Month: December 2007

  •  The Daily News

    kid 1

    1  Are we allowed to watch teevee yet?

    2  I’ve been boycotting because the writers were receiving no respect.

    3  Like two night’s ago I noticed that Jay Leno looked like Eddie Munster.

    4  He had David Copperfield on in the days when he wasn’t being served subpoenas.

    5  Well, I broke down last night and watched one of the best shows ever, Kid Nation.

    6  I KNOW, I KNOW.

    7  All that aside, it is the ultimate Leadership show, with the ultimate Leadership support network.

    8  They had the kids compete to see who could build a house first.

    9   But they are clearly the brightest kids walking around.

    10 Hey, you have to be amazed at a bunch of kids who get to live in an Old West town and not even have to go to school.

    11  If you haven’t watched it, be sure you pick up the first DVD season the second it comes out, which could be as early as this Christmas.

    12  Just incredible show to study. Sort of like watching a real version of Lord of the Flies, only with a little more heart.

    13  Moving on: Ah…Leadership. We had a GREAT go of it last night. Charter dinner for all the clubs, but my organizers were worried to death about it. Funny thing is, i used to rescue the Drama Workshop or the Class of ’05 and do things for them.

    14  On this one, I just advised, but made them accountable completely for the success or failure of the event.

    15  I made a few suggestions, and let them do it.

    16  They rose to it. They delivered, and the event turned into a really fun, energetic evening. These students were all helping make the world a better place. We had Red Cross students, students helping people in three different countries, kids who have become publishers for other students’ literature, environmentalists, and an entire group united to fight for Darfur.

    17  One club after another took the mic and each was utterly amazing.

    18  Cheers, whistles, and hoots and hollers.

    19  Afterwards the students who organized it and succeeded turned up the music and celeberated with dance and with one another.

    20  Our awesome custodian, Frank, came down in his new golf cart, which has some snazzy lights, and let my crew cruise the campus under the light of Mars.

    21  Something changed last night at the Chill.

    22  Something.

    23  Stay tuned.

    24  ~H~

    ~H~

    http://www.xanga.com/bharrington

     

     

     

  • The Daily News

    black-bear 1 bear

    1  Amazing.

    2  Just everything.

    3  Last night I suddenly became paranoid that I might get eaten by a bear.

    4  Ever worry about that?

    5  I remember distinctly this show that used to sort of come around every now and again called When Bears Attack.

    6  Something.

    7  The thing is I made some bacon a while back, and it needed to be eaten so last night I made a bacon and Tillamook Extra Sharp Cheese sandwich.

    8  You know when you just haven’t had food and you open your fridge and all you have is shit that’ll killya?

    9  That.

    10  So I opened the fridge, pulled out the bacon that was already cooked, and the cheese.

    11  Just a little sidebar: Tillamook Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese is Truth.

    12  Anyway I found a bag of corn chip crumbs, cut two pieces of the cheddar, and brought out the baggie of bacon, and within minutes I was on Easy Street.

    13  My good ol’ mates The Grateful Dead used to say that when life looks like Easy Street there is danger at your door.

    14  So that lyric went through my head when I started eating the bacon sandwich, which is already a heart-stopper. Within seconds,  I goofed on something.

    15  See, sometimes when it’s late and I’m alone in a room I get WAY paranoid. I’m afraid of virtually everything: radiation from the teevee, hammertoe, new freckles, you get the drift.

    16  Well I goofed on what someone told me once about bacon.

    17  They said that you should never go hiking after you had bacon because the bears will smell it and then tear you up and rip you to pieces.

    18  And then I remembered those old When Bears Attack shows. I remembered how the bears in those videos used to knock down doors like they were dominos, farmer and all.

    19  And then they’d rip some guy’s kitchen apart: screen doors, wood-burning stove, shovels, milking gloves, grandmas.

    20  Well, I ate the entire small snack (anything larger than a few square inches coulda killed me anyway!) and I survived.

    21  Gee but it’s great to be back home.

    22   Well thank the stars I lived to tellya about it.

    23   I guess that’s about it. Guns last week, and Bearanoia this week.

    24   I gottago. Nice once again to be alive. Fookin’ bears man. ;  )

    25   Live life; love life.

    26  Peace.

    ~H~

    http://www.xanga.com/bharrington

     

  •  

    The Daily News
    confused 1 kid
    1  You know what’s funny?

    2  When your basic daily routine gets interrupted.

    3  I’m constantly amazed at how I completely shut down when a schedule change happens, or when someone else needs the computer, or when a car goes down.

    4  It’s as though we can’t even begin to function on any sort of normal level.

    5  That happened last night.

    6  I got home and my daughter was sitting where I usually sit to do the DN.

    7  I began writing the DN around six feet from where I normally write it, but it was virtually impossible.

    8  I felt left-handed, or  like I was in the wrong world.
     
    oz h
    9  Yeah, I just looked. It was literally a matter of six feet.

