit.
* * * * *
If I were the commissioner of baseball, I would definitely create some kind of yearly game - just for fun, of course - in which all the players take other player's positions...a kind of switcheroo, in effect. So you've got the regular batting lineup doing the pitching, and the regular starters and the bullpen would become batters and fielders. Just imagine, in the National League, the weak part of your lineup would be every player except for the pitcher! I don't know how it would translate to the American League; either the DH becomes obsolete or you have eight of them. Anyway, I just figured that this way, everybody's bad at what they're doing, and it would just be a hilarious time for me. But of course, you'd need to truncate the game to about 3 innings or so, because otherwise it would probably go on with no end in sight.**

*I do not consider golf a sport; it has no offense/defense.
**If you do not understand this, then you need to watch more baseball.

Coming Soon...
I am currently working on a piece about racism in humor. It's not as black and white (or Asian - har har) as you think. Check back before August 20th.

People-Watching Creates Coincidences

Chris and I were downtown today for about three hours because I had a craving for Chinatown pho, and I also wanted to take him to the Mutter Museum of medical anomalies. It was a pretty good day for this, since the trip required a moderate amount of walking and it wasn't too hot outside.

After the Mutter Museum, which is a few blocks from 30th Street Station (west side of downtown Philly for the out-of-town readers), it was pretty much a straight shot to Chinatown (east side and a mile and a half away) to get our pho. Now I really enjoy walking, and the business district of downtown Philly was a prime place to stroll and observe people walking by. Chris and I saw and commented on several unique personalities, including a strung-out looking man with rubber bands tied at five different places on each arm, and a middle-eastern dude who gawked at a handicapped guy zipping by in a scooter. But there was one person who especially caught our eye. Imagine a tall, relatively good-looking guy in his mid-20s, walking in a normal fashion. Now imagine that he's wearing...vertical black-and-white striped leisure pants with a poofiness factor approximately 2 notches below that of MC Hammer's parachute pants. Much zanier now, huh?

Okay, it wasn't supremely zany, but the story doesn't end there. After passing this guy by, we continued toward Chinatown, stopping at the Reading Terminal Market to admire exotic foods. Then we got and ate our big bowls of pho and caught a train at Market East Station to go home.

So we got on our train, and the door's open for a few more seconds waiting for the stragglers to get on. Then, at the last moment, the final Market East passenger boards right at our door, and who should it be but - yes, you guessed it: Stripey McPoofpants! As if this wasn't enough to tickle Chris and me pink, Stripey McPoofpants gets off with us at Overbrook Station, and proceeds to walk into our building and share an elevator with us! At this point, you'd think the odds that he lives on our floor would be higher than a hippie in a hot air balloon, but he actually got off on the 12th floor, one level above us.

(And yes, I was able to, inconspicuously, snag a photo of the incriminating pants after getting off the train.)

Chris wove this whole event together perfectly: the fact that some random guy we saw downtown happened to live in our exact building is much weirder than the black-and-white striped pants he had, but without those black-and-white striped pants, we never would have recognized him as the same guy we saw downtown! There's a stoner moment for you. The universe is full of such beautiful mysteries, where oddness begets oddness.

Anyway, I henceforth dub this the McPoofpants Paradox, and encourage all readers out there to keep a sharp eye open and embrace the weird things that happen in the world. Next time you encounter a jibbering derelict, say hello - he just may be your neighbor*.

*Not responsible for derelict-related injuries.

Come Home Safely

Last Thursday, the Phillies' second baseman and all-around best player Chase Utley suffered a broken hand during the Phillies' last game against the Washington Nationals. When this happened, and with the Phillies' previous string of injuries fresh in my mind, I started writing a very angry post that inadvertently turned into a rant against Nationals pitcher John Lathan (whose pitch broke Utley's hand), and against the opposing city in general, saying some unnecessarily cruel things (the basic effect of which was that D.C. is not a city that understands - or even cares as much about - the pain of sports in the same way that Philadelphia does). When I calmed down, I realized that the words had all tumbled out in anger, and that I wasn't ready to lambast and turn against my former home so easily. That is why the post you are now reading is - well, a different post.

But I do not wish to stay silent on the slew of injuries my beloved Phillies have suffered this season. Chase Utley's placement on the DL at the time seemed to be the peak of this pattern, but I was mistaken to assume it would be the final curtain. After Chase went down, our best reliever Ryan Madson was placed on the DL for the second time this season, and then last night against the Cubs we lost our two fastest men, Shane Victorino and Michael Bourn, to ankle strains. That's 4 valuable players gone within five days.

But once again, the story's not over. All in all this season, we have DLed ten men for 11 different injuries. Here they are in chronological order from earliest to the most recent:




























1. Tom Gordon, closer
2. Ryan Madson, reliever
3. Ryan Howard, overall superstar (and 2nd baseman)
4. Brett Myers, star closer (injured as soon as Ryan Madson returned)
5. Freddy Garcia, expected ace (his injury turned him from our best expected starter to our worst)
6. Jon Lieber, starting pitcher
7. Jayson Werth, relief right fielder
8. Chase Utley, 2nd baseman and possibly the only superstar to eclipse Ryan Howard
9. Ryan Madson (again)
10. Shane Victorino, right fielder with the best arm in the league (and base stealer)
11. Michael Bourn, relief outfielder with the best base stealing percentage in the league

I am impressed with the way our team has pulled through in times of crisis, but enough is enough. I used to anticipate every game; now I have a persistent fear of injuries that gnaws at me more and more. In the evenings, during home games, I can see the reassuring stadium lights of Citizens Bank Park from my balcony. With the team now in Chicago and the injuries seemingly endless, all I want is for everybody to come home safely, and to see those stadium lights shining again.