    10  I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz or something.

    11  My entire perspective of the world had switched. The teevee was straight on, and  the dog looked at me from the other side.

    12  Just weird.

    13  Couldn’t think.

    14  Had to pretend all was well, and that it was a simple matter of location.

    15  But sometimes we get yanked out of our comfort zones.

    16  Yeah, that’s the modern buzz word for it. Time, as it were, grabs us by the proverbial wrist…

    17  We become all confused and different, can’t think straight, and as Kurt Vonnegut once put it regarding the madness of his son Mark, it’s a lot like sneezing into soapflakes, or some such thing.

    18  I absolutely couldn’t do it.

    19  I couldn’t get myself to write the DN. I completely shut down.

    20  I set my laptop on the floor and figured I could just doze for a sec until this all blew over. I certainly didn’t want to disturb someone while they were in the middle of a project.

    21  I just set the laptop on the floor to take a bit of a nap.

    22  What was weird was that I fell into a deep, deep sleep, you know those kind when you’re going through some sort of clinical depression?

    23  Yeah, like that.

    24  Funny.

    25  Woke up around 12:30 a.m. and everyone was out of the room. The laptop remained on the floor. Kitchen dishes stood undone.

    26  And the DN hadn’t even begun.

    27  It was an interesting experiment in that I’ve had that sort of thing happen when I’ve been deeply depressed, yet last night nothing had gone wrong. Life had been fine.

    28  It just  my comfortable routine switched dramatically on me and all my systems shut completely down, as though programmed to do that when strange changes occur.

    29  Lesson learned: sometimes we get pulled out of our comfortable worlds, and our minds can’t deal with the change. We get depressed beyond recognition and unable to function.

    30  And instead of just accepting it as a small change requiring a simple adjustment, we shut ourselves down, climb into a world of sleep, and just want the covers pulled over our heads.

    31  I really wasn’t sad or anything though. I had all the symptoms of depression yet wasn’t depressed.

    32  Once it was all over, I simply picked up the laptop and wrote the DN in around thirty seconds.

    33  Life came in and took care of it. I survived pretty easily. I had to do the DN differently, but it got done, and I felt perfectly normal.

    34  I’m not trying to go deep here. I just think that somewhere I figured something out about when we get depressed and can’t deal with things.

    35  In most cases, it’s just a matter of waiting it out; the symptoms blow over and later on we just ask, “What was all THAT about?”

    36  That’s about it.

    37  Just thought I’d share that. It’s almost worth thinking about because I think I’ve discovered a minor cure for depression.

    38  You just might be viewing the world from an uncomfortable angle.

    39  It’ll blow.

    40  So look up at the sky, give yourself some strength, and realize that all things must pass.

    41  Goin’ deep despite meself, I imagine.

    42  Life just got better.  <IMG

    43  Peace.
     
    confused 9 hope

    ~H~
     
    8-)
     
     

  • Cool guy  superman 8 toilet trainingsuperman 9 wrapping packagescleaning lady superman 8 introssuperman 6 changing a diaper superman 4 dancing a waltzsuperman 2 shave

     The Daily News

    superman 7 evel knievel

    1  So…Evel Knievel flies into a bar…

    2  Classic goofball.

    3  Ah, so it goes, so it goes…

    4  Moving on: A thought: If Superman eats garlic pesto, does he have super-breath? 

    superman 1 just wondering 

    3  And more randomness: You wanna know what gives me the jeebs? The Burger King.

    4  Who PITCHED that concept?

    5   I flatly refuse even to put the guy’s picture. I haven’t been so irritated by something that’s out there on mainstream teevee since the onslaught and subsequent success of Richard Simmons. I NEVER understood THAT one either.

    6  I mean, yeah, the guy definitely has a ton of talent…

    7  Yeesh.

    8  Well, no point in starting a Monday off with all things irritating.

    9  We’re just marching into December now, aren’t we?

    10  The other night I found myself moseying around Barnes and Noble, just a nice thing to do in December.

    11  Pretty fun. And pretty free. I found myself hanging out in the trivia section most of the night, looking at books of lists, useless information, and other oddities.

    12  I found some book called 101 Things You Should Know How to Do. Honestly, I always think I should take about thirty seconds a day to teach students how to do normal things, like folding a box, or tying a tie.

    superman 5 tying a tie

    13  We spend billions of dollars teaching them about algebra, which I’ve NEVER used EVER, not that there’s anything WRONG with algebra, mind you, but we learned that and a lotta other stuff I never used, and really never learned a thing about how to polish shoes or how to get a stain out. And now I have this book. It’s swell.

    superman 10 laundry

    14  It’s great. Here are some things they teach you how to do in the book: It’s actually the titles of the chapters:

    • Shave
    • Propose a Toast
    • Dance the Waltz
    • Introduce a Person
    • Lay Carpet
    • Mop the Floor
    • Fold Clothes
    • House Train Your Cat
    • Change a Diaper
    • Wrap a Gift
    • Tie Knots
    • Scoop Ice Cream
    • Pour a Beer With a Perfect Head
    • Make a Perfect Bloody Mary

    15 How can you miss? We all assume we know how to do these things, but I just don’t THINK so.

    16  How come schools waste so much time on nonsense when we would do better to know how to do normal things?

    17  I’m tellin’ ya, just around thirty seconds a day and my students will learn more useful stuff than sixteen years of education might give them.

    18  They ought really to make the California High School Exit Exam based on a book of normal things.

    19  Like how to be courteous. Or how to change lanes using a signal.

    20  When not to pick your nose.

    21  Sorry. M’bad. It’s just every once in a while I look over at a stoplight, and some guy has his finger all up in there, and then examines it like it’s a fine diamond.

    22  Why at a stoplight, dude?

    23  Anyway, I got another book called Instant Vocabulary. Just learn roots. It’s great. Like “lic” means “permit” or “volcan” and “vulcan” in a word means “fire”. That book cost me six bucks, minus my discount.

    24  And the last book I got was called 100 Things You’re Not Supposed To Know. Here are a few samples of THAT book’s chapters:

    • One of the Popes Wrote an Erotic Book
    • Genetically-Engineered Humans Have Already Been Born
    • The Bayer Company Made Heroin
    • Men Have Clitorises
    • Head Transplants on Monkeys Have Already Been Performed
    • The U.S. Has Almost Nuked Canada, Britain, Spain, Greenland, and Texas.
    • Two Atomic Bombs WEre Dropped on North Carolina

    25  Total cost was $23 and change.

    26  Merry Christmas to me.

    27  I’ll share some of those things with you in the coming weeks.

    28  Bet you’re on the edge of your seats.

    superman 11 pius II

    29  Fun stuff.

    30  Goof on some of this as the day goes on today. Hey, it’s Monday. Google it when no one’s lookin’.

    31  Okay then.

    32  Y’all enjoy your day.

    33  Peace.

    ~H~

     

    Cool guy

    http://www.xanga.com/bharrington

     

  • The Daily News

    1  Don’t believe everything you read.

    2  Sequentially, this Daily News is the Friday, November 30 one.

    3  That was last Friday.

    4  That night I had left a basketball game at the school and on the way home stopped at the store to pick up a few things.

    5  Standing in front of the liquor store in the Save Mart center at Hostetter and Capitol, I suddenly heard loud shots off to my left.

    6  Gunshots. Loud.

    7  Time stood still. Everything turned silent. People curiously looked around, but there was nothing, no noise, no screaming, no screeching tires.

    8  Just dead silence. A few cars moved silently through the parking lot.

    9  I slipped behind a cement pillar and instantly called 911. Knowing I was a potential witness was particularly alarming, as I was afraid they would take a shot at me.

    10  As I called 911, a guy stumbled out of a restaurant and fell to the ground, his friend following right behind. I wanted to get over there to help but realized that the shooters might still be around.

    11  Fortunately a police unit arrived instantly and it became an instant crime scene.

    12  I had already written TWO DN’s at work and e-mailed them home. I had done them on Word, and by the time I was done talking with the police, it was late. I opened the e-mail, cut and pasted the better DN, and the computer went instantly wonky.

    13  I kept trying to make it happen but it refused. I almost published one and stuff deleted and disappeared.

    14  I simply conked out at that point, awoke later on and just wrote a really swift DN, which was mailed to the DN alumni.

    15  Yesterday (Sunday) I went online, checked out the DN because I like to edit them on Sundays for archival purposes, and Friday’s DN took up about two miles of space on the computer screen.

    16  Clearly something was STILL amiss, so I ended up deleting it, as well as the others that I had hidden.

    17  So THIS is the final draft of that weird day, and is intended to be the Friday DN.

    18  So weird man.

    19  By the way, the guy lived, so far as I know. I heard on the police radio that it was an ankle or leg wound. I was up all night worried, seriously. It bothered me that I didn’t run right over to the guy, and I thanked the Creator of the Universe for having the police arrive as swiftly as they did.

    20  So here’s the archive. I’ve been a bit shaky ever since but didn’t want everyone to know that. We’ve all been through some sort of strange thing like that, as we live in one of the most violent countries in the world.

    21  Sadly it’s gonna happen.

    22  Just thought I’d record all that and let you all know that this is officially the Friday DN and NOT a Sunday DN, no matter what it says at the top of the page.

    23  Gottago.

    24  Peace, and I mean that.

    ~H~

    http://www.xanga.com/bharrington