Harry Potter and Who Gives a Shit Already?

When I first heard that J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books were being attacked by far-right religious conservatives for promoting the occult, black magic, and general evilry, my initial reaction was one of relief and approbation. No matter that the reasons behind our opinions were vastly different; I was assuaged simply by the fact that finally, somewhere, amid the blind, orgiastic bloodlust for Harry Potter (more! more!), my sentiments were being echoed:
Harry Potter sucks.

The last of the Harry Potter books was released today, July 21, 2007. Just like its predecessors, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was snatched up by jonesing fans that ranged from the very young to the very old. The fanaticism over Rowling's series is nothing new - it has been surging ad nauseum with each release of the seven books. Yet seeing the media coverage still elicited in me a very real sense of disgust. A Yahoo! News article describes a parent of two grabbing a copy while shouting "Mine! Mine!", while apparently in Britain, "a phone counseling service for children expects a surge in calls when readers learn who is killed."*

As a way of categorically delving into just what is wrong with this scene (many, many, things, and all overlapping with each other), let me break down my arguments.

First of all, and at the root, the books are mediocre at best. To any Harry Potter fan who questions my judgment, let me assure you by saying that I have read every single word of the first third of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, before putting it down and never opening another Harry Potter book again. Of what I read, I found the writing to be stylistically bland, while the story and characters themselves were unsubtle and formulaic. The whole idea of wizards and curses and evil caretakers just smacked of mass appeal and unoriginality. I cannot even believe that Rowling has been compared to Roald Dahl, which is just pure blasphemy. The magic in Dahl is wit, brevity, and invention; in Rowling, it comes from hundreds of pages of wands and flying broomsticks. In short: read a bad book once, shame on the author. Read a bad book and its sequel(s), shame on the reader. I learned my lesson quickly.

This point, however, seems lost on those who look to Harry Potter as the savior of tweens and adolescents who are more web- and game-savvy than well-read. It is they who hailed R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps books in a similar fashion, saying, At least it gets the kids reading! But if you are going to get technical, isn’t scouring the latest issue of TV Guide considered “reading” as well? Those who truly value the importance of books will understand the difference between reading for the sake of developing literacy and reading for the sake of developing one’s mind and one’s capacity for higher thinking and knowledge. (And then there is reading for fun, which innocuous but no better or worse than watching a movie just for the special effects.) The former is acceptable for new readers who are still acclimating themselves to the world of the written word – that is why the Babysitter’s Club and the Boxcar Children books are abandoned (hopefully) after 3^rd or 4^th grade, and a more rigorous reading curriculum is adopted in schools. I simply do not believe that the popularity of Harry Potter leads to a rise in quality reading by young adults any more than watching reality shows leads to a love of The Newshour with Jim Lehrer. Are we imbedded in such a state that any book passes as quality reading?

This all leads to my last point, which is the dumbing down of our society at large. Let's face it - it is naive to even discuss Harry Potter solely as a book. Its enjoyment by its readers has been heavily supplemented with accompanying movies, promos, gear, and even a video game. Whereas buying a book once led to the solitary pleasure of enjoying a book, it has now become another means of subservience to mass media and commercialism. As Ron Charles describes further in his Washington Post article, "Harry Potter and the Death of Reading", reading has now become latching on to the latest (inter)national craze, being caught up-to-date with the rest of the nation, or the world. In other words, if millions of people aren't reading it, it probably is not worth reading. What a shame for the unread worthwhile reads out there. An even bigger shame for the unpublished authors whose submissions are judged by publishers as incapable of turning a buck.

I'll end this last point on a funny little news story I read - you can google it easily. A writer, frustrated by constant rejections by publishers, decided to submit some Jane Austen chapters (changing only character and chapter names) just to see what would happen. Of 18 publishers, only one recognized his submissions as being Austen replicates, and the rest either rejected or ignored the submissions.

Such is the state of literature, and readers, today.

*Collett-White, Mike. "Spoilers and Hysteria as Harry Potter's End Nears." 21 July 2007.

A Year and Counting...

So it has been over a year since I've posted anything. It feels weird to be typing this...right now...

I have to confess: I have not written anything in a year. Emails and lesson plans aside, I have not written anything in a year. Mostly due to a lack of time, but I also think that that is an excuse too easily used. It is far scarier to face the actual truth, which is that I have doubted my own relevancy as a writer. And my skills.

So while I'm in the confessing mood, I should reveal that I have lived part of my life in a very ignorant way this past year. There is a part of me that became a teacher and all the responsibilities that come with that - and I think I did that job very competently, if not more so. But there is also a part of me that used teaching to escape from the things I have been afraid of, and as a result I have - more voluntarily than I would have liked, lived in a bubble. And that is the ignorant part of my life. I haven't read (neither a book nor the news), I haven't explored, I haven't even opined. Living in a bubble requires expending very little mental energy, but also has the unpleasant side effect of draining one of the confidence and practice required for a skill such as writing. If you know nothing about the world around you, then you have little to write about. But then again, if you do not write, you cannot fail at writing.

So after reading all this you may understand why it feels weird for me to be writing now, in my blog, over a year later. I have good memories of this blog, and even in my deepest moments of seclusion I have not felt right about abandoning it. Nor has it abandoned me (thank you, blogspot.com, for teaming with Gmail and not erasing unused accounts). But more than that, I need to see this post I am typing as a clearing of the slate for myself. See this as a swift kick in the ass, from me to me.

So once more, blarm.blogspot is open for business. It will fill your needs from the most superficial to hopefully the less superficial. Wish me luck!